ON HIS SEVENTY-FIFTH BIRTHDAY.
HAPPY the year, the month, that finds alive
A worthy man in health at seventy-five.
Were he a man no further known than loved,
And but for unremember'd deeds approved,
A gracious boon it were from God to earth
To leave that good man by his humble hearth.
But if the man be one whose virtuous youth,
Loving all Nature, was in love with truth;
And with the fervour of religious duty
Sought in all shapes the very form of beauty;—
Feeling the current of the tuneful strain,
Joy in his heart, and light upon his brain,
Knew that the gift was given, and not in vain;
Whose careful manhood never spared to prune
What the rash growth of youth put forth too soon;
Too wise to be ashamed to grow more wise;
Culling the truth from specious fallacies:-
Then may the world rejoice to find alive
So good, so great a man, at seventy-five.
We take no note of time but by its loss:"
So spake a Poet in a mood of spleen,
To whom the world had lost its vernal gloss,
And woe retain'd its churchyard evergreen.
But I can note time by a better measure,
By God's sweet issues of progressive good;
By happy progress from the lively pleasure
Of the brisk child to modest womanhood.
I knew ye both, young maidens, when ye dwelt. Where I was shelter'd with an aged woman,
Whose goodness, often seen but ofter felt,
To common duties gave a grace uncommon.
For ye were children;-one a merry lass,
A sportive kitten mischievous and gay;
A leveret bounding through the long thick grass,
When hounds are mute and winter far away.
But thou, sweet Dinah, wert a thing sedate, For sorrow was thy comrade from thy birth; And early wert thou doom'd to feel the fate Ordain'd to wean us from the joys of earth.
Years have gone by, yea, many years are flown,
And that good aged woman is removed;
And ye, young damsels, both have far outgrown
The pretty age which then I liked and loved.
Never till now I felt myself so old,
As seeing you so tall, such bursting roses, Just at the time when rosy buds unfold
Their sweet concealment into summer posies.
may I measure time, nor cease to see His silent work in still maturing graces; I quite forgive what he has done to me,
For what he has bestow'd on your sweet faces.
WRITTEN AT BELLE-VUE, AMBLESIDE.
STILL is it there, the same soft quiet scene,
Which, whether sodden with importunate rain,
Or sprinkled with the yellow sun, that pours
Columnal brightness through the fissured clouds
Of autumn eve, or, e'en as now display'd,
In the full brightness of the argent moon,
Is yet the same, the same beloved scene,
Which neither time nor change shall wipe away
From the capacious memory of the soul.
Oh blessed faculty of inward sight,
Safe from disease and mortal accident
As love itself, secure from dull caprice
Of prohibition! Blind Mæonides,
That, wandering by the myriad-sounding sea,
Saw not his footsteps on the passive beach,
Nor saw, alas! the many beauteous eyes
That gleam'd with gladness at his potent song,
Had yet a world of beauty-verdant hills,
Bright with the infinite motion of their leaves;
Close-vested towers in olive-groves embower'd,
Whence the gold-cinctured dove for ever coo'd,
Wide-laughing ocean, rich with southern gleam
Purpureal, jewell'd with a hundred isles,
Or roused indignant from its slumberous depths
To smite the long-presumptuous rampart, piled
Without a prayer;-Achilles vast, reclined,
Listening afar the tumults of the field;-
Sweet Helen, sad amidst her loveliness,
Taming her once glad motions to the halt
Of Priam, leaning on her rounded arm ;—
Pelides, glittering like an evil star ;—
Or love-struck Hecuba, when first she wept
O'er the new-ransom'd carcase of her best,
Her fate-devoted Hector.
Who in his judgments is for ever good,
Should make the brightest noon a night to me,
Yet will those fields, those lowly heaving hills,
That roving river, that pure inland lake,
And those neat dwellings that assure my heart
That not alone I love and linger here,
Abide the heir-looms of my inner life,
As sweet, as vivid to my happier dreams,
As when through tears I saw her snatch'd away.
|