University of Virginia Library

BOOK V. SONNETS OF THE LANCASHIRE AND CUMBERLAND COASTS.

I. EAST AND WEST.

Beyond the marsh and reedy meadow land,
By that old rampire that the Romans drew,
In boyish exultation for the view
Of waves that filled the creeks and swept the strand,
How oft I ran bare-footed, spade in hand,
To mound my rampire, cheering on the crew
Of brother-builders where the tide broke through,
Upon that happiest reach of eastern sand!
Grey shore! bewitcher of my boyhood's days,
The shadows lengthen, westward now I turn
To that sweet sister beach of sand and shells
And rushy margent, backed by Cumbria's fells,
Where ocean bends, and sunsets burn and burn
In glory and illimitable praise.

II. THE TOWER ON THE HOAD, ULVERSTON.

Look from thy tower—strong wish we mortals have
That deeds should beremembered after death—
Look forth, and tell the listening lands beneath,
From torchy Furness to the charnel cave
Of Heysham's cliff, that since the Leven's wave,
With confluent Craik, at tide-time held its breath
And halted up the vale, no surer wreath
Than duty honoured can outlive the grave!
If hence no rosy star at sunset gleam,
To guide the keel that beats from shoal to shoal,
And cheer the sailor on his lonely road,
White as thy tower, high-lifted, still must beam
The lamp that lit thee, Barrow, to thy goal,
A nation's honour on thy native Hoad.

III. A LAUNCH FROM THE FURNESS DOCKS.

Dread expectation seals our open lips:
A hundred hammers fall, their work is done;
Out from the keel the busy craftsmen run,
The tender riband that a child's hand snips,
Looses the giant down the groaning slips,
And, with a thrill of life through every ton,
It leaves behind a rift of sky and sun,
And plunges seaward, mightiest of ships.
A toy, the ponderous anchor leapt and ploughed,
But ere the smoking of its passage died,
I saw the breakers turn and toss ashore
The flotsam of its cradle-timbers proud,
Prelude of wreck, indignant that it bore
Another burden laid upon the tide.

IV. BLACK COMBE.

Who leaves the Ruin of the Nightshade dale,
The clouds of Furness, and the stithy roar,
And seeks by Duddon, Millom's haunted shore,
Or stands on Ireleth's slopes of quarry shale,—
Must feel, Black Combe, thy mystery prevail.
Not unimpressed by thee did men of yore
Broider thy skirts with Druid circles hoar,
They heard thee speak with words that never fail.
About thy mottled flanks of green and gold,
Strange organ-notes of worship from the sea
Steal up and die, or linger half expressed;
And added sounds of human melody
Tell, how repentant Lancelot, in his quest
For peace, found God, foreshadowed here of old.

V. ESKMEALS.

Oh, joy, where sea and river waters meet,
To watch how swift the wading dotterels ply
Their rosy stilts in pools of bluest sky,
To hear cool sprinklings from their dainty feet!
To lean and listen to the flutings sweet
Of sandpiper, or sad-voiced plover's cry;
While the grave heron at his fishery
Gleams like a silver sickle through the heat!
Blest be the tide that bared these tawny shelves,
For such a world of food and innocent play!
Man, weary man, with sorrow digs and delves,
But is not glad in winning bread, as they,
Who wait on God, and, careless of themselves,
Take that which Nature else had thrown away.

VI. AT KING HENRY'S CHAPEL, MUNCASTER.

Where Esk in curves and coils of moony light
Gleams down the vale and passes to the sea,
They tell how royal Henry once did flee,
A crownless king, from Hexham's bloody fight;
And how rude shepherds, on a summer night,
Found, and conveyed him, where, on loyal knee,
Stout Pennington did pledge his own roof-tree
For safety, till the Red Rose had the right.
If morn had brought to that unhappy king
Vision of stately trees enleaved with gold,
Or half the beauteous calm mine eyes behold,
Sure it had been a sad awakening—
Such reminiscence of his golden state,
And he, discrowned, forsaken, desolate!

VII. A QUIET AUTUMN DAY,

FROM THE TERRACE AT MUNCASTER.

Fetched from the solemn deeps, at flow of tide,
The Esk brought sun and silence to the vale;
The yellow woodlands, weary with the gale,
Murmured no more; on Birkby's russet side
Clouds dropped their quiet shadows; far and wide
Scawfell looked forth, beneficently pale;
While rooks, at mellow distance, told the tale
Of hearts content and hunger satisfied.
A soft wind set the thistle dancers free,
And, like the ripple of a sunlit stream
Running in air, it shook the thousand hues
Of leaf to radiance: it was hard to choose—
The forest waking from a golden dream,
The dreamless slumber of the silver sea.

VIII. AT MUNCASTER,

AFTER THE GALE OF DECEMBER 11, 1883.

Wild was the wind, which, out of darkness borne,
From that dread West of evil and of death,
Broke on your royal pines, and with fierce breath
Blasted the life of centuries. Forlorn,
The squirrel wakened to a bitter morn;
The rookery clanged unresting; and beneath,
The shy stag browsed in wonder, with the wreath
Of Christmas ivy hung upon his horn.
I grieve not for the pines—with faithfulness
Their masts may bend in many a stout ship set,
Outriding Death, triumphant o'er the gale:
This is the burden of my vain regret,—
Whene'er I wander down the woodland vale,
I hear the groans of innocence in distress.

IX. THE DEATH OF OLAF THE DANE—

SUNSET BEYOND THE ISLE OF MAN.

Full of the Northmen's mission deeds, I strolled
Along the beach that looks to Mona's isle,
In marvel how the Cross set up by guile
Could preach a God of human love, and mould
Men into Christ-like shape, or ever hold
A dying Saviour on it. Hakon's wile,
His pagan, beast's life: Olaf's god-like smile,
And brave, untreacherous hands, made answer bold.
Then, as of Astrid's warrior child I thought,
He took such giant size, that Mona's shore
Seemed the Long-Serpent hull Earl Eric fought,
And the horizon weltered as with gore;
While through the purple waves, with sun for shield,
He sank to death, who had not learned to yield.

X. HOME FROM THE EAST.

AMONG THE DRIGG SAND-HILLS.

Who gives his fancy reins to wander free
Among the sand-built dunes of Cumbria's coast,
Again may follow Israel's flying host
By Pihahiroth's sedges and the sea;
Or, wrapt in recollection's dream, may be
Where Negeb's plain to waves of sand is tost,
And hear, by Gaza's ruin—well-nigh lost
Beneath the drifts of desert—God's decree.
He tracks the moon-foot camel in the sand,
Hunts in the rushes for the bustling quails,
Then tops the bank, and views with glad surprise,
O'er Wastdale's plain the brown-backed Screes arise,
With Scaw, blue guardian of the sister vales,—
And this is home, and this is Cumberland.

XI. THE LIGHT-SHIP, SEEN FROM SEASCALE.

Scarce has the sun, in rosy-jewelled might,
Sunk, when thy double gems with sweet surprise
Spring from the dusky waters, and the eyes
Of mariners bless thee all the weary night.
Oh, never stars in heaven with more delight
Were hailed, than these wave-risen! Lo, outflies
A roseate gleam and into darkness dies,
Then, thro' the tempest, flashes into white.
So, heart, must thou, in dangerous waters set,
Flash from the lamp of truth its many hues,
With pause alternate, thro' the trembling dark—
Thy light, such light as care-worn faces, wet
With sad salt water, cannot fail but choose
To steer by, when for home they sail their bark.

XII. THE DRUID STONE NEAR MILLBECK, SEASCALE.

Thy lips are dumb, thy sisters in the grave,
But thou, sole witness of a god unknown—
Dercetis, Bel, or Dagon—still dost own
Possession of the secrets that we crave.
To thee the fisher sought, and huntsman brave,
When moorlands heard the horn at sunrise blown;
By thee, when Mona's altar fires were shown,
The lamp was lit that flashed on yonder wave.
If Seascale's copse and oaks of Drigg have waned,
And pearls no longer at thy feet are laid,
From Esk and Duddon by the votary brought;
Still to thy stone of help is reverence chained,
With sense of lonely watching, and the thought
Of silent faith—here vows anew are made.

XIII. BRAVE SAILING.

As When the sailor by the Cumbrian strand,
Worn by the equinox, looks out and sees,
Betwixt Black Combe and russet-red Saint Bees,
The restful harvest yellow on the land,
And almost would his keel had smote the sand
So, by the wall of Wastdale's purple screes,
His life might share the ploughman's life of ease—
Yet hoises sail, nor bates of heart nor hand;
I too, when tossing in the weary strife,
The storm of party, hurricane of creed,
Look forth for any tempting haven near,
And almost wish, by wreck from service freed,
A simple shepherd's comfortable life—
But still out seaward to the wind I steer.

XIV. AT SEASCALE.

Here, as we walk along the quilted shore,
Dusted with diamond, rich with shell's inlay,
We watch the fringe of foam, that far away
Broiders the hem old ocean ever wore,
Remade each moment, lovelier than before:
So gold the grassy banks at shut of day,
'Twixt red Saint Bees and Black Combe, sailors say
Grey Cumbria's coast is barred with molten ore.
But not the salt sea broidery, nor the beach
Purpled by shifting light, with murmur loud,
Enchants him most who wanders wrapt in thought;
But, as he hears the ocean's marvellous speech
And sees in mirrors wet the flying cloud,
Heaven's wings, Heaven's voices, nearer him are brought.

XV. THE PREACHER'S SEASIDE LESSON.

Thou art the prophets' tutor; day by day,
Thy voice, wind-driven, sounds along the beach,
Whether it hear or hearken not. Thy speech
Is true, for everlasting: thou dost say
Things brought from depths and distance far away;
And, lest thy rhythmic utterance fail to reach
Deaf ears, successive sentences shall preach,
Line upon line, rolled inward to the bay.
Judgment and death may be thy parable,
But life and light spring ever from thy grave,
And worship;—rapturous clapping of thy hands
In praise of Him who painted every shell,
Who called leviathan to ride the wave,
And laid thy limit on the fearless sands.

XVI. THE OLD WRECK AT SEASCALE.

Weighed down, in utter helplessness it lies,
Whose buoyant youth was lighter than the wave;
Each storm, the robber-winds unseal its grave
And of its bones would fain make merchandise.
Led by the moon, sea-waters sympathise;
E'en hands that snatch, some sense of pity have;
Deeper in sand each day—the boon they crave—
Its sorrows sink from out the seaman's eyes.
So may it be when storms my life shall strand
On treachery's shoal or disappointment's reef:
May the same tide that drove my hull to land
Break up my being far beyond relief;
And waves, that wrecked, reach out a pitying hand
To gulf my sorrow, and to hide my grief.

XVII. THE IRISH LAND LEAGUE.

As one, new-come from a secluded vale,
Lies down to rest beside the wakeful deep,
But troubled with its trouble cannot sleep
For cries of sailors sounding in the gale,
And hears the cruel ocean's harrowing tale
Told to a land it threatens to o'ersweep,
Nor thinks the tide its boundary must keep,
That stars still shine and vessels still may sail;—
So when I hear the half-articulate cries
From Ireland's alien-hearted children, blown
Through the dark night of riot, to our shore,
I too forget that passion's tide goes down,
How cliffs of Justice stem all waves that rise,
And Truth steers safe, if stars of Love shine o'er.

XVIII. ROCK RUINS AT SEASCALE.

Did waves indignant here with storm invest
Some castle huge, and straw it on the sand?
Or did the Viking rangers of this land,
Who bade yon stone tree Yggdrasil attest
That Christ, not Balder, was the Captain blest,
Build here a ladder huge whereon to stand,
Whence all the waves to Mona might be scanned,
And every sail be questioned from the west?
No answer comes: the stones are hoar and strange,
Hairy with weeds, with limpets overgrown;
They keep their secret well; tide after tide
Their heads beneath the ocean's brim they hide;
No storm their dumb confederacy can change,
Their call to fancy can no waters drown.

XIX. THE GOSFORTH CROSS.

We are not wiser than the seers of old,
Our Fathers,—they, twelve hundred years agone,
Hewed from its silent place this prophet-stone,
And bade the sacred Yggdrasil uphold
A Balder-Christ, whose triumphs should be told
In pagan picture:—here the battle won
By Horn's blast,—there the Horse with Death thereon
Cast down for years whose coil is endless rolled.
Preacher of Christ, stone-lipped, but not in vain:
Preacher of woman's love to help her Lord
By faithful tendance, yea, though earth should quake:
For, lo! her feet upon the bruised snake,
Here Mary stands beside her Son in pain;
There Loki's queen prevents the poison poured.

XX. SEASCALE MEMORIES.

As if the salt-sea-blood that years ago
Won the fore-elder Vikings Cumberland,
Leapt in their veins, the glad, tumultuous band
Sped to the shore, and gleaming, to and fro
The bathers hurried; some, more grave, would know
What treasures lay upon the generous sand,
And here and there the lover with his hand
Would trace a name the waves should hide at flow.
Ah, happy feet; this fresh, unwrinkled shore
Forgives all mischief ye shall make in play,
And though to-morrow's sun shall find no trace
Of all your frolic—tides must rise apace,
Sorrow and pain—yet to the bitterest core
Of life's drear sands, shall sink the memory of to-day.

XXI. THE PEACE OF UNDERSTANDING.

Here, as I watch the ceaseless ebb and flow
Of these successive threateners of the land,
Spending their powers in vain, I understand
A little of the secret Peace must know;
Peace that o'erlooks all storms, feeling, below,
Her feet are firm upon His high command
Who set the ocean swinging, in Whose hand
The great moon-weights move steady to and fro.
The fierce sea-chargers, even as they curve
Their necks sink foam-flecked on their knees foredone,
So pride o'er-reaching falls before the goal:
And those battalions coming bravely on,
Shout though they may, they cannot shake the nerve
Of him who knows how far the waves may roll.

XXII. ARCHBISHOP GRINDAL,

FOUNDER OF SAINT BEES GRAMMAR SCHOOL 1587.

No wonder, nursed in such a breezy home,
Betwixt the rosy headland in the west
And Cumbria's treeless wild, that to thy breast
Great thoughts, and free as ocean air, should come.
Thou saw'st heaven's light beyond the darkening foam
That held thee exile, and didst well attest
How God can crown a life, though dispossessed
Of royal favour and the smiles of Rome.
Still may we hear from courtly Spenser's lips
Of Algrind's life, the gentle and the wise,
And they who pass Saint Bega's shrine may name
Thee, bold for conscience' sake to welcome shame,
Thee with thine ample forehead, those mild eyes
That outfaced queens and suffered sad eclipse.

XXIII. TOMB OF THOMAS DE COTTINGHAM,

OBIIT 1300. SAINT BEES.

Stubborn of mouth, and with a stony eye,
Hands firm in prayer, full-robed with monkish gown,
Well wears he cowl severe, and tonsure crown
Who now from stone beholds the passers by:
Great Thomas, he of Cottingham, might die,
The cloisters fall, the walls be overthrown,
But century after century still should own
How Brother Thomas ruled his Priory.
Rude were the times for mitre, cowl, or cope,
And rough the ways in rugged Cumberland;
The road to Heaven is not more easy now.
Still must we labour on, and die in hope,
In his heart's cell must each still take the vow,
And still in prayer true hand be pressed to hand.

XXIV. BEOWULF'S STONE, SAINT BEES.

MAMMON WORSHIP REBUKED.

Here, where the Cross is set, the red alcove
No longer echoes with the call to sales;
Men leaving Church no longer talk of bales,
And tax, and cess: their eyes are drawn above
To where a dragon warrior, and dove
Speak of a beast fierce-mouthed, with bristling scales,
Whose passionate greed prevailed and still prevails,
With whom this age must strive as others strove.
Thrice happy change that they who here profess
The Christ who preached down pelf, the Christ men sold,
Should see in runes the trouble of our time,
And feel each Sabbath, when the Church bells chime,
How well the Cross and sacred dove express
The warrior's hope against the beast of gold.

XXV. THE SNOW MIRACLE,

A LEGEND OF SAINT BEES.

Go, Lady, ask Lord Lucy of his grace
To grant us land, so did Saint Bega say,
Where we may rear a house to watch and pray:
The storm that flung us to the landing-place
Robbed us of all. Lord Lucy from the chase
Came laughing home: Good dame, I answer, Nay,
Yet promise all on next Midsummer day
Is white with snow to mend the stranger's case.
God hath His book, St. Bega's prayer is won,
Vows made in haste are vows eternally:
There came the hallow-eve of Great Saint John,
Forth looked the young moon from a sultry sky;
But ere the night to Midsummer had gone,
Beneath the snow three miles of seaboard lie.

XXVI. THE FORESTER'S. TOMB, SAINT BEES.

Nameless the tomb, his forest-deeds unsung,
But this rude scrawl upon his monument,
Drawn as a child would draw, is eloquent;
For there he stands, his huntsman's bow well-strung,
And overhead, the quarrel-pouch up-hung
Which round his girth was worn when forth he went
To hunt for venison in the woods of Dent,
Or rob the Sanwith she-wolf of her young.
Ah, since that day of hound and hawk and hood,
Which this stout archer of the Priory knew,
A blight has fallen upon Saint Bega's land;
The rooks can scarcely find a nesting wood,
The steam-mills hoot where once the horn he blew,
And men are slaves in coaly Cumberland.

XXVII. SAINT BEES.

Saint bega's Church peeps out behind the hill;
Laid out upon the treeless upland wide,
No longer needs the village now to hide;
Rotun the rover chief is dead, but still
As if it feared the ocean's treacherous will
It rests inland, and yet—the plowman's pride—
Those long-drawn fallows stretch toward the tide,
And sea-mews toss and tumble round his drill.
Here twice a day the sea-lips, deadly pale,
Are touched to life beyond the tawny cove,
And that old wizard scatters coraline,
Jacinth and onyx, then his pulses fail,
And, while the beach grows blank and grey above,
Long miles of liquid pearl, the wet sands shine.

XXVIII. SEA-COTE, SAINT BEES.

Above the grey-blue beach and yellow sand
Is set a milk-white hostelry apart,
Simple without, within of simple heart
And simple fare and hospitable hand.
To morning sun and evening twilight stand
Its portals open—groan of wain or cart
Comes seldom, round its eaves the swallows dart,
No noise disturbs the work their loves have planned.
Here oft the sea-bird's unfamiliar cry
Is borne to him who dreams upon his bed,
Hushed into slumber by the ocean's sound;
And when the sun beyond dark Tomline's head
Has set aflame the sea and the wide sky,
Here rest is sure, and healthful sleep is found.

XXIX. SEA-GULLS AT SAINT BEES.

Moveless of wing, as if by spell suspended,
About the ledges where their eggs are laid
The sea-mews hung, of no alarms afraid,
So well had height and depth their homes defended.
Yet with a wailing that was never ended
Far out to sea was lamentation made,
And, trembling up the cliffs, shade after shade
Like ghosts in grief ascended and descended.
It seemed as if the cries of all the pain
The travailing earth has felt, were there expressed;
The tortured rocks were vocal with dismay:
As if all storms that ever wracked the main
Were finding utterance in the sea-bird's breast,
And sudden sorrow had possessed the bay.

XXX. THE LARK ON TOMLINE HEAD.

To sit and listen where two voices meet,
One the continual patter of the stream,
And one old ocean's murmurings, that seem,
Pause after pause, one utterance to repeat
As if for exhortation,—that were sweet,
While round the emerald beetles shoot and gleam,
Brown martlets cry, and lazy cattle dream,
And the curved beach is winking in the heat.
But, tireless minstrel, neither voice prevails
When thou dost sing—the giant, laid to sleep
Far up the valley, heard thy tender pleas
And wondering looked to heaven, while she the gales
Drove hither, in thy joy, forgot the deep
And all its perils—Abbess of Saint Bees.

XXXI. A DOUBTFUL MAY.

TOMLINE HEAD, SAINT BEES.

The thrift's rose-jewelled caskets in the wind
To fainter flowers each day are shaking free,
The larks are loud on Tomline Head for glee,
And eager school-boys down in Fleswick find
Rare primrose tufts, with violets, the pale kind
That take their colour from Saint Mona's sea:
With dazzling gold the gorse makes gay the lea,
The fragrant breezes have a May-day mind.
Inland o'er treeless wastes the cuckoo calls,
The new-sown fields are red from sky to sky,
But eastward, Skiddaw, like a winter ghost,
Gleams snowy cold, and hark! with bitter cry
The nesting mews upon the seaward wall
Wail, as if May and all spring hopes were lost.

XII.

[_]

Wrongly numbered in the source text; should be poem XXXII.

MUSIC OF TWO WORLDS, SAINT BEES HEAD.

Oh wild wave-people, whose far-wandering breasts
Are white from miles of breaker, leagues of foam,
Here do ye well to build your fortress home,
For here the strange sea-murmur never rests.
Ever towards the cliff's gorse-gilded crests
Through tufts of thrift the hollow sounds will come,
So that your fledglings, wheresoe'er they roam,
Can ne'er forget the music of your nests.
Thrice happy birds, for, ere their wings shall grow,
Your children will have heard upon the steep
The best of sounds our sad old earth can give,
Song of the lark and distant cattle's low;
So wandering over songless seas shall live
As those whose souls two worlds of music keep.

XXXIII. THE IMPERISHABLE GOSPEL.

A LEGEND OF THE SOLWAY.

When, close behind, the Danish robbers cried,
And Lorton's lap no longer gave them rest,
They bore Saint Cuthbert's body to the west,
And fain beyond the wave their trust would hide;
Against the vessel rose a sea, whose tide
Rolled back the Saint with blood, as if its breast
Were wounded to the heart, and all confessed
At Derwent's mouth the body must abide.
With loss it rose, with gain the tide sank low;
The monks who sought their Gospel of the Lord,
Wave-washed from out the ship, found whole and fair
The jewelled gift of Eadfrid: storms may throw
Such jewels overboard, but God will care,
And lo, with added salt, regives His Word.

XXXIV. THE GLADNESS OF THE SEA.

League after league of sunshine, and a face
As changeful as a lover's, in what love
The sea for tryst comes dancing up the cove;
How light of heart, with what excess of grace,
Does wave on wave its brother shoreward race!
Thrice happy ocean, where thy waters move
Is health, and life, and hope for keels that rove,
Thou bearest home brave ships in thine embrace.
Thou seem'st to hold thy breath, then, laughing, roll
Up the long beach in roar of merriment,
And while the dolphins sport in happy shoal
Far seaward, and glad cries of children sent
Ring from the shore, thy tide has touched my soul,
And I am glad with thy deep-drawn content.