by; and the poem closes with the bright and "The Widow to her Hour Glass" is worth happy prospect of returning spring: "Sunshine, health and joy. Play round and cheer the elevated boy. 'Another spring,' his heart exulting cries, 'Another year with promised blessings rise! Eternal Power, from whom those blessings flow, Teach me still more to wonder, more to know. Seed-time and harvest let me see again, Wander the leaf-strewn wood, the frozen plain. Let the first flower, corn-waving field, plain, tree, Here round my home, still lift my soul to Thee, And let me ever, 'midst Thy bounties raise, An humble note of thankfulness and praise.'” The chief merit of the poem is its simplicity. There is no laborious diction, no straining after effect. Familiar with the scenes of which he wrote, the work of the author is at once easy and natural. A close student of Thomson, there is no approach to imitation. Aware, though perhaps unconsciously, that the statelier verse and wider range of the "Seasons" were beyond his powers, he confined himself to the sphere in which his own abilities could best be exerted, the path which nature had fitted him to tread. It was some time before the poem came before the public. Several London booksellers to whom it had been submitted refused to publish it, and it might never have appeared had not Mr. Capel Lofft, a literary gentleman living at Troston, near Bury, given it his countenance and support. Once known, the poem speedily became popular, and its author reaped some substantial benefit thereby. The Duke of Grafton gave him a small annuity, and procured for him a situation in the Seal Office. But the duties were irksome, and of too laborious quoting in its entirety : "Come, friend, I'll turn thee up again, Companion of the lonely hour; Spring thirty times hath fed with rain In frame of wood, On chest or window by my side, I've often watched thy streaming sand, Still sliding down, While thus I spin, and sometimes sing (For now and then my heart will glow), Still shalt thou flow, Steady as Truth, on either end Thy daily task performing well; Thou'rt Meditation's constant friend, And strik'st the heart without a bell: Come, lovely May! Thy lengthened day Shall gild once more my native plain; Curl inward here, sweet woodbine flower, Companion of the lonely hour! I'll turn thee up again." In another of the shorter pieces, "Shooter's a nature to allow Bloomfield to hold the situa-Hill," the poet forgets awhile the charms of tion for very long. His health began to fail, and he resigned the post. He then turned his attention to bookselling, but found it an unprofitable venture. He had in the meantime produced several other small works. "The Banks of Wye," an account in verse of an excursion in South Wales, was pleasingly written and favourably received. "Hazlewood Hall," a village drama, supported, but scarcely increased his reputation. Several phases of rural life are graphically described in "May Day with the Muses" and the "Rural Tales." One of the best of these pieces is "Abner and the Widow Jones ;" another is "Richard and Kate." Of the shorter pieces in this collection, his native county in the prospect that stretches before him near the great city, on the Surrey hills: "Aye, there's the scene, beyond the sweep Here, Thames, I watch thy flowing tides, Dwells Peace-and Peace is wealth to me!" Still the dark shadows that so often, nay, almost always, follow on and haunt the lives of poets, hovered around Bloomfield's. His latter days were rendered wearisome and troubled by pain and poverty. A nervous irritability-with which for years he had been affected-increased to such an extent that his friends feared lest his reason should fail. But ere that could happen came the silent messenger, and at Shefford, in Bedfordshire, the poet died on 19th August, 1823, in the fifty-seventh year of his age. It was his province and his pleasure to record "the short and simple annals of the poor." Less gloomy than Crabbe, he is yet quite as faithful in detail. Of force and passion he has but little. Less varied than the "Seasons," less profound than the "Excursion," "The Farmer's Boy" and the "Rural Tales" have a quiet charm of their own. given to the world. Truly the poet, be he lofty or lowly, need find comfort in the work of his own genius, in the exercise of his own gifts, for he finds comfort but seldom in his daily life, be he a Byron or a Bloomfield, Cowper or a Chatterton, an Otway or a Miltor. The gift of song is the gift of sorrow, but none the less treasured on that account. The same in kind, yet differing in degree; it varies also according to the character, the habits, the tastes of those to whom it is given. Some dwell upon the face of nature, some upon the heart of man; some seek the higher paths, some turn aside to lowlier scenes and themes. Sufficient is it if each succeeds in We can picture the young shoemaker in his allotted task. To Bloomfield it was his garret, bending over his work, but yet given to deal with nature and with human seeing with his mind's eye the fair fields and life in its humblest forms: it was the work wide pastures of his far-off Suffolk home, and for which he was best fitted, and he did his lips moving as he repeated to himself it well. the lines which in the brief pauses of labour he would commit to paper, one day to be R. STANSBY-WILLIAMS. THE HEROISM OF CHILDHOOD. "Come to me, O ye children, And whisper in my ear What the birds and the winds are singing For what are all our contrivings LONGFELLOW. my pleasant neighbours left the carriage, and were succeeded by two of a very different class, who, in a short time, contrived mos effectually to banish all hope of quiet study. For a short time I struggled against the interruption, and tried to keep my attention fixed upon my book, but it was in vain; so at last, with a little sigh of despair, I gave p my reading, and resigned myself to finding what amusement I could in watching the strange shapes the trees we passed assumed as they appeared blurred and indistin through the thickly falling mist. Still, this T was not a long journey, but I occupation was not so engrossing as to had travelled it so often, and render me oblivious of the dialogue going or the country through which we between my neighbours, and from time to passed was so flat and unin- time I heard a scrap of society gossip, 2 teresting, that to me it always passing allusion to some scandal of the day, seemed tedious: therefore, having to go to an account of Lady A.'s last "At Home, M- once more in the gloom of a late or Mrs. B.'s newest and most extravagant autumn afternoon, I took the precaution of toilette. Then, the affairs of others having providing myself with a book, and was for- been fully discussed, the conversation took tunate enough to find a compartment occu- a more personal turn, and I heard the pied by a couple of elderly ladies, whose quiet remarkconversation did not in the least interrupt my reading. However, at an intermediate station "You told me last week you meant to pay Dr. B. a visit. Have you seen him?" "Yes; I went yesterday." "And what did he say?" "Precisely what I expected. siders I am suffering from nervous exhaustion, and advises perfect quiet and rest as if it were even possible to think of such things with a family like mine." my neighbour, who was now growing eloquent Over "Ethel's carelessness" and "Frank's He con- obstinacy," I felt there was a smile coming to my lips and eyes at the remembrance of a remark made once by a small maiden of five years old, to the effect that she did not much like the mother of some little friend; "But, really, my dear, you ought to have she was "such a prickly mamma :" and this some little consideration for yourself," re- was just the description that suited my disturned the sympathizing listener. "Don't contented travelling companion. She was you think you do too much?" "Yes, I am afraid I do; and the result is, that I am fairly worn out. You see, when there are no other worries, there are always the servants and the children." handsomely and expensively dressed, but someway her garments were obtrusive. She was all stiff silk and bugles and feathers and lace, till there was not a spot about her where a tired little head might nestle, or chubby "And I do not know which are the worst," fingers rest without fear of crushing somewas the answer. "Servants are bad enough, thing; and do all I would, I could not but one can pick and choose amongst them, believe she could ever appear in a soft whilst one is obliged to take one's children merino gown, and sit by the nursery fire as they are. I spent a month at Tenby with mine this year, and though they had two nurses and a German governess with them, I had not a moment's peace. They just set everyone at defiance and ran wild. I came home positively ill." "Ah! I went through that experience once, but now I manage better. My companion says she is very fond of children, so I send them away under her care, and then I am free to make what plans I choose. After the wear and tear of the season I do not feel equal to the company of four boys; the girls one might put up with." telling simple stories, that may be wise through all their nonsense, or sing lullabies, or join in an impromptu game of romps, or in any way understand how far above herhow far above all of us, alas !-are the little ones, on whose behalf the poet writes "And not in utter nakedness, But trailing clouds of glory, do we come And if our eyes do not see the glory, it is because the world and worldly things have so long blinded us. So feeling this I wished my companion And so on and so on through a whole would go as I had gone a few days previously gamut of complaints, to which I, sitting-through the wards of a children's hospital, quietly in my corner, listened in wondering where every phase of suffering might have been amazement. At first I had been inclined to seen, without one word of fretful complaint smile at the idea of anyone so well preserved being heard. Amongst the children there and so evidently self-indulged suffering from were some who had never known what it is any species of exhaustion, but then the to be healthy and strong. There were others pathetic side of the question forced itself who had struggled through weeks of pain reupon my notice, and with a feeling deeper sulting from accidents, and who would go back than mere curiosity I looked at this woman, into the world crippled or maimed, and some who was so ready to lay down the crown of few who, despite all that science and care motherhood. She had evidently been very could do, would suffer all their lives from the pretty in her youth, and would have been so diseases entailed upon them by years of neglect still had her face worn less of restless dis- and misery. Yet the little white faces were content; as it was, one instinctively felt that placid, some even positively happy; for the in old age such a face would look neither pain of yesterday was forgotten, the pain of beautiful nor dignified. And then my to-day fought against with a patient heroism thoughts wandered away, and I tried to that was infinitely touching, whilst in almost picture to myself the boys to whose holiday every case there was the strong love for somecompanionship their mother did not "feel one or something that is such a holy attribute equal," and the girls who, as being less of childhood. In one ward was a little girl, boisterous perhaps, might "be put up with." who, after having passed the night in intense But I failed-for my love for children and pain, was only concerned lest "mother" my reverence for childhood made me think should think her "looking worse." So every the fault lay elsewhere; and as I looked at time she heard a step in the corridor, she rubbed her cheeks to bring a little colour be not fulfilled, quite forgetting that "example into them and smiled brightly at the opening is better than precept." door. Another child had been knocked down and run over in attempting to save her dog from the same fate. She was unconscious when brought to the hospital, and so did not know that her favourite had been hurt; but learning afterwards that his leg was broken, the tears she had not shed for her own suffering fell freely because "Snap could not be taken in to be made well." And struggling against the terrible weakness that was creeping over her, I saw her plaiting together some pieces of coloured braid that were to make a collar for Snap and let him know his mistress had not forgotten him. It seems to me that one of the mistakes we make with children is that we are too slow in recognising their self-denial and their halfunconscious striving after right. A mother who has a perfect horror of early rising, and who in dressing-gown and slippers takes her breakfast at ten o'clock in her thoroughly warmed room, thinks nothing of the fact that her little daughter comes down in the dusk of the winter morning to finish learning the lessons for which there had been no time the preceding evening. And another who is "not at home" to unwelcome visitors, and is always ready with some polite fiction to save "It will soon be finished now, and then I herself trouble, is blind to the tacit reproach shall have plenty of time to rest," she said contained in her child's honest avowal of quietly when the nurse advised her to leave wrong-doing,—an avowal that is too often the work alone and try to sleep. So the followed by passionate and inconsiderate collar was finished and "the rest" came, but punishment. Whilst a third, whose amiability Snap will never again see the little friend who lost her life in trying to save him from harm. lasts only as long as her own pleasure is the one thing considered, will without a moment's hesitation summons some small seven-year And these were no isolated cases; for it old maiden from an exciting pastime, and seemed to me that every child there was not consider it a proof of "naughtiness" if the only bearing his or her burden (and such red lips quiver and the little fingers are less heavy burdens too) meekly and uncomplain- flexible than usual over the "practising " that, ingly, but was anxious to do something to- until part of the drudgery is conquered, must wards bearing the burdens of others. And be to an ordinary-minded child a terrible inwhat with most seemed harder to endure than either pain or weakness, or restraint, was the knowledge that "mother needed help," or "father had no one to take his tea to him," or "baby missed her child-nurse." So that I was quite ready to believe the brightfaced nurse, who told me, "The little ones often put the 'grown-ups' to shame." fliction. Some years ago I heard the opinion expressed that "children are naturally untruthful and cruel;" and my indignant protest and contrary experience only met with the assurance that I had been "specially fortunate;” but such was not the case. Since then I have thought more seriously And indeed in much more than their on the subject, and I firmly believe that our patient endurance of pain and sickness are we little ones grow up to be what their surroundshamed by the little ones. We are so wise in ings and their home training teach them to our own conceit, so proud of the experience be. That some are more easily led to the bestowed upon us by our additional years, so right than others is certain; but the "managehard upon the children's faults and so pain-able children" of whom people speak so fully exact in pointing out the children's complacently are often those whose yielding weaknesses. natures would bend to whatever influence might be exercised over them. We talk very wisely about the faults being cured and the weaknesses overcome; but do we ever consider what "trying to be good" really means? Are we always patient and forgiving? Do we bear our little disappointments goodhumouredly? Do we always bravely speak out the truth when an evasion would better serve our purpose? Alas! I am afraid not, and yet we expect to have all these virtues practised by our children, and we think we have a right to complain if our expectations If people-more especially women, for it is to them that the child in its earliest and most impressionable years is entrusted-would only start with the conviction that "children are born good," and that there must be something wrong in the education that allows them to become otherwise, there would be other faults than those of the children corrected, and fewer tears shed over disappointed hopes in the years to come. With the rearing of our cattle, our horses and our dogs, we are willing to confess there s much to be learnt and many mistakes to be avoided. Even in the management of our gardens, and the cultivation of our favourite flowers, we attribute our failures to our own imperfect knowledge; and yet we are ready to excuse ourselves from any responsibility concerning the moral well-being of the human flowers that brighten our homes. in their happier homes there is a lesser demand for such courage, is the boy who generously bears a punishment that in justice should be divided, rather than "tell tales;" the little sister who gives up a pleasure-party to stay at home and amuse an invalid brother; the child who, as was the case with one I knew, will have a tooth taken out and utter no sound, lest a still smaller patient sitting at the dentist's should be frightened; and even the tiny maiden who gives up her pillow to "dollie," are one and all unconscious exponents of the Of course I do not mean that every child is a miniature hero or heroine-a modern Casabianca; but I do mean that there is a wonderful amount of unrecognised heroism" Heroism of Childhood." displayed by the little ones. Well for us if, whilst our bairnies are bairnies still, we learn to rule them with something of the patient, perfect love of Him who, being Himself "like unto a little child," knew the children best, and so said, "of such is the The stunted boy sitting on a doorstep with the baby, round whose neck he has tied his own comforter; the child trying to protect his mother from a drunken father's violence, are as brave in their way as were the Alexanders kingdom of heaven." and Cæsars of the olden times. And brave too, in a lesser degree perhaps only because | NELLA PARKER. THE SCORNFUL LADYE: A BALLAD. T is the Scornful Ladye, a ladye fair to see, Who is motionlessly standing by the linden tree, Where through the leaves comes stealing from the sunset in the West It is a Knight comes riding, a soldier young and bold, With helm and sword and nodding crest and spurs of ruddy gold, But the lovely ladye scorneth him and so he rides away. It is a field of battle when the stubborn fight is done, There the Knight lies cold and silent, his pale brow cleft,-ah me! MARK MERVYN. VOL. XV. 33 |