David Gray

“ Yet dearer grown thro’ all to me, And dearer the anemone.
So with the spirit of a sage I pluck’d it from its hermitage, And placed it ’tween the sacred leaves Of Agnes’ Eve at that rare part Where she her fragrant robe unweaves, And with a gently beating heart, In troubled bliss and balmy woe, Lies down to dream of Porphyro.
Let others sing of that and this, In war and science find their bliss; Vainly they seek and will not find The subtle lore that nature brings [153] Unto the reverential mind, The pathos worn by common things, By every flower that lights the lea, And by the pale anemone. ”

“ And unto thee, my friend! thou prime of soul ’Mong men; I gladly bring my firstborn song! Would it were worthier for thy noble sake, True poet and true English gentleman! [5] Thy favours flattered me, thy praise inspired: Thy utter kindness took my heart, and now Thy love alleviates my slow decline.
Beneath an ash in beauty tender leaved, And thro’ whose boughs the glimmering sunshine flow’d In rare ethereal jasper, making cool A chequered shadow in the dark-green grass, I lay enchanted. ”

“ Thickens the air with strange delight, and lays A fairy carpet on the barren lea. No sun, yet all around that inward light Which is in purity,—a soft moonshine, The silvery dimness of a happy dream. How beautiful! afar on moorland ways, Bosomed by mountains, darkened by huge glens, (Where the lone altar raised by Druid hands Stands like a mournful phantom) , hidden clouds Let fall soft beauty, till each green fir branch Is plumed and tassel’d, till each heather stalk Is delicately fringed. The sycamores, Thro’ all their mystical entanglement Of boughs, are draped with silver. ”

“ But as the Luggie with a plaintive song Twists thro’ a glen of greenest gloom, and gropes For open sunshine; and, the shadows past, Glides quicker-footed thro’ divided meads With sliding purl, so from that tale of gloom [35] My song with happier motions seeks the calm And quiet smoothness of a silver end. From orient valleys where as lucent dew As ever jewelled Hermon, falls and shines Fulfilled by sunrise; where slant arrow-showers Of golden beams make every twinkling drop A diamond, and every blade of grass A glory;—comes the earth-born wanderer Sweet Luggie, singing. ”

“ The unrepealable law Consumed the living while the dead decayed. No more, no more thro’ glorious nights of May We wander, chasing pleasure as of old. First night of May! and the soft-silvered moon Brightens her semicircle in the blue; And ’mid the tawny orange of the west Shines the full star that ushers in the even! [30] On the low meadows by the Luggie-side Gathers a semi-lucent mist, and creeps In busy silence, shrouding golden furze And leafy copsewood. Thro’ the tortuous dell Like an eternal sound the Luggie flows In unreposing melody. ”

“ The meadows shine new-washed; while here and there A dusky patch of snow in shelter’d paths Melts lonely. The awakened forest waves With boughs unplumed. The white investiture [20] Of the fair earth hath vanished, and the hills That in the evening sunset glowed with rose And ineffectual baptism of gold, Shine tawdry, crawled upon by the blind rain. Now Luggie thunders down the ringing vale, Tawnily brown, wide-leaving yellow sand Upon the meadow. The South-West, aroused, Blustering in moody kindness, clears the sky To its blue depths by a full-wingëd wind, Blowing the diapason of red March. ”

“ Soul of the incomplete vitality In atom and in man! Soul of all Worlds! Leave not Thy glory vacant, nor afflict With fear and hunger man whom Thou hast made. Thou from Thy chambers waterest the earth; Thou givest snow like wool; and scatterest wide Hoarfrost like ashes. Casting forth Thy ice Like morsels, who can stand before Thy cold? Thou sendest forth Thy word, and lo! they melt; Causing Thy wind to blow, the waters flow. [A] [19]
Soon the frozen air receives the subtle thaw: And suddenly a crawling mist, with rain Impregn’d, the damp day dims, and drizzling drops Proclaim a change. ”

“ Every field is robed, And in the furrow lies the plough unused. The earth is cherished, for beneath the soft Pure uniformity, is gently born Warmth and rich mildness fitting the dead roots For the resuscitation of the spring.
Now while I write, the wonder clothes the vale, Calmed every wind and loaded every grove; And looking thro’ the implicated boughs I see a gleaming radiance. Sparkling snow Refined by morning-footed frost so still Mantles each bough; and such a windless hush Breathes thro’ the air, it seems the fairy glen About some phantom palace, pale abode Of fabled Sleeping Beauty. ”

“ Deem not I speak in vanity, or speak In false hyperbole, as poets do When languaging in love the radiance Of maids; but there is beauty and delight And passive feeling sweeter than all sense, To him who walks beneath the boughs, and hears The humming music like the sound of seas. There have I dreamed for hours—and gathered there The homely inspiration which fulfils The yearning of my soul. There have I felt The unconfined divinity which lies In beauty; and when the eternal stars Have twinkled silver thro’ illumined leaves, I could not choose but worship. ”

“ When the well-known and once embraceable form Is but a handful of white dust, the soul Grows in divine dilation, nearer God. Therefore grieve not, my heart, that unsustained His memory died among us, that no more, While yet the grass is hoary and the dawn Lingers, he shyly thro’ untrodden fields Brushes his early path: that he no more Beneath the beech, in lassitude outstretched, Ponders the holy strains of Israel’s King; For in translated glory, and new clothed With Incorruptible, he purer air Breathes in a fairer valley. ”

“ THAT impulse which all beauty gives the soul Is languaged as I sing. For fairer stream Rolled never golden sand unto the sea, Made sweeter music than the Luggie, gloom’d By glens whose melody mingles with her own. The uttered name my inmost being thrills, A word beyond a charm; and if this lay Could smoothly flow along and wind to the end In natural manner, as the Luggie winds Her tortuous waters, then the world would list In sweet enthralment, swallowed up and lost, [4] As he who hears the music that beguiles. ”

“ O IF we never knew the genial hour When Happiness sits by us like a god Dispensing treasures, we would never know The barren sadness of the common day, The weariness, and discontentment sour At human life—its ordinary load Of hopes deferred, and presences that flow Smilingly past us, syrens in the dream Of young imagination, fancy-fed. O I have seen such beauties with the gleam Of fairy sunshine on them, and I long Upon their bosoms this my life away To dally, like the lover in a song, And be a luting swain, Arcadian bred! ”

“ O poet-maker, darling love, sweet love, Awakener of manhood, and the life [138] Of life. But let me not like talking fool Prate all thy virgin whiteness, all thy sweet Deliciousness, for thou art living yet! And as the rose that opens to the sun Its downy leaves, scents sweetest at the core, So all thy loveliness is but the robe That clothes a maiden chastity of soul.
O hasten, hasten down your azure road, And darken all the golden zones of heaven, Bright Sun, for I am weary for my love. ”

“ There have been lovers unto death, Yes, and right many too. But never in the march of time, And ne’er in mortal knowing, From history or nobler rhyme, Hath there been such constant flowing: One from mountains far away, [129] One from glades of emerald shining, Flowing, flowing evermore For a delicate combining. If upon a summer’s day, When the air is blue and bracing, You for Merkland take your way, Sweet uneasy fancies chasing; You may see the famous grove— If not famous, then most surely Ripe for fame, which is but love— Where they mingle most demurely. ”

“ The Luggie flows with bells of foam-like stars About its surface. A smooth bleaching-green Spreads its soft carpet to the open doors Of simple houses, shining-white. Blue smoke Curls thro’ the breathing air to the tree-tops Thin spreading, and is lost. A humming noise Industrious is heard, the clack of looms, Whereon sit maidens, homely fair, and full Of household simpleness, who sing and weave, And sing and weave thro’ all the easy hours, Each day to-morrow’s counterpart, and smooth Memory the mirror wherein golden Hope, Contented, sees herself. ”

“ Thus his time Narrowed to a completion, and his soul, Immortal in its nature, thro’ his eyes Yearning, beheld the majesty of Him Great in His mystery of godliness, Fulfiller of the dim Apocalypse! [56] Twelve years have passed since then, and he is now A happy memory in the hearts of those Who knew him; for to know him was to love. And oft I deem it better, as the fates, Or God, whose will is fate, have proven it; For had he lived and fallen (as who of us Doth perfectly? and let him that is proud Take heed lest he do fall) he would have been A sadness to them in their aged hours. ”

“ Not a finger plucks This hidden beauty; but it blooms and dies, In lonely lustre blooms and lonely dies— Unknown, unloved, save by one simple heart Poetic, the creator of this song. [47] And after this frail luxury hath given Its little life in keeping to the soul Of all the worlds, a robin builds its nest In lowly cleft, a foot or so above The water. His dried leaves, and moss, and grass He hither carries, lining all with hair For softness. I have laid the hand that writes These rhymes belovëd, on the crimson breast, Sleek-soft, that panted o’er the five unborn ”

“ Not in song and babbling play Which no poet could unravel; But in tender simple way, On a bed of golden gravel. Where I sit I see them now,— Bothlin with her endless winding From a mountain’s purple brow, Sacred contemplation finding; [130] In still nooks of shady rest, Gleaming greenly ’neath the holly: Youth, she says, is often blest With a touch of melancholy. Luggie from the orient fields Wiser is, yet hath a beauty, Which the snowy conscience yields To the softened face of duty. ”

“ And come, blue deeps! magnificently strewn With coloured clouds—large, light, and fugitive— By upper winds through pompous motions blown. Now it is death in life—a vapour dense Creeps round my window till I cannot see The far snow-shining mountains, and the glens Shagging the mountain-tops. O God! make free This barren, shackled earth, so deadly cold— Breathe gently forth Thy spring, till winter flies In rude amazement, fearful and yet bold, While she performs her custom’d charities. I weigh the loaded hours till life is bare— O God! ”

“ With indistinct commotion he perceives All things, and his delight is indistinct. Earth’s forms and ever-living beauty strike Amazement through his spirit, till he feels As one new-born to being undeflowered. The sudden music from the budding woods, The lark in air, startles and overjoys. O Laverock! (for thy Scottish name to me Sounds sweetest) with unutterable love I love thee, for each morning as I lie Relaxed and weary with my long disease, One from low grass arises visibly And sings as if it sang for me alone. ”

“ O God! Thy sore Strange ways expound. Two to the grave have gone Without apparent reason more or less. [76]
XI.
NOW, while the long-delaying ash assumes The delicate April green, and, loud and clear, Through the cool, yellow, mellow twilight glooms, The thrush’s song enchants the captive ear; Now, while a shower is pleasant in the falling, Stirring the still perfume that wakes around; Now, that doves mourn, and from the distance calling, The cuckoo answers, with a sovereign sound,— Come, with thy native heart, O true and tried! But leave all books ”

“ I sanctify The soothing power that in a painless swoon Laps my weak limbs, giving me strength to lie, Till sacred dawn increases unto noon: Then when, from highest meridional height, The sun devolves, and cooling breezes wake, It is a comfort and divine delight The weary bed exhausted to forsake, And bathe my temples in the blessed air. But when day wanes, and the wind-moaning night Deepens to darkness, then thy virtue rare, O dream-creative liquid! brings delight, Thy silver drops, diffusive, kindly steep The senses in the golden juice of sleep. ”