University of Virginia Library

The summer sunshine played upon our path,
The summer sunshine, and the warm south wind;
And from the billowy hill-top, where we stood,
We watched the lazy ships glide out to sea,
Past the green island and its ruined church,
That slept in peace amid the pleasant trees
Down-bending in low, whispering lullabies.
The green sweet island, with its hoary fane
And drowsy, humming trees, that o'er the sea,
Just dimpled into silver by the breeze,
Cast a long, cooling shadow:—Ah! that noon,
Filled with the buzz and boom of happy wings
Wheeling amid the sunshine on our path,
The summer sunshine, and the warm south wind!

Far down below us, on the white, hot road
Some boys were pulling apples from the boughs,
Merry as wreathed and dancing Bacchanals,
Their shouts of laughter running up the hill
In honeyed ripples, 'mong the heather-bells;
And, midway up the mountain, an old man
Crawled like a beetle in the shining day;
While on the left a low-browed cottage stood
Full in the sunshine of that golden noon,
With its old yew-tree by the ivied porch
Holding a dusky coolness in its boughs,
And making pleasant murmurs to the bees;
And a young girl upon the breezy slope
Was playing on the greensward with a lamb,
Now frisking with it in the crisping grass,
And now down lying underneath a tree
Twining a wreath of mosses round its neck
In laughter-dimpled gladness!—Ah! that noon,
Filled with the buzz and boom of happy wings
Wheeling amid the sunshine on our path,
The summer sunshine, and the warm south wind!

Down on our right, the sunny town lay still,
Just folded in a thin, white haze of smoke,
Its sleepy clock low-tolling out the hour;
The sluggish, heated town, thick with sun-motes,
Low lying mid the dim and shadowy fields
With all their tawny wealth of ripening corn;
And round about us hummed the golden bees
Heavy with honey from the tulip-plots,
And peaches warm i' the sun, and mellowing pears;
And butterflies came fluttering their warm wings,
Purple and crimson, dusk and sultry gold;
And dragon-flies went gleaming through the air,
Gorgeous as Juno and her peacock steeds;
And all the glory of that carnival time
Lay like a slumber on the happy earth
In her glad, teeming plenty;—when, behold!
Mighty as Mars—Bellona at his side
In all the terror of her sounding thongs,
Smiting the silence backward to the hills,
Rushed the long thundering train;—a glory plume
Melting in sunshine followed at its wake—
Past the still grange, and slumbering rookery,
Startling the milk-kine sleeping on the slope,
On through the valley with its silent farms,
And the warm languor of the whitening corn;
On through the sunny distance, till the noon,
Drowsy though humming, sank again in sleep,
And we could hear the waggons, down below,
Rolling, hay-laden, through the deep, white lanes,
And heard the creaking barn-door swinging wide,
And murmured hum of voices:—Ah! that noon,
Filled with the buzz and boom of happy wings
Wheeling amid the sunshine on our path,
The summer sunshine, and the warm south wind!

Now, as I stand upon the howling hill,
A scene of desolation lies below,
Wild as a lone moor, with its single tarn
And drowned girl floating through the slobbering waste,
Her dead eyes open to the windy rain!
No boys are pulling apples from the trees
That make an iron music to the blast,
Tossing their bare boughs in the wintry wind,
Gaunt as worn maniacs shrivelled to the bone.
The little girl has vanished from the slope,
Her voice is hushed, and the pet lamb is dead.
The sunshine has abandoned the stark world,
The birds are shivering in the dripping boughs,
The imploring winds seek rest and find it not,
Sending shrill wails above the cold, drowned earth.

Now, as I stand upon the howling hill,
The sea flings its salt spray about the church:
I see the white waves through the slanting rain,
Leaping in fury round the dreary isle,
But cannot hear their roaring for the wind.
The tumbled sea-gulls, blown about the sky,
Strive to win inland from the frenzied shore;
The desolate farms loom dimly through the rain,
Each standing stagnant in its separate swamp;
The starveling hedges drip into the pools;
The town is hidden in a swirl of sleet:
I hear the engine shrieking up the wind,
But cannot see it for the blinding rain.
Below me, on the lush and plashing path,
An old bent woman is abroad to-day—
The cold drops drizzling from her flouting rags—
Fighting with wind and tempest for her bread.
She seeks the low-browed cottage on the hill;
She will find winter on its cheerless hearth—
Winter sole inmate of its reeking walls,
And thin winds wailing in its desolate rooms!

My way lies through the churchyard where she sleeps—
She who was with me on that sunny noon—
Sleeps? Aye! though the lean and hungry winds
Are howling, like starved wolves, along the grass,
And though the tempest, in the dripping yews,
Loosens a deluge down upon the graves!