University of Virginia Library

Farewell the scene, but not farewell the charm
Of ancient Scarbro'! Long as mem'ry lives
And for my past a secret mansion builds
Within me, like a sacred Thing I prize,
Her touching beauties shall be unforgot
And treasured there, with no affected love.

The spirit of the olden time's romance
Haunts her loved scenes, where each abiding grace,
By Nature hallow'd, blooms unwither'd still;
And beautiful are all her wooded bays,
Her winding creeks of loveliness and calm
And mounts of woodland-green, as when the Saxon gazed
In dreaming sternness, or with soften'd brow,
At twilight on them, while the rosy tinge
Of vesper-clouds o'erveil'd the ocean-rocks
Before him. History, too, may yet perceive,
Where the helm'd Roman in his banner'd pride
Lifted those eagles which o'erswept the world,
Invincible in valour. Lone and sad,
Wrapt in a shroud of melancholy thought,
With heart unecho'd, and with mind unnerved,
I thank thee, God! that often I have won
From scenes that here are eloquent of Thee,
Feelings divine, and hopes from heaven new-born,
Grandeur and Beauty, with a bliss serene
That o'er my future like a dew will steal
Hereafter, when the feverish world may fret
My soul, and shore and sea lie far away.

Where rise the hills, and rolls the sacred Deep
Her minstrelsy of many-voicèd waves,
There, is the Poet's haunt, and home of song!
If true to Nature, his responsive heart
Replies in music to those myriad calls
Which still accost him from Her shrines august,
Or lone, or lovely; then, the lyre of thought
Is thrill'd with magic, and each pensive chord
Vibrates at once in poetry and praise.
For, aye between the mountains and the mind,
Infinite Soul and God's unfathom'd Sea,
A poetry of pure attraction dwells
For ever. Ye have felt it! who the Lyre
Have struck, by intellectual beauty charm'd,
In answer to a living harp of song
Within you, Poets! that our mystic world
Alone interpret, and to thought create
A richer Paradise than Adam saw,
Ere ruin fell on Eden's forfeit-bowers.
Is it that mountains are our kindred types
And, in their soaring majesty of shape
Between two worlds thus gloriously uplift,
Instruct us, heavenward how the heart ascends
When man with his high Maker most communes?
Does Ocean, in her measureless profound
Deep within deep interminably sunk,
E'en like an echo of the soul's abyss,
With dread eternity appear instinct?
We cannot tell; enough for Truth to feel
That Man and Nature are responsive works,
Shaped into concord by a Hand divine.

Here while I muse, what inspirations throng
Full on my sense, and through the mind o'erflow,
Till fancy kindles, and a fervent rush
Of bright emotions, blent with deeper thoughts,
Pour inwards: like an intellectual flood
From some heart-fountain, suddenly unseal'd
As if by magic, and with radiant speed
Rolling at once through all the spirit-depths!

Look where you can, the Beautiful is there,
Touch'd with that boldness rock-bound waters lend
To each loved region on our island-coast.
Look where you please! some answering grace responds
To your charm'd glance; as if with conscious power
Rich Nature in her prodigal supply
Of blent attractions, tender, green, or wild,
Echo'd the spirit of your wish, and gave
Her all of lovely in one view combined;
That so, elysian fancy might be lull'd
With landscapes Eden-like, and full of God.
In azure brightness, lo! that billow'd Sea
Rolling in rapture, and alive with beams
Of sun-made glory, with a living joy
Oh, how it heaves its bounding way along,
Cheer'd by young breezes! like a poet's heart
Panting with visions, which before him rise,
And bear him onward with a swelling pulse
Of passion, dreaming, daring, and sublime!

This cliff below, in green remoteness raised,
I mark the outlines of the curvèd shore
Upward receding with a gradual rise
Of roofs, and mansions, blendingly array'd;
While to the left a grassy mount appears
O'er which, mid benchèd walks, and shaded bowers,
In stream-like windings artificial paths
Ascend, and glitter in the glow of eve.
But, near the brink of yon impending height,
The proud Marine its modern piles erects
On high; and full before its window'd front
The surging vastness of the German sea
For ever rolls, and still for ever charms
How many a land-sick Heart, that often sigh'd
To look once more upon the leaping waves
Of laughing ocean! But, again behold
How the brave skill of architectural man.
Both height and depth can subject and reduce
To his proud service! There, the high-poised Bridge
O'erarches with magnificent effect
The cloven hills, and both in one combines:
Beneath the circle of each ponderous arch
The fascinating blue of ocean breaks
Softly, and sweetly on arrested eyes,
That downward from the cresting hills o'ergaze
The sea-girt landscape. Freshly shines the Main,
Rippled with breezes, and with sun-beams clothed
Which make her waves like liquid diamonds flash,
Dazzling the eye with over-bright excess
Hither and thither, where no shade intrudes.
How gently, o'er the beach the swelling tide
Rolls inward! falling with melodious plunge,
It murmurs to the Town's contiguous walls
And garden trees, which round the shore descend,—
As if the Sea were conscious that her waves
Were loved, or look'd upon with greeting eyes,
And hearts which echo those poetic strains
Each breezy stanza to the billow sings!

Behind me, in their yellow ripeness spread,
The upland cornfields, o'er whose bladed stalks
Bending with produce, play the choral airs
From ocean wafted, till the meadows breathe
A fitful undersong, and wild-flowers laugh
In waving gladness. List! the larks are poised
High in the air, and trill their lyric strains
Above me, in an ecstasy of sound,
And seem to quiver forth their vesper hymns.
But lo, the magic of yon peerless Main!
How graceful in majestic strength she heaves
Her breast of waters, tinged with gorgeous hues
From heaven reflected, while her boundless spread
Of billows gently to the breeze upcurls!
Far as our straining eyes can stretch the view,
Rolls that vast ocean the horizon round
Her volumed waters, till both sea and sky
Look wedded in the distance. Near the shore
Or sanded beach, the gambolling children bathe,
And in the foam and freshness of the wave
Plunge their delighted heads, and disappear
A moment, then, again their dripping frames
Lift into light, all innocently clad.
While many a bark, symmetrical and small,
Opes its white sail, and on the azure calm
Mirrors its beauty; like a bird it moves
Born of the sea, and on the waters bred;
With such a vital grace it seems to glide
O'er the light wavelets, which around it curl
Amid those taller vessels. O'er the strand
Rising within the bay's prolong'd recess,
Bold Scarbro' with her slanting roofs appears,
That redden dimly, now the pallid beam
Of sunset strikes them. Hark! her busy hum
In broken cadence to the ear is brought,
And not unpleasing; while beneath this cliff
Where now I watch, the pulsing billows play
In languid motion, while its pebbled base
They moisten; or, in lulling tones dissolve
Of sea-born music, exquisitely sad.

But stranger! high o'er all the Town behold,
Breathing stern history from its haunted walls
And mangled towers, yon warlike Castle frowns:
Sublime in ruins, like Romance in stone,
Still to the present does it preach the past
With more than language! There, a moral sigh
O'er the gone splendour of heroic times
May well be heaved, when Chivalry prevail'd,
And knightly bosoms with heroic pulse
Were beating nobly, as the brave became!
Now turn from man, for God himself is nigh
Whene'er His Temple to the heart appeals,
Like mute religion!—Thus, St. Mary's shrine,
Dim with dead ages, lifts her hoary pile,
And almost touches into pensive tears
The hearts who view her, bow'd and bent with time:
Conventual mother of Cistercian monks,
Once in the pride and pomp of Romish art
Her structure tower'd, and o'er this ancient Burgh
Ruled like a queen; but now, both damp and dust
Feed on her walls, and waste her mouldering form.
And can Wealth look upon a wreck like this,
Nor feel the blush of self-rebuke to burn
Into her conscience? Is the Christ we serve
To Mammon given, while with hoarding grasp
A hideous worship unto heartless Gold
We proffer, gripe our bloated incomes back,
And grudge to God the boon we well might give,
From Faith how due, to feeling how divine!

But in her widowhood St. Mary's pile
Affectingly to pious hearts appeals:
From this far mount I view her churchyard-slopes
With tombstones populous, whose pallid fronts
In the slant brightness of the sunset gleam,
And glisten o'er the humbler graves which lie
Beneath them, nameless as the grass that mourns
Of death unconscious, when the night-airs wake.
Methinks, that in her mournfulness august
E'en like a Mother, does that hallow'd Fane
Gaze on the tombs which round about her seem
To nestle; while to living Souls she pleads,
That once again the pious and the pure
Her ruin'd Shrine may raise, till Gothic arch
And roof majestic o'er rapt thousands bend
Within Her gather'd, full of praise and prayer.

Yet, ere we part from such ideal bliss
This hour of beauty and this heaven of scene
Embosom, yonder local charm survey;
That Light-house, in its guardian pride erect,
Gilded by sunshine, when it haply gleams
Full on its whited column, points afar
Through storm and gale, to mariners at Sea
Rock'd on rude surges; or, at misty night
Becalm'd, when Darkness and the Deep embrace
In black confusion, like a spectral gloom,
To them it beckons with its beacon-ray
For ever welcome to their wave-toss'd view;
And often, when the glassy ocean sleeps,
Projects its shadow with unbroken trace
Of imaged portraiture, the tide along.

There is a nobleness in nature's gifts;
A free enchantment; and a bold delight
Flow from her vital scenes of grace, or power,
Or beauty, did but man his bosom yield
To fine impressions, breathed from sylvan haunts.
Oh! none but hearts sectarian, shut, and cold,
Contracted into smallness, vain as vile,
Which do not in the cheering thought exult,
How catholic entire Creation looks
And glorious! loving all whose souls reply
To grace, or grandeur, clothing hills and dales.
If to loud Cities men contraction owe,
'Tis from the Country minds a largeness gain
Healthful and hallow'd, open as the skies
Above them, nobly breathing freedom's air!
'Tis from her landscapes our loved England takes
A moral freshness, and romantic tinge
That hues her heart with beauty: Commerce dries
The soul of Cities into venal dust,
Or, sanctions false refinement; but from shores
Embay'd in quiet, or from rock-girt waves,
Where on the beach with loud pulsation swells
The billowy heart of God's mysterious sea
For ever, may the town-worn race derive
Emotions, which immortalise their play
In that deep inwardness where feeling dwells.
Thus, let them wander by the sanded beach
O'er rocks, and crags familiar with the clouds
Where the red morning throws her radiant blush,
By meadows, lakes, or lanes of twilight green
Devious and far, to view those rustic charms
Which clothe our hamlets with an English grace
Unrivall'd. Nature is no dull effect,
No dead appearance of an outward show
To sense confined; but, oft in secret wields
A bosom-influence, when the gazer's eye
Hath long departed from the scene it saw.
Many a tone of tenderness and truth
Comes to a heart, in city-prisons pent,
Where joyless Labour plies her feverish task
Incessant,—not from streets of noise, and strife,
But from the stillness of remember'd fields,
From inland-quiet, landscapes hush'd and lone,
Or, from the magic of poetic waves
In breezy chorus, such as now resounds
Time-honour'd Scarbro'! o'er thy sweeping bay.

Ideal landscapes beautify sad minds
Immersed in cities, worn and wasted down
Into a wreck of carking wo, and care
Emaciate; or, amid some crowded mart
Of commerce, where in rooms of airless toil
Britannia's helots drudge, for Mammon's lords,
Through tedious rounds of everlasting toil
Healthless as hopeless, day by day, and year
By year, like work-Machines, unsoul'd for hire!
Hence, may the Country man's remembrance haunt
With freshening beauty, and the fever cool
Of pent-up weariness, and unvoiced woe.
And thus will Hearts benignant, wise and meek,
Of Christian tone and temper, e'er rejoice
In the chance-visit, which the o'erlabour'd poor
And pale mechanic to some rustic mead,
Or ocean, pays; and trust they there imbibe
Beautiful thoughts, or spells of inward power
To charm remembrance, when hereafter-toil
Hangs on each life-pulse, like a choking weight
Which burdens health, or blasts it to decay!

With man in sympathy all Nature moves,
And human Destiny: her forms his doom
Embody: featured for his primal good
By Hands celestial, when from God he fell
And glory, Nature felt the awful shock
Of his disaster! and, alike she waits
That hour millennial, when regenerate Earth
From the dark curse deliver'd, shall exult
In beauty, richer far than Eden wore,
And hush the groan which twice three thousand Years
Have ever breathed for purity and heaven!
But lo! the Day has died, and o'er the waves
Shadow and silence like two spirits creep;
Rock, hill, and radiant shore and castled fort
Melt into dimness; while the plaintive chime
Of lone St. Mary's o'er the landscape wafts
A sound of sadness, which the hour beseems.

Here ends my strain, imperfect but sincere;
Such passing tribute from a pilgrim Bard,
Stranger, accept; and with him, gently cry,
Farewell the scene! but not farewell the charm
Of ancient Scarbro': Beauty and Romance
Are thine, thou region of the rock and wave!
And priests of Nature, such as poets are,
May well enshrine thee in their songs, and make
Thy scene immortal to melodious hearts.