Part 7

“Brother, had we but time to live, And fleet the careless hours together, With all that leisure has to give Of perfect life and peaceful weather,

“The Rich Man’s halls, the anxious faces, The weary Forum, courts, and cases Should know us not; but quiet nooks, But summer shade by field and well, But county rides, and talk of books, At home, with these, we fain would dwell!

“Now neither lives, but day by day Sees the suns wasting in the west, And feels their flight, and doth delay To lead the life he loveth best.”

So from thy city prison broke, Martial, thy wail for life misspent, And so, through London’s noise and smoke My heart replies to the lament.

For dear as Tagus with his gold, And swifter Salo, were to thee, So dear to me the woods that fold The streams that circle Fernielea!

APRIL ON TWEED.

AS birds are fain to build their nest The first soft sunny day, So longing wakens in my breast A month before the May, When now the wind is from the West, And Winter melts away.

The snow lies yet on Eildon Hill, But soft the breezes blow. If melting snows the waters fill, We nothing heed the snow, But we must up and take our will,— A fishing will we go!

Below the branches brown and bare, Beneath the primrose lea, The trout lies waiting for his fare, A hungry trout is he; He’s hooked, and springs and splashes there Like salmon from the sea!

Oh, April tide’s a pleasant tide, However times may fall, And sweet to welcome Spring, the Bride, You hear the mavis call; But all adown the water-side The Spring’s most fair of all.

TIRED OF TOWNS.

‘When we spoke to her of the New Jerusalem, she said she would rather go to a country place in Heaven.’

Letters from the Black Country.

I’M weary of towns, it seems a’most a pity We didn’t stop down i’ the country and clem, And you say that I’m bound for another city, For the streets o’ the New Jerusalem.

And the streets are never like Sheffield, here, Nor the smoke don’t cling like a smut to them; But the water o’ life flows cool and clear Through the streets o’ the New Jerusalem.

And the houses, you say, are of jasper cut, And the gates are gaudy wi’ gold and gem; But there’s times I could wish as the gates was shut— The gates o’ the New Jerusalem.

For I come from a country that’s over-built Wi’ streets that stifle, and walls that hem, And the gorse on a common’s worth all the gilt And the gold of your New Jerusalem.

And I hope that they’ll bring me, in Paradise, To green lanes leafy wi’ bough and stem— To a country place in the land o’ the skies, And not to the New Jerusalem.

SCYTHE SONG.

MOWERS, weary and brown, and blithe, What is the word methinks ye know, Endless over-word that the Scythe Sings to the blades of the grass below? Scythes that swing in the grass and clover, Something, still, they say as they pass; What is the word that, over and over, Sings the Scythe to the flowers and grass?

Hush, ah hush, the Scythes are saying, Hush, and heed not, and fall asleep; Hush, they say to the grasses swaying, Hush, they sing to the clover deep! Hush—’tis the lullaby Time is singing— Hush, and heed not, for all things pass, Hush, ah hush! and the Scythes are swinging Over the clover, over the grass!

PEN AND INK.

YE wanderers that were my sires, Who read men’s fortunes in the hand, Who voyaged with your smithy fires From waste to waste across the land, Why did you leave for garth and town Your life by heath and river’s brink, Why lay your gipsy freedom down And doom your child to Pen and Ink?

You wearied of the wild-wood meal That crowned, or failed to crown, the day; Too honest or too tame to steal You broke into the beaten way; Plied loom or awl like other men, And learned to love the guineas’ chink— Oh, recreant sires, who doomed me then To earn so few—with Pen and Ink!

Where it hath fallen the tree must lie. ’Tis over late for me to roam, Yet the caged bird who hears the cry Of his wild fellows fleeting home, May feel no sharper pang than mine, Who seem to hear, whene’er I think, Spate in the stream, and wind in pine, Call me to quit dull Pen and Ink.

For then the spirit wandering, That slept within the blood, awakes; For then the summer and the spring I fain would meet by streams and lakes; But ah, my Birthright long is sold, But custom chains me, link on link, And I must get me, as of old, Back to my tools, to Pen and Ink.

A DREAM.

WHY will you haunt my sleep? You know it may not be, The grave is wide and deep, That sunders you and me; In bitter dreams we reap The sorrow we have sown, And I would I were asleep, Forgotten and alone!