Family

To-day I was so weary and I lay
    In that delicious state of semi-waking,
When baby, sitting with his nurse at play,
    Cried loud for "mamma," all his toys forsaking.

I was so weary and I needed rest,
    And signed to nurse to bear him from the room.
Then, sudden, rose and caught him to my breast,
    And kissed the grieving mouth and cheeks of bloom.

For swift as lightning came the thought to me,
    With pulsing heart-throes and a mist of tears,
Of days inevitable, that are to be,
    If my fair darling grows to manhood's years;

Days when he will not call for "mamma," when
    The world with many a pleasure and bright joy,
Shall tempt him forth into the haunts of men
    And I shall lose the first place with my boy;

When other ho...

I.

Oh, when I was a tiny boy,
My days and nights were full of joy,
My mates were blithe and kind! -
No wonder that I sometimes sigh,
And dash the tear-drop from my eye,
To cast a look behind!


II.

A hoop was an eternal round
Of pleasure. In those days I found
A top a joyous thing; -
But now those past delights I drop,
My head, alas! is all my top,
And careful thoughts the string!


III.

My marbles - once my bag was stored, -
Now I must play with Elgin's lord,
With Theseus for a taw!
My playful horse has slipt his string,
Forgotten all his capering,
And harness'd to the law!


IV.

My kite - how fast and far it flew!
Whilst I, a sort of Franklin, drew
My pleasure from ...

        Only a simple rhyme of love and sorrow,
    Where "blisses" rhymed with "kisses," "heart," with "dart:"
        Yet, reading it, new strength I seemed to borrow,
    To live on bravely and to do my part.

        A little rhyme about a heart that's bleeding -
    Of lonely hours and sorrow's unrelief:
        I smiled at first; but there came with the reading
    A sense of sweet companionship in grief.

        The selfishness of my own woe forsaking,
    I thought about the singer of that song.
        Some other breast felt this same weary aching;
    Another found the summer days too long.

        The few sad lines, my sorrow so expressing,
    I read, and on the singer, all unknown,
        I breathed a fervent though a silent blessing,

Of all the days in memory's list,
Those motley banish'd days;
Some overhung with sorrow's mist,
Some gilt with hopeful rays;
There is a day 'bove all the rest
That has a lovely sound,
There is a day I love the best--
When Patty first was found.

When first I look'd upon her eye,
And all her charms I met,
There's many a day gone heedless by,
But that I'll ne'er forget;
I met my love beneath the tree,
I help'd her o'er the stile,
The very shade is dear to me
That blest me with her smile.

Strange to the world my artless fair,
But artless as she be,
She found the witching art when there
To win my heart from me;
And all the days the year can bring,
As sweet as they may prove,
There'll ne'er come one like that I sing,
Wh...

The old dead flowers of bygone summers,
The old sweet songs that are no more sung,
The rose-red dawns that were welcome comers
When you and I and the world were young,

Are lost, O love, to the light for ever,
And seen no more of the moon or sun,
For seas divide, and the seasons sever,
And twain are we that of old were one.

O fair lost love, when the ship went sailing
Across the seas in the years agone,
And seaward-set were the eyes unquailing,
And landward-looking the faces wan,

My heart went back as a dove goes homeward
With wings aweary to seek its nest,
While fierce sea-eagles are flying foamward
And storm-winds whiten the surge’s crest;

And far inland for a farewell pardon
Flew on and on, while the ship went South,
The ros...

The years are many, the changes more,
Since wind and sun on the wild sweet shore
Where Joyous Gard stands stark by the sea
With face as bright as in years of yore
Shone, swept, and sounded, and laughed for glee
More deep than a man's or a child's may be,
On a day when summer was wild and glad,
And the guests of the wind and the sun were we.
The light that lightens from seasons clad
With darkness now, is it glad or sad?
Not sad but glad should it shine, meseems,
On eyes yet fain of the joy they had.
For joy was there with us; joy that gleams
And murmurs yet in the world of dreams
Where thought holds fast, as a constant warder,
The days when I rode by moors and streams,
Reining my rhymes into buoyant order
Through honied leagues of the northland border.

Catching the sunbeams, oh, wee dimpled child,
    Gleefully laughing because they are bright;
Knowing, ah! never, my beautiful pet,
    Ne'er can our fingers imprison the light.

Beautiful sunshine, oh! fair is the light
    Falling on earth from the heavens above;
Beautiful childhood, oh! glad is the sight
    Filling the world with its measure of love.

Playing with sunbeams, oh, all of us, pet,
    Toy with the treasures, so shining and bright;
Catching the sunshine we never may hold,
    Trying like you, to imprison the light.

Sunbeams that glitter and sparkle and shine--
    Life is so full of the beautiful light;
Gilding the wings of each fleet-footed day
    Only to fade in the shadows of night.

Playing with sunbeams, oh! all of us...

PART FOURTH.

WALK ABROAD - VIEWS AROUND, FROM THE SEVERN TO BRISTOL - WRINGTON - "AULD ROBIN GRAY."

The shower is past - the heath-bell, at our feet,
Looks up, as with a smile, though the cold dew
Hangs yet within its cup, like Pity's tear
Upon the eyelids of a village child!
Mark! where a light upon those far-off waves
Gleams, while the passing shower above our head
Sheds its last silent drops, amid the hues
Of the fast-fading rainbow, - such is life!
Let us go forth, the redbreast is abroad,
And, dripping in the sunshine, sings again.    10
No object on the wider sea-line meets
The straining vision, but one distant ship,
Hanging, as motionless and still, far off,
In the pale haze, between the sea and sky.
She seems the ship - the very ship I saw<...

There are mem'ries glad of the old school-house,
Which throng around me still;
And voices spoke in my youthful days,
My ears with music fill.

Those youthful voices I seem to hear,
With their gladsome, joyous tone,
And joy and hope they bring to me,
When I am all alone.

I think of the joys of that time long past,
Of its boyish hopes and fears,
And 'tis partly joy, and partly pain,
That wets my eyes with tears.

For 'tis joy I feel, when I seem to stand,
Where I stood long years ago,
And when I think that cannot be,
My heart is fill'd with woe.

My old school mates are scatter'd far,
And some are with the dead,
And my old class mates have wander'd, too,
To seek for fame, or bread.

And those who still are near my ho...

Genius of the Forest Shades!
Lend thy pow'r, and lend thine ear!
A Stranger trod thy lonely glades,
Amidst thy dark and bounding Deer;
Inquiring Childhood claims the verse,
O let them not inquire in vain;
Be with me while I thus rehearse
The glories of thy Sylvan Reign.

Thy Dells by wint'ry currents worn,
Secluded haunts, how dear to me!
From all but Nature's converse borne,
No ear to hear, no eye to see.
Their honour'd leaves the green Oaks rear'd,
And crown'd the upland's graceful swell;
While answering through the vale was heard
Each distant Heifer's tinkling bell.

Hail, Greenwood shades, that stretching far,
Defy e'en Summer's noontide pow'r,
When August in his burning Car
Withholds the Cloud, withholds the Show'r.
The deep-...

Oft I remember those whom I have known
    In other days, to whom my heart was led
    As by a magnet, and who are not dead,
    But absent, and their memories overgrown
With other thoughts and troubles of my own,
    As graves with grasses are, and at their head
    The stone with moss and lichens so o'erspread,
    Nothing is legible but the name alone.
And is it so with them?    After long years,
    Do they remember me in the same way,
    And is the memory pleasant as to me?
I fear to ask; yet wherefore are my fears?
    Pleasures, like flowers, may wither and decay,
    And yet the root perennial may be.

This book is all that's left me now!--
    Tears will unbidden start--
With faltering lip and throbbing brow
    I press it to my heart.
For many generations past,
    Here is our family tree;
My mother's hands this Bible clasped,
    She, dying, gave it me.

Ah! well do I remember those
    Whose names these records bear;
Who round the hearth-stone used to close
    After the evening prayer,
And speak of what these pages said,
    In tones my heart would thrill!
Though they are with the silent dead,
    Here are they living still!

My father read this holy book
    To brothers, sisters dear;
How calm was my poor mother's look
    Who leaned God's word to hear!
Her angel face--I see it yet!
    What vivid memories come!--

Fair tiny rosebud! what a tide
    Of hidden joy, o'erpow'ring, deep,
Of grateful love, of woman's pride,
    Thrills through my heart till I must weep
With bliss to look on thee, my son,
My first born child - my darling one!

What joy for me to sit and gaze
    Upon thy gentle, baby face,
And, dreaming of far distant days,
    With mother's weakness strive to trace
Tokens of future greatness high,
    On thy smooth brow and lustrous eye.

What do I wish thee, darling, say?
    Is it that lordly mental power
That o'er thy kind will give thee sway,
    Unchanging, full, a glorious dower
For those whose minds may grasp its worth,
True rulers and true kings of earth?

Or would I ask for thee that fire
    Of wond'rous genius, great d...

An old lane, an old gate, an old house by a tree;
A wild wood, a wild brook they will not let me be:
In boyhood I knew them, and still they call to me.

Down deep in my heart's core I hear them and my eyes
Through tear-mists behold them beneath the oldtime skies,
'Mid bee-boom and rose-bloom and orchardlands arise.

I hear them; and heartsick with longing is my soul,
To walk there, to dream there, beneath the sky's blue bowl;
Around me, within me, the weary world made whole.

To talk with the wild brook of all the long-ago;
To whisper the wood-wind of things we used to know
When we were old companions, before my heart knew woe.

To walk with the morning and watch its rose unfold;
To drowse with the noontide lulled on its heart of gold;
To lie with th...

If I should quit thee, sacrifice, forswear,
    To what, my art, shall I give thee in keeping?
    To the long winds of heaven? Shall these come sweeping
My songs forgone against my face and hair?

Or shall the mountain streams my lost joys bear,
    My past poetic pain in the rain be weeping?
    No, I shall live a poet waking, sleeping,
And I shall die a poet unaware.

From me, my art, thou canst not pass away;
    And I, a singer though I cease to sing,
    Shall own thee without joy in thee or woe.

Through my indifferent words of every day,
    Scattered and all unlinked the rhymes shall ring
    And make my poem; and I shall not know.

The sinking sun is taking leave,
And sweetly gilds the edge of Eve,
While huddling clouds of purple dye
Gloomy hang the western sky.
Crows crowd croaking over head,
Hastening to the woods to bed.
Cooing sits the lonely dove,
Calling home her absent love.
With "Kirchup! Kirchup!" mong the wheats
Partridge distant partridge greets;
Beckoning hints to those that roam,
That guide the squandered covey home.
Swallows check their winding flight,
And twittering on the chimney light.
Round the pond the martins flirt,
Their snowy breasts bedaubed with dirt,
While the mason, neath the slates,
Each mortar-bearing bird awaits:
By art untaught, each labouring spouse
Curious daubs his hanging house.

Bats flit by in hood and cowl;
Through the ba...

In moss-prankt dells which the sunbeams flatter
(And heaven it knoweth what that may mean:
Meaning, however, is no great matter)
Where woods are a-tremble, with rifts atween;

Thro' God's own heather we wonn'd together,
I and my Willie (O love my love):
I need hardly remark it was glorious weather,
And flitterbats waver'd alow, above:

Boats were curtseying, rising, bowing,
(Boats in that climate are so polite),
And sands were a ribbon of green endowing,
And O the sundazzle on bark and bight!

Thro' the rare red heather we danced together,
(O love my Willie!) and smelt for flowers:
I must mention again it was gorgeous weather,
Rhymes are so scarce in this world of ours:-

By rises that flush'd with their purple favours,
Thro' becks tha...

    Am I kin to Sorrow,
        That so oft
    Falls the knocker of my door--
        Neither loud nor soft,
    But as long accustomed,
        Under Sorrow's hand?
    Marigolds around the step
        And rosemary stand,
    And then comes Sorrow--
        And what does Sorrow care
    For the rosemary
        Or the marigolds there?
    Am I kin to Sorrow?
        Are we kin?
    That so oft upon my door--
        *Oh, come in*!