He not resembles those base traffickers
Who compass sea and land, in journeys oft,
And oft in perils, for no righteous cause,
Not for the love of God or man, but love
Of filthy lucre: His are nobler aims—
The means of his improvement lie at hand
Within a nearer circle, and he reads
The map of life, and understands it well,
With half the pains that others take to prove
How little they have learn'd, or of themselves,
Or of their brethren of mankind. He ne'er
Wander'd to distant climes to borrow thence
Opinions, fashions, dress; nor visited
The courts of princes, saw their levees, sat
With great ones in their halls of state, nor went
On foreign embassy, with pomp and train
And numerous retinue, to form the leagues
Of peace or war. More studious he to know
Himself; to scan the nature, character,
And motives of his actions, to weigh well
Their consequences, and sum up the amount.
He has a world within, where most he lives,
Nor yet by narrow limits circumscribed,
The world of reason, knowledge, the wide range
Of intellect, the empire of the mind!
And, midst the calm of cool collected thought,
He meditates the noblest purposes,
Such as may benefit the public weal,
And closer knit the ties of social man
In blessed concord and sweet sympathy!
Nor boasts he greater state than he who sways
His passions well; who curbs his headstrong will,
And, with an absolute rule, over himself
Reigns undisputed lord! Sublime he sits
With sceptred Reason on her star-girt throne,
And looking down, with calm composure, hears
The hubbub and the din, the busy stir
And turmoil of the world, and smiles serene.
He is a landmark to the present age;
And to the generations yet to come
He leaves a monument of his own worth,
That shall outlive the pompous sepulchres
Where kings enshrine their dust. Nor chance,
nor fate,
Nor lapse of time, nor mortal circumstance
Shall waver his fix'd resolution,
Nor tempt his feet to deviate from the path
Of rectitude; while in his daily course
He presses forward towards the glorious prize
Of immortality; advancing still
In knowledge, virtue, and the love of God.
ON VISITING A SCENE IN ARGYLESHIRE.
Ar the silence of twilight's contemplative hour,
I have mused in a sorrowful mood
On the wind shaken weeds that embosom the bower
Where the home of my forefathers stood.
All ruin'd and wild is their roofless abode,
And lonely the dark raven's sheltering tree, And travel'd by few is the grass-cover'd road, Where the hunter of deer and the warrior trode, To his hills that encircle the sea.
Yet wandering I found, on my ruinous walk,
By the dial-stone aged and green,
One Rose of the wilderness left on its stalk,
To mark where a garden had been:
Like a brotherless hermit, the last of its race,
All wild in the silence of nature, it drew
From each wandering sunbeam a lonely embrace; For the nightweed and thorn overshadow'd the place
Where the flower of my forefathers grew.
Sweet Bud of the wilderness! emblem of all
That survives in this desolate heart!
The fabric of bliss to its centre may fall!
But Patience shall never depart
Though the wilds of enchantment, all vernal and bright,
In the days of delusion by fancy combined With the vanishing phantoms of love and delight, Abandon my soul like a dream of the night, And leave but a desert behind.
Be hush'd, my dark spirit! for Wisdom condemns
When the faint and the feeble deplore;
Be strong as the rock of the ocean that stems
A thousand wild waves on the shore-
Through the perils of Chance and the scowl of
Disdain
May thy front be unalter'd, thy courage elate! Ah, even the name I have worship'd in vain Shall awake not the sigh of remembrance again! To bear is to conquer our fate!
INSCRIBED BENEATH THE PICTURE
OF AN ASS.
MEEK animal, whose simple mien
Provokes the' insulting brow of spleen
To mock the melancholy trait
Of patience in thy front display'd,
But thy Great Author fitly so portray'd,
To character the sorrows of thy fate;
Say, heir of misery, what to thee
Is life? a long, long gloomy stage
Through the sad vale of labour and of pain!
No pleasure hath thy youth, no rest thine age,
Nor in the vasty round of this terrene
Hast thou a friend to set thee free,
Till Death, perhaps too late,
In the dark evening of thy cheerless day,
Shall take thee, fainting on thy way,
From the rude storm of unresisted hate.
Yet dares the' erroneous crowd to mark
With folly thy despised race,
The' ungovernable pack, who bark
With impious howlings in Heaven's awful face, If e'er on their impatient head
Affliction's bitter shower is shed.
But 'tis the weakness of thy kind
Meekly to bear the' inevitable sway;
The wisdom of the human mind
Is to murmur and obey.
WHAT is the' existence of man's life,
But open war or slumber'd strife;
Where sickness to his sense presents
The combat of the elements;
And never feels a perfect peace
Till Death's cold hand signs his release:
It is a storm, where the hot blood
Outvies in rage the boiling flood;
And each loose passion of the mind
Is like a furious gust of wind,
Which beats his bark with many a wave
Till he casts anchor in the grave.
It is a flower, which buds, and grows,
And withers as the leaves disclose;
Whose spring and fall faint seasons keep,
Like fits of waking before sleep;
Then shrinks into that fatal mould
Where its first being was enroll'd.
It is a dream, whose seeming truth
Is moralized in age and youth;
Where all the comforts he can share
As wandering as his fancies are;
Till in a mist of dark decay
The dreamer vanish quite away.
It is a dial, which points out
The sunset, as it moves about;
And shadows out in lines of night
The subtle stages of time's flight;
|