Poems :: :: University of Virginia Library

The children of one king one rank retain;
And he that is the youngest, in his plays
Is none the less a prince with him who sways
A sceptre in the father-king's domain
Apportioned to his years: So I were fain,
Out of my love for one of gentle ways
And golden promise of his youth, to raise
The whole poetic choir of every strain
To one great level; and, that I may guard
A life so gentle from debate, and shun
Conflicting with the critic's nice award,
I will prevent idle comparison
By naming in one breath England's great bard,
Milton, and Bruce, Apollo's uncrowned son.

II

Milton and Michael Bruce: Not thine the blame,
Sweet minor poet of my native shire,
If thus the mighty master of the lyre
And thou be linked together, name to name.
Yet now, however wide the master's fame
Burn in our English heavens, a living fire,
While thy small taper threatens to expire,
I soberly must think your meeds the same.
'Tis true thy genius crept in narrow groove,
While his soared sunward beyond common ken;
But as the power of mighty poets move
Only the mighty, so thy simple pen
Belike as great an influence doth prove
Upon the simple lives of common men.

III

'Twas his to cheer the leaders of the throng
That moves between the moaning of two seas
Darkling—between the two eternities—
With the high hopes of his unclouded song.
Of light he sang, and rolled its beams along
The skies of human life: the vales and leas
Catch not the rays that strike the hills and trees;
And Milton's strength was only for the strong.—
But thou wert in the crowd, and stooped thy brow,
Lambent with Heaven's own light, among the low,
And sang sweet hymns to cheer the passing Now,
And raised sweet hopes of a bright morning glow;
And ever, amidst thy singing, thou wouldst bow
Thy head to hide the tears that would down-flow.

IV

If, where thou sitt'st in juster state than here,
With scarce a bud of all thy springtime blown,
Thy friends could claim for thee, till thou wert gone
And they were free to think thee Milton's peer,
And fain to find for thee some idle sphere
Waiting thy tardy coronation on
The lofty splendours of its empty throne
To burst forth singing on a new career,—
If, where thou sitt'st inheriting the glow
Of full-orbed glory, thou hast thought of earth,
Thy gentle spirit must be pleased to know
That in the pastoral hamlet of thy birth,
While stranger generations come and go,
Thy cherished hymns are heard by many a hearth.

V

The pale-faced weaver, pensive at his loom,
Flinging the idle shuttle day by day,—
Cheered by the solace of thy gospel lay,
Escapes the thraldom of his narrow doom.
And I have heard sweet voices in the broom
Of orphan girl or boy, on upland brae
Tending the cow, or tedding of the hay,
Singing of glad reunions at the tomb
In solemn hymns of thine; and I have thought
Their hopes the braver for their faith in thee;
For thou wert one of them: thy parents wrought
At wheel and loom beneath yon old rooftree;
And thou, like them, wert in thy boyhood taught
On these same hills to earn thy infant fee.

VI

Thou art a living presence in the streets
Of the small town, familiar on the tongue
Of every villager, and ever young;
So that the pilgrim to these lone retreats
Marvels to find in every one he meets
That kindly memory, of affection sprung,
Which, more than panegyric said or sung,
Time and the grave of their grim functions cheats.
But when the blissful Sabbath days bestow
Their weekly balm on jaded heart and limb,
And temporal cares the burdened heart forego,
And Heaven appears less distant and less dim,
Is heard thy voice plaintive o'er human woe,
Or jubilant in the grand millennial hymn.