In Cornwall and Across the Sea :: :: University of Virginia Library

Cornwall, thou rivallest the border-land
In the romance, which thrills the poet's heart:
Indeed a border-land thyself thou art,
Where British Douglases did stoutly stand
'Gainst Saxon Percies—wouldest have as grand
A roll of ballad-heroes on thy part
If only the true tale of what thou wert
Had not been blurred with Time's obscuring hand
In the long centuries, like the granite stone
On tombs in thine old churchyards. Lyonnesse,
Tintagel, maybe Camelot, are thine own:
And on thine uplands lingered the impress
Of pixy, giant, exorcist so long
That still they leaven cottage tale and song.

II.

Nor hast thou only legend and romance:
For does not dusty board, in wayside fane,
Oft to the antiquary's search make plain
How stoutly Cornish halberds did advance
King Charles's cause? And where could artist glance
On boulders like Treen's Castle-of-the-Dane,
Or mightier billows rolling from the main
Than those which hurl their winter puissance
Against Tintagel and the Land's-end cliffs,
While from the dim recesses of thine heart
The stream of wealth has risen, since the skiffs
Of the Phœnicians took that to the mart
Which gave those islands of the northern seas
Their ancient name of Cassiterides.

SONNETS OF THE CORNISH MOORS.

ON THE CORNISH MOORS.

He, whom the Muse beguiles, doth seldom note
The flight of time or covering of space,
But rambles on with absent-minded face,
Oft with light tread, though blistered be his foot
His body weary and his goal remote;
The mind's impatience wearies more than pace;
And he who feeds or lulls his mind, can brace
A weary frame to task too heavy put.
I had been climbing all a summer day:
Over rough Cornish moors had been my roam:
Jaded and footsore was I, far from home,
And thrice as far it seemed to lie away,
When suddenly the Muse spoke, and I sped
As lightly home as though enchantment-led.

II.

The Cornish moors! what visions raise they not
Of fairies, pixies, giants, knights, and kings?
For here the latest fairies danced their rings
And pixies lurked in every lonely spot
To lure the traveller: and giants wrote
Their history in stones whose vastness sings,
As never minstrel might who harped on strings,
The giants' mighty lives. Here Tristram smote
In his first fight, and Arthur in his last
Beside the slaughterous bridge of Camelford
After the power of his knights had passed,
And here the loyal Cornishmen have poured
Times out of mind their blood in any cause
Which seemed to simple folk for Nature's laws.

CASTLE CHUN.

I.

A mighty ring of granite stones, unhewn,
Like beaches raised by the Atlantic tide
On Cornish coasts, a brambled moat outside,
And, bounding that, a giant's wall—half strewn,
Half indestructible—are Castle Chûn.
Within it is one carpet, fairy-dyed,
Of heather-crimson and gorse-gold allied,
Fern-fringed with green. Late on an afternoon
We scaled the castle-hill: the sun had gone,
But on the ruins of long-vanished pride
The haze of the departed godhead shone,
So lately 'neath horizon did he glide.
Was it not meet? His rays would have revealed
The ravages his haze did fondly shield.

II.

Glorious it were to spend a summer night,—
A sweet soft night in June,—within these walls,
Listening to distant owl and curlew calls,
And conjuring up a vision of the fight,
Which strewed the moor, a cloth-yard arrow's flight,
With barrow, cist, and cromlech. What appals
The ignorant and timid only thralls
The lover of the mystic with delight.
Giant or fay were no unwelcome guest,
Or ghost of Norseman, or Round-Table knight
Still of the phantom Sangreal in quest.
If such there came, might not there come a sight
Of the huge castle in its ancient pride,—
High-walled, deep-moated, and with kings inside?

III.

It weighs but little in the poet's mind
By whom 'twas reared—the dark Euskarian
(Who named us “Britons,” our primæval man,)
Against the Celt, or by the Celt designed
To stay the Teuton conqueror and find
Brief respite from the Viking. If blood ran
In great old battles, if for long months' span
'Twas resolutely held, when hope had pined,
And food had wasted, it is haunted ground;
Even if a bandit, preying on his kind,
In these stupendous stones a fastness found.
It matters not who stone to stone doth bind.
Castles we love as stages where great plays
By famous men were acted in old days.

RIALOBRAN, THE SON OF CUNOVAL.

Rialobran, the Son of Cunoval,
This is inscribed in Latin on a stone,
Rough hewn and rudely lettered, standing lone
Beneath Carn Galva. Was he general
Or hero? Did he valiantly fall
Fighting the Saxon? Did wild women moan
Over a bulwark of the people gone?
Why shared he not the common fate of all,
Who lived and died and were forgotten here,
That his one stone the moors of Penwith hold,
Gay-gardened at the season of the year
With bramble-fruit, heath-purple, and gorse-gold,
And with two castles of his ancient race
Guarding in ruined pride his burial place.

SONNETS OF MOUNTS BAY.

PENZANCE.

Penzance, I gazed upon you many a time
Across the bay: now tropically blue,
Now white with wrath and threatening to strew
Ship and sea-wall in common wreck sublime.
I gazed upon you when the morning prime
Gilt tower and dome, and when the summer threw
A veil of mist and splendour over you
As seven of the even rang its chime.
In pensive mood I gazed upon your lights
Guiding the pilchard-fisher through the gloom,
When I threw up the window of my room
For the cool breeze on fine September nights,
And hope for many a pleasant ramble still
Through your quaint streets or up Lescudjack's hill.

MOUNT'S BAY.

SEPTEMBER 6th, 1884.

The storm had passed, the breakers died away,
The setting sun, a crown of glory, pressed
On ocean's sinking head, while from the west
A fresh wind blew, no longer fierce but gay.
One ray illumed St Michael's Mount, one ray
The Land's last range, and one the meadowy nest
Beneath the leas of Ludgvan, and the rest
The foaming locks of ocean tossed and grey.
I called the legend to my mind, which told
That round the Mount for miles a forest grew,
Where sands have blown, meads bloomed, and waters rolled,
For centuries; and could not deem it true,
Had not the workmen, digging in the ground
Two fathoms deep, the ancient forest found.

MARAZION.

SEPTEMBER 14TH, 1884.

The day was warm, as many an Austral day,
And all day the September sun had rained
On sand and old seawall rough-weather-stained
And on the tide-filled waters of the bay
So pitilessly that the idler lay
In each chance shadow, or if he had gained
The friendly shelter of a house, remained
Until the storm of heat had passed away.
Yet, ere the sun waned, when the tide ran down
And I the causeway to the Mount had crossed
In search of cool, the East wind blew so cold
That I remembered winter days I'd known
In New South Wales with scorch at noon but frost
At eve, like strong men suddenly grown old.

ST MICHAEL'S MOUNT.

SEPTEMBER 25TH, 1884.

St Michael's Mount! four weeks did I abide
Beneath its shadow; yet I entered not
Its castle though I haunted the wild spot
Moated with ocean every flush of tide.
Oft was I tempted sore to pass inside;
It seemed so heedless, when it was one's lot
To be so near, to miss it, and I wot
That I enjoy the oft-derided pride
Of seeing all the wonders of the earth,
As wonders, though 'twere but a fleeting glance.
Yet what was vain inquisitiveness worth
When put into the scales with the romance,
Which I could weave about each ancient wall,
Which distance held me in enchantment's thrall?

II.

While I was shielded from the common round
And commonplace of modern social life,
Piano, Paris-dress and paperknife,
Afternoon tea and tennis, I was crowned
An ancient king, could tread enchanted ground
With fairy queens, and couch a lance in strife
With mailed knights-errant. Might not Tristram's wife—
Did he not dwell in Lyonnesse's bound?—
Be in you tower, or else the Cornish Queen
For whom he died. And if I heard a fount
Of music from the church, it must have been
The Norman Fathers from the elder mount.
Was the hall lit? The valiant cavalier
Offered the ruined Stuart-Queen high cheer.

III.

With dreams and visions of Arturian knight
And monk from Mont St Michel d'Outremer
Migrated to the Guarded Mount, the air
Which floated round the castle rock was bright.
Once more the Norman scorning terms and flight
Opened his resolute veins, and stout De Vere
Extorted his free pardon. Then a pair
Of strangely mated lovers met my sight,
Scotland's white rose, child of an honoured name,
And he, who born of Flemish chapman, yet
So like to England's royal Edward came
That Edward's sister had the will to set
The ancient crown of England on his head,
And Scotland gave her choicest flower to wed.

IV.

We know but little of this fair mock-queen
Left in the castle, while her mock-king went
To lead the angered Cornish into Kent
And rouse the riversiders, who had been
Foremost, whenever force did intervene
'Twixt wrong and weakness. When, with marching spent,
His troops were routed, thou wast ta'en and sent
To the crowned King. What was it in thy mien
That melted that stern heart? how didst thou weep
And blush thy shame, that he who spared so few
Should pardon thee and bid his White Rose keep
This Scottish Rose beside her? Thou hast shared
The fate of many a flow'r of olden time,
Whose tale has passed from history to rhyme.

ST MICHAEL'S MOUNT, CORNWALL, AT SUNSET.

I.

After a burning day, when even came,
I climbed a cliff which looked across the bay,
And glanced to where St Michael's Mountain lay
Dissevered by a mirrored shaft of flame,—
As ruddy as a maiden's blush of shame,—
And a flood-tide with evening shadows grey
From Marazion. There I mused away
On Tristram's early praise and later blame,
And how upon this very rock once stood
The gleaming castle called through Lyonesse
In Tristram's day, “The White Tower in the wood,”
While forest, meadow, towns and palaces
Were bowered from here to Scilly's utmost bound,
Where long the ocean hath usurped the ground.

II.

I gazed upon the castle of to-day,
At first behind a halo amber-dyed,
Which half-concealed it and half fairified
Until no mortal pencil could convey
The glory of the picture—fit for fay
Or Knight of old romance. I turned aside,
Forgetful that a vision might not bide,
And, when I looked again, the pageant gay
Had vanished and a sorcerer's fastness rose
Black from the precipice,—no aperture
For door or window,—such as Doré shows
With his grim brush, till the sun grew obscure.
And every point of tower and crag did leave
In bold relief with the clear light of eve.

III.

The bay around was placid as a lake,
And locked with land on every side save one;
The pilchard boats had, with the setting sun,
Launched out their nightly task to undertake;
Some few small feathered songsters were awake,
Their evensong of thanksgiving scarce done;
And to their pastures with their udders run
The cows slow way were wending through the brake.
Bathed in warm sunset, sate we there until
The first bleak breeze of even warned us home,
Fain on the fairy scene to linger still
But fearful to be caught, while we might roam,
By the cold outstretched fingers of the night
Stripping its iris-vesture from the sight.

ST MICHAEL'S MOUNT BY MOONLIGHT.

At Marazion, I remember well
How that I stood half a September night,
To feast my eyes on the enchanted sight
Exceeding all the poet's art to tell,
St Michael's Mountain with its citadel
Against the moonlit sky outstanding bright,
And long dark headlands stretching left and right
Around the placid bay, that rose and fell,
With soft melodious, incessant sough,
And gently heaving far off lights, which marked
Fishers. I mused how here the Tyrian
Ages ago adventured and embarked
Tin from this haven, when the Aryan man
Had not emerged from Aryan highlands rough.

TO A YOUNG AUSTRALIAN LADY E. M. S.

Lady, I met thee on the Austral shore,
Fresh from the very threshold of the grave,
And pale as if thou never wouldest have
Health's purple hue and springing footstep more.
A few months passed, and on a ball-room floor
Thou glidedst fair and graceful, though too brave.
I saw thee then on that side of the wave
No further. Now upon a Cornish moor
Thou standest sunburnt, lithe, and strong of limb
As a young Dian, making the wild heath
And fallen cromlechs echo with health's hymn
Of laughter. Futures who foreshadoweth?
How could I dream four years ago of thee
Robust, and on these far off hills with me?

SONNETS OF THE LAND'S END.

THE LAND'S END.

I.

The Land's End is it? with calm beryl sea
Stretching before me for a score of miles
To the low, distant, broken rim of isles?
The Land's End pictured in my reverie
Had been a wall of granite on the lee
Of waves, that mimicked mountains and defiles,
And flung themselves upon the giant piles
Of boulders, swooping irresistibly,
Like eagles driving through a wild swan's back
Their greedy talons deep. Was Lyonnesse
Submerged beneath this sleeping, gleaming track?
Here was it one alone escaped the stress
Of wind and wave, when o'er Sir Tristram's realm
The angry ocean rushed to overwhelm?

II.

But stay! Where'er an islet rock appears,
Where the “Armed Knight” stands sentry o'er the strait,
And fabled “Irish lady” met her fate,
Where the “Long Ships” their warning light uprear,
And the dark “Brisons” rise, cliff-castled sheer,
A prison for a giant, springs a spate
Of frosted, seething foam beneath the weight
Of every pounding wave. It leaps up clear,
(Like a white ostrich feather shot in air,
Or like a sunny fountain in the court
Of palace old) falls, ripples everywhere
Hissing, then drains straight back with respite short,
Islanding each projecting jag of rock,
To break or merge in the next billow's shock.

SENNEN—THE VILLAGE UPON THE LAND'S END.

I.

Sennen, mere hamlet—with a tiny fane,
A tavern and farmhouses, what is here
That pilgrims thread in hundreds year by year
Through the long village past the Table-maen
And roadside-cross? it is that they would gain
The end of England's land, and gaze down sheer
From her last cliffs on billows running clear,
Without a barrier, from the Spanish Main.
Majestic is the sight, which strikes the eye,
Whether the sea is calm—of that rare hue
Greener than sapphire, more than beryl blue,
Which gleams in Cornish coves—or threats the sky
With waves that o'er the cliff tops leap on high
And rend the rocks, and sand with wreckage strew.

II.

Nor is the little cove next Whitesand bay,
With shelving slide of granite carried down
Below low-water from the Fishers' Town,
Without its history. For in his day
After the crowning slaughter at Boleit,
King Athelstan, to wear his English crown
E'en to the utmost isles, from hence was blown
By cruel east winds to the lands which lay
A few leagues off, a bulwark from the west.
Here later Stephen landed for a throne,
And coming from his Irish wars King John;
And here, in her extremity, sore-pressed,
She who, of proudest Scottish birth possessed,
Linked the pretender's fortunes to her own.

III.

White Rose of Scotland, be thy slumber sweet,
Who, after thy roi-faineant was ta'en,
Taken thyself on Michael's Mount, didst gain
The favour of all eyes which thou didst meet,
Up to cold Henry on his judgment seat,
From whom with blushes and thine eyes' soft rain,
Thou, sole of all his captives, didst obtain
Life-mercy. Was thy girlhood so replete
With all which sweetens and illumines life,
That thou thy forfeit neck couldst lightly win
From these stern men not slow to slay their kin,
In the long years of internecine strife
That followed on the baring of the knife
Which finished the two Roses' council-din.

VELLANDREATH—WHITESAND BAY.

By Whitesand Bay report beholds at night
The spirits of the folk who have been drowned
In what was ancient Lyonnesse's bound,
And fisher-folk still shrink in strange affright
From treading on its shores before the light
Or after dusk. Why this is haunted ground
We know not if 'tis not that here are found,
The corpses which have foundered in the bight,
After the storm blows over. Once we know
The cruel Spaniard beached upon these sands,
Ready to lay his torch or violent hands
On all he met: but that was long ago,
And burn the mill was all that he might do
Which named the place, but now no longer stands.

SONNETS OF THE LIZARD.

TO THE LIZARD.

I.

We drove betimes from Marazion town,
Skirted Breage church, and, threading Helston streets,
First sighted, where the tilth the moorland meets,
The Cornish heather roving on the down,
With full pale bells eyelashed with dainty brown.
No heather such as this the sportsman greets
As up and down his moor for grouse he beats
In Yorkshire or the Highlands. Cornwall's own
It will not leave the sanguine serpentine
And soil magnesian, but in this far place
It blossoms and the marble gleams divine.
'Tis like a dream some poet's pen might trace
To have this strange fair stone and flower pressed
In one wild corner of the scarce-known west.

II.

We lighted down and roamed across the moor,
'Twixt stunted plants of heather and sea-pink,
Until we found ourselves upon the brink
Of Kynance—Kynance with its sandy floor
And “Cow-rock” like a marble Kohinoor
Blood-hued, upstanding. When the sea did shrink
The “Bellows” brayed with every rise and sink
Of waves that round the island-base did roar,
Even in the calm of a still summer day.
In spacious caverns neath the cliff we walked
With shimmering green and white and crimson gay
For salon fit or banquet-hall, then stalked
Along a dizzy path upon the isle,
To gaze into the Devil's mouth a while.

III.

We left the isle and clomb the hill once more,
Toward the Lizard, to the great twin lights
Seen by the mariner on stormy nights
To warn him of the perils of the shore,
The “Lions' Den” where when the Lions roar
No ship that sails could live,—so fiercely fights
The lion breaker, from the rocky heights
Flung on succeeding lions. Thence we bore
To where the terrace looks upon the cove
Of fishy Cadgwith, picked our dubious way
To where we might gaze downward from above
Into the “Devil's Frying-pan” and day
Being far spent, our way then wended back
To Lizard-town to take the homeward track.

SONNETS OF ARTURIAN CORNWALL.

TINTAGEL.

AUGUST 1884.

Tintagel, huge rock-royal, glad was I
That only here and there a crumbling wall,
Hard to distinguish from the natural,
Still stood upon thy summit. Worthily
Could feudal palace-keep scarce occupy
Such site; and how would newer buildings pall
Where every rood was stamped historical,
Or fancy-tinged, or steeped in legendry?
Dismantled, one can picture on the isle
A shadowy Arthur washed up from the bay,
And rear upon its front a stately pile
Of marble as kings reared them in the day,
Ere time had taught the Briton to neglect
The lesson of the Roman Architect.

II.

Arthur and Ysolde, Uther and Ygraine,
Tristram and Mark!—on moon-enchanted nights
At murk mid-dark, or when the island's heights
Peer dimly through a veil of spray and rain
Driven by the western gales—ye live again.
What wilder than this huge rock, ringed with bights
Precipice-walled and reefy, for the fights
Of Uther and the Cornish Duke, both fain
For Arthur's mother? Not in fairy-land
Have they in summer stillness such a cove
With ferny caverns nooked and soft with sand
To take a stranded babe. And hate and love,—
Queen Ysolde's love for Tristram, and Mark's hate—
Thy smooth brow and dark chasms illustrate.

III.

I saw thee first late on a summer eve,
Too dusky to distinguish the low block
Of wall fast mingling with the native rock,
So dusky that I could not well perceive
The vast ravine the elements did leave,
When the great drawbridge fell, before the shock
Of giant storms or those strong dwarfs who mock
Adamant—mists which melt and frosts which cleave.
Only the mount loomed black against the sky
And at my feet slow heavy breakers roared,
The while I trampled, musing wistfully,
The stunted gorse and sea-pinks of the sward
Upon the windy height, whereon still stands
The church first founded there by Saxon hands.

IV.

Next morn I clomb the mount to seek the well
And all but vanished earthworks. Those were there
When Uther's savage war-cry rent the air;
Those and the mount itself alone could tell,
Had they but tongues, where such a hero fell,
And such a gallant prince won such a fair,
And how Queen Ysolde of the raven hair
Held the stout knight, Sir Tristram, in her spell.
The month was August and the morn was grand
With all that makes an August morning dear
To rain-vexed England; light the west wind chased
The ripples on the bay; the sky was clear,
The sun shone bright, the air was warm and dry:
And Nature held the keep of days gone by.

[Not Camelot the towered—the goodly town]

I.CAMELFORD—CAMELOT

Not Camelot the towered—the goodly town
Upon the shining river, whither passed
The Lady of Shalott, when fallen at last
A victim to her spell, slow-wafted down!
Not Camelot the towered, the glittering crown
Of all King Arthur's cities! Yet thou hast
Thy legend of the King—how Modred massed
His traitor legions, where the waters brown
Run neath the Bridge of Slaughter, how the King,
With Launcelot dishonoured, Tristram slain
And half of his Round-table following
Dead or apostate—triumphed; then was ta'en,
Stricken to edath, by bold Sir Bedivere
To Dozmary and passed upon the mere.

II.CAMELFORD—SLAUGHTER BRIDGE.

In the soft prelude of an August night
We sallied forth from Camelford in quest
Of where his last great battle in the west
Brought death to Arthur. Grey the gloaming light
Ere we were in the valley of the fight,
A spot by Nature framed for fierce contest,
With ridge commanding ridge, and crest on crest,
On either side a little river, bright
With waving sedge and darting trout. The bridge
Was wreathed with blackhaired spleenwort and wild flowers,
And the rank grass beneath the lowest ridge
Guarded a stone, in characters not ours,
Claimed by the country-folk with wondering eyes
To tell that Arthur underneath it lies.