O'er which, with cheek forsaken of its blood,
He hung, still pointing with stern hardihood,
And brow that spake the unuttered mandate, "Read!' Sign!" He glares round. — Never! though thousands
- low words, in solemn mood,
Are murmured; and he signs. Great God! were these
Progenitors of our enfeebled kind?
Whose wordy wars are waged to thwart or please
Minions, not kings; who stoop with grovelling mind
To weigh the pauper's dole, scan right by rule,
And plunder churches to endow a school!
WRITTEN WITH A SLATE-PENCIL UPON A STONE, THE LARGEST
OF A HEAP LYING NEAR A DESERTED QUARRY, UPON ONE OF THE ISLANDS AT RYDAL.
TRANGER! this hillock of misshapen stones
Is not a ruin spared or made by time,
Nor, as perchance thou rashly deem'st, the cairn
Of some old British chief: 't is nothing more
Than the rude embyro of a little dome
Or pleasure-house, once destined to be built
Among the birch-trees of this rocky isle.
But, as it chanced, Sir William having learned
That from the shore a full-grown man might wade,
And make himself a freeman of this spot
At any hour he chose, the prudent knight
Desisted, and the quarry and the mound
Are monuments of his unfinished task.
The block on which these lines are traced, perhaps,
Was once selected as the corner-stone
Of that intended pile, which would have been
Some quaint odd plaything of elaborate skill,
So that, I guess, the linnet and the thrush,
And other little builders who dwell here,
Had wondered at the work. But blame him not,
For old Sir William was a gentle knight,
Bred in this vale, to which he appertained
With all his ancestry. Then peace to him,
And for the outrage which he had devised,
Entire forgiveness! But if thou art one
On fire with thy impatience to become
An inmate of these mountains, — if, disturbed
By beautiful conceptions, thou hast hewn
Out of the quiet rock the elements
Of thy trim mansion destined soon to blaze
In snow-white splendor, think again; and, taught
By old Sir William and his quarry, leave
Thy fragments to the bramble and the rose;
There let the vernal slow-worm sun himself,
And let the redbreast hop from stone to stone.
ADIEU, Rydalian laurels ! that have grown
And spread as if ye knew that days might come When ye would shelter in a happy home,
On this fair mount, a poet of your own,
One who ne'er ventured for a Delphic crown
To sue the god; but, haunting your green shade
All seasons through, is humbly pleased to braid
Ground-flowers, beneath your guardianship self-sown.
Farewell! no minstrels now with harp new-strung
For summer wandering quiet their household bowers;
Yet not for this wants Poesy a tongue
To cheer the itinerant on whom she pours
Her spirit, while he crosses lonely moors
Or, musing, sits forsaken halls among.
COMPOSED AT RYDAL, SEPTEMBER, 1860.
HE last great man by manlier times bequeathed
To these our noisy and self-boasting days
In this green valley rested, trod these ways,
With deep calm breast this air inspiring breathed;
True bard, because true man, his brow he wreathed
With wild-flowers only, singing Nature's praise;
But Nature turned, and crowned him with her bays,
And said, "Be thou my Laureate." Wisdom sheathed
In song love-humble; contemplations high,
That built like larks their nests upon the ground;
Insight and vision; sympathies profound
That spanned the total of humanity, -
These were the gifts which God poured forth at large
On men through him; and he was faithful to his charge.
Aubrey de Vere.
RYDAL MOUNT, JUNE, 1838.
HIS day without its record may not pass,
In which I first have seen the lowly roof
That shelters Wordsworth's age. A love intense,
Born of the power that charmed me in his song,
But grown beyond it into higher moods
And deeper gratitude, bound me to seek
His rural dwelling. Fitting place I found,
Blest with rare beauty, set in deepest calm:
Looking upon still waters, whose expanse
Might tranquillize all thought; and bordered round
By mountains springing from the turfy slopes
That bound the margin, to where heath and fern
Dapple their soaring sides, and higher still
To where the bare crags cleave the vaporous sky.
Henry Alford.
LOW and white, yet scarcely seen,
Are its walls for mantling green ;
Not a window lets in light
But through flowers clustering bright;
Not a glance may wander there
But it falls on something fair:
Garden choice and fairy mound,
Only that no elves are found;
Winding walk and sheltered nook,
For student grave and graver book;
Or a bird-like bower, perchance,
Fit for maiden and romance.
Then, far off, a glorious sheen
Of wide and sunlit waters seen;
Hills that in the distance lie
Blue and yielding as the sky;
And nearer, closing round the nest,
The home, of all the "living crest";
Other rocks and mountains stand
Rugged, yet a guardian band,
Like those that did in fable old
Elysium from the world enfold.
INTENDED FOR A STONE IN THE GROUNDS OF RYDAL MOUNT.
these fair vales hath many a tree
At Wordsworth's suit been spared;
And from the builder's hand this stone,
For some rude beauty of its own,
Was rescued by the bard:
So let it rest; and time will come
When here the tender-hearted
May heave a gentle sigh for him,
As one of the departed.
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