VII. A WESTMORELAND HAMLET.
I
The rain hath ceased to weep upon the earth,
The very hills put off their misty shroud;
And evening cometh to her sunset birth
Through gorgeous bars of black and orange cloud,
While the late beams their lustrous looms may ply
To weave and unweave rainbows in the sky.
II
Beneath this mountain terrace, at my feet
Lies one of England's calm and green-field hollows,
And a small village with its rain-washed street,
And eaves beset with clouds of autumn swallows;
And the full river with its radiant flowing
Is like a harmless-natured serpent glowing.
III
The sounds, which from the cottages ascend
Through the thin smoke that trembles up so lightly,
With deep soul-soothing interchanges blend
Toil's sweet fatigueand childhood's clamor sprightly,
Where children, prisoned by the rain all day,
Win their undreaming sleep in evening play.
IV
There fathers watch, well-pleased, with folded arms,
And at the doors young mothers come and go,
And age, in out-door chairs, doth borrow charms,
More than it wots of, from that sunset glow,
And youths unblamed their early beds may press
O'ercome by labor's pleasant weariness.
V
The last gleam lingers on the hallowed ground,
Where angels oft descend from realms of light,
And now, with twilight's dreaded fence drawn round,
The churchyard path is quiet for the night;
Though many a matron opes her casement there,
That she may breathe good dreams with churchyard air.
VI
O mighty are the gifts, and manifold
The tides of moral health and strength that roll
Through yon small street,—not to be bought or sold,
But fresh from God in many a peasant soul,
That might arise, and with meet aid from high,
Buoy England up against her destiny!
VII
O England! England! wherefore so forswear
The healthy powers that with resistless shock
Bade fettered nations all their incense bear
To thy few leagues of billow-beaten rock,
And crowned thee empress on this ocean brow,
Where, lulled by foreign winds, thou sleepest now?
VIII
Calm lies upon the hamlet,—calm and sleep:
And, as I gaze on it, my pulses quicken,
And echos seem from every bush to leap,
Like the loud names that in our slumbers thicken,—
Echos that come the autumn evening freighting
With England's name in low reverberating.
IX
No boyish habit is my love for thee;
For it came on with slow and conscious stealings,
So that thy woods and waters now must be
To me instead of passions and of feelings:
Yet every month thy thoughtless ways are loading
Dejected hearts like mine with dull foreboding.
X
Not banks of cloud upon the mountain stooping,
Unmoved through ailing weeks of cheerless rain,
Not want of letters when my soul is drooping
For lack of love, and yet may not complain,
Not these, so much as thy poor barrenness
In all high thoughts and deeds, upon me press.
XI
If in a harbour on a sunny day,
Foreseeing fate, thou mightest range the deck
Of some good ship, that on her Indian way
In one short week was doomed to midnight wreck,—
Where rugged partings blend half-smiling fears
With loves that play, like rainbows, among tears,—
XII
Oh! hath thy moral frame got nerves so strong
To look with calmness into those clear faces,
Setting their noisy sails with shout and song,
To come no more unto their household places,
But find, without church benison, a pillow
On the salt sea's unconsecrated billow.
XIII
Such are the thoughts, my country! which I bear
Close to my heart all day and night for thee,
Drinking in life with thine imperial air
Fraught with the healthy spirit of the sea,
Haply mistaking motes that dim mine eye
For shapes and shadowings of prophecy.
XIV
Not that I fear, as some, mechanic force,
Which runs our life into another mould;
Earth shall not see thought's wonder-working force
Twisted aside by means for getting gold:
These have no moral soul within them swelling,
No spirit-pulse, no passionate indwelling.
XV
Great times are greatest in their ruins; these
On after-years no giant shades may cast,
Where flesh and soul may both dig palaces
In the huge relics of a glorious past,
As from the aqueducts Rome left behind,
Types of the cumbrous beauty of her mind.
XVI
But I have fears, mayhap too hotly cherished,
Of the dense towns, like storm-clouds, o'er the land,
Killing the popular heart that had been nourished
With fear and love, all chaste from nature's hand,
Spurning the weight wherewith the green earth lies
On peasant spirits with her mysteries.
XVII
And I have fears, lest quickened times should bring
Guesses and notions, clothed in earnest dress,
And men, from this reformed self-worshipping,
Should make an idol of their earnestness,
Counting unreal love of moral beauty
Coin that may pass for simple-hearted duty.
XVIII
O that my tongue to such calm power were wrought,
With life to kindle, sweetness to assuage
Its own good fires,—to lodge some mighty thought
Far in the soul of this self-praising age,
Received into all England's wood and hill,
A native echo, heard when strifes are still.
XIX
England hath need of harmless men, whose minds
May draw to their own color every heart,
Working in spots where angel help unbinds
The chains that fetter noblest souls apart,
That she might now, as erst, compacted be
Within one spiritual Unity.
