From the low hills that skirt these mighty meres,
And more than rival in their loveliness
The dreaming Indian’s Happy hunting grounds,
In boyhood’s careless prime, I once beheld
The wild fowl migrates. ‘Twas a cloudless morn
In early spring; the sun had bathed in gold
The dew-sprent turf, and trees of giant girth,
Whose gnarled trunks, deep scarred and scathed with fire,
Raised by the neighbouring herdsmen to destroy
The rotting leaves, and withered and undergrowth,
And clear the pastures for the early grass,
Stood like grim warders of the lone hill side
On which I lay—a faint breeze stirred the leaves,
When from the fens a mighty rushing sound
Rose—the precursor of a wedge-shaped host
Of swans, and pelican, and clamorous geese,
White-collared teals, widgeons, and stately cranes
With flecks of vivid green upon their wings.
Northwards the phalanx streamed, and soon the sky
Was hid as with a veil of glancing wings!
And from the grassy slope my wondering eyes
Could at one single glance, with ease, survey
Myriads of birds! for hours and hours they flew,
With harsh shrill screams that echoed from the woods.
It was a sight to fire with wild delight
A youthful heart. I felt a keener joy
Than feels in far Caffrarian wilds the Boer,
(Lone tenant with his partner of a hut
And cherished garden ‘mid the arid waste)
At a ‘trek bokken’, when the nimble deer
Sweep past his tiny farm, in such vast herds,
That to the welkin’s verge the brown karoo
Seems a bright carpet to the gazer’s eye.
Long years have past of joys and griefs and cares
Since that spring morn of which I speak, yet oft,
When I sit silent in long winter eves,
And gaze upon the fire in listless mood,
To my mind’s eye return in vision clear,
Those gnarled trunks upon the lone hill side,
That cloud of out-stretched necks and restless wings!
English