Mysterious havoc! but serene his brow,
Where daylight lingers 'mid perpetual snow;
Glitter the stars above, and all is black below.
At such an hour I heaved a pensive sigh,
When roared the sullen Arve in anger by,
That not for thy reward, delicious Vale!
Waves the ripe harvest in the autumnal gale;
That thou, the slave of slaves, art doomed to pine;
Hard lot! for no Italian arts are thine,
To soothe or cheer, to soften or refine.
Beloved Freedom! were it mine to stray,
With shrill winds roaring round my lonely way,
O'er the bleak sides of Cumbria's heath-clad moors,
Or where dank sea-weed lashes Scotland's shores;
To scent the sweets of Piedmont's breathing rose,
And orange gale that o'er Lugano blows;
In the wide range of many a varied round,
Fleet as my passage was, I still have found
That where despotic courts their gems display,
The lillies of domestic joy decay,
While the remotest hamlets blessings share,
In thy dear presence known, and only there!
The casement's shed more luscious woodbine binds,
And to the door a neater pathway winds;
At early morn, the careful housewife, led
To cull her dinner from its garden bed,
Of weedless herbs a healthier prospect sees,
While hum with busier joy her happy bees;
In brighter rows her table wealth aspires,
And laugh with merrier blaze her evening fires;
Her infants' cheeks with fresher roses glow,
And wilder graces sport around their brow;
By clearer taper lit, a cleanlier board
Receives at supper hour her tempting hoard;
The chamber hearth with fresher boughs is spread,
And whiter is the hospitable bed.
And oh, fair France! though now along the shade,
Where erst at will the gray-clad peasant strayed,
Gleam war's discordant vestments through the trees,
And the red banner fluctuates in the breeze;
Though martial songs have banished songs of love,
And nightingales forsake the village grove,
Scared by the fife and rumbling drum's alarms,
And the short thunder, and the flash of arms;
While, as Night bids the startling uproar die,
Sole sound, the Sourd* renews his mournful cry!
Yet, hast thou found that Freedom spreads her
power
Beyond the cottage hearth, the cottage door :
All nature smiles, and owns beneath her eyes
Her fields peculiar, and peculiar skies.
Yes, as I roamed where Loiret's waters glide
Through rustling aspens heard from side to side,
An insect is so called, which emits a short, melancholy cry, heard at the close of the summer evenings, on the banks of the Loire.
When from October clouds a milder light
Fell, where the blue flood rippled into white,
Methought from every cot the watchful bird
Crowed with ear-piercing power till then unheard;
Each clacking mill, that broke the murmuring streams, 27
Rocked the charmed thought in more delightful
Chasing those long, long dreams, the falling leaf
Awoke a fainter pang of moral grief;
The measured echo of the distant flail
Wound in more welcome cadence down the vale;
A more majestic tidef the water rolled,
And glowed the sun-gilt groves in richer gold.
-Though Liberty shall soon, indignant, raise
Red on the hills his beacon's comet blaze;
Bid from on high his lonely cannon sound,
And on ten thousand hearths his shout rebound;
His larum-bell from village tower to tower
Swing on the astounded ear its dull undying roar;
Yet, yet rejoice, though Pride's perverted ire
Rouse Hell's own aid, and wrap thy hills in fire!
Lo! from the innocuous flames, a lovely birth,
With its own Virtues springs another earth:
Nature, as in her prime, her virgin reign
Begins, and Love and Truth compose her train;
While, with a pulseless hand, and steadfast gaze,
Unbreathing Justice her still beam surveys.
Oh give, great God, to Freedom's waves to ride
Sublime o'er Conquest, Avarice, and Pride,
To sweep where Pleasure decks her guilty bowers,
And dark Oppression builds her thick-ribbed towers
Give them, beneath their breast while gladne
springs,
To brood the nations o'er with Nile-like wings;
And grant that every sceptred Child of clay,
Who cries, presumptuous, "Here their tides shall stay
Swept in their anger from the affrighted shore,
With all his creatures sink-to rise no more!
To-night, my friend, within this humble cot
Be the dead load of mortal ills forgot
In timely sleep; and, when at break of day,
On the tall peaks the glistening sunbeams play,
With lighter heart our course we may renew,
The first whose footsteps print the mountain dew.
+ The duties upon many parts of the French rivers were exorbitant, that the poorer people, deprived of the benefit water carriage were obliged to transport their goods by land
WRITTEN IN VERY EARLY YOUTH.
CALM is all nature as a resting wheel.
The kine are couched upon the dewy grass;
The horse alone, seen dimly as I pass,
Is cropping audibly his later meal:
Dark is the ground; a slumber seems to steal
O'er vale, and mountain, and the starless sky.
Now, in this blank of things, a harmony
Honefelt, and home created, seems to heal
That grief for which the senses still supply
Fresh food; for only then, when memory
Is hushed, am I at rest. My Friends! restrain
Those busy cares that would allay my pain;
Ob leave me to myself, nor let me feel
The officious touch that makes me droop again.
Such as did once the Poet bless,
Who murmuring here a later ditty, Could find no refuge from distress But in the milder grief of pity.
Now let us, as we float along,
For him suspend the dashing oar;
And pray that never child of song
May know that Poet's sorrows more.
How calm! how still! the only sound,
The dripping of the oar suspended!
-The evening darkness gathers round
By virtue's holiest Powers attended.†
Left upon a Seat in a Yew-tree, which stands near the Lake of Esthwaite, on a desolate part of the Shore, commanding a beautiful Prospect.
NAY, Traveller! rest. This lonely Yew-tree stands
Far from all human dwelling; what if here
No sparkling rivulet spread the verdant herb?
What if the bee love not these barren boughs?
Yet, if the wind breathe soft, the curling waves,
That break against the shore, shall lull thy mind
By one soft impulse saved from vacancy.
COMPOSED UPON THE THAMES NEAR RICHMOND.
GUDE gently, thus for ever glide,
Thames! that other bards may see
As lovely visions by thy side
As now, fair river! come to me.
glide, fair stream! for ever so,
quiet soul on all bestowing,
Til all our minds for ever flow
As thy deep waters now are flowing.
Vain thought!-Yet be as now thou art,
That in thy waters may be seen
The image of a poet's heart,
How bright, how solemn, how serene!
That piled these stones, and with the mossy sod
First covered, and here taught this aged Tree
With its dark arms to form a circling bower,
I well remember. He was one who owned
No common soul. In youth by science nursed,
And led by nature into a wild scene
Of lofty hopes, he to the world went forth
A favoured Being, knowing no desire
Which genius did not hallow; 'gainst the taint
Of dissolute tongues, and jealousy, and hate,
And scorn, against all enemies prepared,
All but neglect. The world, for so it thought,
Owed him no service; wherefore he at once
With indignation turned himself away,
And with the food of pride sustained his soul
In solitude. Stranger! these gloomy boughs
Had charms for him; and here he loved to sit,
His only visitants a straggling sheep,
The stone-chat, or the glancing sand-piper:
And on these barren rocks, with fern and heath,
And juniper and thistle, sprinkled o'er,
Fixing his downcast eye, he many an hour
A morbid pleasure nourished, tracing here
An emblem of his own unfruitful life:
And, lifting up his head, he then would gaze
On the more distant scene,- how lovely 'tis
Thou seest, and he would gaze till it became
Far lovelier, and his heart could not sustain
The beauty, still more beauteous! Nor, that time,
When nature had subdued him to herself,
Would he forget those Beings to whose minds,
Warm from the labours of benevolence,
The world and human life appeared a scene
Of kindred loveliness: then he would sigh,
Inly disturbed, to think that others felt
What he must never feel: and so, lost Man!
On visionary views would fancy feed,
Till his eye streamed with tears. In this deep vale
He died, this seat his only monument.
If Thou be one whose heart the holy forms
Of young imagination have kept pure
sistible arms of Great Britain being added to those of the allies, 1 was assured in my own mind would be of long continuance, and productive of distress and misery beyond all possible calculation This conviction was pressed upon me by having been a witness during a long residence in revolutionary France, of the spirit whic prevailed in that country. After leaving the Isle of Wight, I spen two days in wandering on foot over Salisbury Plain, which, though cultivation was then widely spread through parts of it, had upo the whole a still more impressive appearance than it now retains.
The monuments and traces of antiquity, scattered in abundance over that region, led me unavoidably to compare what we know o guess of those remote times with certain aspects of modern society and with calamities, principally those consequent upon war, t which, more than other classes of men, the poor are subject. I those reflections, joined with particular facts that had come to m knowledge, the following stanzas originated.
In conclusion, to obviate some distraction in the minds of thos who are well acquainted with Salisbury Plain, it may be proper t say, that of the features described as belonging to it, one or tw are taken from other desolate parts of England.
A TRAVELLER on the skirt of Sarum's Plain
Pursued his vagrant way, with feet half bare;
Stranger! henceforth be warned; and know that pride, Stooping his gait, but not as if to gain
Howe'er disguised in its own majesty,
Is littleness; that he who feels contempt
For any living thing, hath faculties
Which he has never used; that thought with him
Is in its infancy. The man whose eye
Is ever on himself doth look on one,
The least of Nature's works, one who might move
The wise man to that scorn which wisdom holds
Unlawful, ever. O be wiser, thou!
Instructed that true knowledge leads to love;
True dignity abides with him alone
Who, in the silent hour of inward thought,
Can still suspect, and still revere himself,
In lowliness of heart.
INCIDENTS UPON SALISBURY PLAIN.
Help from the staff he bore; for mien and air
Were hardy, though his cheek seemed worn with care
Both of the time to come, and time long fled:
Down fell in straggling locks his thin grey hair;
A coat he wore of military red,
But faded, and stuck o'er with many a patch and shre
The gathering clouds grew red with stormy fire, In streaks diverging wide and mounting high; That inn he long had passed; the distant spire, Which oft as he looked back had fixed his eye, Was lost, though still he looked, in the blank sky. Perplexed and comfortless he gazed around, And scarce could any trace of man descry, Save cornfields stretched and stretching without bounc Not less than one-third of the following poem, though it has But where the sower dwelt was nowhere to be found.
PREFIXED TO THE FIRST EDITION OF THIS POEM, PUBLISHED IN 1842.
from time to time been altered in the expression, was published so far back as the year 1798, under the title of "The Female Vagrant."
The extract is of such length that an apology seems to be required No tree was there, no meadow's pleasant green,
for reprinting it here: but it was necessary to restore it to its origi nal position, or the rest would have been unintelligible. The whole
was written before the close of the year 1794, and I will detail, rather as matter of literary biography than for any other reason, the circumstances under which it was produced.
During the latter part of the summer of 1793, having passed a month in the Isle of Wight, in view of the fleet which was then preparing for sea off Portsmouth at the commencement of the war, I left the place with melancholy forebodings. The American war was still fresh in memory. The struggle which was beginning, and
No brook to wet his lip or soothe his ear;
Long files of corn-stacks here and there were seen,
But not one dwelling-place his heart to cheer.
Some labourer, thought he, may perchance be near;
And so he sent a feeble shout—in vain;
No voice made answer, he could only hear
Winds rustling over plots of unripe grain,
which many thought would be brought to a speedy close by the irre- Or whistling thro' thin grass along the unfurrowed plain
No swinging sign-board creaked from cottage elm
To stay his steps with faintness overcome;
"Twas dark and void as ocean's watery realm
Roaring with storms beneath night's starless gloom;
No gipsy cower'd o'er fire of furze or broom;
No labourer watched his red kiln glaring bright,
Nor taper glimmered dim from sick man's room;
Along the waste no line of mournful light
Her he addressed in words of cheering sound;
Recovering heart, like answer did she make;
And well it was that, of the corse there found,
In converse that ensued she nothing spake;
She knew not what dire pangs in him such tale could
wake.
But soon his voice and words of kind intent Banished that dismal thought; and now the wind
From lamp of lonely toll-gate streamed athwart the In fainter howlings told its rage was spent:
At length, though hid in clouds, the moon arose;
The downs were visible-and now revealed
A structure stands, which two bare slopes enclose.
It was a spot, where, ancient vows fulfilled,
Kind pious hands did to the virgin build
A lonely spital, the belated swain
From the night terrors of that waste to shield:
But there no human being could remain,
Meanwhile discourse ensued of various kind,
Which by degrees a confidence of mind
And mutual interest failed not to create,
And, to a natural sympathy resigned,
In that forsaken building where they sate
The woman thus retraced her own untoward fate.
"By Derwent's side my father dwelt -a man
Of virtuous life, by pious parents bred;
And I believe that, soon as I began
And now the walls are named the "Dead House" of the To lisp, he made me kneel beside my bed,
And in his hearing there my prayers I said:
And afterwards, by my good father taught,
I read, and loved the books in which I read;
For books in every neighbouring house I sought,
And nothing to my mind a sweeter pleasure brought.
A little croft we owned - -a plot of corn,
A garden stored with peas, and mint, and thyme,
And flowers for posies, oft on Sunday morn
Plucked while the church bells rang their earliest chime.
Can I forget our freaks at shearing time!
My hen's rich nest through long grass scarce espied;
The cowslip's gathering in June's dewy prime;
The swans that with white chests upreared in pride
Rushing and racing came to meet me at the water-side'
The staff I well remember which upbore
The bending body of my active sire;
His seat beneath the honied sycamore
Where the bees hummed, and chair by winter fire;
Which now with freezing thoughts did all her powers When market-morning came, the neat attire
Had heard of one who, forced from storms to shroud,
Felt the loose walls of this decayed retreat
Rock to incessant neighings shrill and loud,
While his horse pawed the floor with furious heat;
Till on a stone, that sparkled to his feet,
Struck, and still struck again, the troubled horse:
The man half raised the stone with pain and sweat,
Half raised, for well his arm might lose its force
Disclosing the grim head of a late murdered corse.
Such tale of this lone mansion she had learned,
And, when that shape, with eyes in sleep half drowned,
By the moon's sullen lamp she first discerned,
Cold stony horror all her senses bound.
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