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A Descriptive Fragment
HAST thou a heart to prove the power | |
| Of a landscape lovely, soft, and serene? | |
| Go, when its fragrance hath left the flower, | |
| When the leaf is no longer glossy and green; | |
| When the clouds are careering across the sky, | 5 |
| And the rising winds tell the tempest nigh, | |
| Though the slanting sunbeams are lingering still | |
| On the tower’s gray top and the side of the hill: | |
| Then go to the village of Playford, and see | |
| If it be not a lovely spot; | 10 |
| And if nature can boast of charms for thee, | |
| Thou wilt love it, and leave it not, | |
| Till the shower shall warn thee no longer to roam, | |
| And then thou wilt carry its picture home, | |
| To feed thy fancy when far away, | 15 |
| A source of delight for a future day. | |
| Its sloping green is verdant and fair, | |
| And between its tuffs of trees | |
| Are white cottages, peeping here and there, | |
| The pilgrim’s eye to please: | 20 |
| A white farm-house may be seen on its brow, | |
| And its gray old hall in the valley below, | |
| By a moat encircled round; | |
| And from the left verge of its hill you may hear, | |
| If you chance on a sabbath to wander near, | 25 |
| A sabbath-breathing sound: | |
| ’T is the sound of the bell which is slowly ringing | |
| In that tower, which lifts its turrets above | |
| The wood-fringed bank, where birds are singing, | |
| And from spray to spray are fearlessly springing, | 30 |
| As if in a lonely and untrodden grove; | |
| For the gray church-tower is far overhead; | |
| And so deep is the winding lane below, | |
| They hear not the sound of the traveller’s tread, | |
| If a traveller there should chance to go. | 35 |
| But few pass there, for most who come | |
| At the bell’s last summons have left their home, | |
| That bell which is tolling so slow. | |
| And grassy and green may the path be seen | |
| To the village church that leads; | 40 |
| For its glossy hue is as verdant to view | |
| As you see it in lowly meads. | |
| And he who the ascending pathway scales, | |
| By the gate above and the mossy pales, | |
| Will find the trunk of a leafless tree, | 45 |
| All bleak and barren and bare; | |
| Yet it keeps its station, and seems to be | |
| Like a silent monitor there: | |
| Though wasted and worn, it smiles in the ray | |
| Of the bright warm sun, on a sunny day; | 50 |
| And more than once I have seen | |
| The moonbeams sleep on its barkless trunk | |
| As calmly and softly as ever they sunk | |
| On its leaves, when its leaves were green: | |
| And it seemed to rejoice in their light the while, | 55 |
| Reminding my heart of the patient smile | |
| Resignation can wear in the hour of grief, | |
| When it finds in religion a source of relief, | |
| And, stript of delights which earth had given, | |
| Still shines in the beauty it borrows from heaven! | 60 |
| But the bell hath ceased to ring, | |
| And the birds no longer sing, | |
| And the grasshopper’s carol is heard no more; | |
| Yet sounds of praise and prayer | |
| The wandering breezes bear, | 65 |
| Like the murmur of waves on the ocean shore. | |
| All else is still! but silence can be | |
| More eloquent far than speech! | |
| And the valley below, and that tower and tree | |
| Through the eye to the heart can reach. | 70 |
| Could the sage’s creed, the historian’s tale, | |
| Utter language like that of yon silent vale, | |
| As it basks in the beams of the sabbath-day, | |
| And rejoices in nature’s reviving ray; | |
| While its outstretched meadows and autumn-tinged trees | 75 |
| Seem enjoying the sun and inhaling the breeze? | |
| And hath not that church a lovely look | |
| In the page of this landscape’s open book? | |
| Like a capital letter which catches the eye | |
| Of the reader, and says a new chapter is nigh; | 80 |
| So its tower, by which the horizon is broken, | |
| Of prayer and of praise a beautiful token, | |
| Lifts up its head, and silently tells | |
| Of a world hereafter, where happiness dwells. | |
| While that scathed tree seems a link between | 85 |
| The dead and the living! ’T is barren and bare, | |
| But the grass below it is fresh and green, | |
| Though its roots can find no moisture there: | |
| Yet still on its birthplace it loves to linger, | |
| And evermore points with its silent finger | 90 |
| To the clouds, and the sun, and the sky so fair. * * * * * | |
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