'Again the sun is hot and high in heaven;
The rustic sweats beneath the sultry ray;
The idler seeks the shady walk; and I,
With shaken frame and slow returning strength,
Upon the sloping bank, beneath the trees,
Have sat me down to ruminate a while,
And dream away the hours till health return.
These trees which spread their branches o'er my head,
And shade me from the sultry summer sun
Were young when I was young-we grew together:
I was a boy, and they were paltry shrubs.
Even then, this was a pleasant place to me,
And here I loitered many an hour away,
And dreamed as pertinaciously as now;
But then my dreams did differ far from those
Which now I may indulge at this dim distance.
The scene hath changed its aspect-I am changed;
Yet now I would recall the shadowy trace
Which memory holds of those departed years,
And live again a moment in their light.
'The mournful ballad was my earliest lore,
And long ere I could read it for myself,
'Twas music to my soul; and I would sit
With a pleased melancholy, such as steals
Over the heart when day dies in the west,
To hear it warbled. Then the strain of Burns
Touched a strange chord in my yet boyish bosom,
Which thrilled beneath the magic of his words;
And when more years had added to my stock-
My little stock of knowledge, then I learned
That Nature's poet in his early day
Was but a peasant boy, as poor as I.
Then I went on to fill the picture up,
With all the colouring fancy could devise:-
Ragged he was, perchance, as I had been,
And sauntered far by wood or lonely stream
To muse and meditate-a sun-burnt wanderer;
Or slid with desperate skill the frozen lake,
Till the big snow-flakes, drifting through the rents
Of his long worn and sorely wasted raiment,
Which opened to receive them, had transform'd
Him almost to an icicle; or plunged,
By a rash venture, as I oft had done,
Through the frail pavement over which he glided,
And almost drowned, trembled with cold and terror,
And durst not venture home for being whipped.
Yet when he grew to manhood, and had learned
To write and spell the words he wrote aright,
He made a book, and gained nine hundred pounds!
That was a monarch's treasure!-When I grew
A man, I'd learn to write and spell like him!
Then what might hinder me to make a book,
Which men would buy, and marvel how I made it.
What he had done, sure, I might learn to do!
Though rags and poverty were all my portion:
He too was poor; and I had made him ragged,
That we might be alike . . .
In the beginning of life's weary journey-
It seemed not weary then, but a rich walk
Which glittered with a thousand glowing charms-
And then my book!-that was the mighty shadow
Which filled my day-dream with unnumbered schemes.
Nine hundred pounds! oh, what a mighty sum!
Had I a hundred, ay or even fifty,
I never could exhaust it-it would serve
To make a nation happy.-Then the boys
Who, clad in tatters, and with battered feet,
In winter slid like me the frozen lake,
Should all have better jackets from my store,
And clothes to keep them from the pinching cold-
New shoes too, with a hundred tackets each
And iron heels, I would bestow upon them:
Then I would give them shillings for their mothers.
(I got a shilling once, which gave me joy,
Such as I know not that I felt before.
It was from a kind-hearted man, whose horse
I held a while; and when I brought it home,
My mother blessed him so, and said so much,
And seem'd so happy, that, to earn such blessing
From those poor mothers whom I would befriend,
Appeared the acme of all earthly good.)
Their fathers too, when sickness came upon them,
Should have for dinner wheaten bread and milk-
That was a luxury I, for once, had tasted,
And longed to do again, although it came not
Within the clutches of my ravening jaw
A second time; still I remembered well,
And deemed it daintiest of earth's dainty things.
Tea, too, should grace their boards on Sabbath-days,
And the coarse bannocks baken from the bean,
(Which last I never liked, although compelled
To take them for my dinner many a day,)
Should be exchanged for those of barley bread.
And I would buy them cows to yield them milk;
And give them meal when that was waxing scarce.
A hundred pounds would do all this and more,
Ay, twice as much, or may be twenty times.
And when my paradise was made complete
In this department, there was one old man,
Whom I had seen draining a hilly field-
That was when I was very young, but still
His picture was before me undecayed;
My memory had the scene in all its parts:-
The noonday sun was beating fierce upon him;
His coat and vest were doffed, and thrown aside,
His worn-out shirt, in rags, was black and wet
With the warm moisture which suffused his skin;
His bald head was uncovered, and his locks,
His thin gray locks, dripping and drenched with sweat;
His face was soiled, his joints were stiff, and he
Appeared to ply his weary task with pain.
I saw him once again by a road-side-
The wind was cold-it was the winter time;
And snows lay deep on hill and valley round.
Beside him lay his staff and sundry hammers;
For he was breaking stones. But it was plain
That he had seen misfortune since I saw him;
A splinter from his hammer had cut out
One eye-it was the best-and left a hollow,
Dark, rayless, tenantless, where once it shone;
And penury and sickness, blent together,
Had set their stamp upon his meagre face.
My heart bled as I paused to look upon him,
And summed up all his miseries with an eye
Which held a boyish tear although it flowed not.
'Oft had his shadow flitted o'er my mind,
And damped my happiness, like a dark cloud;
For it was painful to behold him thus,
And still more painful that I could do nothing
(For I was penniless) to make him better.
But brighter images now crowded on me:-
He too should be a sharer of my fortune
When it grew fine! And I would build a house-
A house for him:-I could do this myself;
For I used to repair our kail-yard dyke,
And make it stand without or clay or mortar;
And I should then have both. Sticks I would gather
To kindle up his fire, and bring him coals
To keep him warm throughout the winter day.
My heart danced at the thought;-how happy then!
And for the crust of ill-baked oaten bread,
Unsavoury and unseasoned, dry, yet mouldy,
Which I had seen him labour to consume,
As he sat resting on the frozen bank,-
And the cold beverage from the way-side stream,
From which he broke the ice that he might drink,-
I would provide a comfortable meal;-
It should be new potatoes in the season,
And porridge when I could not come at these.
I never thought of slaying sheep and oxen,
To feed him with their flesh. That was a word
Of which I scarcely understood the meaning.
But then I should take care he had a yard,
With goose-berries a-plenty growing in it.
Of gooseberries I reckoned not a little,
For I had bought a pennyworth and ate them,-
And oh how sweet!-I never could forget it.
Of apples also I could tell the flavour,
For I had once ate two on the same day,
And found that they were pleasant to my taste;
And therefore he should have an apple-tree:-
O what a treasure it would be to him
To go and take an apple when he pleased!
And then if he should chance to have too many,
Why! he might sell them for a drink of ale,
To do him good when harvest days were hot.
Ale did not make men drunk-he might do this.
Then I would help him too to dig his yard,
And plant his kail, and hoe his cabbages;
For I was growing strong, and would be stronger
When I became a man.-My spirit drew
Nectar from these delusions, as the bee
Draws honey from the flowers on summer days.
It was a boyish weakness which the world
May laugh at and forgive, though slow to pardon
Such flagrant follies found in one so young.
'Thus squandered I my time, while other boys
At school were picking up some useful knowledge
Which might be for their benefit through life.
At raw fourteen I had outgrown my fellows;
Of strength too I possessed the common share
Which boys have at this early time of life,
And like a fool I was full fain to show it:
I knew not that even then my strength was destined
To a severer trial than I had recked of.
'My days of idleness were at an end,
My parents could no longer keep me so,
And I was sent to dig a ditch more deep,
And dirtier too, than that the old man dug;
And for my fare I ate a crust as dry,
And drank from the ice-girded stream, and rested
Upon a stone from which I swept the snow.
My dining-room had clouds for tapestry,
Mountains for walls, the boundless sky for ceiling,
And frosty winds for music whistling through it.
Thus situated and thus serenaded,
I ate my dinner with-I know not what,
If it might be content or something else.
My work was hard, my strength inadequate,-
It tired strong men, and I was but a boy.
At eventide so tired was I, I scarcely
Could keep my fellows' way in walking home;
My joints were stiffened, and became the seat
Of weariness and pain; and sleep forsook me
For many a night, or only came by fits,
From which I woke to find I was not rested.
Hard labour drives the downy god away
From bodies older and more firmly knit
Than mine could be at such an early age.
'This tamed me to my fate, and taught me wisdom,
And broke me to drag on the wain of life
With all the dullness of the sluggish ox
When yoked to till the field or draw the wain.
My spirits sunk; imagination strayed
No more in quest of those illusive scenes,
On which it painted happiness before;
My book-and-fortune dream was at an end;
And to obtain a little rest appeared
The greatest blessing which I could enjoy.
The sabbath then was sacred in my eye,
Not that it was a day to worship God,
But that it freed me from a galling yoke;
And I would count the intervening hours
Till slow revolving time should bring it back.
'Life is a drama of a few brief acts;-
The actors shift-the scene is often changed-
Pauses and revolutions intervene-
The mind is set to many a varied tune,
And jars and plays in harmony by turns;
And happiness, like heaven's blue arch, is seen
Upon the top of Expectation's mount,
And waiting for us there that we may grasp it;
But when we gain that cloud-capt elevation,
Behold! the hoped-for object is far off,
And we must start again in a new chase,
And climb another hill of greater height,
Upon whose summit gorgeously arrayed
The fair, false spirit seems to sit enshrined.
Still, still that dream runs on through every change,
And still deceives the dreamer!-Why repine?
Man's happiness is more in the hot chase,
Than the attainment of the good he seeks.
'My dream, though interrupted, was not ended;
Though checked, it had not reached its final close.
As I grew older, I outgrew my toil;
My limbs resumed their wonted elasticity,
My step its firmness; and I felt my arm
Was competent for that which fate assigned it;
From boyhood I was rising into man,
And trod upon the verge of growth completed.
My mind, too, had embraced a few more objects;
And I had learned some knowledge of mankind,
Their impulses, their manners, and their passions;
For they had tutored me to know their ways
By lessons which were sometimes at my cost.
My heart expanded into a new life,
Rejoicing in the skill which it had gained:-
It might be worthless, but it seemed not so;-
And I was eager to increase my stock.
But yet I must have had some petty cares
To temper happiness; for, it was said
That I at times grew thoughtful, and was seen,
Or seemed, less prone to laugh than my compeers.
It might be so, or it might not-I forget;
But be that as it may, there is the trace
Of a long cherish'd vision in my heart,
Which years and accidents have left untouched-
'Tis but the trace-the vision is no more.
When vexed by calumny, or teased by foes,
Or fretted by false friends, that vision came,
Like the full moon emerging from dark clouds,
And shed a pure, soft radiance on my soul,
Such as that maiden orb at midnight hour
Lends to the windings of the silver stream.
'My dream was then of some fair being, on
Whose love-warm bosom I should lay my head;
And, while I felt a fond heart beat beneath,
Forget that 'as the sparks from fire fly upward,
So man is born to trouble'-whose soft voice
Should be the sweetest music to my ear,
Awakening all the chords of harmony-
Whose eye should speak a language to my soul,
More eloquent than aught which Greece or Rome
Could boast of in their best and happiest days-
Whose smile should be my rich reward for toil-
Whose pure, transparent cheek, when press'd to mine,
Should calm the fever of my troubled thoughts,
And woo my spirit to those fields Elysian,
The paradise which strong affection guards-
Whose heart with mine made one by Heaven's decree,
In mutual interchange of sentiment,
And thought, and wish-to the minutest feeling,
Should make our lives flow gently on together;
Even as two streams when poured into each other
Unite and form a broader, brighter river.
Oh! I have seen such streams, and paused and lingered
To see an emblem of that happiness
Which I was destined never to enjoy.
Where the first eddy of their meeting waters-
The deep commotion of their mingling tides
Subsided in a smooth and glassy plain,
Which, clear the placid sky above reflected-
Its fleecy vapours and its azure blue:
The banks the bushes, the surrounding hills,
They glided on in tranquil loveliness,
To mix with that eternity of waters,
The all unmeasured ocean. . . .
That was the spot which riveted my eye;
And there I saw-in short, I know not what-
The forms and shadows of a thousand things:-
Those eddies were the first fresh burst of feeling,
Half pleasing and half painful which love brings,
When that delicious dream, like life, is new;
Then, the subsiding point was to my eye
The calm which union brings to plighted lovers;
Then, the long mirror of its mazy windings
Might represent the deep and settled flow
Of mutual sympathy and chaste affection,
Which hearts, by nature formed to bear love's yoke,
Enjoy in journeying through the vale of life,
Till Time shall merge them in Eternity,
Again to close the link their beings wore,
And find it strengthened in another state-
Not broken by death's transitory change.
'This was a weakness which I cherish'd long,
Even as men sometimes cherish their worst follies-
A deep delusion which was loath to part,
A dream from which but lately I awaked,
Nor waked without a pang; but it is past.
And now I bless my fate that it is thus,
Nor murmur though that pang was hard to bear.
It had been harder far, and bitterer too,
And worse to bear, to look on one beloved,
Whose destiny and hopes were ruled by mine,
And see her shrink in the November blast
Of my bleak fortune, like a northern winter,
Which broke around me and with frozen breath
Chilled those illusive fancies from my sight.'