III
Loud without the wind was roaringThrough th’autumnal sky;Drenching wet, the cold rain pouring,Spoke of winter nigh.All too like that dreary eve,Did my exiled spirit grieve.Grieved at first, but grieved not long,Sweet—how softly sweet!—it came;Wild words of an ancient song,Undefined, without a name.
“It was spring, and the skylark was singing:”Those words they awakened a spell;They unlocked a deep fountain, whose springing,Nor absence, nor distance can quell.
In the gloom of a cloudy NovemberThey uttered the music of May;They kindled the perishing emberInto fervour that could not decay.
Awaken, o’er all my dear moorland,West-wind, in thy glory and pride!Oh! call me from valley and lowland,To walk by the hill-torrent’s side!
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 mountainThe bluebells have long died awayFrom the brink of the moss-bedded fountain—From the side of the wintry brae.
But lovelier than corn-fields all wavingIn emerald, and vermeil, and gold,Are the heights where the north-wind is raving,And the crags where I wandered of old.
It was morning: the bright sun was beaming;How sweetly it brought back to meThe time when nor labour nor dreamingBroke the sleep of the happy and free!
But blithely we rose as the dawn-heavenWas melting to amber and blue,And swift were the wings to our feet given,As we traversed the meadows of dew.
For the moors! For the moors, where the short grassLike velvet beneath us should lie!For the moors! For the moors, where each high passRose sunny against the clear sky!
For the moors, where the linnet was trillingIts song on the old granite stone;Where the lark, the wild sky-lark, was fillingEvery breast with delight like its own!
What language can utter the feelingWhich rose, when in exile afar,On the brow of a lonely hill kneeling,I saw the brown heath growing there?
It was scattered and stunted, and told meThat soon even that would be gone:It whispered, “The grim walls enfold me,I have bloomed in my last summer’s sun.”
But not the loved music, whose wakingMakes the soul of the Swiss die away,Has a spell more adored and heartbreakingThan, for me, in that blighted heath lay.
The spirit which bent ’neath its power,How it longed—how it burned to be free!If I could have wept in that hour,Those tears had been heaven to me.
Well—well; the sad minutes are moving,Though loaded with trouble and pain;And some time the loved and the lovingShall meet on the mountains again!
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?
Thy mind is ever moving,In regions dark to thee;Recall its useless roving,Come back, and dwell with me.
I know my mountain breezesEnchant and soothe thee still,I know my sunshine pleases,Despite thy wayward will.
When day with evening blending,Sinks from the summer sky,I’ve seen thy spirit bendingIn fond idolatry.
I’ve watched thee every hour;I know my mighty sway:I know my magic powerTo drive thy griefs away.
Few hearts to mortals given,On earth so wildly pine;Yet few would ask a heavenMore like this earth than thine.
Then let my winds caress theeThy comrade let me be:Since nought beside can bless thee,Return—and dwell with me.
Here again is the same mind in converse with a like abstraction. “The Night-Wind,” breathing through an open window, has visited an ear which discerned language in its whispers.