Dick’s Apophthegm.
“ Avoid the man who hates flowers and the voice
of a child.”
I
wound along the face of Dover cliffs
In hot July, and dazzling white the chalk
Ray’d back the heat : above a dizzy height,
Hung fearless wild flowers, and the washing wave
Broke on the beach a dizzy depth below.
Sick with the noonday blaze, I marked a cave,
Scoop’d out to witless semblance of a house,
One room, with crazy door ; and entering in
Found Dick, the path-cutter. No sinecure
His office. Year by year the touch of time
Makes havoc : frost-crabb’d winter and the storms
Make mimic avalanches of the chalk,
And spoil his work. Yea, summer scarce re-
frains :
And every wave that lashes on the rock
Rolls back like milk. I found Dick garrulous ;
And, being idle, sat an hour and smoked ;
And watch’d the sails pass by the open door,
And saw the buoy dip with the battery shot.
A hale and honest fellow, Dick, content
With little, gathering samphire, netting prawns ;
With cheery talk for every passer-by,
Tho’ sleeping on a mat of straw : his age
Some three-score years; with tough and sinewy
arms,
But softer heart. Two children, on two stools,
Sat near him : guests, who stay’d out half a day,
And found in wifeless Dick a friend. The girl,
Some four years old,—I took her for a boy,—
Half wild, half shy, and graceful as a goat,
As native as the sea-wreck to the place,
Made friends with me, too. Yellow hair she had,
Unloop’d, and brown bare little legs and feet,
And wide blue eyes. I liked to talk with Dick :
A shrewd and travell’d man, and apt at speech.
“ He’s the grand master,”—pointing to the sea,
Dick said,—“ he’s master of all masters here,
When winter comes : he’s quiet enough now.”
Who loves not talk like this, from one whose hands
Sweat with rough toil ? I listen’d with delight.
I learn’d some lessons, and acquired some facts :
That samphire is no longer in demand ;
That fossils will not sell. He had a stock :
Shut in a flint a sea-urchin, complete—
A beauty ! What seas left it on the shore,
A million years ere God wall’d England round
With ever-shifting bulwark of the main ?
Then flints were low in price; he hoarded up
:
He would not let them go, though hoarding up
Came hard. But one grand lesson, which I knew,—
But here repeat for such as are more used
Than I and Dick to measure with the world,—
The old man’s lips made beautiful. He said,
“ Avoid the man who loves not the wild flowers,
Nor cares to hear the prattling of a child.”
Pondering the lesson as I went I felt
How true it was : yea, somehow, with the sense
Of its deep truth, the sea-gulls dipp’d more glad,
The lisping wave broke tenderer on the shore,
The seaman’s oar seem’d human, and Heaven kind.