The School Of The Heart. Lesson The Second. Poem by Henry Alford

My sweet companion, who hast ever been
Beside me in all toils, refreshing oft
My weary spirit with low whisperings
Of hope that spoke not falsely; in whose sight
My young life floweth pleasantly along;
Sit thou beside me once again, and take
Thy magic pencils--they will serve thee well
To help thy patience; for my heart is full,
And I perchance may wander waywardly;
Besides, this bank is known to us of old;
For yonder is the ivy--girded trunk,
Bright mouldering timber, clothed with darkest green;
And yonder those two ashes on the steep
And grassy slope; and underneath, the moor
Stretches its pastured level far away
To the gray mountains and the Severn sea:
And from that very brake, the nightingale,
In the sweet silence of the summer--eve,
Poured forth a wavy stream of melody,--
Signal to one who waited with thick breath
And throbbing bosom, all afraid to speak
One low--breathed word;--that evening thou wert mine.

Sit thou beside me--we will talk no more
Of dim and cloudy childhood, ere the spring
Burst on us, when with searchings wearisome
We sought some centre for our errant hopes;
But underneath this sky of clearest June,
We will discourse, as we are wont, of things
Most gentle, of most gentle causes sprung,
That make no wave upon the stream of life,
That are not written in the memory's book,
That come not with observance; but from which,
As from a myriad stones, costly though small,
Is built upon the mansion of the blessed soul.

Look out upon the earth, or meditate
Upon the varying glories of the sky,
As we have looked on them from windy hills,
Or from the moonlit window; fullest joy
Flows on thy heart, and silent thankfulness
Drowns all thy struggling thoughts; doth not this bliss
Wax ever deeper with the years of life?
And when past pleasures come upon the soul
Like long--forgotten landscapes of our youth,
Are not these spots clad with peculiar light,
The brightest blossoms in the paradise
Of recollections of a soul forgiven?
There is no joy that is not built on peace;
Peace is our birthright, and our legacy,
Signed with a hand that never promised false.
And we have fed on peace; and the green earth,
With all that therein is, the mighty sea,
The breath of the spring--winds, and all the host
Of clustered stars, give fittest nourishment
To the peace--loving soul. ``Not as the world
Giveth, give I to you;'' for what have souls
Whose vision labours with the film of sin,
Who struggle in the twilight of eclipse,
To do with beauty and the joy of thought?
Our very joys have been redeemed with blood;
Our very liberty is bought anew:
The unforgiven pleasures of the world
Are but a dance in chains; freedom of thought
Owes fealty to sin; and Fancy's self,
That airiest and most unfettered thing,
Is but the prisoned maniac's dream of bliss.

Oft have I listened to a voice that spake
Of cold and dull realities of life.
Deem we not thus of life: for we may fetch
Light from a hidden glory, which shall clothe
The meanest thing that is with hues of heaven.
If thence we draw not glory, all our light
Is but a taper in a chambered cave,
That giveth presence to new gulfs of dark.
Our light should be the broad and open day;
And as we love its shining, we shall look
Still on the bright and daylight face of things.

Is it for nothing that the mighty sun
Rises each morning from the Eastern plain
Over the meadows, fresh with hoary dew?
Is it for nothing that the shadowy trees
On yonder hill--top in the summer night
Stand darkly out before the golden moon?
Is it for nothing that the autumn boughs
Hang thick with mellow fruit, what time the swain
Presses the luscious juice, and joyful shouts
Rise in the purple twilight, gladdening him
Who laboured late, and homeward wends his way
Over the ridgy grounds, and through the mead,
Where the mist broods along the fringed stream?
Far in the Western sea dim islands float,
And lines of mountain--coast receive the sun
As he sinks downward to his resting--place,
Ministered to by bright and crimson clouds:
Is it for nothing that some artist--hand
Hath wrought together things so beautiful?
Noon follows morn--the quiet breezeless noon,
And pleasant even, season of sweet sounds
And peaceful sights; and then the wondrous bird
That warbles like an angel, full of love,
From copse and hedgerow side pouring abroad
Her tide of song into the listening night.
Beautiful is the last gleam of the sun
Slanted through twining branches; beautiful
The birth of the faint stars--first, clear and pale,
The steady--lustred Hesper, like a gem
On the flushed bosom of the West; and then
Some princely fountain of unborrowed light,
Arcturus, or the Dogstar, or the seven
That circle without setting round the pole.
Is it for nothing that the midnight hour
That solemn silence sways the hemisphere,
And ye must listen long before ye hear
The cry of beasts, or fall of distant stream,
Or breeze among the tree--tops--while the stars,
Like guardian spirits, watch the slumbering earth?

Can human energies be scattered all
In a long life--a slumber deep and chill
Settle upon the soul--a palsy bind
The spiritual limbs--and all the strings
Of that sweet instrument, the mind of man,
Remain untuned, untouched?--What if in dreams
The struggling fancy from her prison break
And wander undirected, gathering up
Unnatural combinations of strange things,
Of sights, it may be, beautiful and wild,--
Long gleaming reaches of some slow--paced stream,
And boats of gold and pearl, with coral masts,
Floating unguided in a faint green light
Of twisted boughs, and heavy--plumaged birds
Of many colours, roosting all the night
On rambling branches of a giant wood?--
And what if voices in the middle night
Full on thine ear in chimy murmurs rush,
That warble of deep skies and silver sheen,--
And bright eyes twinkle, far away but clear,
Receding as they twinkle, and with charm
Unknown the ravished spirit drawing on?
These are not wholesome nurture for the soul,
Nor sounds and sights like these the daily bread
It asks from Heaven: these are the errant paths
Of those great flaming brushes in the sky,
Now dangerously near the maddening fire,
Now chill and darkling in the gulfs of space,
Unlike the steady moderated course
Of habitable worlds. There lie around
Thy daily walk great store of beauteous things,
Each in its separate place most fair, and all
Of many parts disposed most skilfully,
Making in combination wonderful
An individual of a higher kind;
And that again in order ranging well
With its own fellows, till thou rise at length
Up to the majesty of this grand world;--
Hard task; and seldom reached by mortal souls,
For frequent intermission, and neglect
Of close communion with the humblest things;
But in rare moments, whether Memory
Hold compact with Invention, or the door
Of Heaven hath been a little pushed aside,
Methinks I can remember, after hours
Of unpremeditated thought in woods
On western steeps, that hung a pervious screen
Before blue mountains in the distant sea,
A sense of a clear brightness in my soul,
A day--spring of mild radiance, like the light
First--born of the great Fiat, that ministered
Unto the earth before the sun was made.

Evening and morning--those two ancient names
So linked with childish wonder, when with arm
Fast wound about the neck of one we loved,
Oft questioning, we heard Creation's tale--
Evening and morning ever brought to me
Strange joy; the birth and funeral of light,--
Whether in clear unclouded majesty
The large Sun poured his effluence abroad,
Or the gray clouds rolled silently along,
Dropping their doubtful tokens as they passed;
Whether above the hills intensely glowed
Bright lines of parting glory in the west,
Or from the veil of faintly--reddened mist
The darkness slow descended on the earth;
The passage to a state of things all new,
New fears and new enjoyments,--this was all
Food for my seeking spirit: I would stand
Upon the jutting hills that overlook
Our level moor, and watch the daylight fade
Along the prospect: now behind the leaves
The golden twinkles of the westering sun
Deepened to richest crimson: now from out
The solemn beech--grove, through the natural aisles
Of pillared trunks, the glory in the west
Showed like Jehovah's presence--fire, beheld
In olden times above the Mercy--seat
Between the folded wings of Cherubim;--
I loved to wander, with the evening star
Heading my way, till from the palest speck
Of virgin silver, evermore lit up
With radiance as by spirits ministered,
She seemed a living pool of golden light;
I loved to learn the strange array of shapes
That pass along the circle of the year;
Some, for the love of ancient lore, I kept,
And they would call into my fancy's eye
Chaldaean beacons, over the drear sand
Seen faintly from thick--towered Babylon
Against the sunset, shepherds in the field,
Watching their flocks by night,--or shapes of men
And high--necked camels, passing leisurely
Along the starred horizon, where the spice
Swims in the air, in Araby the Blest;
And some, as Fancy led, I figured forth,
Misliking their old names; one circlet bright
Gladdens me often, near the Northern Wain,
Which, with a childish playfulness of choice
That hath not passed away, I loved to call
The crown of glory, by the righteous Judge
Against the day of His appearing, laid
In store for him who fought the fight of faith.

I ever loved the Ocean, as't had been
My childhood's playfellow: in sooth it was;
For I had built me forts upon its sands,
And launched my little navies in the creeks,
Careless of certain loss; so it would play
Even as it listed with them, I were pleased.
I loved to follow with the backward tide
Over rough rocks and quaintly delving pools,
Till that the land--cliffs lessened, and I trod
With cautious step on slippery crags and moist,
With sea--weed clothed, like the green hair of Nymphs,
The Nereids' votive hair, that on the rocks
They hang when storms are past, to the kind power,
That saved their sparry grottoes. And at night
I wandered often, when the winds were up,
Over the pathless hills, till I could hear,
Borne fitly upon the hurrying blast,
The curfew--bell, with lingering strokes and deep,
From underlying town; then all was still
But the low murmuring of the distant sea;
And then again the new--awakened wind
Howled in the dells, and through the bended heath
Swept whistling by my firmly--planted feet.

Eternal rocks --that lift your heads on high,
Gray with the tracks of ages that have passed
Over your serried brows, with many a scar
Of thunder--stroke deep--riven: from out whose clefts
The gnarlèd oak, and yew, and tender ash,
Poured forth like waters, trail adown the steep,--
Ye stand to figure to our human view
The calm and never--altering character
Of great Eternity; like some vast pier
Fixed, while the fleeting tide of mortal things
Flows onward from its sight. The mighty men
Of ages gone have past beneath your crest
And cast an upward look, and ye have grown
Into their being, and been created part
Of the great Mind; and of your influence some
Hath past into the thoughts that live and burn
Through all the ages of the peopled world.
Your presence hath been fruitful to my soul
Of mighty lessons; whether inland far
Ye lift your jutting brows from grassy hills,
Or on the butt of some great promontory
Keep guard against the sleepless siege of waves.
Once I remember when most visible light
Shone from you on my spirit--'twas an eve
In fall of summer, when the weaker births
Of the great forest change their robes of green;
On such an eve, I climbed into a nook
Bowered with leaves and canopied with crags
On the loved border of the western shore.
Over the topmost cliff the horned moon,
Not eight days old, shone mildly; under foot
The mighty ocean rolled its multitude
Of onward--crowding ridges, that with crash
Of thunder broke upon the jutting rocks;
And in the northern sky, where not an hour
The day had sunk, a pomp of tempest--clouds
Passed wildly onward over the calm lines
Of the hue of faded sunset. Wearily
Sighed the thick oaks upon the seaward steep,
And the melancholy sea--bird wailed aloft,
Now poised in the mid--air, now with swift sweep
Descending; and again on balanced wings
Hovering, or wheeling dismally about,
With short importunate cry. But ye the chief,
Trees, that along our pleasant native slope
Pendant with clustering foliage, in the light
Of parting evening sleep most peacefully,
Gathering to the eye your separate heads
Into a dark and misty mass of green;
Ye can bear witness how with constant care
I mourned your tribute to the autumn winds,
And hailed with you the sweet return of spring,
And watched with fondest care the tender green;
Ye sleep the winter through, and burst abroad
In the morning of the year; and sweetest songs
Sound through your arbours all the happy May,
Till callow broods take wing, and summer's sun
Darkens the tender green upon the leaf;
And then ye stand majestic, glorying
In strength of knotted trunk and branches vast,
Daring the noonday heat, that withers up
The orchis--flower and foxglove at your feet,
Save where your mighty shadows gloomily
Recline upon the underlying sward.
I looked upon you when the April moon
Sprinkled your forms with light, and the dewball lay
All night upon the branch: listening each year
When the first breeze might stir your boughs new--clothed,
Or when the rain all through the summer--day
Fell steadily upon the leaves, mine ear
Soothing, with the faint music's even chime.

These, and a thousand things that men pass by,
Served for my spiritual nourishment:
Nor wanted high example, to my heart
Laid often, and in secret cherished up
With oft--recurring sweet encouragement;
Nor words of import deep, that fall on us
In solemn places, when we note them not;
But most one sacred thought, linked in my breast
To a thousand memories that can never die--
Sounding upon me in the hallowed hour
Of Sabbath--service from the wondrous book;--
It was that He, the only Son of Heaven
That took His joys and woes from things below,
When He would pour His holy soul in prayer,
Went forth beneath the moonlight;--through the lines
Of trembling olive--leaves, to where the path
Came sudden out upon the open hill;--
There He stood waiting till the flame from heaven
Lighted upon the inward sacrifice
Of thoughts most pure: and then the holy words
Came musically forth upon the night,
More sweet than tinkling Kedron, or the pipe
Of distant nightingale: or on the cliff
Above the tossing lake He prayed and stood,
And through the flight of jarring elements
Came unimpeded swiftly gliding down
From the Father's hand a healing drop of peace
Upon His wounded soul. On mountain heights
All the mid--hours of night, with serried crags
Towering in the moonlight overhead,
And through a channelled dell stretching away
The plains of Galilee seen from afar,
Till morn alone He prayed: whether the cup
Of self--determined suffering passed athwart
His forward vision, and the Father's wrath
Upon His human soul pressed heavily,
Or for the welfare of His chosen flock
He wrestled in an agony of prayer
That their faith fail not. Even the love of Him
Now mingled in my bosom with all sounds
And sights that I rejoiced in: and in hours
Of self--arraigning thought, when the dull world
With all its saws of heartlessness and pride
Came close upon me, I approved my joys
And simple fondnesses, on trust that He
Who taught the lesson of unwavering faith
From the meek lilies of green Palestine,
Would fit the earthly things that most I loved
To the high teaching of my patient soul.
And the sweet hope that sprung within me now
Seemed all--capacious, and from every source
Apt to draw comfort; I perceived within
A fresh and holy light rise mildly up;
Not morning, nor the planet beautiful
That heads the bright procession, when the sun
Hath sunk into the west, is half so fair.
This was that Light which lighteth every man
That comes into the world; from the first gleam
Of momentary joy, that twinkles forth
Brightly and often from the infant's eye,
To that which seldom comes on common days,--
The steady overflow of calm delight
In the well--ripened soul; all thoughts which spring
From daily sights and sounds, all active hopes
Brought from the workings of the outer world
Upon the life within, here have their fixed
And proper dwelling--place. As on the front
Of some cathedral pile, ranged orderly,
Rich tabernacles throng, of sainted men
Each in his highday robes magnificent,
Some topped with crowns, the Church's nursing sires,
And some, the hallowed temple's serving--men,
With crosiers deep--embossed, and comely staves
Resting aslant upon their reverend form,
Guarding the entrance well; while round the walls,
And in the corbels of the massy nave,
All circumstance of living child and man
And heavenly influence, in parables
Of daily--passing forms is pictured forth:--
So all the beautiful and seemly things
That crowd the earth, within the humble soul
Have place and order due; because there dwells
In the inner temple of the holy heart
The presence of the Spirit from above:
There are His tabernacles; there His rites
Want not their due performance, nor sweet strains
Of heavenly music, nor a daily throng
Of worshippers, both those who minister
In service fixed--the mighty principles
And leading governors of thought; and those
Who come and go, the troop of fleeting joys--
All hopes, all sorrows, all that enter in
Through every broad receptacle of sense.