University of Virginia Library

MEDITATIVE AND DESCRIPTIVE PIECES.

MEMORIAL POEMS.

WHY IS THERE WAR ON EARTH?

WRITTEN ON A CALM AND BEAUTIFUL DAY IN MAY, 1848.

LINES WRITTEN BY H. C. IN THE FLY-LEAF OF A COPY OF LUCRETIUS PRESENTED BY HIM TO MR. WORDSWORTH.

LINES SUGGESTED BY A CAST FROM AN ANCIENT STATUE OF THE INFANT HERCULES STRANGLING THE SERPENTS.

Behold Art's triumph! Yea, but what is Art?
Is it the Iris sent from mind to heart?
Or a bright exhalation, raised, refined,
And organized with various hues of mind?
Nay, let the mind and heart, as nature meant,
Unite to work their Maker's great intent;
As light and heat, diffused by the same sun,
To sense are diverse, but in essence one.
The poet's craft in rosy breath transpires,
And the quick music of a thousand lyres,
That wake to ecstasy the slumbering air,
Dies into nought, or flits we know not where.
The patient sculptor views, from day to day,
An image that can never pass away;
With resolute faith, which nothing can surprise,
Beholds the type in true proportions rise:
His progress slow, and every touch as slight
As dawn encroaching on a summer night;
His purpose sure, for consummated beauty
To him is love, religion, law and duty.
Long ere our God vouchsafed himself to be
A baby God, a human Deity,
The vast prophetic impulse of the earth
Foretold, and shadow'd forth the mystic birth;
Nor all the art of sacerdotal lies,
Nor the world's state, could so incarnalise
The strong idea, but that men, set free
By pure imagination's liberty,
Conceived the fancy of a boy divine.
Some fables fashion'd a fierce God of wine,
Abortive issue of intense desire,
Begot by Thunder and brought forth by Fire.
Some milder spirits cull'd two twinkling lights
From the throng'd brilliance of their Grecian nights,
And gave them names, and deem'd them great to save
The wandering mariner on the weltering wave.
Some, wiser still, believed the sun on high
A deathless offspring of the empyreal sky,
A personal power that could all truths reveal,
Mighty to slay, and merciful to heal.
Some feign'd—and they came nearest to the truth—
A destined husband of eternal youth,
Born of a mortal mother, and, ere born,
Doom'd to the pilgrim's houseless lot forlorn,
To fight and conquer, a victorious slave,
Strong in subjection, by obedience brave.
Such thought possess'd the nameless artist's mind
When he the God, the baby God, design'd,
That perfect symbol of awaken'd will,
Matching its might against predestinate ill.
The serpent writhing round his lower part,
His infant arm defies to reach his heart.
One mighty act is all the wondrous boy,
Line, limb, and feature, all are strength and joy.
Yet half an hour ago that infant slept,
Smiled at his mother's breast, and haply wept:
And when his task is done, the serpent slain,
Soft in his cradle-shield may sleep again.

SUMMER RAIN.

TO W. W.,

ON HIS SEVENTY-FIFTH BIRTHDAY.

Happy the year, the month, that finds alive
A worthy man in health at seventy-five.
Were he a man no further known than loved,
And but for unremember'd deeds approved,
A gracious boon it were from God to earth
To leave that good man by his humble hearth.
But if the man be one whose virtuous youth,
Loving all Nature, was in love with truth;
And with the fervour of religious duty
Sought in all shapes the very form of beauty;—
Feeling the current of the tuneful strain,
Joy in his heart, and light upon his brain,
Knew that the gift was given, and not in vain;
Whose careful manhood never spared to prune
What the rash growth of youth put forth too soon;
Too wise to be ashamed to grow more wise;
Culling the truth from specious fallacies:—
Then may the world rejoice to find alive
So good, so great a man, at seventy-five.

WRITTEN AT BELLE-VUE, AMBLESIDE.

NAWORTH.

When English lords and Scottish chiefs were foes,
Stern on the angry confines Naworth rose;
In dark woods islanded its towers look'd forth,
And frown'd defiance to the growling North;
With donjon-keep and long embattled wall,
Portcullis, portal, and wide-echoing hall,
Where erst the warrior carved in gloves of steel,
And the stone pavement clang'd with iron heel.
The very type was Naworth of a time
Whose sins and woes by age are made sublime.
There came the vagrant minstrel—not in vain,
For ladies loved, and lords repaid his strain.
What though his song was oft of loves unholy,
And fights,—fantastic brood of restless folly?
What though the plaudits, clatter'd on the stones,
Bemock'd and deafen'd the poor captive's groans,
Doom'd in sad durance pining to abide
The long delay of hope from Solway's further side?
Let us in thankfulness our God adore,
Because such things have been, and are no more:
Nor let a Queen, a matron pure and young,
And sweet as e'er by vagrant bard was sung,
Conspire with those who would, with eyeless rage,
Deface the relics of ancestral age;
But, as her duty, be it still her joy
All to improve, and nothing to destroy.
So Naworth stands, still rugged as of old,
Arm'd like a knight without, austerely bold;
But all within bespeaks the better day,
And the bland influence of a Morpeth's sway.

LINES.

Oh for a man, I care not what he be,
A lord or labourer, so his soul be free,
Who had one spark of that celestial fire
That did the Prophets of old time inspire,
When Joel made the mystic trumpet cry,
When Jeremiah raised his voice on high,
And rapt Isaiah felt his great heart swell
With all the sins and woes of Israel!
Not such am I,—a petty man of rhyme,
Nursed in the softness of a female time.
From May of life to Autumn have I trod
The earth, not quite unconscious of my God;
But apter far to recognise his power
In sweet perfection of a pencill'd flower,
A kitten's gambols, or a birdie's nest,
A baby sleeping on its mother's breast,
Than in the fearful passages of life,—
The battle-field, the never-ceasing strife
Of policy that ever would be wise,
Dissecting truth into convenient lies;
The gallows, or the press-gang, or the press;
The poor man's pittance, ever less and less;
The dread magnificence of ancient crime,
Or the mean mischief of the present time.
Yet there is something in my heart that would
Become a witness to eternal good.
Woe to the man that wastes his wealth of mind,
And leaves no legacy to human kind!
I love my country well,—I love the hills,
I love the valleys and the vocal rills;
But most I love the men, the maids, the wives,
The myriad multitude of human lives.

HIDDEN MUSIC.

I HAVE WRITTEN MY NAME ON WATER.

THE PROPOSED INSCRIPTION ON THE TOMB OF JOHN KEATS.

And if thou hast, where could'st thou write it better
Than on the feeder of all lives that live?
The tide, the stream, will bear away the letter,
And all that formal is and fugitive:
Still shall thy Genius be a vital power,
Feeding the root of many a beauteous flower.

ON A PICTURE OF A VERY YOUNG NUN,

NOT READING A DEVOTIONAL BOOK, AND NOT CONTEMPLATING A CRUCIFIX PLACED BESIDE HER.

So young, too young, consign'd to cloistral shade,
Untimely wedded,—wedded, yet a maid;
And hast thou left no thought, no wish behind,
No sweet employment for the wandering wind,
Who would be proud to waft a sigh from thee,
Sweeter than aught he steals in Araby?
Thou wert immured, poor maiden, as I guess,
In the blank childhood of thy simpleness;
Too young to doubt, too pure to be ashamed,
Thou gavest to God what God had never claim'd,
And didst unweeting sign away thine all
Of earthly good,—a guiltless prodigal.
The large reversion of thine unborn love
Was sold to purchase an estate above.
Yet by thy hands, upon thy bosom prest,
I think, indeed, thou art not quite at rest;
That Christ that hangs upon the sculptured cross
Is not the Jesus to redeem thy loss;
Nor will that book, whate'er its page contain,
Convince thee that the world is false and vain.
E'en now there is a something at thy heart
That would be off, but may not, dare not, start;
Yes, yes! thy face, thine eyes, thy closed lips, prove
Thou wert intended to be loved and love.
Poor maiden! victim of the vilest craft
At which e'er Moloch grinn'd or Belial laugh'd,
May all thy aimless wishes be forgiven,
And all thy sighs be register'd in Heaven,
And God his mercy and his love impart
To what thou should'st have been, and what thou art!

BEAUTY.

FAIRY LAND.

Yes, I am old, and older yet must be,
Drifting along the everlasting sea;
And yet, through puzzling light and perilous dark,
I bear with me, as in a lonely ark,
A precious cargo of dear memory;
For, though I never was a citizen,
Enroll'd in Faith's municipality,
And ne'er believed the phantom of the few
To be a tangible reality,
Yet I have loved sweet things, that are not now,
In frosty starlight, or the cold moonbeam.
I never thought they were; and therefore now
No doubt obscures the memory of my dream.
My Fairy Land was never upon earth,
Nor in the heaven to which I hoped to go;
For it was always by the glimmering hearth,
When the last fagot gave its reddest glow,
And voice of eld wax'd tremulous and low,
And the sole taper's intermittent light,
Like a slow-tolling bell, declared good night.
Then could I think of Peri and of Fay,
As if their deeds were things of yesterday.
I felt the wee maid in her scarlet hood
Real as the babes that wander'd in the wood,
And could as well believe a wolf could talk
As that a man beside the babes could stalk,
With gloomy thoughts of murder in his brain;
And then I thought how long the lovely twain
Threaded the paths that wound among the trees,
And how at last they sunk upon their knees,
And said their little prayers, as prettily
As e'er they said them at their mother's knee,
And went to sleep. I deem'd them still asleep
Clasp'd in each other's arms, beside a heap
Of fragrant leaves;—so little then knew I
Of bare-bone Famine's ghastly misery.
Yet I could weep and cry, and sob amain,
Because they never were to wake again;
But if 'twas said, “They'll wake at the last day!”
Then all the vision melted quite away;
As from the steel the passing stain of breath,
So quickly parts the fancy from the faith.
And I thought the dear babes in the wood no more true
Than Red Riding Hood,—aye, or the grim loup-garou,
That the poor little maid for her granny mistook;
I knew they were both only tales in a book.

THE ROYAL MAID.

Oh, thou sweet daughter and last lingering flower
Of a great nation's loyal hope and love,
Last of a line of kings whose royal dower
Is virgin loveliness sublimed to power,
The yearning blossom of the expectant dove
On the strong eagle's spacious wings upborne;
Or shall I call thee prophecy of spring,
In thine own virgin pureness blossoming,
Like the white May-bloom on the naked thorn;
Nay, rather art thou like a flower
Crowning some high crazy tower,
So sweetly smiling on the rifted wall,
That, for thy sake, we would not see it fall.
Oh, royal maid, excuse the idle brain
That, knowing thee but in thy loved ideal,
Plays with thine image, and would very fain
Love and revere thee too as something real;
The human accents of thine innocent thought
Would rather think thee flower, or happy bird,
Than the dull lesson that thou hast been taught;
Rather would deem thee bird, that glad and free
Warbles its wood-notes wild on greenwood tree,
Than tutor'd captive of a gilded cage,
Unweeting echo of a prating age.
Alas! a prisoner born, and bred a slave,
But late awaken'd from a happy trance,
Reft of the best of what thy fortune gave,
Thy childish, aimless, wantless ignorance:—
Ah, what a hopeless task it is for thee
To govern free men that were never free.
Easy it were, I doubt not, to obey,
If to obey were duty's consummation;
But throned servility, compell'd to sway
A shackled sceptre by the year and day—
[OMITTED]

ON THE DEATH OF HENRY NELSON COLERIDGE.

ADDRESSED TO A FRIEND.

AGNES.

FAREWELL!

TO A FRIEND

SUFFERING UNDER A RECENT BEREAVEMENT.

Think not, my friend, my heart or hand are cold
Because I do not, and I cannot weep.
Too sudden was the knowledge of the woe,
And it requires some time, some thoughtful pause,
Ere we believe what but too well we know.
Some men are lessoned long in sorrow's school,
And serve a long apprenticeship to grief,
So, when the ill day comes, their minds are clad
In funeral garments. Death came here at once,
Like the sun's setting in the level sea;
No meek, pale warning, melancholy eve,
Weaned the fond eyesight from the joyous day;
'Twas full-orbed day, and then 'twas total night—
Sad night for us, but better day for her.
Well may'st thou mourn, but mourn not without hope:
Thou art not one, I know, that can believe
A pausing pulse, an intermitted breath,
Or aught that can to mortal flesh befal,
Can turn to nothing any way of God,
Or frustrate one good purpose of our Lord.
She was a purpose of the great Creator,
Begun on earth, and well on earth pursued,
Now in the heaven of heavens consummate,
Or happy waiting the predestined day,
The flower and glory of her consummation.

A SCHOOLFELLOW'S TRIBUTE TO THE MEMORY OF THE REV. OWEN LLOYD.

TO THE MEMORY OF JAMES GREENWOOD.

TO A LADY,

ON THE DEATH OF HER MOTHER AND DAUGHTER.

Sara,—so let me call thee, since that name
Is most familiar to thy friendly ear,
And for a mother that is now no more,
And for a sister passing dear to me—
Long time it seems since thou and I have spoke
In verse or honest prose, or, happier still,
With running comment of looks, lips, and eyes,
And silence, when our mutual thought was heard,
Discoursed by mute and secret sympathy,
Interpreted by some half-melting star,
That seemed a part of twilight, or akin
To the retiring, pensive, tawny hill,
So dim reflected in the dozing lake,
It wot not of its presence;—lake once proud
Of diamonds dripping from thy silvery oar,
When thou, thy boat, and its long-beaded wake,
Seem'd like the shadow of a Glendoveer,
Floating above in smallest skiff of heaven,—
So shy, he would and yet would not be seen.
Those times are past,—and I have known thee tamed
To sober womanhood and matron grave,
Yet like the ever-glad Hesperian tree,
Whose summer fruitage gleams through vernal flowers;
And I have seen thee, too, in double grief
For two pure souls removed, so like each other,
They may be playmates in the bowers of bliss,—
For souls like theirs receive no taint of time.
And who can doubt that each fine faculty,
But half-developed in the prophet spring
Of thy sweet Katherine's little life, shall bloom
In God's own light, consummate and fulfilled?
[OMITTED]

ON THE DEATH OF THOMAS JACKSON,

LATE OF LOW WOOD INN, WHO DIED BY A FALL FROM AN APPLE TREE.

ON THE LATE DR. ARNOLD.

EPITAPH ON OWEN LLOYD.

Could love devout, or longing sighs, or tears,
From God obtain a grant of lengthened years,
Then, wandering reader, thou hadst never stood
Beside the grave of one so young and good.
Still in the small but consecrated place
He spake of judgment and he spake of grace;
Of judgment dread, and merciful delay:
And latest spake of that, the latest day,
When those,—how few!—that may compare with him,
Shall mount on high with brightest seraphim!