Abbildungen der Seite
PDF
EPUB

And here comes the old grandmother,
When her day's work is done;
And here they bring the sickly babe
To cheer it in the sun.
And here, on Sabbath-mornings,

The good man comes to get
His Sunday nosegay, moss-rose bud,
White pink, and mignonette.
And here, on Sabbath-evenings,
Until the stars are out,
With a little one in either hand,

He walketh all about.

For though his garden-plot is small,

Him doth it satisfy;

For there's no inch of all his ground That does not fill his eye.

It is not with the rich man thus;

For though his grounds are wide, He looks beyond, and yet beyond, With soul unsatisfied.

Yes! in the poor man's garden grow

[ocr errors][merged small][merged small]

LET them sing of bright red gold;
Let them sing of silver fair;
Sing of all that's on the earth,
All that's in the air;
All that's in the sunny air,

All that's in the sea;
And I'll sing a song as rare

Of the apple-tree!
The red-bloomed apple-tree;
The red-cheeked apple-tree;
That's the tree for you and me,

The ripe, rosy apple-tree!
Learned men have learned books,

Which they ponder day and night; Easier leaves than theirs I read,

Blossoms pink and white;
Blossom-leaves all pink and white,
Wherein I can see
Charactered, as clear as light,
The old apple-tree;
The gold-cheeked apple-tree;
The red-streaked apple-tree;
All the fruit that groweth on
The ripe, rosy apple-tree!
Autumn comes, and our good-man
Soon as harvest-toil is o'er,
Speculates on apple-crops -
Be they less or more;

I could tell him; less or more
Is well-known to me;

I have eyes that see the core
Of the apple-tree;

The old, mossy apple-tree;
The young, glossy apple-tree;
Scathed or sound, the country round,
I know every apple-tree!
Winter comes, as winter will,

Bringing dark days, frost, and rime; But the apple is in vogue

At the Christmas-time;
At the merry Christmas-time
Folks are full of glee;
Then they bring out apples prime,
Of the primest tree;

Then you the roast-apple see
While they toast the apple-tree,
Singing, with a jolly chime,
Of the brave old apple-tree!

THE HERON.

Lo! there the hermit of the waste,
The ghost of ages dim,

The fisher of the solitudes,

Stands by the river's brim! Old Heron, in the feudal times, Beside the forest stream, And by the moorland waters,

Thus didst thou love to dream.
And over towers and castles high,
And o'er the armed men,
Skirmishing on the border-lands,
Or crouching in the glen;
Thy heavy wings were seen to flit,
Thy azure shape was known
To pilgrim and to anchorite,

In deserts scorched and lone.
Old Heron, in those feudal times
Thou wast in dangerous grace,
Secured by mandates and by laws
All for the royal chase.
No meaner head might plot thy death
Than one which wore a crown;
No meaner hand might loose the shaft,
From the skies to strike thee down.
And out came trooping courtly dames,
And men of high degree,

On steeds caparisoned in gold,

With bridles ringing free.

Came king and queen; came warrior stout;
Came lord and lady fair,

All gallant, beautiful, and bold,
Into the autumn air.

The abbot and the bishop grave,

The monk with crown new-shorn, Who sore did rue their ravaged stew* In the last Lent forlorn.

* Fish-pond.

The keepers with their dogs in leash;

The falconers before,

Who proudly on their sturdy wrists The hooded tercel bore.

And in thy solitary haunts

By stream or sedgy mere,

The laugh, the shout, the cries of dogs And men, came to thine ear.

And starting from thy reverie,

And springing from the bent, Into the air, from joyous hearts, Another shout was sent.

Up, up, into the azure skies

On circling pinions strong,

Fair eyes pursued thy mounting course
While the falcon sped along.

Up, up, into the azure skies

Thy strenuous pinions go,

While shouts and cries, and wondering eyes,
Still reach thee from below;
But higher, and higher, like a spirit of fire,
Still o'er thee hangs thy foe;

Thy cruel foe, still seeking

With one down-plunging aim,

To strike thy precious life

For ever from thy frame!

But doomed perhaps, as down he darts
Swift as the rushing wind,
Impaled upon thy up-turned beak,
To leave his own behind.

Old Heron, all those times are past,

Those jocund troops are fled;

The king, the queen, the keepers green,
The dogs, the hawks are dead!

In many a minster's solemn gloom,
In shattered abbeys lone,

Lie all thy crowned enemies,

In midnight vaults of stone!

The towers are torn, the gates outworn,
Portcullis, moat, and mound

Are vanished all, or faintly mark
Some rarely-trodden ground.

O'er all those abbeys, convents, all

Those chantries and crosses,

Where thou didst glide past in thy pride,

Grow tawny ferns and mosses.

Where banners waved, the ivy grows;—

Baronial times are o'er!

The forests now are cornfields green,

Green is the lakelet's shore.

Where grew the furze, now runs the fence;
Where waved the wild-rush free,

And whistled moorland-grasses sere,
Fat cattle roam the lea.

The bow is gone, the hawk is thrown

For ever from the hand;

And now we live a bookish race,

All in a cultured land.

Yet here and there some remnant
Of those old woodland times;
Some waste lies brown; some forest spreads;
Some rocky streamlet chimes.

And there, beside the waters,
On moorland and on wold,

I find thee watching still,
Thou fisherman of old.
Oh fair, fair is the forest,

When summer is in prime!
And I love to lie by mountain lake,
On its slopes of heath and thyme!
In the thyme so richly fragrant,

In the heath that blooms so fair,
And list the quaint bird-voices

From the moorland and the air.
All those that lead their sweetest lives
Far from the haunt of men,
Are sending forth their gladness
In many a wild cry then.
The curlew and the plover,

The gor-cock on the brae,
Send, with the singing of the lark,
Their voices far away!

The coot and moor-hen from the reeds,
Or where the waters run
Crystal and warm and glittering,
O'er the pebbles in the sun.
And from the air, in circling flight,
Comes suddenly the crowd
Of all the wild-duck army,

With pinions rustling loud;
And, dashing down into the lake,
The splashing waters bound
In drops and showers of silver,

And in snow-flakes all around. Such is the joy that wakens,

That clamours, and that lives, In all the winged creatures,

Where nature still survives;
Where nature still survives

In her regions wild and free;
So lives in all her creatures,
Old fisherman, but thee!

Whene'er I meet thee, Heron,
By river broad and deep,
Where mountain-torrents run and moan
Or ponded waters sleep;

By tarns upon the naked hills;
In stony regions grey,
Or wading in the sounding sea
Amid the hissing spray:

Whene'er I see thee, Heron,

Thy cheer is silent still; Solemnly watching by the wave, Or o'er the dusky hill,

Waving thy shadowy wings
In motion grave and slow,
Like a spirit of the solemn past

That museth on its woe!

Like one that in all present joy

Finds no congenial tone,
For his heart is in the perished past,
And seeketh that alone!

Then hail to thee, old Heron,

Flit on from dream to dream; Be yet the watcher on the shore, The spirit of the stream;

For still at sight of thee come back

The storied times of old;

The jovial hawking-train, the chase,
The sturdy bowmen bold.

Still wandering over cultured fields,
Or 'mid the human throng,
Come back the feudal castle,

The harper and his song.

And it is pleasant thus to dream

In this kingdom of the free,
Now laws are strong and roads are good,
Of outlaw 'neath his tree.

Now knowledge falls like sunshine,
And peace walks in our towns —
Oh pleasant are the feudal days

And the bloody strife of crowns!

Then hail to thee, old Heron!

Flit on to lakes and streams; And by their waters dreaming,

Still prompt these pleasant dreams!

THE ROSE OF MAY.

An there's the lily, marble pale,
The bonny broom, the cistus frail,
The rich sweet-pea, the iris blue,
The larkspur with its peacock hue ;-
Each one is fair, yet hold I will
That the rose of May is fairer still.
"Tis grand 'neath palace-walls to grow;
To blaze where lords and ladies go;
To hang o'er marble founts, and shine
In modern gardens trim and fine; -
But the rose of May is only seen
Where the great of other days have been.
The house is mouldering stone by stone;
The garden-walks are overgrown;
The flowers are low, the weeds are high;
The fountain-stream is choked and dry;
The dial-stone with moss is green,
Where'er the rose of May is seen.

The rose of May its pride display'd
Along the old stone balustrade;
And ancient ladies, quaintly dight,
In its pink blossoms took delight,
And on the steps would make a stand,
To scent its sweetness, fan in hand.

Long have been dead those ladies gay,
Their very heirs have passed away;
And their old portraits, prim and tall,
Are mouldering in the mouldering hall;
The terrace and the balustrade
Lie broken, weedy, and decayed.

But, lithe and tall, the rose of May
Shoots upward through the ruin grey,
With scented flower, and leaf pale-green,

Such rose as it hath ever been;

Left, like a noble deed, to grace

The memory of an ancient race!

What exact species of rose this is I do not know; it appears not to be approved of in modern gardens, -at least if it be, it is so much altered by cultivation as to have lost much of its primitive character. I saw it in three different situations in Nottinghamshire. In the small remains of gardens and old labyrinthine shrubbery at Awthorpe Hall,-which, when we were there, had just been taken down,-the resi. dence of the good Colonel John Hutchinson and his sweet wife Lucy-in the very gardens which, as she relates in his life, he laid out and took so much pleasure in. It was growing also, with tall shoots and abundance of flowers, in the most forlorn of gardens at an old place called Burton Grange, a house so desolate and deserted as to have gained from a poetical friend of ours the appropriate name of The Dead House. It was a dreary and most lonesome place; the very bricks of which it was built were bleached by long exposure to wind and weather; there seemed no life within or about it. Every trace of furniture and wainscot was gone from its interior, and its principal rooms were the depositories of old ploughs and disused ladders; yet still its roof, floors, and windows were in decent repair. It had once upon a time been a well-conditioned house; had been moated, and its garden-wall had been terminated by stately stone pillars surmounted by well-cut urns, one of which, at the time we were there, lay overgrown with grass in the ground beneath; the other, after a similar fall, had been replaced, but with the wrong end uppermost. To add still more to its lonesomeness, thick, wild woods encompassed it on three sides, whence of an evening, and often too in the course of the day, came the voices of owls and other gloomy wood-creatures.

"There's not a flower in the garden," said a woman who, with her husband and child, we found, to our astonishment, inhabiting what had once been th scullery," not a flower but fever-few and the ros of May, and you'll not think it worth getting." She was mistaken; I was delighted to find this sweet and favourite rose in so ruinous a situation.

Again, we found it in the gardens of Annesley Hall,

that most poetical of old mansions; and the ancient housekeeper, at that time its sole inhabitant, pointed out this flower with a particular emphasis. "And here's the rose of May," said she, drawing out a slender spray from a tangle of jessamine that hung about the stone-work of the terrace; "a main pretty thing, though there's little store set by it now-adays!"

THE DOR-HAWK.
FERN-OWL, Churn-owl, or Goat-sucker,
Night-jar, Dor-hawk, or whate'er
Be thy name among a dozen, -
Whip-poor-Will's and Who-are-you's cousin,
Chuck-Will's-widow's near relation,
Thou art at thy night vocation,

Thrilling the still evening air!

In the dark brown wood beyond us,
Where the night lies dusk and deep;
Where the fox his furrow maketh,
Where the tawny owl awaketh

Nightly from his day-long sleep;
There Dor-hawk is thy abiding,

Meadow green is not for thee; While the aspen branches shiver, 'Mid the roaring of the river,

Comes thy chirring voice to me. Bird, thy form I never looked on,

And to see it do not care; Thou hast been, and thou art only As a voice of forests lonely,

Heard and dwelling only there.

Bringing thoughts of dusk and shadow;

Trees huge-branched in ceaseless change;

Pallid night-moths, spectre-seeming ;
All a silent land of dreaming,

Indistinct and large and strange.

Be thou thus, and thus I prize thee
More than knowing thee face to face,
Head and beak and leg and feather,
Kept from harm of touch and weather,
Underneath a fine glass-case.

I can read of thee, and find out
How thou fliest, fast or slow;
Of thee in the north and south too,
Of thy great moustachioed mouth too,
And thy Latin name also.
But, Dor-hawk, I love thee better

While thy voice unto me seems
Coming o'er the evening meadows,
From a dark brown land of shadows,

Like a pleasant voice of dreams!

This singular bird, which is found in every part of the old world, as well in the cold regions of Siberia, as in the hot jungles of India, and the lion-haunted forests of Africa, has, as we have said, a large class

of relations also in America: the Whip-poor-Will, the Willy-come-go, the Work-away, and the Whoare-you? being all of the same family. In Africa and among the American Indians these birds are looked upon with reverence or fear; for, by some they are supposed to be haunted by the dead, and by others to be obedient to gloomy or evil spirits. The Dor-Hawk of our own country has been subject to slander, as his name of the goat-sucker shows. This name originated of course in districts where goats were used for milking, and furnished, no doubt, an excuse for the false herd, who stole the milk and blamed the bird.

The Dor-Hawk, like the owl, is not seen in the day; and like it also, is an inhabitant of wild and gloomy scenes; heathy tracks abounding in fern; moors, and old woods. It is so regular in the time of beginning its nightly cry, that good old Gilbert White declares, it appeared to him to strike up exactly when the report of the Portsmouth evening gun was heard. He says also, that its voice, which resembles the loud purring of a cat, occasions a singular vibration even in solid buildings; for that, as he and some of his neighbours sate in a hermitage on a steep hill-side, where they had been taking tea, a Dor-Hawk alighted on the little cross at the top, and uttered his cry, making the walls of the building sensibly vibrate, to the wonder of all the company.

I can give no anecdotes of the bird from my own experience. I know him best by his voice, heard mostly from scenes of a wild and picturesque character, in the gloom and shadow of evening, or in the deep calm of summer moonlight. I heard him first in a black, solemn-looking wood, between Houghton Tower, and Pleasington Priory, in Lancashire. Since then I have become familiar with his voice in the pleasant woods of Winter-down, and Claremont, in Surrey.

THE OAK-TREE.

Sing for the Oak-Tree,

The monarch of the wood;

Sing for the Oak-tree,

That groweth green and good;

That groweth broad and branching
Within the forest shade;

That groweth now, and yet shall grow
When we are lowly laid!

The Oak-Tree was an acorn once,
And fell upon the earth;
And sun and showers nourished it,
And gave the Oak-tree birth.
The little sprouting Oak-Tree!

Two leaves it had at first,
Till sun and showers had nourished it,
Then out the branches burst.

The little sapling Oak-Tree!

Its root was like a thread, Till the kindly earth had nourished it, Then out it freely spread:

On this side and on that side

It grappled with the ground; And in the ancient, rifted rock

Its firmest footing found.

The winds came, and the rain fell;

The gusty tempests blew; All, all were friends to the Oak-Tree, And stronger yet it grew. The boy that saw the acorn fall,

He feeble grew and grey;

But the Oak was still a thriving tree,
And strengthened every day!
Four centuries grows the Oak-Tree,
Nor doth its verdure fail;
Its heart is like the iron-wood,

Its bark like plated mail.
Now, cut us down the Oak-Tree,

The monarch of the wood;

And of its timbers stout and strong
We'll build a vessel good!

The Oak-Tree of the forest

Both east and west shall fly; And the blessings of a thousand lands Upon our ship shall lie!

For she shall not be a man-of-war,

Nor a pirate shall she be :

But a noble, Christian merchant-ship, To sail upon the sea.

Then sing for the Oak-Tree,

The monarch of the wood;

Sing for the Oak-Tree,

That groweth green and good; That groweth broad and branching

Within the forest shade;

That groweth now, and yet shall grow, When we are lowly laid!

THE CAROLINA PARROT.

PARROTS, with all their cleverness, are not capable of keeping up a dialogue; otherwise we might suppose something like the following to be in character with their humour and experience.

POLL'S MISTRESS.

I've heard of imp, I've heard of sprite;
Of fays and fairies of the night;
Of that renowned fiend Hobgoblin,
Running, racing, jumping, hobbling;
Of Puck, brimful of fun; also
Of roguish Robin Goodfellow.
I've seen a hearth where, as is told,
Came Hobthrush in the days of old,
To make the butter, mend the linen,
And keep the housewife's wheel a-spinning.
I've heard of pigmies, pixies, lares,
Shoirim, gemedim, and fairies: ---
And, Parrot, on my honest word,
I hardly think thou art a bird ;-

[blocks in formation]

Ha, Captain, how do you do?-Captain, your health I say;

Captain, I'll have the pleasure of drinking your

health to-day! ha! ha! ha!

I'm very glad to see you!-You remember, perhaps,
That wood in Carolina, the guns and all the traps;-
To be sure you do!--Ladies, I'm a Carolina bird,—
Some come from the East Indies, from the Cape, too,
I have heard;
But I'm of Carolina -

-to the Big-bone lick I've

been, Now in that country there is something to be seen! Our Captain knows that! Ay, Captain, I say, Do you remember crossing the Cedar Swamp one particular day,

When I got out of your pocket and flew away?
Ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! How it makes me laugh!
You'd a pretty chase after me!-ha! ha! a pretty

chase!

And I sat in the hiccory trees, laughing in your face! Ha! ha ha! how I did laugh. What cypress-berries, cockle-burrs, and beech-nuts grew there!

You may look all this country over, and find none anywhere.

And what fun it was-me, and a thousand beside To fly in the merry sunshine through those forests

wide,

And build our nests- Oh, what nests we had!— Did you ever see one of our nests, Captain? Eh, my lad?"

CAPTAIN.

I've heard of nests of cinnamon, With the great Phoenix set thereon;

« ZurückWeiter »