University of Virginia Library

THOMSON'S BIRTH-PLACE.

(EDNAM, ROXBURGHSHIRE.)

I.

“Is Ednam, then, so near us? I must gaze
On Thomson's cradle-spot—as sweet a bard
(Theocritus and Maro blent in one)
As ever graced the name—and on the scenes
That first to poesy awoke his soul,
In hours of holiday, when Boyhood's glance
Invested nature with an added charm.”
So saying to myself, with eager steps,
Down through the avenues of Sydenham—
(Green Sydenham, to me for ever dear,
As birth-house of the being with whose fate
Mine own is sweetly mingled—even with thine
My wife, my children's mother)—on I strayed
In a perplexity of pleasing thoughts,
Amid the perfume of blown eglantine,
And hedgerow wild-flowers, memory conjuring up
In many a sweet, bright, fragmentary snatch,
The truthful, soul-subduing lays of him
Whose fame is with his country's being blent,
And cannot die; until at length I gained
A vista from the road, between the stems
Of two broad sycamores, whose filial boughs
Above in green communion intertwined:
And lo! at once in view, nor far remote,
The downward country, like a map unfurled,
Before me lay—green pastures—forests dark—
And, in its simple quietude revealed,
Ednam, no more a visionary scene.

II.

A rural church; some scattered cottage roofs,
From whose secluded hearths the thin blue smoke,
Silently wreathing through the breezeless air,
Ascended, mingling with the summer sky;
A rustic bridge, mossy and weather-stained;
A fairy streamlet, singing to itself;
And here and there a venerable tree
In foliaged beauty—of these elements,
And only these, the simple scene was formed.

III.

In soft poetic vision, brightly dim,
Oft had I dreamed of Ednam, of the spot
Where to the light of life the infant eye
Of Thomson opened, where his infant ear
First heard the birds, and where his infant feet
Oft chased the butterfly from bloom to bloom;
Until the syllables—a talisman—
Brought to my heart a realm of deep delight,
A true Elysian picture, steeped in hues
Of pastoral loveliness—whose atmosphere
Was such as wizard wand has charmed around
The hold of Indolence, where every sight
And every sound to a luxurious calm
Smoothed down the ever-swelling waves of thought;—
And oft, while o'er the Bard's harmonious page,
Nature's reflected picture, I have hung
Enchanted, wandering thoughts have crossed my mind
Of his lone boyhood—'mid the mazy wood,
Or by the rippling brook, or on the hill,
At dewy daybreak—and the eager thirst
With which his opening spirit must have drank
The shows of earth and heaven, till I have wished,
Yea rather longed with an impassioned warmth,
That on his birth-place I might gaze, and tread,
If only for one short and passing hour,
The pathways which, a century agone,
He must have trod—scenes by his pencil sketched,
And by the presence hallowed evermore,
Of him who sang the Seasons as they roll,
With all a Hesiod's truth, a Homer's power,
And the pure feeling of Simonides.

IV.