2 ELLISLAND. THE year was in its prime, for June The breezes faint made sportive play, With pilgrim feet, that we might stand Where, 'neath the humble rooftree's shade, Oft sung the Bard of Ellisland. We saw the lassie buskit neat, The bonnie lassie herding yowes, We gazed adown Dalswinton's plain, Through which he chanted forth their praise. We watched the shadows come and go Where high the hills in grandeur stand, And fleecy clouds were drifting slow Across the blue o'er Ellisland. We listened as from leafy dell The feathered chorus rung out clear, And from the sky there warbling fell The trill of lark upon our ear: And as we heard the mingling strain, We wished that some magician's wand Might yet be waved, to bring again The poet soul to Ellisland. We marked the daisy loved so dear, The thistle springing 'mong the corn, The op'ning rosebud on the brier, The lingering primrose 'neath the thorn; We marked them all with loving eye, Yet plucked them not with ruthless hand, But left them there, to bloom and die, Upon the holms of Ellisland. To know his voice amid a hundred round, To lean confiding on his arm, and know, To hear at last his step, and rise to greet To hear him praised for deeds of goodness done; To see him envied, and to know thou'st won Though sorrows overwhelm, thou for his sake lot "The world forgetting, by the world forgot." Though sickness bows the form, and dims the eye Whose glance controlled thy youthful destiny; Though pain may chafe that spirit e'en to vent On thee a murmur of its discontent, Yet o'er his couch wilt thou unwearied bend, And soothe and bless, though pangs thy bosom rend; To see him suffer, and to feel and know To watch the livelong night, and weep and pray For him, the loved one, till the dawn of day; Then, shrinking, own the bitterness of death! SUPPOSING there had been two brothers, twin At birth, who grew like young plants in the sun To youth, but one died, and the other one Living fell lower every day in sin, Betraying his own heart, yet kept therein, When all things else were lost and he undone, Love of the dead strong and unstain'd alone; Which thing avail'd of pitying gods to win This boon, Eneas-like to pass the gate, Living, of Death, and in the fields of Hell And groves to nether Juno consecrate, To meet the luckless shade of the boy; but he Turn'd his pale face away in loathing, Even so it is with my old self and me. well, Athenæum. |