Fables in Song :: :: University of Virginia Library

When little kings, whose race was run
A little while ago,
Had little thrones to sit upon,
And little else to do,
Within a little town, remote
From Europe's larger scenes,
There dwelt a man of little,
Who lived on little means.

2.

A man, he was, of humble birth and mind,
His life was lowly, small was his estate.
Yet was there ever a human life confined
In bounds so narrow by ungenerous fate,
But it had in it something far and strange?
This man, from youth to age, had lived and grown
In a great longing for a far blue range
Of hills that hover'd o'er his native town.
Ne'er had his footsteps climb'd those mountains blue,
But half his life, and all his thoughts, dwelt there.
He was a man beyond himself. They drew
His being out of him, and made it fair.
For wheresoe'er his gaze around him roved,
There were those beautiful blue hills. And he,
Who lived, not in himself, but them, so loved
And so revered them, that they ceased to be
To him mere hills, mere human feet may wend.
Their azure summits, to his longing view,
Were features of a dear, though distant friend,
In kingly coronal and mantle blue.

3.

And “Oh,” he mused, “full sure am I
Those mountains feel, in silent joy,
The love my gaze doth give them. They
Seek it, indeed, with signs all day;

Down drawing o'er their shoulders fair,
This way and that, soft veils of air,
And colours, never twice the same,
Woven of wind, and dew, and flame,
And strange cloud-shadows, and slant showers.

“That is their speech. 'Tis unlike ours,
Easy to learn, tho', if one tries;
One only has to use his eyes.
The colours are the vowels. These
Are liquid links whose mobile ease
Such fluent combination grants
To those substantial consonants,
Precipitous crags, and sudden peaks.
The accents are the lightning-streaks
And thunder-claps, that render, each,
Such emphasis to mountain speech.
Next follow fog and mist, which are
Verbs we may call irregular;
Perplexing when at first you view them,
But persevere, and you'll get thro' them.
Then comes the rain, which just supplies
The necessary quantities
Of notes of admiration. Far
Too many, folks may think they are.
But if such folks could understand
The mountains, there on every hand
They'd find about them more, far more,
Than notes of admiration, score

On score, suffice for. Think, what lands
And peoples every peak commands!
Then find the statesman that knows how
To govern one land. As for two,
That task's beyond the best, we feel.
Now, had we, like the hills, to deal
With winds, and storms, and clouds, and snows,
Nor lose our dignified repose,
Who'd wonder why the hills abound
In thoughts so serious, so profound,
About what men, when met together,
Talk, without thinking, of—the weather?
But still to talk it is men's wont,
Both when they think and when they don't.
Ah, good old hills! If Majesty
Should, some day hence, be forced to fly
From all her other thrones on earth,
'Tis there, with you, who gave her birth,
That she her latest home would find,
Above, but still among, mankind!”

PART II.

1.

Thus ever the fancies of the man
(Like their own restless rills)
Upon the mighty mountains ran,
Refresht by far-off hills.

Not one of his neighbours, he could swear,
Half so well as those mountains, knew him,
Who wrapp'd his soul in their robe of blue.
And, if that were fancy, this was true:
That, whether or not, those mountains fair
For the good of this man had a thought or care,
Much good they had contrived to do him
By simply being there.

2.

His only wish was to tell them of it,
And requite them for it. But not, as now,
When to every peak, with the snow above it,
And the azure of heaven above the snow,
It was only his wishes that found their way;
But among the hills, himself, some day
Before he died, if that might be,
When the hills could hear what he had to say,
And how much to say to the hills had he!

3.

O heavenly power of human wishes!
For as wings to birds, and as fins to fishes,
Are a man's desires to the soul of a man.
'Tis by these, and by these alone, it can
Wander at will thro' its native sphere
Where the beauty that's far is the bliss that is near.
Fate favour'd the wishes of this poor man.
For the wave of the ebbing century ran

In a sudden surge of storm at last
Over the little spot of earth,
Where, else, unnoticed he might have past
To his obscure death from his obscure birth.
And thus he, whose life had lain out of sight,
A social nothing, the strain and swell
Of the time's strong trouble swept into light,
And suddenly made perceptible.
Then, as soon as noticed by those in power,
The man was honour'd (O happy hour!)
By the sight of his name in a Royal Decree;
Which inform'd the world that he (poor he!
Who could have fancied so strange a thing?)
Had really and truly lived to be
A cause of alarm to his lord the King.
For it banish'd him to a place, he knew
Must be in the midst of those mountains blue.
And thus his wishes, at last, came true.

PART III.

1.

Glad was our friend, when himself he found,
In travelling trim, to the mountains bound!
The way was long, and the road was steep,
And, before he had got to his journey's end,
The night was dark, and the hills asleep.
“Aha!” thought he, “will they know their friend,
Who is here at last? Too late to-night

To see them, of course! They are sleeping now.
But to-morrow, to-morrow at earliest light,
I shall arise ere the red cock crow,
And visit mine old friends, every one.”

2.

So, at dawn, he arose with the rising sun,
And forth, as blithe as a bird, went he.
At first he was puzzled and pain'd, to find
All round him a field which appear'd to be
Just like the fields he had left behind:
A little meadow of grass, hemm'd round
With many a little hillock and mound,
Which hinder'd his sight from ranging far.
“But soon are these small hills climb'd,” he thought,
“And behind them, doubtless, the blue ones are,
Where, sportively hiding, they wish to be caught.”

3.

Then he mounted the hillocks that rose close by,
And thence, indeed, he beheld once more
The old blue hills. But they were not nigh;
They were far, far, far away, as before.

4.

“Strange!” he mused, “yet I travell'd all day,
Ay, and more than the half o' the night, too, post!
And all my life I have heard folks say
That the blue hills are but a day, at most,

From my native town. Did they err, I wonder?”
Then, he ask'd of a traveller passing by,
“Pray, sir, what is that country yonder?
There, where the hills are so blue and high.”
And, when the traveller had told him the name
Of the place where the blue hills now were seen,
Alas, poor man! 'twas the very same
Where, till then, he had all his life long been:
The country about his native town—
His birthplace—whence he had just been banish'd.
The blue hills there he had never known,
And the blue hills here, which he loved, had vanish'd.

PART IV.

1.

“And have I been living, then, all this while
In a blue land—really and truly blue?”
The exile sigh'd with a sorrowful smile,
“And never dream'd of it? Can it be true?
Never dream'd of it! All seem'd grey,
Or dusty white, with a patch or two
Of lean green grass, or raw red clay,
To enliven the rest. But blue?. . . blue?. . . blue?”

2.

And the man fell into a reverie.
O'er his cerulean home a brood
Of etherial clouds was floating free.
And they sign'd to him, and he understood.

3.

“As the waves that are clad in the azure of ocean,
So clad in the azure of heaven are we.
As thou movest, we move, with an unseen motion;
And, where thou followest, there we flee.
For the children of Never and Ever we are,
And our home is Beyond, and our name is Afar.

“Never to us shall thy steps attain,
Nor ever to thee may we draw nearer.
But, if fair in thy vision our forms remain,
Still love us, the farther we are, the dearer,
And be thou ours, as thine we are,
For what were the near, were it not for the far?

“Look above, and below—to the heaven, the plain!
The low and the level, they disappear.
The aloof and the lofty alone remain.
And, for ever present tho' never near,
Whilst ours are the summit, the sky, and the star,
Still thine is the beauty of all that we are.”

4.

All this, in his much-loved mountain-tongue,
The man's heart, hearing it, understood.
And he thought of the old old days, so young!
But he spake not: only, let fall a flood
Of passionate notes of admiration,
Over his wan cheek silently sweeping.
As when, in their sorrow and desolation,
At the death of the summer, the hills are weeping.

5.

Then the folk about him, who knew not aught
Of that mountain language, shook the head.
“How he taketh his sentence to heart!” each thought.
And “Courage! the times must mend,” they said.