ON TURNING ONE DOWN WITH THE PLOW, APRIL, 1786.
Wee, modest, crimson-tipped flow'r, Thou's met met me in an evil hour, For I maun crush amang the stoure Thy slender stem;
To spare thee now is past my pow'r, Thou bonnie gem!
Alas! it's no thy neibor sweet, The bonnie lark, companion meet, Bending thee 'mang the dewie weet, Wi' speckled breast,
When upward springing, blythe to greet The purpling east.
Cauld blew the bitter-biting north Upon thy early, humble birth, Yet cheerfully thou glinted forth Amid the storm-
Scarce rear'd above the parent earth Thy tender form.
The flaunting flow'rs our gardens yield, High shelt'ring woods and wa's maun shield; But thou, beneath the random bield,
O' clod or stane, Adorns the histie stibble-field, Unseen, alane.
There in thy scanty mantle clad, Thy snawy bosom sun-ward spread, Thou lifts thy unassuming head In humble guise;
But now the share uptears thy bed, And low thou lies!
Such is the fate of artless maid, Sweet flow'ret of the rural shade! By love's simplicity betray'd,
And guileless breast;
Till she, like thee, all soil'd is laid Low i' the dust.
Such is the fate of simple bard,
On life's rough ocean luckless starr'd, Unskillful he to note the card Of prudent lore,
Till billows rage, and gales blow hard, And whelm him o'er.
Such fate to suffering worth is giv'n, Who long with wants and woes has striv'n, By human pride or cunning driv’n, To mis'ry's brink;
Till wrench'd of ev'ry stay but Heav'n, He ruin'd sink.
Ev'n thou who mourn'st the daisy's fate, That fate is thine-no distant date; Stern ruin's plowshare drives, elate, Full on thy bloom,
Till, crush'd beneath the furious weight,
"There," said a stripling, pointing with much pride Toward a low roof, with green trees half conceal'd, "Is Mossgiel farm; and that's the very field Where Burns plow'd up the daisy!" Far and wide A plain below stretch'd seaward; while, descried, Above sea-clouds, the peaks of Arran rose; And, by that simple notice, the repose Of earth, sky, sea, and air was vivified. Beneath the random field of clod or stone, Myriads of daisies here shone forth in flower, Near the lark's nest, and in their natural hour Have pass'd away; less happy than the one That by the unwilling plowshare died to prove The tender charm of poetry and love.
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH, 1770-1850.
THE FOREST-LEAVES IN AUTUMN.
FROM "THE CHRISTIAN YEAR."
Red o'er the forest peers the setting sun; The line of yellow light dies fast away
That crown'd the eastern copse; and chill and dun Falls on the moor the brief November day.
Now the tir'd hunter winds a parting note, And Echo bids good-night from every glade; Yet wait awhile, and on the calm leaves float Each to his rest beneath the parent shade.
How like decaying life they seem to glide! And yet no second spring have they in store; But where they fall forgotten, to abide
Is all their portion, and they ask no more.
Soon o'er their heads blithe April airs shall sing;
A thousand wild-flowers round them shall unfold; The green buds glisten in the dews of spring, And all be vernal rapture as of old.
Unconscious they in waste oblivion lie, In all the world of busy life around No thought of them; in all the bounteous sky, No drop, for them, of kindly influence found.
Man's portion is to die and rise again—
Yet he complains; while these unmurmuring part With their sweet lives, as pure from sin and stain As his when Eden held his virgin heart.
But now tell me, good folk, tell me, How should not I cry?
Ah! where is my dear father?
Woe! he lies deep buried.
Where my mother? O good mother!
O'er her grows the grass!
Brothers have I not, nor sisters,
LANDSCAPE AND ITS ASSOCIATIONS.
I wake, I rise; from end to end, Of all the landscape underneath, I find no place that doth not breathe Some gracious memory of my friend;
No gray old grange, or lonely fold, Or low morass and whispering reed, Or simple stile from mead to mead, Or sheep-walk up the windy wold;
Nor hoary knoll of ash and haw,
That hears the latest linnet trill, Nor quarry trench'd along the hill, And haunted by the wrangling daw;
Nor rivulet trickling from the rock, Nor pastoral rivulet that swerves From left to right through meadowy curves, That feed the mothers of the flock;
But each has pleased a kindred eye, And each reflects a kindlier day; And leaving these, to pass away
I think once more he seems to die.
Thy mornings showed, thy nights concealed
The bowers where Lucy played;
And thine is, too, the last green field
That Lucy's eyes surveyed!
W. WORDSWORTII, 1770-1850.
RPHAN hours, the year is dead,
Come and sigh, come and weep! Merry hours smile instead,
For the year is but asleep. See! it smiles as it is sleeping, Mocking your untimely weeping.
As an earthquake rocks a corse In its coffin in the clay, So white winter, that rough nurse, Rocks the dead-cold year to-day;
Solemn hours! wail aloud For your mother in her shroud.
As the wild air stirs and sways The tree-swung cradle of a child,
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