——Moodie.

NATURE.
A DAY ON THE HILLS, IN NATAL.

Of Beauty, Joy, and Life and Light, which dwell
In florid nature, be it mine to tell.
Majestic truth! with Beauty at thy side—
Irradiate maid of highest Heaven’s pride;
And thou, undying Harmony, attend,
Romance with fact, and fact with fiction blend.
Bright Virtue bring, by brilliant Fancy drest,
And called by man, Imagination, blest;
That she, companion of the muse, may show
The gentle thoughts that lofty souls should know.

Oh, well do I remember me, when late
I stood upon the beetling crags, to wait
The coming of the rosy-fingered morn,
And view the heavenly tints that thence were born.
Far, far beyond the mountain’s pencilled brow,
Defined so clearly in the mellow glow,
Leucothea grey precedes the flaming dye
With which Aurora paints th’ orient sky;
Robed in dark shadows lies that mountain now,
O’er which bright phosphor lifts his radiant brow,
While, all above, the leaden-coloured sky
Is cloudless to the little moon on high—
And brightly hangs that little circling moon,
Contrasting richly in that dull cartoon.
But oh, the star! the blazing star above,
The morning and the evening star of love,
Sheds silently upon the scene below
The glowing softness of its ardent brow,
Beams o’er the snowy clouds that calmly sleep
In outstretched slumber on the shadowed steep;
And viewed o’er these, assumes a lurid hue,
But flames the brighter for the contrast too—
E’en so as when along the o’ersnowed ways
Some chilly wanderer wakes the ruddy blaze,
It wears a lustre faint and pale, though bright,
And burns the fiercer in the dazzling light.
Essence of love—a tear by Sappho dropped,
Which Jove, in pity, in its falling stopped,
Suffused with light and his immortal fire
And hung above and granted to inspire
Love’s glowing bards, when beauty’s chain entwines
The heart that vents itself in am’rous lines.

Now far below, and o’er the shrouded world
Lie, densely clotted, fields of mist enfurled;
Jutting out that molten sea, the rugged peaks
Seem starting into life, to watch the freaks
Of Nature’s wildest fancy o’er her glades
That lie embosomed in those fleecy shades—
O’er hills and hills the snowy sheet extends,
And peaceful beauty to the landscape lends;
Hushed is all Nature in her slumber there,
And shrouded are her charms in veil so fair.
Now whisp’ring Zephyrs o’er the changing scene
Are sporting, where so late repose has been,
The mist in circling wreaths departs, nor stays
To idly wanton with the airy fays.
And sternly frowns that dusky mountain still,
And marks their fittings over moor and hill;
Like some fell giant of the early days
Beheld the dancing of the sportive fays.
Oh, for the power of Byron or of Moore,
To glow with one, and with the latter soar;
To find a vent for budding fancy’s throes,
And reap the soft luxuriance that she sows;
To snatch a glowing diction’s varied strain,
And paint the fire when it flames again;
So I might well portray fair Nature’s charms,
Depict the bounties of her lavish arms,
Invoke the strains that to the Nine belong,
And roll the happy tide of thrilling song.

But lo! the rainbow tints that fast succeed
Each other, proclaim th’ impatient speed
Of that bright sun that rules our universe,
Of Nature’s joys the sole, the constant nurse;
With burning gold he tips those ebon clouds
Whose jagged banks his glory now enshrouds—
Miniature mountains capped with melting snow—
They now appear ere fading ’fore his brow;
The upshot rays he darts through limpid air,
Through half-closed eyes in varied tints appear
The speedy maid, with bow of varied dye,
Throws beaming pleasure in the gladdened eye;
And from this giant peak on which I muse,
All space seems rife with kaleidoscopic hues.
And now Aurora opes the saffron gates,
And all the glory of the sky awakes—
“He flasheth forth like bridegroom to the feast,
Through the red portals of the fiery east.”
The glittering dew, with brilliant flashing clings
Around the scattered cobweb’s silken strings,
In pearly drops within the lily grows,
Loads the wild violet and the mountain rose;
In silvery sheen arrests each golden ray,
Refracts its stream in multi-coloured play,
As shivered mirrors on a flow’ry lawn
Reflect a thousand tints where one is born,
And filtering through these early morning beams,
Sinks spangling round the smoking mountain streams.

Resuming now my trusty Terry’s weight,
I wander on where fleeting game or fate
Does guide my steps—where o’er the sloping grounds
High in the air the exulting Oribe bounds—
“The rifle raised and levelled with the eye,
Sharp a short thunder rolls along the sky,”
Swift to the unconscious hind the leaden death
Speeds on the wings of fate and stops his breath;
With one quick spring he falls upon the plain,
No more o’er vernal lawns to bound again.
Or, where the wary Rhee buck, wild and shy,
Perceive afar the hunter drawing nigh,
Together rush in one affrighted band,
And wildly gaze and tremble as they stand;
Till fully scared, with one short cough, again
They sweep like wind across the sounding plain.
Where, mute and lonely on the impending steeps,
The mountain hawk his frequent vigil keeps,
With noiseless pinion shoots into the air,
And sails upon the wind that’s wandering there;
With head oblique he scans his native sky,
Then far below his piercing glances hie
To where his dreaded shade portentous sweeps
O’er wilds, where in the sun the coney sleeps;
With sudden fear the rocks with cries resound,
As dive the furry tribe beneath the ground.
Now down I stray to where yon rushing rill
Is tumbling down the rock-defended hill,—
Here grateful winds in many a whispered lay,
With mild impression o’er my forehead stray,
And here reclined, where shadowed flows the stream,
I lend myself to reverie and dream.

Remorseless Time has rolled long years away
Since last I faced wild ocean’s fresh’ning spray,
But still a charmed impression lingers o’er
The heart, when scenes she’s often felt before,
Come crowding on her corners, thick as waves
Roll closely sequent into lonely caves;
Which prompts me to retune my feeble lyre,
And sing the theme of which we never tire;—
But whence this thought that thus the past recalls
That sudden gleams and oft the mind appals?
Without the faintest cause or reason plain,
This lightning thought darts quickly on the brain,
Picturing in the clear mirror of the mind
The distant spot that long we’ve left behind,
In faithful semblance painting on her eye
The bygone scene to mem’ry now so nigh,
And then as sudden flies, unless as here,
We fix the shadow e’er it disappear.
Not ev’ry one has felt this vision leap
With magic bound upon their mem’ry’s sleep,
But some there are, who, startled by the spell,
Retain remembrance to the feeling well;
Each spoken word, each gesture will appear
To have been acted in some former year,
And oft we think we almost can foretell
The next words spoken in this passing spell.

But how shall I essay to shape my way
Through themes, that multi-genius ’fore my day,
Has wrought upon and left no point unviewed,
That varied Nature on their minds imbued?
How through exhausted pictures steer my course,
And shun the oft-used terms that almost force
Themselves upon expression, for they deem
They are the sine qua nons of the theme,
And cling so firmly in the lab’ring breast,
That ’tis beyond its power to divest
Its chambers of these oft-recurring terms,
That stamp their image and implant their germs.
Coincidence of thought will oft produce
The same in words, and thus I do adduce
That censors ne’er will quibble in these times,
Nor scent a plagiarist in these stray lines.
So bear we on with that we have contrived,
Ne’er pausing to reflect from whence derived,
Nor spurn a passage for the reason that
Its semblance was in other brains begat—
For truth will charm though sung in echoed strain,
And changeless scenes instruct the bard again.