With mattock and with spade My clan had counted blest: My sword, and spear, and chain,- I know your modern boast Is light, and learning's spread,- Farley Beath, NEAR GUILDFORD, SURREY. Many a day have I whiled away For celts, and querns, and funereal urns, And rich red Samian ware, And sculptured stones, and centurions' bones May all lie buried there! How calmly serene, and glad have I been From morn till eve to stay, With Surrey serfs turning the turfs The happy livelong day; With eye still bright, and hope yet alight, As the spade brings up fragments of things Pleasant and rare it was to be there On a joyous day of June, With the circling scene all gay and green Steep'd in the silent noon; When beauty distils from the calm glad hills,- O then to look back upon Time's old track Or rush'd pell-mell with a midnight yell Yes; every stone has a tale of its own, A volume of old lore; And this white sand from many a brand Has polish'd gouts of gore; When Holmbury-height had its beacon light, And Cantii held old Leith, And Rome stood then with his iron men On ancient Farley-heath! How many a group of that exiled troop Or lying at length have bask'd their strength Or down by the well in the larch-grown dell Look, look! my day-dream right ready would seem The past with the present to join,— For see! I have found in this rare ground An eloquent green old coin, With turquoise rust on its Emperor's bust Some Cæsar, august Lord, And the legend terse, and the classic reverse, "Victory, valour's reward!" Victory,-yes! and happiness, Kind comrade, to me and to you, When such rich spoil has crown'd our toil And proved the day-dream true; With hearty acclaim how we hail'd by his name The Cæsar of that coin, And told with a shout his titles out And drank his health in wine! And then how blest the noon-day rest With hungry cheer and the brave old beer And the secret balm of the spirit at calm, Aye, have I not found in that rare ground Wisdom. It is the way we go, the way of life; With toil and grief, and grief and toil again: That never doubts its birthright to be blest, The Beart's Busbaud. FOR MUSIC. Go, leave me to weep for the years that are past, For my youth, and its friends, and its pleasures all dead, My spring and my summer are fading too fast, And I long to live over the days that are fled; It is not for sorrows or sins on my track That I mournfully cast my fond yearnings behind,-Ah no,-from affection I love to look back, It is only my Heart that has wedded my Mind. And still, let the Mind that has married a Heart, From the realm that he rules in the soul of his bride; Like a child's broken toys are the years past away, And my Heart half-ashamed has forgotten her grief. Prophets. Prophets at home,-I smile to note your wrongs; The little minds that chronicle a birth Dismay'd at his gigantie lineaments, They fear'd to find his glory their disgrace, His mind their master: so their worldly aim Was still to vex him with discouragements, To check the spring-tide budding of his fame, And keep it down, to save themselves a name. |