Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, THE HAREBELL, by DAVID MACBETH MOIR


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

THE HAREBELL, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: Simplest of blossoms! To mine eye
Last Line: And flocks in quiet feeding round!
Alternate Author Name(s): Delta
Subject(s): Flowers; Harebells; Memory; Perfume


SIMPLEST of blossoms! to mine eye.
Thou bring'st the summer's painted sky;
The maythorn greening in the nook;
The minnows sporting in the brook;
The bleat of flocks; the breath of flowers;
The song of birds amid the bowers;
The crystal of the azure seas;
The music of the southern breeze;
And, over all, the blessed sun,
Telling of halcyon days begun.
Blue-bell of Scotland, to my gaze,
As wanders Memory through the maze
Of silent, half-forgotten things,
A thousand sweet imaginings
Thou conjurest up—again return
Emotions in my heart to burn,
Which have been long estranged; the sky
Brightens upon my languid eye;
And, for a while, the world I see,
As when my heart first turned to thee,
Lifting thy cup, a lucid gem,
Upon its slender emerald stem.
Again I feel a careless boy,
Roaming the daisied wold in joy;
At noontide, tracking in delight
The butterfly's erratic flight;
Or watching, 'neath the evening star,
The moonrise brightening from afar,
As boomed the beetle o'er the ground,
And shrieked the bat lone flitting round.

Yet though it be, that now thou art
But as a memory to my heart,
Though years have flown, and, in their flight,
Turned hope to sadness, bloom to blight,
And I am changed, yet thou art still
The same bright blossom of the hill,
Catching within thy cup of blue
The summer light and evening dew.
Yes! though the wizard Time hath wrought
Strange alteration in my lot,
Though what unto my youthful sight
Appeared most beautiful and bright—
(The morning star, the silver dew,
Heaven's circling arch of cloudless blue,
And setting suns, above the head
Of ragged mountains blazing red)—
Have of their glory lost a part,
As worldly thoughts o'erran the heart;
Still, what of yore thou wert to me,
Blithe Boyhood seeks and finds in thee.
As on the sward reclined he lies,
Shading the sunshine from his eyes,
He sees the lark, with twinkling wings,
For ever soaring as she sings,
And listens to the tiny rill,
Amid its hazels murmuring still,
The while thou bloomest by his knee—
Ah! who more blest on earth than he!

Ah! when in hours by thought o'ercast,
We mete the present with the past,
Seems not this life so full of change,
That we have to ourselves grown strange?
For, differs less the noon from night,
Than what we be from what we might.
The feelings all have known decay;
Our youthful friendships, where are they?
The glories of the earth and sky
Less touch the heart, less charm the eye;
Yet, as if Nature would not part,
In silent beauty to my heart,
Sweet floweret of the pastoral glen,
Amid the stir, the strife of men,
Thou speakest of all gentle things,
Of bees, and birds, and gushing springs,
The azure lake, the mossy fount,
The plaided shepherd on the mount,
The silence of the vale profound,
And flocks in quiet feeding round!





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