Читать книгу Rhymes a la Mode - Lang Andrew, May Kendall - Страница 5

Our youth began with tears and sighs,

With seeking what we could not find;

Our verses all were threnodies,

In elegiacs still we whined;

Our ears were deaf, our eyes were blind,

We sought and knew not what we sought.

We marvel, now we look behind:

Life’s more amusing than we thought!

Oh, foolish youth, untimely wise!

Oh, phantoms of the sickly mind!

What? not content with seas and skies,

With rainy clouds and southern wind,

With common cares and faces kind,

With pains and joys each morning brought?

Ah, old, and worn, and tired we find

Life’s more amusing than we thought!

Though youth “turns spectre-thin and dies,”

To mourn for youth we’re not inclined;

We set our souls on salmon flies,

We whistle where we once repined.

Confound the woes of human-kind!

By Heaven we’re “well deceived,” I wot;

Who hum, contented or resigned,

“Life’s more amusing than we thought!”

O nate mecum, worn and lined

Our faces show, but that is naught;

Our hearts are young ’neath wrinkled rind:

Life’s more amusing than we thought!

Just one cast more! how many a year

   Beside how many a pool and stream,

Beneath the falling leaves and sere,

   I’ve sighed, reeled up, and dreamed my dream!

Dreamed of the sport since April first

   Her hands fulfilled of flowers and snow,

Adown the pastoral valleys burst

   Where Ettrick and where Teviot flow.

Dreamed of the singing showers that break,

   And sting the lochs, or near or far,

And rouse the trout, and stir “the take”

   From Urigil to Lochinvar.

Dreamed of the kind propitious sky

   O’er Ari Innes brooding grey;

The sea trout, rushing at the fly,

   Breaks the black wave with sudden spray!

Brief are man’s days at best; perchance

   I waste my own, who have not seen

The castled palaces of France

   Shine on the Loire in summer green.

And clear and fleet Eurotas still,

   You tell me, laves his reedy shore,

And flows beneath his fabled hill

   Where Dian drave the chase of yore.

And “like a horse unbroken” yet

   The yellow stream with rush and foam,

’Neath tower, and bridge, and parapet,

   Girdles his ancient mistress, Rome!

I may not see them, but I doubt

   If seen I’d find them half so fair

As ripples of the rising trout

   That feed beneath the elms of Yair.

Nay, Spring I’d meet by Tweed or Ail,

   And Summer by Loch Assynt’s deep,

And Autumn in that lonely vale

   Where wedded Avons westward sweep,

Or where, amid the empty fields,

   Among the bracken of the glen,

Her yellow wreath October yields,

   To crown the crystal brows of Ken.

Unseen, Eurotas, southward steal,

   Unknown, Alpheus, westward glide,

You never heard the ringing reel,

   The music of the water side!

Though Gods have walked your woods among,

   Though nymphs have fled your banks along;

You speak not that familiar tongue

   Tweed murmurs like my cradle song.

My cradle song, – nor other hymn

   I’d choose, nor gentler requiem dear

Than Tweed’s, that through death’s twilight dim,

   Mourned in the latest Minstrel’s ear!

Light has flown!

Through the grey

The wind’s way

The sea’s moan

Sound alone!

   For the day

   These repay

And atone!

Scarce I know,

Listening so

   To the streams

      Of the sea,

   If old dreams

      Sing to me!

When strawberry pottles are common and cheap,

Ere elms be black, or limes be sere,

When midnight dances are murdering sleep,

Then comes in the sweet o’ the year!

And far from Fleet Street, far from here,

The Summer is Queen in the length of the land,

And moonlit nights they are soft and clear,

When fans for a penny are sold in the Strand!

When clamour that doves in the lindens keep

Mingles with musical plash of the weir,

Where drowned green tresses of crowsfoot creep,

Then comes in the sweet o’ the year!

And better a crust and a beaker of beer,

With rose-hung hedges on either hand,

Than a palace in town and a prince’s cheer,

When fans for a penny are sold in the Strand!

When big trout late in the twilight leap,

When cuckoo clamoureth far and near,

When glittering scythes in the hayfield reap,

Then comes in the sweet o’ the year!

And it’s oh to sail, with the wind to steer,

Where kine knee deep in the water stand,

On a Highland loch, on a Lowland mere,