The Poetical Works of David Macbeth Moir Edited by Thomas Aird: With A Memoir of the Author |
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 | The Poetical Works of David Macbeth Moir |  |
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,
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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.
| The Poetical Works of David Macbeth Moir | |