In works of love, in these alone, How restless, how minute!
Pale was her hue; yet mortal cheek Ne'er kindled with a livelier streak When aught had suffered wrong,- When aught that breathes had felt a wound; Such look the Oppressor might confound, However proud and strong.
But hushed be every thought that springs From out the bitterness of things; Her quiet is secure ;
No thorns can pierce her tender feet, Whose life was, like the violet, sweet, As climbing jasmine, pure-
As snowdrop on an infant's grave, Or lily heaving with the wave That feeds it and defends:
As Vesper, ere the star hath kissed
The mountain top, or breathed the mist That from the vale ascends.
Thou takest not away, O Death! Thou strikest-absence perisheth, Indifference is no more;
The future brightens on our sight; For on the past hath fallen a light That tempts us to adore.
IN THE GROUNDS OF COLEORTON HALL, THE SEAT OF THE LATE SIR G. H. BEAUMONT, BART. In these grounds stands the Parish Church, wherein is a mural monument bearing an Inscription which, in deference to the earnest request of the deceased, is confined to name, dates, and these words:-"Enter not into judgment with thy servant, O Lord!" WITH copious eulogy in prose or rhyme
Graven on the tomb we struggle against Time, Alas, how feebly! but our feelings rise And still we struggle when a good man dies; Such offering BEAUMONT dreaded and forbade, A spirit meek in self-abasement clad.
Yet here at least, though few have numbered
That shunned so modestly the light of praise, His graceful manners, and the temperate ray Of that arch fancy which would round him play, Brightening a converse never known to swerve From courtesy and delicate reserve; That sense, the bland philosophy of life, Which checked discussion ere it warmed to
strife; Those rare accomplishments, and varied powers, Might have their record among sylvan bowers. Oh, fled for ever! vanished like a blast That shook the leaves in myriads as it passed;- Gone from this world of earth, air, sea, and sky, From all its spirit-moving imagery, Intensely studied with a painter's eye, A poet's heart; and, for congenial view, Portrayed with happiest pencil, not untrue To common recognitions while the line Flowed in a course of sympathy divine:- Oh! severed, too abruptly, from delights That all the seasons shared with equal rights;- Rapt in the grace of undismantled age, From soul felt music, and the treasured page
Lit by that evening lamp which loved to shed Its mellow lustre round thy honoured head; While Friends beheld thee give with eye, voice, mien,
More than theatric force to Shakspeare's
If thou hast heard me-if thy Spirit know Aught of these bowers and whence their pleasures flow;
If things in our remembrance held so dear, And thoughts and projects fondly cherished here,
To thy exalted nature only seem
Time's vanities, light fragments of earth's dream
Rebuke us not!-The mandate is obeyed That said, "Let praise be mute where I am
The holier deprecation, given in trust To the cold marble, waits upon thy dust; Yet have we found how slowly genuine grief From silent admiration wins relief.
Too long abashed thy Name is like a rose That doth "within itself its sweetness close;" A drooping daisy changed into a cup In which her bright-eyed beauty is shut up. Within these groves, where still are flitting by Shades of the Past, oft noticed with a sigh, Shall stand a votive Tablet, haply free, When towers and temples fall, to speak of Thee! If sculptured emblems of our mortal doom Recal not there the wisdom of the Tomb, Green ivy risen from out the cheerful earth Will fringe the lettered stone; and herbs spring forth,
Whose fragrance, by soft dews and rain unbound,
While truth and love their purposes fulfil, Shall penetrate the heart without a wound; Commemorating genius, talent, skill, That could not lie concealed where Thou wert known:
Thy virtues He must judge, and He alone. The God upon whose mercy they are thrown. Νου. 1830.
WRITTEN AFTER THE DEATH OF CHARLES LAMB.
To a good Man of most dear memory This Stone is sacred. Here he lies apart From the great city where he first drew breath, Was reared and taught; and humbly earned his bread,
To the strict labours of the merchant's desk By duty chained. Not seldom did those tasks Tease, and the thought of time so spent depress, His spirit, but the recompence was high; Firm Independence, Bounty's rightful sire; Affections, warm as sunshine, free as air; And when the precious hours of leisure came, Knowledge and wisdom, gained from converse
Inspired-works potent over smiles and tears. And as round mountain-tops the lightning plays,
Thus innocently sported, breaking forth As from a cloud of some grave sympathy, Humour and wild instinctive wit, and all The vivid flashes of his spoken words. From the most gentle creature nursed in fields Had been derived the name he bore-a name, Wherever christian altars have been raised, Hallowed to meekness and to innocence; And if in him meekness at times gave way, Provoked out of herself by troubles strange, Many and strange, that hung about his life; Still, at the centre of his being, lodged A soul by resignation sanctified: And if too often, self-reproached, he felt That innocence belongs not to our kind, A power that never ceased to abide in him, Charity, 'mid the multitude of sins That she can cover, left not his exposed To an unforgiving judgment from just Heaven. O, he was good, if e'er a good Man lived!
Thou wert a scorner of the fields, my Friend, But more in show than truth; and from the fields,
And from the mountains, to thy rural grave Transported, my soothed spirit hovers o'er Its green untrodden turf, and blowing flowers; And taking up a voice shall speak (tho' still Awed by the theme's peculiar sanctity
Enriching and adorning. Unto thee, Not so enriched, not so adorned, to thee Was given (say rather thou of later birth Wert given to her) a Sister-'tis a word Timidly uttered, for she lives, the meek, The self-restraining, and the ever-kind; In whom thy reason and intelligent heart Found-for all interests, hopes, and tender
All softening, humanising, hallowing powers, Whether withheld, or for her sake unsought- More than sufficient recompence!
Her love (What weakness prompts the voice to tell it here?)
Was as the love of mothers; and when years, Lifting the boy to man's estate, had called The long-protected to assume the part Of a protector, the first filial tie
Was undissolved; and, in or out of sight, Remained imperishably interwoven With life itself. Thus, 'mid a shifting world, Did they together testify of time
And season's difference-a double tree With two collateral stems sprung from one
In union, in partition only such; Otherwise wrought the will of the Most High; Yet, thro' all visitations and all trials,
Still they were faithful; like two vessels launched
From the same beach one ocean to explore With mutual help, and sailing-to their league True, as inexorable winds, or bars Floating or fixed of polar ice, allow.
But turn we rather, let my spirit turn With thine, O silent and invisible Friend! To those dear intervals, nor rare nor brief, When reunited, and by choice withdrawn From miscellaneous converse, ye were taught That the remembrance of foregone distress, And the worse fear of future ill (which oft Doth hang around it, as a sickly child Upon its mother) may be both alike Disarmed of power to unsettle present good
Which words less free presumed not even to So prized, and things inward and outward held
Of that fraternal love, whose heaven-lit lamp From infancy, through manhood, to the last Of threescore years, and to thy latest hour, Burnt on with ever-strengthening light, en- shrined
"Wonderful" hath been The love established between man and man, "Passing the love of women;" and between Man and his help-mate in fast wedlock joined Through God, is raised a spirit and soul of love Without whose blissful influence Paradise Had been no Paradise; and earth were now A waste where creatures bearing human form, Direst of savage beasts, would roam in fear, Joyless and comfortless. Our days glide on; And let him grieve who cannot choose but grieve
That he hath been an Elm without his Vine, And her bright dower of clustering charities, That, round his trunk and branches, might
In such an even balance that the heart Acknowledges God's grace, his mercy feels, And in its depth of gratitude is still.
O gift divine of quiet sequestration! The hermit, exercised in prayer and praise, And feeding daily on the hope of heaven, Is happy in his vow, and fondly cleaves To life-long singleness; but happier far Was to your souls, and, to the thoughts of others,
A thousand times more beautiful appeared, Your dual loneliness. The sacred tie
Is broken; yet why grieve? for Time but holds His moiety in trust, till Joy shall lead To the blest world where parting is unknown. 1835.
EXTEMPORE EFFUSION UPON THE
DEATH OF JAMES HOGG. WHEN first, descending from the moorlands, I saw the Stream of Yarrow glide
Along a bare and open valley, The Ettrick Shepherd was my guide. When last along its banks I wandered, Through groves that had begun to shed Their golden leaves upon the pathways, My steps the Border-ininstrel led.
The mighty Minstrel breathes no longer, Mid mouldering ruins low he lies; And death upon the braes of Yarrow, Has closed the Shepherd-poet's eyes: Nor has the rolling year twice measured, From sign to sign, its stedfast course, Since every mortal power of Coleridge Was frozen at its marvellous source; The rapt One, of the godlike forehead, The heaven-eyed creature sleeps in earth: And Lamb, the frolic and the gentle, Has vanished from his lonely hearth. Like clouds that rake the mountain-summits, Or waves that own no curbing hand, How fast has brother followed brother, From sunshine to the sunless land! Yet I, whose lids from infant slumber Were earlier raised, remain to hear A timid voice, that asks in whispers, "Who next will drop and disappear?" Our haughty life is crowned with darkness, Like London with its own black wreath, On which with thee, O Crabbe! forth-looking, I gazed from Hampstead's breezy heath. As if but yesterday departed, Thou too art gone before; but why, O'er ripe fruit, seasonably gathered, Should frail survivors heave a sigh?
Mourn rather for that holy Spirit, Sweet as the spring, as ocean deep; For Her who, ere her summer faded, Has sunk into a breathless sleep.
No more of old romantic sorrows, For slaughtered Youth or love-lorn Maid! With sharper grief is Yarrow smitten, And Ettrick mourns with her their Poet dead. Νου. 1835.
FOR A MONUMENT IN CROSTHWAITE CHURCH, IN THE VALE OF KESWICK.
YE vales and hills whose beauty hither drew The poet's steps, and fixed him here, on you, His eyes have closed! And ye, loved books,
Shall Southey feed upon your precious lore, To works that ne'er shall forfeit their renown, Adding immortal labours of his own- Whether he traced historic truth, with zeal For the State's guidance, or the Church's weal, Or Fancy, disciplined by studious art, Inform'd his pen, or wisdom of the heart, Or judgments sanctioned in the Patriot's mind By reverence for the rights of all mankind. Could private feelings meet for holier rest. Wide were his aims, yet in no human breast His joys, his griefs, have vanished like a cloud From Skiddaw's top; but he to heaven was
Through his industrious life, and Christian faith Calmed in his soul the fear of change and death.
THERE was a time when meadow, grove, and Ye blessed Creatures, I have heard the call
Ye to each other make; I see
The heavens laugh with you in your jubilee; My heart is at your festival,
My head hath its coronal,
The fulness of your bliss, I feel-I feel it all. Oh evil day! if I were sullen While Earth herself is adorning, This sweet May-morning,
And the Children are culling
On every side,
In a thousand valleys far and wide, Fresh flowers; while the sun shines
And the Babe leaps up on his Mother's arm :- I hear, I hear, with joy I hear! -But there's a Tree, of many, one, A single Field which I have looked upon, Both of them speak of something that is gone: The Pansy at my feet
Doth the same tale repeat: Whither is fled the visionary gleam? Where is it now, the glory and the dream?
Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting: The Soul that rises with us, our life's Star, Hath had elsewhere its setting, And cometh from afar: Not in entire forgetfulness, And not in utter nakedness, But trailing clouds of glory do we come From God, who is our home: Heaven lies about us in our infancy! Shades of the prison-house begin to close Upon the growing Boy,
But He beholds the light, and whence it flows He sees it in his joy;
The Youth, who daily farther from the east Must travel, still is Nature's Priest, And by the vision splendid
Is on his way attended;
Shout round me, let me hear thy shouts, thou At length the Man perceives it die away,
And fade into the light of common day.
Earth fills her lap with pleasures of her own; Yearnings she hath in her own natural kind, And even with something of a Mother's mind, And no unworthy aim,
The homely Nurse doth all she can To make her Foster-child, her Inmate Man, Forget the glories he hath known, And that imperial palace whence he came.
Behold the Child among his new-born blisses, A six years' Darling of a pigmy size! See, where 'mid work of his own hand he lies, Fretted by sallies of his mother's kisses, With light upon him from his father's eyes! See, at his feet, some little plan or chart, Some fragment from his dream of human life, Shaped by himself with newly-learned art; Á wedding or a festival,
A mourning or a funeral,
And this hath now his heart, And unto this he frames his song: Then will he fit his tongue
To dialogues of business, love, or strife. But it will not be long
Ere this be thrown aside,
And with new joy and pride
The little Actor cons another part;
But for those obstinate questionings Of sense and outward things, Fallings from us, vanishings;
Blank misgivings of a Creature
Moving about in worlds not realised,
High instincts before which our mortal Nature Did tremble like a guilty thing surprised: But for those first affections, Those shadowy recollections, Which, be they what they may,
Are yet the fountain light of all our day, Are yet a master light of all our seeing;
Uphold us, cherish, and have powerto make Our noisy years seem moments in the being Of the eternal Silence: truths that wake, To perish never;
Which neither listlessness, nor mad endeavour, Nor Man nor Boy,
Nor all that is at enmity with joy, Can utterly abolish or destroy!
Hence in a season of calm weather Though inland far we be,
Our Souls have sight of that immortal sea Which brought us hither,
Can in a moment travel thither,
And see the Children sport upon the shore, And hear the mighty waters rolling evermore.
Filling from time to time his "humorous stage" Then sing, ye Birds, sing, sing a joyous song!
With all the Persons, down to palsied Age, That Life brings with her in her equipage;
As if his whole vocation Were endless imitation.
Thou, whose exterior semblance doth belie Thy Soul's immensity;
Thou best Philosopher, who yet dost keep Thy heritage, thou Eye among the blind,
And let the young Lambs bound As to the tabor's sound!
We in thought will join your throng,
Ye that pipe and ye that play,
Ye that through your hearts to-day Feel the gladness of the May!
What though the radiance which was once so bright
Be now for ever taken from my sight,
Though nothing can bring back the hour
That, deaf and silent, read'st the eternal deep, Of splendour in the grass, of glory in the flower;
Haunted for ever by the eternal mind,
Mighty Prophet! Seer blest! On whom those truths do rest,
Which we are toiling all our lives to find, In darkness lost, the darkness of the grave; Thou, over whom thy Immortality Broods like the Day, a Master o'er a Slave, A Presence which is not to be put by; Thou little Child, yet glorious in the might Of heaven-born freedom on thy being's height, Why with such earnest pains dost thou provoke The years to bring the inevitable yoke," Thus blindly with thy blessedness at strife? Full soon thy Soul shall have her earthly freight,
And custom lie upon thee with a weight, Heavy as frost, and deep almost as life!
O joy! that in our embers Is something that doth live, That nature yet remembers What was so fugitive!
The thought of our past years in me doth breed Perpetual benediction: not indeed
For that which is most worthy to be blest; Delight and liberty,the simple creed
Of Childhood, whether busy or at rest,)
We will grieve not, rather find Strength in what remains behind; In the primal sympathy
Which having been must ever be; In the soothing thoughts that spring Out of human suffering:
In the faith that looks through death, In years that bring the philosophic mind.
Thanks to the human heart by which we live,
With new-fledged hope still fluttering in his Thanks to its tenderness, its joys, and fears,
The song of thanks and praise;
To me the meanest flower that blows can give Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears. 1803-6.
« AnteriorContinuar » |