The Poetical Works of Walter C. Smith :: :: University of Virginia Library

I, Herr Professor Künst, Philologus,
Editor of these rhymes—having no knack
That way, myself, to make my words go chime,
Or none that makes a crystal of my thought,
Face answering to face, and so built up
By inward force of Law inevitable—
Care not to tag mere fringes to my lines,
And mar their meaning. 'Tis a pretty sight
The lissom maiden dancing her light measure,
And keeping time with castanet or timbrel,
When maiden, dance, and timbrel all are one
Joy of great nature. But enough for me
The unwonted dance without the castanet,
The measured tread without the timing jingle.
God giveth speech to all, song to the few.

A quaint old gateway, flanked on either side
By grim, heraldic beasts with beak and claw
And scaly coating—yet four-footed beasts—
Opened into a long, straight avenue,
Lined by rough elms, stunted, and sloping west,
And nipped by sharp sea-winds. Without a turn,
It ran up to a tall, slim, grey, old house,
With many blinking windows, row on row,
And high-pitched gables rising, step by step,
Above heraldic beasts with beak and claw,
That pranced at every corner. A green bank,
Broken with flower-plots, on the one side dropt
Down to a brattling brook; upon the other
A group of brown Scotch firs reared their straight boles
And spreading crowns, breaking the chill east wind;
And then a holly hedge enclosed the garth,
Which altogether covered scant an acre.

Eastward, you saw the glimmer of the sea,
And the white pillar of the lighthouse tall
Guarding the stormy Ness: a minster church

Loomed with twin steeples high above the smoke
Of a brisk burgh, offspring of the church
And of the sea, and with an old Norse love
Of the salt water, and the house of God,
And letters and adventure. On the west,
Cleft by the stream, a slow-retiring hill
Embayed a goodly space which once had been
Waste moorland for the curlew, and the snipe
Haunted its marshes. Lately, growing wealth,
From fleets of fishing craft, and ventures far
To Greenland and Archangel, had subdued
The peat-hag and the stony wilderness:
And here and there a citizen's countryhouse
Stood among fields where cattle browsed, or corn
Was rustling: yet there still were, here and there,
Stretches of heathy moss and yellow gorse,
And desert places strewn with white bleached stones,
And grey rocks tufted o'er with birch and hazel.
And through the gorse, and over rock and stone,
The brattling brook leaped downward to the sea.

The slim, grey house with its heraldic beasts,
Nestling in its scant acre of flower-plots
And green sward, at the end of the elm-tree drive,
Stood plainly in ancestral dignity,
Aloof from citizen's villa: shorn of wealth,
It was the home of culture and simple taste,
And heir of fine traditions.

By the door,
Where it was hid by honey-suckle sprays
And briar-rose that trailed around the porch,
There stood a youth, at early twilight, making
Impatient gestures, switching thistle-down
And nettle and dandelion, and whate'er
His hasty stroke might reach; yet humorous
Rather than fretful, for the art was his
To break vexations with a ready jest,
As one that, on the stirrup duly rising,
Rides lightly through the world. A graceful youth,
And tall, and slightly stooping, with features high
And thin and colourless; yet earnest life
Beamed, full of hope and energy and help,
From his great lustrous eyes, though now and then
They swam into a dreamy, far-off gaze,
As seeing the invisible. He was
A student who had travelled many a field
Of arduous learning, planted venturous foot
On giddy ledge of speculative thought,
And searched for truth o'er mountain, shore and sea,
In stone and flower, and every living thing
Where he might read the open secret of God
With his own eyes, and ponder out its meaning.

Intent he was to know, and knowing do
The work laid to his hand; yet evermore,
As he toiled up the solemn stair with joy,
Caught by some outlook on a larger world,
He seemed to pause, and gaze, and dream a dream.
These moods I noted when he was my pupil,
And some strange vocable from India,
Or fragment of the old Semitic speech
Would suddenly arrest his eager quest,
And sunder us, like the ocean or the grave.

So stood he, in the twilight, near his home,
And waiting for his sister, smote the weeds;
Impetuous, humorous, bright, and mystical,
The wonder and the glory of the place,
Scarce out of boyhood, yet the pride of all.

Trained for a priest, for that is still the pride
And high ambition of the Scottish mother,
There was a kind of priestly purity
In all his thoughts, and a deep undertone
Ran through his gayest fancies, and his heart
Reached out with manifold sympathies, and laid
Fast hold on many outcast and alone
I' the world. But being challenged at the door
Of God's high Temple to indue himself
With armour that he had not proved, to clothe
With articles of ready-made Belief
His Faith inquisitive, he rent the Creed
Trying to fit it on, and cast it from him;
Then took it up again, and found it worn
With age, and riddled by the moth, and rotten.
Therefore he trod it under foot, and went
Awhile with only scant fig-leaves to clothe
His naked spirit, longing after God,
But striving more for knowledge than for faith.
The Priest was left behind; the hope of Glory
Became pursuit of Fame; and yet a light
From heaven kept hovering always over him,
Like twilight from a sun that had gone down.