The Comrades :: :: University of Virginia Library

His long grey shadow lingers in the pass;
He slowly gains the ridge; he turns to wave
A last farewell. (God speed you!)—He is gone!
Sunset will light him to some quiet cave;
Or haply, stretched a-lee some sheltering stone
Among the mountain grass,
He'll lie to-night and listen to the deep
Hushed breathing of the hills, and watch the skies
Till one great star shall lead him by the eyes,
Through drowsy deserts, to the crib of sleep.

II

A merry ouzel chattering on his rock,
A bleating lamb, will wake him ere the day
Hath reddened to the flower of four o'clock,
And he will rise and wander on his way.
And this hath been his mode of life for years,—
To roam in search of simples through the hills,
To fish for pearls where upland waters fall
Murmuring o'er mossy weirs,
To sleep where fortune and when darkness wills—
Praise be to Him who doth not sleep at all!

III

The little rrd-roofed town where he was born
Sits robin-like amid the trees and snow;
And here he winters, making song and shoe
Like old Hans Sachs. But let the windflower blow,
And hyacinths light the woods with wells of blue,
And white stars gem the thorn—
The leafless sloe, why, lo you! he is dressed
For travel, and in honest leather shod
From his own lapstone, starts 'mid smile and nod
Hillward once more upon his annual quest.

IV

What rustic thorpe, lone farm, or bosky grange,
But counts upon his coming year by year?
He rarely fails them. In a world of change
These old-time nooks to him are strangely dear.
He comes and goes; he leaves at every door
A cheery memory. When at last his way
Shall lead him from the kindly homes of men,
And he can come no more,
“If not this year, why, next,” the folk will say;
“He sometimes failed, but always came again.”

V

For habit makes us hopeful, and we thrive
Best on this homely nurture of routine.
“If not this year, why, next,” will oft be said;
And so for them, long after grass is green
Upon the simple mound where he is laid,
He still will be alive—
A strong blithe man of helpful hand and speech,
Still wandering somewhere, sitting by some fire
Of farm or cottage in a neighbouring shire,
Or telling tales beneath some village beech.

VI

Dear in a world of change, because they change
So little, are these old homes. Since first he came,
Roads, houses, trees, brooks, meadows, mountain-range
Have, like the heaven above them, seemed the same.
The ivied church hath scarcely hoarier grown,
Yet age hath silvered many a lusty head;
The little ones of twenty years ago
Have children of their own:
Beneath the shadow of the elms the dead
Have heaved the earth in many a grassy row.

VII

But most he haunts the hills. For days and days,
Among the mossy solitudes, the coy
Wild lives in fur and feather are his only
Companions; but a deep impassioned joy
Prevents his heart from ever feeling lonely.
Merely to sit and gaze
On God's green earth and gracious heaven, to live
In cloud and rock, in lichen and in leaf,
To feel but Nature's gladness, Nature's grief,
Are happiness no pride of life could give.

VIII

He knows all tracks, the loops and glassy linns
Of every burn, each winding river-reach;
The limits where each herb and flower begins
And ends; the virtues and the name of each.
And often of these uplands doth he speak,
As if in some mysterious way each stone
And rush, and every cry and chirp of song
Were his from plain to peak—
As if they were in some strange sense his own
And to none else could ever so belong.

IX

And oft he tells, in phrase of dreamy power,
Of sights that filled his heart with strength and rest,—
As, how he watched the lean blue heron wait
With head and bill sunk gravely on its breast,
Among the shadowy shoals, as fixed as fate,
As patient of the hour;
And once when rain and wind had raged amain
And all again was bright, he chanced to see
A milk-white fawn beneath a rowan-tree
Which blazed with crimson fruit and drops of rain.

X

As though of weightiest import, he insists
On merest trifles, no one notes at all.
God steeps, he says, the rain-clouds and the mists
In gold of dawn and sunset ere they fall.
Though we by tender gloamings moved may weep,
He smiles; his sunset's but the other side
Of some one else's morning. When he lies
Beneath a tree to sleep,
He thinks how leaves and little cares can hide
God in His heaven and systems in their skies.

XI

The Oak-tree croons to him a wondrous song:
“My type, which hath sufficed for centuries,
Doth still hold good. Old elements new-wrought
Have streamed from age to age beneath this guise.
Through what most ancient language have man's thought
And feeling streamed so long?”

To him the great Dust blown upon the wind
Is a weird vision. Lo! among her own,
He sees sweep past, unworshipped and unknown,
The venerable Mother of Mankind!

XII

A little naked child in tender wise
She carries nestling to her slumb'rous breast.
Her milk hath hushed its passionate human cries,
And lulled it into ever dreamless rest.
Absorbed in fantasy, he thinks he sees
The infant's playthings as she glideth by,
For countless fragments, curious and old,
Strange animals and trees,
Like broken arks of childhood, mingled lie
Within her garment's deep mysterious fold.

XIII

He marvels at the discontent of men
Cankering their lives with labour and despite.
One April midnight, waking on the hill,—
Jupiter set, Arcturus burning bright
I' the central blue,—he heard a song-thrush thrill

The wooded little glen
With ravishing roulades; and in the hush
Of those blue heavens and that enchanted earth,
He asked was all men strove and toiled for worth
The rapturous music of that happy thrush.

XIV

The ancient mysteries of life and death
Perplex him not. Why should he hope or fear?
Because men clamour, and no one answereth
Out of the clouds? He knows that God is here—
Not in some distant heaven, but close at hand—
Around us, nay, within us—well aware
Of us and all our motions. Like a nest
The world lies in His hand.
What can the callow nestlings chirping there
Conceive of Him who holds them to His breast?

XV

To him the doubts and anguish of the age
Seem raving winds among the peaks of stone.

O sceptic spirit, climb the hills and learn
That God exists, and man is not alone!
Question the Arctic lichen and the fern,
The moss and saxifrage!
High up the sea-pink blooms. 'Twill answer thee:
“The North wind blew us hither in days of yore.
These rocks of ours were once an island shore
Amid the ice-drift of an ancient sea!”

XVI

The wandering flora of the Northern Star
Drifted for centuries on berg and floe.
Through the white ages Europe gleamed afar—
One mighty snow-peaked archipelago.
And here a fern was stranded, here a grass,
And here a saxifrage laughed out in flower
And made a gladness in the lone bright air.
Who saw the ages pass?
Who shaped the land afresh, yet every hour
Thought these small fragile creatures worth His care?

XVII

Who raised them with the hills on which they grew,
And bade His clouds subserve them? Who sustained
Their weakness through the wondrous cosmic change
When the great ocean of the north was drained,
And new-time plants and beasts began to range
A continent made new?
They blossomed in the prehistoric snow;
They blossom still; it may be that once more
New seas shall find them on their ancient shore
Amid a later archipelago.

XVIII

Thus, being confident of God, he takes
No trouble to himself whate'er befall.
Enough that God loves everything He makes—
Through countless ages hath remembered all.
Nor is he anywise concerned to know
Aught more of God than God may will. He seeks
No pledge, no knowledge wherefore he exists
Or whither he shall go.

He lives on faith,—a flower upon the peaks,
Cared for and loved though wrapped in blinding mists.

XIX

Out of delight to find a little space
For trees and flowers which he may call his own
In this old garden of Earth, where'er he goes
He carries apple-pip and cherry-stone,
And seed of divers trees; and these he sows
In many a lonely place,
And little cairns mark every chosen spot.
Exceeding joy to him it is to know
His trees among the hills in hundreds grow,
And still will bloom when he is long forgot.

XX

Thus through the years he wanders, gathering pearls
For beauty, culling herbs for human pain,
And planting trees to be his boys and girls—
His fair and fruitful children. Not in vain
Can he have lived whose heart hath found such rest,
Who dwells in such high thoughts of men and things,

Who loves through all his wayfaring to read
And carry in his breast
The book wherein old Epictetus sings
The grand Te Deum of a pagan creed.

XXI

For thus saith Epictetus: “Ought we not,
Whether we dig or plough or eat, to sing
To God this homage: ‘Great is God who gives
These tools of tillage and of harvesting;
Who fashioned unto every man that lives
Hands equal to his lot:
And great is God who gives us each the power
Of swallowing, and a stomach for our keep,
And faculty of breathing while asleep,
And imperceptible growth from hour to hour.’

XXII

“And this at all times and in every place
We ought to sing; but our most joyous praise
Should rise to heaven that God hath given us grace
To know these things, and walk in blameless ways.

Well, seeing most of you are dumb and blind,
Were it not meet some man should fill for you
This charge, and sing to God his whole life long
A hymn for all mankind?
Besides, what else can Epictetus do,—
A lame old man,—save honour God with song?”