IN THE FIELDS.

BY ISIDORE G, ASCHER.

WHY search for secrets of the past,
Piercing the earth for dusty lore?
What boots it now what mammoth forms
Had life in days of yore?

But cast your rapture on the earth,
Upon the miracles at your feet,
The spiral windings of the grass,
So beautiful and sweet.

The life that wakes beneath your gaze
Is lovelier than the ages' dust,
More awe-inspiring than the doubts
Of earth's primeval crust.

*

The lucky grass doth feel her tread,
She walks, a maiden mystery,
The symbol of the perfect bloom

That in the fields we see.

You cannot fathom all her looks,
The archness of her dimpling smile;

Or why she loiters listlessly

Upon the mossy stile.

Just sixteen transient, happy springs

Have lent their glow to make her bright,

To crown her on this vernal morn

With all the season's light!

For who can count the waves of grass,
Where lurking sunbeams bask and brood?

Or round a verse with every charm

Of blushing maidenhood?

For all the ravishing warmth and bloom

The glory of the virgin May,

Are centred in a joyous face,

Where smiles and dimples play.

She kens not much of learned books,

But in the azure of her eyes

Is beauty, which to read aright

Is far beyond the wise.

In many a curve and many a wave

Her hair rolls wanton to the wind;

Her ways are touched with Nature's grace,
That cannot be defined.

Anon, she listens anxiously,'

To hear the church bells' welcome sound,

And musing waits, and taps her feet

Upon the grassy ground.

She kens not much of musty tomes,
For books, like men, may oft deceive,
Her knowledge lingers in a phrase-
To love and to believe.

The church bells chime a tone of praise,
She listens with enraptured ears,
As clad in Sunday gear, unstained,

Her world of love appears.

She cannot heed his voice uncouth,
His clumsy gait, his dullard face,
For love has throned him in her eyes
With majesty and grace.

The air is rich with clover breath,
The spiral grass is fair to see,
The joy and beauty of the morn
Do bear them company.

The wind has lent the trees a voice,

The wild birds sing with Nature's art, And all the vagrant melodies

Wake echoes in the heart.

And richer, purer than the spray

Of clustering blooms, that promise fruit, Is every hope within her breast,

Where love has taken root.

O wondrous power of human love,
That drapes the world with loveliness!
And tints the lowliest life with light,
To sanctify and bless.

Her voice is hushed with deep content,
She gives her hand within his clasp,

And only death can render void

Love's symbol in that grasp.

What boots it that their cares are mean?
Can riches hallow human love,

Or strengthen hope, or deepen trust,

Or faith, or goodness prove?

They press the golden buttercups,

Whose tint is on her wavy hair,

And all the fields are gay with smiles,
To bless the constant pair.

Trip lightly o'er the spiral grass,

Walk hand in hand through weal and woe, Though years have gaps of weariness,

And mingled shade and glow.

Tread briskly through the fields of life,
That spread before you joy and bloom,
And Love shall deck with Love's own light
Your darkest hour of gloom.

THE UNWELCOME NEWS-BRINGER.

A CUE FROM SHAKSPEARE.

BY FRANCIS JACOX.

GOOD and trusty fellow, and attached follower of Northumberland's, as Morton is, Northumberland shrinks from that man's presence, and avoids the sound of his voice, from the hour he brought the earl tidings of Harry Percy's death. For,

-the first bringer of unwelcome news Hath but a losing office; and his tongue Sounds ever after as a sullen bell,

Remember'd knolling a departing friend.*

Well may Rosse deprecate the antipathy of Macduff, when breaking to him the bitter bad news of his massacred household:

Let not your ears despise my tongue for ever,

Which shall possess them with the heaviest sound

That ever yet they heard.†

Salisbury finds a worse than ungracious reception from the noble Lady Constance, when he brings her word of adverse events. Proud peer and loyal soldier though she knows him to be, she cannot control a passionate outburst of personal aversion, of the instant born, and at the spur of the moment expressed

Fellow, be gone; I cannot brook thy sight;
This news hath made thee a most ugly man.

Sal. What other harm have I, good lady, done,
But spoke the harm that is by others done?

Const. Which harm within itself so heinous is,
As it makes harmful all that speak of it.‡

Lewis the Dauphin's reception of a messenger of disaster in the same play,§ is, "Ah, foul shrewd news!-Beshrew thy very heart!" Richard the Second's gentle queen becomes a very shrew in her onset on the gardener that reports her husband's fall:

-How dares

Thy harsh-rude tongue sound this unpleasing news?

*

*

*Say, where, when, and how,

Cam'st thou by these ill-tidings? speak, thou wretch.

Vain is the poor bullied gardener's "Pardon me, madam; little joy have I to breathe this news:" he but brings upon himself this comminatory rhyme without reason,

Gardener, for telling me this news of woe,

I would the plants thou graft'st may never grow.||

* Second Part of King Henry IV., Act I. Sc. 1.

† Macbeth, Act. IV. Sc. 3.

§ Act V. Sc. 5.

King John, Act III. Sc. 1.

King Richard II., Act III. Sc. 4

So with Juliet turning on the Nurse and her black intelligence: "What devil art thou, that dost torment me thus ?"* "O pardon me for bringing these ill news," is Balthasar's deprecating appeal to Romeo, when acquainting him with Juliet's death.-Indeed, Shakspeare abounds in illustrations of this topic-the unthankful office of the unwelcome newsbringer; other and diversified examples of which will occur farther on.

Adam Smith's chapter on Merit and Demerit contains some remarks on the tendency of the agreeable or disagreeable effects of an action to throw a shadow of merit or demerit upon the agent, though in his intentions there be nothing deserving praise or blame, or at least that deserves them in the degree in which we are apt to bestow them. "Thus, even the messenger of bad news is disagreeable to us," just as, on the contrary, we feel a sort of gratitude to the man who brings us good tidings: for a moment we look upon them both as the authors, the one of our good, the other of our bad fortune, and regard them in some measure as if they had really brought about the events which they only give an account of. As the first author of our joy is naturally the object of a transitory gratitude, so the first author of our sorrow is just as naturally the object of a (not always) transitory resentment.‡

Sydney Smith, again, in one of his lectures on Moral Philosophy, expatiates on the same theme-evidently fresh from the study of Father Adam. The messenger of good news, he says, is always an object of benevolence every one knows that an officer who brings home the news of a victory, receives a donation in money, and is commonly knighted or promoted. Strictly speaking, it would be just as equitable, the lecturer affirms, to mulet him of half a year's pay for bringing home the news of a defeat, as to present him with 5001. for bringing home the news of a victory; but, if they be not too great, all men sympathise with the excesses of the generous and benevolent passions; while they restrain the malevolent principles within the most rigid bounds of justice. "That the messenger of disastrous news should be punished, would appear to the impartial spectator the most horrible injustice; but no one envies his reward to him who brings good intelligence, though no one pretends to say that he has deserved it."§

Deserved it, quotha? Use every man after his desert, as Hamlet says, and who shall 'scape whipping? Which is about the only consolation, as regards Merit and Demerit, that can be suggested to or for such bringers of unwelcome news as have been whipped, or otherwise evil entreated, by those to whom they were sent.

Pope considers that the speech of Antilochus, when breaking to *Romeo and Juliet, III., 2.

† Ibid., Act. V. Sc. 1.

"Tigranes, King of Armenia, struck off the head of the man who brought him the first account of the approach of a formidable enemy. To punish in this manner the author of bad tidings, seems barbarous and inhuman: yet to reward the messenger of good news is not disagreeable to us; we think it suitable to the bounty of kings. But why do we make this difference, since, if there is no fault in the one, neither is there any merit in the other? It is because any sort of reason seems sufficient to authorise the exertion of the social and benevolent affections; but it requires the most solid and substantial to make us enter into that of the unsocial and malevolent."-Adam Smith, Theory of Moral Sentiments, part ii. sect. iii.

§ Elementary Sketches of Moral Philosophy, by Rev. Sydney Smith, Lect. xxii.

Achilles the fatal news of his friend's death, ought to serve as a model for the brevity with which so dreadful a piece of news should be delivered.

Sad tidings, son of Peleus! thou must hear,
And wretched I, th' unwilling messenger!
Dead is Patroclus! For his corse they fight,
His naked corse; his arms are Hector's right.*

For, in great distresses, argues the translator-critic, after Eustathius, there is nothing more ridiculous than a messenger who begins a long story with pathetic descriptions; he speaks without being heard; for the person to whom he addresses himself has no time to attend to him: the first word which discovers to him his misfortune, has made him deaf to all the rest. And, it may be added, has made the messenger hateful in his sight, and the messenger's accents cruel discord in his ears.

Reason good have the slaves who inform Gamelyn, in Chaucer, of his brother's active antagonism,-to deprecate their lord's fury:

Whan they had him founde, on knees they hem sette,
And adoun with here hood, and here lord grette:

'Sire, wraththe you nought, for the good roode,

For we have brought you tydynges, but they be nat goode.†

A man of Gamelyn's violent temper might be expected to wreak his vengeance on the slave who brought him evil tidings, observes one of the poet's annotators; and adds, "This is a feeling by no means peculiar to the middle ages."+

When the old king, Muley Aben Hassan, was roused at midnight in the Alhambra, by the news that Boabdil had surprised the city, in the first transports of his rage, says Washington Irving, § he would have struck the messenger to the earth.

A dukedom had been intended for Lord Darnley; but the higher title was suspended, and news reached him in May, 1565, that on the 15th, he, the Queen of Scots' betrothed, was to be created Earl of Ross at Stirling; and "the foolish boy struck with his dagger at the justiceclerk who was sent to tell him of the unwelcome change."||

One is rather gratified than grieved, somehow, at the smiting and smashing that "spiteful fop" receives, in the Story of Rimini,-as the guerdon for his malign haste to inform Prince Giovanni of the faithlessness of wife and brother:

Pale first, then red, his eyes upon the stretch,

Then deadly white, the husband heard the wretch,
Who in soft terms, almost with lurking smile,
Ran on, expressing his "regret" the while.
The husband, prince, cripple, and brother heard;
Then seem'd astonished at the man,-then stirr'd
His tongue but could not speak; then dash'd aside
His chair as he arose, and loudly cried,

"Liar and madman!

Regorge the filth in thy detested throat."

And at the word, with his huge fist he smote

* Pope's Iliad, XVIII. 21-4.

R. Bell, Annotated Chaucer, I. 261.

The Coke's Tale of Gamelyn.
Conquest of Granada, ch. xxi.

Froude, History of the Reign of Elizabeth, vol. ii. p. 153.