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النشر الإلكتروني

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Who have a broom still ready in your hands
To rid the world of nuisances; ye proud,
Heart-swoln, while in your pride ye contemplate
Your talents, power, and wisdom, deem him not
A burden of the earth. 'Tis Nature's law
That none, the meanest of created things,
Of forms created the most vile and brute,
The dullest or most noxious, should exist
Divorced from good-a spirit and pulse of good,
A life and soul, to every mode of being
Inseparably linked. While thus he creeps
From door to door, the villagers in him
Behold a record which together binds
Past deeds and offices of charity,"
Else unremembered, and so keeps alive

The kindly mood in hearts which lapse of years,
And that half wisdom half experience gives,
Make slow to feel, and by sure steps resign
To selfishness and cold oblivious cares.
Among the farms and solitary huts,
Hamlets, and thinly scattered villages,
Where'er the aged Beggar takes his rounds,
The mild necessity of use compels

To acts of love; and habit does the work
Of reason; yet prepares that after joy

Which reason cherishes. And thus the soul,
By that sweet taste of pleasure unpursued,
Doth find itself insensibly disposed

To virtue and true goodness. Some there are,
By their good works exalted, lofty minds

And meditative, authors of delight

And happiness, which to the end of time

Will live, and spread, and kindle; minds like these,
In childhood, from this solitary being,

This helpless wanderer, have perchance received
(A thing more precious far than all that books
Or the solicitudes of love can do!)

That first mild touch of sympathy and thought,
In which they found their kindred with a world
Where want and sorrow were. The easy man
Who sits at his own door,-and, like the pear
Which overhangs his head from the green wall,
Feeds in the sunshine; the robust and young,
The prosperous and unthinking, they who live
Sheltered, and flourish in a little grove
Of their own kindred; all behold in him
A silent monitor, which on their minds
Must needs impress a transitory thought
Of self-congratulation, to the heart
Of each recalling his peculiar boons,
His charters and exemptions; and, perchance,
Though he to no one give the fortitude
And circumspection needful to preserve
His present blessings, and to husband up
The respite of the season, he, at least-
And 'tis no vulgar service-makes them felt

21

Yet further. Many, I believe, there are
Who live a life of virtuous decency,
Men who can hear the Decalogue and feel
No self-reproach: who of the moral law
Established in the land where they abide
Are strict observers; and not negligent,
Meanwhile, in any tenderness of heart
Or act of love to those with whom we dwell,
Their kindred, and the children of their blood.
Praise be to such, and to their slumbers peace!
-But of the poor man ask, the abject poor,
Go, and demand of him, if there be here
In this cold abstinence from evil deeds,
And these inevitable charities,

Wherewith to satisfy the human soul?
No! man is dear to man; the poorest poor
Long for some moments in a weary life

When they can know and feel that they have been
Themselves, the fathers and the dealers-out
Of some small blessings-haye been kind to such
As needed kindness-for this single cause,
That we have all of us one human heart.
-Such pleasure is to one kind being known,
My neighbour, when with punctual care, each week
Duly as Friday comes, though pressed herself
By her own wants, she from her chest of meal
Takes one unsparing handful for the scrip
Of this old mendicant, and, from her door
Returning with exhilarated heart,

Sits by her fire, and builds her hope in heaven.

Then let him pass, a blessing on his head! And while in that vast solitude to which The tide of things has led him, he appears To breathe and live but for himself aloneUnblamed, uninjured, let him bear about The good which the benignant law of Heaven Has hung around him: and, while life is his, Still let him prompt the unlettered villagers To tender offices and pensive thoughts. Then let him pass, a blessing on his head! And, long as he can wander, let him breathe The freshness of the valleys: let his blood Struggle with frosty air and winter snows: And let the chartered wind that sweeps the heath Beat his grey locks against his withered face. Reverence the hope whose vital anxiousness Gives the last human interest to his heart. May never House, misnamed "of Industry," Make him a captive! for that pent up din, Those life-consuming sounds that clog the air, Be his the natural silence of old age! Let him be free of mountain solitudes; And have around him, whether heard or not, The pleasant melody of woodland birds.

Few are his pleasures: if his eyes have now
Been doomed so long to settle on the earth,
That not without some effort they behold
The countenance of the horizontal sun,
Rising or setting-let the light at least
Find a free entrance to their languid orbs.
And let him, where and when he will, sit down
Beneath the trees, or by the grassy bank
Of highway side, and with the little birds
Share his chance-gathered meal; and, finally,
As in the eye of Nature he has lived,
So in the eye of Nature let him die !

II.

THE FARMER OF TILSBURY VALE.

'Tis not for th' unfeeling, the falsely refined,
The squeamish in taste, and the narrow of mind,
And the small critic wielding his delicate pen,
That I sing of old Adam, the pride of old men.

He dwells in the centre of London's wide town;
His staff is a sceptre-his grey hairs a crown;
Erect as a sunflower he stands, and the streak
Of the unfaded rose is expressed on his cheek.

'Mid the dews, in the sunshine of morn,-'mid the joy

Of the fields, he collected that bloom, when a boy;

There fashioned that countenance, which, in spite of a stain
That his life hath received, to the last will remain.

A farmer he was; and his house far and near
Was the boast of the country for excellent cheer:
How oft have I heard, in sweet Tilsbury Vale,

Of the silver-rimmed horn whence he dealt his good ale.

Yet Adam was far as the furthest from ruin,

His fields seemed to know what their master was doing; And turnips, and corn-land, and meadow, and lea,

All caught the infection-as generous as he.

Yet Adam prized little the feast and the bowl,-
The fields better suited the ease of his soul:

He strayed through the fields like an indolent wight,
The quiet of Nature was Adam's delight.

For Adam was simple in thought, and the poor,
Familiar with him, made an inn of his door :
He gave them the best that he had; or, to say
What less may mislead you- they took it away.

Thus thirty smooth years did he thrive on his farm;
The genius of plenty preserved him from harm:
At length, what to most is a season of sorrow,
His means are run out,-he must beg, or must borrow.

To the neighbours he went,-all were free with their money;
For his hive had so long been replenished with honey
That they dreamt not of dearth. He continued his rounds,
Knocked here, and knocked there-pounds still adding to
pounds.

He paid what he could with this ill-gotten pelf,
And something, it might be, reserved for himself:
Then (what is too true), without hinting a word,
Turned his back on the country; and off like a bird.
You lift up your eyes! and I guess that you frame
A judgment too harsh of the sin and the shame;
In him it was scarcely a business of art,

For this he did all in the ease of his heart.

To London-a sad emigration I ween

With his grey hairs he went from the brook and the green;
And there, with small wealth but his legs and his bands,
As lonely he stood as a crow on the sands.

All trades, as needs was, did old Adam assume,—
Served as stable-boy, errand-boy, porter, and groom;
But Nature is gracious, necessity kind,

And, in spite of the shame that may lurk in his mind,

He seems ten birth-days younger, is green and is stout;
Twice as fast as before does his blood run about;
You would say that each hair of his beard was alive,
And his fingers are busy as bees in a hive.

For he's not like an old man that leisurely goes
About work that he knows, in a track that he knows;
But often his mind is compelled to demur,

And you guess that the more then his body must stir.

In the throng of the town like a stranger is he,
Like one whose own country's far over the sea;
And Nature, while through the great city he hies,
Full ten times a day takes his heart by surprise.

This gives him the fancy of one that is young,
More of soul in his face than of words on his tongue;
Like a maiden of twenty he trembles and sighs,
And tears of fifteen have come into his eyes.

What's a tempest to him, or the dry parching heats?
Yet he watches the clouds that pass over the streets;
With a look of such earnestness often will stand,

You might think he'd twelve reapers at work in the Strand.

Where proud Covent Garden, in desolate hours

Of snow and hoar-frost, spreads her fruit and her flowers,

Old Adam will smile at the pains that have made
Poor Winter look fine in such strange masquerade.

'Mid coaches and chariots, a waggon of straw,
Like a magnet, the heart of old Adam can draw;
With a thousand soft pictures his memory will team,
And his hearing is touched with the sounds of a dream.

Up the Haymarket hill he oft whistles his way,
Thrusts his hands in the waggon, and smells at the hay;
He thinks of the fields he so often hath mown,
And is happy as if the rich freight were his own.

But chiefly to Smithfield he loves to repair,-
If you pass by at morning you'll meet with him there:
The breath of the cows you may see him inhale,
And his heart all the while is in Tilsbury Vale.

Now farewell, old Adam! when low thou art laid,
May one blade of grass spring up over thy head;
And I hope that thy grave, wheresoever it be,
Will hear the wind sigh through the leaves of a tree.

III.

THE SMALL CELANDINE.

THERE is a flower, the Lesser Celandine,
That shrinks, like many more, from cold and rain;
And, the first moment that the sun may shine,
Bright as the sun itself, 'tis out again!

When hailstones have been falling, swarm and swarm,
Or blasts the green field and the trees distressed,
Oft have I seen it muffled up from harm,
In close self-shelter, like a thing at rest.

But lately, one rough day, this flower I passed,
And recognised it, though an altered form,
Now standing forth an offering to the blast,
And buffeted at will by rain and storm.

I stopped, and said, with inly-muttered voice,
"It doth not love the shower, nor seek the cold:
This neither is its courage nor its choice,
But its necessity in being old.

"The sunshine may not bless it, nor the dew;
It cannot help itself in its decay;

Stiff in its members, withered, changed of hue."
And in my spleen, I smiled that it was gray.

To be a prodigal's favourite then, worse truth,
A miser's pensioner-behold our lot!

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