University of Virginia Library

SONNETS.

I. WORDSWORTH. COMPOSED AT RYDAL.—1.

The 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.

II. WORDSWORTH, ON VISITING THE DUDDON. —2.

So long as Duddon 'twixt his cloud-girt walls
Thridding the woody chambers of the hills
Warbles from vaulted grot and pebbled halls
Welcome or farewell to the meadow rills;
So long as linnets pipe glad madrigals
Near that brown nook the labourer whistling tills,
Or the late-reddening apple forms and falls
'Mid dewy brakes the autumnal redbreast thrills,
So long, last poet of the great old race,
Shall thy broad song through England's bosom roll,
A river singing anthems in its place,
And be to later England as a soul.
Glory to Him Who made thee, and increase,
To them that hear thy word, of love and peace!

III. WORDSWORTH, ON VISITING THE DUDDON.—3.

When first that precinct sacrosanct I trod
Autumn was there, but Autumn just begun;
Fronting the portals of a sinking sun
The queen of quietude in vapour stood,
Her sceptre o'er the dimly-crimsoned wood
Resting in light. The year's great work was done;
Summer had vanished, and repinings none
Troubled the pulse of thoughtful gratitude.
Wordsworth! the autumn of our English song
Art thou: 'twas thine our vesper psalms to sing:
Chaucer sang matins; sweet his note and strong;
His singing-robe the green, white garb of Spring:
Thou like the dying year art rightly stoled;
Pontific purple and dark harvest gold.

IV. SELF-DECEPTION.

Like mist it tracks us wheresoe'er we go,
Like air bends with us ever as we bend;
And, as the shades at noontide darkest grow,
At times with Virtue's growth its snares ascend:
Weakness with wisdom skilled it is to blend,
Breed baser life from buried sins laid low,
Make void our world of God and good, yet lend
The spirit's waste a paradisal glow.
O happy children simple even in wiles!
And ye of single eye, thrice happy Poor!
Practised self-love, that cheat which slays with smiles,
Weaves not for you the inevitable lure.
Men live a lie: specious their latest breath:
Welcome, delusion-slayer, truthful Death!

V. POETIC RESERVE.

Not willingly the Muses sing of love:
But, ere their Songs disperse o'er man's domain,
Through the dark chambers of the poet's brain
They pass, and passing take the stamp thereof:
And, as the wind that sweeps the linden grove
Wafts far its odour, so that sphere-born Strain
Learns from its mortal mould to mourn and plain,
Though the strong Muses sit like Gods above.
True poetry is doubly-dowered—a brightness
Lit from above yet fuelled from below;
A moon that rolls through heaven in vestal whiteness,
Yet, earthward stooping, wears an earthly glow.
Mysteries the Muse would hide the Bards reveal:
They love to wound: her mission is to heal.

VI. ON A GREAT FUNERAL.

No more than this? The chief of nations bears
Her chief of sons to his last resting-place:
Through the still city, sad and slow of pace
The sable pageant streams: and as it nears
That dome, to-day a vault funereal, tears
Run down the grey-haired veteran's wintry face;
Deep organs sob; and flags their front abase;
And the snapt wand the rite complete declares.
—Soul, that before thy Judge dost stand this day,
Disrobed of strength and puissance, pomp and power;
O Soul defrauded at thine extreme hour
Of man's sole help from man, and latest stay,
Swells there for thee no prayer from all that host?
Is this blank burial but a Nation's boast?

VII.
TO CHARLES ELIOT NORTON.—1.

On reading his ‘Vita Nuova’ of Dante, March 28, 1860.

Norton! I would that oft in years to come
The destined bard of that brave land of thine
Sole-seated 'neath the tempest-roughened pine,
In boyhood's spring when genius first doth plume
Her wing, 'mid forest scents and insects' hum
And murmurs from the far sea crystalline
May smell this blossom from the Tuscan vine,
May hear this voice from antique Christendom;
For thus from love and purity and might
Shall he receive his armour, and forth fare
Champion elect in song, that country's knight
Who early burst the chain weak nations bear
Weeping. 'Mid trumpet-blasts and standards torn
To manhood, with loud cries, thy land was born!

VIII. TO THE SAME.—2. June 12, 1861.

‘To manhood with loud cries thy land was born’—
Was born! is born! Her trumpets peal this hour
The authentic voice of Nationhood and Power!
The iron in her soul indignant worn
This day she tramples down. Her lips have sworn
To lift the dusky race in chains that cower;
And if once more the tempests round her lour
Her smile goes through them like the smile of morn!
Great Realm! The men that in thy sunnier day
Looked on thee dubious or with brow averse,
Now thou hast put the evil thing away,
Our sin and thine, Time's dread transmitted curse,
Send up their prayers to prop that lifted hand
Which gives to God a liberated Land!

IX.
THE AMERICAN STRUGGLE.—1.

The Principle. February 20, 1865.

Sword! ere the sheath that hid thy light so long
That splendour quench, go thou like lightning forth,
High Bride of Justice, not of South or North,
And raise, as now the weak, and quell the strong!
Advance, till from the black man's hearth the song
Rises to God, and by the black man's hearth
Humanity hath leave in godly mirth
To sit, forgetful of her ancient wrong.
Then rest for ever; for to work like thine
While the world lasts no other can succeed
Equal, or second. Hang in heaven, a Sign,
But stoop no more to earth or earthly need,
Nor ever leave thy starry home august,
Vassal of vulgar wars, and prone Ambition's lust.

X.
THE AMERICAN STRUGGLE.—2.

PRINCIPLE A POWER; OR, LOGIC IN HISTORY, FEBRUARY 21, 1865.

Lo! as an eagle battling through a cloud
That from his neck all night the vapour flings,
And ploughs the dark, till downward from his wings
Sunrise, long waited, smites some shipwrecked crowd
Beneath a blind sea-cavern bent and bowed;—
Thus through the storm of Men, the night of Things,
That Principle to which the issue clings
Makes fateful way, and spurns at last its shroud.
There were that saw it with a sceptic ken:
There were that saw it not through hate or pride:
But, conquering and to conquer, on it came,
No tool of man but making tools of men,
Till Nations shook beneath its advent wide,
And they that loosed the Portent rued the same.

XI. THE CENTENARY OF AMERICAN LIBERTY.

A century of sunrises hath bowed
Its fulgent forehead 'neath the ocean-floor
Since first upon the West's astonished shore,
Like some huge Alp, forth struggling through the cloud,
A new-born nation stood, to Freedom vowed:
Within that time how many an Empire hoar
And young Republic, flushed with wealth and war,
Alike have changed the ermine for the shroud!
O ‘sprung from earth's first blood,’ O tempest-nursed,
For thee what Fates? I know not. This I know,
The Soul's great freedom, gift, of gifts the first,
Thou first on man in fulness didst bestow;
Hunted elsewhere, God's Church with thee found rest:
Thy future's Hope is she—that queenly Guest.

XII. ROBERT ISAAC WILBERFORCE.

‘No way but this.’ There where the pleasant shade
Dropped from the ledges of the Alban hill
Creeps to the vast Campagna and is still,
The mightier shadow reached him! Prayer was made:
But he to God his tribute just had paid,
And earned his rest. The deep recalled the rill:
A long life's labour with a perfect will
He on the altar of the Church had laid.
Child of the old English Learning sage and pure,
Authentic, manly, grave, without pretence,
From this poor stage of changeful time and sense
Released, sleep well, of thy reward secure:
Beside the Apostles' threshold thou dost lie,
Waiting, well-pleased, thy great eternity.

XIII. ‘LE RÉCIT D'UNE SŒUR.’—1.

Whence is the music? minstrel see we none;
Yet soft as waves that, surge succeeding surge,
Roll forward, now subside, anon emerge,
Upheaved in glory o'er a setting sun,
Those beatific harmonies sweep on!
O'er earth they sweep from heaven's remotest verge
Triumphant hymeneal, hymn, and dirge,
Blending in everlasting unison.
Whence is the music? Stranger! these were they
That, great in love, by love unvanquished proved:
These were true lovers, for in God they loved:
With God, these Spirits rest in endless day,
Yet still for Love's behoof, on wings outspread
Float on o'er earth, betwixt the Angels and the Dead!

XIV. ‘LE RÉCIT D'UNE SŒUR.’—2.

ALEXANDRINE.

Between two graves, a sister's grave and one
Wherein the husband of her youth was laid,
In countenance half a Spirit, half a Nun,
She stood: a breeze that branch of jasmine swayed
In her slight hand upholden: ‘Peace!’ she said:—
A smile all gold to meet the sinking sun
Came forth: the pale, worn face transfigured shone
Sun-like beneath the sorrowing widow-braid.
She raised that branch, away her tears to wipe—
‘How happy seemed our life twelve years ago!
I weep him still, but gaily weep at last!
Like some sweet day-dream looks that earthly past:
Of genuine joy the pledge it was, the type:
Now, now alone the joy itself I know!’

XV. A WINTER NIGHT IN THE WOODS.

When first the Spring her glimmering chaplets wove
This way and that way 'mid the boughs high hung,
We watched the hourly work, while thrushes sung
A song that shook with joy their bowered alcove:
Summer came next: she roofed with green the grove,
And deepening shades to flower-sweet alleys clung:
Then last—one dirge from many a golden tongue—
The chiding leaves with chiding Autumn strove.
These were but Nature's preludes. Last is first!
Winter, uplifting high both flail and fan,
With the great forests dealt as Death with man;
And therefore through their desolate roofs hath burst
This splendour veiled no more by earthly bars;
Infinite heaven, and the fire-breathing stars!

XVI. POLAND AND RUSSIA.—1.

When, fixed in righteous wrath, a Nation's eye
Torments some crowned Tormentor with just hate,
Nor threat nor flattery may that gaze abate:
Unshriven the unatoning years go by:
For, as that starry Archer in the sky
Unbends not his bright bow, though early and late
The Siren sings, and folly weds with fate,
Even so that sure though silent Destiny
Which keeps fire-vigil in God's judgment-heaven
Upon the countenance of the Doomed looks forth
Consentient with a Nation's gaze on earth:
To those twinned Powers a single gaze is given:
The earthly Fate reveals the Fate on high—
A Brazen Serpent raised, that says not, ‘live,’ but ‘die!’

XVII. POLAND AND RUSSIA.—2.

The Strong One with the Weak One reasons thus:
‘Through sin of thine our eagle wings are clipt:
Through frost of thine our summer branch is nipt:
Thy wounds accuse: thy rags are mutinous:
The nations note thine aspect dolorous
Like some starved shape that cowers in charnel crypt,
Or landscape in eclipse perpetual dipt,
And, ignorant, cavil, not at thee but us!’
Then answer makes that worn voice, stern and slow:
‘Am I a dog the scourger's hand that licks,
And fattens? Blind reproof but spurns the pricks.
That which I am thou mad'st me! long ago
My face thou grav'dst to be a face of woe,
Fixed as the fixed face of a Crucifix.’

XVIII. GALATEA AND URANIA; OR, ART AND FAITH.

‘Dread Venerable Goddess, whom I fear,
Gaze not upon me from thy starry height!
I fear thy levelled shafts of ruthless light,
Thine unfamiliar radiance and severe:
Thy sceptre bends not! stern, defined, and clear
Thy Laws: thy face intolerantly bright:
Thine is the empire of the Ruled and Right:
Never hadst thou a part in smile or tear!
I love the curving of the wind-arched billow;
The dying flute tone, sweeter for its dying:
To me less dear the Pine tree than the Willow,
The mountain than the shadows o'er it flying.’
Thus Galatea sang, whilst o'er the waters
Urania leant; and cowered 'mid Ocean's foam-white daughters.

XIX. COMMON LIFE.

Onward between two mountain warders lies
The field that man must till. Upon the right,
Church-thronged, with summit hid by its own height,
Swells the vast range of the Theologies:
Upon the left the hills of Science rise
Lustrous but cold: nor flower is there, nor blight:
Between those ranges twain through shade and light
Winds the low vale wherein the meek and wise
Repose. The knowledge that excludes not doubt
Is there; the arts that beautify man's life:
There rings the choral psalm, the civic shout,
The genial revel, and the manly strife:
There by the bridal rose the cypress waves:
And theretheall-blest sunshine softest falls on graves.

XX. TO KEATS.

Peace, peace, or mourn the living! Ye but hold
A shadow to your bosoms. He hath quaffed
Glory and Death in one immortal draught;
Surely among the undying men of old
Numbered art thou, great Heart; in heaven enrolled
Among the eternal Splendours that rain forth
Love, light, and peace on our unquiet earth,
O latest radiance of the starry fold.
Below, thou liv'st, a consecrated name;
Above, with naked feet unscorched and hair
Unsinged thou walkest through that fierce white fire
Which mantles like a robe of golden air
Homer and Shakespeare, and the burning choir,
Rejoicing in the fullness of thy fame.

XXI. MODERN DESPONDENCY.

Soft land, and gracious as some nectarous fruit
In whose warm bosom Autumn's heart is glad,
Thou hadst of old thy bards, whose lyre and lute
Well praised thy joyous woodlands blossom-clad:
Thou hadst thy blithesome days! If ours be sad,
May thy blue bays and orchards never mute
That sadness charm—slay causeless sorrow's root—
Loveless self-will, the pride that maketh mad!
Wed, blameless nature, wed with grace divine
Once more, like sweet harps blent with sweeter voices,
Thy powers: then sing, till child and man rejoices
Betwixt those ‘Double Seas’ of England! Shine,
Sun of past years! Disperse those modern glooms
At least from golden Devon's Tors and Coombes!

XXII. PONTEFRACT CASTLE; OR, TREASON'S TWOFOLD BEQUEST.

Wind-wasted castle without crown of towers!
Dread dungeon keep, watching the dying day!
A crownless king, great Edward's grandson, lay
Wasting in thee, and counting prisoned hours:
A century passed: the Faith's embattled Powers
Thus far advanced; here stood, a stag at bay:
The eighth Henry trembled in his blood-stained bowers;—
Thou saw'st that ‘Pilgrimage of Grace’ decay!
Two Woes thou saw'st; the fall of England's Crown,
That drowned in blood her old Nobility;
Then, baser plague, the old Temples trampled down
By Despots new! Twice-doomed! the fount in thee
I mark of that Red Sea which rolls between
England that is, and England that hath been!

XXIII. INDUSTRY.

Virtue defamed for sordid, rough, and coarse,
Unworthy of the glimpses of the moon,
Praise of the clown alone whose heavy shoon
Kneads the moist clay, nor spares the pure stream's source,
In thee how strong is grace! how fair is force!
How generous art thou, and to man how boon!
Not thine the boastful plain with carnage strewn,
Nor chambers, wassail-shamed, where late Remorse
Sits, the last guest! From ocean on to ocean,
From citied shore to hills far-forested,
The increase of earth is thine, in rest or motion;
The crown is thine on every Sage's head;
The ship, the scythe, the rainbow among flowers:
Thine too the song of girls exulting 'mid their bowers.

XXIV. TO THE MOST FAIR.

Fair, noble, young! Of thee I thought to sing,
(If so Love willed, and the ever-virgin Muse
Who cannot grace accord unless Love choose,
Were pleased from Love's first bath, Castalia's Spring,
One flower or sparkling drop on me to fling)
For ofttimes thus some clan barbaric strews
Their earth and wood, the little island's dues,
Before his feet whom conquest made its king:
So dreamed I, when, a mourner sad and stern,
The Muses' Mother fixed on me her eyes—
Memory—nor slow their meaning to discern
Like a child stung I dropped the forfeit prize:
Some holier hand from out the immortal river
The destined reed must draw, and hymn thy praise for ever!

XXV. IN MEMORY OF THE LATE SIR JOHN SIMEON.—1.

Feast of the Purification, 1873.

This day we keep our Candlemas in snow:
Wan is the sky; a bitter wind and drear
Wrinkles the bosom of yon blackening mere:
Of these I reck not, but of thee, and O!
Of that bright Roman morn, so long ago,
When, children new of her, that Church more dear
To liegeful hearts with each injurious year,
We watched the famed Procession circling slow.
Once more I see it wind with lights upholden
On through the Sistine, on and far away:
Once more I mark beneath its radiance golden
Thy forehead shine, and, with it kindling, say,
‘Rehearsals dim were those, O friend: this hour
Surely God's light it is that on thee rests in power!’

XXVI. IN MEMORY OF THE LATE SIR JOHN SIMEON.—2.

Again we met. We trod the fields and farms
Of that fair isle, thy happy English home;
We gazed upon blue sea, and snowy foam
Clipt in the jutting headland's woody arms:
The year had reached the fulness of her charms:
The Church's year, from strength to strength increased,
Its zenith held, that great Assumption feast
Whose sun with annual joy the whole earth warms.
That day how swiftly rushed from thy full heart
Hope's glorying flood! How high thy fancy soared,
Kenning, though far, once more thine England's crest
A light to Christendom's old heaven restored!
‘In a large room’ thy heart its home had found:
The land we trod that day to thee was holy ground.

XXVII. IN MEMORY OF THE LATE SIR JOHN SIMEON.—3.

The world external knew thee but in part:
It saw and honoured what was least in thee;
The loyal trust, the inborn courtesy;
The ways so winning, yet so pure from art;
The cordial reverence, keen to all desert,
All save thine own; the accost so frank and free;
The public zeal that toiled, but not for fee,
And shunned alike base praise and hireling's mart:
These things men saw; but deeper far than these
The under-current of thy soul worked on
Unvexed by surface-ripple, beam, or breeze,
And unbeheld its way to ocean won:
Life of thy life was still that Christian Faith
The sophist scorns. It failed thee not in death.

XXVIII. THE POETRY OF THE FUTURE.

Go forth, fair Book! Go, countenanced like that Man
Upon whose brow all Eden's light was stayed;
Beauteous as Truth, go forth to cheer and aid,
Breathing of greatness ours ere sin began;
With angel-wing from eyes earth-wearied fan
Convention's mist; revive great hopes that fade;
Bid nature rule where reigned but masquerade;
Bear witness to that joy divine which ran
Down to creation's heart, while, bending o'er it,
The great Creator saw that all was good,
That mightier joy, when, dying to restore it,
He rose Who washed it in His conquering Blood:
Go forth, a seer in minstrel raiment clad;
Say to the meek, ‘Be strong;’ the pure, ‘Be glad!’

XXIX. THE RUINS OF EMANIA, NEAR ARMAGH.

Why seek ye thus the living 'mid the dead?
Beneath that mound, within yon circle wide,
Emania's palace, festive as a bride
For centuries six, had found its wormy bed
When here Saint Patrick raised his royal head
And round him gazed. Perhaps the Apostle sighed
Even then, to note the fall of mortal pride:
Full fourteen hundred years since then have fled!
Then, too, old Ulster's hundred kings were clay;
Then, too, the Red Branch warriors slept forlorn;
Autumn, perhaps as now a pilgrim grey,
Counted her red beads on the berried thorn,
Making her rounds; while from the daisied sod
The undiscountenanced lark upsoared, and praised her God.

XXX. DUNLUCE CASTLE, COUNTY OF ANTRIM.

O! of the fallen, most fallen, yet of the proud
Proudest; sole-seated on thy tower-girt rock;
Breasting for ever reboant ocean's shock;
With blind sea-caves for ever dinned and loud;
Now sunset-gilt; now wrapt in vapoury shroud
Till distant ships—so well thy bastions mock
Primeval nature's style in joint and block—
Misdeem her ramparts, round thee bent and bowed,
For thine, and on her walls, men say, have hurled
The red artillery store designed for thee:
Thy wars are done! Henceforth perpetually
Thou restest, like some judged, impassive world
Whose sons, their probatory period past,
Have left that planet void amid the vast.

XXXI. HORN HEAD, COUNTY OF DONEGAL.

Sister of Earth, her sister eldest-born,
Huge world of waters, how unlike are ye!
Thy thoughts are not as her thoughts: unto thee
Her pastoral fancies are as things to scorn:
Thy heart is still with that old hoary morn
When on the formless deep, the procreant sea,
God moved alone: of that Infinity,
Thy portion then, thou art not wholly shorn.
Scant love hast thou for dells where every leaf
Boasts its own life, and every brook its song;
Thy massive floods down stream from reef to reef
With one wide pressure; thy worn cliffs along
The one insatiate Hunger moans and raves,
Hollowing its sunless crypts and sanguine caves.

XXXII. FOUNTAINS ABBEY.

The hand of Time is heavy; yet how soft
Its touch can be, yon mouldering chancel knows!
The ruin too can ‘blossom like the rose;’
Nor e'er from orchard bower, or garth, or croft,
More sweetly sang the linnet than aloft
She sings from that green tower! The sunset glows
Behind it; and yon stream that, darkling, flows
From arch to arch, reflects it oft and oft,
Humbly consenting 'mid the gloom to smile
And take what pensive gladness may befall:
Rejoice thou, too, O venerable Pile,
With loftier heart answering a holier call:
Like those, thy buried saints, make strong thy trust,
Waiting the Resurrection of the Just.

XXXIII. ON READING AN UNTRUE CHARGE.

Beautiful Land! They said, ‘He loves thee not!’
But in a churchyard 'mid thy meadows lie
The bones of no disloyal ancestry
To whom in me disloyal were the thought
Which wronged thee. For my youth thy Shakspeare wrought;
For me thy minsters raised their towers on high;
Thou gav'st me friends whose memory cannot die:—
I love thee, and for that cause left unsought
Thy praise. Thy ruined cloisters, forests green,
Thy moors where still the branching wild deer roves,
Dear haunts of mine by sun and moon have been
From Cumbrian peaks to Devon's laughing coves.
They love thee less, fair Land, who ne'er had heart
To take, for truth's sake, 'gainst thyself thy part.