By passion or mischance; or such misrule Among the unthinking masters of the earth
He followed till provision for his wants
Had been obtained;-the Wanderer then resolved To pass the remnant of his days, untasked With needless services, from hardship free. His calling laid aside, he lived at ease : But still he loved to pace the public roads And the wild paths; and, by the summer's warmth Invited, often would he leave his home
And journey far, revisiting the scenes That to his memory were most endeared. -Vigorous in health, of hopeful spirits, undamped By worldly-mindedness or anxious care; Observant, studious, thoughtful, and refreshed By knowledge gathered up from day to day; Thus had he lived a long and innocent life.
The Scottish Church, both on himself and those With whom from childhood he grew up, had held The strong hand of her purity; and still Had watched him with an unrelenting eye. This he remembered in his riper age With gratitude, and reverential thoughts. But by the native vigour of his mind, By his habitual wanderings out of doors, By loneliness, and goodness, and kind works,
Whate'er, in docile childhood or in youth, He had imbibed of fear or darker thought Was melted all away; so true was this, That sometimes his religion seemed to me Self-taught, as of a dreamer in the woods; Who to the model of his own pure heart Shaped his belief, as grace divine inspired, And human reason dictated with awe.
-And surely never did there live on earth A man of kindlier nature. The rough sports And teasing ways of children vexed not him; Indulgent listener was he to the tongue Of garrulous age; nor did the sick man's tale, To his fraternal sympathy addressed,
Obtain reluctant hearing.
Such as might suit a rustic Sire, prepared
For sabbath duties; yet he was a man
Whom no one could have passed without remark. Active and nervous was his gait; his limbs And his whole figure breathed intelligence. Time had compressed the freshness of his cheek Into a narrower circle of deep red,
But had not tamed his eye; that, under brows Shaggy and grey, had meanings which it brought From years of youth; which, like a Being made Of many Beings, he had wondrous skill- To blend with knowledge of the years to come, Human, or such as lie beyond the grave.
So was He framed; and such his course of life Who now, with no appendage but a staff, -The prized memorial of relinquished toils, Upon that cottage-bench reposed his limbs, Screened from the sun.
Supine the Wanderer lay, His eyes as if in drowsiness half shut,
The shadows of the breezy elms above
Dappling his face. He had not heard the sound Of my approaching steps, and in the shade Unnoticed did I stand, some minutes' space. At length I hailed him, seeing that his hat Was moist with water-drops, as if the brim Had newly scooped a running stream. He rose, And ere our lively greeting into peace Had settled, ""Tis," said I, "a burning day: My lips are parched with thirst, but you, it seems, Have somewhere found relief." He, at the word, 'Pointing towards a sweet-briar, bade me climb The fence where that aspiring shrub looked out Upon the public way. It was a plot
Of garden ground run wild, its matted weeds Marked with the steps of those, whom, as they passed, The gooseberry trees that shot in long lank slips, Or currants, hanging from their leafless stems,
In scanty strings, had tempted to o'erleap The broken wall. I looked around, and there, Where two tall hedge-rows of thick alder boughs Joined in a cold damp nook, espied a well Shrouded with willow-flowers and plumy fern.
My thirst I slaked, and from the cheerless spot Withdrawing, straightway to the shade returned Where sate the old Man on the cottage-bench; And, while, beside him, with uncovered head, I yet was standing, freely to respire, And cool my temples in the fanning air, Thus did he speak. "I see around me here Things which you cannot see we die, my Friend, Nor we alone, but that which each man loved And prized in his peculiar nook of earth Dies with him, or is changed; and very soon Even of the good is no memorial left. -The Poets, in their elegies and songs Lamenting the departed, call the groves, They call upon the hills and streams to mourn, And senseless rocks; nor idly; for they speak, In these their invocations, with a voice Obedient to the strong creative power
Of human passion. Sympathies there are More tranquil, yet perhaps of kindred birth, That steal upon the meditative mind,
And grow with thought. Beside yon spring I stood, And eyed its waters till we seemed to feel One sadness, they and I: For them a bond Of brotherhood is broken: time has been When, every day, the touch of human hand Dislodged the natural sleep that binds them up In mortal stillness; and they ministered
To human comfort. Stooping down to drink,
Upon the slimy foot-stone I espied
The useless fragment of a wooden bowl,
Green with the moss of years, and subject only To the soft handling of the elements:
There let it lie—how foolish are such thoughts! Forgive them ;-never-never did my steps Approach this door but she who dwelt within A daughter's welcome gave me, and I loved her As my own child. Oh, Sir! the good die first, And they whose hearts are dry as summer dust Burn to the socket. Many a passenger Hath blessed poor Margaret for her gentle looks, When she upheld the cool refreshment drawn From that forsaken spring; and no one came But he was welcome; no one went away But that it seemed she loved him. She is dead, The light extinguished of her lonely hut,
The hut itself abandoned to decay, And she forgotten in the quiet grave!
"I speak," continued he, "of One whose stock Of virtues bloomed beneath this lowly roof. She was a Woman of a steady mind, Tender and deep in her excess of love;
Not speaking much, pleased rather with the joy Of her own thoughts: by some especial care Her temper had been framed, as if to make A Being, who by adding love to peace Might live on earth a life of happiness.
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