Stay awhile,
Poor youth! who scarcely dar’st lift up thine eyes –
The stream will soon renew its smoothness, soon
The visions will return! And lo! he stays,
And soon the fragments dim of lovely forms
Come trembling back, unite, and now once more
The pool becomes a mirror.
Yet from the still surviving recollections in his mind, the Author has frequently purposed to finish for himself what had been originally, as it were, given to him. A’úρτο‘άάδτον’άσω: but the to-morrow is yet to come.
As a contrast to this vision, I have annexed a fragment of a very different character, describing with equal fidelity the dream of pain and disease.
– 1816
Kubla Khan
In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure-dome decree:
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea.
So twice five miles of fertile ground
With walls and towers were girdled round:
And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills
Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree;
10 And here were forests ancient as the hills,
Enfolding sunny spots of greenery.
But oh! that deep romantic chasm which slanted
Down the green hill athwart a cedarn cover!
A savage place! as holy and enchanted
As e’er beneath a waning moon was haunted
By woman wailing for her demon-lover!
And from this chasm, with ceaseless turmoil seething,
As if this earth in fast thick pants were breathing,
A mighty fountain momently was forced:
20 Amid whose swift half-intermitted burst
Huge fragments vaulted like rebounding hail,
Or chaffy grain beneath the thresher’s flail:
And mid these dancing rocks at once and ever
It flung up momently the sacred river.
Five miles meandering with a mazy motion
Through wood and dale the sacred river ran,
Then reached the caverns measureless to man,
And sank in tumult to a lifeless ocean:
And ’mid this tumult Kubla heard from far
30 Ancestral voices prophesying war!
The shadow of the dome of pleasure
Floated midway on the waves;
Where was heard the mingled measure
From the fountain and the caves.
It was a miracle of rare device,
A sunny pleasure-dome with caves of ice!
A damsel with a dulcimer
In a vision once I saw:
It was an Abyssinian maid,
40 And on her dulcimer she played,
Singing of Mount Abora.
Could I revive within me
Her symphony and song,
To such a deep delight ’twould win me
That with music loud and long,
I would build that dome in air,
That sunny dome! those caves of ice!
And all who heard should see them there,
And all should cry, Beware! Beware!
50 His flashing eyes, his floating hair!
Weave a circle round him thrice,
And close your eyes with holy dread,
For he on honey-dew hath fed,
And drunk the milk of Paradise.
[Lines from a notebook – September 1798]
The silence of a City – How awful at midnight –
Mute as the battlements & crags & towers
That fancy makes in the clouds – yea as mute
As the moonlight that sleeps on the steady Vanes –
The cell of a departed Anchoret,
His skeleton & flitting ghost are there,
Sole tenants –
And all the City, silent as the moon
That steeps in quiet light the steady Vanes
10 Of her huge temples –
[Hexameters:] William, My Teacher, My Friend!
William, my teacher, my friend! dear William and dear
Dorothea!
Smooth out the folds of my letter, and place it on desk or on
table;
Place it on table or desk; and your right hands loosely
half-closing,
Gently sustain them in air, and extending the digit didactic,
Rest it a moment on each of the forks of the five-forkèd left
hand,
Twice on the breadth of the thumb, and once on the tip of each
finger;
Read with a nod of the head in a humouring recitativo;
And, as I live, you will see my hexameters hopping before you.
This is a galloping measure; a hop, and a trot, and a gallop!
10 All my hexameters fly, like stags pursued by the stag-hounds,
Breathless and panting, and ready to drop, yet flying still
onwards.
I would full fain pull in my hard-mouthed runaway hunter;
But our English Spondeans are clumsy yet impotent curb-reins;
And so to make him go slowly, no way have I left but to lame
him.
William, my head and my heart! dear Poet that feelest and
thinkest!
Dorothy, eager of soul, my most affectionate sister!
Many a mile, O! many a wearisome mile are ye distant,
Long, long, comfortless roads, with no one eye that doth know
us.
O! it is all too far to send to you mockeries idle:
20 Yea, and I feel it not right! But O! my friends, my beloved!
Feverish and wakeful I lie, – I am weary of feeling and thinking.
Every thought is worn down, – I am weary, yet cannot be vacant.
Five long hours have I tossed, rheumatic heats, dry and flushing,
Gnawing behind in my head, and wandering and throbbing
about me,
Busy and tiresome, my friends, as the beat of the boding
night-spider.
[I forget the beginning of the line:]
… my eyes are a burthen,
Now unwillingly closed, now open and aching with darkness.
O! what a life is the eye! what a fine and inscrutable essence!
Him that is utterly blind, nor glimpses the fire that warns him;
30 Him that never beheld the swelling breast of his mother;
Him that ne’er smiled at the bosom as babe that smiles in its
slumber;
Even to him it exists, it stirs and moves in its prison;
Lives with a separate life, and ‘Is it the spirit?’ he murmurs:
‘Sure, it has thoughts of its own, and to see is only its language.’
[There was a great deal more, which I have forgotten, as I never wrote it down. No doubt, much better might be written; but these will still give you some idea of them. The last line which I wrote I remember, and write it for the truth of the sentiment, scarcely less true in company than in pain and solitude:]
William, my head and my heart! dear William and dear
Dorothea!
You have all in each other; but I am lonely, and want you!
[Translation of a passage in Ottfried’s metrical
paraphrase of the Gospel]
She gave with joy her virgin breast;
She hid it not, she bared the breast,
Which suckled that divinest babe!
Blessed, blessed were the breasts
Which the Saviour infant kiss’d;
And blessed, blessed was the mother
Who wrapp’d his limbs in swaddling clothes,
Singing placed him on her lap,
Hung o’er him with her looks of love,
10 And soothed him with a lulling motion.
Blessed! for she shelter’d him
From the damp and chilling air;
Blessed, blessed! for she lay
With such a babe in one blest bed,
Close as babes and mothers lie!
Blessed, blessed evermore,
With her virgin lips she kiss’d,
With her arms, and to her breast
She embraced the babe divine,
20 Her babe divine the virgin mother!
There lives not on this ring of earth
A mortal, that can sing her praise.
Mighty mother, virgin pure,
In the darkness and the night
For us she bore the heavenly Lord!
[Fragmentary translation of the Song of Deborah]
The Song of Deborah, translated in the ‡ parallelisms of the Original / (‡ that is, so that each Line or member of a sentence is counter-balanced by the following, either by difference, or similitude, or by the repetition of the same thought in different words or with a different Image).
Then sang Deborah,
And Barak, Abinoam’s Son,
On that day sang they thus:
That the Leaders of Israel led on.
And the People willingly followed
Praise ye the Lord!
I
Ye Monarchs, hear!
Give ear, ye Princes!
I sing to the Everlasting,
10 To the Everlasting will I play & sing praises,
To the Lord God of Israel.
II
Lord God, Eternal!
When thou marchedst out from Seir,
When thou marchedst on thro’ Edom,
The Earth trembled,
The Heavens dissolved,
The Clouds poured,
Mountains melted away from the Lord,
Mount Sina from before the face of Jehovah,
20 The Lord God of Israel.
III
In the days of Samgar, the Son of Anath,
In the days of Jael lay waste the High roads,
The Travellers went not save by crooked by-ways
Suspended were the assemblies of Israel,
They ceased, till I arose, Deborah,
Till that I arise, a mother in Israel.
IV
To themselves they had chosen strange Gods;
And close to their gates came War.
Not a Shield was there seen, nor a Spear
30 Among the twice twenty Thousand of Israel.
V
My Heart, it swells high to the Rulers of Israel,
O ye, who offered yourselves freely among the People,
Praise the Everlasting One.
Ye that ride on white asses,
Ye that sit on seats of costly Coverings, or embroidered Seats
Ye that walk on the High roads, frame a Song.
VI
A Song for the Voice of the herdsmen, who beside thee draw wells
Draw water for the Herds & Flocks!
For there will they sing the Deeds of Jehovah,
40 His deeds will the People of Israel praise.
Catullian Hendecasyllables
Hear, my beloved, an old Milesian story! –
High, and embosom’d in congregated laurels,
Glimmer’d a temple upon a breezy headland;
In the dim distance amid the skiey billows
Rose a fair island; the god of flocks had plac’d it.
From the far shores of the bleat-resounding island
Oft by the moonlight a little boat came floating,
Came to the sea-cave beneath the breezy headland,
Where amid myrtles a pathway stole in mazes
10 Up to the groves of the high embosom’d temple.
There in a thicket of dedicated roses,
Oft did a priestess, as lovely as a vision,
Pouring her soul to the son of Cytherea,
Pray him to hover around the slight canoe-boat,
And with invisible pilotage to guide it
Over the dusk wave, until the nightly sailor
Shivering with ecstasy sank upon her bosom.
The Homeric Hexameter Described and Exemplified
Strongly it bears us along in swelling and limitless billows,
Nothing before and nothing behind but the sky and the Ocean.
The Ovidian Elegiac Metre Described and Exemplified
In the hexameter rises the fountain’s silvery column;
In the pentameter aye falling in melody back.
On a Cataract
FROM A CAVERN NEAR THE SUMMIT OF A
MOUNTAIN PRECIPICE
STROPHE
Unperishing youth!
Thou leapest from forth
The cell of thy hidden nativity;
Never mortal saw
The cradle of the strong one;
Never mortal heard
The gathering of his voices;
The deep-murmured charm of the son of the rock,
That is lisp’d evermore at his slumberless fountain.
10 There’s a cloud at the portal, a spray-woven veil
At the shrine of his ceaseless renewing;
It embosoms the roses of dawn,
It entangles the shafts of the noon,
And into the bed of its stillness
The moonshine sinks down as in slumber,
That the son of the rock, that the nursling of heaven
May be born in a holy twilight!
ANTISTROPHE
The wild goat in awe
Looks up and beholds
20 Above thee the cliff inaccessible; –
Thou at once full-born
Madd’nest in thy joyance,
Whirlest, shatter’st, splitt’st,
Life invulnerable.
Tell’s Birth-Place
IMITATED FROM STOLBERG
I
Mark this holy chapel well!
The birth-place, this, of William Tell.
Here, where stands God’s altar dread,
Stood his parents’ marriage-bed.
II
Here, first, an infant to her breast,
Him his loving mother prest;
And kissed the babe, and blessed the day,
And prayed as mothers use to pray.
III
‘Vouchsafe him health, O God! and give
10 The child thy servant still to live!’
But God had destined to do more
Through him, than through an armèd power.
IV
God gave him reverence of laws,
Yet stirring blood in Freedom’s cause –
A spirit to his rocks akin,
The eye of the hawk, and the fire therein!
V
To Nature and to Holy Writ
Alone did God the boy commit:
Where flashed and roared the torrent, oft
20 His soul found wings, and soared aloft!
VI
The straining oar and chamois chase
Had formed his limbs to strength and grace:
On wave and wind the boy would toss,
Was great, nor knew how great he was!
VII
He knew not that his chosen hand,
Made strong by God, his native land
Would rescue from the shameful yoke
Of Slavery – the which he broke!
The Visit of the Gods
IMITATED FROM SCHILLER
Never, believe me,
Appear the Immortals,
Never alone:
Scarce had I welcomed the sorrow-beguiler,
Iacchus! but in came boy Cupid the smiler;
Lo! Phœbus the glorious descends from his throne!
They advance, they float in, the Olympians all!
With divinities fills my
Terrestrial hall!
10 How shall I yield you
Due entertainment,
Celestial quire?
Me rather, bright guests! with your wings of upbuoyance
Bear aloft to your homes, to your banquets of joyance,
That the roofs of Olympus may echo my lyre!
Hah! we mount! on their pinions they waft up my soul!
O give me the nectar!
O fill me the bowl!
Give him the nectar!
20 Pour out for the poet,
Hebe! pour free!
Quicken his eyes with celestial dew,
That Styx the detested no more he may view,
And like one of us Gods may conceit him to be!
Thanks, Hebe! I quaff it! Io Pæan, I cry!
The wine of the Immortals
Forbids me to die!
On an Infant
WHICH DIED BEFORE BAPTISM
‘Be, rather than be called, a child of God,’
Death whispered! – with assenting nod,
Its head upon its mother’s breast,
The Baby bowed, without demur –
Of the kingdom of the Blest
Possessor, not inheritor.
Something Childish, but Very Natural
WRITTEN IN GERMANY
If I had but two little wings,
And were a little feathery bird,
To you I’d fly, my dear!
But thoughts like these are idle things,
And I stay here.
But in my sleep to you I fly:
I’m always with you in my sleep!
The world is all one’s own.
But then one wakes, and where am I?
10 All, all alone.
Sleep stays not, though a monarch bids:
So I love to wake ere break of day:
For though my sleep be gone,
Yet while ’tis dark, one shuts one’s lids,
And still dreams on.
Home-Sick
WRITTEN IN GERMANY
’Tis sweet to him, who all the week
Through city-crowds must push his way,
To stroll alone through fields and woods,
And hallow thus the Sabbath-day.
And sweet it is, in summer bower,
Sincere, affectionate and gay,
One’s own dear children feasting round,
To celebrate one’s marriage-day.
But what is all, to his delight,
10 Who having long been doomed to roam,
Throws off the bundle from his back,
Before the door of his own home?
Home-sickness is a wasting pang;
This feel I hourly more and more:
There’s healing only in thy wings,
Thou Breeze that play’st on Albion’s shore!
The Virgin’s Cradle-Hymn
COPIED FROM A PRINT OF THE VIRGIN, IN A ROMAN
CATHOLIC VILLAGE IN GERMANY
Dormi, Jesu! Mater ridet
Quæ tam dulcem somnum videt,
Dormi, Jesu! blandule!
Si non dormis, Mater plorat,
Inter fila cantans orat,
Blande, veni, somnule.
ENGLISH
Sleep, sweet babe! my cares beguiling:
Mother sits beside thee smiling;
Sleep, my darling, tenderly!
If thou sleep not, mother mourneth,
Singing as her wheel she turneth:
Come, soft slumber, balmily!
Lines
WRITTEN IN THE ALBUM AT ELBINGERODE,
IN THE HARTZ FOREST
I stood on Brocken’s sovran height, and saw
Woods crowding upon woods, hills over hills,
A surging scene, and only limited
By the blue distance. Heavily my way
Downward I dragged through fir groves evermore,
Where bright green moss heaves in sepulchral forms
Speckled with sunshine; and, but seldom heard,
The sweet bird’s song became a hollow sound;
And the breeze, murmuring indivisibly,
10 Preserved its solemn murmur most distinct
From many a note of many a waterfall,
And the brook’s chatter; ’mid whose islet stones
The dingy kidling with its tinkling bell
Leaped frolicsome, or old romantic goat
Sat, his white beard slow waving. I moved on
In low and languid mood: for I had found
That outward forms, the loftiest, still receive
Their finer influence from the Life within; –
Fair cyphers else: fair, but of import vague
20 Or unconcerning, where the heart not finds
History or prophecy of friend, or child,
Or gentle maid, our first and early love,
Or father, or the venerable name
Of our adored country! O thou Queen,
Thou delegated Deity of Earth,
O dear, dear England! how my longing eye
Turned westward, shaping in the steady clouds
Thy sands and high white cliffs!
My native Land!
Filled with the thought of thee this heart was proud,
30 Yea, mine eye swam with tears: that all the view
From sovran Brocken, woods and woody hills,
Floated away, like a departing dream,
Feeble and dim! Stranger, these impulses
Blame thou not lightly; nor will I profane,
With hasty judgment or injurious doubt,
That man’s sublimer spirit, who can feel
That God is everywhere! the God who framed
Mankind to be one mighty family,
Himself our Father, and the World our Home.
The British Stripling’s War-Song
IMITATED FROM STOLBERG
Yes, noble old Warrior! this heart has beat high,
Since you told of the deeds which our countrymen wrought;
O lend me the sabre that hung by thy thigh,
And I too will fight as my forefathers fought.
Despise not my youth, for my spirit is steel’d,
And I know there is strength in the grasp of my hand;
Yea, as firm as thyself would I march to the field,
And as proudly would die for my dear native land.
In the sports of my childhood I mimick’d the fight,
10 The sound of a trumpet suspended my breath;
And my fancy still wander’d by day and by night,
Amid battle and tumult, ’mid conquest and death.
My own shout of onset, when the Armies advance,
How oft it awakes me from visions of glory;
When I meant to have leapt on the Hero of France,
And have dash’d him to earth, pale and breathless and gory.
As late thro’ the city with banners all streaming
To the music of trumpets the Warriors flew by,
With helmet and scimitars naked and gleaming,
20 On their proud-trampling, thunder-hoof’d steeds did they fly;
I sped to yon heath that is lonely and bare,
For each nerve was unquiet, each pulse in alarm;
And I hurl’d the mock-lance thro’ the objectless air,
And in open-eyed dream proved the strength of my arm.
Yes, noble old Warrior! this heart has beat high,
Since you told of the deeds that our countrymen wrought;
O lend me the sabre that hung by thy thigh,
And I too will fight as my forefathers fought!
Names
I asked my fair one happy day,
What I should call her in my lay;
By what sweet name from Rome or Greece;
Lalage, Neæra, Chloris,
Sappho, Lesbia, or Doris,
Arethusa or Lucrece.
‘Ah!’ replied my gentle fair,
‘Beloved, what are names but air?
Choose thou whatever suits the line;
10 Call me Sappho, call me Chloris,
Call me Lalage or Doris,
Only, only call me Thine.’
The Devil’s Thoughts
I
From his brimstone bed at break of day
A walking the Devil is gone,
To visit his snug little farm the Earth,
And see how his stock goes on.
II
Over the hill and over the dale,
And he went over the plain.
And backward and forward he switched his long tail
As a gentleman switches his cane.
III
And how then was the Devil drest?
10 Oh! he was in his Sunday’s best:
His jacket was red and his breeches were blue,
And there was a hole where the tail came through.
IV
He saw a Lawyer killing a viper
On a dung hill hard by his own stable;
And the Devil smiled, for it put him in mind
Of Cain and his brother Abel.
V
He saw an Apothecary on a white horse
Ride by on his vocations;
And the Devil thought of his old friend
20 Death in the Revelations.
VI
He saw a cottage with a double coach-house,
A cottage of gentility;
And the Devil did grin, for his darling sin
Is pride that apes humility.
VII
He peep’d into a rich bookseller’s shop,
Quoth he! ‘We are both of one college!
For I sate myself, like a cormorant, once
Hard by the tree of knowledge.’
VIII
Down the river did glide, with wind and with tide,
30 A pig with vast celerity;
And the Devil look’d wise as he saw how the while,
It cut its own throat. ‘There!’ quoth he with a smile,
‘Goes England’s commercial prosperity.’
IX
As he went through Cold-Bath Fields he saw
A solitary cell;
And the Devil was pleased, for it gave him a hint
For improving his prisons in Hell.
X
He saw a Turnkey in a trice
Unfetter a troublesome blade;
40 ‘Nimbly’ quoth he, ‘do the fingers move
If a man be but used to his trade.’
XI
He saw the same Turnkey unfetter a man
With but little expedition,
Which put him in mind of the long debate
On the Slave-trade abolition.
XII
He saw an old acquaintance
As he pass’d by a Methodist meeting; –
She holds a consecrated key,
And the Devil nods her a greeting.
XIII
50 She turned up her nose, and said,
‘Avaunt! my name’s Religion,’
And she looked to Mr–––
And leered like a love-sick pigeon.
XIV
He saw a certain minister
(A minister to his mind)
Go up into a certain House,
With a majority behind.
XV
The Devil quoted Genesis,
Like a very learned clerk,
60 How ‘Noah and his creeping things
Went up into the Ark.’
XVI
He took from the poor,
And he gave to the rich,
And he shook hands with a Scotchman,
For he was not afraid of the —
* * *
XVII
General burning face
He saw with consternation,
And back to hell his way did he take,
For the Devil thought by a slight mistake
70 It was general conflagration.
Lines Composed in a Concert-Room
Nor cold, nor stern, my soul! yet I detest
These scented rooms, where, to a gaudy throng,
Heaves the proud harlot her distended breast
In intricacies of laborious song.
These feel not Music’s genuine power, nor deign
To melt at Nature’s passion-warbled plaint;
But when the long-breathed singer’s uptrilled strain
Bursts in a squall – they gape for wonderment.
Hark! the deep buzz of vanity and hate!
10 Scornful, yet envious, with self-torturing sneer
My lady eyes some maid of humbler state,
While the pert captain, or the primmer priest,
Prattles accordant scandal in her ear.
O give me, from this heartless scene released,
To hear our old musician, blind and gray
(Whom stretching from my nurse’s arms I kissed),
His Scottish tunes and warlike marches play,
By moonshine, on the balmy summer-night,
The while I dance amid the tedded hay
20 With merry maids, whose ringlets toss in light.
Or lies the purple evening on the bay
Of the calm glossy lake, O let me hide
Unheard, unseen, behind the alder-trees,
For round their roots the fisher’s boat is tied,
On whose trim seat doth Edmund stretch at ease,
And while the lazy boat sways to and fro,
Breathes in his flute sad airs, so wild and slow,
That his own cheek is wet with quiet tears.
But O, dear Anne! when midnight wind careers,
30 And the gust pelting on the out-house shed
Makes the cock shrilly on the rain storm crow,
To hear thee sing some ballad full of woe,
Ballad of ship-wrecked sailor floating dead,
Whom his own true-love buried in the sands!
Thee, gentle woman, for thy voice re-measures
Whatever tones and melancholy pleasures
The things of Nature utter; birds or trees
Or moan of ocean-gale in weedy caves,
Or where the stiff grass mid the heath-plant waves,
40 Murmur and music thin of sudden breeze.
The Exchange
We pledged our hearts, my love and I, –
I in my arms the maiden clasping;
I could not tell the reason why,
But, oh! I trembled like an aspen.
Her father’s love she bade me gain;
I went, and shook like any reed!
I strove to act the man – in vain!
We had exchanged our hearts indeed.
[Paraphrase of Psalm 46. Hexameters]
Gōd ĭs oŭr Strēngth ănd ouŭr Rēfuŭge: thērefoēre wīll wĕ noŏt
trēmblĕ,
Thō’ thĕ Eărth bĕ rĕmōvĕd; aănd thō’ thĕ pĕrpĕtŭaăl Moūntains,
Sink in the Swell of the Ocean! God is our Strength & our
Refuge.
There is a River, the Flowing whereof shall gladden the City,
Hallelujah! the City of God! Jehova shall help her.
Thĕ Iēdōlaătĕrs ragĕd, the Kingdoms were moving in fury –
But He utter’d his Voice: Earth melted away from beneath
them.
Halleluja! th’ Eternal is with us, Almighty Jehova!
Fearful the works of the Lord, yea, fearful his Desolations –
10 But He maketh the Battle to cease, he burneth the Spear & the
Chariot.
Halleluja! th’ Eternal is with us, the God of our Fathers!
Hymn to the Earth
HEXAMETERS
Earth! thou mother of numberless children, the nurse and the
mother,
Hail! O Goddess, thrice hail! Blest be thou! and, blessing, I
hymn thee!
Forth, ye sweet sounds! from my harp, and my voice shall float
on your surges –
Soar thou aloft, O my soul! and bear up my song on thy pinions.
Travelling the vale with mine eyes – green meadows and lake
with green island,
Dark in its basin of rock, and the bare stream flowing in
brightness,
Thrilled with thy beauty and love in the wooded slope of the
mountain,
Here, great mother, I lie, thy child, with his head on thy bosom!
Playful the spirits of noon, that rushing soft through thy tresses,
10 Green-haired goddess! refresh me; and hark! as they hurry or
linger,
Fill the pause of my harp, or sustain it with musical murmurs.
Into my being thou murmurest joy, and tenderest sadness
Shedd’st thou, like dew, on my heart, till the joy and the
heavenly sadness
Pour themselves forth from my heart in tears, and the hymn of
thanksgiving.
Earth! thou mother of numberless children, the nurse and the
mother,
Sister thou of the stars, and beloved by the sun the rejoicer!
Guardian and friend of the moon, O Earth, whom the comets
forget not,
Yea, in the measureless distance wheel round and again they
behold thee!
Fadeless and young (and what if the latest birth of creation?)
20 Bride and consort of Heaven, that looks down upon thee
enamoured!
Say, mysterious Earth! O say, great mother and goddess,
Was it not well with thee then, when first thy lap was ungirdled,
Thy lap to the genial Heaven, the day that he wooed thee and
won thee!
Fair was thy blush, the fairest and first of the blushes of
morning!
Deep was the shudder, O Earth! the throe of thy self-retention:
Inly thou strovest to flee, and didst seek thyself at thy centre!
Mightier far was the joy of thy sudden resilience; and forthwith
Myriad myriads of lives teemed forth from the mighty
embracement.
Thousand-fold tribes of dwellers, impelled by thousand-fold
instincts,
30 Filled, as a dream, the wide waters; the rivers sang on their
channels;
Laughed on their shores the hoarse seas; the yearning ocean
swelled upward;
Young life lowed through the meadows, the woods, and the
echoing mountains,
Wandered bleating in valleys, and warbled on blossoming
branches.
Mahomet
Utter the song, O my soul! the flight and return of Mohammed,
Prophet and priest, who scatter’d abroad both evil and blessing,
Huge wasteful empires founded and hallow’d slow persecution,
Soul-withering, but crush’d the blasphemous rites of the Pagan
And idolatrous Christians. – For veiling the Gospel of Jesus,
They, the best corrupting, had made it worse than the vilest.
Wherefore Heaven decreed th’ enthusiast warrior of Mecca,
Choosing good from iniquity rather than evil from goodness.
Loud the tumult in Mecca surrounding the fane of the idol; –
10 Naked and prostrate the priesthood were laid – the people with
mad shouts
Thundering now, and now with saddest ululation
Flew, as over the channel of rock-stone the ruinous river
Shatters its waters abreast, and in mazy uproar bewilder’d,
Rushes dividuous all – all rushing impetuous onward.
Ode to Georgiana,
DUCHESS OF DEVONSHIRE, ON THE TWENTY-FOURTH
STANZA IN HER ‘PASSAGE OVER MOUNT GOTHARD’
And hail the chapel! hail the platform wild
There Tell directed the avenging dart,
With well strung arm, that first preserved his child,
Then aimed the arrow at the tyrant’s heart.
Splendour’s fondly fostered child!
And did you hail the platform wild,
Where once the Austrian fell
Beneath the shaft of Tell!
O Lady, nursed in pomp and pleasure!
Whence learn’d you that heroic measure?
Light as a dream your days their circlets ran,
From all that teaches brotherhood to Man
Far, far removed! from want, from hope, from fear!
10 Enchanting music lulled your infant ear,
Obeisance, praises soothed your infant heart:
Emblasonments and old ancestral crests,
With many a bright obtrusive form of art,
Detained your eye from nature: stately vests,
That veiling strove to deck your charms divine,
Rich viands and the pleasurable wine,
Were yours unearned by toil; nor could you see
The unenjoying toiler’s misery.
And yet, free Nature’s uncorrupted child,
20 You hailed the chapel and the platform wild,
Where once the Austrian fell
Beneath the shaft of Tell!
O Lady, nursed in pomp and pleasure!
Whence learn’d you that heroic measure?
There crowd your finely-fibred frame,
All living faculties of bliss;
And Genius to your cradle came,
His forehead wreathed with lambent flame,
And bending low, with godlike kiss
30 Breath’d in a more celestial life;
But boasts not many a fair compeer,
A heart as sensitive to joy and fear?
And some, perchance, might wage an equal strife,
Some few, to nobler being wrought,
Corrivals in the nobler gift of thought.
Yet these delight to celebrate
Laurelled war and plumy state;
Or in verse and music dress
Tales of rustic happiness –
40 Pernicious tales! insidious strains!
That steel the rich man’s breast,
And mock the lot unblest,
The sordid vices and the abject pains,
Which evermore must be
The doom of ignorance and penury!
But you, free Nature’s uncorrupted child,
You hailed the chapel and the platform wild,
Where once the Austrian fell
Beneath the shaft of Tell!
50 O Lady, nursed in pomp and pleasure!
Whence learn’d you that heroic measure?
You were a mother! That most holy name,
Which Heaven and Nature bless,
I may not vilely prostitute to those
Whose infants owe them less
Than the poor caterpillar owes
Its gaudy parent fly.
You were a mother! at your bosom fed
The babes that loved you. You, with laughing eye,
60 Each twilight-thought, each nascent feeling read,
Which you yourself created. Oh! delight!
A second time to be a mother,
Without the mother’s bitter groans:
Another thought, and yet another,
By touch, or taste, by looks or tones
O’er the growing sense to roll,
The mother of your infant’s soul!
The Angel of the Earth, who, while he guides
His chariot-planet round the goal of day,
70 All trembling gazes on the eye of God,
A moment turned his awful face away;
And as he viewed you, from his aspect sweet
New influences in your being rose,
Blest intuitions and communions fleet
With living Nature, in her joys and woes!
Thenceforth your soul rejoiced to see
The shrine of social Liberty!
O beautiful! O Nature’s child!
’Twas thence you hailed the platform wild,
80 Where once the Austrian fell
Beneath the shaft of Tell!
O Lady, nursed in pomp and pleasure!
Thence learn’d you that heroic measure.
A Christmas Carol
I
The shepherds went their hasty way,
And found the lowly stable-shed
Where the Virgin-Mother lay:
And now they checked their eager tread,
For to the Babe, that at her bosom clung,
A mother’s song the Virgin-Mother sung.
II
They told her how a glorious light,
Streaming from a heavenly throng,
Around them shone, suspending night!
10 While sweeter than a mother’s song,
Blest Angels heralded the Saviour’s birth,
Glory to God on high! and Peace on Earth.
III
She listened to the tale divine,
And closer still the Babe she prest;
And while she cried, ‘the Babe is mine!’
The milk rushed faster to her breast:
Joy rose within her, like a summer’s morn;
Peace, Peace on Earth! the Prince of Peace is born.
IV
Thou Mother of the Prince of Peace,
20 Poor, simple, and of low estate!
That strife should vanish, battle cease,
O why should this thy soul elate?
Sweet music’s loudest note, the poet’s story, –
Did’st thou ne’er love to hear of fame and glory?
V
And is not War a youthful king,
A stately hero clad in mail?
Beneath his footsteps laurels spring;
Him Earth’s majestic monarchs hail
Their friend, their playmate! and his bold bright eye
30 Compels the maiden’s love-confessing sigh.
VI
‘Tell this in some more courtly scene,
To maids and youths in robes of state!
I am a woman poor and mean,
And therefore is my soul elate.
War is a ruffian, all with guilt defiled,
That from the aged father tears his child!
VII
‘A murderous fiend, by fiends adored,
He kills the sire and starves the son;
The husband kills, and from her board
40 Steals all his widow’s toil had won;
Plunders God’s world of beauty; rends away
All safety from the night, all comfort from the day.
VIII
‘Then wisely is my soul elate,
That strife should vanish, battle cease:
I’m poor and of a low estate,
The Mother of the Prince of Peace.
Joy rises in me, like a summer’s morn:
Peace, Peace on Earth! the Prince of Peace is born.’
On an Insignificant
No doleful faces here, no sighing –
Here rots a thing that won by dying:
’Tis Cypher lies beneath this crust –
Whom Death created into dust.
Job’s Luck
Sly Beelzebub took all occasions
To try Job’s constancy and patience;
He took his honours, took his health,
He took his children, took his wealth,
His camels, horses, asses, cows –
And the sly Devil did not take his spouse.
But Heaven that brings out good from evil,
And loves to disappoint the Devil,
Had predetermined to restore
10 Twofold all Job had before,
His children, camels, horses, cows –
Short-sighted Devil, not to take his spouse!
Love
All thoughts, all passions, all delights,
Whatever stirs this mortal frame,
All are but ministers of Love,
And feed his sacred flame.
Oft in my waking dreams do I
Live o’er again that happy hour,
When midway on the mount I lay,
Beside the ruined tower.
The moonshine, stealing o’er the scene
10 Had blended with the lights of eve;
And she was there, my hope, my joy,
My own dear Genevieve!
She lean’d against the armèd man,
The statue of the armèd knight;
She stood and listened to my lay,
Amid the lingering light.
Few sorrows hath she of her own,
My hope! my joy! my Genevieve!
She loves me best, whene’er I sing
20 The songs that make her grieve.
I played a soft and doleful air,
I sang an old and moving story –
An old rude song, that suited well
That ruin wild and hoary.
She listened with a flitting blush
With downcast eyes and modest grace;
For well she knew, I could not choose
But gaze upon her face.
I told her of the Knight that wore
30 Upon his shield a burning brand;
And that for ten long years he wooed
The Lady of the Land.
I told her how he pined: and ah!
The deep, the low, the pleading tone
With which I sang another’s love,
Interpreted my own.
She listened with a flitting blush
With downcast eyes, and modest grace;
And she forgave me, that I gazed
40 Too fondly on her face!
But when I told the cruel scorn
That crazed that bold and lovely Knight,
And that he crossed the mountain-woods,
Nor rested day nor night;
That sometimes from the savage den,
And sometimes from the darksome shade,
And sometimes starting up at once
In green and sunny glade, –
There came and looked him in the face
50 An angel beautiful and bright;
And that he knew it was a Fiend,
This miserable Knight!
And that unknowing what he did,
He leaped amid a murderous band,
And saved from outrage worse than death
The Lady of the Land; –
And how she wept, and clasped his knees;
And how she tended him in vain –
And ever strove to expiate
60 The scorn that crazed his brain; –
And that she nursed him in a cave;
And how his madness went away,
When on the yellow forest-leaves
A dying man he lay; –
His dying words – but when I reached
That tenderest strain of all the ditty,
My faltering voice and pausing harp
Disturbed her soul with pity!
All impulses of soul and sense
70 Had thrilled my guileless Genevieve;
The music and the doleful tale,
The rich and balmy eve;
And hopes, and fears that kindle hope,
An undistinguishable throng,
And gentle wishes long subdued,
Subdued and cherished long!
She wept with pity and delight,
She blushed with love, and virgin shame;
And like the murmur of a dream,
80 I heard her breathe my name.
Her bosom heaved – she stepped aside,
As conscious of my look she stept –
Then suddenly, with timorous eye
She fled to me and wept.
She half inclosed me with her arms,
She pressed me with a meek embrace;
And bending back her head, looked up,
And gazed upon my face.
’Twas partly love, and partly fear,
90 And partly ’twas a bashful art,
That I might rather feel, than see,
The swelling of her heart.
I calmed her fears, and she was calm,
And told her love with virgin pride;
And so I won my Genevieve,
My bright and beauteous Bride.
The Madman and the Lethargist, an Example
Quoth Dick to me, as once at College
We argued on the use of Knowledge,
‘In old king Olim’s reign, I’ve read,
There lay two Patients in one bed.
The one in fat lethargic trance
Lay wan and motionless as lead:
The other, like the Folks in France,
Possess’d a different disposition –
In short, the plain truth to confess,
10 The man was madder than mad Bess.
But both diseases, none disputed,
Were unmedicinably rooted.
Yet so it chanc’d, by Heaven’s Permission,
Each prov’d the other’s true Physician.’
‘Fighting with a ghastly stare
Troops of Despots in the air,
Obstreporously Jacobinical
The Madman froth’d & foam’d & roar’d:
The other, snoring octaves cynical,
20 Like good John Bull, in posture clinical
Seem’d living only when he snor’d.
The Citizen, enrag’d to see
This fat Insensibility,
Or tir’d with solitary Labour,
Determin’d to convert his Neighbour.
So up he sprung, & to ’t he fell
Like Devil piping hot from hell;
With indefatigable Fist
Belab’ring the poor Lethargist,
30 Till his own Limbs were stiff & sore,
And Sweatdrops roll’d from every pore.
Yet still, with “flying fingers” fleet –
Duly accompanied by feet,
With some short Interludes of Biting
He executes the self-same Strain,
Till the Slumb’rer woke for pain
And half prepar’d himself for Fighting,
That moment, that his mad Colleague
Sunk down & slept thro’ pure fatigue.
40 So both were cur’d: & this example,
Gives demonstration full & ample,
That Chance may bring a thing to bear
When Art sits down in flat Despair.’
‘That’s true enough, Dick!’ – answer’d I –
‘But as for th’example, ’tis a Lie!’
On a Volunteer Singer
Swans sing before they die: ’twere no bad thing,
Should certain persons die before they sing.
Talleyrand to Lord Grenville
A METRICAL EPISTLE
To the Editor of The Morning Post.
MR EDITOR, – An unmetrical letter from Talleyrand to Lord Grenville has already appeared, and from an authority too high to be questioned: otherwise I could adduce some arguments for the exclusive authenticity of the following metrical epistle. The very epithet which the wise ancients used, ‘aurea carmina,’ might have been supposed likely to have determined the choice of the French minister in favour of verse; and the rather when we recollect that this phrase of ‘golden verses’ is applied emphatically to the works of that philosopher who imposed silence on all with whom he had to deal. Besides is it not somewhat improbable that Talleyrand should have preferred prose to rhyme, when the latter alone has got the chink? Is it not likewise curious that in our official answer no notice whatever is taken of the Chief Consul, Bonaparte, as if there had been no such person existing; notwithstanding that his existence is pretty generally admitted, nay that some have been so rash as to believe that he has created as great a sensation in the world as Lord Grenville, or even the Duke of Portland? But the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Talleyrand, is acknowledged, which, in our opinion, could not have happened had he written only that insignificant prose-letter, which seems to precede Bonaparte’s, as in old romances a dwarf always ran before to proclaim the advent or arrival of knight or giant. That Talleyrand’s character and practices more resemble those of some regular Governments than Bonaparte’s I admit; but this of itself does not appear a satisfactory explanation. However, let the letter speak for itself. The second line is supererogative in syllables, whether from the oscitancy of the transcriber, or from the trepidation which might have overpowered the modest Frenchman, on finding himself in the act of writing to so great a man, I shall not dare to determine. A few Notes are added by
Your servant,
GNOME
P.S. – As mottoes are now fashionable, especially if taken from out of the way books, you may prefix, if you please, the following lines from Sidonius Apollinaris:
‘Saxa et robora, corneasque fibras
Mollit dulciloquâ canorus arte!’
TALLEYRAND, MINISTER OF FOREIGN AFFAIRS AT PARIS,
TO LORD GRENVILLE, SECRETARY OF STATE IN GREAT
BRITAIN FOR FOREIGN AFFAIRS, AUDITOR OF THE
EXCHEQUER, A LORD OF TRADE, AN ELDER BROTHER OF
TRINITY HOUSE, ETC.
My Lord! though your Lordship repel deviation
From forms long establish’d, yet with high consideration,
I plead for the honour to hope that no blame
Will attach, should this letter begin with my name.
I dar’d not presume on your Lordship to bounce,
But thought it more exquisite first to announce!
My Lord! I’ve the honour to be Talleyrand,
And the letter’s from me ! you’ll not draw back your hand
Nor yet take it up by the rim in dismay,
10 As boys pick up ha’pence on April fool-day.
I’m no Jacobin foul, or red-hot Cordelier
That your Lordship’s un gauntleted fingers need fear
An infection or burn! Believe me, ’tis true,
With a scorn like another I look down on the crew
That bawl and hold up to the mob’s detestation
The most delicate wish for a silent persuasion.
A form long-establish’d these Terrorists call
Bribes, perjury, theft, and the devil and all!
And yet spite of all that the Moralist prates,
20 ’Tis the keystone and cement of civilized States.
Those American Reps ! And i’ faith, they were serious!
It shock’d us at Paris, like something mysterious,
That men who’ve a Congress – But no more of ’t! I’m proud
To have stood so distinct from the Jacobin crowd.
My Lord! though the vulgar in wonder be lost at
My transfigurations, and name me Apostate,
Such a meaningless nickname, which never incens’d me,
Cannot prejudice you or your Cousin against me:
I’m Ex-bishop. What then? Burke himself would agree
30 That I left not the Church – ’twas the Church that left me.
My titles prelatic I lov’d and retain’d,
As long as what I meant by Prelate remain’d:
And tho’ Mitres no longer will pass in our mart,
I’m episcopal still to the core of my heart.
No time from my name this my motto shall sever:
’Twill be Non sine pulvere palma for ever!
Your goodness, my Lord, I conceive as excessive,
Or I dar’d not present you a scroll so digressive;
And in truth with my pen thro’ and thro’ I should strike it;
40 But I hear that your Lordship’s own style is just like it.
Dear my Lord, we are right: for what charms can be shew’d
In a thing that goes straight like an old Roman road?
The tortoise crawls straight, the hare doubles about;
And the true line of beauty still winds in and out.
It argues, my Lord! of fine thoughts such a brood in us
To split and divide into heads multitudinous,
While charms that surprise (it can ne’er be denied us)
Sprout forth from each head, like the ears from King Midas.
Were a genius of rank, like a commonplace dunce,
50 Compell’d to drive on to the main point at once,
What a plentiful vintage of initiations
Would Noble Lords lose in your Lordship’s orations.
My fancy transports me! As mute as a mouse,
And as fleet as a pigeon, I’m borne to the house
Where all those who are Lords, from father to son,
Discuss the affairs of all those who are none.
I behold you, my Lord! of your feelings quite full,
‘Fore the woolsack arise, like a sack full of wool!
You rise on each Anti-Grenvillian Member,
60 Short, thick and blustrous, like a day in November!
Short in person, I mean: for the length of your speeches
Fame herself, that most famous reporter, ne’er reaches.
Lo! Patience beholds you contemn her brief reign,
And Time, that all-panting toil’d after in vain,
(Like the Beldam who raced for a smock with her grand-child)
Drops and cries: ‘Were such lungs e’er assign’d to a man-child?’
Your strokes at her vitals pale Truth has confess’d,
And Zeal unresisted entempests your breast!
Though some noble Lords may be wishing to sup,
70 Your merit self-conscious, my Lord, keeps you up,
Unextinguish’d and swoln, as a balloon of paper
Keeps aloft by the smoke of its own farthing taper.
Ye SIXTEENS of Scotland, your snuffs ye must trim;
Your Geminies, fix’d stars of England! grow dim,
And but for a form long-establish’d, no doubt
Twinkling faster and faster, ye all would go out.
Apropos, my dear Lord! a ridiculous blunder
Of some of our Journalists caused us some wonder:
It was said that in aspect malignant and sinister
80 In the Isle of Great Britain a great Foreign Minister
Turn’d as pale as a journeyman miller’s frock coat is
On observing a star that appear’d in BOOTES!
When the whole truth was this (O those ignorant brutes!)
Your Lordship had made his appearance in boots.
You, my Lord, with your star, sat in boots, and the Spanish
Ambassador thereupon thought fit to vanish.
But perhaps, dear my Lord, among other worse crimes,
The whole was no more than a lie of The Times.
It is monstrous, my Lord! in a civilis’d state
90 That such Newspaper rogues should have license to prate.
Indeed printing in general – but for the taxes,
Is in theory false and pernicious in praxis!
You and I, and your Cousin, and Abbé Sieyès,
And all the great Statesmen that live in these days,
Are agreed that no nation secure is from vi’lence
Unless all who must think are maintain’d all in silence.
This printing, my Lord – but ’tis useless to mention
What we both of us think – ’twas a cursèd invention,
And Germany might have been honestly prouder
100 Had she left it alone, and found out only powder.
My Lord! when I think of our labours and cares
Who rule the Department of foreign affairs,
And how with their libels these journalists bore us,
Though Rage I acknowledge than scorn less decorous;
Yet their presses and types I could shiver in splinters,
Those Printers’ black Devils! those Devils of Printers!
In case of a peace – but perhaps it were better
To proceed to the absolute point of my letter:
For the deep wounds of France, Bonaparte, my master,
110 Has found out a new sort of basilicon plaister.
But your time, my dear Lord! is your nation’s best treasure,
I’ve intruded already too long on your leisure;
If so, I entreat you with penitent sorrow
To pause, and resume the remainder to-morrow.
The Two Round Spaces on the Tomb-Stone
See the apology for the ‘Fire, Famine, and Slaughter,’ in first volume. This is the first time the author ever published these lines. He would have been glad, had they perished; but they have now been printed repeatedly in magazines, and he is told that the verses will not perish. Here, therefore, they are owned, with a hope that they will be taken – as assuredly as they were composed – in mere sport.
The Devil believes that the Lord will come,
Stealing a march without beat of drum,
About the same time that he came last,
On an old Christmas-day in a snowy blast:
Till he bids the trump sound, neither body nor soul stirs,
For the dead men’s heads have slipt under their bolsters.
Oh! ho! brother Bard, in our church-yard,
Both beds and bolsters are soft and green;
Save one alone, and that’s of stone,
10 And under it lies a Counsellor keen.
’Twould be a square tomb, if it were not too long,
And ’tis fenced round with irons sharp, spearlike, and strong.
This fellow from Aberdeen hither did skip,
With a waxy face, and a blubber lip,
And a black tooth in front, to show in part
What was the colour of his whole heart.
This Counsellor sweet,
This Scotchman complete,
(The Devil scotch him for a snake)
20 I trust he lies in his grave awake.
On the sixth of January,
When all around is white with snow,
As a Cheshire yeoman’s dairy;
Brother Bard, ho! ho!
Believe it, or no,
On that stone tomb to you I’ll show
Two round spaces void of snow.
I swear by our Knight, and his forefathers’ souls,
That in size and shape they are just like the holes
30 In the house of privity
Of that ancient family.
On those two places void of snow,
There have sate in the night for an hour or so,
Before sunrise, and after cock-crow,
He kicking his heels, she cursing her corns,
All to the tune of the wind in their horns,
The Devil, and his Grannam,
With a snow-blast to fan ’em;
Expecting and hoping the trumpet to blow,
40 For they are cock-sure of the fellow below.
The Mad Monk
I heard a voice from Etna’s side,
Where o’er a cavern’s mouth
That fronted to the south
A chesnut spread its umbrage wide:
A hermit or a monk the man might be;
But him I could not see:
And thus the music flow’d along,
In melody most like to old Sicilian song:
‘There was a time when earth, and sea, and skies,
10 The bright green vale, and forest’s dark recess,
With all things, lay before mine eyes
In steady loveliness:
But now I feel, on earth’s uneasy scene,
Such sorrows as will never cease; –
I only ask for peace;
If I must live to know that such a time has been!’
A silence then ensued:
Till from the cavern came
A voice; – it was the same!
20 And thus, in mournful tone, its dreary plaint renew’d:
‘Last night, as o’er the sloping turf I trod,
The smooth green turf, to me a vision gave
Beneath mine eyes, the sod –
The roof of Rosa’s grave!
‘My heart has need with dreams like these to strive,
For, when I woke, beneath mine eyes I found
The plot of mossy ground,
On which we oft have sat when Rosa was alive. –
Why must the rock, and margin of the flood,
30 Why must the hills so many flow’rets bear,
Whose colours to a murder’d maiden’s blood,
Such sad resemblance wear? –
‘I struck the wound, – this hand of mine!
For Oh, thou maid divine,
I lov’d to agony!
The youth whom thou call’d’st thine
Did never love like me!
‘Is it the stormy clouds above
That flash’d so red a gleam?
40 On yonder downward trickling stream? –
’Tis not the blood of her I love. –
The sun torments me from his western bed,
Oh, let him cease for ever to diffuse
Those crimson spectre hues!
Oh, let me lie in peace, and be for ever dead!’
Here ceas’d the voice. In deep dismay,
Down thro’ the forest I pursu’d my way.
A Stranger Minstrel
WRITTEN [TO MRS ROBINSON] A FEW WEEKS
BEFORE HER DEATH
As late on Skiddaw’s mount I lay supine,
Midway th’ ascent, in that repose divine
When the soul centred in the heart’s recess
Hath quaff’d its fill of Nature’s loveliness,
Yet still beside the fountain’s marge will stay
And fain would thirst again, again to quaff;
Then when the tear, slow travelling on its way,
Fills up the wrinkles of a silent laugh –
In that sweet mood of sad and humorous thought
10 A form within me rose, within me wrought
With such strong magic, that I cried aloud,
‘Thou ancient Skiddaw by thy helm of cloud,
And by thy many-colour’d chasms deep,
And by their shadows that for ever sleep,
By yon small flaky mists that love to creep
Along the edges of those spots of light,
Those sunny islands of thy smooth green height,
And by yon shepherds with their sheep,
And dogs and boys, a gladsome crowd,
20 That rush e’en now with clamour loud
Sudden from forth thy topmost cloud,
And by this laugh, and by this tear,
I would, old Skiddaw, she were here!
A lady of sweet song is she,
Her soft blue eye was made for thee!
O ancient Skiddaw, by this tear,
I would, I would that she were here!’
Then ancient Skiddaw, stern and proud,
In Sullen majesty replying,
30 Thus spake from out his helm of cloud
(His voice was like an echo dying!): –
‘She dwells belike in scenes more fair,
And scorns a mount so bleak and bare.’
I only sigh’d when this I heard;
Such mournful thoughts within me stirr’d
That all my heart was faint and weak,
So sorely was I troubled!
No laughter wrinkled on my cheek,
But O the tears were doubled!
40 But ancient Skiddaw green and high
Heard and understood my sigh;
And now, in tones less stern and rude,
As if he wish’d to end the feud,
Spake he, the proud response renewing
(His voice was like a monarch wooing): –
‘Nay, but thou dost not know her might,
The pinions of her soul how strong!
But many a stranger in my height
Hath sung to me her magic song,
50 Sending forth his ecstasy
In her divinest melody,
And hence I know her soul is free,
She is where’er she wills to be,
Unfetter’d by mortality!
Now to the “haunted beach” can fly,
Beside the threshold scourged with waves,
Now where the maniac wildly raves,
“Pale moon, thou spectre of the sky!”
No wind that hurries o’er my height
60 Can travel with so swift a flight.
I too, methinks, might merit
The presence of her spirit!
To me too might belong
The honour of her song and witching melody,
Which most resembles me,
Soft, various, and sublime,
Exempt from wrongs of Time!’
Thus spake the mighty Mount, and I
Made answer, with a deep-drawn sigh: –
70 ‘Thou ancient Skiddaw, by this tear,
I would, I would that she were here!’
Inscription for a Seat by the Road Side Half-Way Up
a Steep Hill Facing South
Thou who in youthful vigour rich, and light
With youthful thoughts dost need no rest! O thou,
To whom alike the valley and the hill
Present a path of ease! Should e’er thine eye
Glance on this sod, and this rude tablet, stop!
’Tis a rude spot, yet here, with thankful hearts,
The foot-worn soldier and his family
Have rested, wife and babe, and boy, perchance
Some eight years old or less, and scantly fed,
10 Garbed like his father, and already bound
To his poor father’s trade. Or think of him
Who, laden with his implements of toil,
Returns at night to some far distant home,
And having plodded on through rain and mire
With limbs o’erlaboured, weak from feverish heat,
And chafed and fretted by December blasts,
Here pauses, thankful he hath reached so far,
And ’mid the sheltering warmth of these bleak trees
Finds restoration – or reflect on those
20 Who in the spring to meet the warmer sun
Crawl up this steep hill-side, that needlessly
Bends double their weak frames, already bowed
By age or malady, and when, at last,
They gain this wished-for turf, this seat of sods,
Repose – and, well-admonished, ponder here
On final rest. And if a serious thought
Should come uncalled – how soon thy motions high,
Thy balmy spirits and thy fervid blood
Must change to feeble, withered, cold and dry –
30 Cherish the wholesome sadness! And where’er
The tide of Life impel thee, O be prompt
To make thy present strength the staff of all,
Their staff and resting-place – so shalt thou give
To Youth the sweetest joy that Youth can know;
And for thy future self thou shalt provide
Through every change of various life, a seat,
Not built by hands, on which thy inner part,
Imperishable, many a grievous hour,
Or bleak or sultry may repose – yea, sleep
40 The sleep of Death, and dream of blissful worlds,
Then wake in Heaven, and find the dream all true.
Apologia Pro Vita Sua
The poet in his lone yet genial hour
Gives to his eyes a magnifying power:
Or rather he emancipates his eyes
From the black shapeless accidents of size –
In unctuous cones of kindling coal,
Or smoke upwreathing from the pipe’s trim bole,
His gifted ken can see
Phantoms of sublimity.
The Night-Scene:
A DRAMATIC FRAGMENT
Sandoval. You loved the daughter of Don Manrique?
Earl Henry. Loved?
Sandoval. Did you not say you wooed her?
Earl Henry. Once I loved
Her whom I dared not woo!
Sandoval. And wooed, perchance,
One whom you loved not!
Earl Henry. Oh! I were most base,
Not loving Oropeza. True, I wooed her,
Hoping to heal a deeper wound; but she
Met my advances with impassioned pride,
That kindled love with love.
1 comment