Poems :: :: University of Virginia Library

Scotland, my Mother! thrice I've left thy hearth
To seek my crust 'mong strangers—left each time
Alone, in sadness, never to return,
Yet, by some fate undreamt of, still return'd.

When shall this heart find an abiding home?
Alas! too many has it found—heart-homes,
Loved spots where it has been, and fain would bide—
But none for me! Ah, where the homestead, where
The kindred soil in which my tendrill'd years
Might spread and deepen on to rooted age—
Green shoots up-springing, and all things around
Engraven with my life, until they read
As pages of my history? But no:
I see no dawn of that—blank dark all round!

Once more I leave the Doric land—this time,
A part that rings with glorious deeds of old:
Kyle's capital, made famous by the lives,
To Scotland dear, of Wallace and the Bruce,
And where even England's Cromwell graved his name.
But O, more glorious by the minstrel chief
Who sang of Tam O'Shanter and the Brigs,
And whose heart-warbled melodies have borne
The seuch of Coila's streams o'er all the earth.
O favour'd land, whom Providence has given

Not wealth of beauty only, but a voice
To sing it to the world—farewell, farewell!

'Tis but my lips that say that word, my heart
Bids no farewell, and could not if I would.
No: be my outward being where it may,
While memory, and thought, and Burns remain,
I live in Kyle. Still, in the summer eve
My soul will wander by the “Hermit Ayr”—
At noon sit dreamily by “Bonnie Doon”—
“Brown Carrick hill” fill all my musing moods
With its mysterious beauty—and yon isle,
With Goatfell, framed in sunsets. Hill and dale,
And river, bridge and road where he has been,
Live in a double glory—in their own,
And in the light of that impassion'd eye:
For God, who breathes the miracle of beauty,
Gives to the Poet the creative soul
That makes a beauty kindred to His own.

If not my first, thou art my dearest home.
And where my next? I leave, but whither go?
I blush to think there is for me no place
That begs my work; but, rather, that mere bread
May lead me like a beggar! Would my faith
In missions were confirm'd—that for each one
Throughout the ravell'd labours of the world,
His special work awaited him! I'd rise
Like morning, with hope's star upon my brow,
And feel earth beckon'd me. The world accords

Divine appointment to her greatest sons,
Who turn her destinies by arm or pen:
But wherefore not the least? In sight of God,
Who are the greatest? And what acts of man,
Little or great, most pregnant of results?
The flash that leaps from heaven fills all men's eyes,
But with amazement passes; while the spark
That falls unseen from some lone widow's lamp
May fire a city. Fields are won and lost,
Run red with blood, their thousands heap'd in death,
Yet in a little while are green again.
A lonely thinker gives the world a thought,
Which in due season overruns the earth,
Brings wealth to nations, bread to all that work.
A ten years' war rose from a woman's cheek;
A Reformation, from a cutty stool.
The veriest acts work an eternal change,
And none can tell the outcome.

All, or none,
Have special missions waiting them from God,
And here, or somewhere in this endless life,
Must find them. None so worthless, none,
But, like the pettiest artery, performs
A necessary part amid the whole.
Not Shakspeare only, but the multitude,
Gave birth to Shakspeare's universal line.
So, Washington was but the brain whose strength
Drew upwards from the obscurest heart that beat
With Independence. Take the least away,

And Washington had not been Washington.—
God's thoughts are circles: lives, things, and events
That we deem useless, are the arcs which, join'd,
Make up the round.

Shall even the trees put forth
Each its appointed leaf and bloom and fruit—
The birds and insects live and build and sing—
All in their own unerring way—yet man
Be left to blind experiment and doubt?
They are God's slaves, and cannot err,
While man, you say, is free! Ay, so he is;
And therefore often misses his true end.
Yet is he only free within the bounds:
Error and wrong cannot be driven far:
On one side only is there endless scope,
And that is towards the right, the true, the good;
And he alone that is God's willing slave
Is truly free—yea, even free as God.

The conscience-beat of Right that stirs amid
The conflicts of the heart—this is God's will.
It bids us to our missions: we are deaf;
Or, hearing, heed not, and still live at waste,
In half successes, disappointing gains,
Failures and fears, that seek to whip us right.
Who thinks of missions? None. Yet even we—
You, I—might find our God-appointed work,
Would we but rise in His name and begin.

There ever is a Right, a Best to do,
Here where we are, and now. In simple trust
Do that, and ever that, nor mind results.—
To make thy life an embodied thought of God—
Be it all failure in the world's loose speech—
That, only, is success—how done or where.

And whence the love of home, this heart for place?
Not from the dusky grandeur of the hill,
The clouding tree before the cottage door,
The haunting stream—no, nor the mantling hearth;
But that through them, unconsciously, the heart
Has caught the gleam of God; and that is love.
It is the very home of every soul,
And everything in nature is the door.

If we by thought, at any time, can pass
Into this all-sufficing mystery,
The soul's true home, then farewell all regret!
Be where we may, we are at home and peace.