I question whether any part of the world looks so beautiful as England—this part of England, at least—on a fine summer morning. It makes one think the more cheerfully of human life to see such a bright, universal verdure; such sweet, rural, peaceful, flower-bordered cottages,—not cottages of gentility, but dwellings of the laboring poor; such nice villas along the roadside, so tastefully contrived for comfort and beauty, and adorned more and more, year after year, with the care and afterthought of people who mean to live in them a great while, and feel as if their children might live in them also. And so they plant trees to overshadow their walks, and train ivy and all beautiful vines up against their walls,—and thus live for the future in another sense than we Americans do. And the climate helps them out, and makes everything moist and green, and full of tender life, instead of dry and arid, as human life and vegetable life are so apt to be with us. Certainly, England can present a more attractive face than we can, even in its humbler modes of life,—to say nothing of the beautiful lives that might be led, one would think, by the higher classes, whose gateways, with broad, smooth gravelled drives leading through them, one sees every mile or two along the road, winding into some proud seclusion. All this is passing away, and society must assume new relations; but there is no harm in believing that there has been something very good in English life,—good for all classes, while the world was in a state out of which these forms naturally grew.
MONA'S MOTHER.
In the porch that brier-vines smother,
At her wheel, sits Mona's mother.
O, the day is dying bright!
Roseate shadows, silver dimming,
Ruby lights through amber swimming,
Bring the still and starry night.
Sudden she is 'ware of shadows
Going out across the meadows
From the slowly sinking sun,—
Going through the misty spaces
That the rippling ruby laces,
Shadows, like the violets tangled,
Like the soft light, softly mingled,
Till the two seem just as one!
Every tell-tale wind doth waft her
Little breaths of maiden laughter.
O, divinely dies the day!
And the swallow, on the rafter,
In her nest of sticks and clay,—
On the rafter, up above her,
With her patience doth reprove her,
Twittering soft the time away;
Never stopping, never stopping,
With her wings so warmly dropping
Round her nest of sticks and clay.
"Take, my bird, O take some other
Eve than this to twitter gay!"
Sayeth, prayeth Mona's mother,
To the slender-throated swallow
On her nest of sticks and clay;
For her sad eyes needs must follow
Down the misty, mint-sweet hollow,
Where the ruby colors play
With the gold, and with the gray.
"Yet, my little Lady-feather,
You do well to sit and sing,"
Crieth, sigheth Mona's mother.
"If you would, you could no other.
Can the leaf fail with the spring?
Can the tendril stay from twining
When the sap begins to run?
Or the dew-drop keep from shining
With her body full o' the sun?
Nor can you, from gladness, either;
Therefore, you do well to sing.
Up and o'er the downy lining
Of your bird-bed I can see
Two round little heads together,
Pushed out softly through your wing.
But alas! my bird, for me!"
In the porch with roses burning
All across, she sitteth lonely.
O, her soul is dark with dread!
Round and round her slow wheel turning,
Lady brow down-dropped serenely,
Lady hand uplifted queenly,
Pausing in the spinning only
To rejoin the broken thread,—
Pausing only for the winding,
With the carded silken binding
Of the flax, the distaff-head.
All along the branches creeping,
To their leafy beds of sleeping
Go the blue-birds and the brown;
Blackbird stoppeth now his clamor,
And the little yellowhammer
Droppeth head in winglet down.
Now the rocks rise bleak and barren
Through the twilight, gray and still;
In the marsh-land now the heron
Clappeth close his horny bill.
Death-watch now begins his drumming
And the fire-fly, going, coming,
Weaveth zigzag lines of light,—
Lines of zigzag, golden-threaded,
Up the marshy valley, shaded
O'er and o'er with vapors white.
Now the lily, open-hearted,
Of her dragon-fly deserted,
Swinging on the wind so low,
Gives herself, with trust audacious,
To the wild warm wave that washes
Through her fingers, soft and slow.
O the eyes of Mona's mother!
Dim they grow with tears unshed;
For no longer may they follow
Down the misty mint-sweet hollow,
Down along the yellow mosses
That the brook with silver crosses.
Ah! the day is dead, is dead;
And the cold and curdling shadows,
Stretching from the long, low meadows,
Darker, deeper, nearer spread,
Till she cannot see the twining
Of the briers, nor see the lining
Round the porch of roses red,—
Till she cannot see the hollow,
Nor the little steel-winged swallow,
On her clay-built nest o'erhead.