| |
| BY the side of a ruined terrace | |
| I sat in the early spring; | |
| The leaves were so young that the speckled hen-thrush | |
| Could be seen as she sat in the hawthorn bush, | |
| Falt’ring and faint at the cuckoo’s cry; | 5 |
| The cypress looked black against the green | |
| Of folded chestnut and budding beech, | |
| And up from the slumbering vale beneath | |
| Came now and again the ominous ring | |
| Of a passing bell for a village death. | 10 |
| Yet a spirit of hope went whispering by, | |
| Through the wakening woods, o’er the daisied mead; | |
| And up in the stem of the strait Scotch fir | |
| An insolent squirrel, in holiday brush, | |
| Went scampering gaily, at utmost speed, | 15 |
| To gnaw at his fir-apples out of reach. | |
| All seemed so full of life and stir, | |
| Of twitter and twinkle, and shimmer and sheen, | |
| That I closed my book, for I could not read; | |
| So I sat me down to muse instead, | 20 |
| By the side of the ruined terrace, | |
| In the breath of the early spring. | |
| |
| Alas that the sound of a passing bell, | |
| (Only proclaiming some villager’s death), | |
| As it echoes up from the valley beneath, | 25 |
| Should summon up visions of trestle and shroud! | |
| And pity it is that yon marble urn, | |
| Fall’n and broken should seem to tell | |
| Of days that are done with, and may not return | |
| Whatever the future shall chance to be! | 30 |
| Hollow and dead as the empty shell | |
| Of last year’s nut as it lies on the grass, | |
| Or the frail laburnum’s withered seed, | |
| That hang like felons on gallows-tree: | |
| This is a truth that half aloud | 35 |
| We may but murmur with bated breath: | |
| How many sat as I sit to-day, | |
| In the vanished hours of the olden time, | |
| Watching the Spring in her early prime | |
| Beam, and blossom, and go her way! | 40 |
| Squirrels that sport and doves that coo, | |
| And leaves that twinkle against the blue, | |
| A green woodpecker and screeching jay, | |
| Ye are purposeless things that perish and pass, | |
| Yet you wanton and squander your transient day,— | 45 |
| My soul is sickened at sight of you! | |
| ‘I had rather be shrouded and coffined and dead’ | |
| (To my innermost soul I, sighing, said) | |
| ‘Than know no pleasure save love and play!’ | |
| Then all seemed so full of the odour of Death | 50 |
| (Though I smelt the gorse-blossom blown from the heath), | |
| That I opened my book and tried to read, | |
| Since my soul was too saddened to muse instead, | |
| By the side of the ruined terrace, | |
| In the breath of the early spring. | 55 |
| |
| I wonder now if it could be right | |
| For the Great First Cause to let such things be? | |
| To plan this blending of black and white,— | |
| (I know for myself I had made all bright!) | |
| And to mould me, and make me, and set me here, | 60 |
| Without my leave and against my will, | |
| With never so much as a word in mine ear | |
| As to how I may pilot my bark through the night? | |
| Was it well, I wonder, or was it ill, | |
| That I should feel such a wish to be wise, | 65 |
| And dream of flying, and long for sight, | |
| With faltering footsteps and bandaged eyes, | |
| To be blamed the more that I may not see, | |
| As I stagger about in a wilderness, | |
| And know no more than the worms and the flies? | 70 |
| I feel at my heart that it is not right— | |
| ‘Nothing is right and nothing is just; | |
| We sow in ashes and reap the dust; | |
| I think, on the whole, I would rather be | |
| The wandering emmet, that loses its way | 75 |
| On the desert-plain of my muslin-dress, | |
| Than be moulded as either woman or man.’ | |
| (All this I said in my bitterness.) | |
| ‘Yet who is to help me and who is to blame?’ | |
| But just at that moment a hurrying sound, | 80 |
| A sound as of hurrying pattering feet, | |
| In the dry leaves under the hawthorn bush, | |
| Troubled the heart of the speckled hen-thrush, | |
| Whilst the love-sick pigeon that called to her mate, | |
| And the green woodpecker and screeching jay, | 85 |
| Outspread their wings and flew scared away; | |
| And on a sudden, with leap and bound, | |
| My neighbour’s collie, marked black and tan, | |
| Sprang panting into the garden seat, | |
| His collar aglow with my neighbour’s name! | 90 |
| So my neighbour himself cannot be far, | |
| Ah, I care not now how wrong things are!… | |
| I know I am ignorant, foolish, and small | |
| As this wandering emmet that climbs my dress, | |
| Yet I know that now I had answered ‘Yes,’ | 95 |
| (Were I asked my will by the Father of all); | |
| ‘I desire to be, I am glad to be born!’ | |
| And all because, on a soft May morn, | |
| My neighbour’s collie-dog, black and tan, | |
| Leapt over the privet-hedge, and ran | 100 |
| With a rush, and a cry, and a bound to my side, | |
| And because I saw his master ride | |
| (Laying spurs to his willing horse) | |
| Over the flaming yellow gorse. | |
| Awake, my heart! I may not wait! | 105 |
| Let me arise and open the gate, | |
| To breathe the wild warm air of the heath, | |
| And to let in Love, and to let out Hate, | |
| And anger at living, and scorn of Fate, | |
| To let in Life, and to let out Death, | 110 |
| (For mine ears are deaf to the passing-bell— | |
| I think he is buried now, out of the way;) | |
| And I say to myself, ‘It is good, it is well; | |
| Squirrels that sport and doves that coo, | |
| And leaves that twinkle against the blue, | 115 |
| And green woodpecker and screeching jay,— | |
| Good-morrow, all! I am one of you!’ | |
| Since now I need neither muse nor read, | |
| I may listen, and loiter, and live instead; | |
| And take my pleasure in love and play, | 120 |
| And share my pastime with all things gay, | |
| By the side of the ruined terrace, | |
| In the breath of the early spring. | |
| |
