With the love of living creatures,
Who shall always be thy teachers,
Whilst thy heart is pure and free,
As the birds upon the tree;
Whilst thou lovest earth and sky,
Things that creep, and things that fly;
Spurning with thy golden brain,
The mammon of unrighteous gain;
Living grandly for the right;
Ever in the master's sight;
Unabash'd by scorn and wrong,
But star-girdled-purpose-strong,
Daring prison, rack, and thong.
But if thou lose thy rectitude,
Come no more into the wood;
Or if thou come, thou wilt not find
Angel voices in the wind,
Glory in the grass and flowers,
Nor the old love in the bowers.
All the magic thou doest see,
To outer darkness turned will be ;
And the window-loops which lie,
Open to thy seeing eye,
Revealing through the form of things,
Most divine imaginings,
Shall be blanketed, and hidden,
And thou a guest, unsought, unbidden."
And these fancies I have told,
Walking in those woodlands old;
Whilst I showed my friends around,
The pictures in those days I found;
Pictures set in antique frames,
Made by Nature in her games;
Made of old fantastic oak,
By the centuries bespoke,
With ivy-wreaths, and columbine,
For carvery, and gildings fine.
And through these frames of foliage,
We looked on Nature's living page;
Now stretched in vistas faint and dim,
Or dipping down the horizon's brim;
And now in broad and vast expanse,
Revealing village, church, and manse,
Farm-house, cattle, flocks of sheep,
Dark woodlands, glimmering in their sleep,
Midst the sun, that lay around
Like God's shadow on the ground.
Here, likewise, I pointed out,
The trees Tom Miller wrote about
In his sweet" Day in the Woods,"
Whilst he made his wicker goods,
In the town of Gainsboro';
For here he loved to come and go,
Musing 'mongst the charmed trees,
To the wild harp of the breeze;
Noting every tiny glade,
Every sunny nook and shade;
Every colour of the skies,
And the rich injewelled dyes
Of the costly woodland floor,
Paved with flowers mosaic o'er.
And these sights and sounds conspired,
Till his spirit they had fired,
And he flung them once again,
In living glory from his brain.
Oh, rare Tom Miller! basket-maker,(9)
We'll thank the Lord he's not a Quaker!
Thank him that he spread the earth,
With splendours of immortal birth;
Fusing his colours altogether,-
Golden gorse, and purple heather;
Lilies white, and roses red,
Green below, and blue q'erhead.
And for the trees that thou didst love,
The sweet" Three Sisters" in the grove,
I love them as well as thou;
And all the more because thy brow
In tender thought so oft hath pressed,
The silver whiteness of their breast!
And as we homeward drove at even,
'Mid the starry mists of heaven,
Whilst the lowlands dark did glimmer,
Through the fog, and white moon shimmer,
We passed many a swarthy hind,
With his basket slung behind,
Hastening, all his labour done,
To the rest which he had won;
Or slowly, on the dusty road,
Bending 'neath a fagot load
Which, to brighten up his hearth,
He'd gathered by the woodland path;
And much good it did my heart,
To see each little cot apart,
By the way-side as we went,
Smoking from its chimney vent;
Whilst the cheerful fire displayed,
A happy group round it arrayed.
And, as we journeyed up the lane,
Red lights gleamed through many a pane
Of many a window, far and near,
'Mid the landscape shining clear.
And the old farm houses loomed
Through the mist which them entomk ›d;
And the fox upon the wold,
Howling in the moonlight cold,
Was answered by the trusty hound,
As he paced the farm yard round.
Then, at Stowe Park, as we passed, (10)
-Whilst the heavens lay broad and vast
Pierced by the countless eyes of God—
The ghostly trees their plumes did nod,
O'er the graveyard of the dead,
'Neath their branches buried.
For here a palace stood of
And an abbey's cloistered floor,
Where old churchmen lived and died,
Mid their manors far and wide.
And as we gazed upon the scene,
A nightingale, hid in the green
Of a little copsewood nigh,
Burst out in floods of melody,
Like a river in its tide,
Melancholy, wild, and wide,
As from the broke heart of a bride.
And the singing of this bird,
To those dead ears that never heard,
-Tho' to mine it was so sweet,-
Made my heart with sadness beat;
For they had listened in their time,
When Stowe Park was in its prime,
To songs as sweet, and trills as clear,
Walking midst the trees, and deer;
And now in cold obstruction, they
Lay stiff, and senseless, in their clay.
But these thoughts were soon dispelled,
When the village we beheld,
With its orchards blooming white
In the moonshine of the night;
For we knew our friends did wait,
To give us welcome at the gate.
Thus I have my heart's desire,
When I go to Lincolnshire;
Visiting familiar places,
And the unforgotten faces,
Of the rich, and of the poor,
Knocking at each friendly door.
And it is pleasant unto me,
Sitting 'neath some shady tree,
Amongst the swales of new-mown hay,(11)
the
pass
Whilst the lads and lassies turn
The fragrant grass on bank and burn;
Or pile the haycocks in a row
As o'er the drowsy fields they go;
Or load their heavy wains with glee,
And drive them homeward merrilie.
Or perchance, the harvest fields(12)
Are ready with their golden yields,
When I go to see my
friends;-
Then fresh joy on me attends,
For I rise at early morn
To see the wheat and barley shorn;
And mark the bright red poppies glow,
As the yellow corn-fields flow,
To the waving of the wind;
Whilst the reapers cut and bind,
Handfuls of the golden grain,
Which the meek earth gives again,
To the toiler for his pain.
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