Maternal Love Bk. II. vv. 342-380 Admire how Nature, with her jealous care For purity in kind, still schemes to pair Mother and child by features that forbid Confusion in the common home all share.
Members of a kind insomuch agree; Yet each is itself; whence diversity.
Mutual recognition rests on that; Family ties without it could not be.
No human convention; dumb cattle can Be sure where love is due, no less than Man.
An universal instinct—and, for guide, A sense of differences—Nature’s plan.
A calf may its innocent life resign On the altar before some stately shrine, Shedding a flood of warm blood ’mid the steam Of incense, and libations of red wine.
And the Mother! in many a green glade She tracks the lost by prints his feet have made.
Each spot she studies, in the fond belief The faith of love can never be gainsaid.
Then, from the woods that her moans overflow, An impulse drives her to renew her woe At the stall, where a passionate regret, Piercing her heart, tosses her to and fro.
Not willow saplings, dewy grass, nor sight Of brimming rivers, with, in warm noon light, Cool pools to stand in, banish pain and ache, Much less, yield an interval of delight.
A calf at play impose on her belief!
Be accepted as hers, and bring relief!
Numberless signs attest it not her own; Both like and unlike aggravate her grief.
’Tis given not to flocks alone and herds To mark diversities, but wild beasts, birds, Joying in lonely groves, and streams, and lakes, Even fish that understand without words, As they swim the deep, paint in shells the shore,— Nay, grains of corn themselves, an endless store, Remain distinguishable, one and all; Are known apart by learnéd in such lore.
Art works after one pattern, and by rule; Nature as the mood inspires, not a school.
She is certain in idea; diverse In embodiment; never same and dull.
Echo Bk. IV. vv. 525-536, 549-596 Sound, voice are bodies. Though not for the hand To grasp, sense feels them, acts at their command.
They wind into the ear, and strike the drum; Hark! response, as to a conductor’s wand.
The voice even can hurt, as fist, or saw.
In full volume, hoarse, grating on the jaw, Jostling its way in haste to worry through, It leaves the path it travels rough and raw.
And no less bodily a spoken word; When moulded, and dressed, to be rightly heard, And winged by that arch modeller, the tongue, It slips through the lips, and careers, a bird.
If the length to be traversed is unfair, Symmetry is marred; speakers must prepare For dazed confusion in their audience, And only a blurred rumbling in the air.
Then set a Herald in a market place.
For him thousands of eyes gaze from one face; And he flings at the whole a single word, That each will drink-in as his special grace.
It multiplies, and with the hearers; all Receive stamped facsimiles, to recall Both form and sound, distinct, as that went forth; Each can claim his own for original.
Human ears are the goal; and when no ear Is reached, after roaming everywhere In vain for shelter, the poor thing expires, To flit a ghostly leaf, dead, shrunk and sere.
Or chance may be that it collides with rock; When—as with pebble that recoils—the shock Returns the voice thither whence it had come, And so unchanged that it appears to mock.
Natural the cause, effect; the surprise, When in lone spots a company’s loud cries After stragglers on dark hills, bring back nought But old words in old order as replies.
Where a height faced height, I have known a shout To gambol between in a joyous rout, And six or seven times reverberate; Like ball thrown to and fro in play about.
Nothing is out of Nature’s course, the mode In which She acts; but Fancy loves to load Being with mysteries; not learn the laws Within our ken that rule Earth, our abode.
Thus, a charmed husbandman will vigils keep, Imagining far echoes breaking sleep, ’Mid silences that seem to hold their breath, To be Pan come, half God, half Beast, with leap, And rustle of his bristly, pine-wreathed head— Drawn lip running o’er shrilling pipe—to lead His troop, goat-footed Satyrs, Nymphs, and Fauns, Till cliffs and caves reply to chords and reed.
He deems that shy Powers, as falls the Dark, In solitudes—no prying crowds to mark— Fill woods and hills with music, wind and stringed, That he hears till the day-star wakes the lark.
For ears hear as they list.
The world is wide, With wildernesses wherein few abide.
Remote from busy marts these joy to dream Some Gods do not disdain to dwell beside!
The Seasons Bk. V. vv. 736-746 The pageant of the Seasons! Venus comes; She brings with her, As leader of the revel, winged Zephyr, Spring’s harbinger.
And Flora has spread a carpet, finer was never wove, All hues and fragrances, to be trod by the Queen of Love.
Next enters red-hot Summer; but its droughts are lightly borne By good Goddess Ceres; for they ripen the standing corn Nought ashamed is She of the dusty sweat upon her brow.
Foreseeing her sheaves, how more and heavier they shall grow; Nor even scolds the North-wind; it steels the straw to sustain, By its rough embraces, the weight of the hardening grain.
Autumn steps close after; and it too with a God for guide; Hark! shout the vineyards, “Bacchus! Hail to Bacchus!” far and wide.
And now Earth’s “No-man’s land!” Spring, Autumn, Summer here and there; While up and down dance the Winds in the Kingdom of the Air.
South-easters roar through woods where green leaves whispered yesterday; And thunders the South on meadows that wear the bloom of May.
But the Year is waning; in the long chilly Dark it sits; No more, though by mere spasms, it breaks out into merry fits.
Sulky and dull it mumbles its tempers in fog and sleet; Its joints are stiff with age; it totters on frost-bitten feet.
’Tis Winter, with a train pinched like itself, and short of breath, That shivers, and, as it moves, rattles its remains of teeth.