Of many minds, of minds and bodies too;
The history of many families;
How they had prospered; how they were o'erthrown
By passion or mischance, or such misrule
Among the unthinking masters of the earth. As makes the nations groan. This active course, Chosen in youth, through manhood he pursued, Till due provision for his modest wants Had been obtained;--and thereupon resolved To pass the remnant of his days, untasked With needless services, from hardship free. His calling laid aside, he lived at ease:
But still he loved to pace the public roads
And the wild paths; and, when the summer's warmth
Invited him, would often leave his home
And journey far, revisiting those scenes
That to his memory were most endeared.
-Vigorous in health, of hopeful spirits, untouched By worldly-mindedness or anxious care; Observant, studious, thoughtful, and refreshed By knowledge gathered up from day to day; Thus had he lived a long and innocent life.
The Scottish Church, both on himself and those With whom from childhood he grew up, had held
The strong hand of her purity; and still Had watched him with an unrelenting eye. This he remembered in his riper age With gratitude, and reverential thoughts. But by the native vigour of his mind, By his habitual wanderings out of doors, By loneliness, and goodness, and kind works, Whate'er, in docile childhood or in youth, He had imbibed of fear or darker thought, Was melted all away; so true was this That sometimes his religion seemed to me Self-taught, as of a dreamer in the woods ; Who to the model of his own pure heart Framed his belief, as grace divine inspired, Or human reason dictated with awe.
--And surely never did there live on earth A man of kindlier nature. The rough sports And teasing ways of children vexed not him; Nor could he bid them from his presence, tired
With questions and importunate demand. Indulgent listener was he to the tongue
Of garrulous age; nor did the sick man's tale, To his fraternal sympathy addressed,
Obtain reluctant hearing.
Such as might suit a rustic Sire, prepared
For Sabbath duties; yet he was a man
Whom no one could have passed without remark. Active and nervous was his gait; his limbs And his whole figure breathed intelligence. Time had compressed the freshness of his cheek Into a narrower circle of deep red,
But had not tamed his eye; that, under brows Shaggy and grey, had meanings which it brought From years of youth; which, like a Being made Of many Beings, he had wondrous skill
To blend with knowledge of the years to come, Human, or such as lie beyond the grave.
So was He framed; and such his course of life, Who now with no appendage but a staff, The prized memorial of relinquished toils, Upon that cottage-bench reposed his limbs, Screened from the sun. Supine the Wanderer lay, His eyes as if in drowsiness half shut,
The shadows of the breezy elms above Dappling his face. He had not heard my steps As I approached, and near him did I stand Unnoticed in the shade some minutes' space.
At length I hailed him, seeing that his hat Was moist with water-drops, as if the brim Had newly scooped a running stream. He rose, And ere the pleasant greeting that ensued Was ended, ""Tis," said I, "a burning day;
My lips are parched with thirst, but you, I guess, Have somewhere found relief." He, at the word, Pointing towards a sweet-briar, bade me climb The fence hard by, where that aspiring shrub Looked out upon the road. It was a plot Of garden-ground run wild, its matted weeds. Marked with the steps of those, whom, as they passed,
The gooseberry-trees that shot in long lank slips, Or currants, hanging from their leafless stems
In scanty strings, had tempted to o'erleap The broken wall. I looked around, and there, Where two tall hedge-rows of thick alder-boughs Join'd in a cold damp nook, espied a well Shrouded with willow-flowers and plumy fern. My thirst I slaked, and, from the cheerless spot Withdrawing, straightway to the shade returned, Where sate the old Man on the cottage-bench; And, while, beside him, with uncovered head,
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