University of Virginia Library

It is the very lull of noon. The sun,
Which smote the champaign but an hour ago
With violent heat, in pity hath concealed
The intolerable splendor of his brow
In tabernacles of cerulean cloud,
Gold-fringed and gauze-like. But a milder glow
Streams over hill and dale, and meadows green
Besprent with the rath cowslip; lanes o'erhung
With clustered woodbine; clumps of sycamore;
And immemorial oaks—green sepulchres
Of countless centuries; and proud roofs between,
Peaked and embattled; homes transmitted down
From sire to son for ages—since the day
When Norman William smote the Saxon force
Of Harold on the hill;—and lowly cots
With diamond casemates flashing to the morn;
And happy hearths, though humble; and tall spires
Pointing the heavenward road to who would ask,
And find—
An English landscape, such as lie
Stretched out by thousands through the sea-girt isle
From farthest Tweed to those white walls which frown
Her southern bulwarks o'er the subject sea.

It is the very lull of noon. The thrush,
Which all the morn has poured his richest strain
In musical gushes from the umbrageous tent
Of yon gnarled thorn-bush, stills his liquid throat
Mute by his silent mate; the lark, down dropt
Amid the young green wheat, with trailing wing
Pants in the furrow, by excess of song
Faint, and forespent with bliss. In limpid pool,
Or shallow reach of the quick-glancing stream,
The spotted heifer shuns the midday glare,
Half hid i' the willows pale, or on the bank
With open nostrils quaff the cooling breeze.
There is no life astir, save in the beam,
Where float, like dusty atoms, or the sand
On the seashore, wheeling their short-lived dance,
The myriad insect tribes, born but to die—
Most beautiful and briefest.
Oh! 'tis strange,
And passing sad, that in this human world,
Where all is fleeting, transitory show,
Naught should so fleeting be as what is best,
And dearest, and most lovely, and most loved.
Alas! alas! Is it, indeed, that those
“Whom the Lord loves die young,” thus spared the lapse
Of years which are but sorrows; rescued thus
From trial and temptation, to look down
In perfect bliss on that uncertain state
Which once to them was happiness and love?

Or is it that our world, those left to strew
Its weary paths with gladness, and illume
Its shadows by their inborn light of soul,
Would e'en too happy be, too bright; and so
Our aspirations to the mortal bind
Which should to the immortal and eterne
Rise hopefully, and leave the dust of time?

Enough for us that it is He whose hand
Gives to the painted insect but one day
Of joy and beauty, and an age complete
To the slow, senseless reptile; He it is
Who takes the purest and the sweetest souls
Early away, and leaves the rude and vile
To grow apace and ripen—He it is,
Most merciful and wise! And thence we know
This best and wisest; though to mortal eyes
Strange, and intolerable to endure.
Bright insects, ye have led me from my theme
Devious, and like a child whom o'er the mead
Your downy wings invite to dubious chase
Illusive; but small things will thrill the chain
Of memory, which links all time, and binds
All things that are, or have been, or shall be,
Into one present.
When the heart is bruised,
Even blissful things and gay their nature change,
Making its sadness sadder yet: the boon,
Long wished and long denied, which, had it fallen
Yestreen, had been esteemed a gift from God,
To-day comes as a grief, and adds new pain
To that needs no addition.
Thus it is
That I have wandered—
Yet it still is noon
In the fair landscape. The swinked husbandman
Sits in the cool blue shadow of the oak,
His garments spread beside him, and the tools
That win his scanty bread dismissed awhile,
Yet soon to be resumed. A little hand
Rests on his knee, a delicate, small voice
Speaks music to his weary ear: his girl,
Bareheaded, in the sunshine, with bare feet,
Yet fair and graceful as a prince's child,
Has brought across the fields his noonday meal,
And o'er the stile, and by the deep woodside,
Nor stopped to gather kingcups in the mead,
Or gay marsh-marigolds beside the brook;
Nor, when her little sister clapped her hands,
And laughed, till the old trees sent back her glee
In mellow trebles, to see Carlo chase
The light-winged swallows o'er the new-mown hay,
Tarried to share her glee; but hastened on,
Meek type of sweetest womanhood, to soothe
The toil of others, careless of her own,
Gentle and uncomplaining, and most glad
To mark a smile steal o'er the face she loves,
Lit by her coming.
Happy, happy they,
Though poor, and weak, and lowly in estate,
And haply scorned by the proud, who have on whom
To lean in sorrow, and with whom in joy
To feel joy doubled by the radiant smile
That thanks the giver of 't.
And wretched he
Who, blest albeit with riches, honor, youth,
Vigor of bone, and intellect sublime,
Would barter—oh how freely!—youth, and wealth,
Glory, and strength, and genius—and the last
Perchance most willingly, as adding most
To that he suffers—for one little hour
Of who no longer is; although she live
In bliss forever, by no sense of his
Perceived or apprehended, and perhaps—
Most saddest thought of all—no more to be,
Or known, or loved, beyond the pitiless tomb.