BOOK VI.

THE WINTER WALK AT NOON.

ARGUMENT:-Bells at a distance, I-Their effect, 6-A fine noon in winter, 57-A sheltered walk, 72-Meditation better than books, 84— Our familiarity with the course of nature makes it appear less wonderful than it is, 118-The transformation that spring effects in a shrubbery described, 140-A mistake concerning the course of nature corrected, 198-God maintains it by an unremitted act, 221-The amusements fashionable at this hour of the day reproved, 262—Animals happy, a delightful sight, 321—Origin of cruelty to animals, 348—That it is a great crime, proved from Scripture, 459-That proof illustrated by a tale, 483-A line drawn between the lawful and unlawful destruction of them, 560-Their good and useful properties insisted on, 601-Apology for the encomiums bestowed by the author on animals, 621-Instances of man's extravagant praise of man, 632-The groans of the creation shall have an end, 729—A view taken of the restoration of all things, 747-An invocation and an invitation of Him who shall bring it to pass, 818-The retired man vindicated from the charge of uselessness, 906-Conclusion, 995.

THERE is in souls a sympathy with sounds,
And as the mind is pitched the ear is pleased
With melting airs or martial, brisk or grave:
Some chord in unison with what we hear
Is touched within us, and the heart replies.
How soft the music of those village bells,
Falling at intervals upon the ear

5

In cadence sweet, now dying all away,

Now pealing loud again, and louder still,
Clear and sonorous, as the gale comes on!
With easy force it opens all the cells

Where Memory slept. Wherever I have heard

IO

A kindred melody, the scene recurs,
And with it all its pleasures and its pains.
Such comprehensive views the spirit takes,
That in a few short moments I retrace
(As in a map the voyager his course)
The windings of my way through many years.
Short as in retrospect the journey seems,
It seemed not always short; the rugged path,
And prospect oft so dreary and forlorn,
Moved many a sigh at its disheartening length.
Yet feeling present evils, while the past
Faintly impress the mind, or not at all,
How readily we wish time spent revoked,
That we might try the ground again, where once
(Through inexperience, as we now perceive,)
We missed that happiness we might have found!
Some friend is gone, perhaps his son's best friend,
A father, whose authority, in show

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When most severe, and mustering all its force,

Was but the graver countenance of love;

Whose favour, like the clouds of spring, might lower,

And utter now and then an awful voice,

But had a blessing in its darkest frown,

35

Threatening at once and nourishing the plant.

We loved, but not enough, the gentle hand

That reared us. At a thoughtless age, allured
By every gilded folly, we renounced
His sheltering side, and wilfully forewent

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That converse which we now in vain regret.
How gladly would the man recall to life

The boy's neglected sire! a mother too,
That softer friend, perhaps more gladly still,
Might he demand them at the gates of death.
Sorrow has, since they went, subdued and tamed
The playful humour; he could now endure
(Himself grown sober in the vale of tears)
And feel a parent's presence no restraint.
But not to understand a treasure's worth

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Till time has stolen away the slighted good,
Is cause of half the poverty we feel,

And makes the world the wilderness it is.
The few that pray at all pray oft amiss,

And seeking grace to improve the prize they hold,
Would urge a wiser suit than asking more.

55

The night was winter in his roughest mood; The morning sharp and clear. But now at noon Upon the southern side of the slant hills,

And where the woods fence off the northern blast
The season smiles, resigning all its rage,

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And has the warmth of May. The vault is blue

Without a cloud, and white without a speck

The dazzling splendour of the scene below.

Again the harmony comes o'er the vale,

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And through the trees I view the embattled tower
Whence all the music. I again perceive

The soothing influence of the wafted strains,
And settled in soft musings as I tread

The walk, still verdant, under oaks and elms,
Whose outspread branches overarch the glade.
The roof, though moveable through all its length
As the wind sways it, has yet well sufficed,
And intercepting in their silent fall

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The frequent flakes, has kept a path for me.

75

No noise is here, or none that hinders thought.
The redbreast warbles still, but is content

With slender notes, and more than half suppressed:
Pleased with his solitude, and flitting light

From spray to spray, where'er he rests he shakes

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From many a twig the pendent drops of ice,

That tinkle in the withered leaves below.

Stillness, accompanied with sounds so soft,

Charms more than silence. Meditation here

May think down hours to moments. Here the heart

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May give a useful lesson to the head,

And Learning wiser grow without his books.

Knowledge and Wisdom, far from being one,

Have ofttimes no connexion. Knowledge dwells
In heads replete with thoughts of other men,
Wisdom in minds attentive to their own.
Knowledge, a rude unprofitable mass,

The mere materials with which Wisdom builds,
Till smoothed and squared and fitted to its place,
Does but encumber whom it seems to enrich.
Knowledge is proud that he has learned so much,
Wisdom is humble that he knows no more.
Books are not seldom talismans and spells,
By which the magic art of shrewder wits
Holds an unthinking multitude enthralled.
Some to the fascination of a name

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Surrender judgment hoodwinked. Some the style
Infatuates, and through labyrinths and wilds
Of error, leads them by a tune entranced.

While sloth seduces more, too weak to bear
The insupportable fatigue of thought,

105

And swallowing therefore without pause or choice
The total grist unsifted, husks and all.

But trees, and rivulets whose rapid course
Defies the check of winter, haunts of deer,

IIO

And sheepwalks populous with bleating lambs,
And lanes in which the primrose ere her time

Peeps through the moss that clothes the hawthorn root,

Deceive no student. Wisdom there, and Truth,

Not shy as in the world, and to be won
By slow solicitation, seize at once

115

The roving thought, and fix it on themselves.

What prodigies can power divine perform
More grand than it produces year by year,
And all in sight of inattentive man?

Familiar with the effect we slight the cause,
And in the constancy of Nature's course,
The regular return of genial months,
And renovation of a faded world,

120

See naught to wonder at. Should God again,
As once in Gibeon, interrupt the race

125

Of the undeviating and punctual sun,
How would the world admire!

But speaks it less

An agency divine, to make him know

His moment when to sink and when to rise,
Age after age, than to arrest his course?
All we behold is miracle, but seen

So duly, all is miracle in vain.

Where now the vital energy that moved,

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While summer was, the pure and subtle lymph
Through the imperceptible meandering veins

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Of leaf and flower? It sleeps; and the icy touch
Of unprolific winter has impressed

A cold stagnation on the intestine tide.

But let the months go round, a few short months,
And all shall be restored. These naked shoots,

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Barren as lances, among which the wind
Makes wintry music, sighing as it goes,

Shall put their graceful foliage on again,

And more aspiring, and with ampler spread,

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Shall boast new charms, and more than they have lost.

Then each in its peculiar honours clad,

Shall publish, even to the distant eye,

Its family and tribe. Laburnum, rich

In streaming gold; Syringa, ivory pure;

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The scentless and the scented Rose, this red,

And of an humbler growth, the other tall,
And throwing up into the darkest gloom

Of neighbouring Cypress, or more sable Yew,
Her silver globes, light as the foamy surf,
That the wind severs from the broken wave;

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The Lilac, various in array, now white,

Now sanguine, and her beauteous head now set
With purple spikes pyramidal, as if

Studious of ornament, yet unresolved

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Which hue she most approved, she chose them all;

Copious of flowers the Woodbine, pale and wan,

But well compensating her sickly looks

With never cloying odours, early and late;