Cheerlier

Oſt had ſhe trac’d and travers’d it; but ne’r / With cheerlier countenance or nimbler pace: / The pleaſure of her Task could not forbear / To ſhew it ſelf both in her feet and face; / So much ſhe joy’d this Virgin-work ſhould be / Child to the Mother of Virginity.

The wayworn pilgrim, though the tempest lours, / Breathes a new being in the realm of Death, / And bears the burden of life’s darker hours / With cheerlier aspect o’er the lonely heath, / That spreads between us and the unfading clime / Where true Love triumphs o’er the death of Time.

“Oh,” thought I, “that woods like these / Should be without their ferns and cragies; Lack a daisy! lacking trees, / Lack a daisy! lacking daisies // Yet by picturing matters to him / In a cheerlier light than he, / Somewhat from his woe I drew him: / And I soon was pleased to see / His eye twinkling, his lips wrinkling, / Which expressed a sort of inkling / Yet of better times to be.

[…] every now and then I reached some favorite haunt of the rich-throated nightingale, and stopped and wondered at the mellow, pensive music of her note; even the cold, dark, treacherous river, wherever my path lay along it, seemed to roll with a louder, cheerlier ripple than I had ever heard it yield before, as if welcoming my homeward-bound feet.

Soon as the gray dawn peeps upon the hill, / Soon as the daylight falls upon the mill, / Swarms forth the laughing, happy negro-throng, / While through the glad air rings the crop-time song: / Not dearer home to school-imprisoned boys, / Nor cheerlier sing they home’s enchanting joys.

No bird whose swelling throat / Quivers with song, or whose extended wing / Fans the soft air, but cheerlier doth sing— / And on the breezes float / Odors from blossoms which the sun’s caress / Hath woke to life in field and wilderness.

Enchaunt me with your spells of art, / And draw me homeward to your heart: / Till weariness and things unkind / Seem but a vain and passing wind: / Till the gray morning slowly creep / Upward, and rouse the birds from sleep: / Till Oxford bells the silence break, / And find me happier, for your sake. / Then, with the dawn of common day, / Rest you! But I, upon my way, / What the fates bring, will cheerlier do, / In days not yours, through thoughts of you!