Poems :: :: University of Virginia Library

A student out of doors, where mountain winds,
With voices deepened by the raving brooks,
Inspire into the lassitude of thought
Somewhat of vernal buoyancy, I went
To a calm haunt, while overhead sweet spring
An airy cloister diligently roofed.
I was in my peculiar, sheltered walk
Among the beeches and the laurels: there,
In meditation utterly immured,
Chewing the luscious prunings of sweet bay,
I troubled my poor self with Charlemagne,
Otho, Conrad the Salic, and the tribe
Of great bad men, who made and shaped the earth
We live upon to-day. Why should a heart,
Begirt with trees and streams and cawing rooks,
And with a tent of bluest sky above,
Amid the jocund images that grow
Of the blythe present, fret about the past,
Stirring the silent bones of emperors,
And dusty banners of old paladins?

Sometimes,—a brighter vision far, and yet
A riddle still more difficult to read,
Divine things always look so undivine,—
I mused the fortunes of enchanted Rome,
Where Christ, with a tiara on His brow,
Sits, and delays the hour of Anti-Christ,—

344

City, whose supernatural ways ill mate
The style of modern life, yet suit so well
All change, all progress, all vicissitude,
Too broad, too nearly infinite, to let
The grandest present cover its extent,
Or equal its intense vitality,—
Unboastful city, not defending self,
And answering questions only with a look,
Healing the world of its successive ills,
Queening it o'er the wildest times, with grace
Which conquers those that conquer her, and who,
While centuries are breaking at her feet
Tame as tired waves that scarcely kiss the strand,
Spite of her crumbling walls and pagan wrecks,
Sits musing mid her tombs, and quietly,
Scarce looking up when danger's hour comes near,
Braves the world's fury, and with passive calm
Disarms the ages by her right to live.

Bewildered more and more, I walked and walked,
And still light would not rise, thought would not come,
Clear, steady thought; the German Empire lay
A nightmare on my mind; when with rude shock
From out a bush my little favourite boy
By stealth leaped on me, clinging to my coat,
And uttering a most victorious cry.
His face was flushed, his bonnet laid aside,
His long brown hair disordered by his play,
And in his eyes there glimmered the sly light
Of merriment, half weary of itself,
Flagging and spent with an excess of joy.
Mornings are long to children: he was tired
With running, and as much with resting too,
Among the daisies and the buttercups

345

That were enamelling the April field.
These were the cares which fretted him, as great,
I doubt not, and substantial as the wealth,
The power, the fame, the barren scholarship,
Wherein we grown-up children spend our strength.
It may be that in nature's honest eye
A knot of wild-flowers are of truer worth
Than the old German State, or any dream
From which the world has wakened: for the flower
Is a pure growth of heavenly love, a thing
Unblamed by Him who made it.

He was tired,
And bitterly complained of the strange heat
So early in the year: the April sun
Among our lofty hills is all unused
To such reproach; he should have rather blamed
The heat of his own restless happiness.
Yet wherefore were the things without us made,
(So reason childish hearts, or rather act
As if they reasoned so) except to bear
The blame most due to that which is within?
“There is no heat, my little boy,” said I;
“Thy head is reeling with the open air,
“And breathing grass, and the new glossy leaves,
“And all the sunny aspect of the hills:
“The power of spring hath made thee drunk, my child,
“With its brisk spirit poured into thy veins,
“After long months of cold within the house
“Among thy playthings, wearisome through use:
“But sunshine is an unabated joy
“Which neither use nor frequency make dull.”
So spake I, rambling in a thoughtful strain
Which the child understood not, but once more

346

Cried out against fair April for its heat.
“Come then with me,” said I, “I told thee once
“That there was nothing nature could not do,
“Ay, nothing nature would not do, for those
“Who love her as they ought,—that she would bring
“New playthings and old sunshine every day.
“Now let us speak to the maternal earth;
“She ever answers me when I do speak.”

I took him by the hand, and he looked up
Most reverently into my face, as though
I were a man of marvels, such as he
Had seen last Michaelmas at our great fair.
A gentle juggler, I conveyed the child,
From the low sheltered walk wherein we were,
Unto a bare and lofty terrace, whence
We looked into the desolate recess
Of a huge mountain clothed in shining snow.
The air was warm and tranquil; not a breath
Stirred in the seven tall larches, a sweet ring
Which visibly was making all the haste
It could, to robe itself in blythsome green.
The boughs were pendulous and still; and there
I placed the boy in front of the vast cove
And giant ribs of snow, and bade him look
Boldly into the mountain's snowy face,
And ask it for a wind, a good cold wind
To blow into his eyes. With timid voice,—
As of a child, half pleased and half afraid,
Who yields himself upon a Christmas night
To some new trick, when all the rest stand back,—
He asked the snowy mountain for a wind.
Scarce had the words escaped his trembling lips,
When, with a motion on the distant woods,
A cold fresh breeze along the terrace swept,

347

And died away, a marvellous response
To his shy prayer. How quick his heart did beat,
While with surprise and awe he looked again
Less boldly in the mountain's snowy face!
This time he did not ask it for a wind.
'Twas a sweet sight to see the little boy
Stand there, and gaze into the mountain's face
And on the sheets of silent, sparkling snow,
With eyes brimful of wonder and delight,
And with bewildered meanings running over.

Now when his patience—'twas a scanty stock—
Had wellnigh failed, there came another breeze,
Colder and ruder than the first, at which
He laughed outright into the mountain's face
With pure delight, as though it sent the breeze
For his sole sport; and I might safely say
The snowy mountain laughed at him again;
For it sent out a mighty, boisterous wind
Which made the larch-trees loudly creak, and blew
Young Richard's tartan bonnet down the hill.
Away in mad pursuit, both man and boy
Followed the truant cap, which we reclaimed
With laughter ere it reached the dangerous stream.

“Thou wilt remember now,” said I, “the power
“Of the old earth, and that she hath a heart,
“A mother's heart, among her lonely hills.
“Thou wilt remember too and love this snow,
“Whose beautiful white fields are melting fast;
“And this kind-hearted mountain thou wilt love.
“Be kind to it thyself in all thy thoughts;
“And when the evil summer of these vales
“Arrives, and that high summit brings the clouds
“To weep a very plague of drizzling rain
“All through the holydays, remember still

348

“This mountain is the mother of cold winds;
“And be not petulant, but love it well
“For this day's boon:” then with a mimic sign
Of wrath, I added, “and forget not too
“That poets are lone walkers and strange men,
“Not to be leaped on in their chosen paths,
“Or scared by shouts from groves of arbutus.”

Once more in my peculiar, sheltered walk,
My thoughts imbrued in blood and battlefields,
And with my fancy chastened and kept down
By the great shade of royal Charlemagne,
I see the boy at play upon the lawn,
But with the great, white mountain in his heart,
Which loads him with a new solemnity,—
An altered being, even in his play,
More happy, yet less vocal in his mirth.
From this day forth the mountain and the snow
From common sights are lifted in his mind
Unto the rank of causes, solemn things
To be by him more honored than before.

It is a just beginning: all our lives
This is the wisdom which we have to learn—
To see our earthly shadows taken up
And by the Cross commuted into signs
Or substances,—and with strong faith to feel
Our own immortal being so transfused
Into the out-lying world, that common forms
Are canonized, and circled with a light,
Like the pale rings around the autumnal moon.
The man to whom our common daily things
By meek devotion and a simple eye
Have grown to reverend solemnities,—
What lacketh he of his full growth in Christ?