TO THE MEMORY OF RAISLEY CALVERT.

Comp. 1806.

Pub. 1807.

[This young man, Raisley Calvert, to whom I was so much indebted, died at Penrith, 1795.]

CALVERT! it must not be unheard by them
Who may respect my name, that I to thee
Owed many years of early liberty.

This care was thine when sickness did condemn
Thy youth to hopeless wasting, root and stem—
That I, if frugal and severe, might stray
Where'er I liked; and finally array

My temples with the Muse's diadem.

Hence, if in freedom I have loved the truth;
If there be aught of pure, or good, or great,
In my past verse; or shall be, in the lays
Of higher mood, which now I meditate;
It gladdens me, O worthy, short-lived, Youth!
To think how much of this will be thy praise.

Raisley Calvert was the son of R. Calvert, steward to the Duke of Norfolk. Writing to Sir George Beaumont, on the 20th February 1805, Wordsworth said, "I should have been forced into one of the professions" (the church or law) "by necessity, had not a friend left me £900. This bequest was from a young man with whom, though I call him friend, I had but little connection; and the act was done entirely from a confidence on his part that I had powers and attainments which might be of use to mankind... Upon the interest of the £900, and £100 legacy to my sister, and £100 more which the Lyrical Ballads' have brought me, my sister and I contrived to live seven years, nearly eight." To his friend Matthews he wrote, November 7th, 1796, "My friend" (Calvert) "has every symptom of a confirmed consumption, and I cannot think of quitting him in his present debilitated state." And in January 1795 he wrote to Matthews from Penrith (where Calvert was staying), "I have been here for some time. I am still much engaged with my sick friend; and am sorry to add that he worsens daily... he is barely alive." In a letter to Dr Joshua Stanger of Keswick, written in the year 1842, Wordsworth referred thus to

METHOUGHT I SAW THE FOOTSTEPS OF A THRONE 41

Raisley Calvert. Dr Calvert-a nephew of Raisley, and son of the W. Calvert whom the poet accompanied to the Isle of Wight and Salisbury Plain in 1793—had just died. "His removal (Dr Calvert's) has naturally thrown my mind back as far as Dr Calvert's grandfather, his father, and sister (the former of whom was, as you know, among my intimate friends), and his uncle Raisley, whom I have so much cause to remember with gratitude for his testamentary remembrance of me, when the greatest part of my patrimony was kept back from us by injustice. It may be satisfactory to your wife for me to declare" [Mrs Stanger who still lives-is a daughter of William Calvert] "that my friend's bequest enabled me to devote myself to literary pursuits, independent of any necessity to look at pecuniary emolument, so that my talents, such as they might be, were free to take their natural course. Your brothers Raisley and William were both so well known to me, and I have so many reasons to respect them, that I cannot forbear saying, that my sympathy with this last bereavement is deepened by the remembrance that they both have been taken from you..." On October 1, 1794, Wordsworth wrote from Keswick to Ensign William Calvert about his brother Raisley. (The year is not given in the letter, but it must have been 1794.) He tells him that Raisley was determined to set out for Lisbon; but that he (Wordsworth) could not brook the idea of his going alone; and that he wished to accompany his friend and stay with him, till his health was re-established. He adds, "Reflecting that his return is uncertain, your brother requests me to inform you that he has drawn out his will, which he means to get executed in London. The purport of his will is to leave you all his property, real and personal, chargeable with a legacy of £600 to me, in case that, on inquiry into the state of our affairs in London, he should think it advisable to do so. It is at my request that this information is communicated to you." Calvert did not live to go south; and he changed the sum left to Wordsworth from £600 to £900. The relationship of the two men suggests the somewhat parallel one between Spinoza and Simon de Vries. For further details, see the Life of the Poet in the last volume.-ED.

[The latter part of this sonnet was a great favourite with my sister S. H. When I saw her lying in death, I could not resist the impulse to compose the Sonnet that follows it.]

METHOUGHT I saw the footsteps of a throne

Which mists and vapours from mine eyes did shroud

Nor view of who might sit thereon allowed;1
But all the steps and ground about were strown
With sights the ruefullest that flesh and bone
Ever put on; a miserable crowd,

Sick, hale, old, young, who cried before that cloud,
"Thou art our king, O Death! to thee we groan."
Those steps I clomb; the mists before me gave 2
Smooth way and I beheld the face of one.
Sleeping alone within a mossy cave,

With her face up to heaven; that seemed to have
Pleasing remembrance of a thought foregone;

A lovely Beauty in a summer grave!

"The sonnet that follows," referred to in the Fenwick note, is one belonging to the year 1836, beginning—

"Even so for me a Vision sanctified."

See the note to that sonnet.-ED.

LINES

Composed at Grasmere, during a walk one Evening, after a stormy day, the Author having just read in a Newspaper that the dissolution of Mr Fox was hourly expected.

LOUD is the Vale! the Voice is up

With which she speaks when storms are gone,

A mighty unison of streams!

Of all her Voices, One!

I seemed to mount those steps; the vapours gave
Those steps I mounted, as the vapours gave
Those steps I mounted, which the vapours gave
Those steps I clomb; the opening vapours gave C. & 1843.

1807.

1836.

C.

Loud is the Vale;-this inland Depth
In peace is roaring like the Sea;

Yon star upon the mountain-top
Is listening quietly.

Sad was I, even to pain deprest;
Importunate and heavy load !*

The Comforter had found me here,
Upon this lonely road;

And many thousands now are sad-
Wait the fulfilment of their fear;
For he must die who is their stay,
Their glory disappear.

A Power is passing from the earth
To breathless Nature's dark abyss;
But when the great and good depart1
What is it more than this-

That Man, who is from God sent forth,
Doth yet again to God return ?-
Such ebb and flow must ever be,

Then wherefore should we mourn?

Charles James Fox died September 13, 1806. He was Minister for Foreign Affairs at the time, having assumed office on the 5th February, shortly after the death of William Pitt. Wordsworth's sadness on this occasion, his recognition of Fox as great and good, and as "a power" that was "passing from the earth," may have been due partly to personal and political sympathy, but also probably to Fox's appreciation of the better side of the French Revolution, and to his

1

1936.

But when the Mighty pass away

1807.

*Note to edd. 1807 and onwards :-" Importuna e grave salma.' Michael Angelo.

welcoming the pacific proposals of Talleyrand, perhaps also to his efforts for the abolition of slavery.

The "lonely road" referred to in these Lines, was, in all likelihood, the path from Town-end towards the Swan Inn past the Hollins, Grasmere. A "mighty unison of streams' may be heard there any autumn evening after a stormy day, and especially after long continued rain, the sound of waters from Easdale, from Greenhead Ghyll, and the slopes of Silver How, blending with that of the Rothay in the valley below. The poem was always classed amongst the "Epitaphs and Elegiac Pieces."-ED.

ANOTHER year-another deadly blow!
Another mighty Empire overthrown!
And We are left, or shall be left, alone;
The last that dare to struggle with the Foe.1
'Tis well from this day forward we shall know
That in ourselves our safety must be sought;
That by our own right hands it must be wrought ;
That we must stand unpropped, or be laid low.
O dastard whom such foretaste doth not cheer!
We shall exult, if they who rule the land
Be men who hold its many blessings dear,
Wise, upright, valiant; not a servile band,2
Who are to judge of danger which they fear,
And honour which they do not understand.

Napoleon won the battle of Jena on the 14th October 1806, entered Potsdam on the 25th, and Berlin on the 28th; Prince Hohenlohe laid down his arms on the 6th November; Blücher surrendered at Lübeck on the 7th; Magdeburg was taken on the 8th ; on the 14th the French occupied Hanover; and on the 21st Napoleon issued his Berlin decree for the Blockade of England.-Ed.