Ere my tongue lisped, amid your dewy bowers, Its first glad hymn to mercy's sunny showers And air and day;
When in my mother's arms, an infant frail, Along your windings borne,
My blue eye caught your glimmer in the vale, Where halcyons darted o'er your willows pale, On wings like morn.
Ye saw my feelings round that mother grow, Like green leaves round the root!
Then thought, with danger came, and flowered like woe! But deeds, the fervent deeds that blush and glow, Are virtue's fruit.
RUGBY CHAPEL, NOVEMBER, 1857.
COLDLY, sadly descends
The autumn evening. The field Strewn with its dank yellow drifts Of withered leaves, and the elms, Fade into dimness apace,
Silent; - hardly a shout
From a few boys late at their play! The lights come out in the street,
In the school-room windows; but cold,
Solemn, unlighted, austere,
Through the gathering darkness, arise The Chapel walls, in whose bound Thou, my father! art laid.
There thou dost lie, in the gloom Of the autumn evening. But ah! That word gloom to my mind Brings thee back in the light Of thy radiant vigor again!
In the gloom of November we passed Days not of gloom at thy side; Seasons impaired not the ray Of thine even cheerfulness clear. Such thou wast; and I stand In the autumn evening, and think Of bygone autumns with thee.
Fifteen years have gone round
Since thou arosest to tread, In the summer morning, the road Of death, at a call unforeseen, Sudden. For fifteen years,
We who till then in thy shade Rested as under the boughs Of a mighty oak, have endured Sunshine and rain as we might, Bare, unshaded, alone, Lacking the shelter of thee.
O strong soul, by what shore
Tarriest thou now? For that force,
Surely, has not been left vain! Somewhere, surely, afar,
In the sounding labor-house vast Of being, is practised that strength, Zealous, beneficent, firm!
Yes, in some far-shining sphere, Conscious or not of the past, Still thou performest the word Of the Spirit in whom thou dost live, Prompt, unwearied, as here!
Still thou upraisest with zeal The humble good from the ground, Sternly repressest the bad.
Still, like a trumpet, dost rouse Those who with half-open eyes Tread the border-land dim "Twixt vice and virtue; reviv❜st, Succorest; - this was thy work, This was thy life upon earth.
THE BARONS AT RUNNIMEDE.
WITH what an awful grace those barons stood
In presence of the king at Runnimede ! .
Their silent finger to that righteous deed
O'er which, with cheek forsaken of its blood, He hung, still pointing with stern hardihood,
And brow that spake the unuttered mandate, "Read! Sign! He glares round. — Never! though thousands
He will not! Hush,—low words, in solemn mood, Are murmured; and he signs. Great God! were these Progenitors of our enfeebled kind?
Whose wordy wars are waged to thwart or please Minions, not kings; who stoop with grovelling mind To weigh the pauper's dole, scan right by rule, And plunder churches to endow a school!
WRITTEN WITH A SLATE-PENCIL UPON A STONE, THE LARGEST
OF A HEAP LYING NEAR A DESERTED QUARRY, UPON ONE OF THE ISLANDS AT RYDAL.
TRANGER! this hillock of misshapen stones Is not a ruin spared or made by time, Nor, as perchance thou rashly deem'st, the cairn Of some old British chief: 't is nothing more Than the rude embyro of a little dome Or pleasure-house, once destined to be built Among the birch-trees of this rocky isle. But, as it chanced, Sir William having learned
That from the shore a full-grown man might wade, And make himself a freeman of this spot At any hour he chose, the prudent knight Desisted, and the quarry and the mound Are monuments of his unfinished task.
The block on which these lines are traced, perhaps, Was once selected as the corner-stone
Of that intended pile, which would have been Some quaint odd plaything of elaborate skill, So that, I guess, the linnet and the thrush, And other little builders who dwell here, Had wondered at the work. But blame him not, For old Sir William was a gentle knight, Bred in this vale, to which he appertained With all his ancestry. Then peace to him, And for the outrage which he had devised, Entire forgiveness! But if thou art one On fire with thy impatience to become An inmate of these mountains, if, disturbed By beautiful conceptions, thou hast hewn Out of the quiet rock the elements
Of thy trim mansion destined soon to blaze
In snow-white splendor, think again; and, taught By old Sir William and his quarry, leave Thy fragments to the bramble and the rose; There let the vernal slow-worm sun himself, And let the redbreast hop from stone to stone.
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