For he's not like an old man that leisurely goes About work that he knows, in a track that he knows; But often his mind is compelled to demur,
And you guess that the more then his body must stir.
In the throng of the town like a stranger is he,
Like one whose own country's far over the sea;
And nature, while through the great city he hies,
Full ten times a day takes his heart by surprise.
This gives him the fancy of one that is young,
More of soul in his face than of words on his tongue;
Like a maiden of twenty he trembles and sighs,
And tears of fifteen will come into his eyes.
What's a tempest to him, or the dry parching heats?
Yet he watches the clouds that pass over the streets;
With a look of such earnestness often will stand,
You might think he'd twelve reapers at work in the
Strand.
Where proud Covent Garden, in desolate hours
Of snow and hoar-frost, spreads her fruit and her flowers,
Old Adam will smile at the pains that have made
Poor winter look fine in such strange masquerade.
Mid coaches and chariots, a waggon of straw,
Like a magnet, the heart of old Adam can draw;
With a thousand soft pictures his memory will teem,
And his hearing is touched with the sounds of a dream.
Up the Haymarket hill he oft whistles his way,
Thrusts his hands in the waggon, and smells at the hay;
He thinks of the fields he so often hath mown,
And is happy as if the rich freight were his own.
But chiefly to Smithfield he loves to repair,
If you pass by at morning, you'll meet with him there:
The breath of the cows you may see him inhale,
And his heart all the while is in Tilsbury Vale.
Now farewell, old Adam! when low thou art laid,
May one blade of grass spring up over thy head;
And I hope that thy grave, wheresoever it be,
Will hear the wind sigh through the leaves of a tree.
THE SMALL CELANDINE.
THERE is a flower, the lesser Celandine,
That shrinks, like many more, from cold and rain;
And, the first moment that the sun may shine,
Bright as the sun itself, 'tis out again!
When hailstones have been falling, swarm on swarm,
Or blasts the green field and the trees distressed,
Oft have I seen it muffled up from harm,
In close self-shelter, like a thing at rest.
But lately, one rough day, this flower I passed
And recognized it, though an altered form,
Now standing forth an offering to the blast,
And buffeted at will by rain and storm.
I stopped, and said with inly-muttered voice,
"It doth not love the shower, nor seek the cold:
This neither is its courage nor its choice,
But its necessity in being old.
"The sunshine may not cheer it, nor the dew;
It cannot help itself in its decay;
Stiff in its members, withered, changed of hue."
And, in my spleen, I smiled that it was gray.
To be a prodigal's favourite-then, worse truth,
A miser's pensioner-behold our lot!
O man, that from thy fair and shining youth
Age might but take the things youth needed not!
OR, THE LAST STAGE OF AVARICE.
Он, now that the genius of Bewick were mine,
And the skill which he learned on the banks of the Tyne!
Then the muses might deal with me just as they chose,
For I'd take my last leave both of verse and of prose.
What feats would I work with my magical hand!
Book-learning and books should be banished the land:
And, for hunger and thirst, and such troublesome calls,
Every alehouse should then have a feast on its walls.
The traveller would hang his wet clothes on a chair;
Let them smoke, let them burn, not a straw would he care!
For the Prodigal Son, Joseph's Dream and his sheaves,
Oh, what would they be to my tale of two thieves?
The one, yet unbreeched, is not three birthdays old,
His grandsire that age more than thirty times told;
There are ninety good seasons of fair and foul weather
Between them, and both go a-stealing together.
With chips is the carpenter strewing his floor?
Is a cart-load of turf at an old woman's door?
Old Daniel his hand to the treasure will slide!
And his grandson's as busy at work by his side.
Old Daniel begins, he stops short-and his eye,
Through the lost look of dotage, is cunning and sly.
'Tis a look which at this time is hardly his own,
But tells a plain tale of the days that are flown.
He once had a heart which was moved by the wires Of manifold pleasures and many desires:
And what if he cherished his purse! 'Twas no more
Then treading a path trod by thousands before.
'Twas a path trod by thousands; but Daniel is one
Who went something further than others have gone,
And now with old Daniel you see how it fares;
You see to what end he has brought his gray hairs.
The pair sally forth hand in hand: ere the sun
Has peered o'er the beeches, their work is begun :
And yet, into whatever sin they may fall,
This child but half knows it, and that not at all.
They hunt through the streets with deliberate tread,
And each, in his turn, is both leader and led;
And, wherever they carry their plots and their wiles,
Every face in the village is dimpled with smiles.
Neither checked by the rich nor the needy they roam;
The gray-headed sire has a daughter at home,
Who will gladly repair all the damage that's done;
And three, were it asked, would be rendered for one.
Old man, whom so oft I with pity have eyed,
I love thee, and love the sweet boy at thy side:
Long yet mayst thou live! for a teacher we see
That lifts up the veil of our nature in thee.
ANIMAL TRANQUILLITY AND DECAY.
THE little hedgerow birds,
That peck along the road, regard him not.
He travels on, and in his face, his step,
His gait, is one expression; every limb,
His look and bending figure, all bespeak
A man who does not move with pain, but moves
With thought. He is insensibly subdued
To settled quiet: he is one by whom
All effort seems forgotten; one to whom
Long patience hath such mild composure given,
That patience now doth seem a thing of which
He hath no need. He is by nature led
To peace so perfect, that the young behold
With envy, what the old man hardly feels.
TRANSLATED FROM CHIABRERA.
PERHAPS Some needful service of the state
Drew Titus from the depth of studious bowers,
And doomed him to contend in faithless courts,
Where gold determines between right and wrong.
Yet did at length his loyalty of heart,
And his pure native genius, lead him back
To wait upon the bright and gracious Muses,
Whom he had early loved. And not in vain
Such course he held. Bologna's learned schools
Were gladdened by the sage's voice, and hung
With fondness on those sweet Nestorian strains.
There pleasure crowned his days, and all his thoughts
A roseate fragrance breathed. Oh, human life,
That never art secure from dolorous change!
Behold a high injunction suddenly
To Arno's side conducts him, and he charmed
A Tuscan audience; but full soon was called
To the perpetual silence of the
grave.
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