He turns to heaven his small grey eyes,
He opes his lips in pompous wise,
And lets his measured accents fall
With a rough burr and northern drawl,
As he expounds his theories.
He talks of Nature and her laws,
Of man, the mind, the great First Cause, Demand, supply, life, death, increase, The over-fruitfulness of peace,
And prates upon them, clause by clause.
War, like a thunder-storm, quoth he,
Is moral electricity;
It thins the heavy air, makes clear
The dense and dangerous atmosphere
O'erladen with humanity.
'Tis cruel shame, mistake most dire, That men should mate in young desire,
And trust alone to honest toil,
The kindly heaven, the genial soil,
For food, and shelter, and attire.
He thinks it time the truth were said.
That mouths, too many to be fed,
Swarm on the superpopulous land,
And that small wit may understand
That stupid peasants should not wed.
He thinks it decent, for the sake
Of lords with large domains at stake,
That 'common people' should not breed
More plenteously than they can feed,
And that steam husbandmen would 'take.'
If each poor couple, boors and clowns,
Or dirty artizans of towns,
Would, when they wed, produce but two
To take their place in season due,
Philosophy might spare its frowns;
But this not chancing, he declares
The rich alone should live in pairs,
And for their sake each other man
Consume as little as he can,
And die unmated in his cares.
He thinks, while sympathy is sure,
That mendicancy is the cure
For pauperism; that 't is not right
To mulct the rich in their despite,
But that the poor should feed the poor.
This said, he clasps his fingers ten,
And sniffs th' applause of voice and pen;
Bows placidly, goes home to dine,
And wastes the food, in pomp and wine,
Of half a hundred better men.
AN ASPIRATION FROM LONDON.
WHAT time the fern puts forth its rings,
What time the early throstle sings,
I love to fly the murky town,
And tread the moorlands, bare and brown;
From greenest level of the glens,
To barest summit of the Bens,
To trace the torrents where they flow,
Serene or brawling, fierce or slow ;
To linger pleased, and loiter long,
A silent listener to their song.
Farewell, ye streets! Again I'll sit
On crags to watch the shadows flit;
To list the buzzing of the bee,
Or branches waving like a sea;
To hear far off the cuckoo's note,
Or lark's clear carol high afloat,
And find a joy in every sound,
Of air, the water, or the ground;
Of fancies full, though fixing nought,
And thinking-heedless of my thought.
Farewell! and in the teeth of care
I'll breathe the buxom mountain air,
Feed vision upon dyes and hues
That from the hill-top interfuse,
White rocks, and lichens born of spray,
Dark heather tufts, and mosses grey,
Green grass, blue sky, and boulders brown,
With amber waters glistening down,
And early flowers blue, white, and pink,
That fringe with beauty all the brink.
Farewell, ye streets! Beneath an arch
Of drooping birch or feathery larch,
Or mountain ash that o'er it bends,
I'll watch some streamlet as it wends;
Some brook whose tune its course betrays,
Whose verdure dogs its hidden ways-
Verdure of trees and bloom of flowers,
And music fresher than the showers,
Soft-dripping where the tendrils twine;
And all its beauty shall be mine.
Aye, mine, to bring me joy and health,
And endless store of mental wealth
Wealth ever given to hearts that warm
To loveliness of sound or form,
And that can see in Nature's face
A hope, a beauty, and a grace —
That in the city or the woods,
In thoroughfares or solitudes,
Can live their life at Nature's call,
Despising nothing, loving all.
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