'And in the summer time, when days are long, And with the dancers and the minstrels' song, 'Till the foundations of the mountains fail, Then home he went and left the Hart, stone-dead, With breathless nostrils stretch'd above the spring. Soon did the Knight perform what he had said; And far and wide the fame thereof did ring. Ere thrice the moon into her port had steered, And near the fountain flowers of stature tall, And thither, when the summer days were long, The Knight, Sir Walter, died in course of time, PART II. The moving accident is not my trade; As I from Hawes to Richmond did repair, What this imported I could ill divine; The trees were grey, with neither arms nor head; I looked upon the hill both far and near, I stood in various thoughts and fancies lost, The Shepherd stopped, and that same story told Which in my former rhyme I have rehearsed; 'A jolly place,' said he, 'in times of old! But something ails it now; the spot is curst. 'You see those lifeless stumps of aspen wood— Some say that they are beeches, others elmsThese were the bower; and here a mansion stood, The finest palace of a hundred realms! 'The arbour does its own condition tell; 'There's neither dog nor heifer, horse nor sheep, 'Some say that here a murder has been done, 'What thoughts must through the creature's brain have past! Even from the topmost stone upon the steep, Are but three bounds-and look, Sir, at this lastO master! it has been a cruel leap. 'For thirteen hours he ran a desperate race; And in my simple mind we cannot tell What cause the Hart might have to love this place, And come and make his death-bed near the well. I "Here on the grass, perhaps, asleep he sank, Lulled by the fountain in the summer tide; This water was perhaps the first he drank, When he had wandered from his mother's side. 'In April here beneath the flowering thorn, 'Now here is neither grass nor pleasant shade; The sun on drearier hollow never shone; So will it be, as I have often said, Till trees, and stones, and fountain all are gone.' 'Grey-headed Shepherd, thou hast spoken well; 'The Being that is in the clouds and air, 'The pleasure house is dust, behind, before, 'She leaves these objects to a slow decay, That what we are, and have been, may be known; But at the coming of a milder day, These monuments shall all be overgrown. 'One lesson, Shepherd, let us two divide, Taught both by what she shows and what conceals, Never to blend our pleasure or our pride, With sorrow of the meanest thing that feels.' Before the stout harvesters falleth the grain, But yonder aslant comes the silvery rain, Adown the white highway like cavalry fleet, And the boy crouches close to the blackberry wall. The swallows alone take the storm on their wing, And, taunting the tree-sheltered labourers, sing, Like pebbles the rain breaks the face of the spring, While a bubble darts up from each widening ring; And the boy in dismay hears the loud shower fall. But soon are the harvesters tossing their sheaves; The robin darts out from his bower of leaves; peereth forth from the moss-covered The wren eaves; And the rain-spatter'd urchin now gladly perceives That the beautiful bow bendeth over them all. T. B. Read |