(To C. and M.)
The day is fair, the breeze is free,
The ship has crossed the bar,
And you are fleeting o’er the sea
To lands that lie afar.
My fancy to old England turns,
As o’er the deep you fare,
And memory the picture brings
Of all that waits you there.
I see the velvet meadows walled
With hedges deep and green,
The lordly forest trees that mark
The nobleman’s demesne;
The gray old church and Norman tower
Embosomed deep in trees,
The fields aflame with poppy-heads
Where flit the drowsy bees;
The stately minster’s Gothic pile,
The noble heritage
Bequeathed us by the living faith
That stirred the Middle Age;
Old gardens and old village inns,
With all their old-time charm,
And ancient coaching-roads that wind
By ancient garth and farm.
By Cam’s and Isis’ banks I see
The hoary college towns,
Where cloistered scholars pace the walks
In mediaeval gowns;
Where silver-chiming vesper bells
Peal from a score of spires,
And glorious anthems soar on high
From snowy-vested choirs;
Where old libraries, oaken-ceiled
And dim with Learning’s haze,
Entice the traveller to stay
And dream away his days.—
And over all that storied land,
In every burgh and shire,
Are spots that poets’ lines or lives
Have made forever dear.
Westmoreland’s peaks majestic are,
And fair each lake and fell,
But doubled is their beauty now
That Wordsworth here did dwell.
His great heart was in harmony
With nature’s graver moods,
And in his song he showed the soul
Of these sweet solitudes.
And now he sleeps in Grasmere vale,
The Rotha’s bank beside,
But still his calm, sweet voice is heard
As is the Rotha’s tide.
——-
The level moors of Lincolnshire
Recall a later name,
The peerless laureate who sang
Of Celtic Arthur’s fame.
Across these downs he wandered oft,
By beck and lonely dune ;
He loved their sombre beauty well,—
They set his heart atune.
And ever in the after years
These boyhood scenes were dear,
And through his every song there floats
Some breath of Lincolnshire.
——-
In ancient Stratford’s holy fane
Immortal Shakespeare sleeps,
And placid Avon by his grave
Her silent vigil keeps.
His native county’s name will aye
With his own name entwine;
His fancy drew no fairer scenes,
Green Warwickshire, than thine.
Thy peaceful fields and silver streams
Upon his page we find;
Thy woods are like the Arcady
Where dwelt sweet Rosalind.
——-
As in the rural lanes you roam
Of olden Devonshire,
The echoes of the golden harp
Of Herrick you may hear.
Beside these brooks he loved to pipe
In summer’s dreamy hours,
And watch the hock-cart coming in
Engarlanded with flowers.
Along these leafy lanes he trudged
To wassail and to wake,
Or where the rosy country girls
Swung through the barley-break.
Old Devon’s flowery meads and dales
Can never withered be,
For Herrick shed on them the dew
Of immortality!
And so o’er all that ancient land,
From Cornwall to the Tweed,
Her poets’ names are ever green,
And to this day, indeed,
Along the Canterbury road
With Chaucer we may ride,
Or pace the placid Ouse’s bank
By pensive Cowper’s side;
In stately Penshurst’s summer woods
With courtly Sidney stray,
Or muse beneath the church-yard elms
With meditative Gray.
——-
Fair are the fields of sunny France,
And fair is Italy,
But dearest is the love we bear,
Sweet English land, to thee.
Thy Saxon blood we share, and all
Thine ancient memories;
To thee with filial love we look
Across the orient seas.
We love thine old ancestral worth
Throughout the ages long,
But most we love thee for thy wealth
Of glorious English Song!
(John Russell Hayes)
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