University of Virginia Library

1. Part First.

TO G. C. HOLLAND, M.D.

Holland! thou lov'st the little songful lyre,
On which, well-pleased thy bidding to obey,
For the first time, I now attempt to play,
Fretting, with skill-less touch, the sonnet's wire.
Alas! the strings of this small harp require,
To bring forth half their worth, a master's hand!
Yet, as I wander through a lovely land,
And stop, at times, its marvels to admire,
May I not sing them too? Yea, while the breeze,
Sighing o'er moated grange, or castle bold,
Awakes the music of their ancient trees,
The lyre, beloved of bards whose fires re-cold,
That sweetest lyre I'll place before my knees,
And make my theme the wonders I behold.

POWERS OF THE SONNET.

Why should the tiny harp be chain'd to themes
In fourteen lines with pedant rigour bound?
The sonnet's might is mighter than it seems:
Witness the bard of Eden lost and found,
Who gave this lute a clarion's battle sound.
And, lo! another Milton calmly turns
His eyes within on light that ever burns,
Waiting till Wordsworth's second peer be found!
Meantime, Fitzadam's mournful music shows
That the scorn'd sonnet's charm may yet endear
Some long deep strain, or lay of well-told woes;
Such as, in Byron's couplet, brings a tear
To manly cheeks, or o'er his stanza throws
Rapture and grief, solemnity and fear.

EUGENE ARAM.

Knaresbro'! thou wilt be famous through all time,
Because poor Aram's history imparts
A dreadful unsolv'd riddle to all hearts—
A half-told secret, in its gloom sublime,
Though trite and common are death, want, and crime!
But Bulwer, o'er thy caverns, rocks, and trees,
Throws the deep charm of thoughtful melodies,
Heart cherish'd, like a dim cathedral's chime.
That charm will live when rock-built towers decay—
That charm, when rocks themselves are turn'd to dust,
Will to the slanderers of the great and just,
And the grim ghost of buried envy, say—
“Though Time hath plough'd your graves and ground thy bust,
I am not of the things which pass away.”

PLUMPTON.

Who would not here become a hermit? here
Grow old in song? here die, on Nature's breast,
Hush'd, like yon wild bird on the lake, to rest?
Then laid asleep beneath the branches sere,
Till the Awakener in the east appear,
And call the dead to judgment? Quietness,
Methinks the heart-whole rustic loves thee less
Than the town's thought-worn smiler. Oh! most dear
Art thou to him who flies from care to bowers
That breathe of sainted calmness! and, to me,
More welcome than the breath of hawthorn flowers
To children of the city, when delight
Leads them from smoke to cowslips, is the sight
Of these green shades, those rocks, this little sea.

BOLTON ABBEY.

Spirits of wonder, loveliness, and fear,
Dwell in these groves, beneath o'er-arching trees,
With the dim presence of their mysteries
Haunting the rocks and mountain shadows near:
They pass the lone enthusiast, wandering here,
By strangled Wharfe, or Barden's ancient tower;
Pass him, nor shake a dew-drop from a flower,
But with their whispers soothe his soul-taught ear,
As with a dream of prayer; until he starts,
Awaken'd from deep thoughts of Time's calm might
And Nature's beauty, and in awe departs;—
When, to the Abbey's moonlight-tinted walls,
The demon of the spectred river calls,
Mock'd by the voices of mysterious night.

THE VICARAGE.

The Vicar's house is smother'd in its roses,
His garden glows with dahlias large and new;
“Bees murmur in his limes the summer through;”
And on the seat beneath them often dozes
A better man than Calumny supposes.
His living is three hundred pounds a-year;
“But not of servants, wife, and children clear.”
He gives away his common right and closes,
And keeps no horse. When winter strips the tree,
To poor men's homes his wife and daughters go,
With needful gifts of flannel, food, or fire,
And made-wines for the sick. Now, would not he,
Who deem'd the labourer worth of his hire,
Have paid it to his faithful servant?—No.

POET v. PARSON.

A hireling's wages to the priest are paid;
While lives and dies, in want and rags, the bard!
But preaching ought to be its own reward,
And not a sordid, if an honest trade.
Paul, labouring proudly with his hands, array'd
Regenerated hearts in peace and love;
And when, with power, they preach'd the mystic dove,
Penn, Barclay, Clarkson, ask'd not Mammon's aid.
As, for its own sake, poetry is sweet
To poets—so, on tasks of mercy bound,
Religion travels with unsandaled feet,
Making the flinty desert holy ground;
And never will her triumph be complete
While one paid pilgrim upon earth is found.

BRIMHAM ROCKS.

Rocks! sacred deem'd to eldest fraud, when fear
First darken'd death's reality with dreams!
The spirit of your cruel worship seems,
Like a wolf's shadow, yet to linger here,
Deepening the gloom with peril still too near;
For guile and knowledge long have been allies,
Most pious found when preaching blasphemies,
Most treacherous when most trusted. But the year,
Whose seasons are all winters, soon must close;
Knowledge hath join'd the millions; and mankind
Are learning to distinguish friends from foes;
The eagle-eyed give sight unto the blind;
The eagle-wing'd are chasing crime-made woes;
The mighty-voiced are heard in every wind.

TREES AT BRIMHAM.

Gnarl'd oak and holly! stone-cropp'd like the stone!
Are ye of it, or is it part of you?
Your union strange is marvellously true,
And makes the granite, which I stand upon,
Seem like the vision of an empire gone—
Gone, yet still present, thou it never was,
Save as a shadow—let the shadow pass!
So perish human glories, every one!
But Rocks! ye are not shadows; Trees! ye cast
Th' Almighty's shadow o'er the homeward bee,
His name on Brimham! yea, the coming blast,
Beneath his curtains, reads it here with me;
And pauses not to number marvels past,
But speeds the thunder on o'er land and sea.

ROCK IDOL AT BRIMHAM.

Stone! did the hand of sacerdotal fraud
Shape thee into this vital type of things?
Or did a million winters, on their wings
Of scythe-like perseverance come abroad,
To bid Conjecture stand before thee awed,
And, almost severing thee from parent-earth,
Make thee a marvel? Vainly giv'st thou birth
To solemn fancies, building an abode
Around thee, for a world of shapeless ghosts;
Vainly they rise before me, calling up
Kings and their masters, and imagined hosts
That fight for clouds. What then? The heath-flower's cup
With dew-drops feeds this fountain ever clear,
And the ring'd ouzel whistles—“God is here!”

STUDLEY.

Behold! the Medicean Venus! O
Is not this beauty? Yes, for it is truth.
See how she bends in her eternal youth!
E'en thus she charm'd ten thousand years ago;
Ere painting's magic bade the canvas glow,
Or soul inspired the marble; thus she stood
Before her own Adonis of the wood!
The master-piece of sculpture? Artist! No.
In all divine perfection as she stands,
So came she, perfect, from th' Almighty's hands,
The masterpiece of Nature. Everywhere
His spirit walks; but he who in strange lands
Seeks her fair form, turns homeward in despair,
Then seeks it in his soul, and finds it there.

CRITICISM.

Yet art hath less of instinct than of thought,
All instinct though it seems; for as the flower
Which blooms in solitude, by noiseless power,
And skill divine, is wonderfully wrought,
So from deep study art's high charm is caught;
And as the sunny air, and dewy light,
Are spun in heavenly looms, till blossoms, bright
With honey'd wealth and sweetness, droop o'er-fraught,
And our eyes breathe of beauty; so the bard
Wrings from slow time inimitable grace;
So wins immortal Music her reward,
E'en with a bee's industry; and we trace
The sculptor's home-thoughts thro' his labours hard,
Till beams, with deathless love, the chisell'd face.

FOUNTAINS ABBEY.

Abbey! for ever smiling pensively,
How like a thing of Nature dost thou rise,
Amid her loveliest works! as if the skies,
Clouded with grief, were arch'd thy roof to be,
And the tall trees were copied all from thee!
Mourning thy fortunes—while the waters dim
Flow like the memory of thy evening hymn;
Beautiful in their sorrowing sympathy;
As if they with a weeping sister wept,
Winds name thy name! But thou, though sad, art calm,
And time with thee his plighted troth hath kept;
For harebells deck thy brow, and, at thy feet,
Where sleep the proud, the bee and red-breast meet,
Mixing thy sighs with Nature's lonely psalm.

PARTING TEARS.

Scenes which renew my youth, and wake again
Its earliest dreams of love and beauty!—here,
E'en as in heaven, found perfect, though the tear
Of frailty dims them with its earthly stain
Too often and too soon! I can remain
With you no longer; I must haste to things
That drink the ice, which in a moment brings
The chill of fifty winters, and their pain,
To the sick heart. Already I grow cold
In spirit; and the thought of leaving you
For alien scenes, where nothing good or new
Remains for crowds to show, or men to say,
Instructs me—not that I in years am old,
But that the tresses of my soul are grey.

RETURN TO SHEFFIELD.

To swelter in the town's distemper'd glow,
Heart-sick to sleep, and weary wake to strife,
To make a curse of hope, a broil of life,
And blight the rose to bid the cypress grow,
Pain's angel calls me; and I rise to go
Back from the castled wood, the sainted tower—
Scenes where man's home is lovely as a flower,
And he himself still fair, though stain'd with woe!
Where Nid, and Aire, and Wharfe through Eden glide,
Or Brimham's rocks of Druid terrors tell,
No longer, little lyre, may I abide;
No more with Nature's lonely powers to dwell,
I leave thee here on Skell's all-beauteous side;
Toy of the Titans! tiny Harp, farewell!!