Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Vol. 9

Excerpt

THE CRIPPLE; OR, EBENEZER THE DISOWNED.

It is proverbial to say, with reference to particular constitutions or habits of body, that May is a trying month, and we have known what it is to experience its trials in the sense signified. With our grandmothers too, yea, and with our grandfathers also, May was held to be an unlucky month. Nevertheless, it is a lovely, it is a beautiful month, and the forerunner of the most healthy of the twelve. It is like a timid maiden blushing into womanhood, wooing and yet shrinking from the admiration which her beauty compels. The buds, the blossoms, the young leaves, the tender flowers, the glittering dew-drops, and the song of birds, burst from the grasp of winter as if the God of nature whispered in the sunbeams—"Let there be life!" But it is in the morning only, and before the business of the world summons us to its mechanical and artificial realities, that the beauties of May can be felt in all their freshness. We read of the glories of Eden, and that the earth was cursed because of man's transgression; yet, when we look abroad upon the glowing landscape, above us, and around us, and behold the pure heavens like a sea of music floating over us, and hear the earth answer it back in varied melody, while mountain, wood, and dale, seem dreaming in the sound, and stealing into loveliness, we almost wonder that a bad man should exist in the midst of a world that is still so beautiful, and where every object around him is a representative of the wisdom, the goodness, the mercy, the purity, and the omnipotence of his Creator. There is a language in the very wild-flowers among our feet that breathes a lesson of virtue. We can appreciate the feeling with which the poet beheld

"The last rose of summer left blooming alone;"

but in the firstlings of the spring, the primrose, the lily, and their early train, there is an appeal that passes beyond our senses. They are like the lispings and the smiles of infancy—lowly preachers, emblems of our own immortality, and we love them like living things. They speak to us of childhood and the scenes of youth, and memory dwells in their very fragrance. Yes, May is a beautiful month—it is a month of fair sights and of sweet sounds. To it belongs the lowly primrose blushing by the brae-side in congregated beauty, with here and there a cowslip bending over them like a lover among the flowers; the lily hanging its head by the brook that reflects its image, like a bride at the altar, as if conscious of its own loveliness; the hardy daisy on the green sward, like a proud man struggling in penury with the storms of fate. Now, too, the blossoms on a thousand trees unfold their rainbow hues; the tender leaves seem instinct with life, and expand to the sunbeams; and the bright fields, like an emerald sea, wave their first undulations to the breeze. The lark pours down a flood of melody on the nest of its mate, and the linnet trills a lay of love to its partner from the yellow furze. The chaffinch chants in the hedge its sweet but unvaried line of music; the thrush hymns his bold roundelay; and the blackbird swells the chorus; while the bird of spring sends its voice from the glens, like a wandering echo lost between love and sadness; and the swallow, newly returned from warmer climes or its winter sleep,

"Twitters from the straw-built shed."

The insect tribe leap into being, countless in numbers and matchless in livery, and their low hum swims like the embodiment of a dream in the air....