University of Virginia Library

BOOK VIII. SONNETS OF THE LINCOLNSHIRE COAST.

I. CHILDREN ON THE SHORE.

Oh! happy people, blessed in your content,
The sea may flow and drown your new-won lands,—
It does but make you join your merry bands,
You closelier pack your busy settlement,
And urge unjealous industry: here, bent
On fortress mounds, the young strategist stands;
There, while the farmer plans his farm in sands,
With shells the gardener will his art present.
But still the ocean tides impartial roll,
In 'minished acres children ply the spade,
With larger hearts they share the varied task,
On family. Call up the child, and ask
What is it such a heaven of earth has made—
Wide lands, or wider love, and breadth of soul!

II. SEA COAL.

The coals were spent, the village fires burnt low
Out flew the banner on the signal mast,
The greybeards questioned far-off sails that past,
Shading their brows and muttering ay or no;
But when the kindly tide began to flow,
A ship stood up, mysterious, from the vast
Bewildering deep, steered straight ashore, and cast
Her anchors from the stern and from the prow.
Down sank the sea, out-shone the coal-black hull,
The jingling carts towards its gangway sped,
With mimic rolls of thunder thro' the day
The weary vessel gave her heart away:
Our children found next morn a hollow full
Of sand-locked water, but their friend was gone.

III. SKEGNESS HOUSE.

It stood, the genius of the sea-blown bank,
And rocked to every passing wind that blew:
Far out at sea that house the pilot knew,
Its friendly light the fishermen would thank.
For entrance, served a solitary plank,
Loud with the feet that pattered to and fro:
Up to the wolds the rising sun looked through,
Down to the sea looked through the sun that sank.
The housewife there had little need to keep
Of rosemary and lavender sweet store,
Her chests were fragrant with the salt sea-air.
There would the weary quite forget his care,
All day could revel on the healthful shore,
Lulled by its tidal tune all night could sleep.

IV. THE LINCOLNSHIRE MARSH.

Fringed by the sea a level plain we crost,
Fresh with continual green from end to end;
To far-off shepherds flocks their welcome send,
Mixed with the lowings of a hornèd host;
Here gleams a gate, and there a roadway post,
Ever to sunset grey-blown willows bend,
And, round the pastures, whispering rushes lend
Their voice to swell the murmur of the coast.
Here neither sheep nor shepherd-boy can ail,
Glad with the green, invigorate with the gale,
Unchid, across his flowery bounds may pass
The lowing steer in search of sweeter grass;
For they who own these herds are free of hand,
And open-hearted as their breezy land.

V. OLD SKEGNESS CHURCH.

They built thee in far meadows, for their dread
Of greedy waves against the sea-bank rolled;
They set thee 'twixt the waters and the wold,
And to thy church-yard frequent bridges led.
Here weekly prayer the hind or fisher said,
A single bell the deaths and weddings told,
And twice a year they moved with tears the mould,
Twice in the year came laughing to be wed.
Half seen, the preacher from the pulpit's jaw
Still pleads God's blessing and explains His law;
Close to the roof men still on Sabbath sing,
Where in the week-day doves with murmur cling:
On walls of decent white, rude-lettered, see
God's ten commands in their simplicity!

VI. NEW SKEGNESS.

Where once the fisher's cot could ill contrive
A frugal welcome for the chance-come guest,
In gay saloons, with ostentation drest,
Large tables shine, and noisy caterers thrive;
Off sands made black with swarms from labour's hive
The lonely shrimpers vanish, dispossest;
Where poets mused, the showman plies his jest,
And jaded horses plough the sandy drive.
The strenuous tide has lost its task: men rear,
Of alien stone, huge barriers rudely strong;
For music of the rushy bank we hear
The grating band—a stroller's gipsy song;
While that sea-monster millepede, the pier,
Puts out from shore to please a giddy throng.

VII. WILLIAM OF WAINFLEET.

The wide horizon helped his growing mind,
The changing pageant of the bannered skies
Forbade him trust gay-seeming enterprise,
He breathed in wit with every salted wind;
And yonder sea, by its own mounds confined,
Chaining itself with its own ministries,
Was fit instructress how, when passions rise,
Of their own strength they should their raging bind
Oft in the marsh, beneath a level sun,
He sought with simple crook his father's sheep;
Or, boyish, traced his Magdalens in the sand.
The keen-faced prelate lies in marble sleep,
But Cherwell's stream four hundred years has run
In vain against the walls his wisdom planned.

VIII. BOSTON CHURCH TOWER.

Above the Egyptian plain, the earliest ray
Struck tune from the Colossus, shepherds feared,
And those rude boatmen of the Nile, who steered
The monoliths, warped northward in dismay.
But thou, great Christian Memnon—all the day
In silver iterations thou art heard
Insisting on the hours. The hinds are cheered,
And sailors go rejoicing on their way.
High-crowned thou sittest o'er the listening leas,
Thy moveless feet wreathed round with shifting sand;
A beacon true to men who plough the seas,
A tower of hope to men who till the land;
Wide fields and waters lie beneath thy care,
For leagues thy guardian presence haunts the air.

IX. THE EAST FEN.

Land of the earlier morn, the later night,
Of distance beyond distance; broader skies
Where the lark sings, and where the swallow flies,
This unperplexed, and that with clearer sight;
Here swirl no streams, no prattle of delight
Comes from the brook, no bubbling springs arise;
Deep channelled waters, where the bulrush sighs,
Slope, ladder-like, to Heaven, silver bright.
Here pale-faced prisoned labour never comes,
No furnace roar the shepherd's sleep alarms,
Only at times the steamy thresher hums
Among the poplars whisp'ring round the farms;
And all the year, to urge the ploughman's hand,
The great sea-sickle gleams about the land.

X. AT MABLETHORPE:

AN EPISODE IN THE PUBLICATION OF THE “POEMS BY TWO BROTHERS.”

That eve the sun set rosy o'er the wold,
A burnished shield the level marsh-land lay;
The reeds in wonder whispered all the way
As towards the sea their car of triumph rolled;
The whirling mills with voices manifold
Tossed up their arms to cheer; the churches grey—
The lonely churches where the marsh men pray—
Breathed forth a blessing on the venture bold.
Thou, far-retiring ocean, o'er what sands
Of rippled silver glistening to the stars
Didst thou entice those happy brothers' feet;
With what a rhythm didst thou clap thy hands,
And rear thyself above the shoally bars,
And pause, and fall, their music to repeat!

XI. TO SIR JOHN FRANKLIN.

(BY HIS STATUE IN THE SPILSBY MARKET-PLACE, AT NIGHT.)

Above thy native town a white moon shows
Clouds packed as ice about the firmament
And, prisoners in that frozen continent,
A few faint stars to light the shifting snows:
On sails the moon, dispart the hoary floes,
As if a sudden summer with her went
Capes melt, and opens every firth, content
To give her easy passage as she goes.
Now fiercer winter falls upon the sky,
The moon is quenched, one star still glimmers forth:
How like to thee and thine these heavens are,
Thou who hast left a name that cannot die—
A splendour in the dark disastrous north,
And from thy bronze dost front the Polar star!

XII. SONNET VALEDICTORY.