'Come out,' said Leonard, bursting through my door,
His black curls tangled like a fretting sea,--
'Come out, nor waste on lazy books this day,
Fit for the gods, and all too good for men.
Thou witless student, authors have two eyes,
As many thou! with complement of ears,
(Though rather long ones); pray, had Plato more?
Bacon could smell and taste, and finger coin
As saith tradition; and great Socrates
Possess'd five senses and his ugliness;
An' if thou use thine own great store as well,
Thou shalt be learn'd and famous ere thou die.
Thou ever lookest thro' the telescope
Of great dead minds, seeing the shores remote
Of past and future time; thine own poor nose
Knocking meantime 'gainst every neighbour post.
Did Beauty die with her Interpreters,
Dirg'd by the murmur of the Italian sea?
Did Science fly with Newton up to Heaven,
Leaving us here forlorn to read her past?
Or do they rather live a fuller life,
Now dropping blessing down like fruitful rain
On human hearts and homes? Who on the past
Is idly pleas'd to feed his mental frame,
May be indeed the pupil of great men,
But never their companion. We have priests
And teachers all about us every hour--
Matter yet plastic from the hand of God,
And spirits welling up from founts divine,
Begging our thoughts. You give no heed to them;
You're like a child, who throw your lesson by
To fidget with the key, which in itself
Is nothing, can be nothing, but a help
Unto your task's right reading being learnt.'
The sapient Leonard stopp'd.
So I arose,
Took my round hat, and put my box of paints
Into a basket, with some bread and wine
To sustain the outer husk, and for our souls
A volume of Carlyle, poet-painter, one
Wherein he treats of Goethe, and a wee
Edition of Shakespeare's songs (whose title-page
Bore the dear name of some old German town,
Where Leonard bought it, being sworn to Him
As I to Goethe then); and, so equipp'd,
We sallied forth.
A slowly winding road
Led up and up; upon the boundary wall
A fringe of ferns cut into delicate shapes
By Nature's graving tool, and richly dyed
In every shade of green, grew lavishly,
Rejoicing, quiet things, to be alive.
So wound we up, till unawares we gain'd
The broad high table-land, and to our eyes,
Our dazzled, utterly astonish'd eyes,
Broke all that sea of heather, purple ton'd,
A luscious carpet far as eye could see,
Variously shaded, and the cotton-rush
Here and there flecking with its snow-white plume
The great expanse; and by us brown game-birds
Went whirring in sharp fear. Ne'er in my life
Had I seen such a sight, and I stood dumb
In awful wonder. Leonard said, 'God's book
Lieth before thee.'
In a point of time
I seem'd to read long chapters, every word
Cramm'd full with meaning, and the strangest thoughts
Came over me; the great indwelling soul
Of all this beauty spake my heart within,
While in my veins a richer life-blood ran;
The chaos of my fancy open'd out
Into an order never known before;
New thoughts, new paintings, and new poems rose
Like dreams of a futurity, more bright
Than ever was my past; I thought I heard
The stars all singing, though I saw them not,
And the earth swell the chorus; their song said,
'Glory to God who made the Beautiful!'
'Glory to God!' I said, and down my cheeks
Tears rain'd for gladness, till I could not see
The heather or the sunshine. Leonard then--
For he was of a different nature, strong
And blithe as mountain colt--bid me come on
And try another page, and while he went
He sang at topmost voice, 'What shall he have
That kills the deer? the horn, the horn to wear;'
Or else the 'Greenwood Tree.'
And so we pass'd
Over the hills, unto what seem'd a brink
O'erlooking half a world; hill after hill
Around us lay, encircling a great vale
Of many miles' extent; and to the right
An opening stretch'd away: we thither bent
Our steps, and gain'd a verdant pasture deep
In shadow of thick trees, beside the Wharf,
Where comfortable monks had built a church,
And dwellings for themselves, and pray'd and eat,
And drank and eat and pray'd and drank again,
And taught the neighbouring poor some little lore,
And gave them alms, and gossip'd; no place this
For rigid anchorite of dreams divine,
But rather in these blossoming Bolton woods
Might all the Greek and Roman poets lie
Out of the reach of harm on dusty shelves,
And prophesy--the unrighteous pagans--times
When Bolton Abbey should lie low, and they
Should, in quotations, illustrate its fall.
But we were not to that offence inclin'd;
Little of Roman or of Greek thought we,
But only of sweet England and her bards.
Down to the river thirstily we went,
Where yet no deeper than a child's blue eyes
It sparkled over stones; the yonder side
A rocky bank rose steeply, hung with trees.
There did we lie and dream in the hot noon;
Leonard read Shakespeare's songs, as was his wont
Whenever he was glad. I hid my face
Far in the thick rich grass, and poems sang,
Within my spirit, of the olden days,
And then about the ruins and the trees,
And children paddling in the river. I
Seem'd verily like an Æolian harp that day;
I was so mov'd by Nature that I sway'd
Beneath her like a willow to and fro;
And ever as a song came in at one ear,
I felt constrain'd to sing it, and it went
Out at the other. So we lay till dusk;
Then, when the silver moon in beauty rose
Into the dark blue sky, and twinkling stars
Rose over Bolton, shimmering in the Wharf,
We back return'd. Over the heathery moors,
Now darkly radiant, silently we went.