NO more these simple flowers belong | |
| To Scottish maid and lover; | |
| Sown in the common soil of song, | |
| They bloom the wide world over. | |
| |
| In smiles and tears, in sun and showers, | 5 |
| The minstrel and the heather, | |
| The deathless singer and the flowers | |
| He sang of live together. | |
| |
| Wild heather-bells and Robert Burns! | |
| The moorland flower and peasant! | 10 |
| How, at their mention, memory turns | |
| Her pages old and pleasant! | |
| |
| The gray sky wears again its gold | |
| And purple of adorning, | |
| And manhood’s noonday shadows hold | 15 |
| The dews of boyhood’s morning: | |
| |
| The dews that washed the dust and soil | |
| From off the wings of pleasure, | |
| The sky, that flecked the ground of toil | |
| With golden threads of leisure. | 20 |
| |
| I call to mind the summer day, | |
| The early harvest mowing, | |
| The sky with sun and clouds at play, | |
| And flowers with breezes blowing. | |
| |
| I hear the blackbird in the corn, | 25 |
| The locust in the haying; | |
| And, like the fabled hunter’s horn, | |
| Old tunes my heart is playing. | |
| |
| How oft that day, with fond delay, | |
| I sought the maple’s shadow, | 30 |
| And sang with Burns the hours away, | |
| Forgetful of the meadow! | |
| |
| Bees hummed, birds twittered, overhead | |
| I heard the squirrels leaping; | |
| The good dog listened while I read, | 35 |
| And wagged his tail in keeping. | |
| |
| I watched him while in sportive mood | |
| I read “The Twa Dogs’” story, | |
| And half believed he understood | |
| The poet’s allegory. | 40 |
| |
| Sweet day, sweet songs!—The golden hours | |
| Grew brighter for that singing, | |
| From brook and bird and meadow flowers | |
| A dearer welcome bringing. | |
| |
| New light on home-seen Nature beamed, | 45 |
| New glory over Woman; | |
| And daily life and duty seemed | |
| No longer poor and common. | |
| |
| I woke to find the simple truth | |
| Of fact and feeling better | 50 |
| Than all the dreams that held my youth | |
| A still repining debtor: | |
| |
| That Nature gives her handmaid, Art, | |
| The themes of sweet discoursing; | |
| The tender idyls of the heart | 55 |
| In every tongue rehearsing. | |
| |
| Why dream of lands of gold and pearl, | |
| Of loving knight and lady, | |
| When farmer boy and barefoot girl | |
| Were wandering there already? | 60 |
| |
| I saw through all familiar things | |
| The romance underlying; | |
| The joys and griefs that plume the wings | |
| Of Fancy skyward flying. | |
| |
| I saw the same blithe day return, | 65 |
| The same sweet fall of even, | |
| That rose on wooded Craigie-burn, | |
| And sank on crystal Devon. | |
| |
| I matched with Scotland’s heathery hills | |
| The sweet-brier and the clover; | 70 |
| With Ayr and Doon, my native rills, | |
| Their wood-hymns chanting over. | |
| |
| O’er rank and pomp, as he had seen, | |
| I saw the Man uprising; | |
| No longer common or unclean, | 75 |
| The child of God’s baptizing. | |
| |
| With clearer eyes I saw the worth | |
| Of life among the lowly; | |
| The Bible at his Cotter’s hearth | |
| Had made my own more holy. | 80 |
| |
| And if at times an evil strain, | |
| To lawless love appealing, | |
| Broke in upon the sweet refrain | |
| Of pure and healthful feeling, | |
| |
| It died upon the eye and ear, | 85 |
| No inward answer gaining; | |
| No heart had I to see or hear | |
| The discord and the staining. | |
| |
| Let those who never erred forget | |
| His worth, in vain bewailings; | 90 |
| Sweet Soul of Song!—I own my debt | |
| Uncancelled by his failings! | |
| |
| Lament who will the ribald line | |
| Which tells his lapse from duty, | |
| How kissed the maddening lips of wine, | 95 |
| Or wanton ones of beauty; | |
| |
| But think, while falls that shade between | |
| The erring one and Heaven, | |
| That he who loved like Magdalen, | |
| Like her may be forgiven. | 100 |
| |
| Not his the song whose thunderous chime | |
| Eternal echoes render,— | |
| The mournful Tuscan’s haunted rhyme, | |
| And Milton’s starry splendor. | |
| |
| But who his human heart has laid | 105 |
| To Nature’s bosom nearer? | |
| Who sweetened toil like him, or paid | |
| To love a tribute dearer? | |
| |
| Through all his tuneful art, how strong | |
| The human feeling gushes! | 110 |
| The very moonlight of his song | |
| Is warm with smiles and blushes! | |
| |
| Give lettered pomp to teeth of Time, | |
| So “Bonny Doon” but tarry; | |
| Blot out the Epic’s stately rhyme, | 115 |
| But spare his “Highland Mary!” | |
| |
