To Alex. Smith, the ‘Glasgow Poet,’ on His Sonnet to ‘Fame’

NOT vainly doth the earnest voice of manCall for the thing that is his pure desire!Fame is the birthright of the living lyre!To noble impulse Nature puts no ban.Nor vainly to the Sphinx thy voice was raised!Tho’ all thy great emotions like a sea,Against her stony immortality,Shatter themselves unheeded and amazed.Time moves behind her in a blind eclipse:Yet if in her cold eyes the end of allBe visible, as on her large closed lipsHangs dumb the awful riddle of the earth;—She sees, and she might speak, since that wild call,The mighty warning of a Poet’s birth.

But soon it was known thro’ the house, and the house ran over for joy,That news, good news, great marvels, had come from the soldier boy;Young Tom, the luckless scapegrace, offshoot of Methodist John;His grandfather’s evening tale, whom the old man hailed as his son.And the old man’s shout of pride was a shout of his victory, too;For he called his affection a method: the neighbours’ opinions heknew.

Meantime, from the morning table removing the stout breakfast cheer,The drink of the three generations, the milk, the tea, and the beer(Alone in its generous reading of pints stood the Grandfather’s jug),The women for sight of the missive came pressing to coax and to hug.He scattered them quick, with a buss and a smack; thereupon he beganDiversions with John’s little Sarah: on Sunday, the naughty old man!

The day was a van-bird of summer: the robin still piped, but the blue,As a warm and dreamy palace with voices of larks ringing thro’,Looked down as if wistfully eyeing the blossoms that fell from itslap:A day to sweeten the juices: a day to quicken the sap.All round the shadowy orchard sloped meadows in gold, and the dearShy violets breathed their hearts out: the maiden breath of the year!

Full time there was before dinner to bring fifteen of his blood,To sit at the old man’s table: they found that the dinner was good.But who was she by the lilacs and pouring laburnums concealed,When under the blossoming apple the chair of the Grandfather wheeled?She heard one little child crying, ‘Dear brave Cousin Tom!’ as itleapt;Then murmured she: ‘Let me spare them!’ and passed round the walnuts,and wept.

Yet not from sight had she slipped ere feminine eyes could detectThe figure of Mary Charlworth. ‘It’s just what we all might expect,’Was uttered: and: ‘Didn’t I tell you?’ Of Mary the rumour resounds,That she is now her own mistress, and mistress of five thousandpounds.’Twas she, they say, who cruelly sent young Tom to the war.Miss Mary, we thank you now! If you knew what we’re thanking you for!

But, ‘Have her in: let her hear it,’ called Grandfather Bridgeman,elate,While Mary’s black-gloved fingers hung trembling with flight on thegate.Despite the women’s remonstrance, two little ones, lighter than deer,Were loosed, and Mary, imprisoned, her whole face white as a tear,Came forward with culprit footsteps. Her punishment was to commence:The pity in her pale visage they read in a different sense.

‘Why, that’s what I never look at in a letter,’ the farmer replied:‘Facts first! and now I’ll be parson.’ The Bridgeman women descriedA quiver on Mary’s eyebrows. One turned, and while shifting her comb,Said low to a sister: ‘I’m certain she knows more than we about Tom.She wants him now he’s a hero!’ The same, resuming her place,Begged Mary to check them the moment she found it a tedious case.

The old man sneered, and read forward. It was of that desperatefight;—The Muscovite stole thro’ the mist-wreaths that wrapped the chillInkermann height,Where stood our silent outposts: old England was in them that day!O sharp worked his ruddy wrinkles, as if to the breath of the frayThey moved! He sat bareheaded: his long hair over him slowSwung white as the silky bog-flowers in purple heath-hollows thatgrow.

And louder at Tom’s first person: acute and in thunder the ‘I’Invaded the ear with a whinny of triumph, that seem’d to defyThe hosts of the world. All heated, what wonder he little could brookTo catch the sight of Mary’s demure puritanical look?And still as he led the onslaught, his treacherous side-shots he sentAt her who was fighting a battle as fierce, and who sat there unbent.

‘“Then I strove wild for his body: the beggars saw glittering rings,Which I vowed to send to his mother. I got some hard knocks and sharpstings,But felt them no more than angel, or devil, except in the wind.I know that I swore at a Russian for showing his teeth, and he grinnedThe harder: quick, as from heaven, a man on a horse rode between,And fired, and swung his bright sabre: I can’t write you more of thescene.

A curious look, half woeful, was seen on his face as he turnedHis eyes upon each of his children, like one who but faintly discernedHis old self in an old mirror. Then gathering sense in his fist,He sounded it hard on his knee-cap. ‘Your hand, Tom, the Frenchfellow kissed!He kissed my boy’s old pounder! I say he’s a gentleman!’ StraightThe letter he tossed to one daughter; bade her the remainder relate.

Tom properly stated his praises in facts, but the lady preferredTo deck the narration with brackets, and drop her additional word.What nobler Christian natures these women could boast, who, ’twasknown,Once spat at the name of their nephew, and now made his praises theirown!The letter at last was finished, the hearers breathed freely, and signWas given, ‘Tom’s health!’—Quoth the farmer: ‘Eh, Miss? are you weakin the spine?’

For Mary had sunk, and her body was shaking, as if in a fit.Tom’s letter she held, and her thumb-nail the month when the letterwas writFast-dinted, while she hung sobbing: ‘O, see, Sir, the letter is old!O, do not be too happy!’—‘If I understand you, I’m bowled!’Said Grandfather Bridgeman, ‘and down go my wickets!—not happy! whenhere,Here’s Tom like to marry his General’s daughter—or widow—I’ll swear!

‘I wager he knows how to strut, too! It’s all on the cards that theQueenWill ask him to Buckingham Palace, to say what he’s done and he’sseen.Victoria’s fond of her soldiers: and she’s got a nose for a fight.If Tom tells a cleverish story—there is such a thing as a knight!And don’t he look roguish and handsome!—To see a girl snivellingthere—By George, Miss, it’s clear that you’re jealous’—‘I love him!’ sheanswered his stare.

But when again she stammered in this bewildering way,The farmer no longer could bear it, and begged her to go, or to stay,But not to be whimpering nonsense at such a time. Pricked by a goad,’Twas you who sent him to glory:—you’ve come here to reap what yousowed.Is that it?’ he asked; and the silence the elders preserved plainlysaid,On Mary’s heaving bosom this begging-petition was read.

And that it was scarcely a bargain that she who had driven him wildShould share now the fruits of his valour, the women expressed, asthey smiled.The family pride of the Bridgemans was comforted; still, withcontempt,They looked on a monied damsel of modesty quite so exempt.‘O give me force to tell them!’ cried Mary, and even as she spoke,A shout and a hush of the children: a vision on all of them broke.

‘Each day I have come to tell him, and failed, with my hand on thegate.I bore the dreadful knowledge, and crushed my heart with its weight.The letter brought by your comrade—he has but just read it aloud!It only reached him this morning!’ Her head on his shoulder shebowed.Then Tom with pity’s tenderest lordliness patted her arm,And eyed the old white-head fondly, with something of doubt and alarm.

O, take to your fancy a sculptor whose fresh marble offspring appearsBefore him, shiningly perfect, the laurel-crown’d issue of years:Is heaven offended? for lightning behold from its bosom escape,And those are mocking fragments that made the harmonious shape!He cannot love the ruins, till, feeling that ruins aloneAre left, he loves them threefold. So passed the old grandfather’smoan.

Up lanes of the quiet village, and where the mill-waters rush redThro’ browning summer meadows to catch the sun’s crimsoning head,You meet an old man and a maiden who has the soft ways of a wifeWith one whom they wheel, alternate; whose delicate flush of new lifeIs prized like the early primrose. Then shake his right hand, in thechair—The old man fails never to tell you: ‘You’ve got the French General’sthere!’