Delphi Poetry Anthology: The World's Greatest Poems (Delphi Poets Series Book 50) (141 page)

Not distant far, a length of colonnade
 
Invites us; monument of ancient taste,
 
Now scorned, but worthy of a better fate.
 
Our fathers knew the value of a screen
 
From sultry suns, and, in their shaded walks
 
And long-protracted bowers, enjoyed at noon
 
The gloom and coolness of declining day.
 
We bear our shades about us; self-deprived
 
Of other screen, the thin umbrella spread,
 
And range an Indian waste without a tree.
 
Thanks to Benevolus — he spares me yet
 
These chestnuts ranged in corresponding lines,
 
And, though himself so polished, still reprieves
 
The obsolete prolixity of shade.

Descending now (but cautious, lest too fast)
 
A sudden steep, upon a rustic bridge
 
We pass a gulf, in which the willows dip
 
Their pendent boughs, stooping as if to drink.
 
Hence ankle-deep in moss and flowery thyme
 
We mount again, and feel at every step
 
Our foot half sunk in hillocks green and soft,
 
Raised by the mole, the miner of the soil.
 
He, not unlike the great ones of mankind,
 
Disfigures earth, and plotting in the dark
 
Toils much to earn a monumental pile,
 
That may record the mischiefs he has done.

The summit gained, behold the proud alcove
 
That crowns it! yet not all its pride secures
 
The grand retreat from injuries impressed
 
By rural carvers, who with knives deface
 
The panels, leaving an obscure rude name
 
In characters uncouth, and spelt amiss.
 
So strong the zeal to immortalise himself
 
Beats in the breast of man, that even a few
 
Few transient years, won from the abyss abhorred
 
Of blank oblivion, seem a glorious prize,
 
And even to a clown. Now roves the eye,
 
And posted on this speculative height
 
Exults in its command. The sheepfold here
 
Pours out its fleecy tenants o’er the glebe.
 
At first, progressive as a stream, they seek
 
The middle field; but scattered by degrees,
 
Each to his choice, soon whiten all the land.
 
There, from the sunburnt hay-field homeward creeps
 
The loaded wain; while, lightened of its charge,
 
The wain that meets it passes swiftly by,
 
The boorish driver leaning o’er his team,
 
Vociferous, and impatient of delay.
 
Nor less attractive is the woodland scene
 
Diversified with trees of every growth,
 
Alike yet various. Here the gray smooth trunks
 
Of ash, or lime, or beech, distinctly shine,
 
Within the twilight of their distant shades;
 
There, lost behind a rising ground, the wood
 
Seems sunk, and shortened to its topmost boughs.
 
No tree in all the grove but has its charms,
 
Though each its hue peculiar; paler some,
 
And of a wannish gray; the willow such,
 
And poplar that with silver lines his leaf,
 
And ash far-stretching his umbrageous arm;
 
Of deeper green the elm; and deeper still,
 
Lord of the woods, the long-surviving oak.
 
Some glossy-leaved and shining in the sun,
 
The maple, and the beech of oily nuts
 
Prolific, and the lime at dewy eve
 
Diffusing odours; nor unnoted pass
 
The sycamore, capricious in attire,
 
Now green, now tawny, and ere autumn yet
 
Have changed the woods, in scarlet honours bright.
 
O’er these, but far beyond (a spacious map
 
Of hill and valley interposed between),
 
The Ouse, dividing the well-watered land,
 
Now glitters in the sun, and now retires,
 
As bashful, yet impatient to be seen.

Hence the declivity is sharp and short,
 
And such the re-ascent; between them weeps
 
A little Naiad her impoverished urn,
 
All summer long, which winter fills again.
 
The folded gates would bar my progress now,
 
But that the lord of this enclosed demesne,
 
Communicative of the good he owns,
 
Admits me to a share: the guiltless eye
 
Commits no wrong, nor wastes what it enjoys.
 
Refreshing change! where now the blazing sun?
 
By short transition we have lost his glare,
 
And stepped at once into a cooler clime.
 
Ye fallen avenues! once more I mourn
 
Your fate unmerited, once more rejoice
 
That yet a remnant of your race survives.
 
How airy and how light the graceful arch,
 
Yet awful as the consecrated roof
 
Re-echoing pious anthems! while beneath,
 
The chequered earth seems restless as a flood
 
Brushed by the wind. So sportive is the light
 
Shot through the boughs, it dances as they dance,
 
Shadow and sunshine intermingling quick,
 
And darkening and enlightening, as the leaves
 
Play wanton, every moment, every spot.

And now, with nerves new-braced and spirits cheered,
 
We tread the wilderness, whose well-rolled walks,
 
With curvature of slow and easy sweep —
 
Deception innocent — give ample space
 
To narrow bounds. The grove receives us next;
 
Between the upright shafts of whose tall elms
 
We may discern the thresher at his task.
 
Thump after thump resounds the constant flail,
 
That seems to swing uncertain and yet falls
 
Full on the destined ear. Wide flies the chaff,
 
The rustling straw sends up a frequent mist
 
Of atoms, sparkling in the noonday beam.
 
Come hither, ye that press your beds of down
 
And sleep not: see him sweating o’er his bread
 
Before he eats it.— ’Tis the primal curse,
 
But softened into mercy; made the pledge
 
Of cheerful days, and nights without a groan.

By ceaseless action, all that is subsists.
 
Constant rotation of the unwearied wheel
 
That Nature rides upon, maintains her health,
 
Her beauty, her fertility. She dreads
 
An instant’s pause, and lives but while she moves.
 
Its own revolvency upholds the world.
 
Winds from all quarters agitate the air,
 
And fit the limpid element for use,
 
Else noxious: oceans, rivers, lakes, and streams
 
All feel the freshening impulse, and are cleansed
 
By restless undulation: even the oak
 
Thrives by the rude concussion of the storm:
 
He seems indeed indignant, and to feel
 
The impression of the blast with proud disdain,
 
Frowning as if in his unconscious arm
 
He held the thunder. But the monarch owes
 
His firm stability to what he scorns,
 
More fixed below, the more disturbed above.
 
The law, by which all creatures else are bound,
 
Binds man the lord of all. Himself derives
 
No mean advantage from a kindred cause,
 
From strenuous toil his hours of sweetest ease.
 
The sedentary stretch their lazy length
 
When custom bids, but no refreshment find,
 
For none they need: the languid eye, the cheek
 
Deserted of its bloom, the flaccid, shrunk,
 
And withered muscle, and the vapid soul,
 
Reproach their owner with that love of rest
 
To which he forfeits even the rest he loves.
 
Not such the alert and active. Measure life
 
By its true worth, the comforts it affords,
 
And theirs alone seems worthy of the name
 
Good health, and, its associate in the most,
 
Good temper; spirits prompt to undertake,
 
And not soon spent, though in an arduous task;
 
The powers of fancy and strong thought are theirs;
 
Even age itself seems privileged in them
 
With clear exemption from its own defects.
 
A sparkling eye beneath a wrinkled front
 
The veteran shows, and gracing a gray beard
 
With youthful smiles, descends towards the grave
 
Sprightly, and old almost without decay.

Like a coy maiden, Ease, when courted most,
 
Farthest retires — an idol, at whose shrine
 
Who oftenest sacrifice are favoured least.
 
The love of Nature and the scene she draws
 
Is Nature’s dictate. Strange, there should be found
 
Who, self-imprisoned in their proud saloons,
 
Renounce the odours of the open field
 
For the unscented fictions of the loom;
 
Who, satisfied with only pencilled scenes,
 
Prefer to the performance of a God
 
The inferior wonders of an artist’s hand.
 
Lovely indeed the mimic works of Art,
 
But Nature’s works far lovelier. I admire,
 
None more admires, the painter’s magic skill,
 
Who shows me that which I shall never see,
 
Conveys a distant country into mine,
 
And throws Italian light on English walls.
 
But imitative strokes can do no more
 
Than please the eye, sweet Nature every sense.
 
The air salubrious of her lofty hills,
 
The cheering fragrance of her dewy vales,
 
And music of her woods — no works of man
 
May rival these; these all bespeak a power
 
Peculiar, and exclusively her own.
 
Beneath the open sky she spreads the feast;
 
’Tis free to all— ’tis ev’ry day renewed,
 
Who scorns it, starves deservedly at home.
 
He does not scorn it, who, imprisoned long
 
In some unwholesome dungeon, and a prey
 
To sallow sickness, which the vapours dank
 
And clammy of his dark abode have bred
 
Escapes at last to liberty and light;
 
His cheek recovers soon its healthful hue,
 
His eye relumines its extinguished fires,
 
He walks, he leaps, he runs — is winged with joy,
 
And riots in the sweets of every breeze.
 
He does not scorn it, who has long endured
 
A fever’s agonies, and fed on drugs.
 
Nor yet the mariner, his blood inflamed
 
With acrid salts; his very heart athirst
 
To gaze at Nature in her green array.
 
Upon the ship’s tall side he stands, possessed
 
With visions prompted by intense desire;
 
Fair fields appear below, such as he left
 
Far distant, such as he would die to find —
 
He seeks them headlong, and is seen no more.

The spleen is seldom felt where Flora reigns;
 
The lowering eye, the petulance, the frown,
 
And sullen sadness that o’ershade, distort,
 
And mar the face of beauty, when no cause
 
For such immeasurable woe appears,
 
These Flora banishes, and gives the fair
 
Sweet smiles, and bloom less transient than her own.
 
It is the constant revolution, stale
 
And tasteless, of the same repeated joys
 
That palls and satiates, and makes languid life
 
A pedlar’s pack that bows the bearer down.
 
Health suffers, and the spirits ebb; the heart
 
Recoils from its own choice — at the full feast
 
Is famished — finds no music in the song,
 
No smartness in the jest, and wonders why.
 
Yet thousands still desire to journey on,
 
Though halt and weary of the path they tread.
 
The paralytic, who can hold her cards
 
But cannot play them, borrows a friend’s hand
 
To deal and shuffle, to divide and sort
 
Her mingled suits and sequences, and sits
 
Spectatress both and spectacle, a sad
 
And silent cipher, while her proxy plays.
 
Others are dragged into the crowded room
 
Between supporters; and once seated, sit
 
Through downright inability to rise,
 
Till the stout bearers lift the corpse again.
 
These speak a loud memento. Yet even these
 
Themselves love life, and cling to it as he,
 
That overhangs a torrent, to a twig.
 
They love it, and yet loathe it; fear to die,
 
Yet scorn the purposes for which they live.
 
Then wherefore not renounce them? No — the dread,
 
The slavish dread of solitude, that breeds
 
Reflection and remorse, the fear of shame,
 
And their inveterate habits, all forbid.