Lo! with her screwed tail cocked aloft in air,
The cottar’s cow comes scampering clumsily.
Her, sorely cupped and leeched, the clegs have stung
From her propriety; and hoisting high
Her standard of distress, this way she comes
Cantering unwieldily, her heavy udder,
Dropping out milk, swinging from side to side.
Pathetic sight! So long have we been used
To see the solemn tenor of her life,
From calfhood to her present reverend age
Of wrinkled front, scored horns, and hollow back,—
Tenor unbroken, save when once or twice
A pool of frothy blood before the smithy
Has made her snuff, snort, paw, and toss her head,
Wheel round and round, and slavering bellow mad:
That blood the cadger’s horse, seized with the bots,
When he on cobwebbed clover, raw and cold,
Had supped, gave spouting, spinning from his neck,
Beneath the blacksmith’s mallet and his fleam.
Is this the cow, at home so patient o’er
The cool sobriety of cabbage leaves,
Hoarse cropped for her at morn, when the night-drops
Lie like big diamonds in the freshened stock,—
Drops broken, running, scattered, but again
Conglobed like quicksilver, until they fall
Shaken to earth? Is this the milky mother,
That long has given to thankful squeezing hands,
With such an air of steady usefulness,
The children’s streaming food—twelve pints a day;
And with her butter, and her cheese, and cans
Of white-green whey, has bought the grocery goods,
Snuff and tobacco? Oh! the affecting sight!
Help, help, ye Shades, the venerable brute!
But gradually subsiding to a trot,
She takes the river with a fellow-feeling,
And, modestly aloof to raise no strife,
There settles down behind the stranger cows.
Ah! Crummie, you have stolen this scampering march
Upon the little cow-herd. Far are heard
The opening roarings of his wondering fear,
Nearer and nearer still, as they come on,
Loading the noontide air. Three other friends
Had he to feed, besides the family cow.
Twin cushats young, the yellow hair now sparse
In their thick gathering plumage, nestling lie
Within his bonnet; they can snap, and strike
With raised wing; grown vigorous thus, they need
A larger dinner of provided peas.
Nor less his hawk, shrill-screaming as it shakes
Its wings for food, must have the knotted worms
From moist cold beds below the unwholesome stone,
That never has been raised—if he be quick
To raise it, and can seize them ere they slink
Into their holes, or, when half in, can draw them,
With a long, steady, gentle, equal pull,
Tenacious though they be, and tender stretched
Till every rib seems ready to give way,
Unbroken out in all their slippery length.
These now he wandered seeking, for the ground
Was parched, and they the surface all had left;
And many a stone he raised, but nothing saw,
Save insect eggs, and shells of beetles’ wings,
Slaters, cocoons, and yellow centipedes.
Thus was he drawn away. When he came back,
His cow was gone. Dismayed, he looked all round.
At last he saw, far-off on the horizon,
Her hoisted tail. He seized his birds and ran,
Following the tail, and as he ran he roared.
Yonder he comes in view with red-hot face;
Roaring the more to see old Crummie take
The river—how shall he dislodge her thence;
And get her home again? Oh! deep distress!
The world is flooded with the dazzling day.
We take the woods. Couched in the checkered skirts,
Below an elm we lie. A sylvan stream
Is sleeping by us in a cold still pool,
Within whose glassy depth the little fishes
Hang, as in crystal air. Freckled with gleams,
’Neath yonder hazelly bank that roofs it o’er
With roots and moss, it slides and slips away.
Here a ray’d spot of light, intensely clear,
Strikes our eyes through the leaves; a sunbeam there
Comes slanting in between the mossy trunks
Of the green trees, and misty shimmering falls
With a long slope down on the glossy ferns:
Light filmy flies athwart it brightening shoot,
Or dance and hover in the motty ray.
We love the umbrageous Elm. Its well-crimp’d leaf,
Serrated, fresh, and rough as a cow’s tongue,
Is healthy, natural, and cooling, far
Beyond the glazy polish of the bay,
Famed though it be, but glittering hard as if
’Twere liquor’d o’er with some metallic wash.
Thus pleased, laid back, up through the Elm o’erhead
We look. The little Creeper of the Tree
Lends life to it: See how the antic bird,
Her bosom to the bark, goes round away
Behind the trunk, but quaintly reappears
Through a rough cleft above, with busy bill
Picking her lunch; and now among the leaves
Our birdie goes, bright glimmering in the green
And yellow light that fills the tender tree.
Low o’er the burnie bends the drooping Birch:
Fair tree! Though oft its cuticle of bark
Hangs in white fluttering tatters on its breast,
No fairer twinkles in the dewy glade.
Sweet is its scented breath, the wild deer loves it,
And snuffs and browses at the budding spray.
But far more tempting to the truant’s eyes,
Wandering the woods, its thick excrescences
Of bundled matted sprigs: Soft steals he on,
To find what seems afar the cushat’s nest,
Or pie’s or crow’s. Deceived, yet if the tree
Is old, he seeks in its decaying clefts
The fungous cork-wood that gives balls to boys,
And smooth-skinn’d razor-strops to bearded men.
Bent all on play, our little urchin next
Peels off a bit of bark, and with his nails
Splits and divides the many-coated rind
To the last outer thinness; then he holds
The silky shivering film between his lips,
And pipes and whistles, mimicking the thrush.
Nor less the Beauty of our natural woods
Is useful too. What time the housewife’s pirn
(Oh, cheerless change that stopp’d the birring wheel!)
Whirled glimmering round before the evening fire,
’Twas birchen aye. And when our tough-heel’d shoes
Have stood the tear and wear of stony hills
Beyond our hope, we bless the birchen pegs.
In Norway o’er the foam, their crackling fires
Are fed with bark of birch, and there they thatch
Their simple houses with its pliant twigs.
At home, the virtues of our civic besoms
Confess the birch. The Master of the School
Is now “abroad:” Oh! may he never miss,
Wander where’er he will, the birchen shaw,
But cut the immemorial ferula,
To lay in pickle for rebellious imps,
And discipline to worth the British youth.
The Queen can make a Duke; but cannot make
One of the forest’s old Aristocrats.
Behold yon Oak! What glory in his bole,
His boughs, his branches, his broad frondent head!
The ancient Nobleman! Not She who rules
The kingdoms, many-isled, on which the sun
Never goes down, with all the investiture
Of garters, coronets, scutcheons, swords, and stars,
Could make him there at once. Patrician! Nay,
King of the woods, his independent realm!
Whate’er his titled name, there let him stand,
Fit emblem of our British constitution,
Full constituted in the rooted Past,
With powers, and forces, and accommodations,
The growth of ages, not an act or work!
Beyond this emblem of old diguity,
And far beyond the associated thought
Of “Hearts of Oak,” that mightiest incarnation
Of human power that earth has ever seen—
As when we launch’d our Nelson, and he went
Thundering around the world, driving the foe,
With all their banded hosts, from hemisphere
To hemisphere, before him, by the terror
Of his tremendous name, but overtook
And thunder-smote them down, swept from the seas,—
Beyond all this, the reverend Oak takes back
The heart to elder days of holy awe.
Such oaks are they, the hoariest of the race,
Round Lochwood Tower, the Johnstones’ ancient seat.
Bow’d down with very age, and rough all o’er
With scurfy moss, and the depending hair
Of parasitic plants, (the mistletoe,
Be sure, is there, congenial friend of old,)
They look as if no lively little bird
Durst hop upon their spirit-awing heads:
Perhaps, at midnight hour, Minerva’s bird,
The grave, staid owl, may rest a moment there.
But solemn visions swarm on every bough,
Of Druid doings in old dusky time.
When lowers the thunder cloud, and all the trees
Stand black and still, with what a trump profound
The wild bee wanders by! But here he is,
Hoarse murmuring in the fox-glove’s weigh’d-down bell.
Happy in sumner he! but when the days
Of later autumn come, they’ll find him hanging
In torpid stupor, on the horse-knot’s top;
Or by the ragweed in the school-boy’s hand,
As forth he issues, angry from his bike,
Struck down, he’ll die—what time the urchins, bent
On honey, delve into the solid ground:
They seize the yellower and the cleaner comb,
But drop it quick, when squeezing it they find
Nought there but milky maggots; then they pick
The darker bits, and suck them, though they be
Wild, bitter flavoured, in their luscious strength,
And dirty brown, and mix’d with earthen mould.
The luckier mower in the grassy mead,
Turns up with his scythe’s point, or with its edge,
The foggie’s bike, a ball of soft, dry fog.
With what a sharp, thin, acrid, pent-up buzz,
Swarming, it lives and stirs! But when the bees
Are all dislodged, and, circling, wheel away,
The swain rejoices in that bright clean honey.
Ah! there’s Miss Kitty Wren, with her cocked tail,
Cocked like a cooper’s thumb. Miss Kitty goes
In ’neath the bank, and then comes out again
By some queer hole. Thus, all the day she plies
Her quest from hedge to bank, scarce ever seen
Flying above your head in open air.
Unsmitten by the heat where now she is,
She strikes into her song—Miss Kitty’s song!
(We never think of male in Kitty’s case.)
The song is short, and varies not, but yet
’Tis not monotonous; with such a pipe
Of liquid clearness does she open it,
And, with increasing vigour, to the end
Go through it quite: Thus, all the year, she sings,
Except in frost, the spunky little bird!
On mossy stump of thorn, her curious nest
Is often built, a twig drawn over it,
To bind it firm; but more she loves the roof
Of sylvan cave over-arched, where the green twilight
Glimmers with golden light, and fox-gloves stand,
Tall, purple-faced, her goodly beef-eaters,
To guard and dignify her entrance-gate.
The ballad vouches that a wee, wee bird
Oft brings a whispered message to the ear;
So here’s our ear, Miss Wren, (your pardon! we
Must call you Mrs now,) pray, tell us how
You manage, in your crowded little house,
To feed your thirteen young, nor miss one mouth
In its due turn, but give them all fair play?
And here’s our other ear; say, ere you go,
What means the Bachelor’s Nest? ’Tis oftener found
Than the true finished one. Externally,
’Tis built as well; but ne’er we find within
The cozy feathery lining for the home
Of love parental. Is it, as some think,
And as the name, though not precise, implies,
Made for your husband, whosoe’er he be,
To sleep o’nights in? Or, as others deem,
Is it a lure to draw the loiterer’s eye
Off from the genuine nest, not far away?
Or, shy and nice, were you disturbed in building;
Or by some other instinct, fine and true,
Impelled to change your first-projected place,
And choose a safer? This your Laureate holds.
But here comes Robin. In our boyish days,
We thought him Kitty’s husband. By his clear
Black eye, he’s fit to answer for himself.
Like her, he sings the whole year round; but she
Is not his wife. See how he turns the head
This way and that, peeping from out the leaves
With curious eye, and still comes hopping nearer.
Strong in his individual character,
His knowing glance, his shape, his waistcoat red,
His pipe mellifluous, and pugnacious pride,
Darting to strike intruders from his beat,
And other qualities, his love of man
Is still his great peculiarity.
The starved hedge-sparrow haunts the moistened sink,
On gurly winter days, the bitter wind
Ruffling her back, showing the bluer down
Beneath her feathers freckled brown above,
But ne’er she ventures nearer where man dwells.
With sidelong look, bold Robin takes our floor;
And when, as now, we rest us in the depths
Of leafy woods, he’s with us in a trice.
Such is the genius of red-breasted Robin.
Along the shingly shallows of the burn,
The smallest bird that walks, and does not hop,
How fast yon Wagtail runs; its little feet
Quick as a mouse’s! Thus its shaking tail
Is kept in even balance, poised and straight.
With hopping movements ’twould not harmonise,
But, wagging inconveniently more,
Mar and confound the bird’s progressive way,
When off the wing. Wisdom Divine contrived
The just proportions of this compromise
Betwixt the motions of the feet and tail.
Aloft in air, each chirrup keeping time
With each successive undulation long,
The Wagtail flies, a pleasant summer bird.