The alien firelight died away; That opened on a common wide; A heaven so clear, an earth so calm, deepening still the dream-like charm Wild moor-sheep feeding everywhere. That was the scene, I knew it well; I knew the turfy pathway's sweep, That, winding o'er each billowy swell, Marked out the tracks of wandering sheep. Could I have lingered but an hour, It well had paid a week of toil; Even as I stood with raptured eye, My hour of rest had fleeted by, And back came labour, bondage, care. II. THE BLUEBELL THE Bluebell is the sweetest flower That waves in summer air: There is a spell in purple heath The violet has a fragrant breath, The trees are bare, the sun is cold, The heavens have lost their zone of gold, And ice upon the glancing stream The Bluebell cannot charm me now, The heath has lost its bloom; The violets in the glen below, They yield no sweet perfume. But, though I mourn the sweet Bluebell, I know how fast my tears would swell For, oh! when chill the sunbeams fall And gild yon dank and darkened wall With transient brilliancy; Wuthering Heights &c. II. 18 How do I weep, how do I pine III. LOUD without the wind was roaring All too like that dreary eve, Did my exiled spirit grieve. Grieved at first, but grieved not long, Wild words of an ancient song, Undefined, without a name. it came; "It was spring, and the skylark was singing:" Those words they awakened a spell; They unlocked a deep fountain, whose springing, In the gloom of a cloudy November, Awaken, o'er all my dear moorland, It is swelled with the first snowy weather; The rocks they are icy and hoar, And sullenly waves the long heather, And the fern leaves are sunny no more. There are no yellow stars on the mountain; But lovelier than corn-fields all waving It was morning: the bright sun was beaming; The time when nor labour nor dreaming But blithely we rose as the dawn-heaven And swift were the wings to our feet given, For the moors! For the moors, where the short grass Like velvet beneath us should lie! For the moors! For the moors, where each high pass Rose sunny against the clear sky! For the moors, where the linnet was trilling Its song on the old granite stone; Where the lark, the wild sky-lark, was filling Every breast with delight like its own! What language can utter the feeling It was scattered and stunted, and told me But not the loved music whose waking Those tears had been heaven to me. Well-well; the sad minutes are moving, The following little piece has no title; but in it the Genius of a solitary region seems to address his wandering and wayward votary, and to recall within his influence the proud mind which rebelled at times even against what it most loved. SHALL earth no more inspire thee, Thou lonely dreamer, now? Since passion may not fire thee, Shall nature cease to bow? |