me.”
So sang we each to either, Francis Hale,
The farmer’s son who lived across
the bay,
My friend; and I, that having wherewithal,
And in the fallow leisure of my life
A rolling stone of here and everywhere,
[6]
Did what I would; but ere the night we
rose
And saunter’d home beneath a moon
that, just
In crescent, dimly rain’d about
the leaf
Twilights of airy silver, till we reach’d
The limit of the hills; and as we sank
From rock to rock upon the gloomy quay,
The town was hush’d beneath us:
lower down
The bay was oily-calm: the harbour
buoy
With one green sparkle ever and anon [7]
Dipt by itself, and we were glad at heart.
[8]
[Footnote 1: 1842 to 1850. Through.]
[Footnote 2: ‘cf’. Milton, ‘Paradise
Lost’, ix., 1106-7:—
A pillar’d shade
High overarch’d.]
[Footnote 3: 1842. Golden yokes.]
[Footnote 4: That is planting turnips, barley,
clover and wheat, by which land is kept constantly
fresh and vigorous.]
[Footnote 5: 1872. Some.]
[Footnote 6: Inserted in 1857.]
[Footnote 7: Here was inserted, in 1872, the
line—Sole star of phosphorescence in the
calm.]
[Footnote 8: Like the shepherd in Homer at the
moonlit landscape, ‘gegaethe de te phrena poimaen’,
’Il’., viii., 559.]
First published in 1842. Not altered in any respect
after 1853.
‘John’. I’m glad I walk’d.
How
fresh the meadows look
Above
the river, and, but a month ago,
The
whole hill-side was redder than a fox.
Is
yon plantation where this byway joins
The
turnpike? [1]
‘John’. And when does this come
by?
‘James’. The mail? At one o’clock.
‘John’. Whose house is that I see?
[2]
No,
not the County Member’s with the vane:
Up
higher with the yewtree by it, and half
A
score of gables.
‘James’. That? Sir Edward Head’s:
But
he’s abroad: the place is to be sold.
‘John’. Oh, his. He was not
broken?
‘James’. No, sir, he,
Vex’d
with a morbid devil in his blood
That
veil’d the world with jaundice, hid his face
From
all men, and commercing with himself,
He
lost the sense that handles daily life—
That
keeps us all in order more or less—
And
sick of home went overseas for change.
‘James’. Nay, who knows? he’s
here and there.
But
let him go; his devil goes with him,
As
well as with his tenant, Jockey Dawes.
