Poems and Lancashire Songs :: :: University of Virginia Library

Beneath a crag, whose forehead rude
O'erfrowns the mountain side,—
Stern monarch of the solitude,
Dark-heaving, wild, and wide,—
A floweret of the moorland hill
Peeped out unto the sky,
In a mossy nook, where a limpid rill
Came tinkling blithely by.

II

Like a star-seed, from the night-skies flung
Upon the mountains lone,
Into a gleaming floweret sprung,—
Amid the wild it shone;
And bush and brier, and rock and rill,
And every wandering wind,
In interchange of sweet good-will
And mutual love did bind.

III

In the gloaming grey, at close of day,
Beneath the deepening blue,
It lifted up its little cup,
To catch the evening dew:—
The rippling fall, the moorfowl's call,
The wandering night-wind's moan;
It heard, it felt, it loved them all,—
That floweret sweet and lone.

IV

The green fern wove a screening grove
From noontide's fervid ray;
The pearly mist of the brooklet kist
Its leaves with cooling spray;
And, when dark tempests swept the waste,
And north winds whistled wild,
The brave old rock kept off the shock,
As a mother shields her child.

V

And when it died the south wind sighed,
The drooping fern looked dim;
The old crag moaned, the lone ash groaned,
The wild heath sang a hymn;
The leaves crept near, though fallen and sere,
Like old friends mustering round;
And a dew-drop fell from the heather-bell
Upon its burial ground.

VI

For it had bloomed content to bless
Each thing that round it grew;
And on its native wilderness
Its store of sweetness strew:
Fair link in nature's chain of love,
To noisy fame unknown,
There is a register above,
E'en when a flower is gone.

VII

So, lovingly embrace thy lot,
Though lowly it may be,
And beautify the little spot
Where God hath planted thee:
To win the world's approving eyes
Make thou no foolish haste,—
Heaven loves the heart that lives and dies
To bless its neighbouring waste.