The Poetical Works of Thomas Aird :: :: University of Virginia Library

Sing, woodland Muse, Frank Sylvan, brave old buck!
In nankeens, he, white stockings, waistcoat white,
Green coat, and linen of the amplest cut,
White as the snow, tied by a ribbon black
Around the swelling apple of his throat,
While broad of brim a white hat tops the man,
Forth sallies, white-haired, rosy cock of health,
To meet old Winter on the morning hill.
Hail, let it drive, he cares not—be it caught
Even in the thickets of his eyebrows shag,
There let it melt at leisure; he disdains
To raise his gloveless hand to brush away
The sleet that sparkles on his glowing cheek:
'Tis but refreshment. Lifting up his face,
With nostrils broad and large, the vigorous hairs
Down growing thence, he snuffs the Norland blast,
Clear, fresh, and free, rejoicing in the cold.

But more he loves, when on a gurly morn
The surly wind has roused the curly deep,
And o'er the Eastern height he smells the sea,
To take the headland bluff: seaward he stands,
Sniffing the salt white spray, his own bluff face
All red and pickled with the German brine.

Loose, large, and flowing to his convex point,
Our hero's ruffles, lo! they bear a brooch,
Fast by his heart, with Charles the Martyr's hair.
An ancestor of Frank's fought well for Charles
Through all his wars; and, on that eve of doom,
Kneeling he wept upon his Sovereign's knee:
The meek King called his child Elizabeth,
And made the Princess with her scissors cut
A small lock from his neck:—“Be it to thee,
My friend and brother, a memorial slight,
But best in its simplicity to one
Pure of self-seeking—a memorial slight
Of all that thou hast done for England's crown,
And this poor family.” Thus the Martyr said,
Giving that token. And his servant took,
Kissed the gray hair, and pressed it to his heart.
A stout heart wears it still, a loyal heart and true.

A jolly bachelor Frank, in Sylvan Lodge,
Bosomed in woods, he keeps his easy state:
A squire of good broad acres, his old house
Is strong of beef, brown bread, and home-brewed ale;
And at his buttery-hatch the wandering poor
Are aye regaled, and sent upon their way.
His country life has kept his salient points
Unblunted, red his cheek and fresh his heart;
While rambles far through wild peculiar tribes
Have made him largely tolerant, and lent
A humorous twinkle to his keen gray eye.
All picturesque varieties of man,
All oddities of being, starting out
In bold relief from life's strange canvas, find
Grace in his eyes; but wo to them that dare
Abuse discretion, for like any lynx
He looks them through and through, and, hot of blood,

Snorts in his ire, and drives them from his gate—
His gate still open to the modest poor!

For, generous as himself, his little niece,
Who rules his house with many opening keys,
Bears out his heart and hand—“Brown Molly” she
From her complexion; but her clear brown face
Was cut with Beauty's chisel, clean and fine
In every feature; fairy-like, her form
Is grace itself; but oh her true young heart
Is more than beauty, and is more than grace.

FITTE THE SECOND.

Oh now the summer woods! Oh now the joy
To haunt their tangled depths, with curious eye
Watching the wild folk of the leafy world,
From beetledom below to the high flight
Of shooting doves that shave the liquid air!
Such pastime has been Frank's, since first, a boy,
When lit the rising sun with level rays
The light green glimmering of the barley braird,
Empearled with dew, till all the trembling drops
Like sapphires glowed, he wondered at the hare
Hirpling therein, and sitting oft on end
With strange suspicious gestures—can it be
Old Eppie Tait, the witch? and wondering saw
The horse-hair stirring in the shallow pool,
Left in the rut of the unmended road,
After warm rains by night—will it become
A lamprey, as they say? and wondering found
The shrew-mouse lying with itsentrails out,
On the green path, where late at eve he passed
And saw it not: what killed it?—was't the owl
By thing who pounced it for a common mouse,

And, out of temper at her own mistake,
Tore it to death, but scorned to taste a shrew?

Upspringing with the sun, Frank, every morn,
As every night, reads to his gathered house
The solemn service of the English Church,
Dear to his heart—a worship fitly framed
Betwixt the sensuous and emotional.
His stout old-fashioned breakfast o'er, he takes
His business room, and fits himself to speak
Of roads and bridges with his neighbour lairds;
Then forth into his garden, counsel there
To hold with the old gardener, or with ear
Patient attend his manifold complaints
Of birds unthinned, the bullfinch worst of all,
Whose cursèd beak—what can the fellow mean?
For worms he seeks not, nor one blossom eats—
Plays such wild havock with the apple buds.
“He's a bad boy,” says Frank, and whistles off
Along the broad green walk, close-shaven, and paved
With soft moss like a carpet; and the maze
Of pleachèd walks, and alleys green o'erarched,
By holly bowers, and dials old and quaint,
Pacing he threads—for all the place, unlike
Your modern garden cut to the bare quick,
Is kept unshorn, a place of coy retreat.
Up then he gets into the old ash-tree,
To see the hissing owlets in their hole,
And speak to them; or in his pendulous swing
High sitting, moving to and fro, enjoy
The visitations of the flitting birds,
And all the cool refreshment of the leaves,
Rustling and breathing, with a dewy smell,
And all the glimmerings of the greening light.

Then deep he dives into the pathless woods,

And holds communion with the creatures there,
A numerous people; for in all his bounds,
Protected by his humour or his love,
Easy they lead their unmolested lives.
So delicate his ear, he can detect
The faintest impulse that affects the tone
Of beast or bird, as circumstances change:
Has not the rook a harvest cry?—a slight
Percussive breathing through her usual note,
Somewhat analogous to the Irish brogue?—
A chuckle? that's too strong; we'll call it, then,
The halitus of a spirit crowding through
Her fuller voice, like thanks for God's good corn?
Is this a fancy, or is this a fact?

Frank's pencil catches, quick of comic gust,
Queer things where'er he goes—the curly imp
Cocked on the donkey's rump, or whirled right o'er
Its lowered ears into the attempted ford;
The camps of gipsies, and old beggars' heads.
Nor does he chuckle not when he has caught
A Latin scholar on unwonted steed;
His heels turned closely in, his toes wide out;
His trousers ruffled up unto his knees;
His coat-tails pinned before him, to escape
The dusty hair of Rosinante's ribs;
And, ever as he rises in his trot
With slow and solemn risings, the far-off
Horizon seen, a lucid interval,
Betwixt the saddle and his seat of honour.

And on goes Frank, and sees from many a point
The trees he planted in his youth fulfil
The picturesque design—the Scotch firs high
On gravelly ridge (best soil for them) to show
Their flaky foliage on the Eastern light,

Or in the embosomed wood with dark relief
Set off the lightness of the general green;
And sycamores far off, a depth, a world
Of sultry languor in their summer heads.
But here the river bounds his woodland realm.
Steep his own banks of trees, yet steeper far
The opposing hill high up with hanging woods.
The cushat, startled from her ivied tree,
Comes clapping out above him, down right o'er
The river takes, and, folding her smooth wings,
Shoots like an arrow up the woody face
Of yon high steep, and o'er it bears away,—
The loveliest feat in all the flight of birds.
But oh the rarer charm, when yon green face
Is all astir with winds unheard so high,
Waving and swaying all, this way and that,
Opening and closing, intertwined, evolved,
With gestures all of love, low bowings, risings,
Kissings, slow courtesies, and tufted nods,
All flexible graces multitudinous!
Oh many a time, and long hours at a time,
Has Sylvan lain upon his sunny shore,
Rapt, more than gazing on the pictured show,
Silent though all in motion, till his soul,
Drowsed with the very fulness of the beauty,
Slumbered and saw not through the glimmering eye.

The farthest walk in his domain has brought
Frank to “The Plague Mount.” Gray Tradition tells
That here the last struck of the spotted pest
Was buried far from men. Upon its top
Are sombre trees, and in the trees a seat;
And on the seat aye Sylvan rests a while,
With changeful musings o'er life's darker things.
A half-sunk boulder on the Mount is called

“The Siller Stone.” In popular legend, lies
A hoard of gold beneath it. Daring men
Have tried to dig it out; but aye a storm
Of lightning red, and thunder black with wrath,
Bursts, scares and drives them from the unfinished work.
Deepening the awe of the enchanted Mount,
A burn comes down a low and lonely glen,
And sleeps into a pool at its green feet,
Silent, profound, and black, “The Fairy Pool.”
Seven boys, once bathing in the twilight there,
Were spirited away, and ne'er again
Came back to earth. Seven girls once playing there,
As home they passed from school, on the frail ice,
Went down together in the charmèd pool:
But they were found, and, on a weeping day,
Their virgin bodies in one grave were laid.
Here grows the earth-nut, with its slim green stalk,
Flat crowned with flowery white. The Mount's one side
Is soft with moss and broken earth, and there
Bare digging fingers may achieve its nuts.
But, tempted though he be, the schoolboy ne'er
Invades the Genius of the awe-guarded ground,
Alone. In knots the imps have sometimes dared
The desperate deed; but terror all the while
Disturbs their trembling fingers, as they trace
The tender white of the descending stalk
Down through the ground, which hardens as they dig,
And breaks the thread that guides them to the prize:
And so they lose it. If by chance they reach
The knobbèd nut, they break with their thumb-nail,
And peel the foul brown film of rind away
To the pure white, and taste it soft and frush.
They chew—they swallow not—they spit it out
With sputtering haste: 'tis earthy! 'tis the rank

And rotten flavour of the buried Plague!
Awe has them still—they gather close—they look
Into each other's faces—they behold
Strange meanings there—one fear infects the whole—
Breathless they break away, nor dare to turn
And look behind them to the ghostly Mount.

Homeward by other paths, Frank never fails,
With hat in hand, and reverence as of love,
To drink and rest at sweet St Mary's Well.
Cold, still, and glassy deep, a grassy brow
O'ershading it, here lies the virgin well.
Frost never films it, ne'er the Dog-star drinks
Its liquid brimming lower. Self-relieved,
By soft green dimples in its yielding lip,
The trembling fulness breaks, and, slipping o'er,
Cold bubbles through the grass; the infant spilth
Assumes a voice, and, gathering as it goes,
A runnel makes: how beautiful the green
Translucent lymph, crisp curling, purling o'er
The floating duckweed, lapsingly away!

His woodland walk accomplished, Sylvan lays
His right leg o'er his shelty, for a round
Of friendly visits of a summer day.
Thigh, leg, and toe turned round and in, the big
Toe-ball just resting on the stirrup, the heel
Depressed, and almost reaching to the ground,
Erect he sits on Donald; shaggy he,
Long-tailed, long-maned, and tossing, as he moves,
The hair redundant o'er his fairy face,
Whence fitfully his glowing eyes look out.
And many a little dog, and many a large,
With sleek-licked swirls upon their glossy coats,
Attend the march, and round the master play.

The good old Scottish Gentlewoman, first,

Who, faithful to the good old way, still spins,
And speaks the good old Scotch, the classic tongue,
Not of a province, but an ancient realm,
Frank visits. Next, the rough old Commodore,
Who from his castellated cabin high
Telegraphs, with the system of his flags,
The valley far; of many a tough old fight
The tough old remnant he, shattered and worn,
White “at the main:” but o'er a sea of grog
Ascending, reigns the Dog-star in his nose.

Next comes the Manse: And forth with Sylvan walks
The good old Pastor, shaking oft the head
Over the changes of our modern day.
The railway most he fears, spoiling our green
Sequestered valleys with its raw red scaurs,
And long dry banks of rubbish, spoiling more
Our picturesque simplicities of life,
Old points of character, old points of faith,
With social innovations manifold.
“Beautiful vale! Vale of my Flock!” he sighs,
“Fear not the Winter, thou; fear rather, thou,
The Mammon who would drive his railway train,
With whistle shrieking in its lust of gold,
Through the sweet music of thy Sabbath bells!
Let him not in; oh keep the Demon out,
For there's no reverence in his golden hoof!
Give him but gradients to his mind, he'd drive
His trading rail right o'er the inhibited top
Of Sinai, through its awful sanctities,
As if they were the cheap amenities
Of some suburban villa: Keep him out!”

Frank takes the Nabob next: Him oft he finds
Standing beneath a tree: hours at a time,
With sour mahogany face against the day,

There will he stand. Cross-grained to all his folk,
They hold his conscience, not his liver, wrong:
An Indian prince he murdered for his gold—
So runs the whisper—horror-haunted thus,
Dark are his days, by night he dares not sleep
Without seven lighted candles round his bed.
Old Frank, of course, at all such nonsense laughs;
And him the Nabob loves, flinging himself
With full abandonment, as if for help,
On the broad nature of the healthy man:
And Sylvan cheers him up, and he is cheered;
But sinks relapsing when his friend is gone.

Thus hairy Donald, with short dibbling trot,
Bears his blithe master round from place to place.
Old Grayford last he visits: Him he finds
A-field; his right hand with a hedgebill armed;
His left laid down upon his swelling loin,
The palm turned out, the curved arm forming thus
The handle of the Lairdly Dignity.
Gray spats, white stockings, and a long gray coat,
Invest old Nimrod; on his head is set
His small black hunting-cap of many a field—
Beneath its front his keen eye twinkles out,
Behind descends his venerable queue:
Tall, thin, and gray, walks the old man erect.
Due greetings o'er, Laird Grayford lays his hand
On Donald's mane, and by our hero stalks,
And has him round to look at hedge and drain,
And all his plantings:—“Here's a clump—this way—
Put in last Autumn, it seems getting up?
What think you, eh? In thirty years or so,
'Twill be a nice thing; and by then I'll be
Pretty well buffed.”—Old Nimrod's seventy now!
And much he growls of beggars, much of boys,

And tinkers, in defiance of the Act,
Pasturing their donkeys by the sides of roads;
And aye he sniffs, with nostril scornful thin,
At self-dubbed captains with their fishing-rods,
Who summer-haunt the village by the Hall,
And rob the ancient lordship of respect.
“Whom have we next?” keen looking out, demands
The jealous Laird, as o'er the knoll he spies
A waving rod: “One o' your captains, eh?
Of course: A man can't toss his glove up now,
But down it comes on a captain—Let's this way.”

But Frank must home, and dine, and be prepared
Service to do with Moll; for old and young,
His neighbours round, from village and from farm
Invited, hold this night upon the lawn
The Annual Strawberry Feast of Sylvan Lodge.

FITTE THE THIRD.

Take, sportive Health, your tasselled horn and blow,
What time the breezes of the Autumnal hill
Lift your light locks of youth, and scatter them
In tangled beauty round your glowing face;
Call up old Sylvan to the mountain-side.

Pleasant to Sylvan when with Summer come
The twittering swallow and the shrilling swift;
Yet pleasanter, in Autumn's bracing air,
The hills of gorcocks and the hills of deer.
But oh the exhilaration when the furze,
Beneath the high hoar wood, is all astir
With fox-hound tails, just seen above the whins,
Cocked, curled, and crowding in one ferment thick.
Before one tongue, prelusive of the scent,
Has broken out, the experienced hunter knows,

By a fine sense instinctive, all's right now;
And scarce restraining his impatient steed,
Fire-quick in consciousness of every move,
Pulls down his cap, and buttons up his coat.
One sure old beagle gives a deep-mouthed note,
A second—third—the pack: Away, away
Bursts through the echoing woods the storm of chase!
Old Frank is there; with natural, healthy heart,
A daring huntress, Molly too is there.

When the last apple, yellowing into white,
Gleams in the leaves, Frank through the coloured woods
Saunters; an amateur in rustic staves,
His vigilant shaping eye detects at once,
Though rough, half sunk in moss, the well-curved head
To the tall upward stalk, smooth-skinned and straight,
Or gnared with knots and knobs, with twists and crooks
Grotesque, and full of quaint, queer character;
Forth then he draws his vigorous pruning-knife,
And adds another to the cudgel-sheaf
Which garnishes the lobby of his Lodge.

The air begins to nip: The plane-tree, first
With soft crimped leaf to burst the honey-glue
Of Spring's brown swelling bud—as well the boy
Knows, bent on whistles, when the sap is up,
And the moist bark comes peeling cleanly off—
Is first to shed her leaves; down drop they now,
Dullest of sere, embossed with spots of black,
And foul feet tread them in the miry paths.
Cheer by his evening fire! How Frank enjoys
The Sanctum of his books! Byronic glooms
Have no place there, nor felons of romance,
Heroes of hemp, the glories of the gallows;
But all the Saxon old simplicities.
And chief the Fathers of the English Church,

Of holy majesty and sweet composure,
Engage him, lifting up his heart's desire
To the good land of order, peace, and rest.

Clear-minded hence, up with the morn is Frank.
Gambol his dogs around him; deep he wades
The rustling leaves of the October woods,
On through the crushed brown ferns of the high slope,
To look through the clear air: he loves to see
The varied faces of our Scottish hills.
Here grassiest green is one, with darker stripes
Where waters ooze away; one mottled there
With black-brown heather and with verdant spots;
A third, where lies the thin soil on the rock,
Swells smooth and round, but dun its juiceless grass;
A herbless fourth's gray o'er with rocky stones,
Where thorn-trees old, and doddered ashes grow,
And rowans anchored in fantastic rifts:
High o'er its head the circling raven sails.

At penny-weddings, christenings, fairs, and kirns,
Our humorist prompts the rustic holiday.
The passing bell for village patriarch,
For simple maiden, or for thoughtful boy,
Smites on his ready heart; and forth he helps
To bear them to the dust. But ofttimes, too,
Age-callous men, in coats of rustiest black,
With big horn buttons, generations old,
Trembling and fumbling in their eager greed,
All through the plate of service-bread, to find
The largest bits, and smacking their thin jaws
O'er the red solemn wine; then, deaf and loud,
Clattering their gossip through the measured tread
On to the churchyard slow, has made old Frank
Snuff hard, repressing scarce his angry snort,
And lag behind the irreverent company.

Scotland, with all thy worth, irreverent thou,
In solemn things irreverent; reverent less
Of Beauty, loving not the Beautiful?
Yes, tell it to her shame, no statue fair,
For admiration placed in open view,
No monumental work, but her rude sons
Deface it forthwith: France or Italy
Knows no such savagery, nor any land.
What can it mean? Is it our soul of sect,
Which looks on all such beauties of man's Art
As vanities, not unallied to sin?
Did not God make the Rainbow, coarse-grained soul?
His hands did they not bending fashion it?
Is that a vanity, is that a sin?
I, Beauty, dwell with Him who made green earth,
The pictured seasons, and the hosts of heaven.

Mellow the frosty noon: The yellow sun
Eats out the fire in filmy ashes white;
Who cares a doit?—not Frank: the old chap, be sure,
With all his dogs is cheerily abroad.
Yon sliding boys, how blithe! O happier day
Than wet home-prisoned days, when, sick of slates,
And books, and toys, they take their listless stand
At the dull window, and their noses squeeze,
Flattened till they be white, against the pane
Washed by the streaming, weltering drench without!
If hen, high lifting her unwilling feet,
Run dripping by; or random waddling duck,
Half swimming, slabber, with her bill engulfed,
Through the green pool; or snouted sow upturn
The reeking dunghill,—better sight than this
Their vacant eye may hope not, as they stand
And idly look into the dim drear day.

The boy can swim! By day he thinks, by night

He dreams of swimming. Prone upon the sward,
Or snuglier lying in the clover field,
Sucking the honeyed flowers, even there the pride
Of conscious power comes o'er him, out he strikes
With hands and feet, unmindful how the grass
Or clover leaves green-stain his corduroys.
Each summer day, three times at least he takes
The gravelly pool, and wriggles to make way,
Till short and feeble grow his plunging strokes,
Quick, quicker sinks his head, his panting breath
Scarce puffs the lipping water from his mouth,
And his teeth chatter and his nails be blue.
Behold him now! Bent forward on his hams
Beside the burn, his hands he pushes out,
In swimming fashion, from below his nose,
And seems to meditate the unfrozen depth.
Oh no, he'll not jump in; but pleased he sees
How he could stem it, and with eager heart
Longs for the coming of the summer sun.

But lo! the old mill: Down to it hies our imp,
Following the dam. The outer wheel still black,
Though sleeked with gleety green, and candied o'er
With ice, is doing duty. In he goes
By the wide two-leaved door; all round he looks
Throughout the dusty atmosphere, but sees
No miller there. The mealy cobwebs shake
Along the wall, a squeaking rat comes out,
And sits and looks at him with steadfast eye.
He hears the grinding's smothered sound, a sound
Lonelier than silence: Memory summons up
The “Thirlstane Pedlar” murdered in a mill,
And buried there: The “Meal-cap Miller,” too,
In “God's Revenge on Murther” bloody famed,
Comes o'er his spirit. Add to this the fear

Of human seizure, for he meditates
A boyish multure: Stepping stealthily
On tiptoe, looking round, he ventures on;
Thrusts both his hands into the oatmeal heap,
Warm from the millstones; and, in double dread
Of living millers and of murdered pedlars,
Flies with his booty, licking all the way.

Homeward returning by the upland path,
Old Sylvan stands and listens: Through the meek
Still day, from far-off places comes the long,
Smooth, level booming of the channel-stones.
Roar goes a stone adown some nearer rink;
Right, left it strikes: triumphant shouts proclaim
A last great shot has revolutionised
The crowded tee. Down in the valley, lo!
The broom-armed knights upon their gleaming board.
Such rural sports beguile the winter day.

But good old Christmas comes, and holds its state
In Sylvan Lodge, as in the antique time.
And Captain Mavor's there from Eastern lands,
And all is merry cheer and holy joy.
Frank was his father's friend, and, ere he died,
Was named by him the guardian of the boy;
And through long conflicts of disputed rights
He bore his ward triumphantly, and sent
Young George to India, an accomplished youth,
To be a soldier there: But, ere he went,
With Molly Sylvan he had vows exchanged;
And she, and none but she, shall be his wife.
Prudent, and valiant in the field, he rose;
And Aliwal and bloody Sobraon
Fulfilled the promise of his earlier years.
“Come to your window, Lilla Zal, and see
Those blue-eyed islanders, lords of the earth,”

Thus said a dark-eyed damsel of Lahore
To her young sister. And they stood and saw
That little company ride glorious in,
Sublime in their considerate modesty,
And empires stricken by a band so small.
And much they wondered at the fair-haired men,
As they rode by; but Mavor's beauteous youth
Drew forth the murmurs of their glad surprise.
Proud day was that to all those British men;
But Mavor now is happier where he is,
With old Frank Sylvan and his nut-brown maid.

Labour, Art, Worship, Love, these make man's life:
How sweet to spend it here! Beautiful dale,
What time the virgin favour of the Spring
Bursts in young lilies, they are first in thee;
Thine lavish Summer lush of luminous green,
And Autumn glad upon thy golden crofts.
Let Winter come: on January morn,
Down your long reach, how soul-inspiriting,
Far in the frosty yellow of the East,
To see the flaming horses of the Sun
Come galloping up on the untrodden year!
If storm-flaws more prevail, hail, crusted snows,
And blue-white thaws upon the spotty hills,
With dun swollen floods, they pass and hurt thee not;
They but enlarge, with sympathetic change,
The thoughtful issues of thy dwellers' hearts.
Here, happy thus, far from the scarlet sins,
From bribes, from violent ways, the anxious mart
Of money-changers, and the strife of tongues,
Fearing no harm of plague, no evil star
Bearded with wrath, his spirit finely touched
To life's true harmonies, old Sylvan dwells,
Deep in the bosom of his native dale.

Muse, thou'rt a Prophetess as well as Muse;
Lift up the corner of Time's veil:—Behold!
Light fairy forms, the Genii of the wood,
The dappled mountain, and the running stream,
Are strewing favours on the old man's grave,
While many a little bird his requiem sings.
George Mavor Sylvan dwells, in thoughtful peace,
With Mary Sylvan in old Sylvan Lodge.