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III.
Loud without the wind was
roaring
Through th'autumnal sky;
Drenching wet, the cold
rain pouring,
Spoke of winter nigh.
All too like that dreary
eve,
Did my exiled spirit grieve.
Grieved at first, but grieved
not long,
Sweet--how softly sweet!--it
came;
Wild words of an ancient
song,
Undefined, without a name.
"It was spring, and the skylark
was singing:"
Those words they awakened
a spell;
They unlocked a deep fountain,
whose springing,
Nor absence, nor distance
can quell.
In the gloom of a cloudy
November
They uttered the music of
May ;
They kindled the perishing
ember
Into fervour that could
not decay.
Awaken, o'er all my dear
moorland,
West-wind, in thy glory
and pride!
Oh! call me from valley
and lowland,
To walk by the hill-torrent's
side!
It is swelled with the first
snowy weather;
The rocks they are icy and
hoar,
And sullenly waves the long
heather,
And the fern leaves are
sunny no more.
There are no yellow stars
on the mountain
The bluebells have long
died away
From the brink of the moss-bedded
fountain--
From the side of the wintry
brae.
But lovelier than corn-fields
all waving
In emerald, and vermeil,
and gold,
Are the heights where the
north-wind is raving,
And the crags where I wandered
of old.
It was morning: the bright
sun was beaming;
How sweetly it brought back
to me
The time when nor labour
nor dreaming
Broke the sleep of the happy
and free!
But blithely we rose as the
dawn-heaven
Was melting to amber and
blue,
And swift were the wings
to our feet given,
As we traversed the meadows
of dew.
For the moors! For the moors,
where the short grass
Like velvet beneath us should
lie!
For the moors! For the moors,
where each high pass
Rose sunny against the clear
sky!
For the moors, where the
linnet was trilling
Its song on the old granite
stone;
Where the lark, the wild
sky-lark, was filling
Every breast with delight
like its own!
What language can utter the
feeling
Which rose, when in exile
afar,On the brow of a lonely hill kneeling,
I saw the brown heath growing
there?
It was scattered and stunted,
and told me
That soon even that would
be gone:
It whispered, "The grim
walls enfold me,
I have bloomed in my last
summer's sun."
But not the loved music,
whose waking
Makes the soul of the Swiss
die away,
Has a spell more adored
and heartbreaking
Than, for me, in that blighted
heath lay.
The spirit which bent 'neath
its power,
How it longed--how it burned
to be free!
If I could have wept in
that hour,
Those tears had been heaven
to me.
Well--well; the sad minutes
are moving,
Though loaded with trouble
and pain;
And some time the loved
and the loving
Shall meet on the mountains
again!
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