Arthur Quiller-Couch, comp. The Oxford Book of Victorian Verse. 1922.
The Charcoal-BurnerEdmund Gosse (18491928)
H
From one clear dell he seldom ranges;
His daily toil in solitude
Revolves, but never changes.
Grey eye, bent shape, and smoke-tann’d features,
His quiet footstep is not fear’d
By shyest woodland creatures.
His scented labour builds above it;
I track the woodland by his fire,
And, seen afar, I love it.
The emblem of a living pleasure,
It animates the silences
As with a tuneful measure.
Fold naught of nature’s charm around him;
The mystery of soundless days
Hath sought for him and found him.
An instinct innocent and holy,
The music of a wood-bird’s strain,—
Not blithe, nor melancholy,
Of wholesome leaf and bough and blossom—
An unecstatic ravishment
Born in a rustic bosom.
He feels, in his own speechless fashion,
For helpless forms of fur and wings
A mild paternal passion.
The warm brood of the ruddy squirrel;
Their bushy mother storms and scolds,
But knows no sense of peril.
His homeward trudge the rabbits follow;
He finds, in angles of the trees,
The cup-nest of the swallow.
The beating heart of life he reaches
Far more than we who idly dance
An hour beneath the beeches.
Our busy dream of introspection,
To God seem vain and poor beside
This dumb, sincere reflection.
A nameless head-stone stand above him,
And the vast woodland, vague and lone,
Be all that ’s left to love him.