University of Virginia Library

THE CHILDREN OF THE CHILTERNS.

It lies among the hollows of the hills
And hears the music made by countless rills,
As it has lain five hundred years and more
And garnered human love and quiet lore,
While listening to the same old simple tale
Told by the trees or shouted by the gale;
A story of the common use, that rounds
The sober lives content in narrow bounds
With homely joys and sad infrequent feasts,
Or owns a kindly fellowship with beasts
And birds and flowers which of one table share,
Bound by familiar bonds and kindred care.
No storms but those of winter strike the rest
Of ages and the dulness all so blest,
And fortunate in its obscurer lot;
Outside the fever of the fight and plot
And hurly-burly which uplift a State
To glory, through the iron mills of Fate
And fiery blasts of dreadful hope and doubt,
On darksome forges slowly hammered out
And hardly shaped by cruel shocks at length
To the full measure of its final strength.
Green Mossdale lies and sleeps and hears from far,
As through some crevice or a gate ajar,
Strange echoes dropping out of larger life
In worlds of onset and heroic strife,
And wakes awhile to visions and broad lists
Of clashing arms and proud protagonists,
But turns aside from that unwonted strain
To its more welcome peace and sleep again,
And mingles with the melody of streams
Faint snatches of those wild forbidden dreams.
Thus generations after others walk
Along the same old path of even talk
And work allotted as it was at first,
Perform the daily task and quench their thirst
Or break the fast and meekly at the close
Without a murmur seek well-earned repose.
Ambition never moves a single heart
To spurn the yoke and play a spacious part,
But on they drudge the one appointed way
In the same ruts from which they cannot stray,
Like their own cattle gently plodding still
About the weary slope and up the hill,
As tamely as their sires in frost and heat,
And drone the same blind prayers and yet entreat
The unknown God and yield to the old snare
Brute-like, and little do and nothing dare.
Mild are their sports and gray their festivals,
And grim the gladness found in funerals
That rouse from wounded breasts a creature cry
At gloomy hours of sullen revelry.
No fruitful thought with seeds of beauty rife
May stir the stagnant bosom of their life
And roll a pulse of passion through the days,
As on they go their animal dumb ways
And rise to work and sleeping rise once more
To tread the dreary round they trod before
And do their portion of determined care,
Just as their fathers who for ages bare
The same old burden with the same old brow
And destined shoulders that in patience bow;
And take the pittance hardly buying bread,
Ill-clothed and poorly paid and badly fed,
Repeating the blind errors of the Past
And its blank aimless customs to the last,
In the mild measured manner of the slave
Who has no higher goal beyond the grave;
And buy and sell and slowly eat and drink
As kine that ruminate and cannot think,
And drag along the same old iron chain
Of habit void of pleasure as of pain,
And dawdle through the dim unmeaning hours
In vegetable fashion like their flowers—
A starved unmoral fate, a stunted plight
With common griefs and but their pigs' delight.
At times a murder for a moment shakes
The drowsy toiler, who just then awakes
And rubs his rheumy eyes and nods his head
Impervious, ere he seeks the narrow bed
Of use and wont again and dodders on
Deep in the track he has for ever gone,
At heart unmoved by all that does not pinch
His person, settled not to budge an inch
Outside the ancient grooves wherein he plods;
Who feels his kinship with the beasts and clods
And fastens on the soil his lowly gaze,
Nor knows one love to set his life ablaze.
His children come and sprawl about the floor
And bring the want that darkens oft his door,
With that fierce fibre of unbroken will
Which made our England great and keeps it still;
Nursed by the bleak north-easter into force
Bending the earth to its own conquering course
And shaping empires out of shade and doom,
Where once the spade that levels all finds room.
And his the faith that never can grow old
But quarries worlds, as in the times of gold
When men like equals walked with God through death,
In the grand days of great Elizabeth.