Not for an interval however brief;
The silent thoughts that search for stedfast light, Love from her depths, and duty in her might, And faiththese only yield secure relief.
ILLUSTRATED BOOKS AND NEWSPAPERS.
DISCOURSE was deemed man's noblest attribute,
And written words the glory of his hand;
Then followed printing with enlarged command
For thought-dominion vast and absolute
For spreading truth, and making love expand.
Now prose and verse sunk into disrepute
Must lacquey a dumb art that best can suit
The taste of this once intellectual land.
A backward movement surely have we here,
From manhood-back to childhood; for the age-
Back towards caverned life's first rude career.
Avaunt this vile abuse of pictured page!
Must eyes be all in all, the tongue and ear
Nothing Heaven keep us from a lower stage.
For Books!" Yes, heartless ones, or be it proved That 't is a fault in us to have lived and loved Like others, with like temporal hopes to die;
No public harm that genius from her course
After the perusal of his Theophilus Anglicanus, recently published
ENLIGHTENED teacher, gladly from thy hand
Have I received this proof of pains bestowed
By thee to guide thy pupils on the road
That, in our native isle, and every land,
The Church, when trusting in divine command
And in her Catholic attributes, hath trod:
O may these lessons be with profit scanned
To thy heart's wish, thy labour blest by God!
So the bright faces of the young and gay
Shall look more bright-the happy, happier still;
Catch, in the pauses of their keenest play,
Motions of thought which elevate the will
And, like the spire that from your classic hill
Points heavenward, indicate the end and way.
RYDAL MOUNT, Dec. 11, 1843.
Be turned; and streams of truth dried up, even at their In power, where once he trembled in his weakness,
The streets and quays are thronged, but why disown
Their natural utterance: whence this strange release
From social noise - silence elsewhere unknown?
A spirit whispered, "Let all wonder cease;
Ocean's o'erpowering murmurs have set free
Thy sense from pressure of life's common din;
As the dread voice that speaks from out the sea
Of God's eternal Word, the voice of time
Doth deaden, shocks of tumult, shrieks of crime,
The shouts of folly, and the groans of sin."
Must perish; -how can they this blight endure?
And must he too the ruthless change bemoan
Who scorns a false utilitarian lure
Mid his paternal fields at random thrown?
Baffle the threat, bright scene from Orrest-head
Given to the pausing traveller's rapturous glance:
Plead for thy peace, thou beautiful romance
Of nature; and, if human hearts be dead,
Speak, passing winds: ye torrents, with your strong
And constant voice, protest against the wrong.
WANSFELL!* this household has a favoured lot,
Living with liberty on thee to gaze,
To watch while morn first crowns thee with her rays,
Or when along thy breast serenely float
Evening's angelic clouds. Yet ne'er a note
Hath sounded (shame upon the bard!) thy praise
For all that thou, as if from heaven, hast brought
Of glory lavished on our quiet days.
Bountiful son of earth! when we are gone
From every object dear to mortal sight,
As soon we shall be, may these words attest
How oft, to elevate our spirits, shone
Thy visionary majesties of light,
How in thy pensive glooms our hearts found rest.
WHILE beams of orient light shoot wide and high,
Deep in the vale a little rural town t
Breathes forth a cloud-like creature of its own,
That mounts not toward the radiant morning sky,
But, with a less ambitious sympathy,
Hangs o'er its parent waking to the cares
Troubles and toils that every day prepares.
So fancy, to the musing poet's eye,
Endears that lingerer. And how blest her sway
(Like influence never may my soul reject)
If the calm Heaven, now to its zenith decked
With glorious forms in numberless array,
To the lone shepherd on the hills disclose
Gleams from a world in which the saints repose.
ON THE PROJECTED KENDAL AND WINDERMERE
RAILWAY.
Is then no nook of English ground secure
From rash assault? Schemes of retirement sown
In youth, and mid the busy world kept pure
As when their earliest flowers of hope were blown,
PROUD were ye, mountains, when, in times of old,
Your patriot sons, to stem invasive war,
Intrenched your brows; ye gloried in each scar:
Now, for your shame, a power, the thirst of gold,
That rules o'er Britain like a baneful star,
Wills that your peace, your beauty, shall be sold,
And clear way made for her triumphal car
Through the beloved retreats your arms enfold!
Heard YE that whistle? As her long-linked train
Swept onwards, did the vision cross your view?
Yes, ye were startled; — and, in balance true,
Weighing the mischief with the promised gain,
Mountains, and vales, and floods, I call on you
To share the passion of a just disdain.
HERE, where, of havoc tired and rash undoing,
Man left this structure to become time's prey
A soothing spirit follows in the way
That Nature takes, her counter-work pursuing.
See how her ivy clasps the sacred ruin
Fall to prevent or beautify decay;
And, on the mouldered walls, how bright, how gay,
The flowers in pearly dews their bloom renewing!
Thanks to the place, blessings upon the hour;
Even as I speak the rising sun's first smile
Gleams on the grass-crowned top of yon tall tower
Whose cawing occupants with joy proclaim
Prescriptive title to the shattered pile
Where, Cavendish, thine seems nothing but a name!
yeomanry feel to their small inheritances can scarcely be over-rated. Near the house of one of them stands a magnificent tree, which a neighbour of the owner advised him to fell for profit's sake. "Fell it!" exclaimed the yeoman, "I had rather fall on my knees and worship it." It happens, I believe, that the intended railway would pass
*The hill that rises to the south-east, above Ambleside. through this little property, and I hope that an apology for ↑ Ambleside. the answer will not be thought necessary by one who
The degree and kind of attachment which many of the enters into the strength of the feeling.
WELL have yon railway labourers to THIS ground
Withdrawn for noontide rest. They sit, they walk
Among the ruins, but no idle talk
Is heard; to grave demeanour all are bound;
And from one voice a hymn with tuneful sound
Hallows once more the long-deserted quire
And thrills the old sepulchral earth, around.
Others look up, and with fixed eyes adinire
That wide-spread arch, wondering how it was raised,
To keep, so high in air, its strength and grace:
All seem to feel the spirit of the place,
And by the general reverence God is praised:
Profane despoilers, stand ye not reproved,
While thus these simple-hearted men are moved? *
Closing the Volume of Sonnets published in 1838.†
SERVING no haughty muse, my hands have here
Disposed some cultured flowerets (drawn from spots
Where they bloomed singly, or in scattered knots),
Each kind in several beds of one parterre;
Both to allure the casual loiterer,
And that, so placed, my nurslings may requite
Studious regard with opportune delight,
Nor be unthanked, unless I fondly err.
But metaphor dismissed, and thanks apart,
Reader, farewell! My last words let them be-
If in this book fancy and truth agree;
If simple nature trained by careful art
Through it have found a passage to thy heart;
Grant me thy love, I crave no other fee!
MEMORIALS OF A TOUR IN SCOTLAND, 1803
FROM THE VALE OF GRASMERE. AUGUST, 1803.
THE gentlest shade that walked Elysian plains
Might sometimes covet dissoluble chains;
Even for the tenants of the zone that lies
Beyond the stars, celestial Paradise,
Methinks 'twould heighten joy, to overleap
At will the crystal battlements, and peep
Into some other region, though less fair,
To see how things are made and managed there.
Change for the worse might please, incursion bold
Into the tracts of darkness and of cold;'
O'er Limbo lake with aëry flight to steer,
And on the verge of Chaos hang in fear.
Such animation often do I find,
Power in my breast, wings growing in my mind,
Then, when some rock or hill is overpast,
Perchance without one look behind me cast,
Some barrier with which nature, from the birth
Of things, has fenced this fairest spot on earth.
O, pleasant transit, Grasmere! to resign
Such happy fields, abodes so calm as thine;
Not like an outcast with himself at strife;
The slave of business, time, or care for life
But moved by choice; or, if constrained in part,
Yet still with nature's freedom at the heart; -
To cull contentment upon wildest shores,
And luxuries extract from bleakest moors;
With prompt embrace all beauty to enfold,
And having rights in all that we behold.
[† In a brief advertisement to the Volume of Sonnets, the author said:
"My admiration of some of the sonnets of Milton, first tempted me to write in that form. The fact is not mentioned from a notion that it will be deemed of any importance by the reader, but merely as a public acknowledgment of one of the innumerable obligations, which, as a poet and a man, I am under to our great fellow-countryman RYDAL MOUNT, May 21st, 1838."—H. R.]
I mourned with thousands, but as one
More deeply grieved, for he was gone
Whose light I hailed when first it shone,
And showed my youth
How verse may build a princely throne
On humble truth.
Alas! where'er the current tends,
Regret pursues and with it blends,-
Huge Criffel's hoary top ascends
By Skiddaw seen,—
Neighbours we were, and loving friends
We might have been;
True friends though diversely inclined;
But heart with heart and mind with mind,
Where the main fibres are entwined,
Through nature's skill,
May even by contraries be joined
More closely still.
The tear will start, and let it flow;
Thou 'poor inhabitant below,'
At this dread moment
But, leaving each unquiet theme
Where gentlest judgments may misdeem,
And prompt to welcome every gleam
Of good and fair,
Let us beside this limpid stream
Breathe hopeful air.
Enough of sorrow, wreck, and blight;
Think rather of those moments bright
When to the consciousness of right
His course was true,
When wisdom prospered in his sight
And virtue grew.
Yes, freely let our hearts expand,
Freely as in youth's season bland,
When side by side, his book in hand,
We wont to stray,
Our pleasure varying at command
Of each sweet lay.
How oft inspired must he have trod
These pathways, yon far-stretching road!
There lurks his home; in that abode,
With mirth elate,
Or in his nobly-pensive mood,
The rustic sate.
Proud thoughts that image overa wes,
Before it humbly let us pause,
And ask of Nature, from what cause
And by what rules
She trained her Burns to win applause
That shames the schools.
Through busiest street and loneliest glen
Are felt the flashes of his pen;
He rules mid winter snows, and when
Bees fill their hives;
Deep in the general heart of men
His power survives.
What need of fields in some far clime
Where Heroes, Sages, Bards sublime,
And all that fetched the flowing rhyme
From genuine springs,
Shall dwell together till old Time
Folds up his wings?
Sweet Mercy! to the gates of Heaven
This minstrel lead, his sins forgiven;
The rueful conflict, the heart riven
With vain endeavour,
And memory of earth's bitter leaven,
Effaced for ever.
But why to him confine the prayer,
When kindred thoughts and yearnings bear
On the frail heart the purest share
With all that live? -
The best of what we do and are,
Just God, forgive!*
[In a letter from Wordsworth to the Editor, dated Rydal Mount, Dec. 23d, 1839, this poem is referred to as follows: There is a difference of more than the length of your life, I believe, between our ages. I am now standing on the brink of that vast ocean I must sail so soon -I must speedily lose sight of the shore; and I could not once have conceived how little I now am troubled by the thought of how long or short a time they who remain upon that shore may have sight of me. The other day I chanced to be looking over a MS. poem belonging to the year 1803, though not actually composed till many years afterwards. It was suggested by visiting the neighbourhood of Dumfries, in which Burns had resided, and where he died: it concluded thus:
Sweet Mercy! to the gates of Heaven, &c.
I instantly added, the other day,
But why to him confine the prayer, &c.
The more I reflect upon this last exclamation, the more I feel, and perhaps it may in some degree be the same with vou, justified in attaching comparatively small importance to any literary monument that I may be enabled to leave behind. It is well, however, I am convinced that men think otherwise in the earlier part of their lives, and why It 18 so, is a point I need not touch upon in writing to you." -H. R.J
AFTER VISITING THE GRAVE OF THEIR FATHER.
"The poet's grave is in a corner of the churchyard. We looked at it with melancholy and painful reflections, repeating to each other his own verses ——
Is there a man whose judgment clear,' &c "
Extract from the Journal of my Fellow-traveller
'MID crowded obelisks and urns
I sought the untimely grave of Burns;
Sons of the Bard, my heart still mourns
With sorrow true;
And more would grieve, but that it turns
Trembling to you!
Through twilight shades of good and ill
Ye now are panting up life's hill,
And more than common strength and skill
Must ye display;
If ye would give the better will
Its lawful sway.
Hath Nature strung your nerves to bear
Intemperance with less harm, beware!
But if the poet's wit ye share,
Like him can speed
The social hour-of tenfold care
There will be need;
For honest men delight will take
To spare your failings for his sake,
Will flatter you, and fool and rake
Your steps pursue;
And of your father's name will make
A snare for you.
Far from their noisy haunts retire,
And add your voices to the quire
That sanctify the cottage fire
With service meet;
There seek the genius of your sire,
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