Classic Poem

PART I. THE WALK

How fine to walk to dinner, not too far,
Through a green country, on a summer's day,
The dinner at an inn, the time our own,
The roads not dusty, yet the fields not wet,
The grass lie-down-uponable . — Avaunt,
Critics, or come with us, and learn the right
Of coining words in the quick mint of joy.

Pleasant is horseback, — the light strenuous dance
Upon the saddle, talking as we go,
With voices lifted jovial, 'midst the churme
Of leathers and clutched earth, that on the ear
Of sitters within doors dies far away.
Pleasant is rolling onward in a coach,
All ease and cushion; more especially
If you see some one's head bob up and down,
Poor devil! by the side of it, in run
Emulous and tired (so cruel-comfortable
Does luxury make us). Pleasant, also, boating,
Provided you can pull — and are not bound
To pull too much, and look angry and hot,
Pretending you are easy. Roundly go
The wrists, and cluck the rullocks, and the oar
Chucks from its spoon the water with a grace.
So boaters feather. — Pleasant is a sail,
Spanking and spitting through some roughening frith,
When the white foam grows whiter for a cloud,
And sunshine 's out at sea; — Or pleasanter,
Methinks, " for a continuance", between banks
Of inland green; when, gliding, the sail swells
Mild as your lady's bosom; and the swan
Stirs not from where it sits fastidious,
Breasting the pouting of its own regard.

But walking 's freest. Riding, you must keep
To roads; coaching, still more so; and your boat
Must be got home. In walking, you command
Time, place, caprice; may go on, or return,
Lie down, expatiate, wander; laugh at gates,
That poze the loftiest-minded fox-hunter;
Hills animate, brooks lull, woods welcome you,
Like lovers' whispers; you may go within,
Into the secret'st shade, and there climb banks
And bowers of rooty and weedy luxury,
Knee-deep in flowers, upborne by nutty boughs,
Into a paradise of sunny shade,
And sit, and read your book, beside the birds

And lo! we do so; we, the reader and I,
Who tow'rds our inn thus far have come from town,
Now loose, now arm-linked, — first by suburb-garden,
Half-box, half pavement, — and the long brick wall
Vociferous with " Warren", — and the turnpike,
With pocket-aproned man, jingling his cash, —
And the high road, with its dry ditch dock-leaved, —
And ever-met horseman and wagoner
Slouching, and jockey-capped postilion trim,
Interminable of dance on horse's back, —
And then by field-paths, and more flowery ditch
White-starred, and red, and azure, — and through all
Those heaps of buttercups, that smear the land
With splendour, nearly extinguishing the daisies, —
And hill, and dale, and stile on which we sat
Cooling our brows under the airy trees,
And heard the brook low down, and found that hunk
Of bread so exquisite, to the very crumbs
That shared a pocket-corner with its halfpence —
(O Shelley! 'twas a bond 'twixt thee and me,
That power to eat the sweet crust out of doors!
You laughed with loving eyes, wrinkled with mirth,
And cried, high breathing, " What! can you do that ?
I thought that no one dared a thing so strange
And primitive, but myself." — And so we loved
Ever the more, and found our love increase
Most by such simple abidings with boy-wisdom)

" Leaves would be counted flowers, if earth had none."
Lo! for the love of leaves I'll quote myself !
Blest heavens! what heaps of loveliness for ever
Work under ground, and are for ever thrusting
Their sweet heads forth, or stealing up their way
Through trunks of trees, touching (as we may fancy)
The hearts of those rough gravities with some sense
Of pure and sweet; and thence at nicest tips
Of twig, and draping every numerous bough,
Unfold green elegance, as of fairy shops,
And hang their glimmering tents 'twixt us and heaven!
Look up o'er head. What a thin, thick, huge, airy,
Massy green world of lights and lucid glooms,
This single tree! — whose trunk, like to a mast
Mounting its world of sails, swells out of sight
Through the fresh amber stories, layer on layer,
Spread with the darksome tracery of boughs,
Shifting with peeps of white air and blue sky,
And all in breath, and all in blessedness,
As though it smiled, or felt how calm it was,
How rich, how healthy, and what a perfect work!
Not only birds live here, and make the spring
A throng of music, and the rains are thanked
With odours, and the tufted squirrel sits
Handling against his tooth his hasty nut;
But here innumerable small things abide,
Fairies of fly and worm, with other lives
Than ours, but healthy, therefore happy sure,
Perhaps with centuries of sweet little thoughts
Crammed into them, as closely packed as seeds,
Knowing a world of knowledge we know not,
And certainly brief-deathed. Oh happy tree,
Happy the soul can taste a heaven in thee!

Blue never looks so sweet as through these sky-lights
Of the tree-tops; and never do we seem,
When gazing on that blue, to have and hold
So truly a bit of heaven. It comes small
And home to us; — domesticates with the shade.
What think you of this seat, up in the boughs?
And this bough footstool?
Reader . 'Tis the heaven you speak of;
Nay, a man's nest. Did not these limbs of ours
Make me feel too gigantic, I could fain
Think myself bird, — a little, soft, warm thing,
Quick-necked, and glancing out of its nest-nook
With mother's heart over its eggs, those strange
New lives that are itself, and yet not it.
How rascally would seem now the round face
Of the boy come to steal them! What a horrible
Thrust through the leaves, of a young ogre head,
Frighting her soul out!
Author . Don't let us big ogres
Catch him, or we will give his nose a twist
Shall make him think some devilish beak has got him
Oh, nothing like your anti-cruelty
For being cruel, when its sense of right
Once begins raging; right and wrong then meet
So purely, and enable a man to vent
His will upon another's with such comfort!
Reader . Ah ha! I fancied you thought ill of no one?
Author . Nor do I: — No, not even of ill itself,
Kept in due bounds, and made the ground of good,
The dark of light, the labour for the enjoyment;
And its excess is sometimes but a rich
Outbreak and force of life; at least has been so;
Displacing worse; and upon hope's mild face
Opening fresh airs of heaven, after the thunder.
But these are thoughts for reverence of the past,
Eternity's done deeds: — Conscience as reverent
Is for the future, and unbounded hope,
Whether to maintain action alone, and keep
Earth as it is, still hoping and still striving,
A pain-mixed good, strenuous and beautiful, —
Or to some wondrous ripeness of sweet time
Perfect the planet, as to us seems perfect,
Blooming on one of the starry trees of space,
Which we call universes; — golden heavens,
Sprung from the seeds of never-dying love.
Reader . And what of them that have inhabited
These future heavens, and died?
Author . Believing good,
'Tis easy to believe all good in the end,
And all conciliable; — all solvable
By some sweet mystery of place and time.
Meantime, to know all mystery were perhaps
To defeat action, and put ends for means.

But these " high arguments" keep us waiting here
Under our tree and threaten to defeat
Very agreeable action of our own,
And very requisite, and what heaven approves;
Dinner, to wit, — and sweet walk through the fields.
Besides, I grudge myself this teaching tone,
And mighty rambling where one knows not of,
And wish you to discourse me infinite things,
Of woods, and old wood visions, and your own,
And what accords with all sweet country nests.
O ever let us take the " goods the gods
Provide us". Don't you like that honest discord
Of " goods and gods", full of harmonious truth?
Reader . " Goods" and the " Gods", thank God, are one sole word:
For God is " good", the gods but good divided;
And thus the Pagan heaven may smile for ever
Beneath the Christian one, — an under firmament
Full of permitted shapes of beauty and joy.
But come we down, as well your laugh proposed,
From those " high arguments", to this our nest.
What think ye of Sindbad, sitting here and feeling
His " great snake" down below there, waiting for him?
Author . It makes me almost gather my legs up!
Methinks those dock-leaves rustle.
Reader . Sindbad's stories
Are true , they say! at least, " founded in truth;"
I hope, not too entirely. 'Twere a pity
To stint the wondrous to the known, and leave
Imagination not a world to conquer.
Author . No fear of that, e'en could we walk the stars,
As long as known itself remains unknown
In its first cause, and every leaf a wonder.
Reader . Ay; and we thus may welcome fresh true wonders,
Most Sindbad-like, nor give up dear astonishment.
What think ye of being joltered off your boughs
By a great shouldering sloth now, — a slow fellow
Enough on ground, but quick as hunger and strength
Under his trees, and travelling like a goblin?
You know how he " gets on", clinging supine
Under the tossing boughs, from tree to tree?
Fancy a goblin, in a fairy-tale,
Coming upon the wrong side of swung boughs
To kill two pigeons on a tree top, — lovers!
Author . Talk of him always. I could hear such mixture
Of truth and fiction, for a summer's day.
Those woods in the New World, treble the height
Of ours, painted with birds, chattering with monkeys,
Clogged and o'er-saturate with all sorts of life,
Where ferns are trees o'erhead, and creepers cables,
Are themselves good as fiction; though mere truths.
Reader . And such remain they, keeping their proud distance.
We want them not, content with our own small,
Still, thoughtful, many-storied, home-fit woods;
Sweet-voiced, when voiced they are; but sometimes mute,
As fits sweet voices, resting on the heart.
Author . So much I think with you, that give me but
Five trees, familiar ones, and I can love them
For their own sakes, or turn them to five hundred,
The fancied outskirt of some mighty forest,
Where I am still at home. Europe is home,
And Christendom is home; nay, Pagandom,
Being of Europe; nay, the East itself, —
For who's a stranger in the Arabian Nights?
The trees of Ariosto and of Theocritus
Are ours, — beeches and oaks, with no more difference
Than what has been made ours in green old books, —
Cypress and olive, native to all verse;
And with the palm we have grown up in the Bible
Reader . We suit each other, as if made to do so!
Not the worst thing in the world! though some nice friendships
Require a little comfortable discord
To hinder the infinite universe from palling
Upon two pairs of ears! I want, like you,
No miles of forest, when a wood's at hand;
No mountains, when I've hills; no trading river,
Lap me but inland by a mossy brook
Yet love I all those magnitudes; the river,
Showing great ships; mountains, like earths on earth;
Forests, where silence travels with a man.
Poets and poetry-loving men, love all
Which Nature loves, and that is everything.
Out of a garden of some thirty feet
Plump with round roses and his lady's bosom,
A poet's verse, a fount, and a guitar,
The Persian makes his paradise. So could I.
Author . Out of a garden of some thirty feet;
Plump with a water-butt, and spiced with potherbs,
An inn, a hunger, and an ended walk,
The diner makes his paradise. So will we.
Thus from our tree we merrily descend,
Half sliding down the exuberant dry ditch
With jovial heels, and gloved against the nettles,
And so walk onward through the wood; now hearing
The cuckoo, now the thrush, always the leaves,
For 'tis a western wind; now seeing visions
Of fauns, and flying nymphs, and fairy stags
Drawing pursuit to some enamoured bower;
Or coloured shield, hung in the sycamore,
By which some knight's asleep; or the famed band,
Suspenders of the breath of him in the tree,
Who saw them throng into the sudden door;
Or Man of the Woods, that wept when it was fair,
And laughed and leaped in tempests; or that worse
And bad old man, living in the lone house,
Who from his window watched along the wood,
And came out, loud and violent Suddenly
An abbot cometh, plump as two of his priests,
And strong as his horse; yet starteth, for an arrow
Sticks straight into the tree, close by his ear,
Followed by laughter from the brakes. Ah, Robin!
Ever good shot, and jovial heart wast thou,
And loved'st to laugh back his tithe to the poor.
The dusty and firred wood, with dinning-nook
Of flies, and bits of heavy-mantled pond,
Which yet we love, for sylvan too are they,
And full of life, has varied, as we go,
Into park neighbourhood, not tamed, however,
From what is sweet in wildness. Of such spots
Hung with wild musk-blooms and with golden shades,
Where dizzes the dark bee, grave in his joy,
Elysian fields were made, and Eden bowers,
And Golden Ages; and if hope speaks well
And beauteous fitness, shall be made again;
And man, now huddled into struggling towns,
Be sprinkled, blest, o'er all the greeny globe.
That " kingdom come!" — Meanwhile, welcome the hope,
And welcome the delay, and welcome, aye,
The disappointment, should we know it not
Thoroughly, nor desist from hope's good work,
Its cheer, its bettering, or its patient love.
Smooth future world, I hail thee, if to be;
May still some little rough relish thy smoothness.
Rough present world, I hail thee also. Smooth
Hast thou as well as rough; art joy-begotten,
Action sustained, and diest briefly, hoping
We issue from the trees, and look right down
On more, with a church-tower, o'er level meads; —
The village! There's the manor-house; old smoker, —
Wrinkled and stately as Queen Elizabeth,
Its very windows, somehow, seem to wink,
Like old eyes with their lifted brows. There nestles
The parsonage; — and there, behind that elm,
Over the goose-green, as you quit the place,
There, there's the inn!
Thank God and our good walk!
Now, by my future hopes and present appetite,
No better prospect hath the Golden Age;
Nor were a phoenix equal to broiled fowl.
A steak is final
Reader . What a land for meals!
Look in the dell here, in this steep hill-shade,
Under the trees, — look at the coloured cattle.
They're milking them. There's pretty breakfast for you;
There, and in yonder corn-field, past the hedge,
Red with the poppies; you just see the shirts of it.
Upon this other side clusters the farm,
As full of eggs, and flitches, and all sorts
Of eatables, as eggs are full of meat,
And with its homesteads making you feel at home,
Although a stranger. Farms are all men's homes,
A sort of homely golden age in fancy;
Often in fact, did but the inmates know it.
Author. Si bona norint , as the poet says,
Happy, were they but happy! — a small proviso!
Yes; some once in one's life, all would be farmers,
Or something of the kind; grow fat and ruddy,
And live on ales and creams, and scent new hay,
And kiss the dairy-maid. Who would be miners?
Reader . Far be their rail-roads from this quiet spot,
Cutting its heart through; — far that anti-farness ,
Trampling all peaceful places into forced
And iron neighbourhood; making all towns
O'ertake all country with their shoes of swiftness,
That stamp their tyrannous tracks in steel for ever,
Killing the green, the loneliness, the poetry.
Oh! leave us some small solitude, Improvement;
Improve us not into extremes that make
Anti-improvement; nor for earth's fair body
Bring up the dry bones of its iron skeleton;
Till all be a machine and hollow heart.

Thus uttereth my companion his benign
And wrathful deprecation, half in mirth;
And then we quit the wood-side for the path,
That skirts the meadows; first, coasting the farm,
Its elms, rank elder trees, and tawny stack;
Then other fields, flanked with those ever honoured
Empires of dock, campion and briony,
And thorn, and maple, and quaint living things,
Which inconsiderate passers-by call " ditches";
Another then, where early hay is making,
Tossing forth odours, and inviting rest
Or sport (as humour moves us), — a sweet field,
Sweet and shut in, with brown elms and green oaks
And wild-rose hedges, and the nymph-like birch, —
A field that might be called a lawn, or sort
Of lady meadow. Leaving this, we cross
Right through another by a narrow path,
Making the kicked clover and buttercups
Hiss with the edges of our shoes; then resting
A moment on a good broad stile (no sword
Of envious carpentry) with faces turned
To gaze on whence we came, and hats fresh tilted
Over our eyes, (for the sun comes that way,)
We breathe, before we enter by " Love Lane"
Oh Love —
But we must love thee after dinner.
A walk, and a hot steak, postpone ev'n thee!

PART II. THE DINNER

Blessings be thine, and a less hard old sofa,
Thou poor apartment, rich in pleasant memories,
Old-fashioned inn-room! may no insincere
Heart enter thee, nor any sigh remember,
Except for tenderness; and may thy lambs,
And shepherd and shepherdess, in pink and green,
Pointing their toes out (a French golden age),
Perk on thy too tall mantel-piece for ever.
O rester of the tired, welcome's embracer,
Promptest apparitor of meal on table,
Encloser of sweet after-dinner talk,
Loud mostly, sometimes low, then sweeter far,
O nest, antipodean to all ceremony,
For that alone can we, and do we, enter thee
With bows at heart, and blest tormenting boots,
And with a sigh of bliss, flop in thy chairs.
Reader . Truly, a high apostrophe, and deserved!
Your room, it must be owned, is the " right thing";
A snug one to ourselves, and not too good,
Nor yet a sordid. Good old spacious chairs
Two tables, one a circular, turning up;
Item, a casement, honeysuckled; item,
Two dimity curtains, large enough to make
One good one; mantel-piece aforesaid, hardly
Too broad: item, a cracked looking-glass,
For ladies to adjust their curls in; portraits
Of Wellington and Nelson, cherry-lipped;
And then a bell-pull, with an egg-like handle,
Easy as wishing.
Author . Thou art fit to have been
Truth's auctioneer, or Gerard Douw's
Here enters
Not a male waiter, — nor the landlady,
Who sits below, in the full bloom of fifty,
Filling the tap-room window, — but a niece,
With grave, good face (may no one make it graver),
And asks " our pleasures". Now our pleasures are,
Not a beef-steak, (as our last Canto's line
Might have prefigured,) but, the month being June,
A lamb chop and a salad, with cold tart
Of gooseberry (youngest fruit-cry of the year,
Bringing the little boys about their mothers),
And such good drink as pewter makes still better, —
Liquidest freshness become solid bliss, —
Pure quench, and heart's ease, and swilled bosom-joy,
Followed with a king's " Hah!" Whales, gasping southward
And coming on a fairy sea of malt ,
Would gulf it in, and count it Fishes' Paradise.
Lo! the white table-cloth — lo! knives and forks —
Lo! glasses — lo! the salt! — lo! thick square " breads", —
Lo! plates for two — lo! covers — lo! the salad —
Lo! table drawn to the open window — lo!
Two chairs drawn too — lo! prospect out and in; —
Lo! we.
The door is shut; the fresh malt coming.
Now sticketh fork in flesh, and the chops vanish: —
Now, by the gods! we speak not for five seconds: —
Now meat is hot, and the crisp salad cold,
And it 's in basins; — deep; — we fork it up,
Like haycocks; and the first attempted words
Are mums and mutterings, stifled in the bliss;
Beautiful, ill-bred smotherments of munch
The clear good utterance at length leaps forth; —
" Fine!"
" Is not this the thing?"
" The right one!
" Hah! —
Nothing like hunger, ease, and an inn-room.
But you eat nothing ."
" Oh! — excuse me there;
'Tis you eat nothing."
" Pardon me; — you lie ."
Thus banter we, with laughter and loud joy,
And extreme words (from sense of the reverse),
Tabular common place; then expatiate
On the good fare, the prospect, homestead, hayfield,
The pretty waiter; and this brings up Horace,
An author made to sip of, half for love
And half for custom; whom we soon displace
For hearty draughts out of Theocritus,
Th' Elizabethan men, and the old jovial
Hero (for he himself 's a hero) Homer, —
Carver of men and gods, and chines, and verses
Then stop we with a sigh, and wonder whether
Carving of men must still remain thus admirable:
On which we give a glance at our own deeds, —
Carvings of lambs; and wonder how it is,
That man must thus both relish and regret,
Kill and commiserate; love the glad weak thing,
So child-like, in the meadow, — and then eat him!
But death is short, say we, and his life sweet,
Mere novelty and joy, paid with one pang;
And evil must be shared; and good's so common,
We think less of it for its being " a drug".
Men eat good breakfasts, have good days, good nights,
Good homes; and yet, as if they were too good,
Must vary them with spleen and fault-finding; —
So that all evil 's not so very evil,
Nor one ten thousandth part o' the good acknowledged
Meanwhile, 'tis otherwise with the gooseberry tart,
Acknowledged " excellent"; — also the old cheese,
The right rich crumble, betwixt dry and moist; —
Also the final drink; — we say not what; —
Choose what you please; — only the wine at inns,
Especially these inns, (best in all else,
And comfortable as slippers,) is not apt
To be Johannisberg, or suit wise stomachs,
What signifies? We pull another chair to us,
Each for our legs, (a third supplies an elbow,
If your own has none,) and with open window,
And talk, and sip, and biscuit-munch, and laugh,
Are happy as princes. 'Tis a simile
Off-hand and hearty; therefore most appropriate;
Though where, poor devils! any two such princes
(Save near a certain nursery at Windsor)
Are to be found, escaped from the dread load
Of nations at their backs, God only knows.
Now think of any dinner of " formal cut",
Compared with this, — of footmen at your backs,
Strange to your talk, and solemn during mirth; —
Of endless indigestions coming round,
Brought you by serving flesh, that must not touch
Dish without glove; — of speaking a free mind
With men you never saw; — whose names perhaps
You have not heard; and whom you may wound horribly
With hopes you love, hateful to party ears!
My friend and I, at " ease" here in our " inn",
Would as lief sit in a gilt pillory,
Or stocks, or undergo a moderate
Cherokee torture amid scalps and jeers,
As change it for such mockery of free joy.
Not that full many a host, forced to dispense
His pleasures thus, is not a right good soul,
Witty withal, and worthy of eggs and bacon;
But such prosperity hath a slavery in it,
Making extremes meet vilely, and compelling
Comfort to make such show of being comfortable,
That silence might as well proclaim itself
With flourishes of trumpets, or sleep dance.
Author . How very pleasant is this open window!
Reader . Yes, 'tis like out-of-doors visiting in-doors:
The universe salutes our little room,
And we hold both in sovereignty. Besides,
The prospect there resembles what we've conquered,
Our morning's walk; we've played our outer well,
And earned our inn ings
Author . Hail, Paronomasia!
Humanest Punning! every body's power!
Common as laughter; nor more evil deemed
By wisest lips, from Homer to Charles Lamb.
" One touch of punning makes the whole world kin."
Reader. Vide the punster who wrote Lear and Hamlet!
But punning may be tiresome.
Author . Yes, and laughter;
And any thing ill-timed, or over done.
These chops had tired our own , had they been twenty.

Here we tell stories, anecdotes, — love friends,
Are kind to foes (too happy to find fault),
Say and enjoy, in short, a million things,
Meant here to be set down, but better fancied
For want of time. Let all good Readers fancy
All the good things they ever said and loved
With after-dinner souls, and those are they .