Fables in Song :: :: University of Virginia Library

The cattle tinkle down the lanes,
And there the bramble roses blow.
From rocky haunts to reach the plains
The rills, with shaken timbrel, go,
Gay dancers light!
The hills are bright
With gleaming peaks of golden snow.

By fragrant gales in frolic play
The floating corn's green waves are fann'd,
And all above, broad summer day!
And all below, bright summer land!
And, born of each,
Far out of reach,
Those shining alpine spectres stand.

II.

A world of beauty, grandeur, grace,
Abundance, fill'd with force divine,
No sooner doth mine eye embrace
Than my soul hath made it mine.
How deep, O soul,
Thy depth must be,
To hold the whole
Of a world in thee!

III.

But O eye, and O soul, is your thirst yet sated?
Or what more do ye claim for your own?
Must this world, at the best, be so lightly rated,
For the sake of a better, unknown?

Ah, farther away than the farthest hill-top
Do I feel mine own boundless emotion!
And my heart, tho' o'erbrimm'd it may be by a drop,
Is contented not with an ocean.

IV.

On the blossomy lattice ledge,
Whence, far away, I descry
The long land's light blue edge,
With beyond it only the sky,
From a glass half fill'd with water
Leans an ear of wheat. 'Tis a prize

Which erewhile my little daughter
Brought hither with brighten'd eyes.
Its stem, when she pluck'd it, stood
An inch higher than she could see.
And the wheat-field to her was a wood,
And this wheaten stalk was a tree.
And, as soon as her gift my fairy
Had deign'd to confer upon me,
With a frolicsome footstep airy,
Off, carolling, gamboll'd she.

V.

A little child, scarce five years old,
And blithe as bird on bough;
A little maiden, bright as gold,
And pure as new-fall'n snow.

Things seen, to her, are things unknown:
Things near are far away:
The neighbouring hamlet, next our own,
As distant as Cathay!

Far things, which we nor feel, nor see,
To her seem close and clear.
In yon blue sky God's guardian eye
She feels, and feels it near.

What need hath she, our world should be
So wondrous wide and far?
Such worlds unknown are all her own,
And every world a star!

VI.

Why, dreaming ever, clings my gaze so fast
To this small wheat-stem? Whence its power to draw
My refluent thoughts from yonder distance vast,
And hang them on a homely wheaten straw?

It is that, small and homely though it be,
This ear of wheat so homely and so small,
Because it is so near, so near to me,
Hath size enough and power to cover all.
It leans along full twenty leagues of land,
And hides them with a straw. The purple hills
Peer through its hoary panicle. The grand
Horizon's azure orb one wheat-stem fills.

Kindly perspective! Little things close by
Exceed great things remote: for Nature's art
Brings vision to a centre in the eye,
Affection to a centre in the heart.
And, were it not so, light and love would be
Lost wanderers; and the universal frame
A heap of fragments; and the force to see,
The force to feel, mere force without an aim.

VII.

O near ones, dear ones! you, in whose right hands
Our own rests calm; whose faithful hearts all day
Wide open wait till back from distant lands
Thought, the tired traveller, wends his homeward way!

Helpmates and hearthmates, gladdeners of gone years,
Tender companions of our serious days,
Who colour with your kisses, smiles, and tears
Life's warm web woven over wonted ways,

Young children, and old neighbours, and old friends,
Old servants—you, whose smiling circle small
Grows slowly smaller till at last it ends
Where in one grave is room enough for all,

O shut the world out from the heart you cheer!
Tho' small the circle of your smiles may be,
The world is distant, and your smiles are near.
This makes you more than all the world to me.