Reuben and Other Poems :: :: University of Virginia Library

It is your natal-day,—and Time has harried
Some youthful dreams from both your heart and mine;
Yet do we feel as young as when we carried
Pea-hules for Herrit's swine.

And we can still the same old pennies be—
Among the lower classes or the upper—
As when we sang of tuskers to our tea,
And soor-dook to our supper.

Though leagues of weary land and wearier brine
Have parted us since then, forget we cannot;
And who so fit to sing of auld langsyne
As I should be to Janet?

Our memories are harps—the passing winds
Awake in each the notes that harmonize;
An incident is mentioned—in our minds
The self-same pictures rise.

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And far-back names beat on the chords, and draw
Sweet music out, as of a distant lute:—
The Murraygate, Monikie, and The Law;
Or Mickie with his flute.

Some touch the chords of pathos, some as soon
Bring back long-buried humour to new life:—
Paulina, Tibbie Neish, or Toorin Broon;
The Auld Gudeman and Fife.

But why revive old memories to one
Whose mind's a chronicle—whose every day
Is anniversary of lives begun,
Or others pass'd away?

Since each one's day you never fail to count,
Above them all your own day shall be reckon'd;
And for your sake my tartan breeks I'll mount—
The gallant forty-second.

If many years be much to be desired,
May you outwear the tartans of the north,
And ere you don the last garb, be attired
In famous ninety-fourth!

All life should be a heritage of bliss;
And early pass from earth, or long remain;
The deepest thought says life lives on from this,
The first link of the chain.

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Then let us waste no soul on worthless ends,
But largely love and live our highest truth;
Be fill'd with sentiment, give heart to friends,
As in our greenest youth.

And walk with Nature; let her beauty move
The heart to ready joyance: praise the Giver—
Believing that as much as we can love,
Is ours now and for ever.

SOLITUDE.

How sweet the yoke of chosen solitude
With the allurements of the town at hand
To take or leave according to the mood!
How easy to withstand!

We let the buskin'd stage expend its wit,
The panorama of the streets go by,
The orator declaim unheard, and sit
At home in lonely joy.

The morning columns that with breakfast come,
Fill'd with the living drama of the age—
Even them we can afford to leave for some
Elizabethan page.

238

But solitude afar from all that moves
The wheels of history, the hearts of men,
Beyond the range of life's accustomed grooves—
How hard the yoke is then!

We do not live, but longingly exist
Upon the slow combustion of the heart,
Leisure unused, the ends of being miss'd,
Craving the world apart!

Ah, then, the worthiest volume poorly meets
Our fancied wants; we hanker after news,
And lay down Shakspere for the tatter'd sheets
That wrapt our last new shoes.

BOOKS AND THOUGHTS.

As round these well-selected shelves one looks,
Remembering years of reading leisure flown,
It kills all hope to think how many books
He still must leave unknown.

But when to thoughts, instead of books, he comes,
Regret grows less for what he cannot read,
If he reflects how many learned tomes
One thought may supersede.

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So, let him be a toiling, unread man,
And the idea, like an added sense,
Of God informing all his life, he can
With many a book dispense.

The fine conviction, too, that Death, like Sleep,
Wakes into higher dream—this thought will brook
Denial of the libraries, and keep
The key of many a book.

TOO MANY BOOKS.

I would that we were only readers now,
And wrote no more, or in rare heats of soul
Sweated out thoughts when the o'er-burden'd brow
Was powerless to control.

Then would all future books be small and few,
And, freed of dross, the soul's refinèd gold;
So should we have a chance to read the new,
Yet not forego the old.

But as it is, lord help us, in this flood
Of daily papers, books and magazines!
We scramble blind as reptiles in the mud,
And know not what it means.

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Is it the myriad spawn of vagrant tides,
Whose growth would overwhelm both sea and shore,
Yet after necessary loss, provides
Sufficient and no more?

Is it the broadcast sowing of the seeds,
And from the stones, the thorns and fertile soil,
Only enough to serve the world's great needs
Rewards the sower's toil?

Is it all needed for the varied mind?
Gives not the teeming press a book too much—
Not one, but in its dense neglect shall find
Some needful heart to touch?

Ah, who can say that even this blade of grass
No mission has—superfluous as it looks?
Then wherefore feel oppressed and cry, alas,
There are too many books!

INCENSE OF FLOWERS.

This rich abundance of the rose, its breath
On which I almost think my soul could live,
This sweet ambrosia, which even in death
Its leaves hold on to give.

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Whence is it? From dank earth or scentless air?
Or from the inner sanctuaries of heaven?
We probe the branch, the root—no incense there—
O God, whence is it given?

Is it the essence of the morning dew,
Or distillation of a purer sphere—
The breath of the immortals coming through
To us immortals here?

Exquisite mystery, my heart devours
The living inspiration, and I know
Sweet revelations with the breath of flowers
Into our beings flow.

MIND'S SEASONS.

Whence comes the mantling green of summer woods,
To clothe the boughs that have been dead so long?
And whence the thought that breaks our silent moods,
And blossoms into song?

I stand as leafless as the blacken'd trunk,
I feel no stir of any inward breath;
Of what oblivious Lethe have I drunk,
To bring this barren death?

242

Has mind its seasons, like the circling earth?
Its sun that draws new being from the roots?
Its periods of long waiting? winter dearth?
Spring days? autumnal fruits?

O God of Spring, here like a winter oak
I reach to thee my bare, bleak, frozen arms,
And pray for leaves, pray for the quick'ning stroke,
Pray for the breath that warms.

And prayer is its own return, the fire
That floods the mountain tops with hope of day.
The getting of the good that we desire
Enables us to pray.

THE MYSTERY OF THOUGHT.

How is it? Does the Will our thoughts create,
Or only stir the latent seeds to grow?
Or do we but dispose the brain and wait
The unknown inward flow?

We may not tell unless by what we feel;
And who shall say his thoughts can be constrain'd?
Or that he did more service than reveal
The thought by thinking gain'd?

243

Earth gets her wealth of flowers and fruit and grain
All from the unseen world that lies behind.
Earth only is the body and the brain,
The other is the mind.

For though with wondrous skill we analyze
Both thought and food when into being brought,
The unknown something in the process flies
That made them food and thought.

Alas, I know not! but when in this night
Of ignorance, where fancy blindly roams,
I turn to the Unseen, and pray for light,
I often find it comes.

UNWITTING TRIBUTE.

A learned critic, meaning censure, says
No subject is too prosy for my muse,
And thus methinks unwittingly he pays
A tribute he'd refuse.

Nothing too prosy! Wherefore should it be?
He is no poet if in the merest clod
He may not find some trace of Poesy,
His all-besetting god.

244

He cannot hide from it, do what he will;
It gazes out on him from stocks and stones;
The world moves by on grating wheels—he still
Can hear celestial tones.

The cruse that winks through some lone widow's pane;
The birring sonnet of her spinning wheel,
No prosier are than heaven's lurid chain,
Or earth's resounding peal.

The elements that chaunt in epic tongue—
To them the drowsiest senses are awake:
It needs a poet's ear to catch the song
That breathes in things prosaic.

So, as “unto the pure all things are pure,”
Unto the poet all reflect his dream:
He needs no spic'd event, no special lure,
But finds in all a theme.

LOGIC.

Unless you have the logic of the schools,
'Tis said you cannot with precision think;
In reasoning it gives the needed tools
To hammer link by link.

245

‘Not so,’ says Swedenborg; and, argues he,
‘It were as necessary to advance
Through certain studies in anatomy
Ere you can learn to dance.’

Methinks that both are right and wrong; that he
Who thinks by logic will be more exact
Within his rules, but often fail to see
The truth beyond the fact.

While he that treads with uncondition'd sight,
Though often lost within the night of thought,
Will often reach that all-redeeming light
The other vainly sought.

UNCLASSIC.

Unversed in classic lore, and all unread
In the great masters of old Greece and Rome,
Much of the modern is to me half dead,
And wholly dead is some.

Unknown the instances on which they build;
The names they use, and references, unknown,—
Though in good English given, to me they yield,
Instead of bread, a stone.

246

Excluded thus, what chance have I to make,
From gleanings in my own unletter'd waste,
Aught of commanding interest to take
The literary taste!

For what would all its learning serve, were it,
With any recognition, to receive
As critically “literatesque” and fit,
The unschool'd things I weave?

I must not hope to win such classic praise,
But trust to lower audience; and for themes,
Find them at home, along the trodden ways,
In work-begotten dreams.

Or if among the humbler things I find
A dim, deep thought that wants the light of words,
It will be such as for the unclassic mind
God every day affords.

And that I'll give as plainly as I may,
In Saxon tongue, for Saxon eye and ear—
So plainly that the classic taste will say
“Pooh, pooh, there's nothing here!”

BEAUTY THE FLOWERING OF VIRTUE.

Beauty was by the ancients known to be
The flowering of virtue; yet, in sooth,
With added insight into nature, we
Can barely reach that truth.

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But see what lovely violets of light
Pure chastity within the eye imparts,
And in the cheek what roses, red and white,
Bloom up from gentle hearts!

Be outward features wintery and hard,
And virtue in the heart's core, with them bear
Until some soft emotion burst the sward,
Then see what beauty there!

Or if you see great beauty in a face,
Yet know the soul within of no esteem,
Be sure there has been virtue in the race,
This but its setting gleam.

So, too, all work, of whatsoever soil,
If into flowers of loveliness it shoot,
Through trade's close bargain or artistic toil,
Has virtue at the root.

THE DANDELION.

The daisy has its poets; all have striven
Its world-wide reputation to prolong;
But here's its yellow neighbour—who has given
The dandelion a song?

248

Come, little sunflower, patient in neglect,
Will ne'er a one of them assert thy claim,
But, passing by, contemptuously connect
Thee and thy Scottish name?

Whence the neglect? The daisy is as homely,
Its very homeliness has been extolled:
Less beautiful thou art, yet not uncomely,
Thou star of shining gold!

And great thy virtue; root and stem and flower
Yield to the man of herbs their potent juice:
Not all an outward tinsel is thy dower—
It serves a deeper use.

Most human-like the fortune of thy species;
Some struggle hard along the dusty roads,
While some upon the meads, and lawns delicious,
Are blest with pure abodes.

Thou art transfigured too, like the immortals;
The sleep of death usurps thine earthly post;
And then outcomes from thy re-opening portals,
A beautiful white ghost.

Familiar to the children in the meadows,
They pluck the apparition frail, and blow;
And by the flittings of its spectral shadows
They wise conclusions know.

249

Beautiful spirit, this thy highest being
Passes away like sighs into the air:
Not to be lost, although beyond our seeing,
But breathing otherwhere.

Thine is the efflorescence of the poet,
Whose wingèd thoughts speed on to unknown parts,
Take root and are, though he may never know it,
The joy of thankful hearts.

THOUGHT SPRINGS.

If when those springs that filter through the brain
Seem stopped, and all thought's ebbing cisterns low,
We draw upon the little they contain,
Soon, soon the springs will flow.

For all around us hangs thought-laden'd air,
And thro' all earth the living waters break;
Believing all we seek is here and there,
We need but reach and take.

Defer solicitation, and the springs
Soon bid their waters find another way;
But drawing daily of their plenty, brings
Abundance day by day.

250

USE OF BEAUTY.

To what end is it that the soul thus cleaves
To beauty; that around the meanest things
The semblances of higher thought it weaves,
Seeking to give them wings?

While lowly wants they cater, plate and jug
Give nectar and ambrosia through the eyes;
We needs must find, too, on footstool and rug,
Fruits, flowers, clouds and skies.

And what superfluous beauty in our ships,
Given with such lavish heart unto the waves!
We may not be without it: it equips
Our cradles and our graves.

So, too, with what unwearied, wasteful hand
Nature provides it for us, night and day!
All seasons bring it, sky and sea and land
Are giving it away.

And to what end? That we may be embued
With life that runs beyond the earthly goal;
For beauty is the everlasting food
That nourishes the soul.

251

SEEING.

It needs not scholar'd training to receive
Truth when it comes; it often stands aloof
From that; while, simply seeing, we believe,
Nor ask for any proof.

For as the linkëd notes are to the ear
Proof of their harmony, so truth appeals
Unto an inward faculty as clear,
That argues not, but feels.

And when we've asked the seer for some test
That this is as he says, and that is so,
He has not given any, but confess'd
“I cannot, yet I know.”

HOPE'S ARGUMENT.

We give ourselves much trouble lest to die
Should be to lose this conscious life and pass
Impersonally into earth and sky—
Lost in the general mass.

And yet it is our deepest ecstasy
To pass through love into another's life—
To yield this rooted self all up, and be
All husband or all wife.

252

And deeper still the joy of a rapt soul,
Whose self is sunk in earth, dead as the sod,
Whose will has passed into divine control,
And being into God.

If thus to lose self be ecstatic gain,
Wherefore this trouble for the loss of breath?
Ay, ay, but will the ecstasy remain
An ecstasy in death?

So leans the argument; the more we die
To the restraining earth, the more we rise
Into the rapt beatitudes that lie
Hidden to mortal eyes.

At last death is the severing of all
Entanglement or tie that binds to earth—
The cutting of the cord umbilical
That frees the higher birth.

THE STREET SINGERS.

A threadbare workman with a wife and row
Of shivering children singing in the street,—
Discord that sadly fills the heart, although
The thing may be a cheat.

253

Better be cheated and let no doubt start,
About the man's mock-miserable condition;
Better believe his plaint than have your heart
Contracted by suspicion.

Give him your penny and believe him true;
The ways of Providence are wisely dim;
Your alms may purchase the reward for you,
The punishment for him.

'Tis well to keep your charity awake,
To run a thousand risks of being cozen'd,
And hold your heart still open for the sake
Of one among the thousand.

SELF-DENIAL.

In whatsoever grade of life he is
That runs the risks of poverty or pelf,
Great independence and great virtue his
Who can deny himself.

How little shall suffice his actual wants!
How small the service he shall ask or need!
The slights of pride he shall not feel; its taunts
Hearing, he shall not heed.

254

To what do all our grievances amount
But mostly to some selfish want refused,
Or petty dignity of no account,
Or appetite abused.

And if this self by self can be denied,
These are but waves that seek to storm the rock:
It slips them back into the passing tide,
And never feels the shock.

FACT AND FICTION.

Great force is doubtless given to a story
When it is known that every scene and act
Of cruel sorrow or triumphant glory
Was one time living fact.

And so again, with all its chosen diction,
Invented narrative we hold as cheap:
Not fact, not fact; but is there not in fiction
Reality as deep.

Is not the brain-creation of the thinker
As veritable as his daily strife;
The pilgrim just as real as the tinker—
John Bunyan's thought and life.

255

Thought is the spirit of the body, action;
Unacted thought is soul without the frame
But no less fact; and they that call it fiction
Are cheated with a name.

AT THE CHURCH DOOR.

They have been hearing how the highest name
Of all the world by a poor man was borne,
And judged the great ones of his day to blame,
Who held that name in scorn.

They have been hearing how that he himself
Look'd with God's eye alike on rich and poor,
And even thought the holder of the pelf
Was not of heaven so sure.

They have been hearing how with him, who might
Have chosen from the highest in the land,
Poor fishermen found favour in his sight,
And welcome at his hand:

And how that all he said and did on earth
Went to uplift the lowly, and to make
All mankind brothers, of one equal birth,
For God the Father's sake.

256

Surely, inside the Church one life had flow'd
From heart to heart—one light, one hope had shone
From heaven, upon one family of God,
Kneeling around one throne!

Yet see them at the door, where rustling Wealth
Meets in a swarm of smiles and shaking hands;
While Poverty shrinks out and off by stealth,
Or at a distance stands.

If, passing to their carriage, rich eyes dare
On lowly fellow-worshipper to rest,
'Tis with the cruel patronising air
That stabs the poor proud breast.

Not with that perfect oneness of their Lord,
Whose breath, more potent than the strongest blast,
Broke down all earthly difference, ignored
The very thought of caste.

O impious Rich, with your unchristian arts,
And this his Sabbath, this his temple door!
O recreant Poor, with Christ within your hearts,
To feel that you are poor.

PETTY PRIDE.

Your pride of dress, and ostentatious forms
Of entertainment, what are they to him
Who leans on Nature—in her calms and storms—
Nor vainly seeks his whim?

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The unusurped expanse of summer sky—
The immemorial whisper of the tide—
The missionary breeze that wingeth by—
They shame your petty pride.

The mountains so majestically staid
Affront your poor conceit; the seas that roll
With loud acclaim of liberty upbraid
Your fashion-fetter'd soul.

And who that keeps high fellowship with night
And all her mystery of stars, can note
As worthy of a thought the pompous slight
Of a superior coat?

Go, go, and with your compeers give and take
Usage from all sincerity exempt;
But spare your pains on him in whom they wake
No feeling but contempt.

MASTER AND SERVANT.

The master is the servant, the true slave,
And Tom and Dick the masters;—endless care
To think for them, to plan their work, to pave
Their way and keep them there.

258

What freemen they! From work so often done,
Their hands alone might do the tasks assigned;
Some labour of the muscle and the bone,
But little of the mind.

And even that stops with the driven nail,
The placement of the stone, the served-up lime—
Their only care that Time, slow as a snail,
Delays the loosening chime.

But for their servant-master rings no bell!
He comes, he leaves, yet not their freedom knows,
But drags his business, as the snail its shell,
With him where'er he goes.

IMAGINATION.

When Reason has built up on facts all clear
The highest truths its argument can teach,
Imagination steps into a sphere
That Reason cannot reach.

And there it plucks high thoughts out of the mist,
And round them throws its sunshine—thoughts that need
No further proof, but unto those that wist,
Are very truth indeed.

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And thus it is that passing through the clouds
Where Reason halts, it brings from far above
Those mysteries the present time avoids,
And after days approve.

1861–62.

The year goes out in weeds and melancholy:
Sing him a requiem for his soul's release:
Give him a sprig of cypress with his holly,
And let him go in peace.

Farewell to Sixty-One! Forget his failings,
Or make them precious for our future weal;
Leave with the passing shade our fruitless wailings,
And on with hearts of steel.

For see the brave new year the field has taken,
All faithful to the hour—his soldiers we.
There is no time to weep like maids forsaken,
If we would faithful be.

Gird us each one, and to our posts of duty—
For be they great or small 'tis all the same;
Obedience has in all an equal beauty,
Neglect an equal shame.

260

Then lead us on to failures or successes,
We'll take with equal thanks what may befal;
The heart that stands by Right thro' all confesses
An equal gain in all.

And while the unknown Fates are busy spinning
The warp that gives our webs their varied hue,
A thousand welcomes and a brave beginning
We give to Sixty-two.

10TH MARCH, 1863.

An ancient foe has landed on our shore,
But not in victor-plume or captive-chain:
With stronger fetters than were used of yore
We bind the warlike Dane.

Come, Denmark, come in love! The country rings
From end to end, and shouts from side to side,
A British welcome for the day that brings
Our Albert Edward's bride.

'Tis not their royal blood, their princely name,
But that they represent the brave, the free;
They are the nationality, and claim
The nation's bended knee.

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Time was when Vice and Folly, raised to thrones,
Got homage. Such a time has England seen.
That day is past, and Britain proudly owns
A Heaven-anointed Queen.

O, Prince of Wales, be happy in your choice,
As she, your queenly mother was; so may
Your wedded love flow with as little noise,
And deepen day by day.

And when the years shall call you to your own—
A kingdom with its sceptre—may you bring
Your father's heart and wisdom to the throne,
And be indeed a king.

5TH FEBRUARY, 1868.

Whence falls the gloom upon our modern Tyre—
Through all her streets the cloudy brow and eye,
And from her mournful ships the weeping fire
Of red flags, half-mast high?

A prince of her's, the eldest and the best—
In moral strength the bravest of the brave—
Her most revered, her pride, has gone to rest
In William Rathbone's grave.

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Humanity, exhaustless as the sea,
All honour, honesty, and judgment ripe,—
Of what an English Merchant ought to be,
He was the perfect type.

Fifth of a name that brightens as it lives,
He leaves it to his race without one stain,
And to his thankful town assurance gives
Of such another reign.

He was the people's champion through all
Their fights of progress, from his manly youth;
Stern foe to error, ignorance, and thrall,
His sword, unyielding Truth.

The World but seldom bears a godlike son,—
They come at times, to save her failing breath;
But we have known, and mourn the loss of one
In William Rathbone's death.

Weep not for him—weep rather for the Poor,
Who held a deeper interest in his wealth,—
Great Charities that through his aid endure,
And alms he gave by stealth.

Mourn not for him—his finished acts applaud:
He did not merely play, but lived his part:
And now—his immortality in God,
And in the human heart.

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LIVERPOOL.

In Liverpool, the good old town, we miss
The grand old relics of a reverend past—
Cathedrals, shrines that pilgrims come to kiss—
Walls wrinkled by the blast.

Some crypt or keep, historically dear,
You find, go where you will, all England through:
But what have we to venerate, all here
Ridiculously new.

We have our Castle Street, but Castle none;
Redcross Street, but its legend who can learn;
Oldhall Street, too, we have, the old hall gone;
Tithebarn Street, but no barn.

Huge warehouses for cotton, rice, and corn,
Tea and tobacco, log and other woods,
Oils, tallow, hides that smell so foully foreign—
Yea, all things known as goods.

These we can show, but nothing to restore
The spirit of old times, save here and there
An ancient mansion with palatial door,
In some degenerate square.

Then rise the merchant princes of old days,
Their silken dames; their skippers from the strand,
Who brought their sea-borne riches, not always
Quite free from contraband.

264

And these their mansions, to base uses come—
Harbours for fallen fair ones, drifting tars;
Some, manufactories of blacking, some
Tobacco and cigars.

We have a church that one almost reveres—
St. Nicholas, nodding by the river-side—
In old times hail'd by ancient marinërs
That came up with the tide.

And there's St. Peter's, too, not quite so frail,
Yet old enough for antiquated thoughts:
Ah, many a time I lean against the rail
To hear its sweet crack'd notes.

For when the sun has clomb the middle sky,
And wander'd down the short hour after noon,
Then to the heedless world that hurries by
The clock bells clink a tune.

They give us “Home, Sweet Home” in plaintive key,
And in its turn breaks out “The Scolding Wife,”
To show that home, however sweet it be,
Is yet not free from strife.

But sometimes “Auld Lang Syne” comes clinking forth,
And surely every listening heart is charm'd;
For what are even the sorrows of the earth
When, past, they are transform'd?

265

Yet all is so ridiculously new,
Except, perhaps, the river and the sky—
The waters and the immemorial blue
For ever sailing by.

Ay they are old, but new as well as old—
For old and new are just the same sky dream—
One metal in a slightly different mould,
The same refilter'd stream.

SAILING UP THE FIRTH.

Uprose the sun through opening clouds of gray,
And at his touch the misty hills unveil'd,
And all gave promise of a glorious day
As up the Firth we sail'd.

At every step he took, the upper clouds
Thinn'd into gauze; the wak'ning morn look'd thro'
And soon, withdrawing e'en her gauzy shrouds,
Came forth in radiant blue.

A rippling breeze was with us, just enough
To turn the waters into crisping curls;
You could not say the Firth was calm or rough—
It danced in crested pearls.

266

Along the rocky ribs of Galloway
A margin of white foam crept to and fro;
And up the steep cliffs rose the snowy spray,
Silent to us as snow.

Then into view swung Ailsa Craig's huge bulk,
And rais'd an old-world rapture in the blood;
Far-off it loom'd like some great stranded hulk,
Left there by Noah's flood.

As we approach'd, our paltry tongues were still'd,
The bold sky-pictured craig stood more defined;
We sail'd within a presence now that fill'd,
And e'en distress'd, the mind.

Round its sun-burnish'd peak the seabirds flew
In idle numbers, never to be told;
They wheel'd and slid across the skiey blue,
Like sunbeam-specks of gold.

And still we strove the mighty rock to clasp,
‘As one big grandeur,’ all unto the breast;
Its greatness only mock'd our feeble grasp,
And on we sail'd distress'd.

Along our starboard lay the Carrick shore,
And Kyle, the classic, hid in warm white haze;
However hid, reveal'd for evermore
To the poetic gaze:

267

The bonnie Doon, and Cassilis Downan's green,
The ‘Twa Brigs,’ flyting almost side by side,
The ancient town of Ayr, and scene by scene
Of Tam O'Shanter's ride.

And on our left lay Arran, sharp and clear,
Its Holy Isle and hidden loch behind,
Within whose reaches ships for shelter steer,
When storms are in the wind.

But Goatfell, with the tatter'd Arran peaks,
Took all our eyes, piled up so sheer and high:
'Twas Nature's easel—this her freak of freaks,
Her canvas the blue sky.

A sudden cloud came o'er them, and anon
The Arran hills in dark-blue blackness lay;
Surely not all the Highlands can put on
So grim a scowl as they!

They were alive with passion; we beheld
Their knitting eyebrows and their gleaming eyes;
But soon their dark brows lifted, and they smiled
Grandly at our surprise.

Then, also on our left, the Isle of Bute;
So like to what a paradise should be,
That all declared the name would better suit
With an accented é.

268

There Kean, the tragic, built himself a cot
Beside its little lake, a sylvan scene,
And thought to cast in solitude his lot:
Alas, for tragic Kean!

As well expect the lion to turn a hound,
The eagle to forget the soaring wing;
He came to Bute and solitude, but found
The play was still the thing.

Upon our right the Cumbraes, sister isles,
Were pass'd with small remark, tho' fairy splores,
And devil-builded dykes and warlock wiles
Are rife about their shores.

Then landward Largs, with its old battle-field,
Where Alexander fought the invading Dane,
And made him the last hope of conquest yield,
Never to come again.

But all around us Beauty infinite,
And History, and Old Tradition vied
Which should be minister of most delight,
And preach'd from side to side:

Till Greenock's noisy piers lay on our beam,
And luggage dragg'd us back to common earth,
And finger-pointing porters broke our dream
Of sailing up the Firth.

269

POET'S CORNER.

O World, what have your Poets while they live
But sorrow and the finger of the scorner?
And dead, the highest honour you can give
Is burial in a corner.

Not so, my Poets of the popular school
Disprove that mean, yet prevalent conception.—
Once in an age that may be; but the rule
Is proved by the exception.

And so, good World, the Poet still remains
To all your benefices a poor foreigner;
Considered well rewarded if he gains
At last rest in a corner.

Here in Westminster's sanctuary, where
Some two-three Kings usurp one-half the Abbey,
Whole generations of the Poets share
This nook so dim and shabby.

So when we come to see Westminster's lions,
The needy vergers of the Abbey wait us;
And while we pay to see the Royal scions,
We see the Poets gratis.

270

Some in corporeal presence crowd the nook,
While others, who in body are not near it,
Are here as in the pages of a book—
Present only in spirit.

White-bearded Chaucer's here, an honour'd guest,
His sword of cutting humour in its scabbard;
And, sooth, he did not find such quiet rest
In Southwark at the Tabard!

Here's Michael Drayton in his laurell'd tomb,
And Shakspere over all the host commanding;
And rare Ben Jonson, who got scanty room,
And so was buried standing.

Spencer is here from faerie land, his eyne
Filled with the glamour of some dreamy notion,
Admired the more that half his “Faerie Queen”
Was lost in middle ocean.

Here's Prior, who was popular no doubt;
And Guy, with face and cowl round as a saucer;
And Dryden, who, some think, should be put out
Because he murdered Chaucer.

And Milton, after all his civil shocks,
Is here, with look of sweet, yet strong decision—
John Milton, with the soft poetic locks
And supernatural vision.

271

Beaumont, of the firm of B. and F. is here;
And Cowley, metaphysical and lyric;
And Addison, the elegant and clear;
And Butler all satiric.

Gray, of the famous Elegy, who found
His churchyard in the country rather lonely,
Lies with the rest in this more classic ground,
Although in spirit only.

And Goldsmith at the Temple, leaves his bones,
Comes here with tender heart and rugged feature,
And mingles through this wilderness of stones
His milky human nature.

And here is he that wrote the Seasons four;
And so is Johnson, who discover'd “Winter,”
And Garrick, too, who had poetic lore
Enough to bid him enter.

And Southey, who for bread wrote many a tome—
Of prose and verse a progeny plethoric,—
And he that sung the lays of ancient Rome—
Macaulay, the historic.

Campbell is here in body as in soul—
He for a national song eclipsed by no land;
And in whose grave the patriotic Pole
Sprinkled the earth of Poland.

272

Of other famous names we find the trace,
And think of many from their non-appearance;
Byron, for one, who was denied a place
Through priestly interference.

Now most upon their own true genius stand;
A few, perhaps, on little else than quackery;
But all in all, they are a glorious band,
From Chaucer down to Thackeray.

THE END.