Sibylline Leaves Read Online

Be your days

Holy, and blest and blessing may ye live!

To me the Eternal Wisdom hath dispensed

A different fortune and more different mind –

Me from the spot where first I sprang to light

Too soon transplanted, ere my soul had fixed

Its first domestic loves; and hence through life

Chasing chance-started friendships. A brief while

Some have preserved me from life's pelting ills;

But, like a tree with leaves of feeble stem,

If the clouds lasted, and a sudden breeze

Ruffled the boughs, they on my head at once

Dropped the collected shower; and some most false,

False and fair foliaged as the Manchineel,

Have tempted me to slumber in their shade

E'en mid the storm; then breathing subtlest damps,

Mixed their own venom with the rain from Heaven,

That I woke poisoned! But, all praise to Him

Who gives us all things, more have yielded me

Permanent shelter; and beside one friend,

Beneath the impervious covert of one oak,

I've raised a lowly shed, and know the names

Of husband and of father; not unhearing

Of that divine and nightly-whispering voice,

Which from my childhood to maturer years

Spake to me of predestinated wreaths,

Bright with no fading colours!

Yet at times

My soul is sad, that I have roamed through life

Still most a stranger, most with naked heart

At mine own home and birth-place: chiefly then,

When I remember thee, my earliest friend!

Thee, who didst watch my boyhood and my youth;

Didst trace my wanderings with a father's eye;

And boding evil yet still hoping good,

Rebuked each fault, and over all my woes

Sorrowed in silence! He who counts alone

The beatings of the solitary heart,

That Being knows, how I have loved thee ever,

Loved as a brother, as a son revered thee!

Oh! 'tis to me an ever new delight,

To talk of thee and thine: or when the blast

Of the shrill winter, rattling our rude sash,

Endears the cleanly hearth and social bowl;

Or when as now, on some delicious eve,

We in our sweet sequestered orchard-plot

Sit on the tree crooked earth-ward; whose old boughs,

That hang above us in an arborous roof,

Stirred by the faint gale of departing May,

Send their loose blossoms slanting o'er our heads!

Nor dost not thou sometimes recall those hours,

When with the joy of hope thou gav'st thine ear

To my wild firstling-lays. Since then my song

Hath sounded deeper notes, such as beseem

Or that sad wisdom folly leaves behind,

Or such as, tuned to these tumultuous times,

Cope with the tempest's swell!

These various strains,

Which I have framed in many a various mood,

Accept, my brother! and (for some perchance

Will strike discordant on thy milder mind)

If aught of error or intemperate truth

Should meet thine ear, think thou that riper age

Will calm it down, and let thy love forgive it!

[May 26, 1797]

Inscription

For a Fountain on a Heath

This Sycamore, oft musical with bees, –

Such tents the Patriarchs loved! O long unharmed

May all its aged boughs o'er-canopy

The small round basin, which this jutting stone

Keeps pure from falling leaves! Long may the Spring,

Quietly as a sleeping infant's breath,

Send up cold waters to the traveller

With soft and even pulse! Nor ever cease

Yon tiny cone of sand its soundless dance,

Which at the bottom, like a Fairy's page,

As merry and no taller, dances still,

Nor wrinkles the smooth surface of the Fount.

Here twilight is and coolness: here is moss,

A soft seat, and a deep and ample shade.

Thou may'st toil far and find no second tree.

Drink, Pilgrim, here; Here rest! and if thy heart

Be innocent, here too shalt thou refresh

Thy Spirit, listening to some gentle sound,

Or passing gale or hum of murmuring bees!

[1802]

A Tombless Epitaph

'Tis true, Idoloclastes Satyrane!

(So call him, for so mingling blame with praise,

And smiles with anxious looks, his earliest friends,

Masking his birth-name, wont to character

His wild-wood fancy and impetuous zeal,)

'Tis true that, passionate for ancient truths,

And honouring with religious love the great

Of elder times, he hated to excess,

With an unquiet and intolerant scorn,

The hollow puppets of a hollow age,

Ever idolatrous, and changing ever

Its worthless idols! learning, power, and time,

(Too much of all) thus wasting in vain war

Of fervid colloquy. Sickness, 'tis true,

Whole years of weary days, besieged him close,

Even to the gates and inlets of his life!

But it is true, no less, that strenuous, firm,

And with a natural gladness, he maintained

The citadel unconquered, and in joy

Was strong to follow the delightful Muse.

For not a hidden path, that to the shades

Of the beloved Parnassian forest leads,

Lurked undiscovered by him; not a rill

There issues from the fount of Hippocrene,

But he had traced it upward to its source,

Through open glade, dark glen, and secret dell,

Knew the gay wild flowers on its banks, and culled

Its med'cinable herbs. Yea, oft alone,

Piercing the long-neglected holy cave,

The haunt obscure of old Philosophy,

He bade with lifted torch its starry walls

Sparkle, as erst they sparkled to the flame

Of odorous lamps tended by Saint and Sage.

O framed for calmer times and nobler hearts!

O studious Poet, eloquent for truth!

Philosopher! contemning wealth and death,

Yet docile, childlike, full of Life and Love!

Here, rather than on monumental stone,

This record of thy worth thy Friend inscribes,

Thoughtful, with quiet tears upon his cheek.

[1809?]

This Lime-Tree Bower My Prison

In the June of 1797, some long-expected Friends paid a visit to the author's cottage; and on the morning of their arrival, he met with an accident, which disabled him from walking during the whole time of their stay. One evening, when they had left him for a few hours, he composed the following lines in the garden-bower.

Well, they are gone, and here must I remain,

This lime-tree bower my prison! I have lost

Beauties and feelings, such as would have been

Most sweet to my remembrance even when age

Had dimmed mine eyes to blindness! They, meanwhile,

Friends, whom I never more may meet again,

On springy heath, along the hill-top edge,

Wander in gladness, and wind down, perchance,

To that still roaring dell, of which I told;

The roaring dell, o'erwooded, narrow, deep,

And only speckled by the mid-day sun;

Where its slim trunk the ash from rock to rock

Flings arching like a bridge; – that branchless ash,

Unsunned and damp, whose few poor yellow leaves

Ne'er tremble in the gale, yet tremble still,

Fanned by the water-fall! and there my friends

Behold the dark green file of long lank weeds,27

That all at once (a most fantastic sight!)

Still nod and drip beneath the dripping edge

Of the blue clay-stone.

Now, my friends emerge

Beneath the wide wide Heaven – and view again

The many-steepled tract magnificent

Of hilly fields and meadows, and the sea,

With some fair bark, perhaps, whose sails light up

The slip of smooth clear blue betwixt two Isles

Of purple shadow! Yes! they wander on

In gladness all; but thou, methinks, most glad,

My gentle-hearted Charles! for thou hast pined

And hungered after Nature, many a year,

In the great City pent, winning thy way

With sad yet patient soul, through evil and pain

And strange calamity! Ah! slowly sink

Behind the western ridge, thou glorious sun!

Shine in the slant beams of the sinking orb,

Ye purple heath-flowers! richlier burn, ye clouds!

Live in the yellow light, ye distant groves!

And kindle, thou blue ocean! So my Friend

Struck with deep joy may stand, as I have stood,

Silent with swimming sense; yea, gazing round

On the wide landscape, gaze till all doth seem

Less gross than bodily; and of such hues

As veil the Almighty Spirit, when yet he makes

Spirits perceive his presence.

A delight

Comes sudden on my heart, and I am glad

As I myself were there! Nor in this bower,

This little lime-tree bower, have I not marked

Much that has soothed me. Pale beneath the blaze

Hung the transparent foliage; and I watched

Some broad and sunny leaf, and loved to see

The shadow of the leaf and stem above

Dappling its sunshine! And that walnut-tree

Was richly tinged, and a deep radiance lay

Full on the ancient ivy, which usurps

Those fronting elms, and now, with blackest mass

Makes their dark branches gleam a lighter hue

Through the late twilight: and though now the bat

Wheels silent by, and not a swallow twitters,

Yet still the solitary humble bee

Sings in the bean-flower! Henceforth I shall know

That Nature ne'er deserts the wise and pure;

No plot so narrow, be but Nature there,

No waste so vacant, but may well employ

Each faculty of sense, and keep the heart

Awake to Love and Beauty! and sometimes

'Tis well to be bereft of promised good,

That we may lift the Soul, and contemplate

With lively joy the joys we cannot share.

My gentle-hearted Charles! when the last rook

Beat its straight path along the dusky air

Homewards, I blest it! deeming, its black wing

(Now a dim speck, now vanishing in light)

Had crossed the mighty orb's dilated glory,

While thou stood'st gazing; or when all was still

28Flew creeking o'er thy head, and had a charm

For thee, my gentle-hearted Charles, to whom

No sound is dissonant which tells of Life.

To a Friend

Who Had Declared His Intention of

Writing no More Poetry

Dear Charles! whilst yet thou wert a babe, I ween

That Genius plunged thee in that wizard fount

Hight Castalie: and (sureties of thy faith)

That Pity and Simplicity stood by,

And promised for thee, that thou shouldst renounce

The world's low cares and lying vanities,

Steadfast and rooted in the heavenly Muse,

And washed and sanctified to Poesy.

Yes – thou wert plunged, but with forgetful hand

Held, as by Thetis erst her warrior son:

And with those recreant unbaptized heels

Thou'rt flying from thy bounden minist'ries –

So sore it seems and burthensome a task

To weave unwithering flowers! But take thou heed:

For thou art vulnerable, wild-eyed boy,

And I have arrows29 mystically dipt,

Such as may stop thy speed. Is thy Burns dead?

And shall he die unwept, and sink to earth

»Without the meed of one melodious tear?«

Thy Burns, and Nature's own beloved bard,

Who to the »Illustrious30 of his native Land

So properly did look for patronage.«

Ghost of Mæcenas! hide thy blushing face!

They snatched him from the sickle and the plough –

To gauge ale-firkins.

Oh! for shame return!

On a bleak rock, midway the Aonian mount,

There stands a lone and melancholy tree,

Whose aged branches to the midnight blast

Make solemn music: pluck its darkest bough,

Ere yet the unwholesome night-dew be exhaled,

And weeping wreath it round thy Poet's tomb.

Then in the outskirts, where pollutions grow,

Pick the rank henbane and the dusky flowers

Of night-shade, or its red and tempting fruit,

These with stopped nostril and glove-guarded hand

Knit in nice intertexture, so to twine,

The illustrious brow of Scotch Nobility.

1796

To William Wordsworth

Composed on the Night After His Recitation of a Poem on the Growth of an Individual Mind

Friend of the wise! and teacher of the good!

Into my heart have I received that lay

More than historic, that prophetic lay

Wherein (high theme by thee first sung aright)

Of the foundations and the building up

Of a Human Spirit thou hast dared to tell

What may be told, to the understanding mind

Revealable; and what within the mind

By vital breathings secret as the soul

Of vernal growth, oft quickens in the heart

Thoughts all too deep for words! –

Theme hard as high!

Of smiles spontaneous, and mysterious fears,

(The first-born they of Reason and twin-birth)

Of tides obedient to external force,

And currents self-determined, as might seem,

Or by some inner power; of moments awful,

Now in thy inner life, and now abroad,

When power streamed from thee, and thy soul received

The light reflected, as a light bestowed –

Of fancies fair, and milder hours of youth,

Hyblean murmurs of poetic thought

Industrious in its joy, in vales and glens

Native or outland, lakes and famous hills!

Or on the lonely high-road, when the stars

Were rising; or by secret mountain-streams,

The guides and the companions of thy way!

Of more than Fancy, of the Social Sense

Distending wide, and man beloved as man,

Where France in all her towns lay vibrating

Like some becalmed bark beneath the burst

Of Heaven's immediate thunder, when no cloud

Is visible, or shadow on the main.

For thou wert there, thine own brows garlanded,

Amid the tremor of a realm aglow,

Amid a mighty nation jubilant,

When from the general heart of human kind

Hope sprang forth like a full-born Deity!

–– Of that dear Hope afflicted and struck down,

So summoned homeward, thenceforth calm and sure

From the dread watch-tower of man's absolute self,

With light unwaning on her eyes, to look

Far on – herself a glory to behold,

The Angel of the vision! Then (last strain)

Of Duty, chosen laws controlling choice,

Action and joy! – An Orphic song indeed,

A song divine of high and passionate thoughts

To their own music chanted!

O great Bard!

Ere yet that last strain dying awed the air,

With steadfast eye I viewed thee in the choir

Of ever-enduring men. The truly great

Have all one age, and from one visible space

Shed influence! They, both in power and act,

Are permanent, and Time is not with them,

Save as it worketh for them, they in it.

Nor less a sacred roll, than those of old,

And to be placed, as they, with gradual fame

Among the archives of mankind, thy work

Makes audible a linked lay of Truth,

Of Truth profound a sweet continuous lay,

Not learnt, but native, her own natural notes!

Ah! as I listened with a heart forlorn,

The pulses of my being beat anew:

And even as life returns upon the drowned,

Life's joy rekindling roused a throng of pains –

Keen pangs of Love, awakening as a babe

Turbulent, with an outcry in the heart;

And fears self-willed, that shunned the eye of hope:

And hope that scarce would know itself from fear;

Sense of past youth, and manhood come in vain,

And genius given, and knowledge won in vain;

And all which I had culled in wood-walks wild,

And all which patient toil had reared, and all,

Commune with thee had opened out – but flowers

Strewed on my corse, and borne upon my bier,

In the same coffin, for the self-same grave!

That way no more! and ill beseems it me,

Who came a welcomer in herald's guise,

Singing of glory, and futurity,

To wander back on such unhealthful road,

Plucking the poisons of self-harm! And ill

Such intertwine beseems triumphal wreaths

Strewed before thy advancing!

Nor do thou,

Sage Bard! impair the memory of that hour

Of thy communion with my nobler mind

By pity or grief, already felt too long!

Nor let my words import more blame than needs.

The tumult rose and ceased: for peace is nigh

Where wisdom's voice has found a listening heart.

Amid the howl of more than wintry storms,

The halcyon hears the voice of vernal hours

Already on the wing.

Eve following eve,

Dear tranquil time, when the sweet sense of Home

Is sweetest! moments for their own sake hailed

And more desired, more precious for thy song,

In silence listening, like a devout child,

My soul lay passive, by thy various strain

Driven as in surges now beneath the stars,

With momentary stars of my own birth,

Fair constellated foam,31 still darting off

Into the darkness; now a tranquil sea,

Outspread and bright, yet swelling to the moon.

And when – O Friend! my comforter and guide!

Strong in thyself, and powerful to give strength! –

Thy long sustained Song finally closed,

And thy deep voice had ceased – yet thou thyself

Wert still before my eyes, and round us both

That happy vision of beloved faces –

Scarce conscious, and yet conscious of its close

I sate, my being blended in one thought

(Thought was it? or aspiration? or resolve?)

Absorbed, yet hanging still upon the sound –

And when I rose, I found myself in prayer.

[1807]

The Nightingale;

A Conversation Poem. April, 1798

No cloud, no relique of the sunken day

Distinguishes the West, no long thin slip

Of sullen light, no obscure trembling hues.

Come, we will rest on this old mossy bridge!

You see the glimmer of the stream beneath,

But hear no murmuring: it flows silently,

O'er its soft bed of verdure. All is still,

A balmy night! and though the stars be dim,

Yet let us think upon the vernal showers

That gladden the green earth, and we shall find

A pleasure in the dimness of the stars.

And hark! the Nightingale begins its song,

»Most musical, most melancholy« bird!32

A melancholy bird! Oh! idle thought!

In nature there is nothing melancholy.

But some night-wandering man whose heart was pierced

With the remembrance of a grievous wrong,

Or slow distemper, or neglected love,

(And so, poor wretch! filled all things with himself,

And made all gentle sounds tell back the tale

Of his own sorrow) he, and such as he,

First named these notes a melancholy strain.

And many a poet echoes the conceit;

Poet who hath been building up the rhyme

When he had better far have stretched his limbs

Beside a brook in mossy forest-dell,

By sun or moon-light, to the influxes

Of shapes and sounds and shifting elements

Surrendering his whole spirit, of his song

And of his fame forgetful! so his fame

Should share in Nature's immortality,

A venerable thing! and so his song

Should make all Nature lovelier, and itself

Be loved like Nature! But 'twill not be so;

And youths and maidens most poetical,

Who lose the deepening twilights of the spring

In ball-rooms and hot theatres, they still

Full of meek sympathy must heave their sighs

O'er Philomela's pity-pleading strains.

My Friend, and thou, our Sister! we have learnt

A different lore: we may not thus profane

Nature's sweet voices, always full of love

And joyance! 'Tis the merry Nightingale

That crowds, and hurries, and precipitates

With fast thick warble his delicious notes,

As he were fearful that an April night

Would be too short for him to utter forth

His love-chant, and disburthen his full soul

Of all its music!

And I know a grove

Of large extent, hard by a castle huge,

Which the great lord inhabits not; and so

This grove is wild with tangling underwood,

And the trim walks are broken up, and grass,

Thin grass and king-cups grow within the paths.

But never elsewhere in one place I knew

So many nightingales; and far and near,

In wood and thicket, over the wide grove,

They answer and provoke each other's song,

With skirmish and capricious passagings,

And murmurs musical and swift jug jug,

And one low piping sound more sweet than all –

Stirring the air with such a harmony,

That should you close your eyes, you might almost

Forget it was not day! On moon-lit bushes,

Whose dewy leaflets are but half disclosed,

You may perchance behold them on the twigs,

Their bright, bright eyes, their eyes both bright and full,

Glistening, while many a glow-worm in the shade

Lights up her love-torch.

A most gentle Maid,

Who dwelleth in her hospitable home

Hard by the castle, and at latest eve

(Even like a Lady vowed and dedicate

To something more than Nature in the grove)

Glides through the pathways; she knows all their notes,

That gentle Maid! and oft a moment's space,

What time the moon was lost behind a cloud,

Hath heard a pause of silence; till the moon

Emerging, hath awakened earth and sky

With one sensation, and these wakeful birds

Have all burst forth in choral minstrelsy,

As if some sudden gale had swept at once

A hundred airy harps! And she hath watched

Many a nightingale perched giddily

On blossomy twig still swinging from the breeze,

And to that motion tune his wanton song

Like tipsy joy that reels with tossing head.

Farewell, O Warbler! till to-morrow eve,

And you, my friends! farewell, a short farewell!

We have been loitering long and pleasantly,

And now for our dear homes. – That strain again!

Full fain it would delay me! My dear babe,

Who, capable of no articulate sound,

Mars all things with his imitative lisp,

How he would place his hand beside his ear,

His little hand, the small forefinger up,

And bid us listen! And I deem it wise

To make him Nature's play-mate. He knows well

The evening-star; and once, when he awoke

In most distressful mood (some inward pain

Had made up that strange thing, an infant's dream. –)

I hurried with him to our orchard-plot,

And he beheld the moon, and, hushed at once,

Suspends his sobs, and laughs most silently,

While his fair eyes, that swam with undropped tears,

Did glitter in the yellow moon-beam! Well! –

It is a father's tale: But if that Heaven

Should give me life, his childhood shall grow up

Familiar with these songs, that with the night

He may associate joy. – Once more, farewell,

Sweet Nightingale! Once more, my friends! farewell.

Frost at Midnight

The frost performs its secret ministry,

Unhelped by any wind. The owlet's cry

Came loud – and hark, again! loud as before.

The inmates of my cottage, all at rest,

Have left me to that solitude, which suits

Abstruser musings: save that at my side

My cradled infant slumbers peacefully.

'Tis calm indeed! so calm, that it disturbs

And vexes meditation with its strange

And extreme silentness. Sea, hill, and wood,

This populous village! Sea, and hill, and wood,

With all the numberless goings on of life,

Inaudible as dreams! the thin blue flame

Lies on my low burnt fire, and quivers not;

Only that film, which fluttered on the grate,

Still flutters there, the sole unquiet thing.

Methinks, its motion in this hush of nature

Gives it dim sympathies with me who live,

Making it a companionable form,

Whose puny flaps and freaks the idling Spirit

By its own moods interprets, every where

Echo or mirror seeking of itself,

And makes a toy of Thought.

But O! how oft,

How oft, at school, with most believing mind,

Presageful, have I gazed upon the bars,

To watch that fluttering stranger! and as oft

With unclosed lids, already had I dreamt

Of my sweet birth-place, and the old church-tower,

Whose bells, the poor man's only music, rang

From morn to evening, all the hot Fair-day,

So sweetly, that they stirred and haunted me

With a wild pleasure, falling on mine ear

Most like articulate sounds of things to come!

So gazed I, till the soothing things I dreamt

Lulled me to sleep, and sleep prolonged my dreams!

And so I brooded all the following morn,

Awed by the stern preceptor's face, mine eye

Fixed with mock study on my swimming book:

Save if the door half opened, and I snatched

A hasty glance, and still my heart leaped up,

For still I hoped to see the stranger's face,

Townsman, or aunt, or sister more beloved,

My play-mate when we both were clothed alike!

Dear Babe, that sleepest cradled by my side,

Whose gentle breathings, heard in this deep calm,

Fill up the interspersed vacancies

And momentary pauses of the thought!

My babe so beautiful! it thrills my heart

With tender gladness, thus to look at thee,

And think that thou shalt learn far other lore

And in far other scenes! For I was reared

In the great city, pent 'mid cloisters dim,

And saw nought lovely but the sky and stars.

But thou, my babe! shalt wander like a breeze

By lakes and sandy shores, beneath the crags

Of ancient mountain, and beneath the clouds,

Which image in their bulk both lakes and shores

And mountain crags: so shalt thou see and hear

The lovely shapes and sounds intelligible

Of that eternal language, which thy God

Utters, who from eternity doth teach

Himself in all, and all things in himself.

Great universal Teacher! he shall mould

Thy spirit, and by giving make it ask.

Therefore all seasons shall be sweet to thee,

Whether the summer clothe the general earth

With greenness, or the redbreast sit and sing

Betwixt the tufts of snow on the bare branch

Of mossy apple-tree, while the nigh thatch

Smokes in the sun-thaw; whether the eve-drops fall

Heard only in the trances of the blast,

Or if the secret ministry of frost

Shall hang them up in silent icicles,

Quietly shining to the quiet Moon.

[February 1798]

The Three Graves

A Fragment of a Sexton's Tale

[The Author has published the following humble fragment, encouraged by the decisive recommendation of more than one of our most celebrated living Poets. The language was intended to be dramatic; that is suited to the narrator; and the metre corresponds to the homeliness of the diction. It is therefore presented as the fragment, not of a Poem, but of a common Ballad-tale. Whether this is sufficient to justify the adoption of such a style, in any metrical composition not professedly ludicrous, the Author is himself in some doubt. At all events, it is not presented as poetry, and it is in no way connected with the Author's judgment concerning poetic diction. Its merits, if any, are exclusively psychological. The story which must be supposed to have been narrated in the first and second parts is as follows.

Edward, a young farmer, meets at the house of Ellen her bosom-friend Mary, and commences an acquaintance, which ends in a mutual attachment. With her consent, and by the advice of their common friend Ellen, he announces his hopes and intentions to Mary's mother, a widow-woman bordering on her fortieth year, and from constant health, the possession of a competent property, and from having had no other children but Mary and another daughter (the father died in their infancy), retaining for the greater part, her personal attractions and comeliness of appearance; but a woman of low education and violent temper.