Sweet Highland Girl, a very shower
Of beauty is thy earthly dower!
Twice seven consenting years have shed
Their utmost bounty on thy head:
And these gray rocks, that household lawn,
Those trees, a veil just half withdrawn,
This fall of water that doth make
A murmur near the silent lake,
This little bay; a quiet road
That holds in shelter thy abode—
In truth, together do ye seem
Like something fashioned in a dream;
Such forms as from their covert peep
When earthly cares are laid asleep!
But, O fair creature! in the light
Of common day, so heavenly bright,
I bless thee, vision as thou art,
I bless thee with a human heart;
God shield thee to thy latest years!
Thee neither know I, nor thy peers;
And yet my eyes are filled with tears.
With earnest feeling I shall pray
For thee when I am far away;
For never saw I mien or face,
In which more plainly I could trace
Benignity and home-bred sense
Ripening in perfect innocence.
Here scattered, like a random seed,
Remote from men, thou dost not need
The embarrassed look of shy distress,
And maidenly shamefacedness:
Thou wear'st upon thy forehead clear
The freedom of a mountaineer:
A face with gladness overspread!
Soft smiles, by human kindness bred!
And seemliness complete, that sways
Thy courtesies, about thee plays;
With no restraint, but such as springs
From quick and eager visitings
Of thoughts that lie beyond the reach
Of thy few words of English speech:
A bondage sweetly brooked, a strife
That gives thy gestures grace and life!
So have I, not unmoved in mind,
Seen birds of tempest-loving kind—
Thus beating up against the wind.
What hand but would a garland cull
For thee who art so beautiful?
O happy pleasure! here to dwell
Beside thee in some heathy dell;
Adopt your homely ways and dress,
A shepherd, thou a shepherdess:
But I could frame a wish for thee
More like a grave reality:
Thou art to me but as a wave
Of the wild sea; and I would have
Some claim upon thee, if I could,
Though but of common neighborhood
What joy to hear thee, and to see!
Thy elder brother I would be,
Thy father—anything to thee!
Now thanks to heaven! that of its grace
Hath led me to this lonely place.
Joy have I had; and going hence
I bear away my recompense.
In spots like these it is we prize
Our memory, feel that she hath eyes:
Then why should I be loth to stir?
I feel this place was made for her;
To give new pleasure like the past,
Continued long as life shall last.
Nor am I loth, though pleased at heart,
Sweet Highland Girl, from thee to part;
For I, methinks, till I grow old,
As fair before me shall behold,
As I do now, the cabin small,
The lake, the bay, the waterfall,
And thee, the spirit of them all!
I had finished, and the poem had been to me like a draught of the fresh spring-water which I had sipped so often of late as it dropped from the cup of some large green leaf.
Then I heard her gentle voice, like the first tone of the organ, which wakens us from our dreamy devotion, and she said:
"Thus I desire you to love me, and thus the old Hofrath loves me, and thus in one way or another we should all love and believe in each other. But the world, although I scarcely know it, does not seem to understand this love and faith, and, on this earth, where we could have lived so happily, men have made existence very wretched.
"It must have been otherwise of old, else how could Homer have created the lovely, wholesome, tender picture of Nausikaa? Nausikaa loves Ulysses at the first glance. She says at once to her female friends: 'Oh, that I could call such a man my spouse, and that it were his destiny to remain here.' She was even too modest to appear in public at the same time with him, and she says, in his presence, that if she should bring such a handsome and majestic stranger home, the people would say, she may have taken him for a husband. How simple and natural all this is! But when she heard that he was going home to his wife and children, no murmur escaped her. She disappears from our sight, and we feel that she carried the picture of the handsome and majestic stranger a long time afterward in her breast, with silent and joyful admiration. Why do not our poets know this love—this joyful acknowledgment, this calm abnegation? A later poet would have made a womanish Werter out of Nausikaa, for the reason that love with us is nothing more than the prelude to the comedy, or the tragedy, of marriage. Is it true there is no longer any other love? Has the fountain of this pure happiness wholly dried up? Are men only acquainted with the intoxicating draught, and no longer with the invigorating well-spring of love?"
At these words the English poet occurred to me, who also thus complains:
From heaven if this belief be sent,
If such be nature's holy plan,
Have I not reason to lament
What man has made of man.