“Fond dreamer, pause! why floats the silvery breath Of thin, light smoke from yonder bank of heath? What forms are those beneath the shaggy trees, In tattered tent, scarce sheltered from the breeze; The hoary father and the ancient dame, The squalid children, cowering o’er the flame? Those were not born by English hearths to dwell, Or heed the carols of the village bell; Those swarthy lineaments, that wild attire, Those stranger tones, bespeak an eastern sire; Bid us in home’s most favoured precincts trace The houseless children of a homeless race; And as in warning vision seem to show That man’s best joys are drowned by shades of woe. “Pilgrims of Earth, who hath not owned the spell That ever seems around your tents to dwell; Solemn and thrilling as the nameless dread That guards the chambers of the silent dead! The sportive child, if near your camp he stray, Stands tranced with fear, and heeds no more his play; To gain your magic aid, the love-sick swain, With hasty footsteps threads the dusky lane; The passing traveller lingers, half in sport, And half in awe beside your savage court, While the weird hags explore his palm to spell What varied fates these mystic lines foretell. “The murmuring streams your minstrel songs supply, The moss your couch, the oak your canopy; The sun awakes you as with trumpet-call, Lightly ye spring from slumber’s gentle thrall; Eve draws her curtain o’er the burning west, Like forest birds ye sink at once to rest. “Free as the winds that through the forest rush, Wild as the flowers that by the wayside blush, Children of nature wandering to and fro, Man knows not whence ye came, nor where ye go; Like foreign weeds cast upon Western strands, Which stormy waves have borne from unknown lands; Like the murmuring shells to fancy’s ears that tell The mystic secrets of their ocean cell. “Drear was the scene—a dark and troublous time— The Heaven all gloom, the wearied Earth all crime; Men deemed they saw the unshackled powers of ill Rage in that storm, and work their perfect will. Then like a traveller, when the wild wind blows, And black night flickers with the driving snows, A stranger people, ’mid that murky gloom, Knocked at the gates of awe-struck Christendom! No clang of arms, no din of battle roared Round the still march of that mysterious horde; Weary and sad arrayed in pilgrim’s guise, They stood and prayed, nor raised their suppliant eyes. At once to Europe’s hundred shores they came, In voice, in feature, and in garb the same. Mother and babe and youth, and hoary age, The haughty chieftain and the wizard sage; At once in every land went up the cry, ‘Oh! fear us not—receive us or we die!’” DEAN STANLEY’S PRIZE POEM, 1837: “The Gipsies.”