She wrote from Helston; begged I’d come
And see her in her husband’s home.
I went, and bound by double vow,
Not only wife, but mother now,
I found her, lovely as of old,
O, rather, lovelier manifold.
Her wifely sweet reserve unbroke,
Still frankly, tenderly, she spoke;
Asked me about myself, would hear
What I proposed to do this year;
At college why was I detained,
Was it the fellowship I’d gained?
I told her that I was not tied
Henceforward further to reside,
Yet very likely might stay on,
And lapse into a college don;
My fellowship itself would give
A competence on which to live,
And if I waited, who could tell,
I might be tutor too, as well.
Oh, but, she said, I must not stay,
College and school were only play;
I might be sick, perhaps, of praise,
But must not therefore waste my days!
Fellows grow indolent, and then
They may not do as other men,
And for your happiness in life,
Sometime you’ll wish to have a wife.
Languidly by her chair I sat,
But my eyes rather flashed at that.
I said, ‘Emilia, people change,
But yet, I own, I find it strange
To hear this common talk from you:
You speak, and some believe it true,
Just as if any wife would do;
Whoe’er one takes, ’tis much the same,
And love—and so forth, but a name.’
She coloured. ‘What can I have said
Or what could put it in your head?
Indeed, I had not in my mind
The faintest notion of the kind.’
I told her that I did not know—
Her tone appeared to mean it so.
‘Emilia, when I’ve heard,’ I said,
‘How people match themselves and wed,
I’ve sometimes wished that both were dead,’
She turned a little pale. I woke
Some thought; what thought I but soft she spoke;
‘I’m sure that what you meant was good,
But, really, you misunderstood.
From point to point so quick you fly,
And are so vehement,—and I,
As you remember, long ago,
Am stupid, certainly am slow.
And yet some things I seem to know;
I know it will be just a crime,
If you should waste your powers and time.
There is so much, I think, that you,
And no one equally, can do.’
‘It does not matter much,’ said I,
‘The things I thought of are gone by;
I’m quite content to wait to die.’
A sort of beauteous anger spread
Over her face. ‘O me!’ she said,
‘That you should sit and trifle so,
And you so utterly don’t know
How greatly you have yet to grow,
How wide your objects have to expand,
How much is yet an unknown land!
You’re twenty-three, I’m twenty-five,
And I am so much more alive.’
My eyes I shaded with my hand,
And almost lost my self-command.
I muttered something: ‘Yes, I see;
Two years have severed you from me.
O, Emily, was it ever told,’
I asked, ‘that souls are young and old?’
But she, continuing, ‘All the day
Were I to speak, I could but say
The one same thing the one same way.
Sometimes, indeed, I think, you know,’
And her tone suddenly was low,
‘That in a day we yet shall see,
You of my sisters and of me,
And of the things that used to be,
Will think, as you look back again,
With something not unlike disdain;
So you your rightful place obtain,
That will to me be joy, not pain.’
Her voice still lower, lower fell,
I heard, just heard, each syllable.
‘But,’ in the tone she used before,
‘Don’t stay at college any more!
For others it perhaps may do,
I’m sure it will be bad for you.’
She softened me. The following day
We parted. As I went away
Her infant on her bosom lay,
And, as a mother might her boy,
I think she would with loving joy
Have kissed me; but I turned to go,
’Twas better not to have it so.
Next year achieved me some amends,
And once we met, and met as friends.
Friends, yet apart; I had not much
Valued her judgment, though to touch
Her words had power; yet, strangely still,
It had been cogent on my will.
As she had counselled, I had done,
And a new effort was begun.
Forth to the war of life I went,
Courageous, and not ill content.
‘Yours is the fault I opened thus again
A youthful, ancient, sentimental vein,’
He said, ‘and like Munchausen’s horn o’erflow
With liquefying tunes of long ago.
My wiser friend, who knows for what we live,
And what shall seek, will his correction give.’
We all made thanks. ‘My tale were quickly told,’
The other said, ‘but the turned heavens behold;
The night two watches of the night is old,
The sinking stars their suasions urge for sleep.
My story for to-morrow night will keep.’
The evening after, when the day was stilled,
His promise thus the clergyman fulfilled.
THE CLERGYMAN’S FIRST TALE.
Love is fellow-service.
A youth and maid upon a summer night
Upon the lawn, while yet the skies were light,
Edmund and Emma, let their names be these,
Among the shrubs within the circling trees,
Joined in a game with boys and girls at play:
For games perhaps too old a little they;
In April she her eighteenth year begun,
And twenty he, and near to twenty-one.
A game it was of running and of noise;
He as a boy, with other girls and boys
(Her sisters and her brothers), took the fun;
And when her turn, she marked not, came to run,
‘Emma,’ he called,—then knew that he was wrong,
Knew that her name to him did not belong.
Her look and manner proved his feeling true,—
A child no more, her womanhood she knew;
Half was the colour mounted on her face,
Her tardy movement had an adult grace.
Vexed with himself, and shamed, he felt the more
A kind of joy he ne’er had felt before.
Something there was that from this date began;
’Twas beautiful with her to be a man.
Two years elapsed, and he who went and came,
Changing in much, in this appeared the same;
The feeling, if it did not greatly grow,
Endured and was not wholly hid below.
He now, o’ertasked at school, a serious boy,
A sort of after-boyhood to enjoy
Appeared—in vigour and in spirit high
And manly grown, but kept the boy’s soft eye:
And full of blood, and strong and lithe of limb,
To him ’twas pleasure now to ride, to swim;
The peaks, the glens, the torrents tempted him.
Restless he seemed,—long distances would walk,
And lively was, and vehement in talk.
A wandering life his life had lately been,
Books he had read, the world had little seen.
One former frailty haunted him, a touch
Of something introspective overmuch.
With all his eager motions still there went
A self-correcting and ascetic bent,
That from the obvious good still led astray,
And set him travelling on the longest way;
Seen in these scattered notes their date that claim
When first his feeling conscious sought a name.
‘Beside the wishing gate which so they name,
’Mid northern hills to me this fancy came,
A wish I formed, my wish I thus expressed:
Would I could wish my wishes all to rest,
And know to wish the wish that were the best!
O for some winnowing wind, to the empty air
This chaff of easy sympathies to bear
Far off, and leave me of myself aware!
While thus this over health deludes me still,
So willing that I know not what I will;
O for some friend, or more than friend, austere,
To make me know myself, and make me fear!
O for some touch, too noble to be kind,
To awake to life the mind within the mind!’
‘O charms, seductions and divine delights!
All through the radiant yellow summer nights
Dreams, hardly dreams, that yield or e’er they’re done,
To the bright fact, my day, my risen sun!
O promise and fulfilment, both in one!
O bliss, already bliss, which nought has shared,
Whose glory no fruition has impaired,
And, emblem of my state, thou coming day,
With all thy hours unspent to pass away!
Why do I wait? What more propose to know?
Where the sweet mandate bids me, let me go;
My conscience in my impulse let me find,
Justification in the moving mind,
Law in the strong desire; or yet behind,
Say, is there aught the spell that has not heard,
A something that refuses to be stirred?’
‘In other regions has my being heard
Of a strange language the diviner word?
Has some forgotten life the exemplar shown?
Elsewhere such high communion have I known,
As dooms me here, in this, to live alone?
Then love, that shouldest blind me, let me, love,
Nothing behold beyond thee or above;
Ye impulses, that should be strong and wild,
Beguile me, if I am to be beguiled!’
‘Or are there modes of love, and different kinds,
Proportioned to the sizes of our minds?
There are who say thus, I held there was one,
One love, one deity, one central sun;
As he resistless brings the expanding day,
So love should come on his victorious way.
If light at all, can light indeed be there,
Yet only permeate half the ambient air?
Can the high noon be regnant in the sky,
Yet half the land in light, and half in darkness lie?
Can love, if love, be occupant in part,
Hold, as it were, some chambers in the heart;
Tenant at will of so much of the soul,
Not lord and mighty master of the whole?
There are who say, and say that it is well;
Opinion all, of knowledge none can tell.’
‘Montaigne, I know in a realm high above
Places the seat of friendship over love;
’Tis not in love that we should think to find
The lofty fellowship of mind with mind;
Love’s not a joy where soul and soul unite,
Rather a wondrous animal delight;
And as in spring, for one consummate hour
The world of vegetation turns to flower,
The birds with liveliest plumage trim their wing,
And all the woodland listens as they sing;
When spring is o’er and summer days are sped,
The songs are silent, and the blossoms dead:
E’en so of man and woman is the bliss.
O, but I will not tamely yield to this!
I think it only shows us in the end,
Montaigne was happy in a noble friend,
Had not the fortune of a noble wife;
He lived, I think, a poor ignoble life,
And wrote of petty pleasures, petty pain;
I do not greatly think about Montaigne.’
‘How charming to be with her! yet indeed,
After a while I find a blank succeed;
After a while she little has to say,
I’m silent too, although I wish to stay;
What would it be all day, day after day?
Ah! but I ask, I do not doubt, too much;
I think of love as if it should be such
As to fulfil and occupy in whole
The nought-else-seeking, nought-essaying soul.
Therefore it is my mind with doubts I urge;
Hence are these fears and shiverings on the verge;
By books, not nature, thus have we been schooled,
By poetry and novels been befooled;
Wiser tradition says, the affections’ claim
Will be supplied, the rest will be the same.
I think too much of love, ’tis true: I know
It is not all, was ne’er intended so;
Yet such a change, so entire, I feel, ’twould be,
So potent, so omnipotent with me;
My former self I never should recall,—
Indeed I think it must be all in all.’
‘I thought that Love was winged; without a sound,
His purple pinions bore him o’er the ground,
Wafted without an effort here or there,
He came—and we too trod as if in air:—
But panting, toiling, clambering up the hill,
Am I to assist him? I, put forth my will
To upbear his lagging footsteps, lame and slow,
And help him on and tell him where to go,
And ease him of his quiver and his bow?’
‘Erotion! I saw it in a book;
Why did I notice it, why did I look?
Yea, is it so, ye powers that see above?
I do not love, I want, I try to love!
This is not love, but lack of love instead!
Merciless thought! I would I had been dead,
Or e’er the phrase had come into my head.’
She also wrote: and here may find a place,
Of her and of her thoughts some slender trace.
‘He is not vain; if proud, he quells his pride,
And somehow really likes to be defied;
Rejoices if you humble him: indeed
Gives way at once, and leaves you to succeed.’
‘Easy it were with such a mind to play,
And foolish not to do so, some would say;
One almost smiles to look and see the way:
But come what will, I will not play a part,
Indeed I dare not condescend to art.’
‘Easy ’twere not, perhaps, with him to live;
He looks for more than any one can give:
So dulled at times and disappointed; still
Expecting what depends not of my will:
My inspiration comes not at my call,
Seek me as I am, if seek you do at all.’
‘Like him I do, and think of him I must;
But more—I dare not and I cannot trust.
This more he brings—say, is it more or less
Than that no fruitage ever came to bless,—
The old wild flower of love-in-idleness?’
‘Me when he leaves and others when he sees,
What is my fate who am not there to please?
Me he has left; already may have seen
One, who for me forgotten here has been;
And he, the while is balancing between.
If the heart spoke, the heart I knew were bound;
What if it utter an uncertain sound?’
‘So quick to vary, so rejoiced to change,
From this to that his feelings surely range;
His fancies wander, and his thoughts as well;
And if the heart be constant, who can tell?
Far off to fly, to abandon me, and go,
He seems returning then before I know:
With every accident he seems to move,
Is now below me and is now above,
Now far aside,—O, does he really love?’
‘Absence were hard; yet let the trial be;
His nature’s aim and purpose he would free,
And in the world his course of action see.
O should he lose, not learn; pervert his scope;
O should I lose! and yet to win I hope.
I win not now; his way if now I went,
Brief joy I gave, for years of discontent.’
‘Gone, is it true? but oft he went before,
And came again before a month was o’er.
Gone—though I could not venture upon art,
It was perhaps a foolish pride in part;
He had such ready fancies in his head,
And really was so easy to be led;
One might have failed; and yet I feel ’twas pride,
And can’t but half repent I never tried.
Gone, is it true? but he again will come,
Wandering he loves, and loves returning home.’
Gone, it was true; nor came so soon again;
Came, after travelling, pleasure half, half pain,
Came, but a half of Europe first o’erran;
Arrived, his father found a ruined man.
Rich they had been, and rich was Emma too.
Heiress of wealth she knew not, Edmund knew.
Farewell to her!—In a new home obscure,
Food for his helpless parents to secure,
From early morning to advancing dark,
He toiled and laboured as a merchant’s clerk.
Three years his heavy load he bore, nor quailed,
Then all his health, though scarce his spirit, failed;
Friends interposed, insisted it must be,
Enforced their help, and sent him to the sea.
Wandering about with little here to do,
His old thoughts mingling dimly with his new,
Wandering one morn, he met upon the shore,
Her, whom he quitted five long years before.
Alas! why quitted? Say that charms are nought,
Nor grace, nor beauty worth one serious thought;
Was there no mystic virtue in the sense
That joined your boyish girlish innocence?
Is constancy a thing to throw away,
And loving faithfulness a chance of every day?
Alas! why quitted? is she changed? but now
The weight of intellect is in her brow;
Changed, or but truer seen, one sees in her
Something to wake the soul, the interior sense to stir.
Alone they met, from alien eyes away,
The high shore hid them in a tiny bay.
Alone was he, was she; in sweet surprise
They met, before they knew it, in their eyes.
In his a wondering admiration glowed,
In hers, a world of tenderness o’erflowed;
In a brief moment all was known and seen,
That of slow years the wearying work had been:
Morn’s early odorous breath perchance in sooth,
Awoke the old natural feeling of their youth:
The sea, perchance, and solitude had charms,
They met—I know not—in each other’s arms.
Why linger now—why waste the sands of life?
A few sweet weeks, and they were man and wife.
To his old frailty do not be severe,
His latest theory with patience hear:
‘I sought not, truly would to seek disdain,
A kind, soft pillow for a wearying pain,
Fatigues and cares to lighten, to relieve;
But love is fellow-service, I believe.’
‘No, truly no, it was not to obtain,
Though that alone were happiness, were gain,
A tender breast to fall upon and weep,
A heart, the secrets of my heart to keep;
To share my hopes, and in my griefs to grieve;
Yet love is fellow-service, I believe.’
‘Yet in the eye of life’s all-seeing sun
We shall behold a something we have done,
Shall of the work together we have wrought,
Beyond our aspiration and our thought,
Some not unworthy issue yet receive;
For love is fellow-service I believe.’
The tale, we said, instructive was, but short;
Could he not give another of the sort?
He feared his second might his first repeat,
‘And Aristotle teaches, change is sweet;
But come, our younger friend in this dim night
Under his bushel must not hide his light.’
I said I’d had but little time to live,
Experience none or confidence could give.
‘But I can tell to-morrow, if you please,
My last year’s journey towards the Pyrenees.’
To-morrow came, and evening, when it closed,
The penalty of speech on me imposed.
MY TALE.
A la Banquette, or a Modern Pilgrimage.
I stayed at La Quenille, ten miles or more
From the old-Roman sources of Mont Dore;
Travellers to Tulle this way are forced to go,
—An old high-road from Lyons to Bordeaux,—
From Tulle to Brives the swift Corrèze descends,
At Brives you’ve railway, and your trouble ends;
A little bourg La Quenille; from the height
The mountains of Auvergne are all in sight;
Green pastoral heights that once in lava flowed,
Of primal fire the product and abode;
And all the plateaux and the lines that trace
Where in deep dells the waters find their place;
Far to the south above the lofty plain,
The Plomb du Cantal lifts his towering train.
A little after one, with little fail,
Down drove the diligence that bears the mail;
The courier therefore called, in whose banquette
A place I got, and thankful was to get;
The new postillion climbed his seat, allez,
Off broke the four cart-horses on their way.
Westward we roll, o’er heathy backs of hills,
Crossing the future rivers in the rills;
Bare table-lands are these, and sparsely sown,
Turning their waters south to the Dordogne.
Close-packed we were, and little at our ease,
The conducteur impatient with the squeeze;
Not tall he seemed, but bulky round about,
His cap and jacket made him look more stout;
In grande tenue he rode of conducteur;
Black eyes he had, black his moustaches were,
Shaven his chin, his hair and whiskers cropt;
A ready man; at Ussel when we stopt,
For me and for himself, bread, meat, and wine,
He got, the courier did not wait to dine;
To appease our hunger, and allay our drouth,
We ate and took the bottle at the mouth;
One draught I had, the rest entire had he,
For wine his body had capacity.
A peasant in his country blouse was there,
He told me of the conseil and the maire.
Their maire, he said, could neither write nor read,
And yet could keep the registers, indeed;
The conseil had resigned—I know not what.—
Good actions here are easily forgot:
He in the quarante-huit had something done,
Were things but fair, some notice should have won.
Another youth there was, a soldier he,
A soldier ceasing with to-day to be;
Three years had served, for three had bought release:
From war returning to the arts of peace,
To Tulle he went, as his department’s town,
To-morrow morn to pay his money down.
In Italy, his second year begun,
This youth had served, when Italy was won.
He told of Montebello, and the fight,
That ended fiercely with the close of night.
There was he wounded, fell, and thought to die,
Two Austrian cones had passed into his thigh;
One traversed it, the other, left behind,
In hospital the doctor had to find:
At eight of night he fell, and sadly lay
Till three of morning of the following day,
When peasants came and put him on a wain,
And drove him to Voghera in his pain;
To Alessandria thence the railway bore,
In Alessandria then two months and more
He lay in hospital; to lop the limb
The Italian doctor who attended him
Was much disposed, but high above the knee;
For life an utter cripple he would be.
Then came the typhoid fever, and the lack
Of food. And sick and hungering, on his back,
With French, Italians, Austrians as he lay,
Arrived the tidings of Magenta’s day,
And Milan entered in the burning June,
And Solferino’s issue following soon.
Alas, the glorious wars! and shortly he
To Genoa for the advantage of the sea,
And to Savona, suffering still, was sent
And joined his now returning regiment.
Good were the Austrian soldiers, but the feel
They did not well encounter of cold steel,
Nor in the bayonet fence of man with man
Maintained their ground, but yielded, turned and ran
Les armes blanches and the rifled gun
Had fought the battles, and the victories won.
The glorious wars! but he, the doubtful chance
Of soldiers’ glory quitting and advance,—
His wounded limb less injured than he feared,—
Was dealing now in timber, it appeared;
Oak-timber finding for some mines of lead,
Worked by an English company, he said.
This youth perhaps was twenty-three years old;
Simply and well his history he told.
They wished to hear about myself as well;
I told them, but it was not much to tell;
At the Mont Dore, of which the guide-book talks,
I’d taken, not the waters, but the walks.
Friends I had met, who on their southward way
Had gone before, I followed them to-day.
They wondered greatly at this wondrous thing,—
Les Anglais are for ever on the wing,—
The conducteur said everybody knew
We were descended of the Wandering Jew.
And on with the declining sun we rolled,
And woods and vales and fuller streams behold.
About the hour when peasant people sup,
We dropped the peasant, took a curé up,
In hat and bands and soutane all to fit.
He next the conducteur was put to sit;
I in the corner gained the senior place.
Brown was his hair, but closely shaved his face;
To lift his eyelids did he think it sin?
I saw a pair of soft brown eyes within.
Older he was, but looked like twenty-two,
Fresh from the cases, to the country new.
I, the conducteur watching from my side,
A roguish twinkle in his eye espied;
He begged to hear about the pretty pair
Whom he supposed he had been marrying there;
The deed, he hoped, was comfortably done,—
Monsieur l’Evêque he called him in his fun.
Then lifted soon his voice for all to hear;
A barytone he had both strong and clear:
In fragments first of music made essay,
And tried his pipes and modest felt his way.
Le verre en main la mort nous trouvera,
It was, or Ah, vous dirai-je, maman!
And then, A toi, ma belle, à toi toujours;
Till of his organ’s quality secure,
Trifling no more, but boldly, like a man,
He filled his chest and gallantly began.
‘Though I have seemed, against my wiser will,
Your victim, O ye tender foibles, still,
Once now for all, though half my heart be yours,
Adieu, sweet faults, adieu, ye gay amours!
Sad if it be, yet true it is to say,
I’ve fifty years, and ’tis too late a day,
My limbs are shrinking and my hair turns grey;
Adieu, gay loves, it is too late a day!
‘Once in your school (what good, alas! is once?)
I took my lessons, and was not the dunce.
Oh, what a pretty girl was then Juliette!
Don’t you suppose that I remember yet,
Though thirty years divide me from the day,
When she and I first looked each other’s way?
But now! midwinter to be matched with May!
Adieu, gay loves, it is too late a day!
‘You lovely Marguerite! I shut my eyes,
And do my very utmost to be wise;
Yet see you still; and hear, though closed my ears,
And think I’m young in spite of all my years;
Shall I forget you if I go away?
To leave is painful, but absurd to stay;
I’ve fifty dreadful reasons to obey.
Adieu, gay loves, it is too late a day!’
This priest beside the lusty conducteur
Under his beaver sat and looked demure;
Faintly he smiled the company to please,
And folded held his hands above his knees.
Then, apropos of nothing, had we heard,
He asked, about a thing that had occurred
At the Mont Dore a little time ago,
A wondrous cure? and when we answered, No,
About a little girl he told a tale,
Who, when her medicines were of no avail,
Was by the doctor ordered to Mont Dore,
But nothing gained and only suffered more.
This little child had in her simple way
Unto the Blessed Virgin learnt to pray,
And, as it happened, to an image there
By the roadside one day she made her prayer,
And of our Lady, who can hear on high,
Begged for her parents’ sake she might not die.
Our Lady of Grace, whose attribute is love,
Beheld this child and listened from above.
Her parents noticed from that very day
The malady began to pass away,
And but a fortnight after, as they tell,
They took her home rejoicing, sound and well.
Things come, he said, to show us every hour
We are surrounded by superior power.
Little we notice, but if once we see,
The seed of faith will grow into a tree.
The conducteur, he wisely shook his head:
Strange things do happen in our time, he said;
If the bon Dieu but please, no doubt indeed,
When things are desperate, yet they will succeed.
Ask the postillion here, and he can tell
Who cured his horse, and what of it befell.
Then the postillion, in his smock of blue,
His pipe into his mouth’s far corner drew,
And told about a farrier and a horse;
But his Auvergnat grew from bad to worse;
His rank Arvernian patois was so strong,
With what he said I could not go along;
And what befell and how it came to pass,
And if it were a horse or if an ass,
The sequence of his phrase I could not keep,
And in the middle fairly sank to sleep.
When I awoke, I heard a stream below
And on each bank saw houses in a row,
Corrèze the stream, the houses Tulle, they said;
Alighted here and thankful went to bed.
‘But how,’ said one, ‘about the Pyrenees?
In Hamlet give us Hamlet, if you please;
Your friend declares you said you met with there
A peasant beauty, beauteous past compare,
Who fed her cows the mountain peaks between,
And asked if at Velletri you had been.
And was Velletri larger than was Rome?
Her soldier-brother went away from home,
Two years ago,—to Rome it was he went,
And to Velletri was this summer sent;
He twenty-three, and she was sweet seventeen,
And fed her cows the mountain peaks between.
Lightly along a rocky path she led,
And from a grange she brought you milk and bread.
In summer here she lived, and with the snow
Went in October to the fields below;
And where you lived, she asked, and oh, they say,
That with the English we shall fight some day;
Loveliest of peasant girls that e’er was seen,
Feeding her cows the mountain peaks between.’
‘’Tis true,’ I said, ‘though to betray was mean.
My Pyrenean verses will you hear,
Though not about that peasant girl, I fear.’
‘Begin,’ they said, ‘the sweet bucolic song,
Though it to other maids and other cows belong.’
Currente calamo.
Quick, painter, quick, the moment seize
Amid the snowy Pyrenees;
More evanescent than the snow,
The pictures come, are seen, and go:
Quick, quick, currente calamo.
I do not ask the tints that fill
The gate of day ’twixt hill and hill;
I ask not for the hues that fleet
Above the distant peaks; my feet
Are on a poplar-bordered road,
Where with a saddle and a load
A donkey, old and ashen-grey,
Reluctant works his dusty way.
Before him, still with might and main
Pulling his rope, the rustic rein,
A girl: before both him and me,
Frequent she turns and lets me see,
Unconscious, lets me scan and trace
The sunny darkness of her face
And outlines full of southern grace.
Following I notice, yet and yet,
Her olive skin, dark eyes deep set,
And black, and blacker e’en than jet,
The escaping hair that scantly showed,
Since o’er it in the country mode,
For winter warmth and summer shade,
The lap of scarlet cloth is laid.
And then, back-falling from the head,
A crimson kerchief overspread
Her jacket blue; thence passing down,
A skirt of darkest yellow-brown,
Coarse stuff, allowing to the view
The smooth limb to the woollen shoe.
But who—here’s some one following too,—
A priest, and reading at his book!
Read on, O priest, and do not look;
Consider,—she is but a child,—
Yet might your fancy be beguiled.
Read on, O priest, and pass and go!
But see, succeeding in a row,
Two, three, and four, a motley train,
Musicians wandering back to Spain;
With fiddle and with tambourine,
A man with women following seen.
What dresses, ribbon-ends, and flowers!
And,—sight to wonder at for hours,—
The man,—to Phillip has he sat?—
With butterfly-like velvet hat;
One dame his big bassoon conveys,
On one his gentle arm he lays;
They stop, and look, and something say,
And to ‘España’ ask the way.
But while I speak, and point them on,
Alas! my dearer friends are gone;
The dark-eyed maiden and the ass
Have had the time the bridge to pass.
Vainly, beyond it far descried,
Adieu, and peace with you abide,
Grey donkey, and your beauteous guide.
The pictures come, the pictures go,
Quick, quick, currente calamo.
They praised the rhymes, but still would persevere
The eclogue of the mountain peaks to hear,
Eclogue that never was; and then awhile,
Of France, and Frenchmen, and our native isle,
They talked; pre-insular above the rest,
My friend his ardent politics expressed;
France was behind us all, he saw in France
Worse retrogression, and the least advance.
Her revolutions had but thrown her back.
Powerful just now, but wholly off the track;
They in religion were, as I had seen,
About where we in Chaucer’s time had been;
In Chaucer’s time, and yet their Wickliffe where?
Something they’d kept—the worst part—of Voltaire.
Strong for Old England, was New England too;
The clergyman was neutral in his view,
And I, for France with more than I could do,
Though sound, my thesis did not long maintain.
The contemplation of the nightly main,
The vaulted heavens above, and under these,
The black ship working through the dusky seas,
Deserting, to our narrow berths we crept;
Sound slumbered there, the watch while others kept.
The second officer, who kept the watch,
A young man, fair of feature, partly Scotch
And partly Irish in his voice and way,
Joined us the evening of the following day,
And of our stories when he heard us tell,
Offered to give a narrative as well.