Then o'er the mourner and the dead, My song should come like buds and flowers, O that a wing of splendour, Like yon wild cloud, were mine! Yon bounteous cloud, that gets to give, On that bright wing, to climes of spring And bid hope smile on weeping thoughts, Or like the rainbow, laughing When misty morning calleth up Her mountains, one by one, While glistening down the golden broom, And round the little rocky isles O that the truth of beauty Were married to my rhyme! That it might wear a mountain charm Then, Ribbledin! would all the best No longer, nameless streamlet, That marriest Rivilin! Henceforth, lone Nature's devotees THE MALTBY YEWS. FAMED Maltby Yews, with trunks like stone! Of men whose lives were crime and sorrow. Age after age, while Time grew old, Your writhen boughs, here, slowly lengthen'd; Five hundred years have darkly strengthen'd. And, high above the full-voiced lark, O could I write upon your gloom BURNS. THAT heaven's beloved die early, But old as Truth, although in youth, Died giant-hearted Burns. O that I were the daisy That sank beneath his plough, Or, "neighbour meet," that "skylark sweet!” Say, are they nothing now? 66 That mouse, our fellow mortal," Lives deep in Nature's heart; Like earth and sky, it cannot die Till earth and sky depart. Thy Burns, child-honour'd Scotland! Is many minds in one; With thought on thought, the name is fraught Of glory's peasant son. Thy Chaucer is thy Milton, And might have been thy Tell; As Hampden fought, thy Sidney wrote Be proud, man-childed Scotland! And "Bonny Doon," and "heaven aboon," Be proud, though sin dishonour'd, Grieve not, though savage forests Look'd grimly on the wave, Where dim-eyed flowers and shaded bowers Seem'd living in the grave. Grieve not, though, by the torrent, Its headlong course was riven, When o'er it came, in clouds and flame, Niagara from heaven! For sometimes gently flowing, And sometimes chafed to foam, VOL. II. G |