As thro' the garden's desert paths I rove, What fond illusions swarm in every grove! How oft, when purple evening tinged the west, We watched the emmet to her grainy nest; Welcomed the wild-bee home on weary wing, Laden with sweets, the choicest of the spring! How oft inscribed, with Friendship's votive rhyme, The bark now silvered by the touch of Time; Soared in the swing, half pleased and half afraid, Thro' sister elms that waved their summer-shade; Or strewed with crumbs yon root-inwoven seat, Childhood's loved group revisits every scene; The School's lone porch, with reverend mosses grey, Just tells the pensive pilgrim where it lay. Mute is the bell that rung at peep of dawn, Quickening my truant-feet across the lawn; Unheard the shout that rent the noontide air, When the slow dial gave a pause to care. Up springs, at every step, to claim a tear, Some little friendship formed and cherished here; And not the lightest leaf, but trembling teems With golden visions and romantic dreams! Down by yon hazel copse, at evening, blazed The Gipsy's fagot-there we stood and gazed; Gazed on her sun-burnt face with silent awe, Her tattered mantle, and her hood of straw; Her moving lips, her caldron brimming o'er; The drowsy brood that on her back she bore, Imps, in the barn with mousing owlet bred, From rifled roost at nightly revel fed; Whose dark eyes flashed thro' locks of blackest shade, ! Ah, then, what honest triumph flushed my breast; This truth once known-To bless is to be blest! We led the bending beggar on his way, (Bare were his feet, his tresses silver-grey) Soothed the keen pangs his aged spirit felt, And on his tale with mute attention dwelt. As in his scrip we dropt our little store, And sighed to think that little was no more, He breathed his prayer, "Long may such goodness live!” 'Twas all he gave, 'twas all he had to give. Angels, when Mercy's mandate winged their flight,· Had stopt to dwell with pleasure on the sight. But hark! thro' those old firs, with sullen swell, The church-clock strikes! ye tender scenes, farewell! It calls me hence, beneath their shade, to trace The few fond lines that Time may soon efface. On yon grey stone, that fronts the chancel-door, Worn smooth by busy feet now seen no more, Each eve we shot the marble thro' the ring, When the heart danced, and life was in its spring; Alas! unconscious of the kindred earth, The glow-worm loves her emerald-light to shed Hush, ye fond flutterings, hush! while here alone But when the sons of peace, of pleasure sleep, From whom that musing, melancholy mood Her pencil dipt in Nature's living hues, To pass the clouds that round thy empire roll, And trace its airy precincts in the soul. |