Wildflowers. Photo: By Sandra Grunewald on Unsplash.
Poem: Human life (1827)
'I walk’d the fields at morning’s prime...'
I walk’d the fields at morning’s prime,
The grass was ripe for mowing;
The skylark sang his matin chime,
And all was brightly glowing.
‘And thus,’ I cried, ‘the ardent boy,
His pulse with rapture beating,
Deems life’s inheritance is joy —
The future proudly greeting.’
I wander’d forth at noon: — Alas!
On earth’s maternal bosom
The scythe had left the with’ring grass,
And stretch’d the fading blossom.
And thus, I thought with many a sigh,
The hopes we fondly cherish,
Like flowers which blossom but to die,
Seem only born to perish.
Once more, at eve, abroad I stray’d,
Through lonely hay-fields musing,
While every breeze that round me play’d
Rich fragrance was diffusing.
The perfumed air, the hush of eve,
To purer hopes appealing,
O’er thoughts perchance too prone to grieve,
Scatter’d the balm of healing.
For thus ‘the actions of the just,’
When mem’ry hath enshrined them,
E’en from the dark and silent dust
Their odour leave behind them.
Bernard Barton – known in his day as ‘the Quaker poet’ – is perhaps best remembered for ‘The Convict’s Appeal’ (1818), in which he protested against the death penalty and the severity of the criminal code. But much of his work was pastoral in nature, some of which caught the attention of then prime minister Robert Peel, through whom he obtained a pension of £100 a year.
