With faint illumination, that uplifts The shadows to the ceiling, there by fits Dancing uncouthly to the quivering flame. Not undelightful is an hour to me
So spent in parlour twilight: such a gloom Suits well the thoughtful or unthinking mind, The mind contemplative, with some new theme Pregnant, or indisposed alike to all.
Laugh ye, who boast your more mercurial powers, That never felt a stupor, know no pause, Nor need one; I am conscious and confess Fearless a soul, that does not always think. Me oft has fancy ludicrous and wild
Soothed with a waking dream of houses, towers, Trees, churches, and strange visages, expressed In the red cinders, while with poring eye I gazed, myself creating what I saw. Nor less amused have I quiescent watched The sooty films, that play upon the bars Pendulous, and foreboding in the view Of superstition, prophesying still,
Though still deceived, some stranger's near approach. "Tis thus the understanding takes repose
In indolent vacuity of thought,
And sleeps and is refreshed. Meanwhile the face Conceals the mood lethargic with a mask
Of deep deliberation, as the man
Were tasked to his full strength, absorbed and lost. Thus oft, reclined at ease, I lose an hour At evening, till at length the freezing blast, That sweeps the bolted shutter, summons home The recollected powers; and snapping short The glassy threads, with which the fancy weaves Her brittle toils, restores me to myself. How calm is my recess; and how the frost, Raging abroad, and the rough wind endear The silence and the warmth enjoyed within! I saw the woods and fields at close of day, A variegated show; the meadows green, Though faded; and the lands, where lately waved The golden harvest, of a mellow brown, Upturned so lately by the forceful share. I saw far off the weedy fallows smile With verdure not unprofitable, grazed By flocks, fast feeding, and selecting each His favourite herb; while all the leafless groves That skirt the horizon, wore a sable hue, Scarce noticed in the kindred dusk of eve. To-morrow brings a change, a total change! Which even now, though silently performed,
And slowly, and by most unfelt, the face of universal nature undergoes.
Fast falls a fleecy shower; the downy flakes Descending, and with never-ceasing lapse Softly alighting upon all below,
Assimilate all objects. Earth receives Gladly the thickening mantle; and the green And tender blade, that feared the chilling blast, Escapes unhurt beneath so warm a veil.
"Tis morning; and the sun, with ruddy orb Ascending, fires the horizon; while the clouds, That crowd away before the driving wind, More ardent as the disk emerges more, Resemble most some city in a blaze, Seen through the leafless wood. Slides ineffectual down the snowy vale, And, tinging all with his own rosy hue, From every herb and every spiry blade Stretches a length of shadow o'er the field. Mine, spindling into longitude immense, In spite of gravity, and sage remark That I myself am but a fleeting shade, Provokes me to a smile. With eye askance I view the muscular proportioned limb Transformed to a lean shank. The shapeless pair, As they designed to mock me, at my side Take step for step; and, as I near approach The cottage, walk along the plastered wall, Preposterous sight! the legs without the man. The verdure of the plain lies buried deep Beneath the dazzling deluge; and the bents, And coarser grass, upspearing o'er the rest, Of late unsightly and unseen, now shine Conspicuous, and in bright apparel clad, Ard fledged with icy feathers, nod superb. The cattle mourn in corners where the fence Screens them, and seem half petrified to sleep In unrecumbent sadness. There they wait Their wonted fodder; not like hungering man, Fretful if unsupplied; but silent, meek, And patient of the slow-paced swain's delay. He from the stack carves out the accustomed load, Deep-plunging, and again deep-plunging oft, His broad keen knife into the solid mass: Smooth as a wall the upright remnant stands, With such undeviating and even force He severs it away; no needless care,
Lest storms should overset the leaning pile Deciduous, or its own unbalanced weight. Forth goes the woodman, leaving unconcerned The cheerful haunts of man, to wield the axe And drive the wedge in yonder forest drear, From morn to eve his solitary task.
Shaggy, and lean, and shrewd, with pointed ears And tail cropped short, half lurcher and half cur, His dog attends him. Close behind his heel Now creeps he slow; and now, with many a frisk Wide-scampering, snatches up the drifted snow With ivory teeth, or ploughs it with his snout; Then shakes his powdered coat, and barks for joy. Heedless of all his pranks, the sturdy churl Moves right toward the mark: nor stops for aught, But now and then with pressure of his thumb To adjust the fragrant charge of a short tube, That fumes beneath his nose: the trailing cloud Streams far behind him, scenting all the air. Now from the roost, or from the neighbouring pale, Where, diligent to catch the first faint gleam Of smiling day, they gossiped side by side, Come trooping at the housewife's well-known call The feather'd tribes domestic. Half on wing, And half on foot, they brush the fleecy flood, Conscious and fearful of too deep a plunge. The sparrows peep, and quit the sheltering eaves To seize the fair occasion. Well they eye The scattered grain, and thievishly resolved To escape the impending famine, often scared As oft return, a pert voracious kind.
Clean riddance quickly made, one only care Remains to each, the search of sunny nook, Or shed impervious to the blast. Resigned To sad necessity, the cock foregoes
His wonted strut; and wading at their head With well-considered steps, seems to resent His altered gait and stateliness retrenched. How find the myriads, that in summer cheer The hills and vallies with their ceaseless songs, Due sustenance, or where subsist they now? Earth yields them nought; the imprisoned worm is safe Beneath the frozen clod; all seeds of herbs Lie covered close; and berry-bearing thorns That feed the thrush, (whatever some suppose) Afford the smaller minstrels no supply.
THE WINTER WALK AT NOON.
THE night was winter in his roughest mood; The morning sharp and clear. But now at noon Upon the southern side of the slant hills,
And where the woods fence off the northern blast, The season smiles, resigning all its rage, And has the warmth of May. The vault is blue Without a cloud, and white without a speck The dazzling splendour of the scene below. Again the harmony comes o'er the vale; And through the trees I view th' embattled tower, Whence all the music. I again perceive The soothing influence of the wafted strains, And settle in soft musings as I tread
The walk, still verdant, under oaks and elms, Whose outspread branches overarch the glade. The roof, though moveable through all its length As the wind sways it, has yet well sufficed, And, intercepting in their silent fal!
The frequent flakes, has kept a path for me. No noise is here, or none that hinders thought. The redbreast warbles still, but is content
With slender notes, and more than half suppressed; Pleased with his solitude, and flitting light From spray to spray, where'er he rests he shakes From many a twig the pendent drops of ice, That tinkle in the withered leaves below. Stillness, accompanied with sounds so soft, Charms more than silence. Meditation here May think down hours to moments. Here the heart May give an useful lesson to the head, And Learning wiser grow without his books. Knowledge and Wisdom far from being one, Have oftimes no connexion. Knowledge dwells In heads replete with thoughts of other men; Wisdom in minds attentive to their own. Knowledge, a rude unprofitable mass,
The mere materials with which Wisdom builds, Till smoothed, and squared, and fitted to its place, Does but encumber whom it seems t' enrich. Knowledge is proud that he has learned so much; Wisdom is humble that he knows no more. Books are not seldom talismans and spells, By which the magic art of shrewder wits Holds an unthinking multitude enthralled. Some to the fascination of a name
Surrender judgment, hoodwinked. Some the style Infatuates, and through labyrinths and wilds Of error leads them, by a tune entranced.
While sloth seduces more, too weak to bear The insupportable fatigue of thought,
And swallowing therefore without pause or choice, The total grist unsifted, husks and all. But trees and rivulets, whose rapid course Defies the check of winter, haunts of deer, And sheep-walks populous with bleating lambs, And lanes in which the primrose ere her time
Peeps through the moss, that clothes the hawthorn root, Deceive no student. Wisdom there, and truth, Not shy, as in the world, and to be won
By slow solicitation, seize at once
The roving thought, and fix it on themselves.
THE HAPPINESS OF ANIMALS.
HERE unmolested, through whatever sign The sun proceeds, I wander. Neither mist, Nor freezing sky nor sultry, checking me, Nor stranger, intermeddling with my joy. Even in the spring and playtime of the year, That calls th' unwonted villager abroad With all her little ones, a sportive train, To gather kingcups in the yellow mead, And prink their hair with daisies, or to pick A cheap but wholesome salad from the brook, These shades are all my own. The timorous hare, Grown so familiar with her frequent guest, Scarce shuns me; and the stockdove unalarmed Sits cooing in the pine-tree, nor suspends His long love-ditty for my near approach. Drawn from his refuge in some lonely elm, That age or injury has hollowed deep, Where, on his bed of wool and matted leaves, He has outslept the winter, ventures forth To frisk a while, and bask in the warm sun, The squirrel, flippant, pert, and full of play; He sees me, and at once, swift as a bird,
Ascends the neighbouring beech; there whisks his brush, And perks his ears, and stamps, and cries aloud,
With all the prettiness of feigned alarm,
And anger, insignificantly fierce.
The heart is hard in nature, and unfit
For human fellowship, as being void Of sympathy, and therefore dead alike To love and friendship both, that is not pleased With sight of animals enjoying life,
Nor feels their happiness augment his own. The bounding fawn, that darts along the glade
« AnkstesnisTęsti » |