University of Virginia Library

THE MOORHENS NEST

O poesys power thou overpowering sweet
That renders hearts that love thee all unmeet
For this rude world its trouble & its care
Loading the heart with joys it cannot bear
That warms & chills & burns & bursts at last
Oer broken hopes & troubles never past
I pay thee worship at a rustic shrine
& dream oer joys I still imagine mine
I pick up flowers & pebbles & by thee
As gems & jewels they appear to me
I pick out pictures round the fields that lie
In my minds heart like things that cannot die
Like picking hopes & making friends with all
Yet glass will often bear a harder fall
As bursting bottles loose the precious wine
Hopes casket breaks & I the gems resign
Pain shadows on till feelings self decays
& all such pleasures leave me is their praise
& thus each fairy vision melts away
Like evening landscapes from the face of day
Till hope returns with aprils dewy reign
& then I start & seek for joys again
& pick her fragments up to hurd anew
Like fancy-riches pleasure loves to view
& these associations of the past
Like summer pictures in a winter blast
Renews my heart to feelings as the rain
Falls on the earth & bids it thrive again
Then een the fallow fields appear so fair
The very weeds make sweetest gardens there
& summer there puts garments on so gay
I hate the plough that comes to dissaray
Her holiday delights—& labours toil
Seems vulgar curses on the sunny soil
& man the only object that distrains
Earths garden into deserts for his gains
Leave him his schemes of gain—tis wealth to me
Wild heaths to trace—& note their broken tree
Which lightening shivered—& which nature tries
To keep alive for poesy to prize
Upon whose mossy roots my leisure sits
To hear the birds pipe oer their amorous fits
Though less beloved for singing then the taste
They have to choose such homes upon the waste
Rich architects—& then the spots to see
How picturesque their dwellings make them be
The wild romances of the poets mind
No sweeter pictures for their tales can find
& so I glad my heart & rove along
Now finding nests—then listening to a song
Then drinking fragrance whose perfuming cheats
Tinges lifes sours & bitters into sweets
That heart stirred fragrance when the summers rain
Lays the road dust & sprouts the grass again
Filling the cracks up on the beaten paths
& breathing insence from the mowers swaths
Insence the bards & prophets of old days
Met in the wilderness to glad their praise
& in these summer walks I seem to feel
These bible pictures in their essence steal
Around me—& the ancientness of joy
Breath from the woods till pleasures even cloy
Yet holy breathing manna seemly falls
With angel answers if a trouble calls
& then I walk & swing my stick for joy
& catch at little pictures passing bye
A gate whose posts are two old dotterel trees
A close with molehills sprinkled oer its leas
A little footbrig with its crossing rail
A wood gap stopt with ivy wreathing pale
A crooked stile each path crossed spinny owns
A brooklet forded by its stepping stones
A wood bank mined with rabbit holes—& then
An old oak leaning oer a badgers den
Whose cave mouth enters neath the twisted charms
Of its old roots & keeps it safe from harms
Pickaxes spades & all its strength confounds
When hunted foxes hide from chasing hounds
—Then comes the meadows where I love to see
A floodwashed bank support an aged tree
Whose roots are bare—yet some with foothold good
Crankle & spread & strike beneath the flood
Yet still its leans as safer hold to win
On tother side & seems as tumbling in
While every summer finds it green & gay
& winter leaves it safe as did the may
Nor does the morehen find its safety vain
For on its roots their last years homes remain
& once again a couple from the brood
Seek their old birth place & in safetys mood
Lodge there their flags & lay—though danger comes
It dares & tries & cannot reach their homes
& so they hatch their eggs & sweetly dream
On their shelfed nests that bridge the gulphy stream
& soon the sutty brood from fear elopes
Where bulrush forrests give them sweeter hopes
Their hanging nest that aids their wishes well
Each leaves for water as it leaves the shell
& dive & dare & every gambol trie
Till they themselves to other scenes can fly