University of Virginia Library

A WOODLAND ELEGY.

Nature I love to depict: the woods and their shade evanescent,
Filled with ephemeral life, filled with ephemeral song;
Village and homestead secluded; their occupants dull, unambitious,
Living a life of routine old as the earth that they till;
Ay, and the murmuring stream, and the peasant girl sitting beside it,
Waiting a step she well knows, dreaming her dream of a day;
All that is simple and good, and filled with a poetry homely;
All that is fair and must die; all that was fair and is dead.
Nature is constantly dying, but ageth not, and her beauty
Suffers from time no impair: such as she was she is now.
Yet, in my fancy, at times her beauty appears in the present
Less than it was in the past: duller the tints have become.
Strange that boyhood's coasts, from which I am rapidly drifting,
Clearer and fairer become even as farther I get!
Strange that these landscapes Italian, of which I was once so enamoured,
Serve but to call to my mind those of the duskier north!
Often my thoughts will revert to the woods which I knew in my boyhood;
Little likely, alas! ever to see them again.
Beech-woods of foliage translucent, bestrewn with the shells of the beech-nuts,
Where you the squirrel may see, darting like light o'er the path.
Where, as you walk and look up to the new-born green in the sunshine,
Crackle the twigs that are dead, tinder-like, under your feet.
More than one land have I seen, and carried away of their beauties
Much that unbidden, at times, knocks at the door of the heart.
Yet hath he not to go far who seeketh for beauty; it lieth
Round the corner for all, if they have eyes and can see.
England, country of elms—of elms that are spreading and leafy:
England, country of lanes; soft undulatory land,
Dotted with square-towered churches, that Time has adorned and has hallowed;
Traversed by streams which, unheard, glide in the shade of the boughs;
Open to all are thy beauties, to all who can walk, and can clamber
Over a stile, and, as yet, walk unescorted by Care.
Sweet, above all, are the walks in England's beautiful park-land,
Under the trees that are tall, over the turf that is soft;
Where, in the dells on the grass, are the dark-green rings which the fairies
Leave for the wonder of men, after their gambols at night;
Where, as you stop on your way and peep through the wooden enclosures,
Deer, dark-eyed and tame, come to the bars for a pat;
Or 'tis the long-legged foals, who start and scamper a circle
Round their dams as you pass; then of a sudden they stop.
And in the distance is seen, 'mid the trees, a mansion ancestral.
Brightly its windows the while flash in the fast-setting sun.
Scenery quiet like this, more than that which is grand and romantic,
Speaks to the Elegist's soul, waking the best of his thoughts;
Scenery soft as his mood. For he knows nor invective nor rapture;
Sober and pensive, his strain stirs not the passions of men.
Nature for me has most charm in what is her moment elegiac;
When she brings home to the mind all that is fleeting and fair.
Know ye the dreamy and soft, and scarcely definable feeling,
Tinged with a quiet regret, yet not unhappy withal,
Which our autumn imparts, in a walk through the well-wooded country;
When, without omen of ill, rustles the leaf under foot;
When the mind that is calm is possessed by the beauty of Nature,
Yet is aware of a voice telling of mutable things?
This is Elegy latent; and he who in Nature can feel it,
Knoweth a poetry sweet—sweeter than any in books.