University of Virginia Library

OUR COTTAGE.

Some few of us, children and grown, possess
A cottage, far remov'd. 'Tis in a glade,
Where the sun harbours; and one side of it
Listens to bees, another to a brook.
Lovers, that have just parted for the night,
Dream of such spots, when they have said their pray'rs,—
Or some tir'd parent, holding by the hand
A child, and walking tow'rds the setting sun.
No news comes here; no scandal; no routine
Of morning visit; not a postman's knock,—
That double thrust of the long staff of care.
We are as distant from the world, in spirit
If not in place, as though in Crusoe's isle,
And please ourselves with being ignorant
Ev'n of the country some five miles beyond.
Our wood's our world, with some few hills and dales,
And many an alley green, with poppies edg'd
And flowery brakes, where sails the long blue fly,
Whom we pronounce a fairy; and 'twould go
Hard with us to be certain he's not one,
Such willing children are we of the possible.
Hence all our walks have names; some of the Fairies,
And some of Nymphs, (where the brook makes a bath
In a green chamber, and the turf's half violets,)
And some of Grim Old Men that live alone,
And may not be seen safely. Pan has one
Down in a beech-dell; and Apollo another,
Where sunset in the trees makes strawy fires.
You might suppose the place pick'd out of books.
The nightingales, in the cold blooms, are there
Fullest of heart, hushing our open'd windows;
The cuckoo ripest in the warmed thicks.
Autumn, the princely season, purple-rob'd
And liberal-handed, brings no gloom to us,
But, rich in its own self, gives us rich hope
Of winter-time; and when the winter comes,
We burn old wood, and read old books that wall
Our biggest room, and take our heartiest walks
On the good, hard, glad ground; or when it rains
And the rich dells are mire, make much and long
Of a small bin we have of good old wine;
And talk of, perhaps entertain, some friend,
Whom, old or young, we gift with the same grace
Of ancient epithet; for love is time
With us; youth old as love, and age as young;
And stars, affections, hopes, roll all alike
Immortal rounds, in heaven when not on earth.
Therefore the very youngest of us all
Do we call old,—“old Vincent,” or “old Jule,”
Or “old Jacintha;” and they count us young,
And at a very playfellow time of life,
As in good truth we are: witness the nuts
We seek, to pelt with, in thy trampled leaves,
November; and the merry Christmas ring,
Hot-fac'd and loud with too much fire and food,—
The rare excess, loving the generous gods.
“Old Mary,” and “old Percy,” and “old Henry,”
Also there are, with more beyond their teens;
But these are reverend youngsters, married now,
And ride no longer to our cottage nest
On that unbridled horse, their father's knee.
Custom itself is an old friend with us;
Though change we make a friend, too, if it come
To better custom: nay, to bury him,
Provided soul be gone, and it be done
Rev'rently and kindly; and we then install
His son, or set a new one in his place;
For all good honest customs, from all lands,
Find welcome here,—seats built up in old elms
From France; and evening dances on the green;
And servants (home's inhabiting strangers) turn'd
To zealous friends; and gipsy meals, whose smoke
Warms houseless glades; and the good bout Chinese
At pen and ink, in rhyming summer bow'rs,
Temper'd with pleasant penalties of wine.
The villagers love us; and on Sabbath-days,
(Such luck is ours, and round harmonious life)
In an old, ivied church (which God preserve,
And make a mark forever of the love
That by mild acquiescence bears all change
And keeps all better'd good!) no priest like ours
Utters such Christian lore, so final sweet,
So fit for audience in those flowery dells.
Not a young heart feels strange, nor old misgives:
You scarcely can help thinking, that the sound
Must pierce with sweetness to the very graves.
But mark—not the whole week do we pass thus,—
No, nor whole day. Heaven, for ease' sake forbid!
Half of the day (and half of that might serve,
Were all the world active and just as we)
Is mix'd with the great throng, playing its part
Of toil and pain; we could not relish else
Our absolute comfort; nay, should almost fear
Heav'n counted us not worthy to partake
The common load with its great hopes for all,
But held us flimsy triflers—gnats i' the sun—
Made but for play, and so to die, unheav'n'd.
Oh, hard we work, and carefully we think,
And much we suffer! but the line being drawn
'Twixt work and our earth's heav'n, well do we draw it,
Sudden, and sharp, and sweet; and in an instant
Are borne away, like knights to fairy isles,
And close our gates behind us on the world.
“And where (cries some one) is this blessed spot?
May I behold it? May I gain admittance?”
Ay, true as tears or smiles that fiction makes,
Waking the ready heaven in men's eyes;—
True as effect to cause;—true as the hours
You spend in joy while sitting at a play.
Is there no truth in those? Or was your heart
Happier before you went there? Oh, if rich
In what you deem life's only solid goods,
Think what unjoyous blanks ev'n those would be,
Were fancy's light smitten from out your world,
With all its colourings of your prides, your gains,
Your very toys and tea-cups, nothing left
But what you touch, and not what touches you.
The wise are often rich in little else,
The rich, if wise, count it their gold of gold.
Say, is it not so, thou who art both rich
In the world's eye, and wise in solitude's,—
Stoneleigh's poetic lord, whose gentle name
No echo granted at the font to mine,
I trust, shall have made ruder. What would'st care,
O Leigh, for all the wooden matter-o'-fact
Of all thine oaks, depriv'd of what thy muse
Can do to wake their old oracular breath,
Or whisper, with their patriarch locks, of heaven?
Lo! Southwood Smith, physician of mankind,
Bringer of light and air to the rich poor
Of the next age:—he, when in real woods
He rests the mildest energy alive,
Scorns not these fancied ones, but hails and loves
A vision of the dawn of his own world.
Horace Smith, lo! rare compound, skill'd alike
In worldly gain and its unworldliest use:
He prospers in the throng, makes fact his slave,
Then leads a life with fiction and good deeds.
Lo! Bulwer, genius in the thick of fame,
With smiles of thrones, and echoes from the Rhine,
He too extends his grounds to Fairy-land,
And while his neighbours think they see him looking
Hard at themselves, is in Armorica,
Feasting with lovers in enchanted bowers.
Lo! Jeffrey the fine wit, the judge revered,
The man belov'd, what spirit invokes he
To make his hasty moments of repose
Richest and farthest off?—The Muse of Keats,
One of the inmost dwellers in the core
Of the old woods, when Nymphs and Graces liv'd,—
Where still they live, to eyes, like theirs, divine.
Fancy's the wealth of wealth, the toiler's hope,
The poor man's piecer-out; the art of Nature,
Painting her landscapes twice; the spirit of fact,
As matter is the body; the pure gift
Of heav'n to poet and to child; which he
Who retains most in manhood, being a man
In all things fitted else, is most a man;
Because he wants no human faculty,
Nor loses one sweet taste of the sweet world.