Oh! 'tis a second youth to walk with youth,
And take sweet lessons from our father's child,
Wise from Heaven's school, in joys that bring no ruth!
But the sear leaf must fall tho' Autumn gild
Most summer-like; soon comes our winter wild,
Yellow from green to tear; the stake, a day
Stands in the hedge, as if no axe had killed-
Midst the green thorns yet green-but how in May?
Lone in its black it stands, in crimsoned silver they.
While to the child we act that stake's short part,
Uphold to meet a May we must not share,
Fast from the lip, the lap, the hand (not heart!)
He grows away, when most we need him there,
While fools congratulate, and we despair;
Till like the rampant hedge still flourished higher,
Flaunting wild roses o'er that stake's head bare,
The full-blown man o'erlooks the sunken sire,
Left like that log for th' earth, or peradventure-fire.
Thus Life's hopes foundered (ev'n to this small hand)
In pale succession shown, like corses bare,
On this my everlasting shipwreck-strand;
Since those long-loved, long-watched, we leave to fare
We know not how, and go we know not where,
Dear Nature, hide me from those hopes decayed!
Since love must mourn, minds die, and hearts despair,
From genius the curse, and fame the shade,
"Wild Wales!" as from the hounds a fawn close laid, This boy's yet untorn heart keep ever unbetrayed.
The heart has its two ages-first a span,
The blithe "good morrow" to th' whole living race,
And bright blush for the new acquaintance, Man!
The next of fierce recoiling-the long space
Of stern and mournful turning from his face;
Then makes the wounded mind its solemn day
Of night-a mountain its loved dwelling-place;
In vain! that dropp'd acquaintance grinning gay,
Crosses his wild path still-then we will stray
In search of wilder yet,-on then, mine own, away!
As some fair medal stamped with Cæsar's brow,
Coins by long contact wear the god-like face,
Yet leave the bold relief; so, Cambria! now
Half thy sublime do fashion's steps efface,
All, save thy mountain's everlasting grace;
All that of Nature's charms man can deform,
Thy heights, thy depths, her summer idling-place;
Not th' eagle's home outsoars th' incessant swarm,
While Bow-bell dwellers climb the "dwelling of the storm."
Yet thou art still the same, majestic land!
Thy cataract's voice as great as in the hour
It leaped forth roaring from th' Almighty hand,
Thy "sea of mountains" with a sea's own power
Resists man's stamp; tho' (slower to devour)
A little longer than that spares a wreck,
This on its green breast bears the mouldering tower,
As the next wave engulfs th' untrodden deck,
Another age rolls on and vanishes the speck.
Then grieve not thou, Nature's true worshipper,
That those vain impotents infest her shrine,
As cripples hang their crutches up with her
Leaving of their mind's impotence some sign
Midst her green cloisters, and her aisles divine,
Mock-ruin-Gothic arch-embattled cot-
O'erlook those thou, ev'n as a silver mine
Its happy owner sees in thought, and not
The lead-ore heaps, and huts disfiguring the spot.
Such hidden wealth beneath deformity
This land still holds for thee (for me perchance)
Each cowslip dell-by taste's rich alchemy,
Each mountain where the morning sunbeams dance,
Our golden mine-our rich inheritance!
Then come, whoe'er thou art, while fashion's sons
Her Limbos seek, and scarce on Nature glance;
Come where, round flowering roofs the rock-brook runs,
Where old wives knit and spin by rising-setting suns.
Or trace it up by primrosed isles, and rock
And root, where white its little cataracts rave,
Climb where in high blue bleats the spring-white flock
And the boy shepherd,-where tall foxgloves wave
Round the lone carnedd-pipes upon a grave,
Nor dreams that sweet-breathed bank a charnel's roof;
Emblem of man! earth's tyrant, and death's slave,
Who walks on tombs, yet deems death still aloof,
Nor sees his pale pale horse," nor hears his thundering hoof!
Nor life becalmed alone in this green calm
Of Nature, meets the view, but passions high-
Still more terrific for her gentle psalm
Of birds, woods, waterfalls,—her bluest eye
Brew the red rain of mortal tragedy:
So when tornados sweep the torrid zone,
It pours, howls, thunders, in a cloudless sky,*
In whose blue fields sits Phoebus all alone,
And with a dreadful smile sees half a realm o'erthrown.
As Nature's frightful smiling treachery,
That such in scenes that seem her sinless own,
Peaceful and sweet-appears such tragedy;
The midnight murdert-the bog-burial lone,
Warm in the blood, earth smothering the groan!
Need we the Nine? behold you ten times nine
Black peals, the thunder's castellated throne!
Genius of Milton! had such muse been thine,
Who knows but mightier still had soared thy "mighty line."
Thee, glorious Spirit, shall I dare to pity?
Alas for thee in populous city pent!'
Thy pain, thy smothering in the noisome city,
Surely those lines did feelingly lament;
Ah! hadst thou breathed 'grass, dew, and dairy's scent,'
How hadst thou soared up heaven-like eagle freed!
In fierce rebellion's strife thou hadst not spent
Thy fire, nor on that apple tree, that deed'
Which most shocks mortal faith,' of our immortal creed.
From Wales to Milton! bold, not wild the flight
From lofty landscape to a loftier mind;
Enough-henceforth in valley or on height,
Past days or present-to our land confined,
What terror, pity, or delight lie shrined
(Like diamonds in their rock-dew uncongealed,
Rich nestlings of the sun,) be ours to find,
In mountain life or landscape-soft concealed
Or life flowers lurking low in some deep grassy field.
* St. Pierre describes this phenomenon in his 'Harmonies of Nature.' A murder was committed not very long since, on a woman enceinte, under these horrible circumstances, and the murderer (— Evans) executed at Brecknock.
↑ The world is free to smile at this, my solitary opinion, of Milton's subject. Perhaps the tremendous awe with which this very early fact in
As some mild face of fallen beauty, where
Grief, sin, and shame have passed-those pass'd away,
Steals a pathetic beauty from despair;
So in this pensive land, the Norman's prey,
Full of old graves and towers in green decay;
Though groans no more affright, nor blood defile
The silver brooks, where leaves and sunbeams play,
The tragic past still haunts each mountain aisle,
Moans in the winter-roar, and saddens summer's smile.
Lo! through disparted cliffs, with foam and dash,
Wild Edwy leaping from her dungeon rock,
Barred by wild branching oak and mountain ash,
On Wye's blue breast reposing from the shock;
Above some high perch'd straggler from the flock
Looks down the precipice-scene grand, yet gay :
But how doth it deep feeling's fount unlock,
When there thought sees a hunted king at bay,
Scene of a last-lost king's, a kingdom's fatal day!
Where scarce yon green tower peeps above the wood,
Flanked by two rivers in a mountain nook,
Homeless at home, the monarch-outcast stood,
And o'er the Wye turned many a longing look,
From his last friends cut off,-then sadly took
His fatal way, while angels watched th' event;
Forsaken by the land he ne'er forsook-
Straight to dethronement, death, and burial went:
A shepherd ridge of sod* is all his monument!
Nor his alone,-“Hic jacet Cambria:”
With broken sword upon that tomb-turf small
Departing freedom graved, for from that day
Earth was she, and no more! the virtues all,
Warned by the advent of a foul night-fall,
Sought their high seats in heaven; and foul, and fell,
All the dark passions waked beneath its pall,
The blood-fed vampires of that night of hell,
Which howl in human hearts when mercy bids farewell.
Sacred History is invested, to me renders it repulsive in poetry. The expression is Dryden's-
What more could shock my faith than three in one?
Hind and Panther.
• A green turf eminence by the river Irvon, named Cefn y bedd, a “back or ridge of the grave," marks the sepulture of Llewelyn, last Prince of Wales. The treason by which he is believed to have been betrayed to his enemies, is well known.
All souls grew perjured, and all hands embrued;
Save the wild justice of the sword—was none;
Sacred no oath, but to some deadly feud
To which the dying father swore the son;
All minds "on bloody courses set" as one!
Men fled to outlaw-murderers from their kin!†
Lawless he left the land who lawless won,
Left to each other's fire and sword and sin,
To tame the kingdom's heart he little cared to win.
"Twixt freedom's set, and monarchy's full sway,
Such the red interregnum-twilight dire!
When all Nant Conway "in cold ashes" lay,
From all its pastoral towns did not aspire
One little smoke, (when spent that funeral fire,)
To tell of one poor head not homeless yet;
One touch of pity, midst that wide-wreaked ire,
Rare on time's page as peeping violet,
Left on a field of dead, pure from its bloody sweat.
Such the grey mother's wild hand interposed
'Twixt the sword falling and her darling's head;
That son's last look (ev'n as his eyelids closed,)
On that old bleeding hand, the last he said—
"Revenge it for me all who live! I'm dead!"
Such that fierce sister's wild love-desperate deed,
Who, for a waylaid husband, strong in dread,
Tore up a foot-bridge, faced a headlong steed,
Caught by the flying heels, and hung upon his speed!
The brother smote her, the less barbarous beast
Spared, while she raged and wept and prayed for life,
(Yes, life, for with that life her own had ceased!)
On rode the murderer to the ambush-strife;
But the doomed man as fond a friend possest,
A foster-brother-tie in that day rife,
The gentle cuckoo of Welsh parents' nest,
Pleased to behold him play, loved, loving, like the rest.
* The interval between the imperfect conquest of Wales by Edward I. and the restoration of something like law and order under Henry VII. presents a dreadful page in its history. "The history of our country in that period," says Pennant, "is but the record of perfidy and blood." Foreign and internal fury equally desolated the country. All the incidents recorded in these stanzas are literally transplanted from Sir John Wynne's History of the Gwedyr family.
An ancestor of Sir John Wynne removed from his own residence to a neighbourhood infested by bandits and outlaws, and gave as a reason that he had rather live there than stay to be murdered by his own kinsmen.
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