THE SOLITARY REAPER.
BEHOLD her, single in the field,
Yon solitary Highland lass!
Reaping and singing by herself,
Stop here, or gently pass!
Alone she cuts and binds the grain,
And sings a melancholy strain;
Oh listen! for the vale profound
Is overflowing with the sound.
No nightingale did ever chant
More welcome notes to weary bands
Of travellers in some shady haunt,
Among Arabian sands:
Such thrilling voice was never heard
In springtime from the cuckoo-bird,
Breaking the silence of the seas
Among the farthest Hebrides.
Will no one tell me what she sings?
Perhaps the plaintive numbers flow
For old, unhappy, far-off things,
And battles long ago:
Or is it some more humble lay,
Familiar matter of to-day?
Some natural sorrow, loss, or pain,
That has been, and may be again!
Whate'er the theme, the maiden sang
As if her song could have no ending;
I saw her singing at her work,
And o'er the sickle bending?
I listen'd, motionless and still;
And when I mounted up the hill,
The music in my heart I bore,
Long after it was heard no more.
ART thou a statesman, in the van
Of public business train'd and bred?
First learn to love one living man,
Then mayst thou think upon the dead.
A lawyer art thou? draw not nigh:
Go, carry to some fitter place
The keenness of that practised eye,
The hardness of that sallow face.
Art thou a man of purple cheer?
A rosy man, right plump to see?
Approach; yet, doctor, not too near:
This grave no cushion is for thee.
Or art thou one of gallant pride,
A soldier, and no man of chaff?
Welcome! but lay thy sword aside,
And lean upon a peasant's staff.
Physician art thou? One, all eyes,
Philosopher! a fingering slave,
One that would peep and botanize
Upon his mother's grave?
Wrapp'd closely in thy sensual fleece,
Oh, turn aside, and take, I pray,
That he below may rest in peace,
That abject thing, thy soul, away!
A moralist perchance appears;
Led, Heaven knows how! to this poor sod: And he has neither eyes nor ears;
Himself his world and his own God;
One to whose smooth-rubb'd soul can cling
Nor form nor feeling, great nor small;
A reasoning, self-sufficing thing,
An intellectual all-in-all!
Shut close the door; press down the latch;
Sleep in thy intellectual crust;
Nor lose ten tickings of thy watch
Near this unprofitable dust.
But who is he, with modest looks,
And clad in homely russet brown?
He murmurs near the running brooks
A music sweeter than their own.
He is retired as noontide dew,'
Or fountain in a noonday grove;
And you must love him, ere to you
He will seem worthy of your love.
The outward shows of sky and earth,
Of hill and valley, he has view'd;
And impulses of deeper birth
Have come to him in solitude.
In common things that round us lie,
Some random truths he can impart;
The harvest of a quiet eye,
That broods and sleeps on his own heart,
But he is weak; both man and boy
Hath been an idler in the land;
Contented if he might enjoy
The things which others understand.
Come hither in thy hour of strength;
Come, weak as is a breaking wave!
Here stretch thy body at full length,
build thy house upon this grave,
I was thy neighbour once, thou rugged pile!
Four summer weeks I dwelt in sight of thee:
I saw thee every day and all the while
Thy form was sleeping on a glassy sea.
So pure the sky, so quiet was the air!
So like, so very like, was day to day!
Whene'er I look'd, thy image still was there;
It trembled, but it never pass'd away.
How perfect was the calm! it seem'd no sleep;
No mood, which season takes away or brings:
I could have fancied that the mighty deep
Was even the gentlest of all gentle things.
Ah! then, if mine had been the painter's hand,
To express what then I saw; and add the gleam,
The light that never was, on sea or land,
The consecration, and the poet's dream;
I would have planted thee, thou hoary pile,
Amid a world how different from this!
Beside a sea that could not cease to smile;
On tranquil land, beneath a sky of bliss.
A picture had it been of lasting ease,
Elysian quiet, without toil or strife;
No motion but the moving tide, a breeze,
Or merely silent Nature's breathing life.
Such, in the fond illusion of my heart,
Such picture would I at that time have made:
And seen the soul of truth in every part;
A faith, a trust that could not be betray'd.
So once it would have been: 'tis so no more:
I have submitted to a new control:
A power is gone which nothing can restore :
A deep distress hath humanized my soul.
Not for a moment could I now behold
A smiling sea, and be what I have been :
The feeling of my loss will ne'er be old;
This, which I know, I speak with mind serene.
Then, Beaumont, friend! who would have been the
If he had lived, of him whom I deplore,
This work of thine I blame not, but commend;
This sea in anger, and that dismal shore.
Oh, 'tis a passionate work! yet wise and well;
Well chosen is the spirit that is here;
That hulk, which labours in the deadly swell,
This rueful sky, this pageantry of fear!
And this huge castle, standing here sublime,
I love to see the look with which it braves,
Cased in the unfeeling armour of old time,
The lightning, the fierce wind, and trampling waves,
Farewell! farewell the heart that lives alone,
Housed in a dream at distance from the kind!
Such happiness, wherever it be known,
Is to be pitied, for 'tis surely blind.
But welcome fortitude, and patient cheer,
And frequent sights of what is to be borne!
Such sights, or worse, as are before me here:
Not without hope we suffer and we mourn,
SONG AT THE FEAST OF BROUGHAM CASTLE.
HIGH in the breathless hall the minstrel sate,
And Emont's murmur mingled with the song.
The words of ancient time I thus translate,
A festal strain that hath been silent long.
"From town to town, from tower to tower,
The red rose is a gladsome flower.
Her thirty years of winter past,
The red rose is revived at last;
She lifts her head for endless spring,
For everlasting blossoming:
|