Teresa and Other Poems :: :: University of Virginia Library

In all sweet Surrey, to my mind,
No sweeter hamlet you will find,
For pensive grace or sylvan cheer,
Than bowery, hill-encircled Shere,
Crowned with each charm the lowlands yield—
Bright orchard, sunny breadth of field,
Grey holt and homestead; twilight spaces
By huge elms shadowed, from whose bases
Uptowers a precipice of leaves;
A river, whose still bend receives
The wayside cattle's shortening limbs,
While close the venturous swallow skims,
Then fieldward flows with sudden stir,
Haunt of the flashing kingfisher;
And yon dark mill, that now doth seem
Tormented with some fearful dream
(Whose spell it cannot break, I trow)
By power of old enchantment, now
In utter silence slumbereth
So deep, you tremble lest the breath
Of its own wheel should waken it.

Ay, fair the region, nor unfit
To live in some sweet poet's lay
With loveliest Auburn, or where Gray
Was left, the dews of evening shed,
Alone with darkness and the dead.

Here, as beneath an August sky,
With kindred souls for company,
I mused or talked, with heart half-gay,
Half-saddened by the summer day—
For how should ruffled souls express
The heavens' reflected loveliness?—
We chanced adown the village street
A wandering minstrel there to meet,
Of mien once noble, now through waste
Of thriftless penury debased—
The light within burnt low, the lamp
Itself sore tarnished, blurred with damp
But, feed the flame, you wakened yet
A glow not easy to forget,
In sooth a spirit-kindled glance,
And sunny with the smiles of France.

Around him peasant lass and lad
Thronged close, and many a jest they had
At his quaint ways and torn attire:
A rustic Orpheus! and for lyre,
This fiddle, broken in a brawl,
And one string wanting! Therewithal
He led them tripping to the time
Of such rank tune and boisterous rime
As with dull clods of English earth
Passes for music and for mirth.

We paused, and to our side came he,
With antic gesture, not of glee,
Still fingering, singing still the same
Dull nothings, with no sense of shame;
A tipsy stare in that dead eye,
Once kindled from his native sky
With the pure light of chivalry;
Now, starving, in a foreign sty

With swine he wallowed, ill at ease,
And fain with such coarse husks as these
To fill their bellies and his own.

At length, impatient, with a frown,
‘Come, sing us something French,’ I said;
When lo! as starting from the dead,
A quick thrill o'er his features ran;
He stood translated to a man,
With face grown eager and aware
As erst his sire's, some brave Trouvère,
What time amid the spearmen's clang
The war-light filled it, and he sang
To knight and squire in Norman hall
Of Roland's death at Roncesvalles.
‘Mourir, mourir, pour la patrie’
Now rose his altered strain, and we
Stood awed and listening, as he cast
His looks to heaven and lived the past,
And knew the drink-fiend fierce and strong
Exorcised by that noble song,
That brought with every burning line
Fire to his eyes and tears to mine.

Then silence followed for a space,
Until with grave and tender grace,
As gentle minstrel doth behove,
His theme he changed from war to love,
And, preluding so soft an air
As might entrance some lady fair,
Upwafted in the moonlight hour
Through pleachèd bows to latticed bower,
He sang, as if on bended knee,
‘Les beaux yeux de Castalie.’

A few brief moments, clear and strong,
Borne heavenward like a lark, the song

Too soon fell quivering to its close;
But with the silence there arose
A rapture in his heart, in ours
A freshness as of sudden flowers
Sweet-springing from the desert dust,
Undreamed of: and if ask you must
The purpose of my simple tale,
A simple answer must avail—
To catch, before it fade away
And melt into the common grey
Of memory's distance, that sweet scene
And him, the living link between
Our souls and nature: for the tie
Knit there of human sympathy
So binds us, we shall ne'er forget
The hills, the village where we met,
The creeping cloud, the burnished vane,
The cool and elm-o'ershadowed lane,
The very birds upon the wing,
Where first we stopped and heard him sing
‘Mourir, mourir, pour la patrie,’
And ‘Les beaux yeux de Castalie.’