While he read,

Or mused, his sword was haunted by his touch

Continually, like an uneasy place

In his own body. 'Twas in truth an hour

Of universal ferment – mildest men

Were agitated, and commotions, strife

Of passion and opinion, filled the walls

Of peaceful houses with unquiet sounds.

The soil of common life was at that time

Too hot to tread upon. Oft said I then,

And not then only, »What a mockery this

Of history, the past and that to come!

Now do I feel how I have been deceived,

Reading of nations and their works in faith –

Faith given to vanity and emptiness –

Oh, laughter for the page that would reflect

To future times the face of what now is!«

The land all swarmed with passion, like a plain

Devoured by locusts – Carra, Gorsas – add

A hundred other names, forgotten now,

Nor to be heard of more; yet were they powers,

Like earthquakes, shocks repeated day by day,

And felt through every nook of town and field.

 

The men already spoken of as chief

Of my associates were prepared for flight

To augment the band of emigrants in arms

Upon the borders of the Rhine, and leagued

With foreign foes mustered for instant war.

This was their undisguised intent, and they

Were waiting with the whole of their desires

The moment to depart. An Englishman,

Born in a land the name of which appeared

To licence some unruliness of mind,

A stranger, with youth's further privilege,

And that indulgence which a half-learned speech

Wins from the courteous, I – who had been else

Shunned and not tolerated – freely lived

With these defenders of the crown, and talked,

And heard their notions; nor did they disdain

The wish to bring me over to their cause.

But though untaught by thinking or by books

To reason well of polity or law,

And nice distinctions – then on every tongue –

Of natural rights and civil, and to acts

Of nations, and their passing interests

(I speak comparing these with other things)

Almost indifferent, even the historian's tale

Prizing but little otherwise than I prized

Tales of the poets – as it made my heart

Beat high and filled my fancy with fair forms,

Old heroes and their sufferings and their deeds –

Yet in the regal sceptre, and the pomp

Of orders and degrees, I nothing found

Then, or had ever even in crudest youth,

That dazzled me, but rather what my soul

Mourned for, or loathed, beholding that the best

Ruled not, and feeling that they ought to rule.

 

For, born in a poor district, and which yet

Retaineth more of ancient homeliness,

Manners erect, and frank simplicity,

Than any other nook of English land,

It was my fortune scarcely to have seen

Through the whole tenor of my schoolday time

The face of one, who, whether boy or man,

Was vested with attention or respect

Through claims of wealth or blood. Nor was it least

Of many debts which afterwards I owed

To Cambridge and an academic life,

That something there was holden up to view

Of a republic, where all stood thus far

Upon equal ground, that they were brothers all

In honour, as of one community –

Scholars and gentlemen – where, furthermore,

Distinction lay open to all that came,

And wealth and titles were in less esteem

Than talents and successful industry.

Add unto this, subservience from the first

To God and Nature's single sovereignty

(Familiar presences of awful power),

And fellowship with venerable books

To sanction the proud workings of the soul,

And mountain liberty. It could not be

But that one tutored thus, who had been formed

To thought and moral feeling in the way

This story hath described, should look with awe

Upon the faculties of man, receive

Gladly the highest promises, and hail

As best the government of equal rights

And individual worth. And hence, O friend,

If at the first great outbreak I rejoiced

Less than might well befit my youth, the cause

In part lay here, that unto me the events

Seemed nothing out of nature's certain course –

A gift that rather was come late than soon.

No wonder then if advocates like these

Whom I have mentioned, at this riper day

Were impotent to make my hopes put on

The shape of theirs, my understanding bend

In honour to their honour. Zeal which yet

Had slumbered, now in opposition burst

Forth like a Polar summer. Every word

They uttered was a dart by counter-winds

Blown back upon themselves; their reason seemed

Confusion-stricken by a higher power

Than human understanding, their discourse

Maimed, spiritless – and, in their weakness strong,

I triumphed.

 

Meantime day by day the roads,

While I consorted with these royalists,

Were crowded with the bravest youth of France

And all the promptest of her spirits, linked

In gallant soldiership, and posting on

To meet the war upon her frontier-bounds.

Yet at this very moment do tears start

Into mine eyes – I do not say I weep,

I wept not then, but tears have dimmed my sight –

In memory of the farewells of that time,

Domestic severings, female fortitude

At dearest separation, patriot love

And self-devotion, and terrestrial hope

Encouraged with a martyr's confidence.

Even files of strangers merely, seen but once

And for a moment, men from far, with sound

Of music, martial tunes, and banners spread,

Entering the city, here and there a face

Or person singled out among the rest

Yet still a stranger, and beloved as such –

Even by these passing spectacles my heart

Was oftentimes uplifted, and they seemed

Like arguments from Heaven that 'twas a cause

Good, and which no one could stand up against

Who was not lost, abandoned, selfish, proud,

Mean, miserable, wilfully depraved,

Hater perverse of equity and truth.

 

Among that band of officers was one,

Already hinted at, of other mold –

A patriot, thence rejected by the rest,

And with an oriental loathing spurned

As of a different cast. A meeker man

Than this lived never, or a more benign –

Meek, though enthusiastic to the height

Of highest expectation. Injuries

Made him more gracious, and his nature then

Did breathe its sweetness out most sensibly,

As aromatic flowers on Alpine turf

When foot hath crushed them. He through the events

Of that great change wandered in perfect faith,

As through a book, an old romance, or tale

Of Fairy, or some dream of actions wrought

Behind the summer clouds. By birth he ranked

With the most noble, but unto the poor

Among mankind he was in service bound

As by some tie invisible, oaths professed

To a religious order. Man he loved

As man, and to the mean and the obscure,

And all the homely in their homely works,

Transferred a courtesy which had no air

Of condescension, but did rather seem

A passion and a gallantry, like that

Which he, a soldier, in his idler day

Had payed to woman. Somewhat vain he was,

Or seemed so – yet it was not vanity,

But fondness, and a kind of radiant joy

That covered him about when he was bent

On works of love or freedom, or revolved

Complacently the progress of a cause

Whereof he was a part – yet this was meek

And placid, and took nothing from the man

That was delightful. Oft in solitude

With him did I discourse about the end

Of civil government, and its wisest forms,

Of ancient prejudice and chartered rights,

Allegiance, faith, and laws by time matured,

Custom and habit, novelty and change,

Of self-respect, and virtue in the few

For patrimonial honour set apart,

And ignorance in the labouring multitude.

For he, an upright man and tolerant,

Balanced these contemplations in his mind,

And I, who at that time was scarcely dipped

Into the turmoil, had a sounder judgement

Than afterwards, carried about me yet

With less alloy to its integrity

The experience of past ages, as through help

Of books and common life it finds its way

To youthful minds, by objects over near

Not pressed upon, nor dazzled or misled

By struggling with the crowd for present ends.

 

But though not deaf and obstinate to find

Error without apology on the side

Of those who were against us, more delight

We took, and let this freely be confessed,

In painting to ourselves the miseries

Of royal courts, and that voluptuous life

Unfeeling where the man who is of soul

The meanest thrives the most, where dignity,

True personal dignity, abideth not –

A light and cruel world, cut off from all

The natural inlets of just sentiment,

From lowly sympathy, and chastening truth,

When good and evil never have the name,

That which they ought to have, but wrong prevails,

And vice at home. We added dearest themes,

Man and his noble nature, as it is

The gift of God and lies in his own power,

His blind desires and steady faculties

Capable of clear truth, the one to break

Bondage, the other to build liberty

On firm foundations, making social life,

Through knowledge spreading and imperishable,

As just in regulation, and as pure,

As individual in the wise and good.

 

We summoned up the honorable deeds

Of ancient story, thought of each bright spot

That could be found in all recorded time,

Of truth preserved and error passed away,

Of single spirits that catch the flame from heaven,

And how the multitude of men will feed

And fan each other – thought of sects, how keen

They are to put the appropriate nature on,

Triumphant over every obstacle

Of custom, language, country, love and hate,

And what they do and suffer for their creed,

How far they travel, and how long endure –

How quickly mighty nations have been formed

From least beginnings, how, together locked

By new opinions, scattered tribes have made

One body, spreading wide as clouds in heaven.

To aspirations then of our own minds

Did we appeal; and, finally, beheld

A living confirmation of the whole

Before us in a people risen up

Fresh as the morning star. Elate we looked

Upon their virtues, saw in rudest men

Self-sacrifice the firmest, generous love

And continence of mind, and sense of right

Uppermost in the midst of fiercest strife.

 

Oh, sweet it is in academic groves –

Or such retirement, friend, as we have known

Among the mountains by our Rotha's stream,

Greta, or Derwent, or some nameless rill –

To ruminate, with interchange of talk,

On rational liberty and hope in man,

Justice and peace. But far more sweet such toil

(Toil, say I, for it leads to thoughts abstruse)

If Nature then be standing on the brink

Of some great trial, and we hear the voice

Of one devoted, one whom circumstance

Hath called upon to embody his deep sense

In action, give it outwardly a shape,

And that of benediction to the world.

Then doubt is not, and truth is more than truth –

A hope it is and a desire, a creed

Of zeal by an authority divine

Sanctioned, of danger, difficulty, or death.

Such conversation under Attic shades

Did Dion hold with Plato, ripened thus

For a deliverer's glorious task, and such

He, on that ministry already bound,

Held with Eudemus and Timonides,

Surrounded by adventurers in arms,

When those two vessels with their daring freight

For the Sicilian tyrant's overthrow

Sailed from Zacynthus – philosophic war

Led by philosophers. With harder fate,

Though like ambition, such was he, O friend,

Of whom I speak. So Beaupuis – let the name

Stand near the worthiest of antiquity –

Fashioned his life, and many a long discourse

With like persuasion honored we maintained,

He on his part accoutred for the worst.

He perished fighting, in supreme command,

Upon the borders of the unhappy Loire,

For liberty, against deluded men,

His fellow countrymen; and yet most blessed

In this, that he the fate of later times

Lived not to see, nor what we now behold

Who have as ardent hearts as he had then.

 

Along that very Loire, with festivals

Resounding at all hours, and innocent yet

Of civil slaughter, was our frequent walk,

Or in wide forests of the neighbourhood,

High woods and over-arched, with open space

On every side, and footing many a mile,

Inwoven roots, and moss smooth as the sea –

A solemn region. Often in such place

From earnest dialogues I slipped in thought,

And let remembrance steal to other times

When hermits, from their sheds and caves forth strayed,

Walked by themselves, so met in shades like these,

And if a devious traveller was heard

Approaching from a distance, as might chance,

With speed and echoes loud of trampling hoofs

From the hard floor reverberated, then

It was Angelica thundering through the woods

Upon her palfrey, or that gentler maid

Erminia, fugitive as fair as she.

Sometimes I saw methought a pair of knights

Joust underneath the trees, that as in storm

Did rock above their heads, anon the din

Of boisterous merriment and music's roar,

With sudden proclamation, burst from haunt

Of satyrs in some viewless glade, with dance

Rejoicing o'er a female in the midst,

A mortal beauty, their unhappy thrall.

The width of those huge forests, unto me

A novel scene, did often in this way

Master my fancy while I wandered on

With that revered companion. And sometimes

When to a convent in a meadow green

By a brook-side we came – a roofless pile,

And not by reverential touch of time

Dismantled, but by violence abrupt –

In spite of those heart-bracing colloquies,

In spite of real fervour, and of that

Less genuine and wrought up within myself,

I could not but bewail a wrong so harsh,

And for the matin-bell – to sound no more –

Grieved, and the evening taper, and the cross

High on the topmost pinnacle, a sign

Admonitory to the traveller,

First seen above the woods.

 

And when my friend

Pointed upon occasion to the site

Of Romarentin, home of ancient kings,

To the imperial edifice of Blois,

Or to that rural castle, name now slipped

From my remembrance, where a lady lodged

By the first Francis wooed, and bound to him

In chains of mutual passion – from the tower,

As a tradition of the country tells,

Practised to commune with her royal knight

By cressets and love-beacons, intercourse

'Twixt her high-seated residence and his

Far off at Chambord on the plain beneath –

Even here, though less than with the peaceful house

Religious, 'mid these frequent monuments

Of kings, their vices and their better deeds,

Imagination, potent to enflame

At times with virtuous wrath and noble scorn,

Did also often mitigate the force

Of civic prejudice, the bigotry,

So call it, of a youthful patriot's mind,

And on these spots with many gleams I looked

Of chivalrous delight. Yet not the less,

Hatred of absolute rule, where will of one

Is law for all, and of that barren pride

In those who by immunities unjust

Betwixt the sovereign and the people stand,

His helpers and not theirs, laid stronger hold

Daily upon me – mixed with pity too,

And love, for where hope is, there love will be

For the abject multitude. And when we chanced

One day to meet a hunger-bitten girl

Who crept along fitting her languid self

Unto a heifer's motion – by a cord

Tied to her arm, and picking thus from the lane

Its sustenance, while the girl with her two hands

Was busy knitting in a heartless mood

Of solitude – and at the sight my friend

In agitation said, »'Tis against that

Which we are fighting,« I with him believed

Devoutly that a spirit was abroad

Which could not be withstood, that poverty,

At least like this, would in a little time

Be found no more, that we should see the earth

Unthwarted in her wish to recompense

The industrious, and the lowly child of toil,

All institutes for ever blotted out

That legalized exclusion, empty pomp

Abolished, sensual state and cruel power,

Whether by edict of the one or few –

And finally, as sum and crown of all,

Should see the people having a strong hand

In making their own laws, whence better days

To all mankind. But, these things set apart,

Was not the single confidence enough

To animate the mind that ever turned

A thought to human welfare? – that henceforth

Captivity by mandate without law

Should cease, and open accusation lead

To sentence in the hearing of the world,

And open punishment, if not the air

Be free to breathe in, and the heart of man

Dread nothing. Having touched this argument

I shall not, as my purpose was, take note

Of other matters which detained us oft

In thought or conversation – public acts,

And public persons, and the emotions wrought

Within our minds by the ever-varying wind

Of record and report which day by day

Swept over us – but I will here instead

Draw from obscurity a tragic tale,

Not in its spirit singular, indeed,

But haply worth memorial, as I heard

The events related by my patriot friend

And others who had borne a part therein.

 

Oh, happy time of youthful lovers – thus

My story may begin – oh, balmy time

In which a love-knot on a lady's brow

Is fairer than the fairest star in heaven!

To such inheritance of blessedness

Young Vaudracour was brought by years that had

A little overstepped his stripling prime.

A town of small repute in the heart of France

Was the youth's birthplace; there he vowed his love

To Julia, a bright maid from parents sprung

Not mean in their condition, but with rights

Unhonoured of nobility – and hence

The father of the young man, who had place

Among that order, spurned the very thought

Of such alliance. From their cradles up,

With but a step between their several homes,

The pair had thriven together year by year,

Friends, playmates, twins in pleasure, after strife

And petty quarrels had grown fond again,

Each other's advocate, each other's help,

Nor ever happy if they were apart.

A basis this for deep and solid love,

And endless constancy, and placid truth –

But whatsoever of such treasures might,

Beneath the outside of their youth, have lain

Reserved for mellower years, his present mind

Was under fascination – he beheld

A vision, and he loved the thing he saw.

Arabian fiction never filled the world

With half the wonders that were wrought for him:

Earth lived in one great presence of the spring,

Life turned the meanest of her implements

Before his eyes to price above all gold,

The house she dwelt in was a sainted shrine,

Her chamber-window did surpass in glory

The portals of the east, all paradise

Could by the simple opening of a door

Let itself in upon him – pathways, walks,

Swarmed with enchantment, till his spirits sunk

Beneath the burthen, overblessed for life.

This state was theirs, till – whether through effect

Of some delirious hour, or that the youth,

Seeing so many bars betwixt himself

And the dear haven where he wished to be

In honorable wedlock with his love,

Without a certain knowledge of his own

Was inwardly prepared to turn aside

From law and custom and entrust himself

To Nature for a happy end of all,

And thus abated of that pure reserve

Congenial to his loyal heart, with which

It would have pleased him to attend the steps

Of maiden so divinely beautiful,

I know not – but reluctantly must add

That Julia, yet without the name of wife,

Carried about her for a secret grief

The promise of a mother.