The Poetical Works of Walter C. Smith :: :: University of Virginia Library

I see the little dingy street,
The little room three stories high,
The little woman, clean and neat,
With kindly smile, and kindling eye,
The paper chintz, the staring prints,
The bird whose carol would not cease,
And the cracked china ornaments
Ranged stiffly on the mantelpiece.

A dingy street among the poor,
Thronging with children day and night,
With sluttish women at every door
Gossiping in the waning light:
Yet oh the nights I there have seen!
The humour kindling every face,
The play of wit, the logic keen
That glorified the homely place!

Simple our life, with little change,
And yet it was a bright romance,
Fresh with the wonderful and strange
Of youth's enchanted golden trance;
How fresh in powers, in faiths, in thoughts!
How full that fertile time appears!—
We jotted down in pregnant notes
The sum of all the after years.

The scholar's aim we held aloft,
The fearless search for what is true,
As fresh discoveries called us oft
Old schemes of Nature to review,
And to adjust the thought and fact,
And to make room for growth yet more,
And to believe that God may act
In ways we had not dreamed before.

We had our passing hours of doubt,
But did not nurse the shadowy throng,
For we had work to go about
That would not hold with doubting long.
And looking back on those brave years,
Unspotted by the world and free,
Meagre and poor to-day appears,
When earth is so much more to me.

CONFIDENCE

Strange, that for all the wrecks upon the shore,
And all that, helpless, drift about the sea,
We never dream that such our fate may be,
Or shrink from life that may be one wreck more!

But fresh hope comes to each fresh soul, as light
Dawns on the waters, dimpling in their waves,
With running laughter tripping o'er the graves
Where former hopes lie buried out of sight.

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And we are sure, and eager for the race,
And crowd all sail, and deem not for an hour
That life is not worth living, or that power
Is not in us to master time and space.

Is it that Nature, with a wanton's smile,
Allures, but to delude, and break our hearts,
Or worse than break them, when the soul departs
Of nobleness, that dwelt in us erewhile?

Or does she seem to us what we desire,
Though herself true, and hating all deceit,
And all we hear is but our own heart's beat,
And all we see but what our dreams inspire?

SCATTERED

Scattered to East and West and North,
Some with the faint heart, some the stout,
Each to the battle of life went forth,
And all alone we must fight it out.

We had been gathered from cot and grange,
From the moorland farm, and the terraced street,
Brought together by chances strange,
And knit together by friendships sweet.

Not in the sunshine, not in the rain,
Not in the night of the stars untold,
Shall we ever all meet again,
Or be as we were in the days of old.

But as ships cross, and more cheerily go
Having changed tidings upon the sea,
So I am richer by them, I know,
And they are not poorer, I trust, by me.

WAITING

Wearily drag the lagging hours
To him who, waiting to be hired,
Is by enforcèd idlesse tired
More than by strain of all his powers:
Wearily, having in his heart
The hope to play a worthy part,
And scorning each ignoble art.

Girt for the fight, he waits forlorn,
And oh! it irks him sore to rest,
And watch, too oft with mocking jest,
Things done that fill his soul with scorn,
As he with folded hands must sit,
While lesser men, with scanty wit,
Get all the work, and tangle it.

So life grows bitter; or perhaps
Hope flirts a moment in his face,
Then trips off to another place,
And pours its treasures in the laps
Of some dull soul, whose easy feet
Will tread the old familiar beat,
Contented getting much to eat.

And lo! the work remains undone,
And work is what he hungers for,
But cannot find an open door,
And loiters idly in the sun,
Still waiting with his heart on fire,
And wasting with his great desire,
Waiting and finding none to hire.

A WISH

Just a path that is sure,
Thorny or not,
And a heart honest and pure,
Keeping the path that is sure,
That be my lot:
Life is no merry-making,
Hark! how the waves are breaking!

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Just plain duty to know,
Irksome or not,
And truer and better to grow
In doing the duty I know,
That I have sought:
Life is no merry-making,
How the stiff pine trees are quaking!

Just to keep battling on,
Weary or not,
Sure of the Right alone,
As I keep battling on,
True to my thought:
Life is no merry-making,
Ah! how men's hearts are breaking!

SELF-CONTEMPT

I bear a message to the sons of men,
Faithful and true,
And it should drop on earth like tender rain,
But yet I bear my message all in vain,
For let me do
Whate'er I may, and plead howe'er I can,
I touch no heart of man.

How should I? Though I bear a message true,
The thing I want
Is, room for me to live, and work to do;
And so I go about to places new
With patience scant,
And tell my tale, and then go on my way,
And life grows dull and grey.

And I am full of self-contempt and scorn
To go about
Thus, falsely speaking truth to hearts forlorn,
And jibe myself that I, some ugly morn,
Shall be found out
To be no prophet whom the Lord hath sent,
Or for His service meant.

But is my message true? To-day, I seem
Full of the lights
That from the bleeding Christ so grandly stream;
And lo! to-morrow, it is like a dream
Of restless nights:
And I have drifted back into the shade,
Unsaying what I said.

I seek a gospel which I should have found
Before I tried
To preach, with unfixed heart, the faith profound
Which tells the captive that he is unbound
By Him who died
To ope his prison door, and set him free
From all his misery.

O heart that would be true! O hard estate,
To falset bound!
This only comfort is there in my fate;
My message I did ne'er prevaricate
With tinkling sound
To tickle ears, nor played with showy trick
Of tinsel rhetoric.

I've mocked myself, and laughed with bitter jest
At much I saw;
But yet I kept a true heart in my breast,
Nor turned, in all my trouble and unrest,
From the high law
Of present duty; and my peace is great
Even in this hard estate.

HOPE

A little Kirk, beneath a steep green hill,
With a grey spire that peeps o'er tall elm-trees,

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In a still, pastoral land of brook and rill,
And broomy knoll, and sleepy, dripping mill,
Far from the stir of cities and of seas:

And near the Kirk, low nestling in the copse,
With honeysuckle clad, and roses red,
A little Manse, whose sweet-flowered garden slopes
Down to the river where the river drops,
With murmuring ripple, o'er a pebbly bed.

How happily the days and years might flow
Among the silent shepherds brooding long,
In pious labour, studious to know,
And patient service, till their life should grow
From thoughtful silence into thoughtful song;

To pass from house to house in visit free,
Welcome as sunshine at the smoking hearth,
To take the little children on the knee,
And bless them, as He did in Galilee
Who came with blessing unto all the earth;

To speak to them of Duty and of God,
And of the Love that clasped the bitter Cross,
And of the health and comfort of His rod,
And go before them on the way He trod,
Who found Life's glory and fulness in its loss;

To share in all the joys and griefs they have,
To bless the bridal, not else thought complete,
To stand beside the cradle and the grave,
And tell them how the meek and true and brave
Turn graves to cradles where the sleep is sweet.

O happy lot! with one, to brighten life,
Smiling soft-eyed beside the evening fire,
Sharing the sorrow, sweetening all the strife,
And leaning on her lord, a loving wife,
And cherished by her lord with fond desire.

Dream of the golden morning of the day!
Dream of the night beneath the folding star!
Dream of the hungry heart that in me lay!
Dream by the river rippling soft away
Into the tremulous moonshine—which dreams are.

THE BROOK AND THE RIVER

A stream from the heath-purpled mountain
Comes, with a gush,
From the star-moss round its fountain,
Breaking the hush
Of the silent, songless mountain.

Pewit-and-curlew-haunted,
Foaming, it flows
There where the wild deer undaunted
Bells, as it goes
Pewit-and-curlew-haunted.

It plays with the rowan and bracken
And grey lichened stone,
But never its pace will it slacken,
Still hurrying on,
Though it plays with the rowan and bracken.

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A river winds 'neath the shadows
Of pine-wood and oak,
And hums to the bee-humming meadows,
And the white flock
That bleats from the mists and the shadows.

Down to the still river hastens
The swift-flowing stream,
And aye as the distance it lessens
Its bright waters gleam,
And it leaps and sparkles and hastens

Till in the calm-flowing river
Softly it sinks,
And hears not and heeds not for ever
What fern or tree thinks,
But only the low-whispering river.

O love! my river full-flowing,
Wait, wait for me;
O love! my love, ever-growing,
Hastens to thee
For rest in thy river calm-flowing.

FAILURE

I see the Kirk beneath the hill,
The tall elms rustling in the breeze,
The modest Manse, so calm and still,
The dripping of the sleepy mill
That hides among the nutting trees.

I look down, with a hungry heart,
On the broad river rippling cool;
The fisher plies his patient art,
The trout leaps, and the May flies dart
About the slowly eddying pool.

Low sunbeams on the meadows play,
The moon shows like a film of cloud,
A star from the red skirts of day
Peeps to another star far away,
And the hill is wrapt in a misty shroud.

A shepherd's wife comes to the door,
Shading her eyes with large brown hand,
He is away on the upland moor,
And nothing she sees but a kestrel soar,
Keen-eyed, spying far over the land.

There is no voice but the rushing rills,
And creak of frightened pewit's wing,
And bleat of young lambs on the hills,
Heard only when a silence fills
The soul, and all the space of things.

What made my eyes grow dim and blind?—
Ah, when the heart is heavy and low,
The beauty that on earth we find,
Or strain of music on the wind,
Shall touch it like an utter woe!

SUBMISSION

I will remember it for aye,
Though there I was forgotten soon;
It haunts me in the sunny day,
And under stars and moon.
It was the only hope I had
That unto near fulfilment grew;
A while it made me very glad;
A while it made me very sad;
And then I knew
'Twas but another thread He wove
In the mixed web of Father-love.

MORALISING

Roses fair on thorns do grow;
And they tell me, even so
Sorrows into virtues grow:
Heigh-ho!
It was a stroke
Brought the stream from the flinty rock.

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Frosty winter kills out weeds;
And they tell me, evil seeds
Die out in the heart that bleeds:
Heigh-ho!
And some have faith
That dying is the death of Death.

Ah! the loss may yet be gain,
Bitter bliss may spring from pain,
As the bird-songs after rain:
Heigh-ho!
But nought shall be
Ever again the same to me.