As along
410 The Bothnic coast, or southward of the Line,
Though hushed the winds and cloudless the high noon,
Yet if Leviathan, weary of ease,
In sports unwieldy toss his island-bulk,
Ocean behind him billows, and before
A storm of waves breaks foamy on the strand.
And hence, for times and seasons bloody and dark,
Short Peace shall skin the wounds of causeless War,
And War, his strained sinews knit anew,
Still violate the unfinished works of Peace.
420 But yonder look! for more demands thy view!’
He said: and straightway from the opposite Isle
A vapour sailed, as when a cloud, exhaled
From Egypt’s fields that steam hot pestilence,
Travels the sky for many a trackless league,
Till o’er some death-doomed land, distant in vain,
It broods incumbent. Forthwith from the plain,
Facing the Isle, a brighter cloud arose,
And steered its course which way the vapour went.
The Maiden paused, musing what this might mean.
430 But long time passed not, ere that brighter cloud
Returned more bright; along the plain it swept;
And soon from forth its bursting sides emerged
A dazzling form, broad-bosomed, bold of eye,
And wild her hair, save where with laurels bound.
Not more majestic stood the healing God,
When from his bow the arrow sped that slew
Huge Python. Shriek’d Ambition’s giant throng,
And with them hissed the locust-fiends that crawled
And glittered in Corruption’s slimy track.
440 Great was their wrath, for short they knew their reign;
And such commotion made they, and uproar,
As when the mad tornado bellows through
The guilty islands of the western main,
What time departing from their native shores,
Eboe, or Koromantyn’s plain of palms,
The infurate spirits of the murdered make
Fierce merriment, and vengeance ask of Heaven.
Warmed with new influence, the unwholesome plain
Sent up its foulest fogs to meet the morn:
450 The Sun that rose on Freedom, rose in blood!
‘Maiden beloved, and Delegate of Heaven!
(To her the tutelary Spirit said)
Soon shall the morning struggle into day,
The stormy morning into cloudless noon.
Much hast thou seen, nor all canst understand –
But this be thy best omen – Save thy Country!’
Thus saying, from the answering Maid he passed,
And with him disappeared the heavenly Vision.
‘Glory to Thee, Father of Earth and Heaven!
460 All conscious presence of the Universe!
Nature’s vast ever-acting energy!
In will, in deed, impulse of All to All!
Whether thy Love with unrefracted ray
Beam on the Prophet’s purgèd eye, or if
Diseasing realms the enthusiast, wild of thought,
Scatter new frenzies on the infected throng,
Thou both inspiring and predooming both,
Fit instruments and best, of perfect end:
Glory to Thee, Father of Earth and Heaven!’
470 And first a landscape rose
More wild and waste and desolate than where
The white bear, drifting on a field of ice,
Howls to her sundered cubs with piteous rage
And savage agony.
Religious Musings
A DESULTORY POEM, WRITTEN ON THE CHRISTMAS
EVE OF 1794
This is the time, when most divine to hear,
The voice of adoration rouses me,
As with a Cherub’s trump: and high upborne,
Yea, mingling with the choir, I seem to view
The vision of the heavenly multitude,
Who hymned the song of peace o’er Bethlehem’s fields!
Yet thou more bright than all the angel blaze,
That harbingered thy birth, Thou, Man of Woes!
Despised Galilean! For the great
10 Invisible (by symbols only seen)
With a peculiar and surpassing light
Shines from the visage of the oppressed good man,
When heedless of himself the scourged Saint
Mourns for the oppressor. Fair the vernal mead,
Fair the high grove, the sea, the sun, the stars;
True impress each of their creating Sire!
Yet nor high grove, nor many-coloured mead,
Nor the green Ocean with his thousand isles,
Nor the starred azure, nor the sovran sun,
20 E’er with such majesty of portraiture
Imaged the supreme beauty uncreate,
As thou, meek Saviour! at the fearful hour
When thy insulted anguish winged the prayer
Harped by Archangels, when they sing of mercy!
Which when the Almighty heard from forth his throne
Diviner light filled Heaven with ecstasy!
Heaven’s hymnings paused: and Hell her yawning mouth
Closed a brief moment.
Lovely was the death
Of Him whose life was Love! Holy with power
30 He on the thought-benighted Sceptic beamed
Manifest Godhead, melting into day
What floating mists of dark idolatry
Broke and misshaped the omnipresent Sire:
And first by Fear uncharmed the drowsèd Soul.
Till of its nobler nature it ’gan feel
Dim recollections; and thence soared to Hope,
Strong to believe whate’er of mystic good
The Eternal dooms for his immortal sons.
From Hope and firmer Faith to perfect Love
40 Attracted and absorbed: and centred there
God only to behold, and know, and feel,
Till by exclusive consciousness of God
All self-annihilated it shall make
God its identity: God all in all!
We and our Father one!
And best are they,
Who in this fleshly World, the elect of Heaven,
Their strong eye darting through the deeds of men,
Adore with steadfast unpresuming gaze
Him Nature’s essence, mind, and energy!
50 And gazing, trembling, patiently ascend
Treading beneath their feet all visible things
As steps, that upward to their Father’s throne
Lead gradual – else nor glorified nor loved.
They nor contempt embosom nor revenge:
For they dare know of what may seem deform
The Supreme Fair sole operant: in whose sight
All things are pure, his strong controlling Love
Alike from all educing perfect good.
Their’s too celestial courage, inly armed –
60 Dwarfing Earth’s giant brood, what time they muse
On their great Father, great beyond compare!
And marching onwards view high o’er their heads
His waving banners of Omnipotence.
Who the Creator love, created might
Dread not: within their tents no terrors walk.
For they are holy things before the Lord
Aye unprofaned, though Earth should league with Hell;
God’s altar grasping with an eager hand
Fear, the wild-visaged, pale, eye-starting wretch,
70 Sure-refuged hears his hot pursuing fiends
Yell at vain distance. Soon refreshed from Heaven
He calms the throb and tempest of his heart.
His countenance settles; a soft solemn bliss
Swims in his eye – his swimming eye upraised:
And Faith’s whole armour glitters on his limbs!
And thus transfigured with a dreadless awe,
A solemn hush of soul, meek he beholds
All things of terrible seeming: yea, unmoved
Views e’en the immitigable ministers
80 That shower down vengeance on these latter days.
For kindling with intenser Deity
From the celestial Mercy-seat they come,
And at the renovating wells of Love
Have filled their vials with salutary wrath,
To sickly Nature more medicinal
Than what soft balm the weeping good man pours
Into the lone despoiled traveller’s wounds!
Thus from the Elect, regenerate through faith,
Pass the dark Passions and what thirsty Cares
90 Drink up the Spirit, and the dim regards
Self-centre. Lo they vanish! or acquire
New names, new features – by supernal grace
Enrobed with Light, and naturalized in Heaven.
As when a shepherd on a vernal morn
Through some thick fog creeps timorous with slow foot,
Darkling he fixes on the immediate road
His downward eye: all else of fairest kind
Hid or deformed. But lo! the bursting Sun!
Touched by the enchantment of that sudden beam
100 Straight the black vapour melteth, and in globes
Of dewy glitter gems each plant and tree;
On every leaf, on every blade it hangs!
Dance glad the new-born intermingling rays,
And wide around the landscape streams with glory!
There is one Mind, one omnipresent Mind,
Omnific. His most holy name is Love.
Truth of subliming import! with the which
Who feeds and saturates his constant soul,
He from his small particular orbit flies
110 With blest outstarting! From Himself he flies,
Stands in the sun, and with no partial gaze
Views all creation; and he loves it all,
And blesses it, and calls it very good!
This is indeed to dwell with the most High!
Cherubs and rapture-trembling Seraphim
Can press no nearer to the Almighty’s Throne.
But that we roam unconscious, or with hearts
Unfeeling of our universal Sire,
And that in his vast family no Cain
120 Injures uninjured (in her best-aimed blow
Victorious murder a blind suicide)
Haply for this some younger Angel now
Looks down on human nature: and, behold!
A sea of blood bestrewed with wrecks, where mad
Embattling interests on each other rush
With unhelmed rage!
’Tis the sublime of man,
Our noontide majesty, to know ourselves
Parts and proportions of one wondrous whole!
This fraternizes man, this constitutes
130 Our charities and bearings. But ’tis God
Diffused through all, that doth make all one whole;
This the worst superstition, him except
Aught to desire, Supreme Reality!
The plenitude and permanence of bliss!
O Fiends of Superstition! not that oft
The erring priest hath stained with brother’s blood
Your grisly idols, not for this may wrath
Thunder against you from the Holy One!
But o’er some plain that steameth to the sun,
140 Peopled with death; or where more hideous Trade
Loud-laughing packs his bales of human anguish;
I will raise up a mourning, O ye Fiends!
And curse your spells, that film the eye of Faith,
Hiding the present God; whose presence lost,
The moral world’s cohesion, we become
An anarchy of Spirits! Toy-bewitched,
Made blind by lusts, disherited of soul,
No common centre Man, no common sire
Knoweth! A sordid solitary thing,
150 Mid countless brethren with a lonely heart
Through courts and cities the smooth savage roams
Feeling himself, his own low self the whole;
When he by sacred sympathy might make
The whole one self! self, that no alien knows!
Self, far diffused as Fancy’s wing can travel!
Self, spreading still! Oblivious of its own,
Yet all of all possessing! This is Faith!
This the Messiah’s destined victory!
But first offences needs must come! Even now
160 (Black Hell laughs horrible – to hear the scoff!)
Thee to defend, meek Galilean! Thee
And thy mild laws of Love unutterable,
Mistrust and enmity have burst the bands
Of social peace; and listening treachery lurks
With pious fraud to snare a brother’s life;
And childless widows o’er the groaning land
Wail numberless; and orphans weep for bread!
Thee to defend, dear Saviour of mankind!
Thee, Lamb of God! Thee, blameless Prince of peace!
170 From all sides rush the thirsty brood of War –
Austria, and that foul Woman of the North,
The lustful murderess of her wedded lord!
And he, connatural mind! whom (in their songs
So bards of elder time had haply feigned)
Some Fury fondled in her hate to man,
Bidding her serpent hair in mazy surge
Lick his young face, and at his mouth imbreathe
Horrible sympathy! And leagued with these
Each petty German princeling, nursed in gore!
180 Soul-hardened barterers of human blood!
Death’s prime slave-merchants! Scorpion-whips of Fate!
Nor least in savagery of holy zeal,
Apt for the yoke, the race degenerate,
Whom Britain erst had blushed to call her sons!
Thee to defend the Moloch priest prefers
The prayer of hate, and bellows to the herd
That Deity, accomplice Deity
In the fierce jealousy of wakened wrath,
Will go forth with our armies and our fleets
190 To scatter the red ruin on their foes!
O blasphemy! to mingle fiendish deeds
With blessedness!
Lord of unsleeping Love,
From everlasting Thou! We shall not die.
These, even these, in mercy didst thou form,
Teachers of Good through Evil, by brief wrong
Making Truth lovely, and her future might
Magnetic o’er the fixed untrembling heart.
In the primeval age a dateless while
The vacant Shepherd wandered with his flock,
200 Pitching his tent where’er the green grass waved.
But soon Imagination conjured up
A host of new desires: with busy aim,
Each for himself, Earth’s eager children toiled.
So Property began, twy-streaming fount,
Whence Vice and Virtue flow, honey and gall.
Hence the soft couch, and many-coloured robe,
The timbrel, and arch’d dome and costly feast,
With all the inventive arts, that nursed the soul
To forms of beauty, and by sensual wants
210 Unsensualized the mind, which in the means
Learnt to forget the grossness of the end,
Best pleasured with its own activity.
And hence Disease that withers manhood’s arm,
The daggered Envy, spirit-quenching Want,
Warriors, and Lords, and Priests – all the sore ills
That vex and desolate our mortal life.
Wide-wasting ills! yet each the immediate source
Of mightier good. Their keen necessities
To ceaseless action goading human thought
220 Have made Earth’s reasoning animal her Lord;
And the pale-featured Sage’s trembling hand
Strong as a host of armèd Deities,
Such as the blind Ionian fabled erst.
From avarice thus, from luxury and war
Sprang heavenly science; and from science freedom.
O’er wakened realms Philosophers and Bards
Spread in concentric circles: they whose souls,
Conscious of their high dignities from God,
Brook not wealth’s rivalry! and they who long
230 Enamoured with the charms of order hate
The unseemly disproportion: and whoe’er
Turn with mild sorrow from the victor’s car
And the low puppetry of thrones, to muse
On that blest triumph, when the patriot Sage
Called the red lightnings from the o’er-rushing cloud
And dashed the beauteous terrors on the earth
Smiling majestic. Such a phalanx ne’er
Measured firm paces to the calming sound
Of Spartan flute! These on the fated day,
240 When, stung to rage by pity, eloquent men
Have roused with pealing voice the unnumbered tribes
That toil and groan and bleed, hungry and blind –
These hushed awhile with patient eye serene
Shall watch the mad careering of the storm;
Then o’er the wild and wavy chaos rush
And tame the outrageous mass, with plastic might
Moulding confusion to such perfect forms,
As erst were wont – bright visions of the day! –
To float before them, when, the summer noon,
250 Beneath some arch’d romantic rock reclined
They felt the sea breeze lift their youthful locks;
Or in the month of blossoms, at mild eve,
Wandering with desultory feet inhaled
The wafted perfumes, and the flocks and woods
And many-tinted streams and setting sun
With all his gorgeous company of clouds
Ecstatic gazed! then homeward as they strayed
Cast the sad eye to earth, and inly mused
Why there was misery in a world so fair.
260 Ah! far removed from all that glads the sense,
From all that softens or ennobles Man,
The wretched Many! Bent beneath their loads
They gape at pageant Power, nor recognise
Their cots’ transmuted plunder! From the tree
Of Knowledge, ere the vernal sap had risen
Rudely disbranchèd! Blest Society!
Fitliest depictured by some sun-scorched waste,
Where oft majestic through the tainted noon
The Simoom sails, before whose purple pomp
270 Who falls not prostrate dies! And where by night,
Fast by each precious fountain on green herbs
The lion couches; or hyæna dips
Deep in the lucid stream his bloody jaws;
Or serpent plants his vast moon-glittering bulk,
Caught in whose monstrous twine Behemoth yells,
His bones loud-crashing!
O ye numberless,
Whom foul oppression’s ruffian gluttony
Drives from life’s plenteous feast! O thou poor wretch
Who nursed in darkness and made wild by want,
280 Roamest for prey, yea thy unnatural hand
Dost lift to deeds of blood! O pale-eyed form,
The victim of seduction, doomed to know
Polluted nights and days of blasphemy;
Who in loathed orgies with lewd wassailers
Must gaily laugh, while thy remembered home
Gnaws like a viper at thy secret heart!
O aged women! ye who weekly catch
The morsel tossed by law-forced charity,
And die so slowly, that none call it murder!
290 O loathly suppliants! ye, that unreceived
Totter heart-broken from the closing gates
Of the full Lazar-house: or, gazing, stand
Sick with despair! O ye to glory’s field
Forced or ensnared, who, as ye gasp in death,
Bleed with new wounds beneath the vulture’s beak!
O thou poor widow, who in dreams dost view
Thy husband’s mangled corse, and from short doze
Start’st with a shriek; or in thy half-thatched cot
Waked by the wintry night-storm, wet and cold
300 Cow’rst o’er thy screaming baby! Rest awhile
Children of wretchedness! More groans must rise,
More blood must stream, or ere your wrongs be full.
Yet is the day of retribution nigh:
The Lamb of God hath opened the fifth seal:
And upward rush on swiftest wing of fire
The innumerable multitude of Wrongs
By man on man inflicted! Rest awhile,
Children of wretchedness! The hour is nigh;
And lo! the great, the rich, the mighty Men,
310 The Kings and the chief Captains of the World,
With all that fixed on high like stars of Heaven
Shot baleful influence, shall be cast to earth,
Vile and down-trodden, as the untimely fruit
Shook from the fig-tree by a sudden storm.
Even now the storm begins: each gentle name,
Faith and meek Piety, with fearful joy
Tremble far-off – for lo! the giant Frenzy
Uprooting empires with his whirlwind arm
Mocketh high Heaven; burst hideous from the cell
320 Where the old Hag, unconquerable, huge,
Creation’s eyeless drudge, black ruin, sits
Nursing the impatient earthquake.
O return!
Pure Faith! meek Piety! The abhorred Form
Whose scarlet robe was stiff with earthly pomp,
Who drank iniquity in cups of gold,
Whose names were many and all blasphemous,
Hath met the horrible judgment! Whence that cry?
The mighty army of foul Spirits shrieked
Disherited of earth! For she hath fallen
330 On whose black front was written Mystery;
She that reeled heavily, whose wine was blood;
She that worked whoredom with the Demon Power,
And from the dark embrace all evil things
Brought forth and nurtured: mitred atheism!
And patient Folly who on bended knee
Gives back the steel that stabbed him; and pale Fear
Haunted by ghastlier shapings than surround
Moon-blasted Madness when he yells at midnight!
Return pure Faith! return meek Piety!
340 The kingdoms of the world are yours: each heart
Self-governed, the vast family of Love
Raised from the common earth by common toil
Enjoy the equal produce. Such delights
As float to earth, permitted visitants!
When in some hour of solemn jubilee
The massy gates of Paradise are thrown
Wide open, and forth come in fragments wild
Sweet echoes of unearthly melodies,
And odours snatched from beds of amaranth,
350 And they, that from the crystal river of life
Spring up on freshened wing, ambrosial gales!
The favoured good man in his lonely walk
Perceives them, and his silent spirit drinks
Strange bliss which he shall recognise in heaven.
And such delights, such strange beatitudes
Seize on my young anticipating heart
When that blest future rushes on my view!
For in his own and in his Father’s might
The Saviour comes! While as the Thousand Years
360 Lead up their mystic dance, the Desert shouts!
Old Ocean claps his hands! The mighty Dead
Rise to new life, whoe’er from earliest time
With conscious zeal had urged Love’s wondrous plan,
Coadjutors of God. To Milton’s trump
The high groves of the renovated Earth
Unbosom their glad echoes: inly hushed,
Adoring Newton his serener eye
Raises to heaven: and he of mortal kind
Wisest, he first who marked the ideal tribes
370 Up the fine fibres through the sentient brain.
Lo! Priestley there, patriot, and saint, and sage,
Him, full of years, from his loved native land
Statesmen blood-stained and priests idolatrous
By dark lies maddening the blind multitude
Drove with vain hate. Calm, pitying he retired,
And mused expectant on these promised years.
O Years! the blest pre-eminence of Saints!
Ye sweep athwart my gaze, so heavenly bright,
The wings that veil the adoring Seraphs’ eyes,
380 What time they bend before the Jasper Throne
Reflect no lovelier hues! Yet ye depart,
And all beyond is darkness! Heights most strange,
Whence Fancy falls, fluttering her idle wing.
For who of woman born may paint the hour,
When seized in his mid course, the Sun shall wane
Making noon ghastly! Who of woman born
May image in the workings of his thought,
How the black-visaged, red-eyed Fiend outstretched
Beneath the unsteady feet of Nature groans,
390 In feverous slumbers – destined then to wake,
When fiery whirlwinds thunder his dread name
And Angels shout, Destruction! How his arm
The last great Spirit lifting high in air
Shall swear by Him, the ever-living One,
Time is no more!
Believe thou, O my soul,
Life is a vision shadowy of Truth;
And vice, and anguish, and the wormy grave,
Shapes of a dream! The veiling clouds retire,
And lo! the Throne of the redeeming God
400 Forth flashing unimaginable day
Wraps in one blaze earth, heaven, and deepest hell.
Contemplant Spirits! ye that hover o’er
With untired gaze the immeasurable fount
Ebullient with creative Deity!
And ye of plastic power, that interfused
Roll through the grosser and material mass
In organizing surge! Holies of God!
(And what if Monads of the infinite mind)
I haply journeying my immortal course
410 Shall sometime join your mystic choir. Till then
I discipline my young and novice thought
In ministeries of heart-stirring song,
And aye on Meditation’s heaven-ward wing
Soaring aloft I breathe the empyreal air
Of Love, omnific, omnipresent Love,
Whose day-spring rises glorious in my soul
As the great Sun, when he his influence
Sheds on the frost-bound waters – The glad stream
Flows to the ray and warbles as it flows.
From an Unpublished Poem
The early Year’s fast-flying Vapours stray
In shadowing Trains across the orb of Day:
And we, poor Insects of a few short Hours,
Deem it a world of Gloom.
Were it not better hope a nobler doom,
Proud to believe that with more active powers
On rapid many-coloured Wing
We Thro’ one bright perpetual Spring
Shall hover round the Fruits and Flowers
10 Screen’d by those Clouds and cherish’d by those Showers!
On Observing a Blossom on the
First of February, 1796
Sweet Flower! that peeping from thy russet stem
Unfoldest timidly, (for in strange sort
This dark, frieze-coated, hoarse, teeth-chattering Month
Hath borrowed Zephyr’s voice, and gazed upon thee
With blue voluptuous eye) alas, poor Flower!
These are but flatteries of the faithless year.
Perchance, escaped its unknown polar cave,
E’en now the keen North-East is on its way.
Flower that must perish! shall I liken thee
10 To some sweet girl of too too rapid growth
Nipped by consumption mid untimely charms?
Or to Bristowa’s bard, the wondrous boy!
An amaranth, which Earth scarce seemed to own,
Till disappointment came, and pelting wrong
Beat it to Earth? or with indignant grief
Shall I compare thee to poor Poland’s hope,
Bright flower of Hope killed in the opening bud?
Farewell, sweet blossom! better fate be thine
And mock my boding! Dim similitudes
20 Weaving in moral strains, I’ve stolen one hour
From anxious self, Life’s cruel task-master!
And the warm wooings of this sunny day
Tremble along my frame, and harmonize
The attempered organ, that even saddest thoughts
Mix with some sweet sensations, like harsh tunes
Played deftly on a soft-toned instrument.
Verses
ADDRESSED TO J. HORNE TOOKE AND THE COMPANY
WHO MET ON JUNE 28TH, 1796, TO CELEBRATE HIS POLL
AT THE WESTMINSTER ELECTION
Britons! when last ye met, with distant streak
So faintly promis’d the pale Dawn to break;
So dim it stain’d the precincts of the Sky
E’en Expectation gaz’d with doubtful Eye.
But now such fair Varieties of Light
O’ertake the heavy-sailing Clouds of Night;
Th’ Horizon kindles with so rich a red,
That, Tho’ the Sun still hides his glorious head,
Th’ impatient Matin-bird assur’d of Day
10 Leaves his low nest to meet its earliest ray;
Loud the sweet song of Gratulation sings,
And high in air claps his rejoicing wings!
Patriot and Sage! whose breeze-like Spirit first
The lazy mists of Pedantry dispers’d
(Mists in which Superstition’s pigmy band
Seem’d Giant Forms, the Genii of the Land!),
Thy struggles soon shall wak’ning Britain bless,
And Truth and Freedom hail thy wish’d success.
Yes, Tooke! Tho’ foul Corruption’s wolfish throng
20 Outmalice Calumny’s imposthum’d Tongue,
Thy Country’s noblest and determin’d Choice,
Soon shalt thou thrill the Senate
with thy voice; With gradual Dawn bid Error’s phantoms flit,
Or wither with the lightning flash of Wit;
Or with sublimer mien and tones more deep,
Charm sworded Justice from mysterious Sleep,
‘By violated Freedom’s loud Lament,
Her Lamps extinguish’d and her Temple rent;
By the forc’d tears her captive Martyrs shed;
30 By each pale Orphan’s feeble cry for bread;
By ravag’d Belgium’s corse-impeded Flood,
And Vendée steaming still with brothers’ blood!’
And if amid the strong impassion’d Tale
Thy Tongue should falter and thy Lips turn pale;
If transient Darkness film thy aweful Eye,
And thy tir’d Bosom struggle with a sigh:
Science and Freedom shall demand to hear
Who practis’d on a Life so doubly dear;
Infus’d the unwholesome anguish drop by drop,
40 Pois’ning the sacred stream they could not stop!
Shall bid thee with recover’d strength relate
How dark and deadly is a Coward’s Hate:
What seeds of Death by wan Confinement sown,
When prison-echoes mock’d Disease’s groan!
Shall bid th’ indignant Father flash dismay,
And drag the unnatural Villain into Day
Who to the sports of his flesh’d Ruffians left
Two lovely Mourners of their Sire bereft!
’Twas wrong, like this, which Rome’s first Consul bore –
50 So by th’ insulted Female’s name he swore
Ruin (and rais’d her reeking dagger high)
Not to the Tyrants but the Tyranny!
On a Late Connubial Rupture in High Life
I sigh, fair injur’d Stranger! for thy fate –
But what shall Signs avail thee? Thy poor Heart
Mid all the pomp and circumstance of State
Shivers in nakedness! Unbidden start
Sad Recollections of Hope’s garish dream
That shap’d a seraph form, and nam’d it Love –
Its hues gay-varying, as the Orient Beam
Varies the neck of Cytherea’s Dove.
To one soft accent of domestic Joy,
10 Poor are the Shouts that shake the high-arch’d Dome:
The Plaudits that thy public path annoy,
Alas! they tell thee – Thou’rt a Wretch at home!
Then o! retire and weep! Their very Woes
Solace the guiltless. Drop the pearly Flood
On thy sweet Infant, as the full-blown Rose
Surcharg’d with dew bends o’er its neighb’ring BUD!
And ah! that Truth some holy spell could lend
To lure thy Wanderer from the syren’s power:
Then bid your Souls inseparably blend,
20 Like two bright Dew-drops bosom’d in a flower!
Sonnet
WRITTEN ON RECEIVING LETTERS INFORMING ME OF
THE BIRTH OF A SON, I BEING AT BIRMINGHAM
When they did greet me Father, sudden Awe
Weigh’d down my spirit! I retir’d and knelt
Seeking the throne of grace, but inly felt
No heavenly visitation upwards draw
My feeble mind, nor cheering ray impart.
Ah me! before the eternal Sire I brought
Th’ unquiet Silence of confusèd Thought
And shapeless feelings: my o’erwhelmèd Heart
Trembled: and vacant tears stream’d down my face.
10 And now once more, O Lord! to thee I bend,
Lover of Souls! and groan for future grace,
That, ere my Babe youth’s perilous maze have trod,
Thy overshadowing Spirit may descend
And he be born again, a child of God!
Sonnet
COMPOSED ON A JOURNEY HOMEWARD; THE AUTHOR
HAVING RECEIVED INTELLIGENCE OF THE BIRTH OF A SON, SEPT. 20TH, 1796
Oft o’er my brain does that strange fancy roll
Which makes the present (while the flash doth last)
Seem a mere semblance of some unknown past,
Mixed with such feelings, as perplex the soul
Self-questioned in her sleep; and some have said
We lived, ere yet this robe of flesh we wore.
O my sweet baby! when I reach my door,
If heavy looks should tell me thou art dead
(As sometimes, through excess of hope, I fear),
10 I think that I should struggle to believe
Thou wert a spirit, to this nether sphere
Sentenced for some more venial crime to grieve;
Did’st scream, then spring to meet Heaven’s quick reprieve,
While we wept idly o’er thy little bier!
Sonnet
TO A FRIEND WHO ASKED, HOW I FELT WHEN THE NURSE
FIRST PRESENTED MY INFANT TO ME
Charles! my slow heart was only sad, when first
I scanned that face of feeble infancy:
For dimly on my thoughtful spirit burst
All I had been, and all my child might be!
But when I saw it on its mother’s arm,
And hanging at her bosom (she the while
Bent o’er its features with a tearful smile)
Then I was thrilled and melted, and most warm
Impressed a father’s kiss: and all beguiled
10 Of dark remembrance and presageful fear,
I seemed to see an angel-form appear –
’Twas even thine, beloved woman mild!
So for the mother’s sake the child was dear,
And dearer was the mother for the child.
Sonnet
[TO CHARLES LLOYD]
The piteous sobs that choke the Virgin’s breath
For him, the fair betrothèd Youth, who lies
Cold in the narrow dwelling, or the cries
With which a Mother wails her darling’s death,
These from our nature’s common impulse spring,
Unblam’d, unprais’d; but o’er the pilèd earth
Which hides the sheeted corse of grey-hair’d Worth,
If droops the soaring Youth with slacken’d wing;
If he recall in saddest minstrelsy
10 Each tenderness bestow’d, each truth imprest,
Such grief is Reason, Virtue, Piety!
And from the Almighty Father shall descend
Comforts on his late evening, whose young breast
Mourns with no transient love the Agèd Friend.
To a Young Friend
ON HIS PROPOSING TO DOMESTICATE WITH THE AUTHOR.
COMPOSED IN 1796
A mount, not wearisome and bare and steep,
But a green mountain variously up-piled,
Where o’er the jutting rocks soft mosses creep,
Or coloured lichens with slow oosing weep;
Where cypress and the darker yew start wild;
And ’mid the summer torrent’s gentle dash
Dance brightened the red clusters of the ash;
Beneath whose boughs, by those still sounds beguiled,
Calm Pensiveness might muse herself to sleep;
10 Till haply startled by some fleecy dam,
That rustling on the bushy cliff above,
With melancholy bleat of anxious love,
Made meek enquiry for her wandering lamb:
Such a green mountain ’twere most sweet to climb,
E’en while the bosom ached with loneliness –
How more than sweet, if some dear friend should bless
The adventurous toil, and up the path sublime
Now lead, now follow: the glad landscape round,
Wide and more wide, increasing without bound!
20 O then ’twere loveliest sympathy, to mark
The berries of the half-uprooted ash
Dripping and bright; and list the torrent’s dash, –
Beneath the cypress, or the yew more dark,
Seated at ease, on some smooth mossy rock;
In social silence now, and now to unlock
The treasured heart; arm linked in friendly arm,
Save if the one, his muse’s witching charm
Muttering brow-bent, at unwatched distance lag;
Till high o’er head his beckoning friend appears,
30 And from the forehead of the topmost crag
Shouts eagerly: for haply there uprears
That shadowing pine its old romantic limbs,
Which latest shall detain the enamoured sight
Seen from below, when eve the valley dims,
Tinged yellow with the rich departing light;
And haply, basoned in some unsunned cleft,
A beauteous spring, the rock’s collected tears,
Sleeps sheltered there, scarce wrinkled by the gale!
Together thus, the world’s vain turmoil left,
40 Stretched on the crag, and shadowed by the pine,
And bending o’er the clear delicious fount,
Ah! dearest youth! it were a lot divine
To cheat our noons in moralizing mood,
While west-winds fanned our temples toil-bedewed:
Then downwards slope, oft pausing, from the mount,
To some lone mansion, in some woody dale,
Where smiling with blue eye, domestic bliss
Gives this the husband’s, that the brother’s kiss!
Thus rudely versed in allegoric lore,
50 The Hill of Knowledge I essayed to trace;
That verdurous hill with many a resting-place,
And many a stream, whose warbling waters pour
To glad and fertilize the subject plains;
That hill with secret springs, and nooks untrod,
And many a fancy-blest and holy sod
Where Inspiration, his diviner strains
Low murmuring, lay; and starting from the rocks
Stiff evergreens, whose spreading foliage mocks
Want’s barren soil, and the bleak frosts of age,
60 And bigotry’s mad fire-invoking rage!
O meek retiring spirit! we will climb,
Cheering and cheered, this lovely hill sublime;
And from the stirring world up-lifted high
(Whose noises, faintly wafted on the wind,
To quiet musings shall attune the mind,
And oft the melancholy theme supply)
There, while the prospect through the gazing eye
Pours all its healthful greenness on the soul,
We’ll smile at wealth, and learn to smile at fame,
70 Our hopes, our knowledge, and our joys the same,
As neighbouring fountains image each the whole:
Then when the mind hath drunk its fill of truth
We’ll discipline the heart to pure delight,
Rekindling sober joy’s domestic flame.
They whom I love shall love thee, honoured youth!
Now may Heaven realize this vision bright!
Addressed to a Young Man of Fortune
WHO ABANDONED HIMSELF TO AN INDOLENT AND
CAUSELESS MELANCHOLY
Hence that fantastic wantonness of woe,
O Youth to partial Fortune vainly dear!
To plundered want’s half-sheltered hovel go,
Go, and some hunger-bitten infant hear
Moan haply in a dying mother’s ear:
Or when the cold and dismal fog-damps brood
O’er the rank church-yard with sear elm-leaves strewed,
Pace round some widow’s grave, whose dearer part
Was slaughtered, where o’er his uncoffined limbs
10 The flocking flesh-birds screamed! Then, while thy heart
Groans, and thine eye a fiercer sorrow dims,
Know (and the truth shall kindle thy young mind)
What nature makes thee mourn, she bids thee heal!
O abject! if, to sickly dreams resigned,
All effortless thou leave life’s common-weal
A prey to tyrants, murderers of mankind.
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
10 Held, as by Thetis erst her warrior son:
And with those recreant unbaptizèd 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 arrows 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?’
20 Thy Burns, and Nature’s own belovèd bard,
Who to the ‘Illustrious 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 agèd branches to the midnight blast
Make solemn music: pluck its darkest bough,
30 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.
Ode to the Departing Year
ÆSCHYL. Agam. 1225
ARGUMENT
The Ode commences with an address to the Divine Providence, that regulates into one vast harmony all the events of time, however calamitous some of them may appear to mortals. The second Strophe calls on men to suspend their private joys and sorrows, and devote them for a while to the cause of human nature in general. The first Epode speaks of the Empress of Russia, who died of an apoplexy on the 17th of November, 1796; having just concluded a subsidiary treaty with the Kings combined against France. The first and second Antistrophe describe the Image of the Departing Year, &c. as in a vision. The second Epode prophesies, in anguish of spirit, the downfall of this country.
I
Spirit who sweepest the wild harp of Time!
It is most hard, with an untroubled ear
Thy dark inwoven harmonies to hear!
Yet, mine eye fixed on Heaven’s unchanging clime,
Long had I listened, free from mortal fear,
With inward stillness, and a bowèd mind;
When lo! its folds far waving on the wind,
I saw the train of the departing Year!
Starting from my silent sadness
10 Then with no unholy madness
Ere yet the entered cloud foreclosed my sight,
I raised the impetuous song, and solemnized his flight.
II
Hither, from the recent tomb,
From the prison’s direr gloom,
From distemper’s midnight anguish;
And thence, where poverty doth waste and languish!
Or where, his two bright torches blending,
Love illumines manhood’s maze;
Or where o’er cradled infants bending
20 Hope has fixed her wishful gaze;
Hither, in perplexèd dance,
Ye Woes! ye young-eyed Joys! advance!
By Time’s wild harp, and by the hand
Whose indefatigable sweep
Raises its fateful strings from sleep,
I bid you haste, a mixed tumultuous band!
From every private bower,
And each domestic hearth,
Haste for one solemn hour;
30 And with a loud and yet a louder voice,
O’er Nature struggling in portentous birth,
Weep and rejoice!
Still echoes the dread name that o’er the earth
Let slip the storm, and woke the brood of Hell:
And now advance in saintly jubilee
Justice and Truth! They too have heard thy spell,
They too obey thy name, divinest Liberty!
III
I marked Ambition in his war-array!
I heard the mailèd Monarch’s troublous cry –
40 ‘Ah! wherefore does the Northern Conqueress stay!
Groans not her chariot on its onward way?’
Fly, mailèd Monarch, fly!
Stunned by Death’s twice mortal mace,
No more on murder’s lurid face
The insatiate hag shall gloat with drunken eye!
Manes of the unnumbered slain!
Ye that gasped on Warsaw’s plain!
Ye that erst at Ismail’s tower,
When human ruin choked the streams,
50 Fell in conquest’s glutted hour,
Mid women’s shrieks and infants’ screams!
Spirits of the uncoffined slain,
Sudden blasts of triumph swelling,
Oft, at night, in misty train,
Rush around her narrow dwelling!
The exterminating fiend is fled –
(Foul her life, and dark her doom)
Mighty armies of the dead
Dance, like death-fires, round her tomb!
60 Then with prophetic song relate,
Each some tyrant-murderer’s fate!
IV
Departing Year! ’twas on no earthly shore
My soul beheld thy vision! Where alone,
Voiceless and stern, before the cloudy throne,
Aye Memory sits: thy robe inscribed with gore,
With many an unimaginable groan
Thou storied’st thy sad hours! Silence ensued,
Deep silence o’er the ethereal multitude,
Whose locks with wreaths, whose wreaths with glories shone.
70 Then, his eye wild ardours glancing,
From the choirèd gods advancing,
The Spirit of the Earth made reverence meet,
And stood up, beautiful, before the cloudy seat.
V
Throughout the blissful throng,
Hushed were harp and song:
Till wheeling round the throne the Lampads seven,
(The mystic Words of Heaven)
Permissive signal make:
The fervent Spirit bowed, then spread his wings and spake!
80 ‘Thou in stormy blackness throning
Love and uncreated Light,
By the Earth’s unsolaced groaning,
Seize thy terrors, Arm of might!
By peace with proffered insult scared,
Masked hate and envying scorn!
By years of havoc yet unborn!
And hunger’s bosom to the frost-winds bared!
But chief by Afric’s wrongs,
Strange, horrible, and foul!
90 By what deep guilt belongs
To the deaf Synod, “full of gifts and lies!”
By wealth’s insensate laugh! by torture’s howl!
Avenger, rise!
For ever shall the thankless Island scowl,
Her quiver full, and with unbroken bow?
Speak! from thy storm-black Heaven O speak aloud!
And on the darkling foe
Open thine eye of fire from some uncertain cloud!
O dart the flash! O rise and deal the blow!
100 The Past to thee, to thee the Future cries!
Hark! how wide Nature joins her groans below!
Rise, God of Nature! rise.’
VI
The voice had ceased, the vision fled;
Yet still I gasped and reeled with dread.
And ever, when the dream of night
Renews the phantom to my sight,
Cold sweat-drops gather on my limbs;
My ears throb hot; my eye-balls start;
My brain with horrid tumult swims;
110 Wild is the tempest of my heart;
And my thick and struggling breath
Imitates the toil of death!
No stranger agony confounds
The soldier on the war-field spread,
When all foredone with toil and wounds,
Death-like he dozes among heaps of dead!
(The strife is o’er, the day-light fled,
And the night-wind clamours hoarse!
See! the starting wretch’s head
120 Lies pillowed on a brother’s corse!)
VII
Not yet enslaved, not wholly vile,
O Albion! O my mother Isle!
Thy valleys, fair as Eden’s bowers,
Glitter green with sunny showers;
Thy grassy uplands’ gentle swells,
Echo to the bleat of flocks;
(Those grassy hills, those glittering dells
Proudly ramparted with rocks)
And Ocean mid his uproar wild
130 Speaks safety to his island-child,
Hence for many a fearless age
Has social Quiet loved thy shore;
Nor ever proud invader’s rage
Or sacked thy towers, or stained thy fields with gore.
VIII
Abandoned of Heaven! mad avarice thy guide,
At cowardly distance, yet kindling with pride –
Mid thy herds and thy corn-fields secure thou hast stood,
And joined the wild yelling of famine and blood!
The nations curse thee! They with eager wondering
140 Shall hear Destruction, like a vulture, scream!
Strange-eyed Destruction! who with many a dream
Of central fires through nether seas upthundering
Soothes her fierce solitude; yet as she lies
By livid fount, or red volcanic stream,
If ever to her lidless dragon-eyes,
O Albion! thy predestined ruins rise,
The fiend-hag on her perilous couch doth leap,
Muttering distempered triumph in her charmèd sleep.
IX
Away, my soul, away!
150 In vain, in vain the birds of warning sing –
And hark! I hear the famished brood of prey
Flap their lank pennons on the groaning wind!
Away, my soul, away!
I unpartaking of the evil thing,
With daily prayer and daily toil
Soliciting for food my scanty soil,
Have wailed my country with a loud Lament.
Now I recentre my immortal mind
In the deep sabbath of meek self-content;
160 Cleansed from the vaporous passions that bedim
God’s Image, sister of the Seraphim.
The Raven
A CHRISTMAS TALE, TOLD BY A SCHOOL-BOY TO
HIS LITTLE BROTHERS AND SISTERS
Underneath an old oak tree
There was of swine a huge company,
That grunted as they crunched the mast:
For that was ripe, and fell full fast.
Then they trotted away, for the wind grew high:
One acorn they left, and no more might you spy.
Next came a Raven, that liked not such folly:
He belonged, they did say, to the witch Melancholy!
Blacker was he than blackest jet,
10 Flew low in the rain, and his feathers not wet.
He picked up the acorn and buried it straight
By the side of a river both deep and great.
Where then did the Raven go?
He went high and low,
Over hill, over dale, did the black Raven go.
Many Autumns, many Springs
Travelled he with wandering wings:
Many Summers, many Winters –
I can’t tell half his adventures.
20 At length he came back, and with him a She,
And the acorn was grown to a tall oak tree.
They built them a nest in the topmost bough,
And young ones they had, and were happy enow.
But soon came a woodman in leathern guise,
His brow, like a pent-house, hung over his eyes.
He’d an axe in his hand, not a word he spoke,
But with many a hem! and a sturdy stroke,
At length he brought down the poor Raven’s own oak.
His young ones were killed; for they could not depart,
30 And their mother did die of a broken heart.
The boughs from the trunk the woodman did sever;
And they floated it down on the course of the river.
They sawed it in planks, and its bark they did strip,
And with this tree and others they made a good ship.
The ship, it was launched; but in sight of the land
Such a storm there did rise as no ship could withstand.
It bulged on a rock, and the waves rushed in fast:
Round and round flew the Raven, and cawed to the blast.
He heard the last shriek of the perishing souls –
40 See! See! o’er the topmast and mad water rolls!
Right glad was the Raven, and off he went fleet,
And Death riding home on a cloud he did meet,
And he thank’d him again and again for this treat:
They had taken his all, and Revenge it was sweet!
To an Unfortunate Woman at the Theatre
Maiden, that with sullen brow
Sitt’st behind those virgins gay,
Like a scorched and mildewed bough,
Leafless ’mid the blooms of May!
Him who lured thee and forsook,
Oft I watched with angry gaze,
Fearful saw his pleading look,
Anxious heard his fervid phrase.
Soft the glances of the youth,
10 Soft his speech, and soft his sigh;
But no sound like simple truth,
But no true love in his eye.
Loathing thy polluted lot,
Hie thee, Maiden, hie thee hence!
Seek thy weeping Mother’s cot,
With a wiser innocence.
Thou hast known deceit and folly,
Thou hast felt that vice is woe:
With a musing melancholy
20 Inly armed, go, Maiden! go.
Mother sage of self-dominion,
Firm thy steps, O Melancholy!
The strongest plume in wisdom’s pinion
Is the memory of past folly.
Mute the sky-lark and forlorn,
While she moults the firstling plumes,
That had skimmed the tender corn,
Or the beanfield’s odorous blooms.
Soon with renovated wing
30 Shall she dare a loftier flight,
Upward to the day-star spring,
And embathe in heavenly light.
To an Unfortunate Woman,
WHOM THE AUTHOR HAD KNOWN IN THE DAYS OF HER
INNOCENCE
Myrtle-leaf that, ill besped,
Pinest in the gladsome ray,
Soiled beneath the common tread,
Far from thy protecting spray!
When the partridge o’er the sheaf
Whirred along the yellow vale,
Sad I saw thee, heedless leaf!
Love the dalliance of the gale.
Lightly didst thou, foolish thing!
10 Heave and flutter to his sighs,
While the flatterer, on his wing,
Wooed and whispered thee to rise.
Gaily from thy mother-stalk
Wert thou danced and wafted high –
Soon on this unsheltered walk
Flung to fade, to rot and die.
To the Rev. George Coleridge
OF OTTERY ST MARY, DEVON. WITH SOME POEMS
Notus in fratres animi paterni.
HOR. Carm. lib.
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