University of Virginia Library

Low on a haugh, by the river side,
The homely Manse in its garden stood,
With a clump of grand old elms to hide
The rough-cast walls, and the paintless wood.
And close to it was the parish kirk,
But what it was there was nought to tell,
Save only a belfry and tinkling bell,
Above its rough-cast rubble-work.
A humble Kirk, and a homely Manse
On the haugh among the trees and rooks;
Where the white-thorn hedges had grown, perchance,
Unpruned for the sake of the ricks and stooks,
For the stooks of corn and hay are more
Than a well-trimmed hedge to a household poor:
But they helped to make more wildly fair
The old Manse-garden, breathing there
Of thyme and every sweet herb that grows,
And the pink and wall-flower, and cabbage rose.
Oh, there the strawberry beds were good,
And the gooseberry bushes had golden fruit,
And the apple-tree boughs were stayed with wood,
They clustered so thick upon every shoot,
And the jargonelles on the gable hung
Sweet as honey the leaves among:
Just a garden for boys and girls,
Ne'er while they lived to be forgot;
And sunny faces and golden curls
Flashed through its trees when the sun was hot—
Eight wild boys, and as many maids,
In homespun dresses, with unkempt hair,
Laughed and sang in the grassy glades,
Or gathered the fruits of the garden fair,
And gladdened the minister's heart, but yet
They burdened it too with a fear of debt.

Easy-natured and kindly he,
Respectable always in everything;
Nothing he did but it had the ring
Of cultured mediocrity;
In talents, in morals, in learned lore
Respectable ever, and nothing more.
No special mission had he to preach;
No special faculty his to teach;
Nor special power of the priestly art
Or to console, or move the heart;
There seemed no reason why he should be
God's servant there in the parish Kirk,
Instead of dealing out tape or tea,
Or driving the plough from morn to mirk,
Save that he read some Latin or Greek,
And wrote good words that were smooth and weak.
Yet he did his task in a patient way,
With doctrine solid, if stiff and cold,
Ready, by day or by night, to pray
With the sick or the poor that were in his fold—
Mostly the farmers and cottar-folk,
To all of whom, as they hung about
After sermon, the minister spoke
Of the weather and crops, and the sheep and nowt,
And their rheumatisms, and their girls and boys,
And all their commonplace griefs and joys.
No high ideal had he to raise
Their souls from the level of common ways,
Nor passion nor power to stir the mind
As with the rush of a heaven-born wind:
But well he knew all their homely lot,
Their joys and sorrows he ne'er forgot,
Could tell what came of the scholar son,
And where had the married daughter gone,
Had ever the fitting word on his lip,
And gripped each hand with the proper grip:
That bound their hearts to him fast and true
As surest cords of love could do.
Little he read, and what he did
Was mostly sermons to “fang his pump,”
When it ran dry, and the weekly need
Rang in his head like a warning trump.
Yet though he made complaint that wealth
Of letters, alas, was not for him,
Being rich in children in hungry health,
I trow he was not a man to dim
His eyes with poring on musty books;
Far better he liked the cawing rooks,
The smell of the hay-field, and the talk
Of farming folk in a sauntering walk;
For what of learning he had was worn
Outside, like clothes of the proper trim,
But it never was truly part of him,
And now it was somewhat rent and torn.
He had not a doubt to trouble him,
And his faiths were only as corks to swim
Through life as easily as he might,
And net whatever might come his way;
And with the world he would not fight,
If he could only get through the day.
Yet he was reasonable, and shed
A sort of light too along his path,
Which not from the heavenly founts was fed,
Nor yet from the baleful fires of wrath:
It was somewhat earthly perhaps and cold,
And led not many into the fold,
But yet it did not lead astray,
If it only lit up half the way.
No lofty purpose in life had he,
No spirit earnest and brave and true
The glory and hope of God to see;
Nor yet a-craving for something new:
But he walked with them in the way they trod,
And talked with them of the things they knew,
And his speech was easy and natural too,
Save when he spoke of the things of God.
A wholesome nature, and fain to please;
Saintship in him had been like disease
Which he was ever upon the watch—
Though he hardly needed it—not to catch;
For to be called Fanatic he
Dreaded like sin and misery.

Down in the cove, where the fisher folk
Huddled beneath the lighthouse rock,
There was a dainty little Kirk
Of the old faithful mason-work,—
It might have been choir, or pillared nave,
Wreck of a church, by the breaking wave,
And a great cross on the gable stood;
And all within it was fair and good,—
Marble altar, and carven font,
And silver vessels, as were wont,
Under the great black holy Rood.

Long it had been but a ruin grey,
Roofless, and wasting in slow decay,
The mullions all from the windows gone;
The carven niche, and the fine-scrolled stone
By nettles and long grass hid from view;
And the font had been broken and overthrown,
And pillar and arch were crumbling too;
And the cunning fox had made his lair,
And the rook and the jay had nestled there.
Some laid the blame upon Knox's wrath;
Some held it was swept from the Covenant's path;
Some charged it to Cromwell's Ironclads;
And some to a raid of the High-land lads.
But they who had searched the matter well
Read how a great Lord lost a bet,
And tore off the roof, and melted the bell,
And sold them to pay his gambling debt,
After the new Kirk was built away
Landward, far from the little bay.
And all agreed that a Kirk was there
From the days that the Culdee launched his boat,
And came with the voice of psalm and prayer,
And gospel true to the people brought
From the lone Isle of saints that lay
Where ghostly mists on the waters slept,
But God shone out of the mists by day,
And spake in dreams to them when they slept,
And ever their souls in quiet kept.

So the good Dean, when he came there,
Curate or priest, long years ago,
Loving a Kirk that was old and fair
As the ivy loves round its walls to grow,
Had clung to it with a longing heart,
And with his own hands cleared a part,
Casting out nettles and grass and earth,
Till he came to the pavement of solid stone;
And whatever of beauty he found, or worth,
He sought out its place, and fitted it on.
Then with his savings, year by year,
He mended a bit, and roofed it in,
Living himself on sorriest cheer
This trophy again for his Church to win:
And now it stood there fair to see
In lines of graceful symmetry;
A bell once more from the belfry rung,
And matin and vesper were daily sung,
And the organ pealed, and the common prayer
Was sweetly toned to the fishers there.
Yet all the wealth of his worldly gear
Was less than three-score pounds a year.

Near by the Kirk was a cottage small,
With a red-tiled roof, and a white-washed wall,
A garden plot that was bright with flowers,
An old sun-dial to tell the hours,
Some carven stones that were broken quite,
And might not fit in their places right,
Yet were too sacred to be thrown
Among the rubbish of common stone,
With a green wood-paling to fence all round,—
These told where the Dean a home had found.
It was not other than all the rest
Of the fishermen's huts that there were seen,
Save only that it was neat and clean,
With an attic chamber for a guest:
But the Dean's own bed was in the wall,
Hid behind volumes, great and tall,
In the little room where he read and wrote,
And did the work that a pastor ought.
There on the shelves were folios piled;
There Benedictine fathers smiled
In snowy vellum, crimson-lettered—
These, he said, were his golden mines—
And high on the upper shelves were scattered
Big quartos too of the great divines,
And tables and chairs and floor were littered—
With books that were scored with scarlet lines;
For he was a classic ripe and good,
And loved the old wine in the seasoned wood,
But all translations were bottled and dead,
With an evil taste of the cork, he said.

The other room was a kitchen clean,
And there no woman was ever seen,
But once a day, about noon, his man
Lit up the fire for a little can—
If it were not a fast, and a fast, at least,
Came twice a week to this humble priest—
And made for him pulse or porridge sweet,
But the Church's Feasts had sodden meat;
And if a guest by chance was there,
There might be a glass of mildest ale;
And an evening pipe to soothe his care
Was the one luxury did not fail.
Yet was he healthy and strong, nor kept
Ever his bed for a day, or slept
After the dawn, but rose to pray
For his fisher lads in the stormy bay.

A tall, lean form with lank grey hair,
Bushy his eyebrows, and grey his eyes,
Deep sunk in a face that was pale and spare;
And he dressed in a threadbare lowly guise.
One apron had served him all his days,
His newest hat, it was ten years old,
His well-brushed coat had a shining glaze,
And his great thick shoes had been patched and soled;
White was his lawn on the Sabbath morn,
But half was darning, and all was worn
Into so fine a filament
It scarce could be handled without a rent.
Yet had he ever so stately an air
That rich and poor did understand,
Whatsoever his raiment were,
He was a man to hold command,
And none might slight him in all the land.

Old was the world in which he lived,
Old the evils at which he grieved,
Old were the things that most he cherished,
Old were his hopes too, past and perished.
He held that it was a sin to own
Other than Stuart to sit on the throne,
And still did his faith intact remain
Now that there was not a Stuart to reign.
Therefore a strict non-juror he
All the years of his youth had been,
Doing his constant ministry
In hidden ways, and in spots unseen,
Praying for him who in exile lay
“Over the hills and far away.”
Now law and order he kept, 'tis true,
Giving to Cæsar Cæsar's due,
But the loyal heart that would have shed
Its blood for the kings of the ancient line,
Clung to the memories of the dead,
And the vanished rule of the Right divine.
He fasted still for the martyred Charles,
And him who perished on Magus moor,
And held that the Parliament men were carles,
The devil pricked on to delude the poor,
And that gallant Dundee did right to maul
The Westland Whigs who were rebels all.
But for the new world, and its ways,
And all the great hopes of the latter days,
Their science and its expanding views,
New-fangled craving for latest news,
And workmen striking for higher wage,
And all that mostly our thoughts engage—
For them he kept strictly a yearly Fast,
Each year bitterer than the last—
It fell when Culloden day begins—
And he called it the Fast of All the Sins.

So, true to his own ideal, there
He chaunted the psalm, and read the prayer,
And gathered the lore of ancient times
From Latin Fathers and Latin rhymes,
Till scholars came from far and near
This primitive Pastor to revere;
But hardly ever a point was found
Where he touched the life that went on around,
Moved it, or felt with it as it spoke,
Or heeded how its passions woke,
Or how its bubbles swelled and broke.

Landward upon the rolling braes,
Wind-swept, and apart from the common ways,
Where once had stretched a moorland waste,
But now it was covered with grass and corn,
Another kirk on a height was placed
Among two or three pine trees tempest-torn;
And Church of the Wilderness it was named,
Built for a prophet-pastor, famed
For his doom-speaking words, and his stedfast faith,
When the wild dragoons were dealing death;
But he lived through the evil times, and saw,
Though he would not allow, a better law;
And the bonnet-lairds on the rolling braes
Had been Cameron's men in the troublous days.
A plain square building, never meant
To be tricked with carnal ornament,
Rough in its stonework, and rude in its lines,
Grimly it stood by the ragged pines.

There ministered one who held his head
High as the Dean, and would not brook
King or Parliament, living or dead,
Unless the Covenant oath they took:
William or George, Charles or James,
Stuart or Guelph, it mattered not,
Nor what their characters, what their aims,
Or whence their claim to have rule was brought;
Whether from Bishop's anointing oil,
Or from the people who sweat and toil,
Or from a long ancestral line
Lapt in the dream of a right divine;
He would protest against the throne,
Unless the Covenant it would own,
For this was a Covenant Land, and bound
By solemn league to be holy ground,
Where Papist, Prelatist, Sectaries all
Should ne'er have authority, great or small,
Nor should Erastian preach the Word
Where the martyred saints of old were heard.
He was a small, brisk, cheerful soul,
Not a whit gloomy or morose,
Apt at telling a story droll,
Gay among brethren and jocose,
And hardly would he restrain his wit
When in grave Presbytery even they sit.
Yet in the pulpit he would groan
About the defections which he saw,
And that he would soon be left alone
Even as Elijah to stand by the Law,
And by the altar and truth of God,
For which our Fathers dyed the sod
Red with their own best blood, that we
Might have the gospel pure and free.
Then would his tremulous voice swell higher,
Like the sound of winds among trees that moan,
As though some Power did his soul inspire,
Nor even the Dean could so finely intone.

He, too, was a man of learning, skilled
In all polemics since Luther broke
Her sleep, and the Church from dreams awoke,
And wrath was kindled, and blood was spilled.
Well had he conned each mighty tome
Of Calvinist, Lutheran, Doctor of Rome,
And what the Philistine-Prelate writ,
And how the Puritan-David hit
The boastful giant with sling and stone,
And struck down the mitre that wrecked the throne.
The faintest shade of Arminian error
Well could his watchful eye detect,
And he thundered at it, in wrath and terror,
For comfort there of the Lord's Elect.
So he deemed he must faithful be
Unto the little flock that he
Tended and fed amid sore distress
In the lonely Church of the Wilderness.

Stronger he than the other two,
Learning and talent he did not lack;
Yet were there some things he could do
From which their souls would have shrunken back.
He was not so noble, I reckon, as they,
At least, he could stoop to a meaner way,
And did not feel it, but made a jest
Of what would have broken their soundest rest.
For the wee cock-lairds that were his flock,
They were as hard as the flinty rock;
And minded to have their gospel cheap,
Letting him sow if themselves might reap;
And, maybe, dealing with them had been
The blunting of feelings that once were keen;
And maybe the children's hungry cry
Quenched the gleam of his watchful eye.

Five hundred souls, when all were told,
Dwelt in the parish, young and old,
Well shepherded surely by pastors three
Who lived together in amity,
And had no quarrels, nor sought to rob
Each other's folds of a sheep or lamb,
And lived, far off from the noisy mob,
In a world of their own that was full of calm.
Yet what could they do for the landward folk,
Or the fishers beneath the lighthouse rock?
What help to their welfare could they bring?
What light to shine on the darkening road?
What song could they give their hearts to sing
When burdened with sorrow or death or—God?
What gospel had they to raise the soul
Above the weather and crops and beeves,
And spur them to run for the grander goal
In the world beyond these falling leaves?

Respectable one, and easy-hearted,
He went about in a kindly way;
One lived in a world that had long departed;
And one was eager the slain to slay.
Meanwhile the people grew their oats,
And mended lines and nets and boats,
And made their malt, and brewed their ale,
And drank at wedding-feast and fair,
And harvest-home, and auction-sale;
And at the funerals took their share
Of heavy wines and waters strong,
As they bore the dismal bier along.
But there were mothers that were not wives,
And there were widows soon tired of weeping,
And there were prodigals wasting lives,
And sorrowful hearts that lay unsleeping,
Through weary nights long vigil keeping,
And they had their thoughts about life and death,
And sin and mercy and God and faith;
And, now and then, from the world without
There came to their souls strange wafts of doubt,
And things that were not in the catechism;
But how to deal with them no one knew.
They dreaded heresy, error and schism,
But wist not what of these thoughts were true,
Or what, if they were, they ought to do:
For the three good pastors kept their road,
And lightened not any one of his load.

Now, times are changed; there are not many more
Souls in the parish than were of yore,
Yet the pastors three have grown to four;
And their thoughts are run in a sharper mould,
And a spirit is there which was not of old.
It may be, their faith in God is more,
But they have not the same faith in each other;
It may be, they love Christ as before,
But they walk not so lovingly now together.
And yet a milder gospel tells
Of love that in the Father dwells,
And sweeter strains of praise are sung,
And bells in graceful spires are rung,
And they all walk in stricter ways,
And they all spend laborious days.
For life is there, and that is good,
Though it be young life in its selfish mood—
Life is there, with its warmth and power,
Its yearning hope, and its eager strife,
Its thought unfolding like a flower,
Its craving still for a fuller life,
Its futile effort, its failing faith,
Its fresh revival and confidence,
Its error too, like a misty wraith,
Ghost of some old forgotten sense—
Life with its loves, and hates, and fears,
Its wondrous joys, and its bitter tears,
Its follies, blunders, useless fights,
Its brooding shadows, and mystic lights:
Life has broken the slumberous spell,
And it is not all good,—yet it is all well.