The Norton Anthology of English literature. Volume 2

BEACH Y HEA D / 6 1 515520525530 Pass'd him at nightfall, wondering he should sit On the hill top so late: they from the coast Who sought by-paths with their clandestine load, Saw with suspicious doubt, the lonely man Cross on their way: but village maidens thought His senses injur'd; and with pity say That he, poor youth! must have been cross'd in love� For often, stretch'd upon the mountain turf With folded arms, and eyes intently fix'd Where ancient elms and firs obscured a grange,0 Some little space within the vale below, They heard him, as complaining of his fate, And to the murmuring wind, of cold neglect And baffled hope he told.�The peasant girls These plaintive sounds remember, and even now Among them may be heard the stranger's songs. farm Were I a Shepherd on the hill And ever as the mists withdrew Could see the willows of the rill 535Shading the footway to the mill Where once I walk'd with you� 540And as away Night's shadows sail, And sounds of birds and brooks arise, Believe, that from the woody vale I hear your voice upon the gale In soothing melodies; 545And viewing from the Alpine height, The prospect dress'd in hues of air, Could say, while transient colours bright Touch'd the fair scene with dewy light, 'Tis, that her eyes are there! 550I think, I could endure my lot And linger on a few short years, And then, by all but you forgot, Sleep, where the turf that clothes the spot May claim some pitying tears. For 'tis not easy to forget One, who thro' life has lov'd you still, And you, however late, might yet

described in the Forty-second sonnet. I was mistaken in supposing it as visible in November; it is a migrant, and leaves this country in August. I had often seen and heard it, but I did not then know its name or history. It is called Goatsucker (Caprimitlgtis), from a strange prejudice taken against it by the Italians, who assert that it sucks their goats; and the peasants of England still believe that a disease in the backs of their cattle, occasioned by a

fly, which deposits its egg under the skin, and raises a boil, sometimes fata! to calves, is the work of this bird, which they call a Puckeridge. Nothing can convince them that their beasts are not injured by this bird, which they therefore hold in abhorrence [Smith's note, referring at the beginning to John Aikin's An Essay on the Application of Natural History to Poetry, 1777, and in the middle to sonnet 42 in her own Elegiac Sonnets].

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62 / CHARLOTTE SMITH

With sighs to Memory giv'n, regret0 recall with regret 555 The Shepherd of the Hill.

Yet otherwhile it seem'd as if young Hope Her flattering pencil gave to Fancy's hand, And in his wanderings, rear'd to sooth his soul Ideal bowers of pleasure.�Then, of Solitude

560 And of his hermit life, still more enamour'd, His home was in the forest; and wild fruits And bread sustain'd him. There in early spring The Barkmen7 found him, e'er the sun arose; There at their daily toil, the Wedgecutters8

565 Beheld him thro' the distant thicket move. The shaggy dog following the truffle hunter,9 Bark'd at the loiterer; and perchance at night Belated villagers from fair or wake, While the fresh night-wind let the moonbeams in

570 Between the swaying boughs, just saw him pass, And then in silence, gliding like a ghost He vanish'd! Lost among the deepening gloom.� But near one ancient tree, whose wreathed roots Form'd a rude couch, love-songs and scatter'd rhymes,

575 Unfinish'd sentences, or half erased, And rhapsodies like this, were sometimes found.�

Let us to woodland wilds repair While yet the glittering night-dews seem To wait the freshly-breathing air,

580 Precursive of the morning beam, That rising with advancing day, Scatters the silver drops away.

An elm, uprooted by the storm, The trunk with mosses gray and green, 585 Shall make for us a rustic form,

Where lighter grows the forest scene; And far among the bowery shades, Are ferny lawns and grassy glades.

Retiring May to lovely June 590 Her latest garland now resigns; The banks with cuckoo-flowers1 are strewn, The woodwalks blue with columbines,2

7. As soon as the sap begins to rise, the trees intended for felling are cut and barked. At which time the men who are employed in that business pass whole days in the woods [Smith's note], 8. The wedges used in ship-building are made of beech wood, and great numbers are cut every year in the woods near the Downs [Smith's note]. 9. Truffles are found under the beech woods, by means of small dogs trained to hunt them by the scent [Smith's note].

1. Cuckoo-flowers. Lychnis dioica. Shakespeare describes the Cuckoo buds as being yellow [Love's Labor's Lost 5.2.871], He probably meant the numerous Ranunculi, or March marigolds (Caltha palustris) which so gild the meadows in Spring; but poets have never been botanists. The Cuckoo flower is the Lychnisfloscuctili [Smith's note]. 2. Columbines. Aquilegia vulgaris [Smith's note].

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