Begins to wave the wood, and stir the stream, Sweeping with shadowy gust the fields of corn: While the quail clamours for his running mate. Wide o'er the thistly lawn, as swells the breeze, A whitening shower of vegetable down Amusive floats. The kind impartial care
Of nature nought disdains: thoughtful to feed Her lowest sons, and clothe the coming year, From field to field the feathered seed she wings. His folded flock secure, the shepherd home Hies merry-hearted; and by turns relieves The ruddy milkmaid of her brimming pail; The beauty whom perhaps his witless heart- Unknowing what the joy-mixed anguish means— Sincerely loves, by that best language shown Of cordial glances, and obliging deeds. Onward they pass o'er many a panting height, And valley sunk, and unfrequented; where At fall of eve the fairy people throng, In various game and revelry, to pass The summer night, as village stories tell. But far about they wander from the grave Of him whom his ungentle fortune urged Against his own sad breast to lift the hand Of impious violence. The lonely tower
Is also shunned; whose mournful chambers hold- So night-struck fancy dreams-the yelling ghost. Among the crooked lanes, on every hedge,
The glow-worm lights his gem; and through the dark A moving radiance twinkles. Evening yields
The world to night; not in her winter robe Of massy stygian woof, but loose arrayed In mantle dun. A faint erroneous ray, Glanced from the imperfect surfaces of things, Flings half an image on the straining eye; While wavering woods, and villages, and streams, And rocks, and mountain-tops, that long retained The ascending gleam, are all one swimming scene Uncertain if beheld. Sudden to heaven Thence weary vision turns; where, leading soft The silent hours of love, with purest ray Sweet Venus shines; and from her genial rise, When daylight sickens till it springs afresh, Unrivalled reigns, the fairest lamp of night.
But see the fading many-coloured woods, Shade deepening over shade, the country round Imbrown; a crowded umbrage dusk and dun, Of every hue, from wan declining green
To sooty dark. These now the lonesome muse, Low whispering, lead into their leaf-strewn walks, And give the season in its latest view.
Meantime, light shadowing all, a sober calm Fleeces unbounded ether: whose least wave Stands tremulous, uncertain where to turn The gentle current: while illumined wide, The dewy-skirted clouds imbibe the sun, And through their lucid vail his softened force Shed o'er the peaceful world. Then is the time, For those whom virtue and whom nature charm, To steal themselves from the degenerate crowd, And soar above this little scene of things: To tread low-thoughted vice beneath their feet; To soothe the throbbing passions into peace; And woo lone Quiet in her silent walks. Thus solitary, and in pensive guise,
Oft let me wander o'er the russet mead,
And through the saddened grove, where scarce is heard One dying strain, to cheer the woodman's toil. Haply some widowed songster pours his plaint Far, in faint warblings, though the tawny copse; While congregated thrushes, linnets, larks, And each wild throat, whose artless strains so late Swelled all the music of the swarming shades, Robbed of their tuneful souls, now shivering sit On the dead tree, a dull despondent flock: With not a brightness waving o'er their plumes, And nought save chattering discord in their note. O let not, aimed from some inhuman eye, The gun the music of the coming year Destroy; and harmless, unsuspecting harm, Lay the weak tribes a miserable prey In mingled murder, fluttering on the ground! The pale descending year, yet pleasing still, A gentler mood inspires; for now the leaf Incessant rustles from the mournful grove; Oft startling such as studious walk below, And slowly circles through the waving air. But should a quicker breeze amid the boughs Sob, o'er the sky the leafy deluge streams; Till choked, and matted with the dreary shower The forest walks at every rising gale, Roll wide the withered waste, and whistle bleak. Fled is the blasted verdure of the fields; And, shrunk into their beds, the flowery race Their sunny robes resign. E'en what remained Of stronger fruits falls from the naked tree; And woods, fields, gardens, orchards, all around, The desolated prospect thrills the soul.
The western sun withdraws the shortened day, And humid evening, gliding o'er the sky, In her chill progress, to the ground condensed The vapour throws. Where creeping waters ooze, Where marshes stagnate, and where rivers wind, Cluster the rolling fogs, and swim along
The dusky-mantled lawn. Meanwhile the moon,
Full-orbed, and breaking through the scattered clouds, Shows her broad visage in the crimsoned east. Turned to the sun direct her spotted disk, Where mountains rise, umbrageous dales descend, And caverns deep as optic tube descries, A smaller earth, gives us his blaze again, Void of its flame, and sheds a softer day.
Now through the passing clouds she seems to stoop, Now up the pure cerulean rides sublime. Wide the pale deluge floats, and streaming mild O'er the skied mountain to the shadowy vale, While rocks and floods reflect the quivering gleam; The whole air whitens with a boundless tide Of silver radiance trembling round the world. * The lengthened night elapsed, the morning shines Serene, in all her dewy beauty bright, Unfolding fair the last autumnal day. And now the mounting sun dispels the fog; The rigid hoar-frost melts before his beam; And hung on every spray, on every blade Of grass, the myriad dew-drops twinkle round.
Through the hushed air the whitening shower descends At first thin-wavering, till at last the flakes Fall broad and wide, and fast, dimming the day With a continual flow. The cherished fields
Put on their winter robe of purest white:
'Tis brightness all, save where the new snow melts Along the mazy current. Low the woods Bow their hoar head; and ere the languid sun Faint from the west, emits his evening ray; Earth's universal face, deep hid, and chill, Is one wide dazzling waste, that buries wide The works of man. Drooping, the labourer-ox Stands covered o'er with snow, and then demands The fruit of all his toil. The fowls of heaven, Tamed by the cruel season, crowd around The winnowing store, and claim the little boon Which Providence assigns them. One alone, The red-breast, sacred to the household gods, Wisely regardful of the embroiling sky, In joyless fields and thorny thickets, leaves His shivering mates, and pays to trusted man His annual visit. Half afraid, he first Against the window beats; then, brisk, alights On the warm hearth; then hopping o'er the floo Eyes all the smiling family askance, And pecks, and starts, and wonders where he is Till more familiar grown, the table crumbs Attract his slender feet. The foodless wilds Pour forth their brown inhabitants. The hare Though timorous of heart, and hard beset
By death in various forms, dark snares and dogs,
And more unpitying men, the garden seeks, Urged on by fearless want. The bleating kine Eye the bleak heaven, and next, the glistening earth, With looks of dumb despair; then, sad dispersed, Dig for the withered herb through heaps of snow. * As thus the snows arise, and foul and fierce All winter drives along the darkened air, In his own loose revolving fields the swain Disastered stands; sees other hills ascend, Of unknown joyless brow, and other scenes, Of horrid prospect, shag the trackless plain; Nor finds the river nor the forest, hid Beneath the formless wild; but wanders on From hill to dale, still more and more astray, Impatient flouncing through the drifted heaps, Stung with the thoughts of home; the thoughts of home Rush on his nerves, and call their vigour forth In many a vain attempt. How sinks his soul! What black despair, what horror, fills his heart! When for the dusky spot which fancy feigned, His tufted cottage rising through the snow, He meets the roughness of the middle waste, Far from the track and blessed abode of man; While round him night resistless closes fast, And every tempest howling o'er his head, Renders the savage wilderness more wild. Then throng the busy shapes into his mind, Of covered pits, unfathomably deep,
A dire descent! beyond the power of frost;
Of faithless bogs; of precipices huge
Smoothed up with snow; and what is land unknown, What water of the still unfrozen spring,
In the loose marsh or solitary lake,
Where the fresh fountain from the bottom boils. These check his fearful steps, and down he sinks Beneath the shelter of the shapeless drift, Thinking o'er all the bitterness of death, Mixed with the tender anguish nature shoots Through the wrung bosom of the dying man, His wife, his children, and his friends, unseen. In vain for him the officious wife prepares The fire fair blazing, and the vestment warm: In vain his little children, peeping out Into the mingling storm, demand their sire With tears of artless innocence. Alas! Nor wife nor children more shall he behold, Nor friends, nor sacred home. On every nerve The deadly winter seizes, shuts up sense, And o'er his inmost vitals creeping cold, Lays him along the snows a stiffened corse,
Stretched out, and bleaching on the northern blast.
FROM THE CASTLE OF INDOLENCE.
O mortal man, who livest here by toil, Do not complain of this thy hard estate; That like an emmet thou must ever moil, In a sad sentence of an ancient date; And, certes, there is for it reason great;
For, though sometimes it makes thee weep and wail, And curse thy star, and early drudge and late, Withouten that would come a heavier bale,
Loose life, unruly passions, and diseases pale.
In lowly dale, fast by a river's side,
With woody hill o'er hill encompassed round,
A most enchanting wizard did abide,
Than whom a fiend more fell is nowhere found.
It was, I ween, a lovely spot of ground:
And there a season atween June and May,
Half pranked with spring, with summer half imbrowned,
A listless climate made, where, sooth to say,
No living wight could work, ne cared even for play.
Was nought around but images of rest:
Sleep-soothing groves, and quiet lawns between; And flowery beds that slumberous influence kest, From poppies breathed; and beds of pleasant green, Where never yet was creeping creature seen. Meantime unnumbered glittering streamlets played, And hurled everywhere their waters sheen; That, as they bickered through the sunny glade, Though restless still themselves, a lulling murmur made.
Joined to the prattle of the purling rills,
Were heard the lowing herds along the vale, And flocks loud bleating from the distant hills, And vacant shepherds piping in the dale: And now and then sweet Philomel would wail, Or stock-doves 'plain amid the forest deep, That drowsy rustled to the sighing gale; And still a coil the grasshopper did keep; Yet all these sounds yblent inclined all to sleep.
Full in the passage of the vale above,
A sable, silent, solemn forest stood,
Where nought but shadowy forms were scen to move,
As Idlesse fancied in her dreaming mood:
And up the hills, on either side, a wood
Of blackening pines, aye waving to and fro,
Sent forth a sleepy horror through the blood;
And where this valley winded out below,
The murmuring main was heard, and scarcely heard, to flow.
A pleasing land of drowsy-head it was,
Of dreams that wave before the half-shut eye:
And of gay castles in the clouds that pass,
Forever flushing round a summer sky:
« הקודםהמשך » |