Classic Poem

There was a golden time, I ween,
When ivy bright, or laurel green,
From woodland copse, or pastoral glen,
Or hedgerow high, or murmuring fen,
As birthdays open'd fresh and clear,
Adorn'd the brow of bardie dear.

These days are gone. The singer now
Gets scarce a leaflet for his brow.
No laurels cluster round his head,
But sorrow's weeds are there outspread,
Bound by Neglect's cold fingers drear
Upon the brow of bardie dear.

Yet he is Nature's favourite son,
Her greatest, grandest, choicest one;
Her mysteries are by him reveal'd,
Her secrets are by him unseal'd,
Nor loves she, 'mid her votaries here,
One like her own, her bardie dear.

She teaches with her flower and weed,
Her book is more than college creed.
She rears up poets here and there,
Like golden ores on flat lands bare.
With tongues of winds, and brooklets clear.
She makes her own sweet bardie dear.

What has the bard to do with schools,
Or tedious academic rules?
He finds his idyls where the breeze
Walks like a prophet through the trees.
The bud, the flower, the last leaf sere,
All teach the true-born bardie dear.

Were there no lichen'd rock or stone,
No solemn ruin moss-o'ergrown,
No village lane, no stream, or rill,
No footpath winding round the hill,
No moor where larks delight the ear,
Small claim had I to bardie dear.

What taught thee in thy native Wells,
But Nature's language in her dells,
On daisy-mead, or hillock's brow?
Hence thy sweet lyric “To the Plough,”
Replete with rural echoes clear,
Delicious to the bardie dear.

So let me bind thy brow to-day,
Not with green laurel, but a lay,
Which gushes from a grateful heart,
That takes in song a pleasant part;
And wish thee many a tuneful year,
And crown thee Nature's bardie dear.