University of Virginia Library

A clear, crisp, Autumn day. Autumn is Scotch
And lingers lovingly among the hills,
Knee-deep in golden bracken, and golden grass
That tints the moor, what time the purple heather
Withers to brown, and golden pendants hang
On the slim, drooping birch — the golden time
Of all the Northern year.

You shall find spring,
Joyous with bursting life, in English lanes
Where the May-blossom wafts from straggling hedge
Its incense like a white-robed Thurifer,
While the meek violet, like a saintly soul,
Hid in a green obscurity, breathes out
Its sweets, unseen, and the pale primrose woos
The shadow at the foot of lush blue-bells.
Green are the meadows there, and green the leaves
Opening, with various shade, in chestnut whorls,
And feathery birch, and plane and beech and lime,
And late ash-bud and oak—the many tints
Like many colours, yet one flush of green
From the young life o' the year.

But Autumn loves
The ferny braes, the brown heath on the hills,
The lichened rocks, orange and grey and black,
The harebell and the foxglove in the shaws,
The brisk and nimble air upon the moor,
The flying cloud that scuds across the blue,
Its shadow hurrying o'er the sunlight brow
Of the still mountain, and the sleepy loch
Quivering as in a dream of coot and heron,
Or leaping trout; thither the antlered stag
Leads forth his hinds to water at the dawn:
And life is at full pitch of beauty then,
When verging to its close.

That Autumn day,
I wandered forth alone, in sober ways
While yet the shadow of the houses fell
Around me, and the window-eyes looked on;
Yet I was glad, for I had found my work.
And when I reached the country, and beheld
The loaded wains with the last harvest-sheaves
Led homeward, and the reapers blithe and brown,
And felt my feet among the rustling leaves
By the wayside, and watched the shining spikes
Of frost in shady nooks beside the burn,
I could not walk, but leaped, and laughed at nothings
In very joy of life; for anything
Serves for a jest what time the heart is gay.

So on and up I went, with tireless feet,
And fertile mind suggesting victories
My pen should win for me, as the slow years
Ripened the powers which circumstance disclosed,
And critics now approved. I had the trick
Of hoping to the full, and building up
Dream-palaces, creative, out of nothing,
Collapsing into nothing at a touch
Of adverse fact; and that day I was in
The mood to make whole worlds, with suns and stars,
And flowers and birds, and homes by love made glad.

But crossing a waste moor, where hills of slag
Rose bare, and sluggish pools were at their feet,
Where no fish swam, but red lights ever glowed,
I came upon a village mean and poor,
Which no one cared for, save to draw much wealth
From seams of coal, and veins of ironstone
That undermined it; one long string of huts,
Ugly and dirty and monotonous;
And no bell rang there on the Sabbath morn,
And only Death e'er spoke to them of God.
Swart, stunted men were plodding from the pits,
Weary, with little lamps stuck in their caps
Instead of flower or feather; savage children
Were skulking at the doors, but none of them
Did run to meet their fathers, and be kissed
And borne home shoulder-high; the mothers, too,
Were fierce, and smiled not when the men came home,
For they were weary, and not with woman's work.
Oft had I seen the peasant from his plough
Plod slowly home, but gladdened by his girl,
Curly and sunny, chattering at his side,
And by the baby nestling on his breast,
And by the mother smiling at the door
With the milk-pail; and often watched the fisher,
Hard-faced and weather-beaten, leave his boat,
At early morn with children gambolling,
Barefooted, on the sand, or leading him
Home in the pride of love, with the fresh spoils
Of the old sea; but such a sight as this,
So without hope or heart or any joy
I had not seen before: a place so dreary,
So God-forsaken in its ugliness,
Each house alike, the people too alike
Dismal and brutal; and the only spot
With any brightness was a drinking house
Shining with glass and brass and painted barrels.

Therewith the thought again knocked at my heart,
Urgent and loud: Was thy life given to thee
For making pretty sentences, and play
Of dainty humour for the mirthful heart
To be more merry; or to serve thy kind,
Redressing wrong? And all the long way home
That thought kept ever knocking at my heart.