feJfei^aaPiagfej 
 
 •j<-<ff<>:;r<-i*%S^!^^«Ji;i>^
 
 THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 LOS ANGELES
 
 THE VILLAGE LIFP:.
 
 PIBLISHED BV 
 
 JAMES MACLEHOSE. GLASGOW. 
 
 MACMII.I.AN AND CO., LONDON. 
 
 London, .... Hnviilton, Adams and Co. 
 
 Cajnhrid^e, . . Mactnillnn and Co. 
 
 Edinb?t>g!i, . . . Von^las and Fonlis. 
 
 MDCCCI.XXIX.
 
 THE VILLAGE LIFE. 
 
 '•HE SEEMS TO BE A STRANGER: BCT HIS PRESENT IS 
 A WITHERED BRANCH, THAT's ONLY GREKN AT TOP." 
 
 Shakespeare. 
 
 GLASGOW: 
 
 JAMES MACLEHOSE, ST. VINXENT STREET, 
 
 JJnblishcr to the tlnibcrsitg. 
 
 1879- 
 
 \All Ki gilts Reserved.]
 
 
 Though poor the gift to one so brave, 
 So loving, witli a soul that rose 
 In radiant intellectual sway 
 Over its wide surrounding woes ; 
 And tempered true, like ancient glaive, 
 To bend, and back with vigour spring ; 
 Beloved Mother, let me lay 
 On thy dear grave this offering. 
 
 Glasgow, September, 1879. 
 
 868849
 
 Contents. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 PROLOGUE, 9 
 
 THE VILLAGE, 1 7 
 
 THE SCHOOL-MASTER, 23 
 
 MY LADY, 43 
 
 THE BLACKSMITH, -57 
 
 THE PARISH CLERK 7 1 
 
 THE PARSON, 77 
 
 THE KIRK. 85 
 
 THE BEADLE, . . 91 
 
 THE SQUIRE, 103 
 
 THE OLD PROFESSOR II7
 
 8 COX77uY'rS. 
 
 PAl.K 
 
 r//£ MILL, 129 
 
 I'HE MILLER OF BIRLSTANE, I33 
 
 ■JIIE OLD BOATMAN, 1 53 
 
 'JIIE DOCTOR, 165 
 
 I HE BLACKSMITH'S DAUGHTER, 195 
 
 EriLOGUE, . 201 
 
 NOTES 203
 
 THE VILLAGE LIFE. 
 
 JJroloQuc. 
 
 (~^0, little book, without pretence 
 
 Vain-glorious, and make thy way 
 In the thick crowded world to-day ! 
 But scantily endowed thou art — 
 None better than thy maker knows — 
 In the great press to bear a part; 
 But as thy strength is, go thou hence, 
 And "dree thy weird" unto its close, 
 W'hate'er the weird may hap to be, 
 Struggle and death, or victory;
 
 lO THE VILLAGE LIFE. 
 
 Or that sore-doomed and wretched fate- 
 The passing interest of an hour, 
 And afterwards the blameless state 
 Among the thousands lost or slain. 
 How few of those at silent rest 
 In the Republic's shades unblest 
 And nameless graves, return again ? 
 
 For though perhaps a latent power 
 
 Of life, that far within the deep 
 
 Of death and utter darkness, may 
 
 Through ages long defy decay, 
 
 And raise old thoughts to happy light, , 
 
 And welcome, and rekindled youth. 
 
 That happiness is for the gods 
 
 Of Literature ! for those who sweep 
 
 The future with far-seeing sight 
 
 And catch a glimpse of far-off truth.
 
 PROLOGUE. II 
 
 . Dead books lie dead ; or at the most 
 They only re-appear again, 
 From long forgetfulness uptost 
 Like corpses from the troubled main, 
 To strand upon a distant coast 
 .And seek a second burial. 
 
 Go then, thou little book of mine, 
 And add a new grave to the dead, 
 " Unwept, unhonoured," and unread, 
 Save by thine author, who in vain 
 Will look for fame from worth of thine. 
 
 I The lives of books, like lives of men, 
 I Are short and long, are fast and slow, 
 
 But die they must, or soon, or late; 
 
 And even those that seem to grow 
 
 In beauty with the centuries, 
 \ And barely show the touch of age.
 
 12 THE VILLAGE LIFE. 
 
 ^ Are not immortal, cannot be. 
 Decay will come by sure degrees, 
 And at some distant future date, 
 The now strong-hearted living page 
 Will find its everlasting sleep 
 Upon the ever-rising heap 
 Of waste, that Time behind him leaves — 
 The Ages' mighty Dust-bin — not 
 Before its purpose is fulfilled, 
 And its last lesson man receives ; 
 Absorbs and grows from, and forgets. 
 
 Is that a compensating thought 
 
 For the unlucky and unskilled? 
 
 May they not boast that though the frets 
 
 Of one day's life in scores have killed 
 
 The creatures of their brains — the pure 
 
 Ephemera of Literature —
 
 PROLOGUE. 13 
 
 That they have lived and duty done 
 And died? 
 
 And what among the years 
 The race of man has spent on earth, 
 And yet will spend, is a brief day 
 Or a brief thousand years or so ? 
 (Jne passes, and the other goes ; 
 One in the glitter of the sun 
 With a few gasps 'twixt birth and death, 
 The other through the storms and tears 
 Of many lustres, rising slow 
 To power, and sinking to the grey 
 Of age, and then its lasting close, 
 Fame quenched for both, for nought remains. 
 
 Nay something lasts, and lasts as well 
 
 For the ephemera as for kings 
 
 Of thouglit, with long enduring reigns.
 
 14 
 
 THE VILLAGE LIFE. 
 
 A science law demonstrates clear 
 That every act, however weak, 
 Liberates force, that spreads around, 
 And as it spreads in sphere and sphere, 
 Even to creation's utmost bound, 
 Change follows. The remotest star 
 Is moved by every stone we throw, 
 Perhaps by every word we speak. 
 
 So in the universe of mind, 
 
 A thought expressed will reach as far 
 
 And bear its influence ; it is force. 
 
 And force of the sublimest kind. 
 
 Inducing change through all its course, 
 
 Affecting all intelligence. 
 
 Till the last throb of brain shall show 
 
 Expiring reason, soul, and sense. 
 
 And with these random musings fired,
 
 PROLOGUE. 
 
 I send thee out, my timid child, 
 Into the wide and dangerous wild 
 Of Letters, unacknowledged too. 
 Fair be the path thou dost pursue, 
 And soft thy rest when thou art tired I 
 The parent's eye will watch thy way — 
 For guide he cannot — and will shed 
 A secret tear when thou art dead, 
 And " mingling with thy kindred dust " :- 
 Then Vale! Vale! go thou must. 
 
 15
 
 ^he "Billagf. 
 
 \/0U see the village from the moor. 
 A long descent by narrow path — 
 White in the sun it glisteneth — 
 Leads to the dwellings of the poor, 
 Embosomed in the leafy trees. 
 And flowing through with pebbly ease 
 A Httle trouting burn is seen, 
 Its grassy banks the village green : 
 A pleasant place when summer weaves 
 With flow'ry weft the grassy sod, 
 
 B
 
 iS THE VILLAGE LIFE. 
 
 Aad hangs the ehn and ash with leaves, 
 
 Rusthng around the cottage eaves, 
 
 When soft winds breathe abroad; 
 
 Most beautiful when golden light 
 
 Shines from the western sky at night. 
 
 And lights the face of children fair 
 
 Who play beside the stream, or round 
 
 The trees in merrj' jingo-ring 
 
 Go dancing, till their glossy hair 
 
 Is shaken loosely o'er their eyes. 
 
 There, maidens croon and young men sing, 
 
 And old men gabble over pipes. 
 
 And old wives chatter with old wives, 
 
 And all the bright light glorifies — 
 
 Young life and old life hallowed there 
 
 By golden beauty of the trees, 
 
 By shining grass, by purple cloud, 
 
 By mellow rainfall, by the breeze 
 
 That turns the leaves and stirs the locks,
 
 THE VILLAGE. 
 
 By deepening shadows of the night, 
 By the blue sky and starry light; 
 Ideal gleams of heaven and earth 
 Play round the humble cottar's hearth. 
 
 Descend with me, a little while. 
 The homes of homely men to see, — 
 Here half-way is a broken stile, 
 And gushing bright, and clear, and free, 
 Out of the red sand by its side, 
 A shallow well invites to drink. 
 A moment pause upon its brink, 
 Or stoop recumbent on the knee, 
 With planted hands outstretching wide, 
 Like the select of Gideon's band ; 
 And dipping face and lapping tongue 
 Into the fountain, understand 
 How thirst was slaked when earth was vountr. 
 And the wine cup was yet unsung. 
 
 ^9
 
 20 • THE VILLAGE LIFE. 
 
 This is the trysting well and stile ; 
 Here may be seen the village maid 
 At gloaming, half afraid to stay, 
 Yet trusting that not far away, 
 Some one is coming to beguile 
 A sweet brief hour with her ; and shade 
 His and her eyes ot gleaming love, 
 With modest shawl drawn close above 
 Their leaning heads, and arms that lock 
 . Each other in. Too soon the clock 
 From village homes sounds out the hour 
 That separates, and seems to mock 
 The love that binds them in its power. 
 
 And legends, too, there are to tell, 
 Old legends of the stile and well — 
 What well, or trysting place has not 
 Its antique story, deftly wrought 
 From fancv and from fl\ct ? Somehow
 
 THE VILLAGE. 2[ 
 
 The poet lingers there, and weaves 
 
 From ancient myth and modern fact 
 
 A tragic tale, or comic act —   
 
 A ghostly narrative that leaves 
 
 A faint sensation even now 
 
 That something eerie is about — 
 
 Something that tempts the maiden out. 
 
 That draws her to the place where love 
 
 Was in the olden time supreme, — 
 
 Tragic or happy, matters not — 
 
 She hopes the best, and hopes, in sooth. 
 
 That love, all love, will be her lot. 
 
 The village swain, he too may deem, 
 
 With half bold superstitious face 
 
 The while he meets her, that the place 
 
 Is sacred to the trust and truth 
 
 And triumphs of dear innocence, 
 
 And awed he may be by the sense 
 
 Of time and place, and legend old.
 
 2 2 THE VILLAGE LIFE. 
 
 Now we have dnink, and ruminate, 
 Not on the tales the charmed relate; 
 P)Ut on the youth and love that glow 
 Around the trysting place, and throw 
 The warmth of true romance upon 
 The humble villagers below. 
 
 Here each has sought his careful mate, 
 And placed her on his homely throne ; 
 Both may be old, and grown sedate, 
 But still may catch the sense of youth. 
 The sense of love, the while they pass 
 The spot where love was linked to truth ; 
 Or think of daughters waiting there. 
 Or sons who wander o'er the grass, 
 With passions opening to the air.
 
 ^hc §choolmit5tcr. 
 
 ■pvESCENDING still, we reach the Howe. 
 
 Quite near the village. It is now 
 A poor old ruin of a house, 
 Two gables standing, and between 
 A mass of rubbish, that the sheen 
 Of summer flowers and weeds conceal. 
 Its latest tenant none will rouse ; 
 He sleeps securely, with the seal 
 Of God between his patient brows,
 
 24 
 
 THE VILLAGE LIFE. 
 
 Down in the village graveyard there, 
 No stone above his ridgy "lair." 
 
 Old and alone, without the prop 
 Of wife or child, he tottered down 
 Into the grave, and ended so, 
 A lonely not uncheerful life, 
 A life of labour crowned with hope. 
 A teacher, once of some renown 
 In half a dozen parishes ; 
 A humble servant of the state, 
 He taught the " R's " with care and pains 
 To dullish youths, and when he found, 
 A lad of more capacious brains, 
 And quick of wit, with morals sound, 
 His joy was pure, his zeal was great. 
 Most lovingly he drew him on, 
 Through reading, writing and the slate ; 
 Through weary " use and wont," until
 
 THE SCHOOLMASTER. 
 
 He saw him safely on the hill 
 
 Of higher learning, digging deep 
 
 In Caesar's Commentaries ; or 
 
 Exploring Virgil's sybil leaves, 
 
 That safe in precious music keep 
 
 Till latest suns shall dawn upon 
 
 The latest race of thinking men^ 
 
 That older, ripened world of thought ; 
 
 From which our ranker world has grown ; 
 
 Or learning the light-hearted song 
 
 Of the gay Roman ; or among 
 
 The deeper-thinking bards of Greece, 
 
 Her sophists and philosophers. 
 
 In culture that was only hers, 
 
 Seeking the great tongue's rich increase. 
 
 And many a youth the teacher passed, 
 Fired with the love of classic lore, 
 From toilsome plough-tails, from the " last,"
 
 26 THE VILLAGE LIFE. 
 
 I From tailor's board, from planing bench, 
 And many menial labours more, 
 On to high honours and degrees 
 At famous Universities. 
 
 And when the summer days returned 
 And brought them back again to toil, 
 Sweetened by the " Humanities," 
 They dearly felt the welcome earned 
 From the old teacher — felt his hand 
 Pass o'er their heads with tender touch. 
 He did not praise them over much — 
 They knew his ever watchful care 
 Over their studious inner lives ; 
 He drew them to him after hours, 
 
 ' Went with them in their evening walks. 
 Grew young in their inspiring talks, 
 Himself inspiring them, by showers 
 
 ' Of fertile questioning that revives
 
 THE SCHOOLMASTER. 27 
 
 And amplifies their college lore, 
 And wafts upon their pleasant strolls 
 A gentle, balmy, classic air. 
 
 And when they entered, joyous, keen 
 On the long struggle, and the strife 
 The fates ordain for every life. 
 The agony of learning o'er — 
 How ardently their rise was seen 
 By the old man ! How quick his sight 
 Caught the first triumphs of the fight ; 
 For some were thund'ring in the Kirk, / 
 And some were pleading at the Bar, ' 
 And some were writing thoughtful books. 
 And some were travelling afar 
 Away in Geographic mirk. 
 And some in learning's obscure nooks 
 Were plodding drearily alone, 
 All stimulated by his word
 
 28 THE VILLAGE LIFE. 
 
 Of generous encouragement, 
 That struck the right responsive chord 
 Within their souls, and sent them on 
 In their true bias and intent. 
 
 So sped his happy village days, 
 And many an honest modest fame 
 He loved to boast of, and to name — 
 The fame of brave lads he had caught 
 From rustic toil, and sagely taught. 
 
 Ever some clever youth to raise 
 Fresh expectations, the reward 
 Of days and months of labour hard 
 In the dull pedagogic round 
 He hoped to find, and mostly found ; 
 For rarely was the parish school 
 Without at least a Latin boy. 
 His mother's pride, his teacher's joy,
 
 THE SCnOOLMASTER. 29 
 
 And destined some day to expound 
 The Calvinistic faith and rule. 
 
 I see him now, the master still, 
 A shabby pedant if you will, 
 With rumpled hair, and wrinkled face. 
 And full grey eyes, beneath a brow 
 Rounded and high, and just a trace 
 Of humour on the working lips ; 
 Round chested, and round shouldered; dressed 
 In rusty clothes of ancient cut. 
 Oft when the school-house door was shut, 
 He took me kindly as his guest 
 Into his book-encumbered room, 
 And talked with all his soul a-flame. 
 On many a theme, of many a name 
 I only feebly grasped or knew, 
 Until the shadows deeper grew 
 And settled into evening's gloom.
 
 ■zo THE VILLAGE LIFE. 
 
 o 
 
 > And there I learnt to understand 
 His curious theories of creeds, 
 Of ancient worships, bold and grand, 
 With, even in their errors, store 
 Of living thought and quickening lore. 
 
 Though hemmed-in with religious life- 
 Village religion— and ordained 
 By his position to partake 
 , A little in its shows and strife, 
 Within his heart it never reigned. 
 Its yoke sat Hghtly on him too, 
 He shook it off as one would shake 
 The dust from off his coat, while down 
 He settled to his quiet thoughts, 
 His ancient folios and his notes. 
 
 His mind was with the older gods, 
 The gods of Greece ; or older still,
 
 THE SCHOOLMASTER. 3 i 
 
 I The gods of Aryan renown, 
 Great Nature-gods ; conceptions vast 
 And simple of the glowing brain 
 Of the young world's imperial race, 
 While in its primitive abodes. 
 
 They moved within the distant past, 
 
 Mighty, majestic, primal forms 
 
 That child-like awe and wonderment 
 I Shaped of the dawn, of day and night — 
 
 Shaped of the sun, and moon, and sky. 
 
 Of clouds, and thunder, rain and storms. 
 
 Of sleep with visions dark and bright, 
 
 Of death's enduring mystery — 
 
 The facts of nature realised 
 
 In broad poetic splendour, blent 
 
 With the grey hues of daily life ; 
 , The life of men of Mount and Plain, 
 
 Herd-tending, rearing, breeding, and
 
 32 
 
 THE VILLAGE LIFE. 
 
 Subduing with a mastering hand 
 The savage tribes of brutes and men. 
 
 A sympathy that half agreed 
 
 The teacher had, with this grey creed 
 
 Our far-off ancestors believed, 
 
 And its more polished form, relieved 
 
 By happier life, and larger ken. 
 
 And fairer fancies, on the shores 
 
 And in the isles of the Great Sea : 
 
 There, wisest thought and word and deed. 
 
 Through glorious war and fertile peace, 
 
 In lusty vigour and in glee 
 
 Grew like the growth of tropic spores, 
 
 Into the splendid life of Greece. 
 
 What wonder that this simple soul. 
 Long pondering o'er the ancient time. 
 The gods, and god-like it contains,
 
 THE SCHOOLMASTER. 
 
 All moving to the stately roll 
 
 Of measured numbers musical, 
 
 Or cadences of classic prose ; 
 
 All with the early nobleness 
 
 That large and simple life retains, 
 
 Should feel his spirit drawn thereto 
 
 And rest serene in its repose ? — 
 
 Should feel that high above the stress 
 
 Of warring sects, from stiff-necked Jew 
 
 And speculating Gentile, from 
 
 The fierce commingling of the creeds 
 
 That jangled round St. Peter's Dome, 
 
 Dogma with dogma striving fell, 
 
 Science sinking in the strife. 
 
 And superstitions rising rife — 
 
 There towered still Olympian heights 
 
 On which the blissful gods remained ; 
 
 That the bright sky of India 
 
 Its older deities detained —   
 
 c 
 
 1 '^
 
 34 
 
 THE VILLAGE LIFE. 
 
 Still with their attributes a-fresh 
 From Nature's bosom ; human-like 
 As clothed with the thrilling flesh 
 Of men and women, and inspired 
 By men and women's highest thoughts — 
 Thoughts touching and interpreting 
 With pious awe the miracle 
 Surrounding them, that still surrounds 
 Us of a later, better date, 
 T\'hen Science and Religion shell 
 Each other's camp, and both dilate 
 On the destruction that abounds ? 
 
 For the old master would not praise 
 The double thousand years of Avar, 
 Cruel in word, bloody in deed, 
 In which from a fresh spiritual seed 
 A livelier stem of faith had shot. 
 He could not see that progress moves
 
 THE SCHOOLMASTER. 
 
 Slow upward upon jar and jar, 
 And dies in old appointed grooves ; 
 For every problem harder got, 
 And more insoluble, revealed 
 A corpse-like aspect to his soul. 
 
 But in the early faith he saw 
 A grasp at Nature keen and fast, 
 No puzzling over law and law. 
 But holding to her bosom vast. 
 And reading in her spacious face 
 Tokens of beauty and of grace, 
 Eternal attributes of power, 
 Of tenderest love and wildest hate 
 And the indifference of fate. 
 
 What more had human kind thro' years 
 Of painful agonies of thought — 
 Of changing faiths, exchanged in tears 
 
 >■>:!
 
 36 THE VILLAGE LIFE. 
 
 And bloodshed, for its torture get ? 
 Philosophies had come and gone, 
 Some dead and buried, some alive 
 Like marvellous frog in marvellous stone- 
 Coffined in old and unread books; 
 And some, retouched and modified 
 By many a philosophic pen, 
 Still lingered in the thoughts of men ; 
 But none had ever yet descried 
 New dawn within the dark, or seen — 
 However bright and sharp and keen 
 The intellectual gaze had been — 
 Farther than old and weary eyes 
 Of the forgotten centuries. 
 
 Call explanation what you will, 
 Cult, creed, philosophy, or dream 
 Poetic, mythologic, or 
 A holy script of cosmic lore,
 
 THE SCHOOLMASTER. 37 
 
 'Tis but an explanation still. 
 All to the musing teacher told 
 The self-same tale of mystery. 
 But in high preference he held 
 The nature gods of Aryan mould, 
 As lasting types of force and law. 
 Their shapes at morning dawn he saw, 
 When in his early walks alone, 
 Upon the level of the moor, 
 The coming god of day drove on 
 Bright-tinted clouds before him ; till. 
 At length revealed in azure pure, 
 He greeted holy heaven and earth. 
 Their shapes he saw at fading light, 
 When sadness, the dark twin of mirth. 
 Came with the dawn of sacred night — 
 He saw them rise upon the sky 
 In moon and stars and moving clouds ; 
 Great shapes that new philosophy
 
 J 
 
 8 THE VILLAGE LIFE. 
 
 Had vulgarised to common crowds, , 
 By vulgar scientific terms. 
 What though to him the forms were dim, 
 And breathing face and heavenly limb 
 Had vanished, yet they still expressed, 
 In shadowy form, the highest quest 
 ( )f nature's grail — the quest of Pan, 
 For in his secret heart, the man 
 Stood naked to himself confessed, 
 Old Pagan, or new Pantheist. 
 
 No doubt the simple teacher erred. 
 He erred because he failed to see, 
 Within the past, the tender shoot 
 Of a new faith rise bold and free 
 From Judah's long surviving root, 
 (jrowing like grain of mustard seed, 
 And through the dark and vicious reign 
 Of Pagan Roman, Pagan Goth,
 
 THE SCHOOLMASTER. 39 
 
 Flourishing with a vigorous stem 
 Above decay of heathen creeds, 
 And overtopping all of them. 
 A faith that slow and surely sheds 
 The rankness of its earlier growth, 
 Becoming fairer as it spreads, 
 And more divine as men become 
 Humane — 
 
 That with its law of love, 
 And its new mercy sweeter far 
 Than ever blest the poor and weak 
 Of the great ages ; with its peak 
 Of hope immortal, piercing to 
 A future life ; its avatar 
 Of God on man revealed through One 
 In whom the human and divine 
 Blend perfect in one perfect whole — 
 Surrounds and fills the orb of soul.
 
 40 THE VILLAGE LIFE. 
 
 But though the master's steady gaze 
 Down through the ages missed its scope 
 And never felt its high import, 
 He lived its life, in humble sort, 
 Unselfish, loving, in control 
 Of strictest duty all his days. 
 
 The school is gone, and in its stead 
 A brand new structure you may see. 
 Northward a little, on the top 
 Of yonder knoll. There is a Board 
 Of priests and laymen, who transact — 
 With much uproarious gravity — 
 Under the Education Act, 
 The school affairs ; and harshly lord 
 It o'er the master, young, and bred 
 In training college for his sphere, 
 And deft at passing all his youths 
 Through state inspection most severe.
 
 THE SCHOOLMASTER. 41 
 
 He drills them in the " R's," and gives 
 
 A finish of scientific truths 
 
 And facts — of this and that a touch 
 
 Brought down to day and date, not much 
 
 Of the mythologies ; and lives 
 
 To turn them out, and draw his fees 
 
 And grants. Nay, he can also teach 
 
 The smarter boys a litde French, 
 
 A little German, and with ease 
 
 A bit of Euclid. That is now 
 
 The newer way that youths are led 
 
 And intellectually bred. 
 
 New times bring changes, and the wrench 
 From old to new ; and yet somehow 
 The old is pleasant to the old. 
 And board and code and teacher smart, 
 The fresh machinery of the art. 
 Look like machinery dead and cold.
 
 Jl2 l-^^8- 
 
 1\ ,TY lady's gate the village ends, 
 
 Where, thro' the Gothic avenue, 
 Is caught a bough-encumbered view 
 Of an old mansion large and gray. 
 Fairy built it looks when day 
 Is dying on the distant moor, 
 And its ivied wings are spread away 
 In the sedgy lake that lies before. 
 The lady of the manor, too. 
 Is old and slight and fairy-like.
 
 44 THE VILLAGE LIFE. 
 
 And with two piercing eyes ot blue, 
 Sheathed in deep wrinkles, glances out. 
 Beneath a green shade, bound about 
 Her comely brows and whitening locks. 
 Strange-altered world your fancy mocks, 
 My lady, in these latter days ; 
 Its wicked pace you leave alone 
 And quietly keep old-fashioned ways; 
 You only note its furious speed 
 By turning up at time of need 
 The old green shade, to glance awhile, 
 Then pull it downward with a smile. 
 
 My lady's griefs are at an end; 
 
 Her heart, in widowhood, is bent. 
 
 On nursing well her large estate, 
 
 Sore burdened by her thoughtless mate 
 
 When both were young, and he would spend. 
 
 But, when the old Squire struck his tent,
 
 MY LADY. 45 
 
 The calm, succeeding years of storm, 
 
 Sweetened her hfe, and now she reigns, 
 
 A sharp old queen in her domains. 
 
 Does everything in business form, 
 
 Improves, and plants, and drains, and bores 
 
 Below the soil for iron ores 
 
 And fields of coal ; knows how to turn 
 
 The hidden wealth to good account 
 
 By lease and lordship ; understands 
 
 The drifts and levels, seams and bands 
 
 Of all the workings underground. 
 
 And calculates the net amount 
 
 That every pit and mine should earn. 
 
 Her farms are mostly poor in soil. 
 Yielding but scanty crops to toil 
 Incessant and laborious. 
 But she has taught her farmers skill 
 In cropping and manurings new.
 
 46 THE VILLAGE LIFE. 
 
 And for reward of all tlieir pains 
 
 They find a fair result of gains. 
 
 My lady does not grudge them these, 
 
 She knows her time will come, when lease 
 
 Expiring upon lease will place 
 
 Re-letting in her power and grace. 
 
 How keenly then she will review 
 
 The rentals, and decide increase : 
 
 Not turning the rack-renting screw, 
 
 But gently, yet with force of will 
 
 That nothing sentimental bends ; 
 
 She will not part with tenants old 
 
 If she can help it, and they make 
 
 An offer that, though hard, breaks not 
 
 The gentle increase of their store. 
 
 Should they have worked with care and skill, 
 
 And look to make a better start 
 
 On a new lease, she plays her part 
 
 Of sweet encourager before.
 
 MV LADY. 
 
 And afterwards a bit of scold 
 With her economies. Yet, strange, 
 Few fail with her, or like to change. 
 She has the nice and useful gift 
 Of striking the true mean of thrift, 
 Of judging where to press and pause, 
 Where to be stubborn, where to yield, 
 Where to be patient, when to cause 
 The separation of all ties — 
 Subtle tactician. 
 
 In her held 
 Of business vision large and clear 
 Rise ever the fair images 
 Of debt extinguished, mortgages 
 Wiped out, and the estate as free, 
 As when fair gifted by a deed 
 Far back among the centuries, 
 
 47
 
 48 THE VILLAGE LIFE. 
 
 Done by a royal hand it came 
 To a forefather of great name. 
 
 Why should my lady work so much 
 For her estate, when but a touch 
 Of light disease might end her care ? 
 Aged she is, and ever speeds, 
 The short hours till the close of day, 
 The close of life, when all our needs 
 Are but an oak-shell. Why should she 
 Hoard with an avaricious air ? 
 She never felt the miser's joy 
 As heap on heap the treasured gold 
 Rose higher, goodly spoils of thrift 
 And personal penuriousness. 
 She hoarded only for her boy. 
 Thought of the time she would not see 
 When he who had not shared her gift 
 Of worldly wisdom, would be free
 
 49 
 
 AIY LADY. 
 
 • Of all annoying, long arrears, 
 And in his secret bosom bless 
 Th' unselfish love of many years. 
 
 My lady rules the village too, 
 A kindly, half despotic rule. 
 She knows each villager, and knows 
 How to approach him, wise or fool. 
 Counsel she gives, and counsel true, 
 And often followed ; in her reign 
 Village affairs go smoothly on. 
 She shows a man-like tolerance 
 In dealing with the simple folk. 
 And ne'er brings peril to her throne 
 By edicts which their habits shock ; 
 She peers, with kindly, restless glance. 
 Under the green shade in their homes, 
 And questions fast, while slow replies 
 Show truth will come where candour comes. 
 
 D
 
 5° 
 
 THE VILLAGE LIFE. 
 
 The old she cares for with the crumbs 
 
 That in no careless measure fall 
 
 From the broad table of the Hall ; 
 
 And all-observant as she roams 
 
 Her charity is not misplaced, 
 
 But goes with judgment and with taste. 
 
 My lady is not saintly. No ; 
 She never was a penitent. 
 She never groaned for sins, nor spent 
 A sleepless night of cruel woe 
 About her soul ; her soul is whole 
 And sound and healthy, strong and free, 
 Though somewhat worldly for her years. 
 Pangs, strivings, hopes, and bitter fears 
 CJf the beyond — the awful goal 
 Of human life — were not within 
 The compass of her consciousness. 
 Was she not fairly good ? Had sin
 
 MY LADY. 
 
 Of every sort by her clear sense, 
 
 Howe'er alluring its pretence, 
 
 Not been repelled with easy scorn? 
 
 Maid, wife, and widow, night and morn 
 
 Her life had passed — a pattern life 
 
 Of duty done and doing. She 
 
 Scarce looked into futurity. 
 
 Or looked without the sense of pain. 
 
 Clear business soul, sharp business brain, 
 
 It knew no conflict save the strife 
 
 Material that ever springs 
 
 From contact with unworthy things, 
 
 From ancient customs long retained 
 
 When nothing good of them remained. 
 
 A grave and worthy worshipper 
 In the Old Kirk, she liked it well ; " 
 Its quiet, broad, and easy ways 
 And toleration, suited her. 
 
 51
 
 52 THE VILLAGE LIFE. 
 
 It had its place in stable things, 
 
 A stately place just like her own, 
 
 Not to be touched by any fell 
 
 New fingers evangelical. 
 
 Far reaching in these latter days. 
 
 A keen superior contempt 
 
 She felt for movements new to hand, 
 
 And threatening attitudes of men 
 
 Who once decisive took their stand 
 
 By Kirk and State, and fought their cause ; 
 
 She did not fear that voice or pen, 
 
 Or project dreamed or to be dreamt, 
 
 Would e'er reverse our ancient laws. 
 
 My lady's old, and cannot change ; 
 New views, that breast the modern time, 
 Or, in their far-extending range. 
 Take in a future that will come 
 Some day, when harmony prevails
 
 MV LAD Y. 
 
 In the great multitudinous hum 
 
 Of party voices, lay outside 
 
 The utmost circle of her thoughts. 
 
 For with her business freedom, wide 
 
 And wise, she is conservative, 
 
 But eagerly observes and notes 
 
 The tendencies that live and grow 
 
 And threaten with increase to give 
 
 The final push, and overthrow 
 
 To all she holds supreme and dear. 
 
 She likes them not, and strong believes 
 
 That State and Kirk and Land shall ne'er 
 
 Dissevered and unblest and free 
 
 Become the sport of mobs ; for then 
 
 Would come an awful day of wrath, 
 
 That shrivelling up — like autumn leaves 
 
 The early frost and rime have touched — 
 
 The threefold blossom of our power. 
 
 Would bring a swift and sure decay, 
 
 5:.
 
 54 THE VILLAGE LIFE. 
 
 Corruption rapid, red, and smutched 
 ^\'ith death-spots. She would turn away 
 With loathing from the coming hour 
 Of doom, she in her fancy saw, 
 Should innovators fierce prevail 
 On the fixed order and the law. 
 
 My lady has her settled views 
 None may successfully assail ; 
 And all opposing argument, 
 However specious and profuse, 
 Convincing, popular, is spent 
 In vain upon her shielded mind. 
 She heeds the agitators not ; 
 Their bolts fall harmless, like the hail 
 That rattles on a coat of mail. 
 
 So lives she with a high intent 
 I'o free her lands, and leave her son
 
 MY LADY. 55 
 
 To fill the place his fathers won 
 In other times — to do the right 
 And hold her own, and, above all, 
 The poorer people with her sway 
 Maternal and beneficent. 
 To rule in reason and with might. 
 A little despot, you may say, 
 And just a bit tyrannical. 
 
 There you may see her through the trees. 
 With light step walking speedily 
 To feed her swans upon the lake. 
 That come and from her fingers take 
 The dainty morsels greedily. 
 How smart and trim and at her ease 
 My lady looks — old-fashioned too ! 
 But sweet and wholesome in her age ; 
 No vulgar pride, or air untrue, 
 Is present with the dear old sage.
 
 56 THE VILLAGE LIFE. 
 
 She sees us, and with notice bland, 
 And gracious brow, she passes on ; 
 Long may the village feel her hand ! 
 Far off the day when she is gone !
 
 '^ke blacksmith. 
 
 T T ERE, on the outskirts of the wood, 
 We reach the village smithy- — hear 
 The ring of hammers, see the glow 
 Upon the hearth, and in the shed 
 Cart wheels and ploughshares, old and red 
 With rust, a grindstone large and good, 
 An iron circle true to throw 
 The hot rim of the wheel upon, 
 And give it truth of form when cool. 
 The cottage joins the smithy, fair
 
 58 THE VILLAGE LIFE. 
 
 With climbing plants in open bloom; 
 And at the windows blossom rare 
 (Geraniums, mixing their perfume 
 With homely scents. A pretty home, 
 Busy and frugal — and its lord ? 
 Ah ! at the anvil see the smith, 
 See the broad grimy brow all scored 
 A\'ith heavy drops of sweat that fall 
 Quick hissing on the iron hot, 
 Each time his hairy arm brings down 
 A mighty stroke that shakes the spot, 
 And owns the brawny wielder's pith. 
 
 Substantial steadfast man was he, 
 Who shod the horses, forged the ploughs. 
 Who tilled the glebe that kept his cows, 
 Stern in his ways, as ought to be 
 The father of a filling house.
 
 THE BLACKSMITH. 
 
 But when you see him toss his tongs 
 Down in the trough to rest awhile, 
 Then look about him with a smile, 
 And ask at last with rasping lungs 
 Something of a contentious sort, 
 Expect brave controversial sport. 
 Begun at first with cautious wile 
 To stave the issue off a while. 
 Sly hits the loutish audience know, 
 And laugh and swing them to and fro ; 
 But soon the bellows, blowing bright, 
 Whitens the argument ; and right 
 Down ring the disputatious blows. 
 Swift, bright, and thick the sparkles whirr, 
 And, flying to the rafters, wake 
 The lurking rats into a stir — 
 Justly the end of high debate, 
 When rats have lodgings in the state. 
 
 59
 
 6o THE VILLAGE LIFE. 
 
 A man of great renown the smith, 
 His ready tongue, his arm of pith, 
 His rugged face, his honest eye, 
 His pride, untouched by vanity. 
 His sturdy reasonableness, the stand 
 He takes for doctrines old and grand, 
 Make him the village head and chief. 
 Some glimpses of the newer light, 
 Some glimm'rings from the science sphere. 
 Some crude conceptions, caught in brief, 
 Of the new Faith and the new Sight, 
 To Evolutionists so dear, 
 Had reached him. But think not that these 
 Disturbed the adamantine base 
 On which his faith is founded fast. 
 Why, is he not a Calvinist? 
 Believing in th' Eternal Will 
 Whose purposes the worlds fulfil, 
 Order, and law, and Will Divine
 
 THE BLACKSMITH. 6i 
 
 Were one to him ; and God's decree 
 The root of a vast living tree, 
 Branching and intertwisting wide, 
 And filling all the ages — still, 
 A growing trunk whose mystery^ 
 Was solved by the ascending sap 
 From fountain-thought of Deity. 
 
 Just as the little touch of life, 
 That differentiates monads 
 From wastes of matter, gives the strife 
 That leads to growth and slowly adds, 
 Throughout long ages, higher types 
 Of life and being ; but the spring 
 And source of all is the deep thing 
 That brightens into movement specks 
 Of primal dirt; 
 
 The smith would say
 
 62 THE VILLAGE LIFE. 
 
 The source was the divine decree, 
 
 Impregnating with potent germ 
 
 His great creations. There the term 
 
 Of evolution sank at last 
 
 And closed in the creative Will. 
 
 Strong logic, sharpened at the fires 
 Of old divines who lived and wrote 
 While yet geology was not, 
 He had acquired and used it well ; 
 He saw with them that thought inspires 
 All nature, makes it what it seems — 
 Is the true germ spot in the cell 
 Of being; deep implanted germ 
 By the great Sovereign Infinite, 
 Whose word of everlasting might 
 Is law sure fixed, that ever was 
 And ever will be, and His word. 
 The word of the creating Lord,
 
 THE BLACKSMITH. 
 
 Is but a name for His decree, 
 Conceived from all eternity ; 
 The all-efficient primal cause 
 Of past, and present, and to be. 
 
 Thus from a central soul supreme. 
 Ever existing, and alone, 
 The Kernel of the universe — 
 In time spread forth, the outcome vast 
 Of an august immortal scheme. 
 Planned in th' immeasurable past. 
 This was the basis of the views, 
 In metaphysic language terse, 
 That lay below old terms profuse, 
 And pious diction — basis broad 
 And deep— the Sovereignty of God. 
 And far above it had been built 
 A tow'r that reached to heaven high. 
 Shapely and strong, that pleased the eye, 
 
 63
 
 64 THE VILLAGE LIFE. 
 
 Observant, critical of those 
 
 Who knew the rock on which it rose. 
 
 The Scottish Calvinistic creed 
 
 In its old form, the smith held fast 
 
 On its old basis, and he frowned 
 
 On all departures, old and new ; 
 
 They only seemed to him to cast 
 
 The shadow of dark doubts around 
 
 Th' imperishable and ever true. 
 
 Was not God, God, and infinite? 
 
 Did He not will all things to be ? 
 
 Did not Omniscience foresee 
 
 The first and last, and seeing planned 
 
 And executed in His might. 
 
 What He foresaw and so ordained? 
 
 And thus the worlds and all contained 
 
 Within them was His own command. 
 
 Evil and good, whatever is 
 
 Is there through Him, is only His ;
 
 THE BLACKSMITH. 65 
 
 Infinite power could not create 
 In other wise the all of things ; 
 And if a God we postulate, 
 We have all that His being brings. 
 But power infinite, sovereignty, 
 Are not alone His attributes — 
 Infinite fatherhood and love. 
 Infinite righteousness above 
 All human thought are His as well; 
 Infinite justice, that decides 
 Remorselessly, impartially ; 
 Infinite mercy, that abides 
 For sinner blackest in his guilt ; 
 Infinite hate of sin that dooms 
 To sure destruction in a hell. 
 Prepared before the angels fell, 
 Reserved for those whose evil fate 
 Is to be hated and to hate.
 
 66 THE VILLAGE LIFE. 
 
 But then the glorious Infinites 
 Of Justice, Mercy, Love, and Hate 
 Of sin, and awful Sovereignty, 
 Commingling in the soul Divine, 
 Must have their poise and centre point, 
 On vt'hich they mutually meet, 
 And harmonize and balance fine; 
 And from this centre point came forth 
 The plan of Christ — redemption's plan, 
 Unfolding the Divine estate 
 Of the creation and of man, 
 \\nien tirst they stood at His command 
 Jn the virginity of life. 
 New fashioned by a perfect hand. 
 His own creation could not be 
 But infinitely good and fair. 
 Too soon came disobedience, bold, 
 Defiant of the Maker, strife 
 And all the evils manifold.
 
 THE BLACKSMITH. 67 
 
 Ordained by the Divine decree 
 
 As sequences of guilt; and then 
 
 Infinite Mercy came to share 
 
 In disposition of the scheme, 
 
 And found a way of hfe for men — 
 
 A sacrifice that wiped away 
 
 All claim of Justice by its blood — 
 
 The sacrifice of God revealed, 
 
 In weakness of the human clay ; 
 
 But for the chosen only — those 
 
 Who in the everlasting dream 
 
 Of Godhead, ere the world began, 
 
 Had been appointed, signed and sealed, 
 
 For highest blessings ; all the rest 
 
 Foreseen, through sin, to be unblest, 
 
 Will downward sweep, by awful ire 
 
 Pursued to the eternal fire 
 
 Consuming evil.
 
 68 THE VILLAGE LIFE. 
 
 But when all 
 The blotted life of man is gone ; 
 When saints are saved and sinners damned, 
 A new creation will assume 
 A lovelier aspect, sweeter bloom 
 Than the first Eden state ; the Throne 
 Of the God-Man will be supreme 
 And, everlastingly secure, 
 Will everlastingly endure. 
 And thus the purpose, from the first 
 Resolved upon, will be fulfilled, 
 And man no more shall be accurst, 
 All will be as the Maker willed, 
 And in true unison combine 
 With Infinite attributes divine. 
 
 With vice-grip grim and fast the smith 
 Held to this creed, this Christian fate 
 Ordained, of blessedness and woe
 
 THE BLACKSMITH. 
 
 To be, in the world's substance so, 
 And the resplendent perfect state. 
 He saw within it clear and true 
 The centre substance and the pith 
 Of cosmic systems old and new, 
 However comprehensive they, 
 In wisdom, learning, and display 
 Of logic, or of evidence. 
 
 . His God you might eliminate, 
 But still things were, as if He were 
 A centre and a source intense 
 
 I Of all creation ; there was still 
 A something high that could not err 
 Creating, shaping destinies, 
 
   And what but the Eternal Will? 
 
 Rugged, unyielding, straight, and stout. 
 In his defence the smith would stand, 
 Grasping with his far-reaching hand 
 
 69
 
 70 THE VILLAGE LIFE. 
 
 Through the thick growths that hedge it round, 
 An(i keep the weak and feeble out, 
 The inner truth — the purpose sound.
 
 ^he Ravish (EUrk. 
 
 TTIS neighbour, session-clerk and wright, 
 Rich, hard, and greedy as the kite, 
 A "htde touched," the village said, 
 And some were of him half afraid. 
 His face and hair, as brown as dust, 
 His joints grown stiff with aged rust; 
 Deep witch-like eyes that lurked within 
 The ashen cobweb of his skin, 
 Talked often to himself they say — • 
 Nay, seldom talked except that way ; 
 Or to his calves, or to his cows. 
 Would kindly whisper as they browse.
 
 72 
 
 THE VILLAGE LIFE. 
 
 But his was a true hidden Hfe 
 The village knew not of, or dreamed ; 
 It only knew him, as he seemed, 
 A self-engrossed and lonely man. 
 He was a mystic, and had read 
 Deep in the stores of learning dead. 
 He had his faith — he had his plan 
 Confused with many a mingling light, 
 Crossing from many a sage's sight, 
 Fiom spiritualistic visions grand. 
 From insight, might be half-insane ; 
 He saw in night and morning walks, 
 By stream and moor, by tarn and shaw, 
 Frail phantoms of the other world, 
 That moved beyond the reign of law. 
 The timid light of dawn revealed, 
 The gathering mists of night concealed. 
 Phenomena that none but he 
 Could see, or hope or wish to see.
 
 THE PARISH CLERK. 73 
 
 All fairy tales were loved and true, 
 All ghostly stories, old and new, 
 AVere as the facts of life to him ; 
 And not a mossy wall, a cliff, 
 A Imn, a pool, a Druid stone, 
 A knotted oak, with heart all gone, 
 A fairy ring, frilled round with fern. 
 But had its legend, gay or stern. 
 He knew them all — aye, even felt 
 I'hat still old influences dwelt 
 Around them. He could plainly hear 
 The light feet of the fairies near, 
 And saw the wraith that legend told 
 (ilared from the big bole of the oak. 
 Or squatted sad and white and cold 
 On the grey boulder, that, wise folk 
 Maintained, stood over stores of gold. 
 
 I'hese were the fringes of his faith.
 
 74 THE VILLAGE LIFE. 
 
 Beyond their light frivoUties 
 
 His wizard spirit penetrates, 
 
 And through the portals of the night 
 
 Discovers all the lands of light. 
 
 His dreams were as his waking states; 
 
 In truth his spirit woke in dreams. 
 
 The life was real he lived in them, 
 
 And all the outer circumstance 
 
 That his wise neighbours knew him by 
 
 Was but his dim and hazy trance. 
 
 His ways were in the other world, 
 And his lone room shone with the gleams 
 Of glorious visitors, who came 
 Through no mysterious agency 
 That in a spirit-circle worked, 
 Through no deep-tranced and rigid frame. 
 Whose ghost within a cabinet lurked.
 
 THE PARISH CLERK. 75 
 
 Bright as the dew within the dawn 
 They from his finer soul arise ; 
 They ghde around and fill his room, 
 And make the night without its gloom, 
 And all are friends, for all have grown 
 Familiar to the old man's eyes. 
 
 Strange soul, so " sadly vestitured," 
 So grossly cumbered, and so fine 
 And sympathetic ! It allured 
 The far-off influences, and thrilled 
 At every contact. And the world 
 Said he was " touched above " — " insane 
 To some extent." 
 
 Insane ? but how ? 
 Is he quite sane who sees no light 
 But what shines on the sea and shore, 
 Or glimmers from a gasalier ?
 
 76 THE VILLAGE LIFE. 
 
 Who sees no visions of the night, 
 
 And enters dreamland with a snore ? 
 
 Is he all sane whose clotted mind 
 
 Can only catch the coarse and near? 
 
 Who of material things a part 
 
 Lives in them, of them, as their kind ? 
 
 Who are the sane and the insane? 
 
 What makes the " touched " and " healthy " brain ? 
 
 What gives the vision like a fact? 
 
 What gives the fact, and fact alone ? 
 
 What gives the impulses that string 
 
 The reason to a lofty spring 
 
 Above the high engirding ring 
 
 That circumscribes the common range ? 
 
 Hard questions, that Psychology 
 Resolves not by its latest laws.
 
 "VEALOUS and strong the parson preached, 
 Counselled, and prayed, and hard beseeched. 
 , And he was young and sombre-faced, 
 
 Straitened in manner, and strait-laced, 
 
 In pious black discreetly dressed, 
 . Glossy his coat, and smooth his vest, 
 
 Boots shining, and a shiny hat. 
 
 An inch of white around his throat, — 
 
 A parson trained to feed the flocks. 
 
 And decorously orthodox.
 
 78 THE VILLAGE LIFE. 
 
 Though young in his apprenticeship 
 Under the Presbyterian whip, 
 Docile and meek and tame was he, 
 A pattern of mild sanctity, 
 And a true evangelical, 
 Consorting not with Broad or High ; 
 Always the "gospel" was his cry — 
 Gospel of blood and sacrifice, 
 Of hell on one side, and of hell 
 Partly on t'other side as well; 
 For it was better to be driven 
 To take the narrowest path to heaven, 
 Than, trusting to an unhedged Avay, 
 Unconsciously to walk astray. 
 The Gulf was sure; the other place a 
 Needed prim steps and saving grace. .>, 
 
 Full of his gospel and sincere, 
 He preached it honestly and clear,
 
 THE PARSON. 
 
 And tried to lift the poor and base 
 Out of besotted works and ways, — 
 The poor who hardly win their bread 
 O'er plashy drains with dirty spade, 
 Dull as the clay they work upon, 
 Plodding their weary being on ; 
 Over their pipes and alehouse bowls 
 Relieving their unnurtured souls, — 
 A brutish race and yet divine, 
 Immortal in the Parson's eyes ; 
 And they to him were close allied 
 By many loving, mystic ties. 
 With the Divine, the Crucified. 
 And fervently he sought to shake 
 Their sluggish minds by earnest tones, 
 And words of fire to scorch the bones. 
 And melt the marrow, and to wake 
 Their souls for their salvation's sake. 
 
 79
 
 ;( 
 
 THE VILLAGE LIFE. 
 
 And still they plodded on, and growled ; 
 I>ove and faith and sacrifice, 
 And blood and mercy, in their eyes. 
 Were sacred symbols, mysteries 
 To look to, when the heavens scowled ; 
 Or when their old and aching limbs, 
 No longer pliant with the spade, 
 Reposed within the workhouse shed. 
 What time the Parish roughly trims 
 The lamp of life till light is dead. 
 
 The parson had his victories : 
 Sometimes a wild revival came, 
 Swift, crackling, like a forest fire, 
 Raging beyond his own desire. 
 Causing the poor man fear and shame. 
 And over all his vineyard spread. 
 Impossible to keep it safe 
 ''' In proper bounds ; for crazy head
 
 THE PARSON. 8i 
 
 And softened heart, in fervour fierce, 
 Would roar in anguish, and rehearse 
 Their woes and sins, till in collapse 
 They shuddering sank ; and some again 
 Yelled with the yell of the insane, 
 And this would grow, until perhaps 
 In the dim-lighted meeting-house 
 Lay weltering the Gospel-slain. 
 
 But when the fervour ran its course, 
 
 And wild appeals had lost their force, 
 
 And when he counted up the healed, 
 
 His fearful joy was not concealed. 
 
 But still he owned some bitter truths — 
 
 The madhouse had a case or two ; 
 
 Some o'er excited took to beer ; 
 
 And saintly maids and godly youths, 
 
 Of whom he made a great to-do, 
 
 Loved, and lost their looks austere; 
 
 F
 
 2 THE VILLAGE LIFE. 
 
 V Others ambitious found a call 
 To preach revival joys to all, 
 And even within the parson's bounds 
 Held forth with unction, ranted, raved, 
 
 A And counted up their heaps of saved. 
 
 The good man did the best he could — 
 Soothed and warned and frowned and taught. 
 Depressed his own emotional mood, 
 Altered the current of his thought 
 Into the old and formal track, 
 And tried to lure his people back. 
 
 A painful, but a noble task 
 Was his — the task to gently draw 
 Out of its coarse and hardened mask 
 The spiritually higher life, 
 And steady it to heaven's law: 
 A task too great, for his own soul
 
 THE PARSON. 8 
 
 But faintly felt the greater light 
 His Church's ancient creed eclipsed. 
 He saw the little glints that stole 
 Past broken edges of the rim, 
 And sweet their influence was to him, 
 And through the rents, that centuries 
 Of conflict hard had slowly worn, 
 Some jagged beams of splendour bright 
 Into his inmost soul were borne. 
 But the divinest ray of all 
 That lit him on his narrow way 
 Was duty, work — that heavenly call 
 He sought to follow and obey. 
 
 J
 
 A PLEASANT path, with margin green, 
 
 Leads to the kirk you see between 
 The darkening grove of elms and oaks ; 
 And here on Sundays may be seen 
 In solemn troops the village folks. 
 The grave old faces downward bent, 
 The younger learning from the old, 
 Repressing mischievous intent 
 And inclinations to be bold. 
 Here walk the matrons; at their side,
 
 86 THE VILLAGE LIFE. 
 
 Blushing in innocence and pride, 
 The maidens, Bible at their breasts, 
 And glancing stealthily aside; 
 And village lads, in gorgeous vests. 
 Return to them a bolder stare, 
 Or softly wink upon the fair. 
 
 Here is the smith with musing face, 
 For piety has left its trace 
 From morning lesson on the Book. 
 The session-clerk, with wandering look, 
 And ceaseless tongue that only goes 
 In his own hearing, walks apace, 
 With sturdy staff, and old back bent. 
 Mumbling — unheard save by himself — 
 Perhaps about his local woes, 
 Perhaps about his stocking'd pelf. 
 Or, touched by a more serious air, 
 Repeats perhaps a good old prayer.
 
 THE KIRK. 87 
 
 The church is here (and lying round 
 Is the untrimmed old burying ground), 
 Built at the happy settlement 
 That closed our long religious war 
 And fixed a Dutchman on the throne, 
 Sagacious, cool, and tolerant. 
 A strong-built structure without trace 
 Of outward ornament or grace \ 
 A belfry at one end, half gone 
 In ruin, with its little bell 
 Ringing with most discordant jar 
 And jangle, as the beadle rocks 
 It cautiously on Sabbath days. 
 Within, the place is passing well 
 For the devout of parish folks — 
 Clean, newly seated, windows rimm'd 
 With gaudy glass, and you must praise 
 The pulpit carved in oak, bequeathed 
 By a successful village boy,
 
 88 THE VILLAGE LIFE. 
 
 Who wandered far on earth, and breathed 
 His last in distant Illinois. 
 Upon the sounding board above 
 Is perched a gilded wooden dove, 
 AA^ith olive branch in beak, and wide 
 Expanded wings, as she had skimm'd 
 The fast-receding Deluge tide, 
 And, poised at Noah's window, shows 
 The symbol that the Patriarch knows. 
 
 Silent and cool and calm to sit 
 For a few minutes in the pew 
 My Lady honours every week, 
 Brings upon one a solemn fit. 
 Brings back old thoughts and raises new ; 
 For many generations meek 
 And humble, here have praised and prayed, 
 And passed away into the shade. 
 How many gracious lessons read
 
 THE KIRK. 89 
 
 And rousing sermons these grey walls 
 Have echoed? And how many hearts 
 Have been refreshed and comforted 
 With words of cheer and duty-calls ? 
 What fiery warnings have been given 
 Of Satan's wiles and cruel darts? 
 What blinding lights and shows of heaven ? 
 
 The generations pass the eye, 
 In long procession without end, 
 Here as we sit in phantasy. 
 There is no change — the kirk, the folk. 
 The psalms, the prayers, the sermons, all 
 Are as they were two centuries past^ 
 The old and new together blend. 
 Around the church in solemn sleep 
 Repose the congregations gone. 
 And with the living seem to join 
 On Sundays, an immortal flock.
 
 9f) THE VILLAGE LIFE. 
 
 And you will find upon the wall 
 
 Tablets which tell you of the rare 
 
 Religious zeal and virtues fair, 
 
 Of nearly every parson blest 
 
 By ordination, since the day 
 
 That ended the Prelatic sway. 
 
 Pastors and flocks, from first to last, 
 
 Are to the fancy here as one 
 
 Cireat congregation clustered in 
 
 The kirk and kirkyard — living, dead — 
 
 One whole of the religious life 
 
 Of this old parish; for the din 
 
 And clash of theologic strife 
 
 Divisive, has but faintly run 
 
 Its course within the bounds, or spread.
 
 '^ht Resile. 
 
 "OUT from these musings we are shamed 
 By the grey beadle — Willie named — 
 W'ho comes, with sound of keys in hand, 
 Along the passage from the room 
 Behind the pulpit, where with pride, 
 On Sabbaths greatly amplified, 
 He helps the parson to assume 
 His cleric robes, and cidently 
 Does all his trifling wants supply. 
 In rusty black, hard brushed, and bare
 
 92 
 
 THE VILLAGE LIFE. 
 
 Of nap, is Willie dressed, and round 
 His lean old neck is softly heaped 
 A huge white napkin, limply tied ; 
 A satisfied, important air 
 Suffuses the mild face ; and steeped 
 In the soft liquid of his eyes 
 A dainty, pawky wisdom lies. 
 Nought puts him out of countenance, 
 Nought will confuse the happy glance 
 He gives you, as with pinch of snuff 
 Drawn sounding upwards by a nose 
 That dearly loves its snuff, he speaks 
 Deliberately, and with a pose 
 I Half ministerial. He is quite 
 An oracle, with wit enough 
 To serve the parish, and he knows 
 The gossip of its various cliques. 
 And banters it, the while he seeks 
 Their little troubles to put right.
 
 THE BEADLE. 
 
 He saves the parson many pains 
 By clever words and wily tales. 
 When not uncommonly obtains 
 The parish currency a bruit 
 Of scandal ; Willie finds its root, 
 And by sweet humorousness prevails 
 And conquers it, and pleases all. 
 Most likeable, and popular ; 
 All love him — he is at the call 
 Of every good parishioner. 
 
 But Willie has his weakness too. 
 The little weakness to sit through 
 The longest tipple at the inn, 
 To drive the fun and make it spin, 
 Till Saint Mackenzie calls a halt; 
 There you will find him " at his best," 
 Gleeful, confiding, brimming o'er 
 V With unctuous wisdom and with malt,
 
 94 
 
 THE VILLAGE LIFE. 
 
 •i King of his company confessed. 
 From the experiences of years 
 He brings out many a story quaint 
 Of well known reprobate and saint, 
 At which his loutish listeners roar. 
 And if far gone, perhaps he may 
 Touch off the parsons of his day ; 
 For three of them have come and gone 
 In his official life — the fourth, 
 The present parson, carefully 
 He shuns to make remarks upon. 
 Though cupp'd to full garrulity 
 He'll only speak about his worth, 
 His piety, and earnestness, 
 And labours, which the people bless. 
 
 Astute old beadle — Does he know 
 
 i 
 
 ' That everywhere his sayings go ? 
 
 These are his " high jinks," Willie's ways
 
 THE BEADLE. 
 
 Are mostly steady, for although 
 
 He has his liking for his glass, 
 
 And owns his thirst, nor lets it pass, 
 
 But drains the comfort it affords, 
 
 He's had his high aspiring days, 
 
 And has his aspirations still. 
 
 He is the Sheikh of beadles, versed, 
 
 As rumour goes, in the dead tongues ; 
 
 He knows his Latin, and with will 
 
 Rolls out a verse with wond'rous lungs 
 
 And accent. Once, the people tell. 
 
 When an old Roman altar stone 
 
 Was dug out of a field and turned 
 
 To the inspection of the learned, 
 
 Willie alone could rightly spell 
 
 The dedication, and alone 
 
 Gave true translation, as averred 
 
 By scholars of the greatest skill. 
 
 And it is said he has been heard 
 
 95
 
 96 THE VILLAGE LIFE. 
 
 Reading aloud and unperplexed 
 
 On Sunday nights the Hebrew Text, 
 
 Revelling in the sacred Word, 
 
 As it was given by the Lord. 
 
 Deep in theology, he cites 
 
 The great divines on doctrines, rites, 
 
 And textual changes, readings new. 
 
 And how dark phrases they construe. 
 
 In fifty years of beadledom, 
 
 He has acquired a curious sum 
 
 Of miscellaneous beadle lore. 
 
 And gives it out in mixture queer 
 
 Of mother-wit and pedantry. 
 
 Oh ! he can prove a young divine. 
 
 Vain, although bashful of his powers, 
 
 Or draw him out, or lure him near 
 
 His own confusion; yet a fine, 
 
 Soft, charitable, pawkiness 
 
 Controls or hides the mischief meant,
 
 THE BEADLE. 
 
 And those the beadle half befools, 
 Are only puzzled, not beshent; 
 His veneration never cools 
 For the Geneva gown and bands — 
 They are high symbols in his hands — 
 He laughs (with an interior sense 
 Of awe for all who wear the dress) 
 At cleric weakness, and pretence. 
 
 Sunday is Willie's public day, 
 The parson does not feel it more. 
 Betimes he's at the church and sees 
 That all is so disposed to please 
 The pastor and the people well ; 
 Then when the flock no longer stray 
 Around, but all have passed the door ; 
 When coughs suppressed distinctly tell 
 Of forced devotion, he appears 
 With Bible on his outstretched palms, 
 
 G 
 
 97
 
 98 THE VILLAGE LIFE. 
 
 And on its top the Book of Psalms. 
 
 He mounts aloft the pulpit stair, 
 
 And lays them down with pious care ; 
 
 A moment looking round with grave 
 
 Wide eyes upon the pews ; and then 
 
 Descending slowly, seeks again 
 
 The vestry, to return as brave 
 
 Behind the parson, banded, gowned ; 
 
 The beadle shuts the pulpit door, 
 
 His duty for the moment o'er. 
 
 Perhaps in the short interval 
 
 Between the sermons, he will pass 
 
 Among the people, spread around 
 
 The grave stones in the lusty grass, 
 
 And chat with gravity, recall 
 
 Old sermons, old divines and sound, 
 
 And half sincerely make lament 
 
 Of Scotch theology's descent 
 
 To broad church doctrines, vague and crude.
 
 THE BEADLE. 
 
 , Willie recalls the better days, 
 
 When near the church the hostelrie 
 
 Was a convenience he could praise, 
 
 Which, modestly and frugally, 
 
 Provided man and beast with food — 
 
 Christians with drams and frothing ales ; 
 
 Refreshment needed — members came 
 
 From distant farms, and while they fed 
 
 On spiritual manna, all the same, 
 
 They wanted carnal beer and bread. 
 I 
 Willie was there a constant guest, 
 
 And loved the happy hour of rest 
 
 And entertainment, for it broke 
 
 The day's monotony, and was 
 
 A sort of fellowship that woke 
 
 Brotherly feelings among all. 
 
 It was the Sunday's happy pause, 
 
 In rigid observation, when 
 
 A slight unbending was allowed. 
 
 99
 
 lOO 
 
 THE VILLAGE LIFE. 
 
 And pleasure, quite canonical. 
 But all was altered by the proud 
 Decision of our parliament. 
 For when the temporal comfort closed, 
 There came a coldness upon men 
 On Sundays, and a restless bent; 
 And as the beadle presupposed, 
 A real departure from our creed. 
 Organs, and prayers at home composed. 
 And views most heterodox had speed, 
 Since the Mackenzie Act assailed 
 Our ancient customs, and prevailed. 
 
 And ministers had grown too loose 
 In doctrine, and in work severe ; 
 Their sermons, polished and abstruse. 
 Were barren of good gospel cheer ; 
 They all the parish fussed about, 
 And were for ever bringing out
 
 THE BEADLE. iqi 
 
 Some new and necessary scheme 
 Needing co-operative aid, 
 For which the parsons raised the steam, 
 And members half admiring paid. 
 
 Those were the pleasant times in which 
 The parsons were content to preach 
 Two sermons in the week; no thin 
 Chill essays, but poured out with din, 
 Strong, rousing, fierce, and full of hell. 
 That fired and pleased the people well; 
 So ended the week's work, the flock 
 Were no more troubled; beadle took 
 The parson's place on law^ful days, 
 And came and went with easy talk 
 And no officious surly ways ; 
 I No schemes were then, and no bazaars, 
 No penny readings, preaching stars. 
 Or big collections; life went on
 
 J02 ' THE VILLAGE LIFE. 
 
 Within the congregation 
 
 As softly as the running brook. 
 
 But now — the beadle's place is gone, 
 
 Or nearly so ; himself become 
 
 A creature of no consequence — 
 
 The parson's flunky, dressed and dumb, 
 
 Devoid of humour and of sense. 
 
 And Willie tells us, as he keys 
 The door, and shakes his sly old head, 
 That he believes he is the last 
 Of the true beadles of the past — 
 That when his bones are with the dead, 
 You may write Finis when you please.
 
 %\u §><\\mt. 
 
 "DELOW the village half a mile 
 
 The stream runs through a wood of pine, 
 A deep thick wood where you may stay 
 In coolness all the summer day, 
 And lazily the time beguile 
 In musing observation. Here 
 Trooping along the ride you catch 
 The stately heads of antlered deer 
 Above their brown coats, see their fine 
 Light bounding limbs, if startled be 
 Their wary leader ; or you see
 
 I04 THE VILLAGE LIFE. 
 
 The furlive glancing squirrel snatch 
 
 A slender branch, and perched secure 
 
 With tail slung o'er his back, look down 
 
 Contemplative and grave, and wise, 
 
 As if he did philosophise 
 
 On tree life and had grown demure 
 
 With his own thoughts, and for a space 
 
 Had lost his merriment and grace; 
 
 But if he sees you, quick his tail 
 
 Drops down and off he glibly springs, 
 
 Quick twinkling brownly through the boughs, 
 
 Thinking again of worldly things. 
 
 If you are still, the rabbit peeps 
 
 Out of his burrow, ears erect 
 
 And listening, and forthwith will scud 
 
 Long-legged away, to play and browse 
 
 With others of his kindred gay. 
 
 You watch the maukin, tired of play, 
 
 Drop in a bracken brake at ease,
 
 THE SQUIRE. 105 
 
 But if you stir, his white-hued fud 
 Goes vanishing between the trees. 
 Perhaps a long-backed weasel creeps 
 With motion serpentine along, 
 Steady and sure, unfailing snout 
 And cunning eyes will guide him true 
 To where his quarry lies, and then 
 His shining teeth will fiercely pierce 
 The neck veins, and his tongue will lap 
 The reeking blood of victim new. 
 You hear the blue dove crying out 
 Upon the tree-top's branching wand, 
 And in the tones all understand, 
 The tones of love that sink amain 
 To plaintive tenderness and pain, 
 Croon to her consort, who replies. 
 
 And if grown weary with your thought, 
 And dreams that through the fancy float.
 
 lo6 THE VILLAGE LIFE. 
 
 And melt away even as you dream, 
 Here is a bank above the stream, 
 Where, down below, the waters cool 
 Have formed a deep and placid pool. 
 Strip and plunge plashing head o'er heel, 
 And panting rise, at once to feel 
 How renovating is the dive. 
 How faint and far away the sky 
 Seems, as you rest and float and eye 
 ' The filmy clouds trail o'er its blue ! 
 Now cooled, with light limbs re-pursue 
 The shady paths, and nimbly tread 
 Between the undergrowth, and strive 
 To sip fresh honey from the store 
 Of nature's ever-swarming hive. 
 
 Here in these pleasant shades, the Squire, 
 My lady's son, spends many an hour 
 Reading or musing; or he brings
 
 THE SQUIRE. 107 
 
 His easel to an open glade, 
 
 And strikes his large umbrella shade ; 
 
 For literature and art inspire 
 
 The little curly headed youth. 
 
 He paints with ardour, and he sings 
 
 In verse, ambitious of the power 
 
 Of the young race of English bards. 
 
 The great revival that began 
 At Oxford in religious thought 
 And worship, that soon overran 
 The country, and developing 
 In many forms, on many lines, 
 With quickening influences, and signs 
 Of morbid growth, and fair decay, 
 Had seized upon the open soul 
 Of the young Squire, whose happy goal 
 Of life by enviable fate 
 Is towards poetry and art.
 
 xo8 THE VILLAGE LIFE. 
 
 He had drunk deep at Swinburne's fount, 
 
 Rossetti's, Morris's, and found 
 
 The true, intoxicating might 
 
 Of rhythmic grandeur, thoughts profound 
 
 And vague and deep; the wild, expressed 
 
 Fierce riot in the blood and mind 
 
 Of sensuous intellectual youth, 
 
 Who followed art in quest of truth; 
 
 And in the sister art of those 
 
 High priests of painting, Whistler, Jones, 
 
 The school of sad and eerie tones, 
 
 Of cold and varying dimness, or 
 
 Of splendours, merging all confused, 
 
 Though from confusion's inner core 
 
 There seemed to grow a work of art — 
 
 School feeling after mysteries 
 
 And slender idealities 
 
 Of life, removed by many leagues 
 
 From the great continent of prose.
 
 THE SQUIRE. 109 
 
 A school that drearily expressed 
 
 The waste of life, and love's fatigues, 
 
 And passions sated ; but could find 
 
 The charm in life surpassing all — 
 
 The charm of art, of art alone. 
 
 True art, untrammelled by a link 
 
 Of moral or religious chain, 
 
 That nothing but itself could bind; 
 
 Art for itself; the centre throne 
 
 To culture's fealty, to the mind 
 
 Of the illuminated youth ; 
 
 For was not art the only truth 
 
 Approachable to feel and know? 
 
 The Squire just slipped out of his teens^ 
 Ardent, romantic, all aglow 
 With healthy earnestness, as are 
 All youths whom faculty divine 
 Dominates early, spent his days
 
 I JO THE VILLAGE LIFE. 
 
 In following his artistic bent, 
 
 Striving on canvas, shaping lays 
 
 That mocked his high conceived intent. \ 
 
 Poet and painter he would be, 
 
 Following with courage strong and free 
 
 The masters musical, sublime 
 
 In rhythmic thought and ringing rhyme, 
 
 Masters of colour, and concepts 
 
 Original, audacious, light. 
 
 Intensely beautiful and bright. 
 
 For above all to him they showed 
 
 The brightest and the highest dreams 
 
 Of all he dreams, of all that seems 
 
 Within his range of passion, thought, 
 
 Imagination, capable. 
 
 He was the scholar, they adepts 
 
 To imitate in principle, 
 
 But in his own ideal way 
 
 As nature opened it, and brought
 
 THE SQUIRE. I j i 
 
 Impulses that he must obey. 
 
 Not a mere imitator, no. 
 
 A worker with the masters, so 
 
 That the true art might be revealed 
 
 Through his creations ; but alas ! 
 
 True art comes tardy to the field 
 
 Of youthful effort, and the Squire 
 
 Who could so ardently admire, 
 
 Found that his work would never pass 
 
 His own tribunal without blame. 
 
 His thoughts were great, but how to give 
 
 Ethereal soul, external frame, 
 
 To the fine visions that arose 
 
 Within himself, or prompted by 
 
 Some half expressed, deep passionate 
 
 Imagination, in a book 
 
 Or picture ? — it was hard to do, 
 
 Hard to pourtray the life that grows 
 
 So strong and full, and ripe and clear
 
 112 THE VILLAGE LIFE. 
 
 Within the fancy, and so dear, 
 
 Or to melodious rhymes attune 
 
 Ideas singing in his brain. 
 
 Still ardently he strove in pain, 
 
 With pen and pencil, day by day, 
 
 To fix the vivid images 
 
 With colour words, or colour spray. 
 
 On canvas — now in mystic rune. 
 
 And now in sombre, misty hues. 
 
 Most steadfastly he followed close 
 
 The art that finds its largest scope 
 
 In the originating mind — 
 
 Art, poetry, born of the soul ; 
 
 A birth artistic showing through 
 
 Its every thought and structure whole, 
 
 A likeness to its author true, 
 
 With nature sympathetic too : 
 
 The artist-poet could not rise 
 
 Above himself, nor yet disguise 
 
 His innate strength, or feebleness.
 
 THE SQUIRE. n 
 
 The Squire would willingly confess 
 His execution might not pass, 
 As tested by high criticism ; 
 Feeble in colour and design, 
 Or wanting the great pulse divine : 
 Halting in music ; like a prism 
 Dissolving the white beam of thought 
 Imaginative, to a mass 
 Of dazzling elements; but still 
 The mind, the eye, the want of skill 
 Were only blameable, and not 
 The principles by which they wrought. 
 
 The Squire was earnest, not to him 
 Pertaining were the silly ways 
 Of the revival, as it plays 
 With decorations of the house, 
 Or of the church. These were its whim. 
 Its sidelong fancies, its carouse 
 
 H 
 
 J
 
 ri4 THE VILLAGE LIFE. 
 
 With feeble, half appreciative, 
 
 And fashionably affected souls. 
 
 He had a larger mind to give 
 
 To the broad purpose and the sway 
 
 Of its great influences, spent 
 
 In splendour o'er the realms of art. 
 
 What were the little curious bowls. 
 
 The antique shapes of china ware 
 
 Or earthen ; or the patterns rare 
 
 And whimsical on wall or floor? 
 
 What were the tints diaphanous, 
 
 The nocturnes and arrangements, or 
 
 The hymns erotic,^ — poems part 
 
 Of dreary wailing, and part pus 
 
 Of brains corrupting ? Were they not 
 
 Symptoms that proved how minds were stirred 
 
 And moved out of the ancient tracks 
 
 And ruts of custom ? and by acts 
 
 Free and defiant of the laws
 
 THE SQUIRE. jj^ 
 
 That regulate the common herd, 
 Extravagantly gone astray ? 
 
 Thus dreaming, working out his dream, 
 The Squire moves on, and whiles away 
 His youthful hours by wood and stream.
 
 ^hc ©lb professor. 
 
 IVTOW let us wander up the bum, 
 
 An hour's brisk walk will reach its source. 
 And possibly ere we return 
 May meet the venerable grey 
 Professor, spectacles on nose, 
 Basket on back and fishing rod 
 In hand, passing his holiday 
 In fishing and in reading here. 
 How charmingly the old man throws 
 His fly upon the purly wave,
 
 Il8 THE VILLAGE LIFE. 
 
 And hooks the red bespeckled trout, 
 
 Benevolently pulls him out, 
 
 And drops him in his basket bier, 
 
 Then, softly satisfied and grave, 
 
 Upon the bank rescans his hook, 
 
 Or tries another, for the brook 
 
 Runs to a deep and muddy pool. 
 
 To fish and think, to think and fish, 
 
 Through the warm noons and mornings cool 
 
 Is his most pleasurable wish. 
 
 Approach him, and he'll gladly sit 
 On the green sunny bank and talk 
 Beside you, with abounding wit 
 And wisdom ; or if in the vein, 
 Will moralise, philosophise 
 And criticise, and entertain; 
 Re-read you Kant and Hegel's views, 
 And great Sir William Hamilton's,
 
 THE OLD PROFESSOR. 119 
 
 Compare, and analyse, and stalk 
 
 Ideas to their subtlest lair ; 
 
 Mill, Spencer, Bain, the latest dons 
 
 Of metaphysics, Clifford, Caird, 
 
 And the young geniuses who tear 
 
 All systems into shreds while yet 
 
 Their " faculties " are in the braird ; 
 
 He will review them and pursue 
 
 Their many windings through and tlirough, 
 
 And reproduce their several points 
 
 Upon the plane of common sense. 
 
 Long has he taught the laws of mind 
 And morals to our Scottish youth, 
 Expounded and defined, refined, 
 And in brave flowers of eloquence 
 Has wrapped up fertile seeds of truth. 
 You are no learner : he will speak 
 In broad, unscientific style,
 
 I20 THE VILLAGE LIFE. 
 
 And tell you how the mind is all 
 But reached, but never truly got, 
 By half a dozen separate mines 
 Or tunnels, or laborious bores. 
 
 First there are those who think the I 
 I 
 
 The single thing in all the world ; 
 
 That from its consciousness evolves 
 
 All being, which is just itself 
 
 In flux. If mind you could destroy 
 
 All would be gone ; the universe 
 
 Would disappear as does a dream 
 
 To eyelids opening on the light. 
 
 And there are those again who find 
 The soul in an arrangement neat 
 Of things in nature, things in man ; 
 
 It is a composite result, 
 
 I 
 
 \j Something that feels and thinks, but feels
 
 THE OLD PROFESSOR. 121 
 
 •^1 And thinks because the world is here: 
 Destroy the world and mind is gone ; 
 Destroy the avenues through which 
 The I is reached by outside things, 
 And nought results except a void 
 Of all sensation and of thought. 
 The world supplies the pap of soul, 
 And pap becomes the substance, yet 
 Itself self-conscious of its own 
 Digestive process. 
 
 Is there not 
 Something beneath, some active force 
 Or force prepared for action, on 
 Impingement from the outer world ? — 
 Some certain basis of the mind ? 
 
 Oh ! here are other Lights who know 
 How to explain, or think they do,
 
 122 THE VILLAGE LIFE. 
 
 This metaphysic mystery. 
 
 Mind is an organ : is the brain, 
 
 The nervous system's centre large, 
 
 And the most highly organized 
 
 Of all material substances. 
 
 Grey matter, granulated fine 
 
 Responsive to sensations, is 
 
 The seat of thought and consciousness. 
 
 The nerves of sense convey in beats — 
 
 That may be measured like the speed 
 
 Of light or the electric force, 
 
 Or heat and motion's interchange — 
 
 Sensations from the all without. 
 
 To this supremely sensitive 
 
 Coagulated mass of fat. 
 
 The nerve shrinks, quivers, and the brain 
 Responsive quivers, shrinks again \ 
 Forthwith a thought evolves ; a ray
 
 THE OLD PROFESSOR. 123 
 
 Of genius to illume the race ; 
 Or brilliant guess that opes the way 
 To solve a problem men must face ; 
 Or passion thrills the motor nerves, 
 And strings the muscles tense and thick, 
 Darkens the brow, the eye dilates, 
 Uplifts the hand and sends it quick 
 With gleaming dagger in its clasp, 
 And aim that not a moment swerves, 
 Into a beating heart, and heaps 
 The guilt of murder on the brain. 
 The current of sensation sweeps 
 From the outside and agitates 
 The central organ, and again 
 Flows backward, sensitively charged 
 With brain commissions, that with speed 
 Expend themselves in word or deed.
 
 124 
 
 THE VILLAGE LIFE. 
 
 How grimly the Professor puts 
 This new form of philosophy ! 
 But he will ask how comes the thought 
 The product of a nice machine, 
 To think about itself, to know 
 That it is simply a machine? 
 The brain is swept o'er by a wave 
 Of the nerve force and instantly 
 Thinks out an action and decides 
 How it shall send its message on. 
 Whether as blow, or stormy word, 
 Whether as hug or brutal kick ; 
 What is it that decides? 
 
 Ah, well! 
 That is a difficulty ; but then 
 The mind is more than a machine ; 
 It grows, and has inherited 
 Many great powers and attributes,
 
 THE OLD PROFESSOR. 125 
 
 Has much now that it once had not, 
 Is a development, in fact, 
 From weak sensation up to will 
 And consciousness. 
 
 Again the smile 
 Gleams from the Teacher as he turns 
 This latest wisdom to your view, 
 And asks if physiology 
 Is not triumphant? Has it not 
 Reached to the secret mystery 
 And laid it bare; probed with its style 
 The very centre thing of thought, 
 And touched the Ego in the brain? 
 He asks you, and you see he burns 
 To give denial clear and fierce ; 
 All explanations won't explain 
 An organ, howe'er organized, 
 That does its work and yet presides
 
 126 THE VILLAGE LIFE. 
 
 Above itself, self-exercised, v- J- 
 
 Self-ruling, and self-conscious, (r^*^ Jlyt^ 
 The sole thing in the universe, ^■^\' 
 Below its author that decides 
 And causes action by its will. 
 
 He chuckles softly, tries his skill, 
 With a grey fly upon the pool. 
 Just as it lightly flicks beyond 
 A rock emerging, see the trout 
 Rise slowly, turn his belly up. 
 And disappear with downward snout 
 And sculling tail. He won't be caught. 
 " You see him," the Professor says, 
 " That rascal has experience, 
 " He knows the ways of gnats and flies, 
 " And knows the hook that underlies 
 "Their imitations; he has sense 
 " And judgment, and deserves our praise."
 
 THE OLD PROFESSOR. 127 
 
 We laugh and the Professor laughs, 
 And as we wend through whin and broom 
 Upward the stream, we know that hook 
 Busked freshest, and with fairest look 
 By Science's adeptest groom, 
 Will never catch this man who sees 
 How old and new philosophies 
 Play round a point they never reach ; 
 And understanding, laughs and chaffs, 
 With lusty lungs, and graphic speech.
 
 'Qlhc ^VlUl. 
 
 A ND here beyond the gorse you see, 
 
 A weir must once have dammed the stream. 
 
 Long swept away, though its debris 
 
 Are traceable upon the banks ; 
 
 While on the little holm that flanks 
 
 The pathway, and now thick o'er-grown 
 
 With the wild raspberry, whose flowers 
 
 Upon the tall, straight bushes gleam, 
 
 And promise sundry pleasant hours 
 
 Of feasting to the village school ; 
 
 I
 
 THE VILLAGE LIEE. 
 
 Lies 'mong the bushes many a stone 
 Moss-covered, squared, and cut by tool, 
 Hie remnants of a rural home 
 And meal mill ; still the lade remains, 
 Throughout its length a dry green ditch, 
 Which many-coloured flowers enrich. 
 
 The house and mill no longer stand 
 
 In ruin, but my mind retains 
 
 Some memory of the ancient place 
 
 When, forty years ago, a trace 
 
 Of the grey structure might be seen — 
 
 A thick wall, where the great wheel hung. 
 
 And caught tlie flow that gave it pace — 
 
 The Mill of Birlstane it is named. 
 
 From immemorial time, a mill 
 
 With millers' privileges endowed, 
 
 Or from the parish farmers wrung.
 
 THE MILL. 
 
 It has a story wild and famed 
 
 In the outlyuig district still, 
 
 A story of the age of faith, 
 
 Before John Knox had taught the crowd. 
 
 That saints and shrines, and holy wells. 
 
 Could not redeem the soul from scaith. 
 
 The curious legend only dwells 
 
 In living memories, and alas ! 
 
 What with new science and new books. 
 
 And the enlightenment of the mass. 
 
 The mythic tales and legends hoar 
 
 Told by the cozy ingle-nooks, 
 
 And half believed in, may be lost. 
 
 The children now make mouths and boast 
 
 Of unbelief, as grandam's lore 
 
 Is opened to them ; and when all 
 
 The force of unsuspecting truth 
 
 Is gone from listening youthful ears. 
 
 131
 
 132 THE VILLAGE LIFE. 
 
 Small hope is there of the recall 
 
 To memory in after years 
 
 Of tales that charmed an earlier youth. 
 
 Then lest the legend of the Mill 
 Should perish with the few who still 
 Tell it with Doric eloquence, 
 Here is the story's point and sense, 
 Preserved in ballad rhymes, which, though 
 Rough and unpolished, may not fail 
 The awe and humour of the tale, 
 And picture of the past to show.
 
 TJit' Miller Sings. 
 
 ''T^HP" Miller of Birlstane stood at his door, 
 
 And cleared his throat at ev'ning grey, 
 And thus he sang like a happy man 
 
 As I have heard the good folks say : 
 " To-morrow is my sister wed — 
 
 A blythe and pleasant maid is she ; 
 ( )h 1 the Virgin bless the holy bonds, 
 
 And all our joyous companie ! 
 
 ' Note, page 203.
 
 134 
 
 THE VILLAGE LIFE. 
 
 And early may the sun break out, 
 
 To light us up the hill, 
 To pull the flowers and break the boughs 
 
 Wherewith to deck the mill. 
 For we shall busk it up in green 
 
 And make it fresh and gay, 
 And dance all night in the broad moonlight, 
 
 And make a merry play. 
 
 And some will leap the long jump, 
 
 And some will leap the high, 
 And some will groan o'er the putting stone, 
 
 Or make the caber - fly. 
 And won't we laugh, and Avon't we jibe, 
 
 And kiss the bridesmaids free? 
 And rosie Kate shall be my mate, 
 
 The bonnie lassie smiles on me."
 
 THE MILLER OF BIRLSTANE. 135 
 
 The Millers Appearance. 
 The miller was a sturdy man, 
 
 And when the sun was low, 
 A longer shadow down i' the meadow, 
 
 Few other men might throw. 
 Tho' white his coat, his cheek was red — 
 
 He was lithe and big of limb, 
 He might thank his stars and bless his lot 
 
 The strong man that could cope with him. 
 
 The Little Wee Man. 
 The Miller of Birlstane locked his door 
 
 And homeward bent in gloaming grey ; 
 When out o' the mist on the green hill's breast 
 
 A little grey man came running away 
 Down the hill like a rolling stone ; 
 
 He cleared the hedge like a swallow light, 
 And far above ground he spun himself round, 
 
 And danced in the air like a sprite.
 
 136 THE VILLAGE LIFE. 
 
 The Little Man mounts. 
 Over the miller he straddled his legs, 
 
 Slowly and slowly down he bore 
 On the shoulders broad of the miller he strode, 
 
 And his mites of legs hung down before. 
 " Bravo, my steed ! " the little man said, 
 
 And tickled the Miller under the chin ; 
 " I'll ride thee east, and I'll ride thee west. 
 
 And every race thou'lt win." 
 
 The Miller throivs him. 
 
 The miller was near benumbed with fear, 
 
 And never a word he said. 
 But he caught the legs of the little wee man. 
 
 And tossed him over his head. 
 But the little man fell as light as a straw, 
 
 And laughed with might and main; 
 Ere the miller could see where he might be 
 
 He was up on his shoulders again.
 
 THE MILLER OE BIRLSTANE. 
 
 No sooner up than down again, 
 
 Tlie miller was not slow; 
 But fast as he can, the little wee man 
 
 Was faster up I trow. 
 
 The Alilltr gains Courage. 
 
 But the miller's courage rose on high. 
 
 And tossing the little man down, 
 He swore as loud as a thundercloud, 
 
 He would crack his little crown. 
 "Away, away, thou ill-faced loon. 
 
 Thou may'st not mount on me ; 
 Gods bones! I wot a bleer-faced goat. 
 
 Leers not so saucily. 
 
 "To-morrow is my sister wed, 
 
 I cannot thee endure. 
 For much is to do ere evening blue 
 
 Dies over the purple moor." 
 
 137
 
 138 THE VILLAGE LIFE. 
 
 Now the little man laughed till all the woods 
 
 With his elfish skirling rang; 
 With skip and bound, up from the ground, 
 
 On the miller's back he sprang. 
 
 A Strange Phenomenon. 
 "Thou white-coated miller, throw me down, 
 
 But every time I flit, 
 A taller man and a heavier man 
 
 On thy shoulders I will sit."^ 
 "Then down and be kicked," the miller he cried, 
 
 But ere his foot he could draw, 
 Six inches to view the little man grew, 
 
 And the miller stood still with awe. 
 
 "Then take me up on thy shoulders broad. 
 
 For an' ye will or nil ; 
 On thy shoulders astride, this night I shall ride, 
 
 And gallop thee all my till.
 
 THE MILLER OF BIRLSTANE. 139 
 
 And if thou throw'st me down again, 
 
 I swear by my master's toe, 
 As big on thy back as a bursting sack, 
 
 I shall work thee mickle woe." 
 
 Tluy make a Paction. 
 "An' thou be'st the devil I must obey," 
 
 The Miller he said right sly ; 
 "On my shoulders astride this night thou wilt ride, 
 
 And sit thee safe and high. 
 But thou must grant me my request, 
 
 Or I swear by my old grey coat, 
 Tho' thou grow'st thy fill, as big as the hill, 
 
 Thou shalt never make me trot. 
 
 "To-morrow is my sister wed, 
 
 And all will wonder sore, 
 That I do not appear who love her so dear, 
 
 And tears will fall in store.
 
 I40 THE VILLAGE LIFE. 
 
 To-morrow at noon when the priest shall join 
 Her hand with the lad's she chose, 
 
 Is the merriest ride the devil ere tried, 
 Thou shalt run and win the bruse" '^ 
 
 Now the little grey man grew wondrous sad, 
 
 And he answered him with spite — 
 " How can'st thou run to-morrow at noon 
 
 If I spur thee hard all night?" 
 " Oh ! never thou fear, thou little wee man," 
 
 The miller did gaily say; 
 For he laughed in his sleeve that the devil should 
 grieve 
 
 To ride in the open day. 
 
 " Ride the brine to-morrow at noon, 
 
 And I shall run all night; 
 Come fast as thou can, thou little wee man. 
 
 And spur with all thy might."
 
 THE MILLER OF BIRLSTAAE. 
 
 Then up on his shoulders high he sprang, 
 
 And out of his pouch he pulls 
 A bridle thin, of a dead man's skin, 
 
 Wherewith his steed he rules. 
 
 His hunting whip was of marrow bone, 
 
 With a whistle at the head ; 
 The lash was the tail of a spider-ape — 
 
 " Hey ! off, dusty miller," he said. 
 
 The Miller ntns. 
 The Miller of Birlstane quickly flew ; 
 
 Away from his mill he ran. 
 Over the lade with a bound he sped, 
 
 And past his big mill dam. 
 Crossing the dam at the edge of the weir, 
 
 Down, down the glen he wound ; 
 The little man spurred, and the miller cleared 
 
 Dykes, ditches at a bound. 
 
 141
 
 142 THE VILLAGE LIFE. 
 
 The night grew dark as dark could be, 
 
 But the miller saw like day ; 
 For the flame and size of the little man's eyes 
 
 Shed light upon his way. 
 Past the churchyard in the glen, 
 
 Where the ghosts came clattering out, 
 But the flaming eyes took them all by surprise, 
 
 And back they ran with a shout 
 
 Into the wood at the foot of the glen, 
 And the little man yelled with joy 
 
 When he heard the owl, that dismal soul, 
 And the shriek of the weird magpie. 
 
 They disappear. 
 He clapped the miller under the arm, 
 
 Up from the ground they flew, 
 High in the air, the Lord knows where, 
 
 They rose far out of view.
 
 THE MILLER OF BIRLSTANE. 143 
 
 What happened to the jMUler''s Sister. 
 The miller's fair sister rose next morn, 
 
 And went to the bridesmaids gay ; 
 " Alas ! " she cries, with crimson eyes, 
 
 " Why does my brother stay ? " 
 " The mill is locked and he is gone. 
 
 Nowhere may he be found : 
 Murdered by men down in the glen, 
 
 Or in a deep pool drowned." 
 
 In came the stately bridegroom then, 
 
 All busked and fine was he ; 
 " Oh ! we'll search all day till gloaming grey. 
 
 And bring him back to thee." 
 They dragged the dam and they dragged the pools, 
 
 No miller found they there. 
 And the glen they sought, and the wood they sought, 
 
 And they sought him everywhere.
 
 144 
 
 THE VILLAGE LIFE. 
 
 Ne'er a trace of the miller they found — 
 
 Home came they at close of day ; 
 As the bridegroom kissed her, the miller's fair sister, 
 
 Sadly did she say- —   
 '•' Xe'er may I wed till my brother comes, 
 
 Though that should never be. 
 No wife am I till he stands by 
 
 And gives me up to thee." 
 
 Tlu Miller s Siste-r has a Dream. 
 
 When two long years had passed away ; 
 
 In the pleasant morning beam, 
 Some fairy blest her, the miller's sister, 
 
 With a sweet and happy dream. 
 She thought the miller was at her side 
 
 Entreating her to wed, 
 For ne'er could he come to Birlstane home 
 
 Till the marriage vows were said.
 
 THE MILLER OF BIRLSTANE. 145 
 
 The Marriage and the B>'nse. 
 The bridegroom was a happy man 
 
 'When the marriage day had come ; 
 The bells they rang and the villagers sang, 
 
 But the fair young bride was dumb. 
 She thought of the miller far away, 
 
 And prayed with all her might 
 That their joined hands might loose his bands. 
 
 And bring him back by night. • 
 
 When the marriage was done by the holy friar, 
 
 The bridal party wended away. 
 The lusty young lads to run the briisc, 
 
 Stripped off their coats and bonnets gay. 
 Into the glen away they dash, 
 
 Throwing the dust about ; 
 The sun it is hot, as off they shot, 
 
 A laughing, joyous rout. 
 
 K
 
 146 THE VILLAGE LIFE. 
 
 Re-appeai-ance of the Miller. 
 
 Tlie bridegroom's house is the place they turn, 
 
 And the first is near the goal, 
 When the miller he ran with the little grey man, 
 
 Safe and sound and whole. 
 " Who first shall kiss the bride," he cried, 
 
 " A happy man is he ; 
 Now spur thee well, thou gallant wee man. 
 
 For the last I may not be." 
 
 Then out they all shout, " 'Tis the miller himself, 
 
 So here for a stretching race." 
 And they crane the neck and they swing the arm, 
 
 And hot is every face. 
 But the Miller ran as man ne'er ran. 
 
 And the sweat dropt from each pore. 
 So quickly he flew, that the foremost, I trow, 
 
 Could keep him in sight no more.
 
 THE MILLER OF BIRLSTANE. 147 
 
 Ilffiv the Miller drmoited the Devil, and Happy Close. 
 Tlie miller is hot and thirsty too, 
 
 His tongue burned like a fire, 
 When gladly he sees the clump of trees 
 
 And St. Mary's Well draw nigher. 
 " Now, thy steed must water," the miller he said, 
 
 And up to the well he sprung, 
 When he caught the smell of the holy well 
 
 The little grey man was stung. 
 
 " Ah ! this is some font thou hast brought me to. 
 
 Full of holy water, I think." 
 '■' 'Tis only the place," quoth the miller apace, 
 
 " Where the devil's horses drink." 
 
 Then down he stooped at the mouth of the well. 
 
 And a holy draught he drew ; 
 He spied the cross all covered with moss, 
 
 And the sacred sign he knew.
 
 1^8 THE VILLAGE LIFE. 
 
 He secretly signed it on his brow, 
 
 And the little man sat aghast; 
 He pulled his rein, again and again, 
 
 But the miller was thinking fast. 
 
 " See ! Avhat is that shade in the water clear ? 
 
 Tis black as the devil in hell ! " 
 The little man stretched, and the miller he hitched 
 
 Him right into the well. 
 *' Now, how dost thou like the water clear 
 
 Of the Virgin Mother's name?" 
 And the miller laughed, while the little man gasped, 
 
 As up to the top he came. 
 
 " Come pull me out of the holy well, 
 
 Thou crafty miller," he said, 
 "And never again will I hold a rein. 
 
 Or lay a lash on thy head."
 
 THE MILLER OF BIRLSTANE. 149 
 
 " Soak in the water, thou little grey man. 
 
 It will do thy old flesh good, 
 And oft as ye may, turn round and pray, 
 
 At the holy mossy rood ! 
 Here are the runners swift of foot, 
 
 Farewell, I may not stay, 
 And oft may you think, as you gape and drink. 
 
 That the Miller got well away ! " 
 
 Then away he dashed with a merry laugh, 
 
 And he ran and won the bruse, 
 And kissed the cheek of his sister meek, 
 
 Nor did pretty Kate refuse. 
 
 What became of the Well — An Addendum to the Legend. 
 
 Now the Virgin Mother's waters sw^eet, 
 
 Changed wondrous from that day \ 
 And the holy cross with its coating of moss 
 
 Visibly crumbled away.
 
 i^o THE VILLAGE LIFE. 
 
 The limpid stream turned iron-grey, 
 
 And of most unsavoury taste ; 
 And a smell arose that might skin the nos^ 
 
 Of the dog that lapped in haste. 
 
 No holy palmer in his weeds, 
 
 No lame, no sick, no sore ; 
 Did ever drink at its blessed brink, 
 
 'Twas a famous well no more. 
 But at length the age of science came, 
 
 The chemists viewed its stain ; 
 They tested the well, they tasted the well- 
 
 Found virtue in't again, 
 
 Ammonia, sulphates. Lord knows what; 
 
 It is now a chalybeate spring, 
 And doctors bold like the monks of old 
 
 Of its many marvels sing.
 
 THE MILLER OF BIRLSTANE. 151 
 
 And thither flock the pilgruns new, 
 
 Fair dames with shattered nerves ; 
 The roue grey, and the young debauche', 
 
 The physic water serves. 
 
 They quaff it off with finger on nose, 
 
 But instead of the cross, I ween. 
 There is now a stone pump, with an iron rump, 
 
 That clanks from morn till e'en. 
 There mirth, and fooling, and flirting goes on, 
 
 But St. Mary's well, I think, 
 Is still the place, where with sweet solace, 
 
 "The Devil's horses drink."
 
 ^ht ©li) ^o-atman. 
 
 'T^HE stream flows from a dreary mere 
 
 Up in the moorland ; it is here, 
 In an expanse of heather far 
 Extending westward ; not a tree 
 To break the brown monotony. 
 A cottage here and there you see 
 Turf-covered, battered, and around 
 White-headed, ragged children play. 
 Near the horizon far away, 
 A roofless kirk stands, early built
 
 154 THE VILLAGE LIFE. 
 
 After the Reformation, still 
 
 Receiving in its sacred ground 
 
 The moorland dead, and its grey walls 
 
 Are held in veneration by 
 
 The peasants, for its history ; 
 
 Their sturdy fathers' blood was spilt 
 
 Among the heather for the cause 
 
 Of Scotland's covenanted laws, 
 
 And in the churchyard rests their dust. 
 
 The loch is fed by many a rill 
 Of mossy water, brown as must ; 
 It glistens redly in the sun, 
 The heather lips it round about, 
 And the black peaty shallows show 
 The spoor of many a water-fowl 
 Which haunts it ; the wild duck, the teal, 
 The water hen, sometimes the gull. 
 The heron on his stately stilts ;
 
 THE OLD BOATMAN. 
 
 Here comes at night the partridge dun 
 To wash his beak, and the red grouse 
 With all her chicks. And here will steal 
 From some safe cover in the dusk, 
 The otter, after pike and trout ; 
 The fox crawls slily from his house 
 Down in the woods, and makes a lair 
 Near where a tiny streamlet silts 
 Its mud and moss, and watches there ; 
 A stray old feline hunter out 
 In search of feathers, shows his eyes 
 Like fireballs as he nears the edge. 
 
 An old man living in a hut 
 Half turf, half stone, on yonder side 
 The mere, will aid you if you wish 
 To try a cast. He is well known 
 To the Professor and the Squire 
 And Doctor, whom he taught to fish. 
 
 155
 
 156 THE VILLAGE LIFE. 
 
 Lines, rods and baits, and coloured flies, 
 You'll find in the old boat he keeps, 
 And he will oar you to the deeps 
 Or shallows of the mere, where lies 
 The scaly treasure you admire. 
 
 There's not a living thing that swims 
 
 Deep in the mere, or seeks the shore. 
 
 Or on the water gladly trims 
 
 Its feathers, or that seeks its food, 
 
 But he has studied o'er and o'er, 
 
 Knows all the haunts within his reach, 
 
 Almost the daily life of each. 
 
 What wonder ? He has lived alone 
 
 In the old hut now close on good 
 
 Fifty long years. 
 
 Look at the man, 
 His years are nigh on seventy, but
 
 THE OLD BOATMAN. 
 
 157 
 
 He still is sinewy and strong ; 
 
 Will grasp the oar with supple span 
 
 Of fingers, walk with steady swing 
 
 Across the moor, and lightly spring 
 
 Over a streamlet in his way. 
 
 A " dour " and yet a patient face, 
 
 Uncouthly shaped, and never clean ; 
 
 Eyes dull and heavy, rarely seen 
 
 To lighten : mouth without a trace 
 
 Of meaning on it, and a brow 
 
 Knotted and ridgy, brown and bald ; 
 
 Clad in the coarsest moleskins patched 
 
 All over, and the old head thatched 
 
 With a fur bonnet, heavily shod 
 
 In boots with iron soles — he stands 
 
 Just like old Hodge come from the plough, 
 
 As like a lout as ever called 
 
 Woa ! to a horse, or broke a clod. 
 
 But the old man is patient, sure.
 
 1^8 THE VILLAGE LIFE. 
 
 And in his observation keen ; 
 If not book-learned, is nature-taught 
 In the exactest school of all. 
 His studies are the mere and moor, 
 Life studies every day pursued 
 In all the seasons, spring and fall, 
 In summer's lustiness, and in 
 The winter's bitter ice and cold. 
 No living thing but he has caught 
 Within the limits of his search, 
 And handled it, and oft subdued 
 To gentleness, till it would perch 
 Upon his hand and head, and show 
 Its pretty training, bird and beast 
 And reptile even. 
 
 Look within 
 His queer old hut and you shall see 
 Many a dusk and coloured skin,
 
 THE OLD BOATMAN. 
 
 Many stuffed birds, and many a nest, 
 
 And half a dozen rows of eggs 
 
 Hanging in graceful curves from pegs ; 
 
 Pinned insects, all in their degree 
 
 Of scientific order placed. 
 
 Bare skeletons, and old remains 
 
 Of skeletons on blue blaize pressed 
 In the coal-forming era ; here 
 
 A flint, chipped rudely on its flake, 
 
 There a stone hammer polished clear. 
 
 True in the shaft-hole, of a make 
 
 More recent. 
 
 This old hut contains 
 Trifles that great museums lack. 
 But the collector ? What a life 
 Of patience and laboriousness 
 Was his ! 
 
 159
 
 i6o THE VILLAGE LIFE. 
 
 When young, he wed and brought 
 Home to his moorland croft a wife, 
 And lived some years of wedded bliss. 
 Two children fair, a girl and boy 
 Were bom, and then the wife became 
 Dull, dreamy, and at last insane. 
 Some lack of vigour in the spine 
 Left her weak, irritable, lame 
 And fatuous, and the softened brain 
 Sank gradually into decease. 
 But he had tended her, controlled 
 Her wildest frenzies and her moods 
 Of suicidal gloom alone. 
 Neighbours were distant and afraid 
 Of the poor stricken one, whose yells 
 Rang o'er the moor at dead of night. 
 Long dreary months this life was led ; 
 At last all nervous strength was gone, 
 Calm, for exhausted, she was laid
 
 THE OLD BOATMAN. i6l 
 
 Upon her bed, and lived a corpse 
 For other weary months, and fed 
 By his sole patient hand; until 
 Death like a friend came to the hut, 
 And he thanked God that she was dead. 
 
 The boy and girl he strove to rear 
 In vigour upward, but their birth 
 Was fatal, for each coming year 
 Brought signs incipient of the taint 
 Of madness, though it broke not forth 
 Conspicuous. They were quiet and shy, 
 Simple and graceful in their ways, 
 And needing not the least restraint; 
 They even learned a little by 
 The father's lessons out-door taught, 
 They had the father's love of beast 
 And bird, and as they learned they sought 
 Each several haunt and den and nest. 
 
 L
 
 1 52 THE VILLAGE LIFE. 
 
 Their life was innocent at least, 
 And happy, and the father — though 
 He trembled as he thought upon 
 Their future fate, which still was pressed 
 Upon his parent heart — loved so 
 The little ones, that life became 
 Sweet to his soul, and worth an aim. 
 They had a strangely mangled speech 
 He and they only understood. 
 His lonely days were cheered by them ; 
 They ran along with him when out 
 Upon the moor, or on the mere 
 Went with him in his boat to oar, 
 Baited his lines, unhooked the trout 
 When caught, and with a childish roar, 
 Sounding to him a lusty cheer, 
 Greeted his triumphs.
 
 THE OLD BOATMAN. 163 
 
 One sad day 
 When he was at the village, they 
 Unmoored the little boat in play, 
 And rowed it merrily away 
 Out to the middle of the mere ; 
 What happened no one ever knew, 
 For haplessly no one was near, 
 But when returned the father — Oh ! 
 The boat, keel upward, drifted to 
 The shore. 
 
 'Twas forty years ago.
 
 ^ht f odor. 
 
 T^EEP in the bosom of the vale, 
 
 Its garden fence the streamlet's bank, 
 The doctor's cosy cottage stands — 
 The doctor, young and rich and learned, 
 A savatit with a lengthened tail 
 Of mystic letters, proudly earned, 
 After his name. He had been taught 
 In the last school of " modern thought," 
 And was a careful student still. 
 Nature he followed in the trail
 
 1 66 THE VILLAGE LIFE. 
 
 Of Darwin, Huxley, Tyndall, and 
 The more adventurous German band 
 Of theorists by Haeckel led ; 
 He was of the illuminM. 
 
 Through the dark ages of the past, 
 Ages on ages, he could trace 
 The varied steps, from first to last, 
 That Nature took to form the race. 
 No break was there, or could be there : 
 For break admitted miracle, 
 And miracle is never found. 
 And never can be in the range 
 Of the unchanging laws of change ; 
 And God is but a link unsound 
 Hooked to the far end of the chain 
 Of secondary causes : hook 
 Conforming not with highest law — 
 The law of growth, decay, and death,
 
 THE DOCTOR. ib"] 
 
 Of death and growth and constant growth, 
 In endless circles, on and on, 
 Ever evolving from themselves. 
 
 From fiery mist our world arose, 
 And in a fiery mist will close, 
 Again to form, with sun and world, 
 Another system, where the force 
 Of evolution, starting fresh. 
 May run perhaps a different course. 
 And end in higher forms of flesh. 
 Matter, eternal, uncreate, 
 Ever becoming something new, 
 Contains within it all — the All — 
 And everything is just the fate 
 Of atoms as they chance to fall 
 Together. Here a soul, and there 
 A crystal, but the chance is ruled 
 By the great Evolution law.
 
 1 68 THE VILLAGE LIFE. 
 
 So to the village savant seemed 
 The universe. It wholly teemed 
 With forces ever moving on, 
 Passing into each other fast, 
 Forming, re-forming, and no place 
 He found for spiritual life or sphere. 
 What was his life but a result 
 Of countless causes, dating back 
 From unknown ages, when a flash 
 P^lectric smote sea-ooze, or when 
 Some combination rare of parts, 
 That quivered on the brink of life. 
 Evolved a sentient movement far 
 Extending in its potency 
 And opening promise of himself? 
 The long life process he could track 
 With fearless Haeckel ; from the sac 
 Of protoplasm, early dawn 
 Of organ, rising slowly up
 
 THE DOCTOR. 169 
 
 To worm life in its various forms; 
 Through worms to the acrania, 
 The skull-less type, that shadow out 
 A coming back-bone; to the fish 
 Primeval in the ancient seas. 
 From fish to the amphibia 
 And brutes warm-blooded, giving suck, 
 And feeding in the forests fair 
 That covered all the early plains — 
 Pouched animals, whose latest home 
 Is in the wild Australian bush. 
 
 From these, in slow ascending steps, 
 Through semi-apes, and apes with tails, 
 And tail-less apes, with larger brain. 
 Emerged a strain of nobler shape. 
 With straighter legs and finer hands. 
 Thumbed, thinking, speaking, reasoning — 
 The ruler and the chief of life.
 
 lyo 
 
 THE VILLAGE LIFE. 
 
 And yet a puzzle's in it all — 
 Why should the movement that we call 
 Being and life, ever evolve 
 A higher being, until it show 
 Intelligence, the power to know, 
 To reason high and to resolve ? 
 AVhy does the atom touched with life 
 Seek upward, till it knows itself? 
 Why does the struggle and the strife 
 Lead up to wonder, worship, thought, 
 In the attempt to reach above 
 The show of things, and seek a Cause ; 
 Survey, reflect, and, like a god 
 Explain all Nature by its laws? 
 Whence comes the thing Intelligence ? 
 Is it a force that hidden lies. 
 In certain cleavings of sarcode? 
 Then why that mighty force, and whence 
 Impressed? How to the formless mist.
 
 THE DOCTOR. 171 
 
 Tinted by light of other suns,— 
 
 Our wondrous system's element, — 
 
 Came this divine and ever blessed 
 
 And highest power, the power to know ? 
 
 Has it no source but earthly ones, 
 
 No Pnmal Cause mtelligent ? (-'"^- ' ^ . 
 
 OM^U^ 
 
 ^Vwn.^ ; 
 
 The youthful savant answered so : — k- oiw^/^*^r 
 " The starting point of life appears ^^ jn.--'^- 
 With promise of intelligence, 
 Because the struggle through the years 
 Incessant upward rises still ; 
 From form to form, from sense to sense, 
 The living force becomes intense, 
 Till it can reason, think and will. 
 Why so, we know not : it is there 
 Like limb and brain, like scent of flower, 
 Like sting of bee, like serpent's tooth, 
 Like nerve and muscle, like the power
 
 172 THE VILLAGE LIFE. 
 
 Mysterious, that with constant truth, 
 Makes positive and negative. 
 
 All is mysterious : we can learn 
 Only as learners of the whole 
 Of which we form a part; and earn 
 Knowledge of processes and forms. 
 The final truth, if such there be, 
 Is ever hopelessly disguised, 
 Beyond the ken of human soul — 
 For soul is but a process too, 
 A portion of the mystery, 
 That lies within the circle vast, 
 Of which man is the centre true — 
 We know it not, and cannot guess. 
 Darkness and silence, emptiness, 
 At which the spirit stands aghast. 
 Confronts us ever! If there be, 
 Filling the void, a Deitv,
 
 THE DOCTOR. 
 
 He moves beyond our orbit, far 
 Beyond the paths of sun and star, 
 And comes not near to be revealed. 
 Is unrevealable, concealed 
 Like the deep roots and essences 
 Of all the changing forms we see." 
 
 Belief presumptuous, some will say. 
 So ruthlessly it cuts away 
 All spiritual life of man ; 
 All worship, hope, all future state, 
 And narrows down his high estate. 
 That by the old and glorious plan 
 Was but a little lower than 
 The angels, to the product base 
 Of countless causes and effects ; 
 Of Evolution makes a God 
 Or underlying power, that sways 
 The interchange of force and force, 
 
 173
 
 174 
 
 THE VILLAGE LIFE. 
 
 The accident of accident 
 Itself. 
 
 The branch upon the road, 
 The weed that in the puddle blooms, 
 Or worm that wends its sinuous course 
 Amid the mud, or snail bow-bent 
 Upon his belly foot, presumes 
 A future of development 
 As splendid as the rise of Man. 
 For may not branch, or worm, or snail, 
 Or weed, in future strife prevail, 
 And rising upward, stage on stage, 
 At last in some far distant age 
 Become a form of higher strain, 
 With larger limbs, more spacious brain 
 Than his, who, as high priest of man, 
 Knows and explains creation's plan] 
 While man by some pernicious trip,
 
 THE DOCTOR. 
 
 Descending downward, slip on slip, 
 
 Becomes imbruted once again, 
 
 Pronounced in jaw, and low in brain — 
 
 Than the gorilla greater mock 
 
 Of godlike structure and of soul ; 
 
 Or dipping lower, lower down, 
 
 Sink to a shell-fish on the rock 
 
 Of other seas. His thoughts, his works. 
 
 Religions, and philosophies, 
 
 The splendour and the glorious crown 
 
 Of his development — all dead, 
 
 All buried, and all vanished. 
 
 The mind, the soul, which was his boast, 
 
 Forever gone, forever lost. 
 
 A hopeless creed, an awful faith. 
 That overwhelms with its immense 
 Relations intertangled dense ! 
 
 175
 
 176 
 
 THE VILLAGE LIFE. 
 
 And yet we hope a higher power, 
 Than Chance by Evolution led, 
 Has, as the spirit of the Lord, 
 Brooded above the ages dead. 
 And over all the change on change. 
 Transforming fin to foot and claw, 
 Transforming cry to thoughtful word, 
 Enlarging instinct's narrow range, 
 To reason and religious awe ; 
 This ever-present Power, this God, 
 Intelligence, Prime Force, or Will, 
 Directing, shaping, worked through all, 
 Preparing for the higher race 
 A soul refined and spiritual, 
 And life beyond this life of ill — 
 A spiritual life that sinks the clod, 
 And all its restlessness of change, 
 That, fired with impulses divine, 
 A bright development acquires,
 
 THE DOCTOR. 177 
 
 And moving onward still aspires, 
 
 Through other struggles, other strife, 
 
 To catch the purest light that shines 
 
 Beyond the forms and shows of life ; 
 
 To know in full the highest Cause, 
 
 The Fountain Head and Source of laws. fi/>^^/- le^f^Yr^ 
 
 '' - ^^J^Ja   
 The Doctor dearly loved to muse, '^ 
 
 By scientific fancies led. 
 
 On that dim age when the man-ape 
 
 In inter-tropic climes was bred. 
 
 Brown, hairy, and with mighty thews, 
 
 Head rough with brutal vigour, yet 
 
 With broadening brows, and eyes new-lit 
 
 With intellectual fire, and lips 
 
 That modulated simple words — 
 
 Rough symbols of the thoughts that shoot 
 
 Incessant from the growing brains — 
 
 Or grinning savagely agape, 
 
 M
 
 lyS THE VILLAGE LIFE. 
 
 Showed the flesh-tearing fangs, and showed 
 The human based upon the brute. 
 
 Roaming the forest with his spouse, 
 Or many spouses, and their troop 
 Of young brown savages, he reigns 
 The king of brutes, and none allows 
 To cross his path without a fight, 
 For he has learnt to wield a brand 
 Plucked from a tree, and in his hand 
 To poise a stone and throw it straight: 
 Has learned at night to make a fire 
 To cook his food and scare away 
 His brutal neighbours, and above, 
 Bough-thatched, to raise his tent of love. 
 
 Time disappears, the man-ape grows, 
 In struggling upward, more humane. 
 Herds with his fellows, forms a clan.
 
 THE DOCTOR. 179 
 
 And is as chief the [strongest man, 
 A sage, a warrior of renown, 
 Who leads to battle or bestows 
 New weapons, which his kin retain; 
 The bow and arrow, axe of stone. 
 And shield of skin, and before all 
 Enforces rules of social life — 
 Rules that will slowly soften down 
 The selfish instincts, and obtain 
 New strength at every leader's call. 
 The clan must live, and in the strife 
 Of battle or the hunt for food, 
 Obedience is for common good. 
 And he who, by an act of skill 
 Or daring, saves the family 
 From famine, or rapacity 
 Of other clans, is high extolled 
 Among his kinsmen, he has made 
 An upward step in morals ; laid
 
 I So THE VILLAGE LIFE. 
 
 The basis of a higher law 
 
 Of social action ; others will 
 
 In emulation follow him, 
 
 And task the brain and strain the limb 
 
 To earn the praises of the old 
 
 And admiration of the young, 
 
 With the sweet smiles of wife and maid. 
 
 Or one with loftier language blessed. 
 By livelier fancies swayed, may sing 
 A song triumphant, rhythmical 
 And rude, but with a power to ring 
 Through all the tribe, and in its breast 
 Live and endure ; or one, whose lip 
 Is less responsive to his thought 
 Than is his cunning hand, may grave 
 With point of spear or arrow tip 
 On weapon handle, quaintly wrought, 
 The famous action of the brave.
 
 THE DOCTOR. i8i 
 
 Thus poetry and art arise, 
 Preserving all the better traits 
 Of the advancing savage tribe. 
 Ere these have helped to civilize 
 Society, arose a power 
 That moulded mind and morals fast, 
 So great a power, that men ascribe 
 In cultured days, as in the past, 
 Its origin to some high source 
 That lies beyond the reign of Force. 
 
 The Doctor often tried to find 
 A theoretic starting germ. 
 From which development of faiths 
 Religious, shot out and grew, 
 With wild luxuriance; but few 
 Of those he favoured seemed to bind 
 Within their primal buds the whole 
 Of the vast blossom.
 
 1 82 THE VILLAGE LIFE. 
 
 He could see 
 In far-off ages how the man 
 Began to reason, looked abroad 
 On his surroundings, felt that these 
 Controlled his life. He could not move, 
 But he was hindered somehow. Now, 
 It was a beast of prey, and then 
 A poisonous serpent, and anon 
 A storm that raged among the trees, 
 I Uprooting mighty trunks, whose fall 
 Destroyed the loved ones at his side. 
 He saw, and trembled as he saw. 
 The lightning flash from heavii and strike 
 And rive from root to topmost bough 
 The tree that gave him sustenance. 
 He heard the thunder in mid-air 
 Rolling away, or o'er his head 
 Break with a doom-like crash ; but soon 
 The clouds cleared off, the sun appeared,
 
 THE DOCTOR. 183 
 
 The forest glittered in his beams, 
 
 And Hfe was pleasant once again. 
 
 And when he laid him down to rest, 
 
 And sleep came not with the soft night, 
 
 And twinkling stars and yellow moon 
 
 Lit up his coat and couch of skins, 
 
 What thoughts were his? Thoughts simple, vague, 
 
 Of something other than himself, 
 
 That shaped his life, something of Might 
 
 That struck in anger, and again 
 
 Smiled peacefully, and sent him food; 
 
 Something Unknown and to be feared. 
 
 Fear, awe, and worship ; fear at first, 
 Then fear with admiration fused, 
 And lastly worship, long delayed 
 In the slow processes of thought, 
 Took shape as a religious creed. 
 Passing through many an abject phase
 
 1 84 THE VILLAGE LIFE. 
 
 Before it reached a concrete form, 
 Before the Fetish and the Charm 
 Removed a faith so low and base, 
 We scarce its blurred survival find 
 In lowest types of form and mind. 
 But charms and fetishes gave place 
 As knowledge widened by degrees 
 To serpent-worship, and the trees 
 The lustrous reptiles twine around 
 In spiral rings and folds of grace. 
 And with this cult coeval swayed. 
 In the fair Eastern homes of men, 
 That long enduring faith, that found 
 Elaborate ceremonial 
 In groves Assyrian, and arrayed 
 With darker mysteries on the Nile, 
 Became the Isis worship vile — 
 The worship of the fruitful force. 
 Renewing life eternally
 
 THE DOCTOR. \ 85 
 
 Throughout all nature \ pure at first 
 In primitive simplicity. 
 Men knew the universal thirst 
 Of love, and its assuaging source 
 And issues, and love's symbols veiled. 
 They humbly, reverently adored. 
 For love was then the mighty Lord 
 Of life, who oped and closed its gates. 
 
 Then as the generations passed, 
 And reason keener held its sway 
 O'er worship, and the varied states 
 Of human life in races famed 
 For intellectual vigour, rose 
 A higher faith that sought to close 
 Within its sweep a cosmos rude, 
 And some faint likeness of a crude 
 And half shaped out philosophy — 
 A creed personifyina; all
 
 1 86 THE VILLAGE LIFE. 
 
 The mighty facts of Nature by 
 Immortal Gods — men deified, 
 Enlarged upon the grandest scale, 
 And workinar in the universe 
 With man-like purposes and will. 
 A page of history appears, 
 
 Written in languages and graves. 
 
 In ancient legends and in tales 
 
 Of many races, when prevailed 
 
 This faith among the Aryan stock 
 
 In Central Asia — the strain 
 
 Of human kind diverging most 
 
 From the ape type, and strongest grown 
 
 In structure, and in bulk of brain. 
 
 The Doctor often longed to know 
 What fact of variation set 
 At first apart these ancient folk, 
 From all their fellows ; longed to read
 
 277^ DOCTOR. 187 
 
 Their hidden history before 
 
 Their great migrations to the West. 
 
 But all is dark, for all is lost. 
 
 Near to the spot, he only guessed 
 
 From whence the great divergence sprung 
 
 That gave to brute a soul and tongue, 
 
 A tribe developed, highly blessed 
 
 With an advantage o'er the rest, 
 
 And, multiplying outward, beat 
 
 The weaker races ; with itself, 
 
 Contending as it spread, became 
 
 Still stronger and more beautiful. 
 
 Thus there grew up a shapelier frame, 
 
 A larger mind, more moral ways 
 
 Of family and social life, 
 
 And the religion that we know, 
 
 First owning 'mong the many gods 
 
 A Father of the human race, 
 
 And stately Mother in his wife,
 
 1 88 THE VILLAGE LIFE. 
 
 And Son — a hero, suffering 
 
 The worst in battle and disgrace, 
 
 For love of mankind, but at last 
 
 Victorious o'er his enemies. 
 
 The starting point of all the great 
 
 Historic creeds of East and West, 
 
 And systems of philosophies. 
 
 How small a part of man's estate 
 In pre-historic eras seems 
 Included here. The Doctor fain 
 Would speculating start again, 
 In time from the imagined point 
 When the more vigorous forms diverged, 
 And try to trace the lower through 
 Their slower rise, as they emerged 
 From man-like apedom up to man. 
 But scientific facts were few 
 And far apart, and the ascent
 
 THE DOCTOR. 189 
 
 In stages of development, 
 
 So little upward, it was ill 
 
 To follow back and catch the steps 
 
 Progressive, in the living course 
 
 Of early progress. The adepts 
 
 Had gleaned but little from the past 
 
 Out of its many stores and vast. 
 
 The savage of the earliest dates 
 Traced in the Drift, or in the Cave 
 Of Kent, the home of men and brute 
 For many ages, had the skill 
 To light a fire and use a tool. 
 Though of the rudest, and is found, 
 However deep in cave or mound. 
 This side the gap that separates 
 The lowest living men — who rule 
 In the Andamans, or who pass 
 With sad rapidity away,
 
 I go THE VILLAGE LIFE. 
 
 As tliey encounter wave on wave, 
 
 On the Australian continent, 
 
 Of white men seeking room and sway — 
 
 From those catarrhyne apes which grew 
 
 By variation into man. 
 
 No fact disclosed a lower shoot 
 
 From the anthropozoic root, 
 
 Than lives and propagates and still 
 
 Connects, though by a far-off strain, 
 
 The Orang and Gorilla with 
 
 Man reasoning from a larger brain. 
 
 t 
 
 The Doctor drew, as he was bound. 
 With Huxley, the conclusion sound 
 And cogent, that the weakest race 
 Of living savages, as far 
 Removed is from the noblest phase 
 Of European mind, as are 
 The highest apes from lowest men ;
 
 THE DOCTOR. 
 
 Or as the orang, chimpanzee, 
 And the gorilla are removed 
 From monkeys of a low degree. 
 
 The gulf between the two extremes 
 Is equal. Nay, the lower seems 
 The least unbridgeable, although 
 The broken arches in the one 
 Remain to show the progress done. 
 And in the other all are lost; 
 If in the first Stone Age we seek 
 The earliest man, then he can boast 
 A tool of flint flake, and can speak 
 Articulating; had a home 
 And social order of a kind. 
 Married and buried, and had rites 
 And ceremonies primitive. 
 The oldest skull that time has spared, 
 The skull Neanderthal compared 
 
 191
 
 19^ 
 
 THE VILLAGE LIFE. 
 
 With skulls of modern times, contained 
 
 Seeming capacity as great 
 
 As his who now rules o'er a state ; 
 
 Search as we may, no trace is found 
 
 Of how' the man-ape was transformed 
 
 Into the man with speech and creed; 
 
 We know not how he shed his hair, 
 
 Or shortened his fore limbs and rose 
 
 On back-bone straight, with head thrown back, 
 
 With arched foot, and supple knee ; 
 
 Or by what process came the hue 
 
 Of his now soft and hairless skin, 
 
 Its brown, its red, its jetty black, 
 
 Its yellow, and the tints between ; 
 
 Or how the straight and flattened nose, 
 
 Developed from the monkey's face, 
 
 The jaw prognathous, square or thin : 
 
 And above all how speech began — 
 
 How first the inarticulate,
 
 THE DOCTOR. 
 
 Long-armed, broad-chested, roaring clan 
 Of men-apes, out of shouts and cries, 
 Formed syllables and meaning words ; 
 How, from the jarring harsh discords 
 Of brutal sounds there broke instead, 
 Liquid utterances, replies, 
 Sweet conversation, grave debate? — 
 A vast development, so great 
 And splendid that the tail-less ape 
 At once became the planet's lord, 
 A god in reason, as in shape. 
 
 The Doctor hoped that searchers keen, 
 Might find before the glacial age 
 Some traces of an earlier stage — 
 Man Pliocene or Miocene — 
 A skull, or skeleton that showed, 
 The type improving from the ape ; 
 Some form revealing how a broad 
 
 N 
 
 193
 
 IQ4 l^tlE VILLAGE LIFE. 
 
 Divergence intellectual, 
 
 May come from trifling change of shape ; 
 
 That showed complete, a reason why 
 
 The glorious art of speech arose ; 
 
 How shortened arm, and thickened thigh, 
 
 Deepened the chest, enlarged the lung; 
 
 The larynx and the mouth and nose 
 
 Transforming with the breast and brain. 
 
 Became sonorous, and the tongue 
 
 Shaped simple words, that grew amain 
 
 To language musical, and song. 
 
 But though the search is deep and long, 
 
 And evolutionists await 
 
 With eager hope, the early "brave" 
 
 Emerging from the brutal state ; 
 
 He comes not from his ancient grave ; 
 
 His grave is lost ; his fossil bones 
 
 No geologic era owns.
 
 •^he IJlacksmith's gi^i^sl^^^i"- 
 
 A WAY, philosophy and creeds ! 
 
 Here in the honey-suckle bower — 
 Which at the garden's farthest edge 
 Looks on the streamlet as it speeds, 
 Sunlit and gleaming thro' a shower. 
 Away o'er pebbles, and thro' sedge — 
 Sits, with her needle, Isobel, 
 The smith's young daughter, fair and tall, 
 As sweet a maiden for a song 
 As e'er did poet's heart enthral.
 
 ig6 THE VILLAGE LIFE. 
 
 Her eyes are stedfast as a well 
 
 Of living water in its pit, 
 
 When to its depths immeasureable 
 
 A zenith star has lighted it. 
 
 Her face is ruddy with the health 
 
 Pure blood thro' all her body whirls ; 
 
 And worth all gems of greatest wealth 
 
 Is the luxuriance of her curls. 
 
 She shakes them gaily in the sun, 
 
 Nor knows how witchingly they fall 
 
 About the marble of her throat. 
 
 Though dearly loved and praised by all, 
 
 She hardly knows she has begun 
 
 To blossom into perfect flower — 
 
 The perfect flower of womanhood. 
 
 Unconsciously she's fair and good, 
 
 A village maiden pure and sweet. 
 
 Her soul just opening daintily 
 
 To the young radiance of the day,
 
 THE BLACKSMITirs DAUGHTER. 
 
 That tinges it with blushes meet, 
 Much given to meditation, too. 
 Nought loves she better than to see 
 The red Hght softly die away 
 Beyond the woods, beyond the moor. 
 Then steals she past the smithy door. 
 Rejoicing in her friend, the Night, 
 Her heart, her eyes, all brimming o'er 
 With youthful feelings of delight. 
 She seeks new life below the moon, 
 And happy thoughts then crave the boon 
 Of speech from her red lips, while high 
 Above, the stars are glowing bright 
 In the blue Lift, that to her eye 
 Seems veiling heaven from mortal sight. 
 
 The little stream is bubbling near, 
 And many a flickering gleam of light, 
 Through the dark trees, and purple leaves, 
 X "^ 
 
 197
 
 iCjS 7//£ VILLAGE LIFE. 
 
 Falls on its wavelets, soft and white ; 
 With pensive happiness she walks, 
 She feels the influence of the hour, 
 The hour of loneliness and love, 
 The hour of softly whispered talks, 
 The hour of the bright planet's power. 
 What thinks she as her fair feet move 
 Along the margin of the stream ? 
 Does she philosophise or dream ? 
 Her father's hard divinity 
 Is all she knows ; and only knows 
 In her dear soul its better part, 
 Its softness and serenity, 
 Its loving, breathing, ardent heart : 
 Its husk of logic and of prose 
 Breaks open at her tender touch, 
 And the divine emotion shows. 
 In all its truth and poetry. 
 Enough for her, and over much.
 
 THE BLA CKSMITH'S DA UGHTER. 1 9 9 
 
 With feelings keen, and mind that sees 
 But as she feels, the world by her, 
 In its pure life and loveliness, 
 Is freshly loved. Does it not stir 
 Within her breast on such a night 
 Holy emotions, like the bliss 
 Of perfect praise and saintly prayers? 
 Its beauty mingles with her faith. 
 The Lord of all, whose love she shares, 
 His Son divine and human too, 
 Seem moving from the sphere of blue, 
 And, commg down upon the trees, 
 Are present in the mellow light 
 Of moon, are breathing thro' the night, 
 For beauty, love, and holy peace 
 Are theirs ; and the fair earth reveals 
 The Eternal Presence that it feels. 
 Ah ! gaze away with shining eyes 
 Over all the moon-lit view.
 
 200 THE VILLAGE LIFE. 
 
 Fair maiden, meditative, wise. 
 
 Deep thoughts will come and feelings new. 
 
 For just as shyly steals yon beam 
 
 Through the black trunks and quiv'ring leaves. 
 
 Aslant the arch that spans the stream, 
 
 Till in a corner long in shade 
 
 A dark-eyed pool its light receives ; 
 
 So, on the calmness of thy soul, 
 
 A quickening beam of love will light. 
 
 Giving new hopes and strange delight, 
 
 Absorbing thoughts and passions — all ! 
 
 And in the sacred inner shrine 
 
 Create an image half divine, 
 
 A form of manliness and grace 
 
 To love, to cling to, and embrace. 
 
 Fair dawn of love, fair musing maid !
 
 Epilogue. 
 
 A ND now the village rests in sleep : 
 
 The doors are shut, the lights are gone, 
 The moon is down, and thick and deep 
 Darkness and silence reign alone, 
 And life is for the time effaced. 
 All dreams, philosophies, and facts, 
 And creeds and customs, words and acts. 
 In seeming death and night embraced. 
 Slumber in peace with slumb'ring men. 
 Why should we wake them up again ?
 
 20 2 7 HE VILLAGE LIFE. 
 
 To-morrow comes another day, 
 
 Comes with the old life and the new, 
 
 Comes with fresh light and new array 
 
 Of fancies, dreams, and theories. 
 
 Comes with bold minds and searching eyes 
 
 To pierce the heart of Nature through !
 
 |lote0 to the Ittitlcr oi ^irtstjinc. 
 
 1 The author believes that this is the first time that this 
 legend has been given to the public in any form. He heard it 
 many years ago from the lips of an old maiden lady, who was 
 then upwards of fourscore years, and who had a most astonishing 
 collection of ghaist, brownie, witch, and deil legends, which she 
 was fond of repeating to young folks round the ingle on long 
 winter nights. The good old lady belonged to a class which is 
 now almost, if not altogether, extinct in Scotland, for she firmly 
 believed in the truth of her own stories. The present tale so 
 stnick the fancy of the writer that, like Cowper after he heard 
 the story of John Gilpin, he could not rest till, with such skill 
 as he could command, he had turned it into verse. 
 
 It may be proper to mention that the " little wee man," or 
 '• little grey man," as he is called, was a favourite performer in 
 the incidents of Scottish and Irish folk-lore. It is not very easy to 
 define his real character, for he is occasionally half fairy, half brownie, 
 and whole devil. The pranks that he plays would lead one to infer
 
 2 04 ^-^-^ VILLAGE LIFE. 
 
 that he is more potent and more mischievous than the fairy race, 
 and his character scarcely tallies with the great hairy misshapen 
 lout who frequented the kitchens of farmers, and, for a mess of 
 sowens and milk, performed the work of twenty men when the 
 gudeman and his servants were asleep. Wm. Nicholson, the 
 Galloway poet, in his charming poem " The Brownie of 
 Blednock," first published in the Dumfries Magazifu in 1825, 
 gives an excellent carte de visite of this at one time popular 
 gentleman : — 
 
 "His matted head on his breast did rest, 
 A lang blue beard wan'ered down like a vest, 
 And the glare d his e'e hath nae bard exprest, 
 Nor the skimes^ o' Aiken-Drum. 
 
 Roun' his hairy form there was naething seen 
 But a philabeg o' the rashes green, 
 And his knotted knees played aye knoit between. 
 What a sicht was Aiken-Drum. 
 
 On his wauchie arms three claws did meet, 
 As they trailed on the grun' by his taeless feet. 
 E'en the auld gudeman himsel' did sweat 
 To look at Aiken-Drum." 
 
 Nicholson, I suspect, drew from imagination and not from popular 
 tradition when he clothed Aiken-Drum with a "philabeg o' the 
 rashes green." He might with as much propriety have clothed 
 him with a mason's apron. At all events it will be observed that 
 the resemblance between the "Little Wee Man," and the Brownie 
 
 1 Skhnes. — This word signifies glimmering glances, reflected beams 
 of light, and is applied here to the darts from the Brownie's eyes which 
 glinted brightly whenever he turned his head over the half lighted 
 kitchen.
 
 • NOTES TO THE MILLER OF BIRLSTANE. 205 
 
 is in the "glare o' the e'e." The writer inclines to the belief that 
 the supernatural person in the legend is the least harmful of all 
 the many metamorphoses of his Satanic majesty, who in this 
 guise — as a little blasted jockey — went out from his place more for 
 fun and frolic than for mischief to work his pranks upon mankind. 
 Those conversant with the old legends know that he did not always 
 have it his own way, but that "holy friars" and pious laymen 
 sometimes turned the tables upon him. In the preceding story it 
 will be observed he comes off second best. 
 
 2 The Caber. — There is probably both an anachronism and a 
 violation of the unity of place in making the villagers toss the 
 caber, as it is, I believe, originally an Inverness game, and not 
 of the age to which the legend must be referred. 
 
 ^ Supernatural persons had this singular power in the olden time. 
 Milton's devil could swell up into a stature like to Teneriffe or 
 pass through keyholes. Perhaps the reader will remember the 
 fine old legend of the fisherman who carried the holy child across 
 the river and was all but drowned by the increasing weight of 
 the infant. 
 
 * Riding the Druse. — Many readers will require a word of ex- 
 planation regarding this once merry sport at country weddings, 
 now I am afraid but seldom indulged in. Jamieson in his Scottish 
 Dictionary says: "To ride a bruse— to win a race on horseback 
 at a wedding— a custom still preserved in the country. Those 
 who are at a wedding, especially the younger part of the company 
 who are conducting the bride from her own house to the bride- 
 groom's, often set off at full speed for the latter. This is called 
 riding the bruse. He who first reaches the house is said to win 
 the bruse.' Amongst the commonalty, when I was a boy, I have 
 generally seen the race performed on foot, and started after the 
 wedding party had left the clergyman's house, where it was cus-
 
 2o6 THE VILLAGE LIFE. 
 
 tomary to have the ceremony performed. The person who won 
 tlie bruse was the one who gained first the future home of the 
 newly wedded pair and brought back to the marriage party the 
 prize — a bottle of whisky— which was drunk amid shouts and firing 
 of rusty guns and pistols. The custom of riding the bruse varied 
 considerably. Long ago in Dumfriesshire it was not unusual for the 
 bride to start off on horseback from the wedding party flourishing 
 a silk handkerchief, which, in this instance, was the less inspiriting 
 guerdon of the race. When she had got a considerable start the 
 younger male portion of the marriage party also mounted, set off 
 after her, and he who first overtook the fair lady claimed and 
 got the handkerchief as the winner of the bruse. Jamieson tells 
 us that the word bruse means simply "brose, broth, or kail," — 
 the prize of spice broth allotted in some places to the victor — 
 perhaps an appropriate reward for a Scotchman. The Greek 
 crowns were of parsley, and no doubt the Scotch brose or broth 
 contained that savoury herb. The subject is rather interesting. 
 It is just possible that running the bruse may be a survival of a 
 form of primitive marriage in which the bride had to be caught 
 or stolen. The custom still survives among the Turcomans in 
 Central Asia. 
 
 ROBERT MACLEHOSE, PRINTER, GLASGOW.
 
 POEMS RECENTLY PUBLISHED 
 
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 OLRIG GRANGE. See Smith.
 
 MR. MACLEHOSE, GLASGOW. 13 
 
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 14 
 
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 MR. MACLEHOSE, GLASGOW. 15 
 
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