Yet we mark it not; - fruits redden, Hopes that she so long hath known. 40 Be thou wiser, youthful Maiden ! And when thy decline shall come, Hide the knowledge of thy doom. Now, even now, ere wrapped in slumber, 45 Look thou to Eternity! Follow thou the flowing river 50 Through the year's successive portals; 55 Thus when thou with Time hast travelled Toward the mighty gulf of things, Think, if thou on beauty leanest, Duty, like a strict preceptor, 60 65 Choose her thistle for thy sceptre, Grasp it, if thou shrink and tremble, 70 And ensures those palms of honour 75 1817. XVIII. THE NORMAN BOΥ. HIGH on a broad unfertile tract of forest-skirted Down, Nor kept by Nature for herself, nor made by man his own, From home and company remote and every playful joy, Served, tending a few sheep and goats, a ragged Norman Boy. Him never saw I, nor the spot; but from an English Dame, 5 Stranger to me and yet my friend, a simple notice came, With suit that I would speak in verse of that sequestered child Whom, one bleak winter's day, she met upon the dreary Wild. His flock, along the woodland's edge with relics sprinkled o'er Of last night's snow, beneath a sky threatening the fall of more, Where tufts of herbage tempted each, were 10 busy at their feed, And the poor Boy was busier still, with work of anxious heed. There was he, where of branches rent and withered and decayed, For covert from the keen north wind, his hands a hut had made. A tiny tenement, forsooth, and frail, as needs must be 15 A thing of such materials framed, by a builder such as he. The hut stood finished by his pains, nor seem ingly lacked aught That skill or means of his could add, but the architect had wrought Some limber twigs into a Cross, well-shaped with fingers nice, 19 To be engrafted on the top of his small edifice. That Cross he now was fastening there, as the surest power and best For supplying all deficiencies, all wants of the rude nest In which, from burning heat, or tempest driving far and wide, The innocent Boy, else shelterless, his lonely head must hide. Where he, in his poor self so weak, by Pro vidence was placed. -Here, Lady! might I cease; but nay, let us before we part With this dear holy shepherd-boy breathe a prayer of earnest heart, 30 That unto him, where'er shall lie his life's ap pointed way, The Cross, fixed in his soul, may prove an all sufficing stay. 1842. (?) XIX. THE POET'S DREAM. SEQUEL TO "THE NORMAN BOY." Just as those final words were penned, the sun broke out in power, And gladdened all things; but, as chanced, within that very hour, Air blackened, thunder growled, fire flashed from clouds that hid the sky, And for the Subject of my Verse I heaved a pensive sigh. troubling earth and air, I saw, within, the Norman Boy kneeling alone in prayer. The Child, as if the thunder's voice spake with articulate call, His lips were moving; and his eyes, upraised to sue for grace, With soft illumination cheered the dimness of that place. How beautiful is holiness! - what wonder if the sight, Almost as vivid as a dream, produced a dream at night? It came with sleep and showed the Boy, no cherub, not transformed, 15 But the poor ragged Thing whose ways my human heart had warmed. Me had the dream equipped with wings, so I took him in my arms, And lifted from the grassy floor, stilling his faint alarms, And bore him high through yielding air my debt of love to pay, By giving him, for both our sakes, an hour of holiday. 20 |