Classic Poem

PART I.

Ancestral England! filial is the love
And reverential our faith in thee,
Mindful of all thou hast been, all thou art.
Among thy vales with watchful trees o'erhung,
Thy brooks' low cadence swelling at our feet,
Thy cottages' grey faces peering seen
Through overshadowing boughs, while the eye feeds
Upon the beauty that it half creates,
Feeling its spirit in our life instilled,
Then do we murmur from our heart of hearts,
" How beautiful is England!"
Such the thought,
Breathing unconscious utterance as I neared
The mansion of the Pastor on the lea.
Day gathered up his golden shafts of light,
And left to musing twilight the stilled scene;
The Spirit of Joy presided o'er the spot,
Felt in its hues, heard in the rushing stream
That clove through depths unseen its flashing course.
The devious path, through avenues of limes,
Opened upon the distant vicarage.
The Pastor heard not my approach, the rays
Of light shed over him their mellowed hues,
As, resting by an oak, he looked a part
Of Nature and the scene. The aged man
Was not alone; his daughter by his side;
I felt a joy, while watching her, to think
Such flowers expanded in our solitudes.
In her retiring shyness dwelt a grace,
While her eyes looked from their long fringing lids
As if recoiling from the conscious gaze.
Youth covered her like light; the purity
Of her fine blood spake out in the rose hues
That faintly tinged her cheek.

Such as she gave
Angelic types, but she was human still;
To whom the finest impulses of life
Were things familiar and unrepressed.
The eye while watching blessed her with a hope,
Akin to fear, that such a form might pass
Unscathed along the thorny paths of life.

I turned to him, perceived not; years had passed
Since I had listened to that grey-haired sage,
The stationary star of those wild wastes,
Diffusing round his influence benign:
A heedful ear according to the wronged;
Reproof to the oppressor dealt, and hope
To the oppressed with grief or sickness bowed,
Or journeying forth to life beyond the grave
In him dwelt age with moral dignity;
From his pale brow retired the silvery hair;
His lips, compressed by thought, proclaimed the lot
Of those who feel and suffer.
From our hearts
Our greeting flowed, the earnest of delight;
" Time has lapsed soundlessly since we have met;
The light within your eye glows steadfastly
As from an altar-place, your form unbowed.
I come to walk these solitudes with you,
Nature and human life to contemplate;
To harvest the experience of your years,
Gathered from thought and action; and to claim
Knowledge of other minds who this retreat
Have chosen, to be near you."
" But my heart,
Conscious of truth, has saddened by the way.
A change has fallen o'er our peasantry;
The natural health of their ancestral blood
Is tainted, old simplicity outgrown;
Beliefs from childhood nursed, that questioned not,
And faiths grafted on venerating love.
A cavilling and restless spirit is born;
The restlessness that craves a peace unfound.
The ashes of the knowledge-tree are plucked;
The harmonies of rule are discords felt
To bosoms unattuned, and by the hearth
Where sate religion sanctified by time,
And reverence, is disbelief avowed.
Wholesome restraints of duty's discipline,
Worn by confiding love, are cast aside.
Gone, too, those outward signs of inner faith,
Symbols Religion watched with cheerful eye:
Old Christmas gambols, and quaint merriment,
All-Hallowmas, May festivals, are now
Remembrances of childish things that were
No longer merry England, she is sad;
Regeneration she has undergone,
But is she happier or wiser grown?
What can restore domestic peace? the tones
Of trusting love, the quiet which is joy,
The mutual faith and hope, the social hearth,
And all the blessed sanctities of home?"

A shadow gathered on the Pastor's brow;
" Not unperceived the taint of such decay:
I mourned, till wisdom, whose calm vision rests
Upon the future growing from the past,
Told me how vain, how idle was my grief.
Transitions are there in man's moral state,
Rough interruption in ascents to truth.
Old natures are cast off, old habits scorned.
Knowledge has left her college-halls to sit
With children round her knees; the worm, its shell
Discarding, soars aloft a butterfly,
But, as by Egypt typed, the ascending soul
Is symbolled here. But shall not lights revealed
Discern vain doctrines or fanatic faiths?
The peasant's mind a blessing shall become,
Erewhile a curse; the rule of self-respect,
Conscience, and law of obligation, owned.
So from time's birth the nations they have swayed,
Repelled, not crushed, man's answering heart unchanged.
Virtue, the moral sun, obscured, was felt,
That somewhere fell the calm and sunshine still.

In vain sate Vice on altars deified,
In vain the senses on indulgence fed;
Apathy followed, and calm happiness sought
As by the preacher, was unfound. Man waked;
The accusing witness in himself was felt,
Conscience, the presence of a deity
Throned in his human temple; on its wall
A shadowy hand self-condemnation traced;
No revelation more was sought, nor dread
Of penal doom created heaven and hell
Within the retributive soul.
" Nor mourn
Our lighter traits of character effaced
Oh, not in May-pole wreaths or painted booths
Dwells happiness, meek child of quiet growth,
Of sober thought from temperance reared, remote
From blustering crowds, or superstitious fear.
From an impulsive age we graduate
To a serener being; we ascend
To purer realms of thought that shall reveal.
Infinite faculties folded up in man.
Then shall humility, child of knowledge, mourn
Passions once loved; truth shall be reverenced
In the deep heart, until the golden age
Becomes no more a dream.
" You have beheld
Poverty grind the labourer; you have seen
The smoke of factories; the artisan
In vice degraded; and the iron miner,
Scarce less than savage in his sunless cell.
Here, judge the man of nature and of art;
Two spirits dwell among these solitudes,
Minds noticeable 'mid the eminent.
One dwells apart from us, a fallen man;
A sister-spirit, with a darker tale,
Has passed to her account. But enter here,
Our parsonage is your resting-place and home."

His daughter vanished then, intent to press
Her hospitality. I paused to dwell
On that grey cot, the deep bay casements there,
The gables wrought, the mullioned arch, the porch,
And the quaint pinnacles with ivy crowned.
The low verandah pillared on wreathed trunks
The panes o'erbrowed, and cast a freshening shade
O'er flower-beds beneath of richest earth.
And there the beautiful of nature flourished,
The ever-loved, the ever-joyous flowers,
Whose blossomings are laughter. There the rose
In languor her dew-dripping cheek declined,
Her name a blessing, sanctified by love,
And child-remembrances; the marigold
Opened her gorgeous beauty to the sun,
To be looked on by no inferior eye
There, radiate, shone the star-like jessamine;
The iris, drooping in the luxury
Of a fine sorrow, her blue orbs half-closed;
The azalea leaned against the soft grey wall;
There paled the delicate anemoni,
Turning away her frail head from the wind,
Like slighted maiden feeding her vain grief;
And there the humbler wall-flower shed a breath
That realised Elysium.
" You dwell
On them with loving eyes, and I have felt,
In all their gentleness they have inner tones
Deeper than those of mountains or of floods.
Life's opening germ, youth's blossoming, decline,
And fall of age, their holy lips reveal.
They teach us how to live and how to die,
Shedding their spirits in us with their breath.
The insect quaffs its chalice there, and parts
Contented; there the ethereal dews are caught
And cherished; when their ministry is done,
They quietly surrender up to Nature
Their pure and beautiful being.
" I have watched,
With eyes suffused, those chaplets that wreathed Earth,
When before God she stood forth to be made.
I felt a wiser man while blessing them,
Drawing the holiness they gave. Here rest;
Our social board and home partake; the sun
Shall wake us to our morning pilgrimage."