Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 71, No. 436, February 1852

Soaked with the glory of the setting sun, —
These all are his for pleasure: his the Moon,
Chaste huntress, dipping, o'er the dewy hills,
Her silver buskin in the dying day.

The summer morn is up: the tapering trees
Are all a-glitter. In his garden forth
The Old Soldado saunters: hovering on
Before him, oft upon the naked walk
Rests the red butterfly; now full dispread;
Now, in the wanton gladsomeness of life,
Half on their hinges folding up its wings;
Again full spread and still: o'erhead away,
Lo! now it wavers through the liquid blue.
But he intent from out their straw-roofed hives
Watches his little foragers go forth,
Boot on the buds to make, to suck the depths
Of honey-throated blooms, and home return,
Their thighs half smothered with the yellow dust.
Dibble and hoe he plies; anon he props
His heavy-beaded plants, and visits round
His herbs of grace: the simple flowerets here
Open their infant buttons; there the flowers
Of preference blow, the lily and the rose.

Fast by his cottage door there grows an oak,
Of state supreme, drawn from the centuries.
Pride of the old man's heart, in many a walk.
Far off he sees its top of sovereignty,
And with instinctive loyalty his cap
Soldierly touches to the Royal Tree —
King of all trees that flourish! King revered!
Trafalgars lie beneath his rugged vest,
And in his acorns is The Golden Age!
Summer the time; thoughtful beneath his tree
The Veteran puffs his intermittent pipe,
And cheats the sweltering hours; yet noting oft
The flight of bird, and exhalation far
Quivering and drifting o'er the fallow field,
And the great cloud rising upon the noon,
The sultry smithy of the thunder-forge.
Anon the weekly journal of events
Conning, he learns the doings of the world,
And what it suffers – justice-loosened wrath
Falling from Heaven upon unrighteous states,
Famine, and plague, earthquake, and flood, and fire;
Lean Sorrow tracking still the bread-blown Sin;
A spirit of lies; high-handed wrong; the curse
Of ignorance crass and fat stupidity;
Glib demagogue tongues that sow the dragon-teeth
Of wars along the valleys of the earth;
And maddened nations at their contre-dance
Of revolutions, when each bloody hour
Comes staggering in beneath its load of crimes,
Enough to bend the back of centuries.

The sun goes down the western afternoon,
Lacing the clouds with his diverging rays:
Homeward the children from the village school
Come whooping on; but aye their voices fall,
As aye they turn unto the old man's door —
So much they love him. He their progress notes
In learning, and has prizes for their zeal,
Flowers for the girls, and fruit, hooks for the boys,
Whistles, and cherry-stones; and, to maintain
The thews and sinews of our coming men,
He makes them run and leap upon the green.

The nodding wain has borne the harvest home,
And yellowing apples spot the orchard trees:
Now may you oft the Old Soldado see
Stumping relieved against the evening sky
Along the ferny height – so much he loves
Its keen and wholesome air; nor less he loves
To hear the rustling of the fallen leaves,
Swept by the wind along the glittering road,
As home he goes beneath the autumnal moon.

Thus round the starry girdle of the year
His spirit circles thankfully. Not grieved
When winter comes once more, with chosen books
He sits with Wisdom by his evening fire;
Puff goes his cheerful pipe; by turns he works;
And ever from his door, before he sleeps,
He views the stars of night, and thinks of Him
Whose simplest fiat is the birth of worlds.

CAMPAIGN THE THIRD

Lo! yonder sea-mew seeks the inland moss:
Beautiful bird! how snowy clean it shows
Behind the ploughman, on a glinting day,
Trooping with rooks, and farther still relieved
Against the dark-brown mould, alighting half,
Half hovering still; yet far more beautiful
Its glistening sleekness, when from out the deep
Sudden and shy emerging on your lee,
What time through breeze, and spray, and freshening brine,
Your snoring ship, beneath her cloud of sail,
Bends on her buried side, carried it rides