CXLVIII.THE RUINED COTTAGE.
I
A rich and languid midsummer
Thou dost from thine own spirit bring,
And, like a pleased magician there,
Thou standest in thy self-drawn ring;
And from thine own abounding youth
Thou spinnest threads of bright untruth,
And weavest of hope's starry beams
Upon love's busy loom a tapestry of dreams.
II
A sunlight to thyself thou art;
Ah me! it is a hapless lot,
And in old age exiles the heart
Unto a bare, unsunny spot.
Thou passest on from day to day,
As though life were the Milky Way;
Duty hath chartered not thy bliss,
For joy well earned is no such twilight thing as this.
III
Come with me to this mountain vale,
And in meek nature's twilight see
In after years how wan and pale
Thy self-illumined dream will be,
Like yon poor dull and murky speck
By sunset left a joyless wreck,
What time its mellow slanting ray
From out of Langdale sent its last long look this way.
IV
The evening wind is rude and high
Upon this wild deserted green;
The mountains in the pallid sky
Rise up with outline cold and keen:
The splashing lake, the rocking trees
To me are mournful images;
Like uncrowned household gods are they,
Unworshipped now amid this pastoral decay.
V
Here once were happy peace and smiles,
And no less happy, holy tears;
Here once were love's domestic wiles,
And constancy which grew with years;
Here conjugal delights were lured,
And simple trials were endured,
And, with his helpmate at his side,
The shepherd's cares were light, his sorrows sanctified.
VI
See here the drooping ash-tree shade
Meet for the matron's out-door work,
The common where the children played,
The neighboring copse where they might lurk.
Ah! many a merry sunburnt face
Hath come and gone in this green place,
And Loughrigg heard the echoes play—
A year wakes fewer now than then were waked each day.
VII
I see the blue smoke rising up,
The ruined house resume its roof,
The streamlet in a rough stone cup
Protected from the horse's hoof;
I hear the vespers of the bees
In those two sister linden trees;
And there the gilded hollies shine
Through the close network of the clambering eglantine.
VIII
I see the happy rustic pair,
O how my heart the vision stirs!
And four sweet children, wild and fair,
Peeping among the junipers;
While o'er the lake with tremulous swell
Eight strikes upon the chapel bell,
Within its cincture of green trees
Drawing all thoughts unto its pensive sanctities.
IX
Did ever dream come true like this?
If o'er the wide earth we could roam
Should we detect a better bliss,
A simpler or a nobler home?
A few souls moving day and night
Within an orbit of delight,
While they with mutual help fulfil
In meek self-sacrifice and want our Father's Will!
X
Believe me there is not a bliss
To bear the pressure of hard life,
Which hath not been well-forged like this,
And tempered in our mortal strife.
Old age is miserably poor
Which hath not thus laid by its store
Of cheerfulness from good deeds done,
And lawful prisage laid on conquests duly won.
XI
Yet even here behold the wreck,
That voiceless tenement behold;
The past a sun-deserted speck,
Whose story is thus sadly told
By all this melancholy round
Of lonely form and cheerless sound,
Which to the grieving spirit call
With plaintive wooing, a most touching pastoral.
XII
And in the lone and pale ash-trees,
And o'er the white and withered grass,
With what a moaning doth the breeze
O'er this unhaunted moorland pass.
It makes me sad to see it throw
The blossoms from the linden bough,
While by the little waterfalls
The white owl hoots from out the ivy-strangled walls.
XIII
And here and there and everywhere,
The eyeless casements all about,
Like lost babes wailing in the air,
The piteous nightbirds ever shout.
It is a thought to consecrate
This moorland with pathetic state,—
That Human Nature many a day
Here lived and loved, and like a cloud hath passed away.
