Classic and Contemporary Poetry
THOMSON'S BIRTH-PLACE (EDNAM, ROXBURGHSHIRE), by DAVID MACBETH MOIR Poet's Biography First Line: Is ednam, then, so near us? I must gaze Last Line: How oft our joys depend on ignorance! Alternate Author Name(s): Delta Subject(s): Children; Memory; Scotland; Thomson, James (1700-1748); Thought; Childhood; Thinking | ||||||||
I. "Is Ednam, then, so near us? I must gaze On Thomson's cradle-spotas sweet a bard (Theocritus and Maro blent in one) As ever graced the nameand on the scenes That first to poesy awoke his soul, In hours of holiday, when Boyhood's glance Invested nature with an added charm." So saying to myself, with eager steps, Down through the avenues of Sydenham (Green Sydenham, to me for ever dear, As birth-house of the being with whose fate Mine own is sweetly mingledeven with thine My wife, my children's mother)on I strayed In a perplexity of pleasing thoughts, Amid the perfume of blown eglantine, And hedgerow wild-flowers, memory conjuring up In many a sweet, bright, fragmentary snatch, The truthful, soul-subduing lays of him Whose fame is with his country's being blent, And cannot die; until at length I gained A vista from the road, between the stems Of two broad sycamores, whose filial boughs Above in green communion intertwined: And lo! at once in view, nor far remote, The downward country, like a map unfurled, Before me laygreen pasturesforests dark And, in its simple quietude revealed, Ednam, no more a visionary scene. II. A rural church; some scattered cottage roofs, From whose secluded hearths the thin blue smoke, Silently wreathing through the breezeless air, Ascended, mingling with the summer sky; A rustic bridge, mossy and weather-stained; A fairy streamlet, singing to itself; And here and there a venerable tree In foliaged beautyof these elements, And only these, the simple scene was formed. III. In soft poetic vision, brightly dim, Oft had I dreamed of Ednam, of the spot Where to the light of life the infant eye Of Thomson opened, where his infant ear First heard the birds, and where his infant feet Oft chased the butterfly from bloom to bloom; Until the syllablesa talisman Brought to my heart a realm of deep delight, A true Elysian picture, steeped in hues Of pastoral lovelinesswhose atmosphere Was such as wizard wand has charmed around The hold of Indolence, where every sight And every sound to a luxurious calm Smoothed down the ever-swelling waves of thought; And oft, while o'er the Bard's harmonious page, Nature's reflected picture, I have hung Enchanted, wandering thoughts have crossed my mind Of his lone boyhood'mid the mazy wood, Or by the rippling brook, or on the hill, At dewy daybreakand the eager thirst With which his opening spirit must have drank The shows of earth and heaven, till I have wished, Yea rather longed with an impassioned warmth, That on his birth-place I might gaze, and tread, If only for one short and passing hour, The pathways which, a century agone, He must have trodscenes by his pencil sketched, And by the presence hallowed evermore, Of him who sang the Seasons as they roll, With all a Hesiod's truth, a Homer's power, And the pure feeling of Simonides. IV. Now Ednam lay before methere it lay No more phantasmagorial; but the thought Of Thomson vanished, nor would coalesce And mingle with the landscape, as the dawn Melts in the day, or as the cloud-fed stream Melts in the sea, to be once more exhaled In vapours, and become again a cloud. For why? Let deep psychologists explain For me a spell was broken: this I know, And nothing more besides, that this was not My Poet's birth-placeearth etherealised And spirit-huedthe creature of my dreams, By fancy limn'd; but quite an alien scene, Fair in itselfif separate from him Fair in itself, and only for itself Seeking our praises or regard. The clue Of old associations was destroyed A leaf from Pleasure's volume was torn out And, as the fairy frost-work leaves the grass, While burns the absorbing red ray of the morn, A tract of mental Eden was laid waste, Never to blossom more! Alone I stood, By that sweet hamlet lonely and serene, Gazing around me in the glowing light Of noon, while overhead the rapturous lark Soared as it sung, less and less visible, Till but a voice 'mid heaven's engulfing blue. No scene could philosophic life desire More tranquil for its evening; nor could love, Freed from ambition, for enjoyment seek A holier haunt of sequestration calm. Yet though the tones and smiles of Nature bade The heart rejoice, a shadow overspread My musingsfor a fairy-land of thought Had melted in the light of common day. A moment's truth had disenchanted years Of cherished vision: Ednam, which before Spoke to my spirit as a spell, was now The index to a code of other thoughts; And turning on my heela poorer man Than morning looked on meI sighed to think How oft our joys depend on ignorance! | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...MILLE ET UN SENTIMENTS (PREMIERS CENTS) by DENISE DUHAMEL SUNDAY AFTERNOON by CLARENCE MAJOR I BROOD ABOUT SOME CONCEPTS, FOR EXAMPLE by ALICIA SUSKIN OSTRIKER EASY LESSONS IN GEOPHAGY by KENNETH REXROTH GENTLEMEN, I ADDRESS YOU PUBLICLY by KENNETH REXROTH ON FLOWER WREATH HILL: 1 by KENNETH REXROTH THE RUSTIC LAD'S LAMENT IN THE TOWN by DAVID MACBETH MOIR |
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