The Poetical Works of Thomas Aird :: :: University of Virginia Library

The bee has wet his happy horn.
Cloudlet of the silver edges,
Past thee, up, the lark he twinkles;
How he sings, as up he twinkles!
Through the sedges,
O'er the ledges,
Bubbling, how the runnel tinkles;
Down away the runnel tinkles!
Music of the Summer morn.

Joy from grange to city run!
Lo! Autumn forges in the sun
Her spears, so rough of golden head,
To pierce the hungry soul with bread.

SONG THE SECOND.

Blue breathing Night, down from her styptick noon,
Makes her young ice; the pools all plated gleam.
Bold speed defies her: down the dashing stream
Flashes the shattered moon.

Cunning pipe of liquid sweetness!
Who is blowing? Spring is blowing.
All the sullen gloom is going;
All the days are happy fleetness.

Mottled globe of seedy wool,
Blow it round, and blow it full,—
Blow the dandelion right!
Puck, merry elf, behind it notes
His fay of love come on apace;
He puffs the downy bubble in her face,
To vex her with the wingèd motes:
All by the charmèd moon, all in the fairy night.

Morn on the moors! she dips her foot divine
In purple blooms and webs of beaded dew.
How meek she combs, in ripples thin and fine,
Her hair of cloud high out upon the blue!

SONG THE THIRD.

Storm in his blackness forth
Hangs on the suffering north.
Wide go his wings, away he springs,
Far back the tumult of his hair he flings,
The winds are in his roaring wings.

Tearing through forests, making gulfs of night,
Rushes the tyrannous Might.

The secret of the April bud
Bursts to the dewy liquor sweet.
Old men come forth to warm their blood,
And chirp upon the sunny seat.

Black shadows sail. Lights flash in turn:
What lustre on yon showery sea!
On every leaf of every tree
Drops of molten glory burn.

The Autumn eve, so warm and golden,
Lies on the hamlet quaint and olden,
Quaint and quiet. Crofts of wheat
Strength and Youth are yonder reaping;
Age at her door, babes at her feet,
Half is spinning, half is sleeping.

SONG THE FOURTH.

Drear, at the droop of day,
The nettle-wands, all wintry bare,
Sigh in our kirkyard old and lone!
That bowing stranger gray,
What seeks he there?
Sunk in the nettles, moss-o'ergrown,
He finds a flat memorial stone.
Kneeling, he picks the frozen moss away;
There be the lettered names:
“My father!” he exclaims;
“Mother, O mother!” Many a tear
Is dropping on the names so dear.

Floods of the thaws of night!
Yon hills, how blear, in raw dun vapour stand.
Ribs of old snow, glazed bluely white,
Indent the sodden land.

Look up! those leafy openings through,
What liquid gulfs of living blue!
“Look up, O sunken face,”
Quoth June in her sweet grace,
“Drink my blue day and live, my day so balmy blue!”

Yon pine with blasted head
Stands, raven-topped, nailed on the moon so red,—
Hung on the southern heath, so large and round and red.
There graves of suicides be.
Hags, posters of the midnight air,
At witching-time hold synod there.
But see! oh see
The troubled ground, the ghosts uprising through
In hoary, bloodless, thin-compounded dew,
With struggling spots: their shivering lips emit
A feeble whistling as around they flit.
Bending, the bird of ordinance
Croaks music to the mingled dance.
Such tales of thee, weird fell,
Old knitters tell.

SONG THE FIFTH.

Day far into the west is gone:
Weary the Beggar wanders on,—
On where the infant river gushes
The dreary fruitless moorlands through,

And o'er the necks o' the sighing rushes
Will-o'-the-Wisp goes dancing blue.

Cloud on the hill,
It comes down by the mill:
The wheel, it is going;
The meal, it is snowing;
And the miller, good soul,
Gives the Beggar his dole.

The moorland cloud is black with thunder,
Old Bluegown's badge is gleaming under.
With tentative staff, high stepping slow,
Blind, face up, dog-led, see him go.
Thunder-gloom, to him there's none;
Down he sits and picks his bone.
Doggie, he
(Head awry!
Watchful eye!
Muzzle lent on Master's knee,
Sharpening, twitching, farther leant!)
Knows for whom that bone is meant.

Hearts are large when Harvest comes:
Blithe the mealy Beggar hums.

SONG THE SIXTH.

Look up! Yon field of blue
Broadcast with worlds is sown.
Use within use! Look up, O Man, and own
Vast worlds are also light and spiritual thought for you.

“Sunny shower! sunny shower!
'Twill not last half an hour!”
Clapping hands, Kitty forth, with her merry merry cry,
Crows the vaward of the year: and her sweet blue eye
Glimmers up, shimmers up to the sheen of the sky.

Hush! from yon gulf of leaves the brooding dove
Breathes the soft crushings of her heart of love.
O the sweet dove of love!

The blinding day glares on the granite hill.
The very grasshopper is still.
Through yon white stones the sportsman slow
Crosses the gully waterless;
Panting his dogs behind him go,
With lolling tongues in dry distress.

SONG THE SEVENTH.

Yon Alp, he lifts his snowy horn
To catch the virgin rose of morn.

Clouds in towering tumult loom:
Sunny onsets dash the gloom;
Bold burly March, he laughs to do it;
Yon showery drift, he whistles through it;
Breaks in wild glee the Rainbow's horns;
Hangs drops of glory on the points of thorns;
But, o'er yon sower on the slope,
Breathes blessing through his thin white dust of hope.

Breezy dapplings to and fro,
What a ferment o'er the meadow!

O'er the billowy corn they go,
Light and shadow, light and shadow.

Bearded leas embattled stand,
Embattled with the hosts of bread.
Famine has seen and fled.
The sower's hand,
It saves the land:
High honour to the sower's hand!

SONG THE EIGHTH.

Cape on the waves! In sucking caves
The seething pots of ocean boil:
Good ship and true, they suck not you,
Home plunging in your honest toil.

Up in yon sweet blue fluency of air,
Our mountain trees, greening of dewy light,
Stand in their prosperous height:
Finch, merle, and throstle pipe their morning quarrel there.

Summer secrets here they be
Tangled deepest: Shy of view,
The woodman lorn holds, beast and bird, with you
The wild unwritten by-law, large and lax,—
Guild of the forest free.
Down in the sounding wood there goes his vehement axe.

Home, red with earth, the weary hind
Plods through the thistly stubbles wide.
Shrill birds hang wavering down the wind.
The miry hunters homeward ride.

SONG THE NINTH.

Babes to their rest!
Friends by the fire in ring and row;—
Quiet eyes to quiet eyes,
The saucy toss, the gay surprise,
Lips of sages dropping slow
Oil of ages—love and law,
Quips at the solemn saw;
Mild general joy, and quick peculiar zest!

Starts, if the leaves but shiver,
The leveret all a-quiver:
Upraised, it snuffs; with mobile ears it listens
Before, behind; its eyeballs, liquid large,
Turn to each leaf that glistens.
See-ho! from out the stirring shade
Wildered it springs—it stops—it scuds across the glade.
Wild pet! be safe in Freedom's charge.

Moon of the May! spell of the listening grove!
Glancing eyes, and whispered love!
Lady Well, the twain by thee
Sit; deep and pure, their emblem be:
And aye, like the sweet secret of the night,
The living water dimples into light.

Above the mist, the sun has kissed
Our Eildons, one yet three:
The triplet smiles, like glittering isles
Set in a silver sea.
Break, glades of morn; burst, hound and horn;
Oh then their woods for me!

SONG THE TENTH.

'Tis late and hoar. She's at her door:
Oh for her spouse to come in sight!
No form appears; she harks, but hears
No foot abroad in all the night.
Start! her crowding soul is full
Of Murder-Wood and Dead-Man's-Pool,—
Haunts to waylay him: Shuddering in,
To cheat her fear, she hastes to spin.
Sit she cannot: Heart-opprest,
(So thick the ghostly fancies come),
She'll wake her little ones and hear
Their voices in the night so drear;
Yet pauses, loth to break their rest.
God send the husband and the father home!

Young day, so clear and bland!
Earth in her dew, how fresh and fair!
Far ocean lies
To yonder skies,
A floor of fine-compacted air.
Forth we give thee,
Back receive thee,
Gladness of the sea and land.

Soft smiling through the showers,
He makes the eyes of flowers.
Milk of his blessing, Summer-sweet,
Swells out God's covenant in the heart of wheat.
Deep, he makes the silver vein;

Deep, he makes the stone of light,—
A heritage from reign to reign,
Of purest sparkle on the functional brow.
Life hangs upon his sight.
O Sun that Adam saw, I see thee now!

Wo for the sallow eves!
The troubled woods roar to the master winds:
Drift of the leaves, it blinds
The wildered day forlorn,—drift of the whirling leaves.

SONG THE ELEVENTH.

His wild penumbra dimly seen
Through shattered glooms and scuds of sleety sheen,
Bold from yonder Norland height
Winter blows his windy horn.

Of sunny drops is April born,—
Of sunny tremblings of the drops of light.
Type of the Love Supreme, yon infinite blue
Takes rounded shape from you,
Embracing shape for you,—
From you, O earth, for you.

Scorn not the lowly patient power:
Old Winter's root
Is bud and shoot,
Leaf and flower,
And—lo! the fruit:
Heaven is the Harvest of our humblest hour.

SONG THE TWELFTH.

“Our rhythmic armies, lifted whole,
Heaved, whelm and awe;
True to harmonious law,
Peace, thy consummate works spring from the plastic soul.”
So mused the Sage. Seaward he stood: “How swell
Yon waters measured to the moon's weird spell!”
He saw the stars: “Yea, order, thrift divine,
By thee yon congruous worlds unwasted wheel and shine.”

Bold Ben he strikes his spurs into the sea.
Beauty and they
Bending our bay,
Water and light one living crystal be.
Curve me that darling lip: dimpling it swells
To kiss yon lip of shells.

The splendour is setting, the gray coming on;
But the bird of the woodland dew-sweetens his tone.
O Sun of my youth, in the flame of thy power
The river ran glory, the meadow caught flower:
That Sun in the west; be the harmony true,
And steal on Regret in the sweetness of dew.

They come, they go; they round the plan
Of bread with beauty and with types to man,—
The Seasons. Praise, through all our days,
Our weary days of toil and strife,
For bowing Heavens, and sweet relays
Of blessing to the Gates of Life!