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

Yon ridge of trees against the frosty east
Of Morn, how thin, how fine, how spiritualised
Their fringe of naked branches, and of twigs,
Distinct, though multitudinous and small!
Still rarified, they seem about to be
Consumed to nothing in the candent glow
Breathed up before the Sun. Lo! in their stems
His ruddy disc; and now the rayless orb,
Round and entire, is up, on the fixed eye
Dilating, swimming with uncertain poise
From side to side—a great red globe of fire.

Winnowing the high pure ether, go the rooks
Down to the sea in intermittent trains,
Far from their inland roost, on the flat merse
To tear up tufts of grass for grubs below,
With horny beaks to turn the droppings o'er
Of pasturing kine, to search the rack of creeks,
And stalking forage on the shelly shore.
Sagacious birds! what time the sun goes down
With streaks and spots on his distempered face,
High in the airy firmament, a troop

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Of maddest revellers, see them wheeling round;
And oft with sidelong flight slant down the sky
They go; and oft with clanging wings, the one
Depending as if broke, swooping they fall
Near to the ground, then upward shoot again;
They scream, they mix, they thwart, they eddy round
And round tumultuous, till all heaven is filled
With a wild storm of birds! By this they show
Prescience of windy blasts. But when, as now,
They take the morn afar, expect the day
To close in beauty as it has begun.

Rains flood to-day; the morrow's dawning gleam
Shows us the rawish road all stricken o'er
With lines, like crowfoot prints—the work by night
Of half-constringing frost. On such a morn,
Far in the reeking field, late ploughed, sore washed,
The dazzled eye is caught with flashing points,
Beyond the emblazoned stones of Samarcand.
Admire them at a distance: trace them not;
Fragments of saucers, from the dunghill borne,
And bottle-necks are all the gems you'll find:
So may mean men, like bits of delf or glass,
Blaze on the world, 'neath Fortune's favouring light.
Thus oft, through half our winter, damp and dry
Alternate daily. But this frost is fixed,
Deep gnarled of fang—so say the weather-wise.
The earth was slowly dried; the wild ducks oft,
With short quick pinions, and long necks stretched out,
Sped o'er our valley to the plashy springs
That never freeze; higher o'erhead, now seen
On the pale sky, now lost against the cloud,
Shifting their trailing figures of array,
The wild geese cackled through the firmament,

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Far going down upon the softer south:
These be the tokens of a rigorous time.

Here rest The Twins. Here fell they, twins in death,
As twins in birth, and in one grave were laid.
Their widowed mother's only hope, upgrew
The boys in beauty to her loving eye;
One fair, the other dark, but stately both,
Like two young poplars by a river side.
Force rose and slew our Covenanting men.
Walter was firm; but Vincent's rasher heart,
Lured by an english damsel whom he loved,
And who, for insult to her father's name,
Abhorred the Covenant, took her Southern creed,
And waxing hotter in the widening breach
Betwixt his spirit and his former friends,
Lifted his hand against his country's faith.
His maid proved false; she went, and left him lorn—
Oh how forlorn! Meanwhile for Walter's sake,
The stout defier of their violent hands,
The persecutors seized, and put to death
His mother, sparing not her reverend age.
She died, but dying blessed her Vincent too.
On went the unequal war, still struggling on
From hill to hill, from moor to blood-stained moor;
And Walter led the Covenanting strength.
Where'er they went, high on the mountain-side,
Above them still, oft through the hurrying mist
Dim seen, a shrouded Form went as they went,
Watched when they camped, with gestures and with cries
Warning of danger, and oft saved their lives.
What can the gray Shape be? Is it a man,
Or Angel sent to guard them in the wild?
Here burst the battle: Walter's weaker band

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Was swayed, was crushed, was trampled o'er the field.
Three foes bore Walter down; before him leapt,
To shield his life, that unknown Form, and took
Their spears upon himself; they pierced him through,
And Walter fell beside him:—“For her sake,
Her dear dear sake, within whose sacred womb
We lay together, face to face, my brother,
Put your arm o'er my neck.” Thus Vincent said—
For it was Vincent: side by side they lay,
And Walter put his arm o'er Vincent's neck.
A mother's love, oh, it has more than thews
To throw the Wicked One: it wrestles down
The Angel of the Covenant: it wins
Her headlong son back from the doors of Hell.

Fieldfares and redwings on the dun-blanched leas,
And flocks of finches from the stubbles bare,
Still rise before you with thin glinting wings,
As for yon upland through the fields you strike.
'Tis gained. You see the icy cliff remote
Gleam like an opal. Down on the far town
Hangs, like some visible plague, a cloud of smoke,
Steaming discoloured, dusk, but yellower edged;
And oft some window through its reeling skirts
Red glances. Lo! far off away, beyond
The valley's northern bound, the tops of hills,
Snowy, serene in spotless purity,
Standing high up in the clear morning air.

Noon and Afternoon.

Creep out and in, and shiver all the day.
But take the country wide, conquer the cold,

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And in your frost-fed flush of blood enjoy
The glowing triumph of consummate health:
Heart-cheering most, when shines the mid-day sun,
Sweating the clammy brow of puckered frost
In mellower spots, to tread the rustling skirts
Of woods high hanging on the southern hill.

Stand on this height and listen. The broad noon
How meekly quiet; yet how many a sound
Distinct you catch—the cock from farm remote
To answering farm; the house-dog's deep-mouthed bay;
The petulant yaffle of the cottage cur;
The nicking sound of the slow carrier's wheels,
Far away heard; the children's nearer noise
Of sliding sport; the fagot-felling axe;
And, intermitting oft, from yonder grange
The double-flail: from out the barn-door, see,
A thin light dust hangs in the yellow sun.
That faint vibration far! back, levelled low,
Yon smoky streamer!—'tis the railway train:
'Tis near—'tis buried in the cut embanked,
And hid from sight; but puffs of fat white smoke,
Still onward onward spouting from the ground,
Tell where it is—'tis out—'tis past—'tis gone!
Down by the grange we turn. Forth lilting comes
The farm-lass, driving from the byre her cows
To water at the frosty reeking well,
Farrow, ill-haired, and lean, but frisking mad,
Tipsy with freedom: through the shrilling air
She twangs her ditty with a nasal twang.
Lo! chanticleer, his yellow legs well spurred,
Leads forth his dames along the strawy ways.
He claps his wings; he strains his clarion throat,
His blood-red comb inflamed with fiercer life,

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And crows triumphant: Soul-distressing sound,
When in the pent-up city, ill at ease,
Your keen and nervous spirit cannot sleep,
Hearing him nightly from some neighbouring court!
Oft have we wished the gallinaceous tribe
Had but one neck, and that were in our hands
To twist and draw: the morrow's sun had risen
Upon a cockless and a henless world.
And yet the fellow there, so bold of blast
To sound the morn, to summon Labour up,
Is quite a social power: we'll let him live.
How lifelike now, for he has found a corn,
He lowers and lifts his swelling breast and throat,
And lowers again, with cluck peculiar; straight,
Their necks outstretched, in rocking haste, wing-helped,
His straggling dames come running all to him,
In affectation of some hoped-for prize
Great beyond measure; trulier in the pride
Of loving wifehood. He, self-dignified
That portions to his partlets thus he gives,
All to himself denied, crows forth, and round
Stalking in his uxorious majesty,
His mincing toe-tips scarcely touch the earth.

The sun goes down the early afternoon,
And soon will set. A rim of steaming haze
Above the horizon, deeper in its dye
Than the light orange of the general west,
Receives his reddened orb. As through their glades
Westward you go, a sifted dust of gold
Fills all the fir-wood tops; ruddy below
Their rough-barked stems; and aye the wings of birds
Twink with illumination, as they flit
From tree to tree across your startled eye.

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That gray bowed man has seen a hundred years!
With chips and splinters from the forest roots,
To make his evening fire, he totters home,
Shuffling the withered leaves. How wonderful,
With pipes and valves so manifold and nice,
Cords, bloody knots, and tangled threads of life,
And membranes filmy fine, which plank us in
From the great ocean of Eternity,
Roaring around us, with incumbent weight
In on us pressing,—oh, how wonderful
This sherd of clay should stand a hundred years!
Home goes the poor old man; if home it be,
Where once were wife and children, but where now
Are want forlorn and ghosts of happy days.
Yet well with thee, old man! humble and frail
In earthly eyes, yet on thy going out
The angels look, and on thy coming in;
And trained by thee, not lost but gone before,
Thy family wait to have thee in the skies.

Yon upland wasted, dim-furrowed of old time,
Day loves to linger with Tradition there.
'Tis hallowed ground. By Edward bent and bowed,
Our fathers there from the sour moorland wrung
Their meagre bread; but aye, blood-earnest men,
For freedom rose they: Right, they made it Might.

Day fades. But more is left than ta'en away:
The social eve, be Winter blest for this—
Friend facing friend, mild speech, and poignant quick
The sharp clear angles of the Attic salt.
Then to the hour, the meditative hour,
Dear to the Muse. Cast large the true seed-thought,
O Son of Song: the seed-field of the world,

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Great field of function, dewed with tears and blood,
Is quick of womb: sow: trust no grain will die;
Fit soil it ever finds, it roots, it grows
Rough crops of action, arts, and schemes of life,
Harvests of time, and garners in the Heavens.

Evening.

'Tis now the silent night: the full-orbed moon
Hangs in the depth of blue; scarce shine the stars,
Drowned in her light; the valleys of the earth
Are filled and flooded with a silver haze.

Of yonder heavens unscaled, so vast remote,
What can man know or tell? Their milky mists
Of nebulæ, what be they? A luminous stuff,
As Fancy thinks, to curdle into worlds
And systems yet to be? Nay, then, Man's art
Daring, has pierced the secret; has resolved
That luminous matter into stars distinct,
Already formed, but powdering the abyss
Of space with worlds so thick, they seemed, till now,
A cloudy confluence of unfashioned light.

This Man has done—even this. Outdoing this,
Did he not measure, by pure reach of thought,
Those delicate disturbing influences,
Put out like feelers, from the ethereal depths,
Upon our system, by some unborn thing,
As if for cognisance—yearning to be known,
And seen of Man among the works of God,
And praise its Maker in our human hearts?
And Man, did he not tell, as long and far

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He felt it trembling on the soul-sent line
Of his analysis, what it was, and name
The place, and mass, and orbit of a star,
And seize it dawning from the gulfs of space?

But not to drop the bold heaven-climber yet—
Did not Man pluck the lightning from yon skies?
Nay, yoke we not the subtle element
In stated harness, like a visible drudge,
To do our hests? Trembles from shore to shore,
Under the bellies of the tumbling whales,
Along the sightless bottom of the sea,
The electric post with instantaneous news
From State to State. The East and the far West
Shall thus be knit by wonder-working Man,
The southern summer and the lands of snow.
Reverence thyself, O Man, and fear to shame
Thy Godlike nature with debasing sin.