Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, ed. Poems of Places: An Anthology in 31 Volumes.
Scotland: Vols. VI–VIII. 1876–79.
Glasgow
By Alexander Smith (1830–1867)S
That cottage smoke is rolled and curled
In sport, that every moss
Is happy, every inch of soil;—
Before me runs a road of toil
With my grave cut across.
Sing, trailing showers and breezy downs,—
I know the tragic hearts of towns.
Ne’er dwelt I where great mornings shine
Around the bleating pens;
Ne’er by the rivulets I strayed,
And ne’er upon my childhood weighed
The silence of the glens.
Instead of shores where ocean beats,
I hear the ebb and flow of streets.
Into their secret-moaning caves;
But with the morning light
That sea again will overflow
With a long, weary sound of woe,
Again to faint in night.
Wave am I in that sea of woes,
Which, night and morning, ebbs and flows.
Wherein did never sunbeam sport;
Yet there my heart was stirred,—
My very blood did dance and thrill,
When on my narrow window-sill
Spring lighted like a bird.
Poor flowers! I watched them pine for weeks,
With leaves as pale as human cheeks.
Through golden vapors of the morn
I heard the hills of sheep:
I trod with a wild ecstasy
The bright fringe of the living sea:
And on a ruined keep
I sat and watched an endless plain
Blacken beneath the gloom of rain.
O’er which a laughing shower has raced!
O, fair the April shoots!
O, fair the woods on summer days,
While a blue hyacinthine haze
Is dreaming round the roots!
In thee, O city! I discern
Another beauty, sad and stem.
Smite on a thousand anvils, roar
Down to the harbor-bars;
Smoulder in smoky sunsets, flare
On rainy nights, while street and square
Lie empty to the stars.
From terrace proud to alley base,
I know thee as my mother’s face.
In wreaths of bronze thy sides are rolled,
Thy smoke is dusty fire;
And from the glory round thee poured,
A sunbeam like an angel’s sword
Shivers upon a spire.
Thus have I watched thee, Terror! Dream!
While the blue Night crept up the stream.
He shrieks across the midnight rills;
Streams through the shifting glare,
The roar and flap of foundry fires,
That shake with light the sleeping shires;
And on the moorlands bare
He sees afar a crown of light
Hang o’er thee in the hollow night.
As silent as a noonday sky
When larks with heat are mute,
I love to linger on thy bridge,
All lonely as a mountain ridge,
Disturbed but by my foot;
While the black lazy stream beneath
Steals from its far-off wilds of heath.
Flows on that black disdainful stream;
All scornfully it flows,
Between the huddled gloom of masts,
Silent as pines unvexed by blasts,—
’Tween lamps in streaming rows,
O wondrous sight! O stream of dread!
O long, dark river of the dead!
Unfurls: but dimly prisoned here,
’T is only when I greet
A dropt rose lying in my way,
A butterfly that flutters gay
Athwart the noisy street,
I know the happy Summer smiles
Around thy suburbs, miles on miles.
The flash and thunder of the surge
On flat sands wide and bare:
No haunting joy or anguish dwells,
In the green light of sunny dells,
Or in the starry air.
Alike to me the desert flower,
The rainbow laughing o’er the shower.
I lean against the churchyard rails;
Up in the midnight towers
The belfried spire, the street is dead,
I hear in silence overhead
The clang of iron hours:
It moves me not,—I know her tomb
Is yonder in the shapeless gloom.
Solemnities of life and death,
Dwell in thy noise alone:
Of me thou hast become a part,—
Some kindred with my human heart
Lives in thy streets of stone;
For we have been familiar more
Than galley-slave and weary oar.
Is burnished; on the swinging flower
The latest bee doth sit.
The low sun stares through dust of gold,
And o’er the darkening heath and wold
The large ghost-moth doth flit.
In every orchard Autumn stands,
With apples in his golden hands.
Then wherefore from thee should I range?
Thou hast my kith and kin;
My childhood, youth, and manhood brave;
Thou hast that unforgotten grave
Within thy central din.
A sacredness of love and death
Dwells in thy noise and smoky breath.