Her skin was of Egyptian brown
Haughty, as if her eye had seen
Its own light to a distance thrown,
She towered, fit person for a Queen
To lead those ancient Amazonian files;
Or ruling Bandit's wife among the Grecian isles.
Advancing, forth she stretched her ha
And begged an alms with doleful plea
That ceased not; on our English land
Such woes, I knew, could never be ;
And yet a boon I gave her, for the creature
Was beautiful to see a weed of glorious
feature.
I left her, and pursued my way;
And soon before me did espy
A pair of httle Boys at play,
Chasing a crimson butterfly;
The taller followed with his hat in hand, Wreathed round with yellow flowers the gayest of the land.
The other wore a rimless crown
With leaves of laurel stuck about;
And, while both followed up and down,
Each whooping with a merry shout,
In their fraternal features I could trace
Unquestionable lines of that wild Suppliant's
face.
Yet they, so blithe of heart, seemed fit
For finest tasks of earth rar:
Wings let them have, and they might flit
Precursors to Aurora's car,
Scattering fresh flowers; though happier far,
To hunt their fluttering game o'er rock and level green.
They dart across my path-but lo,
Each ready with a plaintive whine!
Said I, "not half an hour ago
Your Mother has had alms of mine."
"That cannot be," one answered-" she is
dead: ". -
I looked reproof-they saw-but neither hung his head.
"She has been dead, Sir, many a day.”. "Hush, boys! you're telling me a lie; It was your Mother, as I say!"'
And in the twinkling of an eye,
"Come! come!" cried one, and without
SEQUEL TO THE FOREGOING,
COMPOSED MANY YEARS AFTER.
WHERE are they now, those wanton Boys?'
For whose free range the dædal earth
Was filled with animated toys,
And implements of frolic mirth;
With tools for ready wit to guide;
And ornaments of seemlier pride,
More fresh, more bright, than princes wear;
For what one moment flung aside
Ancther could repair;
What good or evil have they seen
Since I their pastime witnessed here,
Their daring wiles, their sportive cheer?
I ask-but all is dark between !
They met me in a genial hour,
When universal nature breathed
As with the breath of one sweet flower,-
A time to overrule the power
Of discontent, and check the birth
Of thoughts with better thoughts at strife,
The most familiar bane of life
Since parting Innocence bequeathed
Mortality to Earth!
Soft clouds, the whitest of the year,
Sailed through the sky-the brooks ran clear;
The lambs from rock to rock were bounding;
With songs the budded groves resounding;
nd to my heart are still endeared
The thoughts with which it then was cheered;
The faith which saw that gladsome pair
Walk through the fire with unsinged hair.
Or, if such faith must needs deceive-
Then, Spirits of beauty and of grace,
Associates in that eager chase;
Ye, who within the blameless mind
Your favorite seat of empire find-
Kind Spirits! may we not believe
That they, so happy and so fair
Through your sweet influence, and the care
Of pitying Heaven, at least were free
From touch of deadly injury?
Destined, whate'er their earthly doom,
For mercy and immortal bloom!
1817.
YET are they here the same unbroken knot
Off to some other play the joyous Vagrants Of human Beings, in the self-same spot!
Men, women, children, yea the frame Of the whole spectacle the same !
Only their fire seems bolder, yielding light,
Now deep and red, the coloring of night,
That on their Gipsy-faces falls,
Their bed of straw and blanket-walls. -Twelve hours, twelve bounteous hours are gone, while I
Have been a traveller under open sky,
Much witnessing of change and cheer,
Yet as I left I find them here!
The weary Sun betook himself to rest ;-
Then issued Vesper from the fulgent west,
Outshining like a visible God
The glorious path in which he trod.
And now, ascending, after one dark hour
And one night's diminution of her power,
Behold the mighty Moon! this way
She looks as if at them--but they
Regard not her :-oh better wrong and strife
(By nature transient) than this torpid life;
Life which the very stars reprove
As on their silent tasks they move!
Yet, witness all that stirs in heaven or earth!
In scorn I speak not :- they are what their
And breeding suffer them to be;
Wild outcasts of society !
WHEN Ruth was left half-desolate,
Her Father took another Mate;
And Ruth, not seven years old,
A slighted child, at her own will
Went wandering over dale and hill,
In thoughtless freedom, bold.
And she had made a pipe of straw,
And music from that pipe could draw
Like sounds of winds and floods;
Had built a bower upon the green,
As if she from her birth had been
An infant of the woods.
Beneath her father's roof, alone
She seemed to live; her thoughts her own;
Herself her own delight;
Pleased with herself, nor sad, nor gay;
And, passing thus the live-long day,
She grew to woman's height.
From Indian blood you deem him sprung:
But no he spake the Engish tongue,
And bore a soldier's name;
And when America was free,
From battle and from jeopardy,
He 'cross the ocean came.
With hues of genius on his cheek
In finest tones the Youth could speak!
-While he was yet a boy,
The moon, the glory of the sun,
And streams that murmur as they run,
Had been his dearest joy.
He was a lovely Youth! I guess
The panther in the wilderness
Was not so fair as he;
And, when he chose to sport and play,
No dolphin ever was so gay
Upon the tropic sea.
Among the Indians he had fought,
And with him many tales he brought
Of pleasure and of fear;
Such tales as told to any maid
By such a Youth, in the green shade,
Were perilous to hear.
He told of girls-a happy rout!
Who quit their fold with dance and shout,
Their pleasant Indian town,
To gather strawberries all day long;
Returning with a choral song
When daylight is gone down.
He spake of plants that hourly change
Their blossoms, through a boundless range
Of intermingling hues;
With budding, fading, faded flowers
They stand the wonder of the bowers
From morn to evening dews.
He told of the magnolia, spread
High as a cloud, high overhead!
The cypress and her spire;
-Of flowers that with one scarlet gleam
Cover a hundred leagues, and seem
To set the hills on fire.
The Youth of green savannas spake,
And many an endless, endless lake,
With all its fairy crowds
There came a Youth from Georgia's shore- Of islands, that together lie
A military casque he wore,
With splendid feathers drest;
He brought them from the Cherokees;
The feathers nodded in the breeze,
And made a gallant crest.
As quietly as spots of sky
Among the evening clouds.
"How pleasant," then he said, "it were A fisher or a hunter there,
To wander with an easy mind;
And build a household fire, and find
Whatever in those climes he found
Irregular in sight or sound
Did to his mind impart
A kindred impulse, seemed allied
To his own powers, and justified
What days and what bright years! Ah me! The workings of his heart.
Our life were life indeed, with thee
So passed in quiet bliss,
And all the while," said he, "to know
That we were in a world of woe,
On such an earth as this!"
And then he sometimes interwove
Fond thoughts, about a father's love:
"For there," said he, 66 are spun
Around the heart such tender ties,
That our own children to our eyes
Are dearer than the sun.
Sweet Ruth and could you go with me
My helpmate in the woods to be,
Or shed at night to rear;
Or run, my own adopted bride,
A sylvan huntress at my side,
And drive the flying deer!
Beloved Ruth!"-no more he said.
The wakeful Ruth at midnight shed
A solitary tear :
She thought again-and did agree
With him to sail across the sea,
And drive the flying deer.
"And now, as fitting is and right,
We in the church our faith will plight,
A husband and a wife."
Even so they did; and I may say
That to sweet Ruth that happy day
Was more than human life.
Through dream and vision did she sink,
Delighted all the while to think
That on those lonesome floods,
And green savannas, she should share
His board with lawful joy, and bear
His name in the wild woods.
But, as you have before been told,
This Stripling, sportive, gay, and bold,
And, with his dancing crest,
So beautiful, through savage lands
Had roamed about, with vagrant bands
Of Indians in the West,
The wind, the tempest roaring high,
The tumult of a tropic sky,
Might well be dangerous food
For him, a Youth to whom was given
So much of earth-so much of heaven,
And such impetuous blood.
Nor less, to feed voluptuous thought,
The beauteous forms of nature wrought,
Fair trees and gorgeous flowers;
The breezes their own languor lent;
The stars had feelings, which they sent
Into those favored bowers.
Yet, in his worst pursuits, I ween
That sometimes there did intervene
Pure hopes of high intent :
For passions, linked to forms so fair
And stately, needs must have their share
Of noble sentiment.
But ill he lived, much evil saw,
With men to whom no better law
Nor better life was known;
Deliberately, and undeceived,
Those wild men's vices he received,
And
gave them back his own.
His genius and his moral frame
Were thus impaired, and he became
The slave of low desires;
A Man who without self-control
Would seek what the degraded soul
Unworthily admires.
And yet he with no feigned delight
Had wooed the Maiden, day and night
Had loved her, night and morn:
What could he less than love a Maid
Whose heart with so much nature played?
So kind and so forlorn!
Sometimes, most earnestly, he said,
"O Ruth! I have been worse than dead;
False thoughts, thoughts bold and vain,
Encompassed me on every side
When I, in confidence and pride,
Had crossed the Atlantic main,
Before me shone a glorious world-
Fresh as a banner bright, unfurled
To music suddenly:
I looked upon those hills and plains,
And seemed as if let loose from chains,
To live at liberty.
No more of this; for now, by thee,
Dear Ruth! more happily set free
With nobler zeal I burn;
My soul from darkness
Like the whole sky when to the east
The morning doth return."
Full soon that better mind was gone;
No hope, no wish remained, not one,
They stirred him now no more;
New objects did new pleasure give,
And once again he wished to live
As lawless as before.
Meanwhile, as thus with him it fared,
They for the voyage were prepared,
And went to the sea-shore:
But, when they thither came, the Youth
Deserted his poor Bride, and Ruth
Could never find him more.
An innocent life, yet far astray!
And Ruth will, long before her day,
Be broken down and old:
Sore aches she needs must have! but less
Of mind than body's wretchedness,
From damp, and rain, and cold.
If she is prest by want of food,
She from her dwelling in the wood
Repairs to a roadside;
And there she begs at one steep place
Where up and down with easy pace
The horsemen-travellers ride.
That oaten pipe of hers is mute,
Or thrown away; but with a flute
Her loneliness she cheers:
This flute, made of a hemlock stalk,
At evening in his homeward walk
God help thee, Ruth !-Such pains she had, The Quantock woodman hears.
That she in half a year was mad,
And in a prison housed;
And there, with many a doleful song
Made of wild words, her cup of wrong
She fearfully caroused.
Yet sometimes milder hours she knew,
Nor wanted sun, nor rain, nor dew,
Nor pastimes of the May:
-They all were with her in her cell;
And a clear brook with cheerful knell
Did o'er the pebbles play.
When Ruth three seasons thus had lain,
There came a respite to her pain;
She from her prison fled;
But of the Vagrant none took thought;
And where it liked her best she sought
Her shelter and her bread.
Among the fields she breathed again :
The master-current of her brain
Ran permanent and free;
And, coming to the Banks of Tone,
There did she rest; and dwell alone
Under the greenwood tree.
The engines of her pain, the tools
That shaped her sorrow, rocks and pools,
And airs that gently stir
The vernal leaves-she loved them still;
Nor ever taxed them with the ill
Which had been done to her.
A Barn her winter bed supplies:
But, till the warmth of summer skies
And summer days is gone,
(And all do in this tale agree)
She sleeps beneath the greenwood tree,
And other home hath none.
I, too, have passed her on the hills
Setting her little water-mills
By spouts and fountains wild-
Such small machinery as she turned
Ere she had wept, ere she had mourned,
A young and happy Child!
Farewell! and when thy days are told,
Ill-fated Ruth, in hallowed mould
Thy corpse shall buried be,
For thee a funeral bell shall ring,
And all the congregation sing,
A Christian psalm for thee.
1799.
And with her feet she from the plashy earth
Raises a mist; that, glittering in the sun,
Runs with her all the way, wherever she
doth run.
I was a Traveller then upon the moor,
I saw the hare that raced about with joy;
I heard the woods and distant waters roar;
Or heard them not, as happy as a boy:
The pleasant season did my heart employ:
My old remembrances went from me
wholly ;
And all the ways of men, so vain and melan.
choly.
But, as it sometimes chanceth, from the
might
Of joy in minds that can no further go,
As high as we have mounted in delight
In our dejection do we sink as low;
To me that morning did it happen so :
And fears and fancies thick upon me came;
Dim sadness-and blind thoughts, I knew
not, nor could name.
I heard the sky-lark warbling in the sky;
And I bethought me of the playful hare:
Even such a happy Child of earth am I ;
Even as these blissful creatures do I fare;
Far from the world 1 walk, and from all
But there may come another day to meSolitude, pain of heart, distress, and poverty.
My whole life I have lived in pleasant thought,
As if life's business were a summer mood;
As if all needful things would come un-
sought
To genial faith, still rich in genial good;
But how can He expect that others should
Build for him, sow for him, and at his call
Love him, who for himself will take no
heed at all?
I thought of Chatterton, the marvellous
Boy,
By our own spirits are we deified:
We Poets in our youth begin in gladness:
But thereof come in the end despondency
and madness.
Now, whether it were by peculiar grace,
A leading from above, a something given,
Yet it befell that, in this lonely place,
When I with these untoward thoughts had
striven,
Beside a pool bare to the eye of heaven
I saw a Man before me unawares.
The oldest man he seemed that ever wore
gray hairs.
As a huge stone is sometimes seen to lie
Couched on the bald top of an eminence;
Wonder to all who do the same espy,
By what means it could thither come, and
whence;
So that it seems a thing endued with sense:
Like a sea-beast crawled forth, that on a
shelf
Of rock or sand reposeth, there to sun itself;
Such seemed this Man, not all alive nor
dead,
Nor all asleep-in his extreme old age:
His body was bent double, feet and head
Coming together in life's pilgrimage,
As if some dire constraint of pain, or rage
Of sickness felt by him in times long past,
A more than human weight upon his frame
had cast.
Himself he propped, limbs, body, and pale
face,
Upon a long gray staff of shaven wood:
And, still as I drew near with gentle pace,
Upon the margin of that moorish flood
Motionless as a cloud the old Man stood,
That heareth not the loud winds when they
call:
And moveth all together, if it move at all.
At length, himself unsettling, he the pond Stirred with his staff, and fixedly did look Upon the muddy water, which he conned, As if he had been reading in a book : And now a stranger's privilege I took : Of Him who walked in glory and in joy And, drawing to his side, to him did say, Following his plough, along the mountain-"This morning gives us promise of a glo
The sleepless Soul that perished in his pride:
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