Classic Poem

PART SECOND .

How sweet the first sound of the cuckoo's note!
Whence is the magic pleasure of the sound?
How do we long recall the very tree,
Or bush, near which we stood, when on the ear
The unexpected note, cuckoo! again,
And yet again, came down the budding vale?
It is the voice of spring among the trees;
It tells of lengthening days, of coming blooms;
It is the symphony of many a song.
But, there, the stranger flies close to the ground,
With hawklike pinion, of a leaden blue
Poor wanderer! from hedge to hedge she flies,
And trusts her offspring to another's care:
The sooty-plumed hedge-sparrow frequent acts
The foster-mother, warming into life
The youngling, destined to supplant her own.
Meanwhile, the cuckoo sings her idle song,
Monotonous, yet sweet, now here, now there,
Herself but rarely seen; nor does she cease
Her changeless note, until the broom, full blown,
Give warning that her time for flight is come.
Thus, ever journeying on, from land to land,
She, sole of all the innumerous feather'd tribes,
Passes a stranger's life, without a home.
Home! word delightful to the heart of man,
And bird, and beast! — small word, yet not the less
Significant — comprising all!
Whatever to affection is most dear,
Is all included in that little word —
Wife, children, father, mother, brother, friend.
At mention of that word, the seaman, clinging
Upon the dipping yard-arm, sees afar
The twinkling fire, round which his children cower,
And speak of him, counting the months, and weeks,
That must pass dreary o'er, ere he return.
He sighs to view the seabird's rapid wing.
Oh, had I but the envied power to choose
My home, no sound of city bell should reach
My ear; not even the cannon's thundering roar.
Far in a vale, be there my low abode,
Embower'd in woods where many a songster chants.
And let me now indulge the airy dream!
A bow-shot off in front a river flows,
That, during summer drought, shallow and clear,
Chides with its pebbly bed, and, murmuring,
Invites forgetfulness; half-hid it flows,
Now between rocks, now through a bush-girt glade,
Now sleeping in a pool, that laves the roots
Of overhanging trees, whose drooping boughs
Dip midway over in the darken'd stream;
While ever and anon, upon the breeze,
The dash of distant waterfall is borne.
A range of hills, with craggy summits crown'd,
And furrow'd deep with many a bosky cleugh,
Wards off the northern blast: there skims the hawk
Forth from her cliff, eyeing the furzy slope
That joins the mountain to the smiling vale.
Through all the woods the holly evergreen,
And laurel's softer leaf, and ivied thorn,
Lend winter-shelter to the shivering wing.
No gravell'd paths, pared from the smooth-shaved turf,
Wind through these woods; the simple unmade road,
Mark'd with the frequent hoof of sheep or kine,
Or rustic's studded shoe, I love to tread.
No threatening board forewarns the homeward hind
Of man-traps, or of law's more dreaded gripe.
Pleasant to see the labourer homeward hie
Light-hearted, as he thinks his hastening steps
Will soon be welcomed by his children's smile!
Pleasant to see the milkmaid's blithesome look,
As to the trysting-thorn she gaily trips,
With steps that scarcely feel the elastic ground!
Nor be the lowly dwellings of the poor
Thrust to a distance, as unseemly sights.
Curse on the heartless taste that, proud, exclaims,
" Erase the hamlet, sweep the cottage off;
Remove each stone, and only leave behind
The trees that once embower'd the wretched huts
What though the inmates old, who hoped to end
Their days below these trees, must seek a home
Far from their native fields, far from the graves
In which their fathers lie, to city lanes,
Darksome and close, exiled? It must be so;
The wide extending lawn would else be marr'd
By objects so incongruous." Barbarous taste!
Stupidity intense! Yon straw-roof'd cot,
Seen through the elms, it is a lovely sight!
That scatter'd hamlet, with its burn-side green,
On which the thrifty housewife spreads her yarn,
Or half-bleach'd web, while children busy play,
And paddle in the stream, for every heart,
Untainted by pedantic rules, hath charms.
I love the neighbourhood of man and beast:
I would not place my stable out of sight;
No! close behind my dwelling, it should form
A fence, on one side, to my garden plat.
What beauty equals shelter, in a clime
Where wintry blasts with summer breezes blend,
Chilling the day? How pleasant 'tis to hear
December's winds, amid surrounding trees,
Raging aloud! how grateful 'tis to wake,
While raves the midnight storm, and hear the sound
Of busy grinders at the well-fill'd rack;
Or flapping wing, and crow of chanticleer,
Long ere the lingering morn; or bouncing flails,
That tell the dawn is near! Pleasant the path
By sunny garden-wall, when all the fields
Are chill and comfortless; or barn-yard snug,
Where flocking birds, of various plume, and chirp
Discordant, cluster on the leaning stack,
From whence the thresher draws the rustling sheaves.
Oh, Nature! all thy seasons please the eye
Of him who sees a Deity in all.
It is His presence that diffuses charms
Unspeakable, o'er mountain, wood, and stream.
To think that He, who hears the heavenly choirs,
Hearkens complacent to the woodland song;
To think that He, who rolls yon solar sphere,
Uplifts the warbling songster to the sky;
To mark His presence in the mighty bow,
That spans the clouds, as in the tints minute
Of tiniest flower; to hear His awful voice
In thunder speak, and whisper in the gale;
To know and feel His care for all that lives —
'Tis this that makes the barren waste appear
A fruitful field, each grove a paradise.
Yes! place me 'mid far stretching woodless wilds,
Where no sweet song is heard; the heath-bell there
Would soothe my weary sight, and tell of Thee!
There would my gratefully-uplifted eye
Survey the heavenly vault, by day, by night,
When glows the firmament from pole to pole;
There would my overflowing heart exclaim,
" The heavens declare the glory of the Lord,
The firmament shews forth his handiwork!"
Less loud, but not less clear, His humbler works
Proclaim His power; the swallow knows her time,
And, on the vernal breezes, wings her way,
O'er mountain, plain, and far-extending seas,
From Afric's torrid sands to Britain's shore.
Before the cuckoo's note, she, twittering, gay,
Skims 'long the brook, or o'er the brushwood tops,
When dance the midgy clouds in warping maze
Confused: 'tis thus, by her, the air is swept
Of insect myriads, that would else infest
The greenwood walk, blighting each rural joy:
For this, if pity plead in vain, oh, spare
Her clay-built home! Her all, her young, she trusts,
Trusts to the power of man: fearful, herself
She never trusts; free, on the summer morn,
She, at his window, hails the rising sun.
Twice seven days she broods; then on the wing,
From morn to dewy eve, unceasing plies,
Save when she feeds or cherishes her young;
And oft she 's seen, beneath her little porch,
Clinging supine, to deal the air-glean'd food.
From her the husbandman the coming shower
Foretells: along the mead closely she skiffs,
Or o'er the streamlet pool she skims, so near,
That, from her dipping wing, the wavy circlets
Spread to the shore; then fall the single drops,
Prelusive of the shower.
The martins, too,
The dwellers in the ruin'd castle wall,
When lowers the sky a flight less lofty wheel.
Presageful of the thunder peal, when deep
A boding silence broods o'er all the vale,
From airy altitudes they stoop, and fly
Swiftly, with shrillest scream, round and around
The rugged battlements; or fleetly dart
Through loopholes, whence the shaft was wont to glance;
Or thrid the window of the lofty bower,
Where hapless royalty, with care-closed eyes,
Woo'd sleep in vain, foreboding what befell —
The loss of friends, of country, freedom, life!
Long ere the wintry gusts, with chilly sweep,
Sigh through the leafless groves, the swallow tribes,
Heaven-warn'd, in airy bevies congregate,
Or clustering sit, as if in deep consult
What time to launch; but, lingering, they wait,
Until the feeble of the latest broods
Have gather'd strength the sea-ward path to brave
At last the farewell twitter spreading sounds,
Aloft they fly, and melt in distant air.
Far o'er the British sea, in western course,
O'er the Biscayan mountain-waves they glide:
Then o'er Iberian plains, through fields of air,
Perfumed by orchard groves, where lowly bends
The orange bough beneath its juicy load,
And over Calpe's iron-fenced rock, their course,
To Mauritania's sunny plains, they urge.
There are who doubt this migratory voyage
But wherefore, from the distance of the flight,
Should wonder verge on disbelief, the bulk
So small, so large and strong the buoyant wing?
Behold the corn-craik; she, too, wings her way
To other lands: ne'er is she found immersed
In lakes, or buried torpid in the sand,
Though weak her wing contrasted with her bulk
Seldom she rises from the grassy field,
And never till compell'd; and, when upraised,
With feet suspended, awkwardly she flies;
Her flight a ridgebreadth: suddenly she drops,
And, running, still eludes the following foot
Poor bird, though harsh thy note, I love it well!
It tells of summer eves, mild and serene,
When through the grass, waist-deep, I wont to wade
In fruitless chase of thee; now here, now there,
Thy desultory call. Oft does thy call
The midnight silence break; oft, ere the dawn,
It wakes the slumbering lark; he upward wings
His misty way, and, viewless, sings and soars.

PART THIRD .

Farewell the greenwood, and the welkin song!
Farewell the harmless bill! — The o'erfolding beak,
Incurvated; the clutching pounce; the eye,
Ferocious, keen, full-orb'd; the attitude
Erect; the skimming flight; the hovering poise;
The rapid sousing stroke; — these now I sing!
How fleet the falcon's pinion in pursuit!
Less fleet the linnet's flight! Alas, poor bird!
Weary and weak is now thy flagging wing,
While close and closer draws the eager foe.
Now up she rises, and, with arrow'd pinions,
Impetuous souses; but in vain: with turn
Sudden, the linnet shuns the deadly stroke,
Throwing her far behind; but quick again
She presses on: down drops the feeble victim
Into the hawthorn bush, and panting sits
The falcon, skimming round and round, espies
Her prey, and darts among the prickly twigs.
Unequal now the chase! struggling she strives,
Entangled in the thorny labyrinth,
While easily its way the small bird winds,
Regaining soon the centre of the grove.
But not alone the dwellers of the wood
Tremble beneath the falcon's fateful wing.
Oft hovering o'er the barn-yard is she seen,
In early spring, when round their ruffling dam
The feeble younglings pick the pattering hail:
And oft she plunges low, and swiftly skims
The ground; as oft the bold and threatening mien
Of chanticleer deters her from the prey.
Amid the mountain fells, or river cliffs
Abrupt, the falcon's eyrie, perch'd on high,
Defies access: broad to the sun 'tis spread,
With wither'd sprigs hung o'er the dizzy brink.
What dreadful cliffs o'erhang this little stream!
So loftily they tower, that he who looks
Upward, to view their almost meeting summits,
Feels sudden giddiness, and instant grasps
The nearest fragment of the channel rocks,
Resting his aching eye on some green branch
That midway down shoots from the creviced crag
Athwart the narrow chasm fleet flies the rack,
Each cloud no sooner visible than gone;
While 'tween these natural bulwarks, that deride
The art of man, murmurs the hermit brook,
And joins, with open'd banks, the full-stream'd Clyde.
How various are thy aspects, noble stream!
Now gliding silently by sloping banks,
Now flowing softly, with a silver sound,
Now rushing, tumbling, boiling through the rocks.
Even on that bulging verge smooth flows thy stream,
Then spreads along a gentle ledge, then sweeps
Compress'd by an abutting turn, till o'er
It pours tremendously; again it sweeps
Unpausing, till, again, with louder roar,
It mines into the boisterous wheeling gulf;
While high the boulted foam, at times, displays
An Iris arch, thrown light from rock to rock;
And oft the swallow through the misty cloud
Flits fearlessly, and drinks upon the wing.
Oh, what an amphitheatre surrounds
The abyss, in which the downward mass is plunged,
Stunning the ear! High as the falcon's flight,
The rocks precipitous ascend, and bound
The scene magnificent; deep, deep below,
The snowy surge spreads to a dark expanse.
These are the very rocks on which the eye
Of Wallace gazed, the music this he loved.
Oft has he stood upon the trembling brink,
Unstay'd by tree or twig, absorbed in thought;
There would he trace, with eager eye, the oak,
Uprooted from its bank by ice-fraught floods,
And floating o'er the dreadful cataract:
There would he moralise upon its fate; —
It re-appears with scarce a broken bough,
It re-appears — Scotland may yet be free!
High rides the moon amid the fleecy clouds,
That glisten, as they float athwart her disk;
Sweet is the glimpse that, for a moment, plays
Among these mouldering pinnacles: but, hark!
That dismal cry! It is the wailing owl.
Night-long she mourns, perch'd in some vacant niche,
Or time-rent crevice: sometimes to the woods
She bends her silent, slowly moving wing,
And on some leafless tree, dead of old age,
Sits watching for her prey; but should the foot
Of man intrude into her solemn shades,
Startled, he hears the fragile, breaking branch,
Crash as she rises: further in the gloom,
To deeper solitudes she wings her way.
Oft in the hurly of the wintry storm,
Housed in some rocking steeple, she augments
The horror of the night; or when the winds
Exhausted pause, she listens to the sound
Of the slow-swinging pendulum, till loud
Again the blast is up, and lightning gleams
Shoot 'thwart, and rings a faint and deadly toll
On ancient oak, or elm, whose topmost boughs
Begin to fail, the raven's twig-form'd house
Is built; and, many a year, the self-same tree
The aged solitary pair frequent.
But distant is their range; for oft at morn
They take their flight, and not till twilight gray
Their slow returning cry hoarse meets the ear.
Well does the raven love the sound of war!
Amid those plains where Danube darkly rolls,
The theatres on which the kingly play
Of war is oftenest acted, there the peal
Of cannon-mouths summons the sable flocks
To wait their death-doom'd prey; and they do wait:
Yes, when the glittering columns, front to front
Drawn out, approach in deep and awful silence,
The raven's voice is heard hovering between.
Sometimes upon the far-deserted tents,
She boding sits, and sings her fateful song.
But in the abandon'd field she most delights,
When o'er the dead and dying slants the beam
Of peaceful morn, and wreaths of reeking mist
Rise from the gore-dew'd sward: from corpse to corpse
She revels, far and wide; then, sated, flies
To some shot-shiver'd branch, whereon she cleans
Her purpled beak; and down she lights again,
To end her horrid meal: another, keen,
Plunges her beak deep in yon horse's side,
Till, by the hungry hound displaced, she flits
Once more to human prey.
Ah, who is he
At whose heart-welling wound she drinks,
Glutting her thirst! He was a lovely youth;
Fair Scotia was his home, until his sire
To swoll'n Monopoly resign'd, heart-wrung,
The small demesne which his forefathers plough'd:
Wide then dispersed the family of love.
One son betook him to the all-friendly main:
Another, with his aged parents, plied
The sickly trade, in city garret pent;
Their youngest born, the drum and martial show,
Deluded half, and half-despairing, join'd;
And soon he lay the food of bird and beast
Long is his fate unknown; the horrid sum
Of dead is named, but sad suspense is left,
Enlabyrinth'd in doubt, to please itself
With dark, misgiving hope. Ah, one there is
Who fosters long the dying hope that still
He may return: the live-long summer-day
She at the house end sits; and oft her wheel
Is stopp'd, while on the road, far-stretch'd, she bends
A melancholy, eye-o'erflowing look;
Or strives to mould the distant traveller
Into the form of him who 's far away.
Hopeless, and broken-hearted, still she loves
To sing, " When wild war's deadly blast was blawn."
Alas! war riots with increasing rage.
Behold that field bestrewn with bleaching bones;
And, mark! the raven in the horse's ribs,
Gathering, encaged, the gleanings of a harvest
Almost forgotten now. Rejoice, ye birds of prey!
No longer shall ye glean your scanty meals;
Upon that field again long prostrate wreaths,
Death-mown, shall lie: I see the gory mound
Of dead and wounded, piled, with here and there
A living hand, clutching in vain for help.
But what the horrors of the field of war
To those, the sequel of the foil'd attempt
Of fetter'd vengeance struggling to be free!
Inhuman sons of Europe! not content
With dooms of death, your victim high ye hung
Encaged, to scorch beneath the torrid ray,
And feed, alive, the hungry fowls of heaven.
Around the bars already, see, they cling!
The vulture's head looks through; she strives in vain
To force her way: the lesser birds await
Till worn-out nature sinks; then on they pounce,
And tear the quivering flesh: in agony
The victim wakes, and rolls his wretched eyes,
And feebly drives the ravening flocks away.
Most dreadfully he groans: 'tis thirst, thirst, thirst,
Direst of human torments! — down again
He sinks — again he feels the torturing beak.
England! such things have been, and still would be,
But that the glorious band, the steadfast friends
Of Afric's sons, stand ready to avenge
Their wrongs, and crush the tyrants low.
On distant waves, the raven of the sea,
The cormorant, devours her carrion food
Along the blood-stain'd coast of Senegal,
Prowling, she scents the cassia-perfumed breeze
Tainted with death, and, keener, forward flies:
The towering sails, that waft the house of woe,
Afar she views: upon the heavy hulk,
Deep-logg'd with wretchedness, full fast she gains:
(Revolting sight! the flag of freedom waves
Above the stern-emblazon'd words, that tell
The amount of crimes which Britain's boasted laws,
Within the narrow wooden walls, permit!)
And now she nighs the carnage-freighted keel,
Unscared by rattling fetters, or the shriek
Of mothers, o'er their ocean-buried babes.
Lured by the scent, unweariedly she flies,
And at the foamy dimples of the track
Darts sportively, or perches on a corpse.
From scenes like these, oh, Scotland! once again
To thee my weary fancy fondly hies,
And, with the eagle, mountain-perch'd, alights.
Amid Lochaber's wilds, or dark Glencoe,
High up the pillar'd mountain's steepest side,
The eagle, from her eyrie on the crag.
Of over-jutting rock, beholds afar.
Viewing the distant flocks, with ranging eye
She meditates the prey; but waits the time
When seas of mist extend along the vale,
And, rising gradual, reach her lofty shore:
Up then to sunny regions of the air
She soars, and looks upon the white-wreath'd summits
Of mountains, seeming ocean isles, then down
She plunges, stretching through the hazy deep;
Unseen she flies, and, on her playful quarry,
Pounces unseen: the shepherd knows his loss,
When high o'er-head he hears a passing bleat
Faint, and more faintly, dying far away.
And now aloft she bends her homeward course,
Loaded, yet light; and soon her youngling pair
Joyful descry her buoyant wing emerge
And float along the cloud; fluttering they stoop
Upon the dizzy brink, as if they aim'd
To try the abyss, and meet her coming breast;
But soon her coming breast, and outstretch'd wings,
Glide shadowing down, and close upon their heads.
It was upon the eagle's plunder'd store
That Wallace fared, when hunted from his home,
A glorious outlaw! by the lawless power
Of freedom's foil'd assassin, England's king
Along the mountain cliffs, that ne'er were clomb
By other footstep than his own, 'twas there
His eagle-vision'd genius, towering, plann'd
The grand emprise of setting Scotland free.
He long'd to mingle in the storm of war;
And as the eagle dauntlessly ascends,
Revelling amid the elemental strife,
His mind sublimed prefigured to itself
Each circumstance of future hard-fought fields —
The battle's hubbub loud; the forceful press,
That from his victim hurries him afar;
The impetuous close concentrated assault,
That, like a billow broken on the rocks,
Recedes, but forward heaves with doubled fury.
When lowers the rack unmoving, high up-piled,
And silence deep foretells the thunder near,
The eagle upward penetrates the gloom,
And, far above the fire-impregnate wreaths,
Soaring surveys the ethereal volcanos;
Till, muttering low at first, begins the peal;
Then she descends; she loves the thunder's voice,
She wheels, and sports amid the rattling clouds,
Undazzled gazes on the sheeted blaze,
Darts at the flash, or, hung in hovering poise,
Delighted hears the music of the roar.
Nor does the wintry blast, the drifting fall,
Shrouded in night, and, with a death-hand grasp,
Benumbing life, drive her to seek the roof
Of cave, or hollow cliff; firm on her perch,
Her ancient and accustomed rock, she sits,
With wing-couch'd head, and, to the morning light,
Appears a frost-rent fragment, coped with snow.
Yet her, invulnerable as she seems
By every change of elemental power,
The art of man, the general foe of man
And bird and beast, subdues; the leaden bolt,
Slung from the mimic lightning's nitrous wing,
Brings low her head; her close and mailed plumage
Avails her nought, for higher than her perch
The clambering marksman lies, and takes his aim
Instant upon her flight, when every plume
Ruffling expands to catch the lifting gale.
She has the death; upward a little space
She springs, then plumb-down drops: the victor stands,
Long listening, ere he hear the fall; at last,
The crashing branches of the unseen wood,
Far down below, send echoing up the sound,
That faintly rises to his leaning ear.
But, woe to him! if, with the mortal wound,
She still retain strength to revenge the wrong:
Her bleeding wing she veers; her madden'd eye
Discerns the lurking wretch; on him she springs;
One talon clutch'd, with life's last struggling throes
Convulsed, is buried at his heart; the other
Deep in his tortured eyeballs is transfixed:
Pleased she expires upon his writhing breast.
Of bulk more huge, and borne on broader vans,
The eagle of the sea from Atlas soars,
Or Teneriffe's hoar peak, and stretches far
Above the Atlantic wave, contemning distance.
The watchful helmsman from the stern descries,
And hails her course, and many an eye is raised
Loftier she flies than hundred times mast-height:
Onward she floats, then plunges from her soar
Down to the ship, as if she aim'd to perch
Upon the mainmast pinnacle; but up again
She mounts Alp high, and, with her lower'd head
Suspended, eyes the bulging sails, disdains
Their tardy course, outflies the hurrying rack,
And, disappearing, mingles with the clouds.