"Rule, Britannia,
Britannia rules the waves!"
The Ash is a manly tree, but "dreigh and dour" in the leafing; and yonder stands an Ash-grove like a forest of ships with bare poles in the docks of Liverpool. Yet like the town of Kilkenny
"It shines well where it stands;"
and the bare grey-blue of the branches, apart but not repulsive, like some cunning discord in music, deepens the harmony of the Isle of Groves. Contrast is one of the finest of all the laws of association, as every philosopher, poet, and peasant kens. At this moment, it brings, by the bonds of beauty, though many glades intervene, close beside that pale grey-blue leafless Ash-Clump, that bright black-green Pine Clan, whose "leaf fadeth never," a glorious Scottish tartan triumphing in the English woods. Though many glades intervene, we said; for thou seest that Belle Isle is not all one various flush of wood, but bedropt all over—bedropt and besprinkled with grass-gems, some cloud-shadowed, some tree-shaded, some mist-bedimmed, and some luminous as small soil-suns, on which as the eye alights, it feels soothed and strengthened, and gifted with a profounder power to see into the mystery of the beauty of nature. But what are those living Hills of snow, or of some substance purer in its brightness even than any snow that fades in one night on the mountain-top! Trees are they—fruit-trees—The Wild Cherry, that grows stately and widespreading even as the monarch of the wood—and can that be a load of blossoms! Fairer never grew before poet's eye of old in the fabled Hesperides. See how what we call snow brightens into pink—yet still the whole glory is white, and fadeth not away the purity of the balmy snow-blush. Ay, balmy as the bliss breathing from virgin lips, when, moving in the beauty left by her morning prayers, a glad fond daughter steals towards him on the feet of light, and as his arms open to receive and return the blessing, lays her innocence with smiles that are almost tears, within her father's bosom.
"As when to those who sail
Beyond the Cape of Hope, and now are past
Mozambic, off at sea north-east winds blow
Sabæan odours from the spicy shore
Of Araby the Blest; with such delay
Well pleased they slack their course, and many a league,
Cheer'd with the grateful smell, old Ocean smiles."
Shut your eyes—suppose five months gone—and lo! Belle Isle in Autumn, like a scene in another hemisphere of our globe. There is a slight frost in the air, in the sky, on the lake, and mid-day is as still as midnight. But, though still, it is cheerful; for close at hand Robin Redbreast—God bless him!—is warbling on the copestone of that old barn gable; and though Millar-Ground Bay is half a mile off, how distinct the clank of the two oars like one, accompanying that large wood-boat on its slow voyage from Ambleside to Bowness, the metropolitan port of the Queen of the Lakes. The water has lost, you see, its summer sunniness, yet it is as transparent as ever it was in summer; and how close together seem, with their almost meeting shadows, the two opposite shores! But we wish you to look at Belle Isle, though we ourselves are almost afraid to do so, so transcendently glorious is the sight that we know will disturb us with an emotion too deep to be endured.—Could you not think that a splendid sunset had fallen down in fragments on the Isle called Beautiful, and set it all ablaze! The woods are on fire, yet they burn not; beauty subdues while it fosters the flame; and there, as in a many-tented tabernacle, has Colour pitched his royal residence, and reigns in glory beyond that of any Oriental king. What are all the canopies, and balconies, and galleries of human state, all hung with the richest drapery that ever the skill of Art, that Wizard, drew forth in gorgeous folds from his enchanted loom, if ideally suspended in the air of imagination beside the sun-and-storm-stained furniture of these Palaces of Autumn, framed by the Spirit of the Season, of living and dying umbrage, for his latest delight, ere he move in annual migration, with all his Court, to some foreign clime far beyond the seas! No names of trees are remembered—a glorious confusion comprehends in one the whole leafy race—orange, and purple, and scarlet, and crimson, are all seen to be there, and interfused through the silent splendour is aye felt the presence of that terrestrial green, native and unextinguishable in earth's bosom, as that celestial blue is that of the sky. That trance goes by, and the spirit, gradually filled with a stiller delight, takes down all those tents into pieces, and contemplates the encampment with less of imagination, and with more of love. It knows and blesses each one of those many glorious groves, each becoming, as it gazes, less and less glorious, more and more beautiful; till memory revives all the happiest and holiest hours of the Summer and the Spring, and re-peoples the melancholy umbrage with a thousand visions of joy, that may return never more! Images, it may be, of forms and faces now mouldering in the dust! For as human hearts have felt, and all human lips have declared—melancholy making poets of us all, ay, even prophets—till the pensive air of Autumn has been filled with the music of elegiac and foreboding hymns—as is the Race of Leaves—now old Homer speaks—so is the Race of Men! Nor till time shall have an end, insensate will be any creature endowed "with discourse of reason" to those mysterious misgivings, alternating with triumphant aspirations more mysterious still, when the Religion of Nature leans in awe on the Religion of God, and we hear the voice of both in such strains as these—the earthly, in its sadness, momentarily deadening the divine:—
"But when shall Spring visit the mouldering urn?
Oh! when shall it dawn on the night of the grave?"