THE ISLAND CHURCH.* POOR was the peasant, poor and heavy-hearted, The fine lights faded from the hills of life. Glad threads of speech, if rough, the labourers mingle And steeped in tears the scant bread of a churl. The young have hope; but on his head was shaken Yet bless'd are they whom Heaven has undertaken O bread of God! O fields for ever sunny! O fadeless flowers upon life's craggiest shelves! O better substance, more enduring money, By grace laid up within our hearts themselves! Midsummer Day! All night the child has folden * The idea of this poem is taken from one by Runeberg, of which I have only seen a literal French translation. Midsummer Day! All night the rivers going From joy expected bathed the sleeper's lid. Midsummer Day! At morn the maiden merry Midsummer Day! The sad and wrinkled peasant Midsummer Day! They smother up the altar The feast of flowers! The old priest has conn'd over The feast of flowers! Sky, ocean, earth, seem turning Flowers in the churches! Every birchen column Like warbled music when it comes and goes. Flowers on the window-sill, and in the chamber, The rose of heaven, the violet of the sea. Speaks out the peasant Onni: “O my master! Hark, through the woodland walks is rising faster “All winter long, when the wild wind was grieving, Thou know'st I drudged for thee in wet and cold ; All spring, when God's great sunshine was inweaving Through forest-leaves his thousand nets of gold, "I work'd thy flax; and still the bounding river "Worse, worse than that; for we our gathering festal Once in the twelvemonth only have down here, But saints and angels, on the sea of crystal, Their feast of flowers keep round th' eternal year. "And much I dread, lest, when my dear Lord call me, 'Yea, worse than all, six months how long and dreary, This starving soul of mine is unsufficed With that sweet invitation to the weary, The music of the promises of Christ. 66 O master !-let me call thee, O, my brother!— I pray thee by all prayers thy heart may search, I pray thee by the days when with thy mother Thou kept'st the feast, O let me go to church!' But the churl pointed to the stream, where sombre And said with thick voice, eloquent of the flagon, "There lies thy way to church, thou preaching loon ! Go in that boat alone, I have no waggon Perhaps thy prayers to church will bring thee soon." And Onni heard speechless, and taking only Pray'd inly, "God of ocean and of land! "Sweetly and strongly at Thy will far-bringing All fins in waves, all plumes upon the breeze, Beautiful birds to western forest winging, And whatso passeth through the paths of seas, "Me, of more value, with my soul immortal, Mine infinite futurity, than they, Me, a wing'd voyager to Thy starry portal, Lead, loving Father! to Thy church to-day." Wearily, wearily, drags the oar, and slowly, And ding dong, ding dong, ding dong, in the distance, The church bells sounded over holt and hill. He dropp'd his oars, and, weary of resistance, Until at last the bark's keel sharply grated Then ding dong, ding dong, to the man belated. White clung the colourless mist on the island forest, Then the mist thinn'd; the lustrous sky, from off it And kenn'd beyond the furthest intervening Of dark green hall, and sombre colonnade, The northern river far away was sheening Like the dark blue of some Damascan blade. "Ah, in the church are psalms divinely tender And in the woodland depths, with restless shiver, Flits with the melody from string to string. |