Nugae Canorae :: :: University of Virginia Library

This is the time when every vacant breast
Expands with simplest mirth. Mem'ry, thou nurse
Of mingled feeling, trace the former years,
And count each jolly festival!

My heart
Scarce knew to feel, ere it more lively beat,
When I beheld the evergreen enwreathe
The ice-emblazon'd lattice; or aloft,
Shadowing the comely flitch, that jovial branch
Beneath whose licens'd shade the honest swain
Imprints the kiss unblam'd: and even now
Something like joy steals to my quicken'd pulse
When Friends bid “merry Christmas.”

Oh! 'tis good
To hear the voice of hospitality;
To feel the hearty grasp of love, to quit
For a brief interval the forms and pressures
Of life's tame intercourse.

And now I glean
The remnants that I may of parted joys
To deck this forlorn year, stealing from hours
Long past and flush with jollity.

There is a time
When first sensation paints the burning cheek,
Fills the moist eye, and quickens the keen pulse,
That mystic meanings half conceiv'd invest
The simplest forms, and all doth speak, all lives
To the eager heart! At such a time to me
Thou cam'st, dear holiday! Thy twilight glooms
Mysterious thoughts awaken'd, and I mus'd
As if possest, yea felt as I had known
The dawn of inspiration. Then the days
Were sanctified by feeling, all around
Of an indwelling presence darkly spake.
Silence had borrow'd sounds to cheat the soul!
And, to the toys of life, the teeming brain,
Impregning them with its own character,
Gave preternatural import; the dull face
Was eloquent, and e'en the idle air
Most potent shapes, varying and yet the same,
Substantially express'd.

But soon my heart,
Unsatisfied with blissful shadows, felt

Achings of vacancy, and own'd the throb
Of undefin'd desire, while lays of love
Firstling and wild stole to my trem'lous tongue.
To me thy rites were mock'ry then, thy glee
Of little worth. More pleas'd I trod the waste
Sear'd with the sleety wind, and drank its blast;
Deeming thy dreary shapes most strangely sweet,
Mist-shrouded winter! In mute loneliness
I wore away the day which others hail'd
So cheerily, still usher'd in with chaunt
Of carol, and the merry ringer's peal,
Most musical to the good man that wakes
And praises God in gladness.

But soon fled
The dreams of love fantastic! Still the Friend,
The Friend, the wild roam o'er the drifted snows
Remain unsung! Then when the wintry view
Objectless, mist-hidden, or in uncouth forms
Prank'd by the arrowy flake might aptly yield
New stores to shaping phantasy, I rov'd
With him my lov'd companion! Oh, 'twas sweet;
Ye who have known the swell that heaves the breast
Pregnant with loftiest poesy, declare
Is aught more soothing to the charmed soul
Than friendship's glow, the independent dream

Gathering when all the frivolous shews are fled
Of artificial life; when the wild step
Boundeth on wide existence, unbeheld,
Uncheck'd, and the heart fashioneth its hope
In Nature's school, while Nature bursts around,
Nor Man her spoiler meddles in the scene!
Farewell, dear day, much hath it sooth'd my heart
To chaunt thy frail memorial.

Now advance
The darkening years, and I do sojourn, home!
From thee afar. Where the broad-bosom'd hills,
Swept by perpetual clouds, of Scotland, rise,
Me fate compels to tarry.

Ditty quaint
Or custom'd carol, there my vacant ear
Ne'er blest! I thought of home and happier days!
And as I thought, my vexed spirit blam'd
That austere race, who, mindless of the glee
Of good old festival, coldly forbade
Th' observance which of mortal life relieves
The languid sameness, seeming too to bring
Sanction from hoar antiquity and years
Long past!

For me, a plain and simple man,
I rev'rence my forefathers, and would hold
Their pious ord'nance sacred! Much I hate
The coxcomb innovator, who would raze
The deeds of other times! Most sweet to me
These chroniclers of life; oft round them twine
Dear recollections of the past, the sum
Of all those comforts which the poor heart feels
While struggling here, bearing with holy care
Its little stock of intermediate joy,
To bless the circle of domestic love.
And now farewell! Thus former years have fed
My retrospective lays! Sad barrenness
Scowls o'er the present time! No boyish sports,
No youthful dreams, or hopes fantastic, now
Endear thy festival! Rapture is fled,
And all that nourish'd high poetic thought
Vanish'd afar; yet Resignation meek
Chastens past pleasure with her evening hues,
And lends a sober charm, mild as the shade
Mantling the scene, which glisten'd late beneath
Day's purple radiance, when grey twilight falls
Soft harmonizing. Rich variety
Pales to a sadden'd sameness!

Nor can I
Forget what I have lost since last I hail'd

Thy jolly tide! The aged Friend is dead!
The Friend who mingled in my boyish sports!
The Friend who solac'd my eccentric heart!
The Friend by whose mild suffrage unimpell'd
I ne'er could taste of joy!—Yes, She is dead!
So be it! Yet 'tis hard to smile, and know
So sad a loss! I bend before my God,
And, silent at the past, commune henceforth
Of days in store, “of righteousness to come,”
Of faith, of hope, and of a better world!