The Lake of Geneva :: :: University of Virginia Library

The Lake of Geneva

a poem, moral and descriptive, in seven books. With notes historical and biographical. In two volumes. By Sir Egerton Brydges

Brydges, Egerton (1762-1837)

II.

III.

IV.

VI.

VII.

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DEDICATION.

TO WILLIAM WORDSWORTH, ESQRE. AND ROBERT SOUTHEY, LLD.

Bards of immortal fame, in virtue high
As in bright genius! In a noble heart
Is worth, above all genius, and all power.
All that by labour can be done, is naught,—
And all by skill and artifice! The spell
Lies in the sentiment; the steam of truth,
That issues from the fountain of the soul
Involuntary!—it is intellect
By the heart warm'd, elated, soften'd, mellow'd!
Be curses on the flowers of poetry!

They are but idle, childish ornaments,—
Or rather meretricious! The great soul
Disdains them. By an inward light impell'd,
It echoes forth the voice of spiritual truth;
Nor in material beauty seeks its praise.

To live amid the troubles of the world,
And learn no wisdom, is a life of scorn:
And not to glow amid the scenery
Of its stupendous beauty'; and not to burn
With indignation at the crimes and follies
Of its half-earthborn, half-celestial habitants,
Beneath our better nature is to sink!

The majesty of high and daring thought,
The charm of a refin'd and melting bosom,
The force of piercing faculties of mind,
Call forth the admiration of the enlighten'd,
The just, and sound.—To think and meditate,
And rightly and unselfishly to judge,
And sympathise with human misery,
And mercy shew to man's unwilling frailties;
But tear the veil from curs'd hypocrisy;—
And meditated breach of faith, and robbery,
To Hell's enduring torments to consign,—
This, this, becomes the Muse.—She then her strain
Lifts, as a lesson to direct the paths

VII

Of straying mortals! With the daily tasks,
And daily passions, of mankind she deals!
And not a dreamy, mystic, sickly note
She pours, which girls in a factitious humour
May wonder at, and weep upon, in vain!

It is the Sage's lore, that the ambition
Of manly genius only will aspire to;—
What teaches us to muse with rectitude
Upon th'events of ages gone away;
And by the aid of bright imagination
Revive the past, and bring the dead to life!
Once more before the judgment-seat array'd,
The spirits of antiquity come forth,
And to the censure of succeeding times,
From transient passions free, their acts submit!

All wealth is in the mind;—without the mind
This scene of things is barren. 'Tis the sentiment,
And thought annex'd, that only give it worth;
And thought without emotion is but empty,
Uncertain, and more subtle oft than wise!

Defend me from an idle play of words,
And glittering images, that tell no truth!
From metaphor, and simile, and dress
Illustrative of what is stale and hollow!
We want the substance; not a worthless figure,

VIII

By gaudy and false ornaments disguis'd!

And thus I close my dedicative lay;
For too prolix the following strains have been.—
—So fate ordains it!—I have drank the cup
Of bitterness and wrong, e'en to the dregs!

And now let Calumny', and hell-scaping Scorn
Fall foul on me again, and fix their fangs
Upon my wounded heart!—it still will beat
Mid purer air, and with untam'd emotions
Glow, and ascend on fancy's wings, to bask
On banks of waterfalls Elysian,
Beneath the fire of empyrean air!

Then hail, ye glorious Pair, in sympathy
Of virtue, as of genius, ever fam'd!
And as, in candour, ye have breath'd of old
Your cheers to me, which charm'd away despair,
Bless me once more with your life-waking voices!

Thus on the verge sixty-nine sad years
I yet may fearlessly the lyre resound,
And On the Tombs of mighty Bards of yore
Sing hymns, that shall their airy Spirits soothe!

S. E. B. Friday morning, 30 Sept. 1831.

THE LAKE OF GENEVA.

BOOK I.

O lake most beautiful, thou art become
Now as a home to me! Time has united
The sight of thee with many a feeling fond,
And many a bright idea past; and thou
The mellow mirror art that throws them back
Fairer than when they first within me sprung!
But not to me alone;—to all the world
These years have of tremendous import been.
How many a noble heart, which once I knew,
Sleeps in the dust, since first upon mine eyes
The grandeur of thy glassy waters broke.
It is not wonderful that thou wert chosen,
Nearly two thousand years ago, the seat
Of those Burgundian Kings, who made their inroad

On Rome tyrannic. Ever since in story
Thy name has shone, and thy rich tale is full
Of mighty incidents, beyond my strength,
Or few remaining years, with clearness due
To narrate. I would rather tell how grand
Thy mountains, clad in snow, upon thee hang:
But I have nothing of the Sage's lore,
In natural science learned. My delight
Has been to trace the movements of the mind
And heart of man: and much of this shall I
Ere half my task is finish'd, have to say
On this deep-searching topic; for with thee,
Yes, on the tumbling issue of thy torrent,
Was born Rousseau, of man's immingled being
One of the magic wonders;—of the soul
And moral conscience the enigma strange!
But not to him alone shall be my song
Confin'd: a beadroll of full many a name
Of worthies, that will dignify the verse,
Shall be recall'd to memory, and with due
And clear appropriate praise be fondly sung.
For I have travel'd in the tale of Man,
And from my very earliest boyhood sought
Th'events, the feelings, and the tracts of brain,
That mark'd all those who in the roll of fame
Have been well register'd: and in that roll
A few of lustre high have on thy banks,
O Lake most lovely, most sublime, been nurs'd,
Or spent their lives of virtuous mental labour.
From Jura's heights, just as the setting sun

Upon Mont-Blanc his rosy beams reflected,
I first beheld thee, O most beautiful
Expanse of waters! My worn heart was then
Bursting, and the confusion of my head
As if its light was in the gloomy grave
About to close: for I had many a year
In mingled tempests been conflicting wild
With public duties, and with private wrongs;
And disappointment, insult, most audacious
Fraud, was th' heart—breaking consequence of all.
But when the most sublime of Nature's views
Burst all at once upon my wearied soul,
A being new shone in me, and I wish'd
Again to live, and to enjoy this breath
Of mortal tenement I would put off.
Dark was the night ere we could reach the walls
Of thy fair City—and the gates were clos'd,
To ope no more till morn. Then, Secheron,
Thy over-crowded mansion, after long
Intreaties, under its protecting roof
Received us, and the feversish night, of heat
Intense, counting the hours, we linger'd through.
The streets of London seem'd as they had poured
Their wellknown habitants upon the spot!
But not so far had travel'd I to see
The common faces of my last sad years!
Peace, solitude, and mild forgetfulness
I sought, or if oblivion were not mine,

Then the materials of my loaded brain
To turn upon the future, and by new
Associations a new form to give!
Now close upon thy banks I chose my haunt,
Dear Leman, and from the turmoil of Man's
Society, sick at heart, shut myself out.
But then the past would deep intrude again;
And deep I meditated; yet more deep
Upon the future; and I call'd in fiction
To while the hours away; and every morn
I scribbled the inventions, that the calm
Of night had work'd upon my busy mind;
And thus an hundred fables in my tablets'
Recorded stand; and sometimes to their length
I drew them out; and strove to move the hearts
Of sympathetic readers with the images
That haunted my own fancy. My weak frame
Could scarce sustain the conflict in the cauldron,
Where all the elements of head and heart
In tumult work'd together. My mov'd blood
Diseases nurs'd, that on the springs of life
Prey'd, and extinction nearly had effected.
Then rose those complex causes of the ill,
Which never since has left my afflicted body.
And not thy salutary Baths, St.-Gervais,
Could purge away the poison! It was fix'd
Deep in the purple veins of my earth's being—
And will away no more! But in that haunt
Of loneliness, where every morn I saw
The sun rise o'er the Lake, and distant barge

Offer its white sails to the misty gleam,
Of wisdom much I learn'd, as much I thought;
With bent intense upon the wealth of nations
I ponder'd day and night; and something drew
From this unbroke abstraction of pure mind,
Which will not soon forgotten be, although
Noticed by few; and still but little known.
But long, long, years, after the seed had fallen
Dead in the soil, as I conceiv'd, surpris'd,
And with delight my wondring eyes have found
That it had taken root, and had expanded
Into an healthful produce, and was spreading
From day to day. Then came the sweet reward;
And the heart soften'd and grew calm and good;
And self-complacence, in which mood are nurs'd
Our kindliest virtues, smiling sat within.
We cannot feel benevolence, while none,
We think, are kind to us. I well remember
How unabated was the toil I gave,
And how in cold and dark December's depths,
Three hours before the light I rose, and by
The cheering flame of wood my studies plied,
And drove the current of my worn-out plume.
Then I had done a good day's work, ere others
Had left their beds; and to my morning walk
Betook me with a conscience pleas'd, and sought
The city for its books and for its news.
Of living beings I convers'd with few;
For few were my acquaintance; and with eye
Askance the busy worldlings look'd on me.

I had no manners for the world; reserv'd
And cold was my address; and freezing thoughts
Seem'd to come slowly from my'embarrass'd lips.
But there was fire within; tho frost without:—
By that which was without the world had judg'd,
And ever will judge so. And thus it was,
That while by irritability extreme,
And the incessant boilings of my head,
The chiefest evils of my life had come,
My seeming coldness bred vindictive hate.
But many a year have I a citizen
Of the wide world been since, and many a clime
And nation have I seen; and many a change
Of life and manners, and full many a scene
Of nature's beauties; and my head and hand
Have oped themselves to many a head and hand
Of other countries; and in my old age
A cheer is come at last, which has unbent
My gloomy brow, and breath'd on my chill voice
A lively tone, and op'd my frozen lips,
As the sun melts the icy bonds that chain
The winter waters; and at last my tongue
Babbles as rapid as those torrents run
Beneath the blaze of the sun's burning rays!
Perchance it is a flow of wild and wearying,
Rude, unconsider'd matter—caught from lights
That for the moment dart, then fly away,
And never more upon those objects rest;—
Perchance it is the colouring of passion,
Unjust and hurtful there where good should be

Intended and bestow'd, and with sharp dart
Pierces, or with a barbed arrow wounds.
Slow, and considerate, and weighing deep
All consequences, and all chance of ill,
The cautious talker tells us what is naught.
It is a selfish baseness, that conceals
Opinion. Give it not the name of Candour!
It is a habit, that grows, and still grows,
Till the poor barren mind becomes a blank,
And sand, and sand, is put upon it, till
It has no surface but white worthless atoms.
If ebullition of quick thoughts produce
Injustice, then restraint becomes a duty:
But the reserve, which has its origin
In calculation of self-injury,
Is a most odious baseness, which would damp
The energies of the most noble heart.
The free communion of enlighten'd mind,
Sagacious, penetrating thought, confession
Of unsophisticated moves of heart,
Conviction, the result of complex powers
Of all the faculties when most abundant,
Most strain'd together,—of that inspiration
Which only genius knows;—which is not borrow'd,
And therefore may not elsewhere be obtain'd;
The bright thought suddenly by strong collision
Struck at an accidental dart; the fire
Communicative, from another caught;—
These form the charm intense of social life.
Solitude has its charms, and its great uses;

But so has social life, when well selected:
It quickens our best intellectual powers;
And mends our hearts, and teaches matter rich,
And of discernment nice, which not from books
Or solitary musing can be learn'd.
There are full curious inexhaustible
Stores of instructive knowlege floating ever
Upon men's lips, which not the pen or type
Has ever register'd, or ever can!
Loose and inaccurate full oft the babble
Of ignorance or vanity; but judgment
Selects, arranges, sifts; or gets a clue
By which the workings of his proper mind
Arrive at truth. Thus men who have convers'd
Much with the world, are ready, sharp, exact,
And by comparison with thoughts of others,
Are less expos'd to strange hallucinations,
Which find no test or compass in themselves.
There is a partial blindness,—some weak spot,—
I' th' individual sight of half mankind:
But then there is a range in solitude
For the mind's grandest visions, and the view
O' th' human countenance in its arch smile;
Its love of the ridiculous; its actual
Encumberment of matter; and the call
Of prompt attention to all visible things,
Reins in imagination, and weighs down
By earthly particles the mounting scale.
Thus solitary genius is the most
Sublime,—and social most acute and witty,

Sagacious, and exact, and in the daily
Conduct of life, the surest guide to wisdom.
It is the intermingled course, which leads
To the mind's highest efforts, and best fruits.

But I have wander'd from my subject far;
And must to thee, O Lake belov'd, return!
When the spring came, along the little garden
I pac'd, that by thy fickle waves was wash'd,
And view'd the budding flower, and felt the beam
Of renovating suns, and still beheld
With wistful eye the beamy sail descend
From where Lausanne's bright turrets in the rays
Of golden Phœbus glitter'd; on the bank
Oppos'd, by Jura's frowning Mountains back'd,
Smil'd many a beautiful and varied villa,
Hanging their green shrubs o'er the azure waves.
There the light boat is dancing on the Lake,
And dashes many an oar, and throws the spray
Panting, and many a petty sail is spread
To court the expiring breeze; and here and there
The tones of music, and the gentle voice
Sound sweetly on the bosom of the wave.

Then came the midday dream; and Poesy
Awak'd in all her exquisite emotions;
And then the Tragic Tale went on,—and tears
Profusely on the blotted paper flow'd;
And the swell'd heart with virtues most refined,
Most melancholy and most tender sighs,
Work'd itself into temperaments unearthly.
Oft to thy waters sparkling in the sun,

Then dark again with clouds,—now smooth as plains,
Then suddenly to mountain heights uprear'd,
In frailest boats, with weak hands to the oar
Quite inexperienced, did I entrust
My worn-out frame, by mingled fever torn,
Yet calm'd by courses new of meditation.
Then oft across the burning heat uprose
A sudden piercing blast, that in the mountain
Gorges in secret bred, came like a thief
I' th' night, and with its petrifaction chill'd
The boiling blood. And now twelve years have pass'd,
And yet the dire disorder reigns within,
Now agitating, and now palsying
This frame of eight and sixty years of pain.
Oft on the waves beneath the blazing rays
Upon my oars I rested: then the sun
Shot vertical, and my dry brain was parch'd
Beneath its fire. Disorder took its seat
Within my veins, and I was sound no more.

Now came the clime of Italy to soothe,
But yet perchance my fever'd circulation
With momentary calmness to deceive;
For I once more was to the bed of sickness
For three long months confin'd; and then again
I labour'd hard in intellect, and search'd
Thro regions dull and dry, yet intermix'd
With bright imagination's moral range.
Here the full blazon of the Arts to me
Open'd in rapture, and delirium pass'd
From my eyes to my melted heart, at view

Of Painting and of Sculpture's magic powers.
O Florence—nurse of Genius—birth-place lov'd
Of modern poesy! Where Dante first
Saw Heaven's sublimity upon his cradle
Reflected; and where Milton, and where Gray
Lighted the flames, that, sown in northern climes,
Wanted the heat of more congenial suns!—
With thee I linger'd many a month, tho' death
Over me with his threatening arrow hung.
But I escap'd then, as full thrice at least
Since; and to thee, dear Leman, safe return'd
Ere twenty months completely had elaps'd.
Now broad upon thy blue expanse again
I look'd; and right against the glittering villa
Mounted on Cologny's vine-cover'd hills,
Beneath the Alpine heights and proud Mont-Blanc,
By Deodati's fond Miltonic name
Hallow'd, and yet again on modern rolls
With beams more brilliant blazing, by the memory
Of mighty Byron's sojourn long, where all
The Muse's charms were oped to his embrace.

Thence on this Lake he frolick'd; thence in storms
His rous'd soul, most delighted with thy waves
To battle, and to hear the thunder roll,
And his rent sails all shivering, and his mast
Dire cracking in the roars and blasts of wind;
Then cross the conflict of thy billows he
To Coppet pass'd; and there a strife far other
It was his lot to battle sharply with;
—The conflicts of the mind; the strong collision

Of mental wit, and readiness, and point,
And art, and flow of words, and confidence,
And vanity, and self-conceit inbred
From childhood, and supremacy of thought
Intense, historic, and political.

But in that contest the unrival'd Bard,
Whom every Muse enrich'd, yet paled his star,
And moody at the consciousness of light
Eclips'd, threw forth his fever'd frame aboard
Into the boat, and as the breezes blew
Growing into a storm, and the dark came,
And billows dash'd, he plied his beaten oars
Half in delight, and rose upon the wave,
Then sunk again into the water's depths,
In alternation, that half in delight,
Half in defiance, sometimes with a gloom
Of black despair, and sometimes with a laugh
Of scorn at fate, that buffeted his body
Thus, as his tempest-beaten heart,—arriv'd
Safe at his haunt once more, where Milton's spirit
Receiv'd him at the entrance; then fatigued,
Lap'd in deep slumbers long he lay, the Muse
Upon his bosom sitting, and with fondness
Pouring her balm on his tempestuous heart.

O sacred be those haunts, O beautiful
Be every tint that on them soft and coolly
Hovers! and be the air forever blest,
And gardens, walks, and banks beheld with awe
Mingled with love and fancy, and the swell
Of bosom, that assures to higher being!

For six long months daily as I awoke,
And over the blue rippling waters saw
The white walls glittering on the morning sun,
My fond eyes with a sort of idol gaze
Dwelt on them, and my' uncalm imagination
Peopled them with a crew that ne'er on earth
In truth were habitants:—but so it is;
And in these wild delusions we are doom'd
To live: and well it is, that we so live;
For life without it would be barren, dull,
And of a grossness unendurable.

It was not yet the time of ill,—foreboding
An early destiny to Byron's race:
He yet was in the most abundant bloom
Of his gigantic course, and pour'd along
The torrent of his strains with endless strength;
But four times had the sun his annual round
Perform'd, since he had left that fam'd abode;
And underneath Italian suns brought forth
New splendors, the amaz'd and awe-struck world
To dazzle, and half rapture, half dismay.

O vile Venetian luxury! O poison
Of cups Circæan! O the fall of mind,
That in the body's selfish pleasures fades!
But yet, O effluence indepressible
Of pure and spiritual imagination!
While wallowing in earthly vice, thy brain
Was the seat of all noble sentiment,
And visionary beauty and sublimity!
And thy heart with ideal love was touch'd,

Pure, and intense, and heavenly; and the while
Could mingle pictures of a sensual world
Plung'd in dark earthly sins, and seem to gloat
With glee satanic on them, and to laugh
With scorn triumphant on a fallen race!
Nor, less initiated in the practice,
Wast thou familiar with the foul ambition
In vicious luxury to be a leader!
Asham'd not, thy companions boon amid,
To be the first of worldlings! Ill it sorted
Thy most exalted genius to be thus
Rival of coarse and brutal ignorance;
Hardness of heart; of manners base; of birth
Ignoble, only by corrupt, depraving
Foul-got, and e'en perchance blood-colour'd wealth,
Gilded! But we may reason as we will,
Such was the union! The degrading vice
None can deny, and there existed also
The mind of heavenly breathing! To combine them
May be a swerve from nature's rules; but there
They were together found! How oft in that
Seat of departed commerce, where the tides
That all the streets transpierc'd, once wafted gold
In countless heaps, and arts and arms and glory
Together flourish'd, all by human toil,
And human ingenuity,—didst thou
Look back on Jura and the Alpine heights
Of rosy-tinted proud Mont-Blanc; and sigh
At nature's wonders, and the trembling Lake,
And its night-closing tempests; and the ride

Upon the tips of the white-foaming waves,
And Coppet's lights, and Coppet's blaze of mind!

Can thy waves once again, O Leman lov'd;
Strength to my body give—for I am weak,—
And my eyes fail me, and the opiate weight
Comes over me of deep forgetfulness,
And the rich page, which ought my mind to fill
With keenest interest, falls from my hand.

Thus in the day! but in the shades of night
Still by the lamp I watch, and ply my task
Week after week unwearied, and e'en month
Succeeding month. Then Midnight's silence calm
Befits the meditations of my brain;
For much the turmoil of society,
And much the talk of man, distracts my spirits:
And much it agitates my morbid breast.

There is a sharpness in thine air, that sometimes
Pierces, and sometimes curdles up the blood,
And stops the pores; and great the maladies
Such interruptions cause; for on the free
And even transit thro the tranquil veins
Of the blest stream of life depends all health.
Therefore the race that on thy banks has dwelt,
Has ever somewhat irritable been,
And somewhat moody; and was that not ill
Suited to the capricious humours of
The chief of all thy mental luminaries?
But yet he stood alone; nor ever yet
Did country more unlike its other habitants
Produce a human Being!—O Rousseau!

Thou wast the strangest, most intense, most beautiful,
Most eloquent, most passionate, acute,
Most fond, most selfish, most capricious, vain,
Most wilful, most vindictive, and most cross'd
With sudden unresisting yield to foul
Base wickedness, as thou thyself confessest,
That e'er combin'd in man's mysterious mould.
E'en at the very crise, when Satan sat
Triumphant on thy heart, the beams of Heaven
Were shining in it:—clouds, and sun, and thunder,
And lightning; and the intermingled rays
Of love, of beauty, raptures, and the charms
Of most celestial philanthropy!—

It was not art which aided thee; thou wast
The child of nature; not in Learning's tracks,
By method, toil, instruction, didst thou gain
Thy strength, or clearness, or concision, or
Order of words, or springs of nascent thought!
All was the gift of some inspiring Spirit,
Which visited thine infant eyes, and breath'd
Fire, strength, and tenderness, and th' fairest forms
Of most unearthly beauty, to thy heart!
E'en ere thy tottering steps could reach the banks
Of the deep-purpled waves, thou must have had
This wild delirium in thy wandring sight,
And fluttering, dancing, boiling on thy breast.
If thy weak fingers could have used the pen,
And language had been thine, to paint and fix,
Then in what brightness inconceivable
Thy visions had been set! The forms around thee,

—Material forms—had not in truth the colours—
Nor essences thou wouldst have cloath'd them with;—
But ne'ertheless they would not have been fram'd
By fiction false; but did in truth exist
To thy creative eye and flowing heart.

The sun shone o'er the waves with brighter beams
Than on the mingled mass of land: and more
Of freshness as they beat and spray'd and sparkled,
And worked themselves to purity by collision,
Won on the senses, and evok'd the tribes
Of Fairy habitants within the cells
Of brain and bosom. O who had sagacity
In this thy childhood, looking on thy face
And delicate features, and thy slender frame,
To presage ought above the common gifts
Of vulgar children? On the rocky stone,
The fickle billows dash'd, thy limbs were laid:
And then with ear intent thou didst drink in
The sounds, that on the wave came whispering down,
Or sometimes shrieking. Airy spirits danc'd,
Or slid along the surface of the blue,
And green and white all mingled, of the waves;
Or rose amid the glittering spray, and laugh'd
And mock'd, and breath'd out magic syllables,
And half display'd their limbs of exquisite
And most etherial beauty, when thy boyhood,
O'erdazzled, veil'd thine eyes, and in thyself
Absorb'd and lost, sunk utterly regardless
Of all without. Sometimes in search of thee,
They, from whose care thine errant feet escap'd,

Found thee still sleeping as th' advancing flood
Gain'd on thy stony bed; and thou wouldst cry
And fret and storm to be thus rudely wak'd
Midst of thy golden slumbers! And thy nurse
Would rate thee as a moody, cross-grain'd child,
Of whom no good would come! and in disdain
Thy little eye would fire, and thou wouldst stamp,
And deal about thy puny blows, and rave
With thy impetuous and half-stifled voice!
And even then thou felt'dst the day would come
When thou, the infant treated with despite
And scorn for thy defaults, wouldst craze the world
With beams of splendor, that the sober sense
Of all, deem'd happier-gifted, would in vain
Strive to repell or to endure!—'Tis thus
That Genius ever feels: and thus it swells
Against the vain and blind oppressor: thus
It knows how folly, dulness, ignorance,
Ever miscalculate; and dim presumption
Thinks in the infant of stale common-place
A prize to be well-hugg'd, and prais'd and flatter'd.

How much hadst thou, Enchanter, in thy days
Of boyhood, to oppress, disturb, and cross
The opening of thy mind, to interrupt
The laying-in of wisdom, and to mix
Foulness and poison in the issuing streams
Of tender, pure, and magic-mellow'd sentiment!
But there was in its essence a bright spell,
That threw off all th'impurities with scorn
And might, and indignation, and untouch'd

Stood in surrounding pools of dirt and vapour!

A seer perchance might clearly have discern'd
The rays that play'd around thee; but the veil
Hung thick before the vulgar earthly sight:
A trade mechanic could not dark the lamp
That blaz'd within thee, and thy hands consign'd
To labour for thy head; and fear of want,
And despot brutal orders of a despot
Master, unjust, capricious, ignorant,
And unillum'd by casual gleams of mind.

When the tir'd body has its organs press'd
By the deranged current of the blood,
How ill the mental faculties can work,
Unless some blest supremacy of power
O'ercomes the direful load! But the all-mounting
Fire of true genius will pierce through, and rise,
Spite of clouds, storms, and vapours, up to Heaven!
It was not in society that thou
Caught'dst the refinement of thy bosom's motions;
For much of coarse was there: nor in the ranks
Where wealth and education smoothe the manners,
And elevate the thoughts, and purify
The views, wert thou accustomed to have
Thine infant ear delighted, or thy bosom
Touch'd with the sweetness of habitual rule
Of intellectual dominion!
The eye of female beauty, elevated
By birth, and in the school of Riches, form'd
By wisdom's lessons, and the softening stores
Of delicate and high imagination,

Ne'er beam'd on thee the melting magic of
Its irresistible irradiation:
But all the glory, and the golden tints,
Sky-borrow'd, came from thee, and on the object
Of its deep idol-worship threw the blaze,
Kneeling to deities of its own creation.
But such is ever bright Imagination's
Delusion dangerous! Shall we attribute
Aught to thy clime, thy mountains, the expanse
Of this thine azure mirror, by whose loveliness
The splendor, and the beauty, and the rays
Of beamy lustre, breaking but by fits
Thro mountainous vapours, and sometimes a chill
Of snow-clad summits, bosom'd in thick clouds
Of Heaven, may have been on that breast of sun
And tempests, then again in massy darkness
Impress'd! O no! 'tis not to earthly causes
That we must look: but 'tis the gift of heaven,—
This high creative splendor, that within
Works, and its forms and colours outward throws:
But yet, though lakes and mountains and the sway
Of nature's scenery in its most sublime
And awe-engendering shapes and tints, cannot
Originate th'internal faculty,
Still it may nurse and fan and bring it forth;
For in the heavy vapour of dull skies,
And flat and fen-like countries, much I doubt,
If genius ever can mount high, or duly
Expand her wings.

Along th'oerhanging skies

Comes sweeping o'er the Lake the loud career
Of tempests, bred the gorges deep among
Of those enormous Alpine masses, clad
In snow eternal, down whose craggy sides
The roaring torrents fall, and intermix
Their spray, that into ice-bound atoms turn'd,
Add arrows to the loud careering stream,
And sweep the gather'd pestilences bred
I' th'air, and thro those clouds which o'er thy walls,
Geneva, as o'er all th'abodes of man
In congregated heaps, brood harmfully
Passing—an healthful, airy, free, and sharp
Atmosphere give it! O, how in the roar
Of winter nights 'tis terrible;—but grand;—
And braces up the spirits to delight.

O then the' inhabitants of the vex'd sky
In battle seem; and what a shrill loud shriek
Does ever and anon the blast bring on
To the astonish'd ear! Not three fleet months
Have pass'd away, since thro the long black night
I listen'd to this music of the spheres!
For right against the torrent was th'abode
Where on my bed of sickness I, awake,
Told the long hours, and watching by the blaze
Of cheerful lamp, my magic leaves unfolded,
And wove my tales, and urg'd my weary pen!

How oft I gan imagine that I could
The language of the Winds interpret well:
And tell the gusts of Anger from the shrieks
Of sorrow;—and the murmur soft, between,

Of Peace and Love with comment true intend!
Then sometimes for a moment I believ'd
The spirit of Rousseau himself was there,
Or Milton, or of Gray: but morning light
Drove them away: and down my bosom sank,
And much of philosophic fortitude
It call'd, to reconcile me to the flat
Realities, that press'd upon my senses!

But ere due manhood thou hadst reach'd, thy fate
Led thee away from these thy native airs,
O eloquent but dangerous Moralist;
And little didst thou ever hear again
The voices of the tempests, as they drove
Their gathering torrents of soul-moving sounds
Over old Leman's billows! the lov'd Muse,
Whom I from babyhood have worship'd, frowns
Upon my prayers, when I intreat his voice,
The strange tale of thy wandring life to paint.
She will not touch me with the hallow'd sweetness
That duly can relate it; nor impart
The piercing eye that to the mysteries
Of thy yet undevelop'd breast can look!
And she the movements magical and strange
Has not the force to construe! I would tell
The story of thy chequer'd days in order
Successive, but my head, and pen, and voice
Are all too weak!—And I must catch by fits
Such lights and shadows, as irregular
Will dart upon me! O thou fabulist
Inspir'd of the new passionate Heloise!

La Meillerai and Clarens from thy pencil
Become th' abodes of dangerous magicians.
But I must leave thee now, and I again
Will at a future hour return to thee!

How wert thou, Leman, in the days of old?
The greatest of the Cæsars had thee once:
Julius made thee sometimes his seat of rest,
As northward he advanc'd to victory.
The Church and civil viceroys of the Emperors
Possess'd thee long, and with divided sway
Govern'd thy harass'd people.—
Counts of the Genevois, and despot Bishops,
With iron rod in rivalry conflicting,
Their subjects each tormented for the purpose
Of paining each the other. Then the wretched
Was punish'd twice—firstly for not obeying,
And then again because he had obey'd!

How deep into the night of Time these Counts,
Imperial Viceroys, drew their origin,
To poring antiquary is not yet
Precisely known!—They were among the chief
Nobles and Peers of Carlovingian days!
And many a grand alliance with the Princes
Of France, Helvetia, Italy, they made;
And with puissant grandeur liv'd, and spread
Widely their fame! nor were they wanting in
Mildness of character and arts of peace,
If sometimes to fierce actions thirst of rule,
And irritation of the crosier's sway,
Impell'd them! while a neighbouring encroacher,

Savoy's ambitious Count, was ever pressing
Upon their limits, sometimes by the sword,
Sometimes by plot, sometimes by vile intrigue!
And much more dreaded were they by the people,
Than those they would displace; but after ages,
At length their inextinguishable ambition
Succeeded; and above a nobler House,
More ancient, more benignant, they uprose;
And o'er the shoulders of a tribe oppress'd
Put their tyrannic paws, and bore them down!

Then too the Church's feudal sceptre yielded
To the same thirst of power and politic
Adroitness, and proud Savoy's children grasp'd
The mitre with the sword, and thus united
Sat for three ages on the necks of those
The habitants of thy magnific banks,
O Lake, of which the Alpine side they yet
Tyrannise over! But its chiefest line
At length expires, e'en scarce a few brief weeks
Before the feeble pen these lines records!

But, Carignan, in a more liberal school
We trust that thou wast cradled, and if power
Superior does not crush the seeds of liberty,
An happier policy may yet be thine!
Harsh the dominion here of the long race
Of thy historic grandsires! Many a deed
Of savage, wanton, power disgrac'd their reigns
Here, and in Chablais! Byron's Muse has told
The horror-striking tale of Chillon's walls;
And sufferings of heroic Bonnivard!

Of the mix'd tissue of whose character,
Curious the records Grenus has preserv'd.
O false professors of an holy Faith!
O ye in purple clad, with crosiers arm'd,
Deeming religion but a cloak for power,
And luxury and vice, how quick at last
You push'd the downfall of your own dominion;
And play'd the part of Luther and Melancthon,
And all the fierce Reformers! Ye were blind,
And in the sad delirium of your sensual
Enjoyments to plain reason utterly
Lost! and O thou the last of falling Rome's
Deluded Bishops, who o'er these free walls
Stretchedst thy rod, where were thine eyes and ears,
And common judgment, when in sight of foes
Advancing with so fierce and keen an onset
Thou play'dst thy pranks, and with impunity
Thoughtedst, (thy pleasures and thy wickedness
Minging with insults unindurable,)
By force to gratify. The daughter fair
Of Lullin's ancient House thou dar'dst to seize,
And kept'dst in tears and prayers and pale affright,
At mercy of thy rude licentious love,
Spite of the swords of heroes, and the cries
Of parents, and the threats and bold assaults
Of madden'd lovers! But not long the day,
Ere came the ruin, so by crime enormous
Provok'd! Then enter'd in the gaunt assailants,
And fire and sword began to purify
The haunts of idol crime and foul debauch,

And blasphemous hypocrisy, and thirst
Of the deluded wretch's wealth, and passion
For worldly power by guile and falsehood won!

But all was not unmingled good; abuse
Of pious rites had gone its utmost length;
And licence new, and open wickedness,
Under the broad eye of the garish day,
Revel'd in all the streets, and on thy banks,
Breeze-breathing Leman! Not the searching air,
That on thy rolling, whitening, waters came,
Could waft it off! Thy sounds were in the breeze,
That, speaking nature's voice, would sometimes awe
The tender spirit. Beauty in the skiff,
That danc'd upon thy glassy surface, borne,
Felt all the mountain winds to brace her frame,
And purify the veins that luxury
In delicate mansions poisons:—but in vain!
The eye licentious gaz'd; and she th'infection
Caught!—And a quarter of an age was thus
Approaching to its end, when Calvin came,
Fierce, bigoted, uncandid, unrelenting,
Demanding liberty of conscience, and
Freedom of thought from Rome's usurp'd dominion
Over the mind of Man, yet granting naught
To others in return; for alledged errors
In speculative doctrines blood demanding,
And binding to the stake and burning flame!
O horrid inconsistency! with goodness
Impossible, as seems, to be combin'd!

But still his name is venerated here;

And much the good, 'tis urg'd, that he perform'd
By harsh correction of corrupted manners,
Which ne'er had yielded to a gentle rod!
Yet why this persecution for opinions—
For matters of mere faith? The moral rule
Admits, perchance, no difference of thought,
Of argument, or of authority:—
Not so the nice perplexing points of faith!—
Virtue and vice are still the same. But thou,
O gloomy, fretful, gall-o'erloaded heart,
Not so didst judge, or feel! Thou hadst no mercy
For any course the subtle spirits took
Of the mysterious brain, except for that
To which thy mental travels led thyself:
The whip, the prison, e'en the torture, were
Too little for the punishment of him
Who differ'd from thee! Surely it is strange,
Beyond the comprehension of a mind
Candid and consciencious, that the heart
Nurs'd virtue in it which could thus decide!

But empire o'er the intellect of man,
Wide-spread, hast thou, O Calvin, since enjoy'd!
There was a tribe puissant, of thy doctrines
Sprung, that all Europe's politics have since
Infected, shaking civil institutions,
And making monarchs tremble on their thrones;
Vexing old England in a glorious reign
Most, and a firm heroic, able Princess,
Trying, entangling, damping, and o'erclouding.
Incessant were the complots of the cold

And subtle poison that they spread, and deep
And copious were the seeds of future war
Internal, and dissension, spreading hate
Thro social ties. The name of Puritan
To all is known; yet only to a few
The purposes, and means, and tricks, and weapon,
And guile, and concert in each seeming act
Of pure simplicity! O daring Knox,
O Whittingham and Coverdale, who, here
Finding asylum from the sanguine sceptre
Of bigot Mary, were this master's pupils,
Drinking the essences of mind and heart
From Calvin as your God, and bore in triumph
Those fruits to Albion's and to Scotia's shores.

Then through the Court that Tudor's Princess rul'd,
Faction among the nobles spread, and Discord
Threw out her snakes, that hiss'd and scatter'd venom!
Now through the Church th'insinuating drug
Bred a false zeal, and war polemic wak'd,
That wheresoe'er its head was bruis'd, but rose
Twofold, in places new!—Then government
Became a dangerous and a weary thing;
And Burleigh's brain and heart grew sick, and bent
Beneath the feebleness of age, and sunk
In sorrow to the grave; and Egerton
The Seals of Equity and Conscience held,
In vigorous manhood, by the aid of talents
Strong, clear, and active, but with difficulty.

And now the march of years, and sorrow's draught,
Heavily on the bosom hanging, brought

The gallant Princess to the grave, and James
Ascended in triumphant vanity,—
All hope without a cloud—and confident
In the full prowess of his learned head,
To put down Faction's voice, and spell the pen
From the charm'd hand of controversialist!
But, ah! how little did he know his force!
He was the very instrument for those
He was so rife to battle with; and well
Were they prepar'd to daunt him to the fight,
To draw him to the snare, as does the spider
The fly on which she darts! for cobwebs thick,
And strong, they spun in every corner, and
On every tree! the Monarch struggling seen,—
Sport for his courtiers—for the subtler spinners
Triumph conceal'd and inexpressible!—

Thus pass'd his days, that soon began with clouds
And plots to darken that deep loaded sky,
Which he had at his entrance fondly thought,
Could only sunshine be beneath his wisdom!
O Monarch all of petitess supreme,
Great in small things, and then whenever greatness
Was call'd for, truly least of all the little,
Thou didst by each day's folly thick prepare
The storms and bloodshed for thy fated son,
Who on the scaffold clos'd his wretched days!

Now, Puritans, the practical effect
Of all the theoretic looms of blood
Ye had been working into action, came,
And now it was a war of words no longer:

Out leap'd the sword; and armies met; and brother
Oppos'd himself to brother's instrument
Of death! and fields with civil blood were cover'd,
And fortunes fell, and gallant heroes died;
And law was overturn'd, and blessed Arts
Cover'd their heads and hands, and clos'd their voices.

And thou, divinest Poesy, e'en thou
Fledst the domains, where Heaven had begun
To breathe her accents from the lyre, and He,
The Bard of Paradise, in Ludlow's Castle,
Or Harefield's Halls, had just begun to open
Strains of a tone ne'er yet in Albion sounded.
Then the all-virtuous, and all-eloquent,
All-learned Falkland fell at Newbury,
Already sunk in sorrow for the times,
And daring death in midst of hostile swords!
Then thou from whom the stream of blood I draw,
That circuits thro my veins, O beautiful
And gallant Mainwaring, didst nobly die
On Chester walls, and to an ancient name
Didst leave no scion male! and still I hold
The Garter, signal of thy loyalty,
Cut from the monarch's shoulder, and in need
Giv'n to thy widow as a future pledge!

But many a battle still was to be fought,—
And still, when Newbury's disastrous doom
Could not be chang'd, rested the conflict's issue
Between a gallant monarch and a people,
Who, when awaken'd to the war, would never
Leave liberty's broad banner in the dust!

Then thou, Newcastle, in thy youth uprear'd
To all that wealth, and rank, and courts, and arts,
And all that peace, by its most splendid rays
Of chivalrous adornment, and the glories
Of all the Muses, could create,—didst buckle
Thy armour on for rude spear-cover'd camps,
And fields of desperate onset; and didst bear
The labour and the peril with the roughest!

Last came the fated fight of Marston Moor,
Where thy bold troops thou to the battle ledst,
And gallantly and desperately struggledst!
But all was vain; and when the day beheld
All lost, and thou wert with most base neglect,
Or ignorance, or envy foul, betray'd,—
In foreign realms an exile many a year
Of pressing dark adversity and straits
Of want, and perils, and heart-breaking crosses,
Didst thou in patience and with cheerfulness
Endure, and saw'dst at last thy Prince restor'd;
And still had many a year of peace to come
Within thy native land, and midst of rank,
Wealth, honours, arts, tranquillity of mind,
Beheldst thy sun go down, and sink at last
A mild octogenarian to the grave!

But, O my flighty Muse, how far hast thou
Wander'd from thy elected theme! Resume
Thy purpose; backward dart thy wings again;
For Muses ever have ubiquity;
Perch for a moment on proud Dover's heights,
Then from the white cliffs take thine airy way

Across old Ocean's mighty billows, dashing
Their thundring noises thro the straits, that separate
Albion from its defying rival Gaul!
Leagues after leagues, (the grand metropolis
Of France, the boast of near two thousand years,
Escaping on thy right,) to Jura's summits,—
Cities and towns and hamlets left unnotic'd,
Beyond the counter's skill to numerate,
Thou reachest,—and then down again once more
Alightest on thy purple Lake, all spangling
With young Aurora's beams! and thus once more
Within Geneva's beauteous circuit restest!

END OF BOOK I.

7 Sept. 1818.

BOOK II.

There are who think that under all the forms
Of nature's scenery the mind of man
Is still the same; that mountain, lake, and hill,
And valley, and deep woods, and ocean broad,
No more affect it; and give force no more
And happiness, than the dull vapoury plain,
Ever the same, on which the beams of Heaven
Throw no variety of shapes and colours.
Not so wise theory, not so experience
Instructs us: we are children of the lights
Of the blue sky, and as the spirits move,
And the veins play, the intellect its hues,
And motions takes! Thus poets on thy lake,
O Leman, ought to live:—but yet 'tis rare!

Rousseau, though not in metre, was a poet
In all the essences of his high genius!—

Not so precisely eloquent De Stael!
Tho sometimes in Corinne the Muse's hand
And voice, and imagery, and emotion,
Were hers! But round her cradle forms of life,
And voices, and o'er-labour'd trains of thought,
Too artificial, and the false results
Of a luxurious capital, were ever
Bending her quick and plastic intellect
To wit, miscall'd the proof of force supreme
Of the brain's operations, too much stirr'd
By the collision of base rivalry;—
Where the strife is for conquest,—not for wisdom;
And where acuteness more than grandeur marks
The struggle and the fruit. On Coppet's banks
The Priestess liv'd impatient: her keen eyes
Look'd on the tumbling waters, and the giant
Heights that across them tower'd into the clouds,
Clad with eternal snow; but yet whose tops
Morning and evening shone with rosy beams
O'th' blessed sun! She look'd; but sigh'd for mirrors
Of artificial splendor, and the forms
That social fashion ever dresses up
In whimsical costume, and not the whispers
Or louder noises of the wave-stirr'd breeze;
But the pain'd murmurs of the soft coquette,
Or studied mimickries of tone pretended
Of beau, or statesman, or cramp'd orator,
Where knowledge of an accidental state
Of manners, and of feelings, and ambition,
Was sillily mistaken for sagacity

And wisdom.—Nature with her grandest voices
And most magnificent shapes, and mightiest airs
Of frame-invigorating elements,
Was not to Coppet's Baroness so moving,
As a saloon of Paris fill'd with wits,
Beauties, coquettes, and nobles, and budge authors,
Whose passion in the journals of the day
To figure, prompted to a restless life,
Full of ennui, and labour charlatanic,
And feebleness of body, and regrets
Of conscience for mis-spent abilities!

O strangely various is the human fate,
And human occupation! How wast thou
Employ'd, O learned Beza, on the banks
Of this lov'd lake for a long glorious life
Of intellectual energies, of taste,
Thought, poetry, and forceful sentiment,
And warm, heart-mellowing, and chaste Religion!
Far different from thy master, Calvin's, was
Thine heart: not dry, and hard, and in scholastic
And controversial divinity
Pent up, but with the captivating graces
Of ornamental letters deep imbued,
And joying to the last in the sweet studies
Of thy gay days of youthful efflorescence.—
Poet, and moralist, as elegant
As erudite! when more than eighty years
Had shook thy trembling hand, till scarce a stroke
Distinctly it could make, thou didst again
Freshen with dews these flowers, that in the garden

Of thy young fancy were rear'd up to bloom,
And flourish, and put forth their shining hues,
Spotted with all rich colours, and with scents
Vernal delighting. There they stand in pale
And venerable spells, in those fond haunts,
Where all thy worthies by the painter's skill,
Geneva, live—and all the labour'd fruits
Of their enlighten'd minds survive to teach
Posterity:—and my enthusiast eyes
Have dwelt upon them, and my feeble skill
Has striven to decypher them, and mark,
Compare, and contrast the slow-changing hues
From over-flowing youth to waning age!

As thou wert champion of the Church Reform'd—
So keen were Rome's foul myrmidons against thee;
Then with incessant scandal did they stain
Thy venerable age, and all the levities
Brought of thy boyhood to reproach's aid.—
But thou in conscious rectitude revivedst
Those early blossoms; and they stand recorded
In the best types of thy most learned printers;

And now the misty dawn of light begins
To break upon me! But not yet the hour
Of three has sounded from St. Peter's tower:
Yet short the space that after midnight's calm
Mantle had veil'd the skies, when all but I
Were wrapt in slumbrous rest, the Muse awoke me,
And I to my accustom'd toil applied,
My promis'd task to execute; and now
While I these lines am writing, quick the rays

Of sweet Aurora pierce the vapoury gray
That hastens off, as if affrighted, swifter
Than birds, that in the heavens dart away
From their strong-plum'd destroyers!

O how intense the brilliance and the beauty
Of morning's golden dawn, that over Alpine
Summits I daily see arise, since thirteen
Months have near pass'd, and not e'en once have I
Fail'd from my bed to gaze upon the picture!
But thus our faculties their vigour gain,
And I my daily, nightly, efforts ply
T'approach to spirit! Thought, and words, and images
Thus multiply, and more distinctly come!
And on the verge of that extent of life,
Which is man's common lot, and after sickness
Of more than four much-troubled years, my brain,
If I do not delude myself, has grown
To strength and copiousness, before it knew not.
But 'tis perchance the cheer!—The cheer has come
At last, whose want I languish'd for, and now
Its motions are all energy and hope!
For nature made me timid: and timidity
Sits like a vampire over the mind's efforts.

Coppet, when the Genevan Banker, risen
From counting his dry figures, to the state
Of Minister of mighty France, in times
Which all a politician's wisest powers
And most consummate arts call'd into play,—
Possess'd thee,—little were thy master's habits,
And trains of mind congenial to the fierce

And chivalrous ambitions, that in days
Of feudal splendor did for many ages
Rule thee, as thy proud lords! O gallant Grandson,
Burgundian chief, whose name is yet familiar
Throughout old Jura's heights, and echoes yet
Along Helvetian mountains, whose mail'd warrior
Amid the Gothic wonders of Lausanne's
Rich shrines in proud recumbent figure lies
Sculptur'd in stone, full many a tale have I
To tell of you; but the capricious Muse
Must wait her time.—Wide and remote the current
Of thy impetuous blood impelled thee on
To distant regions, and among the Barons
Of haughty England was thy stock establish'd;
And from thy veins the proud ambitious Beauforts
Sprung, and the saintly Margaret, the mother
Of the seventh Harry, monarch of the Isles
Whose swords, wealth, gallanties, and genius strong,
Have ever held their sway puissant over
The destinies of Europe:—monarch, sage and wily,
And prudent, and to whom, albeit stern
And avaricious, England much of vigour,
And much advance in commerce and the arts
Owes,—of the Tudor dynasty the chief—
A dynasty whose reign was short, but mighty,
And glorious—e'en though thou capricious king,—
A tyrant in tyrannic times; a lover
Of numerous wives, whom soon as sated with,
Of blood regardless, thou didst to the scaffold
With hatred merciless and savage humour

Consign—e'en thou, detested despot, were
Chief of the Line!—For from thee came a princess
Splendid, as most that on the' historic page
Have their reigns blazon'd! Yes, from Coppet's lords
Part of thy blood came in a gallant stream!

O alter'd times! O good and evil mix'd,
That changes have effected! O how different
Was the wild splendor of thy board, De Stael,
When in October's moody evenings, as
The sobbing breeze drove the leaves on the Lake,
And stripp'd the groves of their umbrageous honours,
The gorgeous blaze of lamps the guests attracted,
Of wit and genius, to thy table, spread
With modern luxuries! Then converse bright
Eclips'd the show of the Financier's wealth.—

And here again to thy fond name, O Byron,
I must return! I see thee listening now
To the conflict where at every dart flash forth
Splendors thou canst not reach; and then half angry,
Or envious, half delighted, thou dost shrink
Moody into thyself, and as the blast
By fits comes shrieking, or in deep hoarse roar
Over the beating waters, of thy boat
Think'st, and half risest to enjoy the battle
Of more congenial elements without;—
But then again to thy luxurious seat
Thyself thou reconcilest, and wouldst yet
Hope not eclips'd and vanquish'd to depart!
O pride intolerable, yet with flashes
Of generous submission and humility,

And admiration of corrival powers,
When not insulted, and the victory
Borne with meek placidness, devoid of vain
Arrogant triumph. But thy mind remains
E'en now but half develop'd, firey Bard!

Perchance a poet only well can write
A poet's life, and such the fate which thee,
O Bard of Newsted, has awaited: Moore,
England's Anacreon, has fulfill'd the task;
But now and then it may be thought the strain
Was not congenial;—the profundity
Of the great poet's gloom was of the heart;
His frolic levities were but assum'd!
And sometines his companions seem'd th'effect
Of chance more than of choice. Thus he who perish'd
Upon the shores of Lirici so fatally,
Whelm'd in the waves of the tempesturous Ocean—
Himself also a bard,—but yet a bard
Of mingled stars and clouds!—he touch'd the lyre
Sometimes in happier hour with a light hand,
That drew forth tones most exquisitely sweet;
But then again he labour'd in confusion
Dark, enigmatic, falsely gorgeous, struggling
To grasp at monstrous unmatur'd conceptions,
Unmanag'd, and unmanagable, mystic,
Dangerous, sceptical, and fanciful.

Beneath the roof that Diodati's name
Has consecrated to the Muses, he,
The victim of the stormy billows, pass'd
The autumn, to the noble poet big

With such heart-swelling sorrows!—He whose tales
Of Monks profane, and of hobhoblins dire,
Won a false sensual taste, and a foul fame
Of spurious wit,—a guest was also there;
And she the genius deep of Frankenstein,
And others known perchance, or thirstily
Aspiring to be known,—a motley crew;—
Not one congenial with his noble host!

Above thy banks, O Leman, to a point
Where thy waves gather, at its western bound,
And, issuing in a purple torrent, force
Their passage thro the strait, on whose steep banks
Stands thy fam'd city once the capital
Of the Burgundian realm—now numerous
On thy o'ershadowing heights the fair campaignes
Glitter. Here d'Aubigné the fair abode
Of his last days, the wreck of a long life
Of busy conflicts and adventures bold,
Fix'd;—while his plume as ready as his sword
Told the long tale of many a feat of gallantry,
And many a court intrigue, and many a danger,
In the fierce wars of bigot zeal, which stain'd
The bloody struggles for a pure religion.

O Bourbon, in whose generous character,
The wit, the hero, the sagacious wordling,
The chivalrous adventurer, the lover,
The friend, th'abandon'd to luxurious pleasure,
A many-colour'd web of brilliant hues
Is woven, and whose threads of gloomier tint
Were cut at last too short by the dire dagger

Of an insane assassin, well has d'Aubigné
Recorded the memorials, that still prove
The truth of thy well-merited renown!

Here in his old age were the nuptials gaily
A second time perform'd, and proud Geneva
Received him to the bosom of a House,
It cherished much—from Lucca's warmer skies
Transplanted,—Burlamachi's race, long flourishing—
Extinct at last. But from his veins descended
Of his first issue one, who to the heir
Of his great kingly friend, and to the court
Of brilliant and ambitious France, nor less
To Europe's wide-spread nations, was a star
Of female brilliance, that eclips'd the lights
Of other deep intriguers! Maintenon,
Who does not know thy name; while yet thy character
Remains an half enigma, which Saint-Simon's
Piercing, acute, sincere, but somewhat tedious
Pen, has not yet entirely clear'd from doubt?

Here Rohan's Duke, who fought so long with bravery
The Protestant cause against the force of France,
The remnant of his days, to seek for calm,
And nature's tranquil but majestic scenes,
Appointed, and in thy cathedral walls
His relics, and the funeral memorial,
Defil'd in latter years by hands profane
Of revolutionary rabbles, still
Beneath thy Gothic roofs, displays its broken
Sculpture: but better were the history
Of his field-active days, for prose than verse;

And well has he himself the story given.

Here Bonnet on low Genthod's jutting point
In philosophic studies, natural science,
And expositions of the Power Divine,
His long life of incessant study pass'd.
If reader thou art curious, thou mayst read
In the rich pages of historic Müller
The record of his calm yet busy days,
And virtuous simple life. Here Mallet vers'd
In antiquarian lore, and philosophic
Annals of Europe's politics, his labours
Oft gather'd from the sources far remote
Of other realms, beneath more northern skies
Sometimes applied; tho from his native soil
Distant, too much of his researchful life
Was spent: but not on frozen themes, or rude;
For curious are the sources he evolv'd
Of the bold Runic Muse; and much our Gray,
And much our Percy, of old poetry,
The elegant and learned chronicler,
Drew cups of inspiration from the fount!
But richly-stor'd, and eloquently-gifted,
Sismondi has a brief memorial given
Of the learn'd annalist; and now his fame
Rests undisturb'd. Here Stanhope from the councils
Of Albion's ermin'd robes retir'd to nurse
His scientific passions: here Mahon
In his sire's dry philosophy imbued,
Yet with the passion of an ardent mind,
Drank in republican notions from his cradle,

And in his manhood to his native land
Returning, spent a life of usefulness
In his laborious youth's profound pursuits
Of science practical, and in the plain
Habits by puritanic Calvin nurs'd.
But he was wise and virtuous,—and, exempt
From pride aristocratic, wide secur'd
Love and respect, though sometimes intermingled
With scorn dealt out by brother-peers, who thought
Their ermine soil'd by puritanic manners.

So Pitt, his near alliance, though himself
Of manners plain and simple, and absorb'd
In intellect, yet deem'd: nor would allow
The politics of a minute republic
Well suited to a mighty kingdom's state:
And surely wise and undeniable
Was the great Minister's judgment: for the rule
Of human beings lies upon the heart;
And not in dry deductions from the mechanism
Of reason plied to abstract sciences:—
And the mere reasoner is a man who sees
A distance short—nay shortest, while the lamp
Of bright imagination, that has insight
Of the dark passions working in man's bosom,
And has sagacity and judicious choice,
Alone can lay profound designs, adapted
For government of man's mysterious character.
Thus Burke,—of politicians of his age
The nearest inspiration,—thought: and thus
Immortal Bacon, the bright luminary

Of science!—Thus endow'd have ever been
The mighty statesmen of the world: thus Buckhurst,
Clarendon, Somers, St. John, Pulteney, Carteret,
And Chatham, high and bright above the highest.
Thus Canning, latest dead, and most deplor'd
In days of utmost need;—since which the glory
Of Britain's radiant countenance has paled
Her beams in darkness to the rival eye
Of Europe,—envious then,—triumphant now,
And most insulting! But a little while,
And proudly shall she raise her head again,
And bid defiance to her enemies!

But I am once more wandring,—ever flying
Back to those native soils, which scarcely man
Could ever from his bosom's depths eradicate;
However like a stepmother she acted!

Geneva, cherish'd, lov'd, admir'd Geneva,
I will resume thy tales gain, and bring
Thy worthies back to view! Here the learn'd stock
Of Stephens half a century pursued
Their most enlightened toils, and hence sent forth
The stores of ancient literature, to teach
Reviving taste, and those enlighten'd strains,
Whether in verse or prose, which Greece and Rome
Had once instructed, and adorn'd the world with;
And which for long long centuries inhum'd
In monkish cells unnotic'd, now came forth
By late-discover'd printing's aid, (decipher'd
By erudition never rival'd since,)
To the film-clear'd, and sharp enraptured eye

Of Learning's sons, in types correctly plac'd,
Text clear, and notes and comments, keen, profound,
The fruits of talent, sedulously bent,
And ardent deep research, incessantly
Pursued, and never weary.—Son to son
The erudite and happy zeal descended,
In generations more than I can count:
But in thy pages, classical Maittaire,
The story may be found; and he who reads
And feels no interest, is but a clown
With a clod heart and head of barren wood.

Here Henry thou, of this Stephensian race
The third,—but not the last,—didst carry on
Thy erudite and most wreath-worthy works
In moody humour, thou thyself a wit
Of most capricious hues, sometimes in joy,
But oftner in dark clouds and heart-consuming
Adversity: and sometimes with thy brain
Disorder'd by the troubles, and the restless
Emotions of thine ever-busy spirit!

Then Casaubon, perchance by thine alliance
Prompted, his days of unrelenting study
Gave to pursuits congenial; and his name,
And the ripe fruits of his assiduous culture,
Live as of yesterday. Again my theme
Leads me to native regions: England's Monarch
Attracted by his learned reputation,
Hence drew him, in the splendor of the throne
Of Britain, recompence and patronage
To seek; and thus the son, part-heritor

Of his paternal arts, was plac'd a canon
In Dorovernium's magnificent
Structure, where Becket's archiepiscopal
Blood purples yet the church's sacred stone,
And, neighbouring Ickham, thou, whence last my sickly
Frame I transported hither, didst receive
The learned critic for thy church's pastor!

Hence, Stanley, thou of Greek celebrity,
Perchance thine Æschylusian notes and comments
In part mightst draw, for Casaubon in ties
Of social vicinage might oft enjoy
Thy conversation, where in bonds of union
The travel'd and poetic Sandys, and Digges,
Of fame historic in the civil broils
Of those unhappy days, and many a name,
In registers of learning yet preserv'd,
Liv'd in alliance and kind neighbourhood:
And thy descendants, Meric, yet remain
In Durovernium's walls, and in its province!

Thus ever have thy sympathies and ties
Of blood and friendship, O Geneva, been
With England's children! Nor is Ickham's hamlet,
Its ivied towers, and its rude antique rectory,
And thy rich pastures, Lee, now first connected
With the broad Lake, where mountainous Mont-Blanc
Daily in majesty among the clouds
Smiles, or frowns over the assembled torrents
By Alpine fountains fed, and sends its waters
By the circuitous Arve's impetuous channels
To join the Rhone, that through the narrow gorge

Of Alps and Jura met, in purple stain'd,
Bursts with a fearful roar!—Yet distant countries
Not then, as now, communication held
By beaten tracks, and all the luxuries
Of easy transit, while the missive charge
Of the pen's register'd mirror of the mind
Was slow and interrupted. Nations now
Mingle almost as brothers of the same
Stock, education, habits, morals, feelings!

Voltaire! I hear thy spirit vain reproach me,
That I so long have thy proud name delay'd!
Close to my window lies thine ancient haunt
O'erlooking the blue waters, and the towers
And cluster'd roofs of old Geneva's town,
Once princely and imperial, now to other
Glory political aspiring!—Here
By appellation known, that well befits
The purposes it sought, (for les Delices
'Twas call'd, and still is call'd,) the accomplish'd Bard
His captivating lures to the sour temper
Of puritanic strictness dar'd display.
Here the world by the drama's mirror he
And all th' attractions of Parisian gaiety
Shew'd! till th'insulted government assuming
Its proper force, to Ferney's French domains
Expell'd him! 'Tis a perilous adventure
To draw the portrait of a genius, whom
The world has for a century endeavour'd
With all the force of critical acumen
To paint in his true colours; who e'en now

In popularity thro all the letter'd
Society of nations still augments!
For me against a sense so universal
To lift my voice seems madness.—I have task'd
My taste and judgment o'er and o'er again;—
And yet I think the same!—I am not able
This charm to pierce: in it there is to me
But little merit, and still less attraction.
It is a clear transparent stream of elegance,
With a light bottom. Never does it rise
To eloquence, or energy!—It has
The art of throwing all vain accessaries
Away, and seeming to extract the essence
Of every subject:—it is in sooth a trick,
If I may so express myself, of saying
Trite things, adapted to the apprehension
Of common minds, as if they were discoveries
Of deep and philosophic genius; and
A shrewd appeal to what the populace
Calls common sense;—forever mingled with
That jest and ridicule and irony
And taunt, which are the unresisted masters
Of vulgar intellects. But for the heart,—
The generous feeling,—the emotion grand,—
Nerer by chance is there a single spark!
His proper motto is—“The world's a jest,
“And all things shew it!”—But the world is not
A jest! and therefore he's no sage or bard!
Yet even in the apprehensions of
The people will a witticism be

The most consummate and resistless argument;
And he who laughs;—and has th' ungenerous talent
To see th' absurd, or make it, holds a rod,
A spear—whose touch is instant victory.
But I would never trust the bosom, which
First sees th'incongruent in presented objects,
Material or ideal!—It betrays
A littleness of mind; a microscopic
Habit of searching with ungenerous labour,
Not for the good, but bad:—for combinations
Invented ill; for failures, which may prove
Man's being, and the Universe, a folly!—
It soothes frail human envy to believe
There is no greatness;—that pretended wisdom,
Virtue, and magnanimity, cannot
The sharp dissecting eye of wit withstand;
And that the greatest sage is he, whose insight
Can shew them all to be unsound delusions.

Thou wast, Voltaire, as I conceive, in midst
Of all thy worldly elevation, ill
At ease in thine own heart;—thy spirit working
To carry thine own points by artifice,
Mistrustful of intrinsic strength or greatness;
Thinking that genius was, in truth, a farce;
And in thine own art drowning all thy comfort;
Seeking the plausible, and not the true;—
Witty, not wise; and deeming grandeur, beauty,
To lie i' the pictur'd image only;—not
In the reality! the passions ever
At work to crush thy rivals by deep artifice

And living only in the vain applause
Of loud capricious multitudes! In thee
There was no genuine love of nature's charms;
Of beauty no idolatry;—no fictions
Of fairy lands; no heavenly visitings
Involuntary of imagination.
But ever the long studied combination
Of forc'd, not forceful, art!—Then daily watchfulness
Of rival power no peace within the bosom
Left, and the rising genius of Rousseau
Was poison thus to thy frail veteran breast.
And thus in secret were the enmities

Of the all-morbid dreamer's fellow-citizens
Nurs'd, and incessant by the insidious darts
Of wit perverted the sad wanderer's step
Prevented from return to the dear spot
Of his inspir'd nativity! But ye,
Who in these two dispute the palm of genius,
First fix precisely that which constitutes
True genius! If, as said, it be th'invention
Of what is grand, or beautiful, or tender,
And simpathises with the native movements
That Heaven into the human breast instils,
Then who will most abide this test? the rhymer
In verse prosaic of dull Ferney's lord,
Or he, the eloquent and passionate
Dreamer of Heloise's melting bosom,
The painter of the storm on Leman's Lake,
The muse-enchanted wood-crownd rocks that hang
Over the bright waves at La Meilleirai:

If it were true, that Ferney's Lord has drawn
Man as he is with more fidelity,
'Tis man alone in his material essence,
Mingled with earth's contaminating grossness.

Genius is better conversant with man's
Feelings and thoughts than with his coarsest actions.
O call not this delusion! Virtue lives
More in the mind and heart than in the body,
And all of grandeur we enjoy, and beauty,
And love, and admiration, not the less
Is genuine, if it only be ideal!—
Without th'associations, which the mind
To matter brings, it is a barren essence.

It may be said that Ferney's Bard is ever
All intellect:—but then it is an intellect
Applied to Man in his most artificial
Condition in society; with manners,
Passions, ambitions, toils, pursuits of pleasure,
Of judgment rules, and estimates of merit,
Conventional,—far more the close result
Of nice observance, than of pure invention:
Not the embodiment of abstract thoughts
In living imagery, but itself abstraction,
Subtle, unsimpathising with the heart,
Calling forth only the keen faculties
Of apprehension, judgment, memory!—

These are miscall'd delusions, which removed,
Then all the charms of life dissolve away!
It is not reason, which the callous give
That sacred name! They stupidly call reason

That which their hands can touch, and eyes can see,
And ears can hear; and they are sceptical
On all which is unseen, unheard, unknown,
Save in the regions of imagination!
So, when the heart at the sublime and fair
In Man's conceptions to high rapture swells,
They call it an irrational delusion!
Thus reason is the damper and extinguisher,
Which not produces fruit, but only blights it.

Far up among the mountain gorges lies
The rude domain of craggy Faucigny.
Its ancient feudal lords were sovereign princes;
And high were their alliances, and rivals
Of the Genevan Counts, and those of Savoy!
Oft on the summits of its crags are perch'd
The fragments of their castellated towers
Among the clouds in most magnificent form;
And in its narrow vallies green is view'd
The loveliness of nature in her softest
And sweetest hues and features. There, St.-Gervais,
I pass'd an autumn month in thy abode,
Since which twelve busy years have pass'd away,
Bringing in their career full many a change
To Europe, and to half the world besides!

Imagination cannot figure scenes
More beautiful, more grand, of rural shapes
And hues more full of ravishment,
Than thine, St.-Gervais, in an autumn day
Of splendor; nor a peasantry in childhood
Of face more lovely, and seemingly more happy!

Beneath th'incessant sound of the cascade,
In foamy torrents of white spray descending
From its precipitous heights, was plac'd th'abode,
For congregated crews of strangers built,
Who come the medical powers to seek of waters
Sulphureous, bursting from its iron rocks!
It is a strange concurrence, from all nations
Deep in this mountainous solitude to meet
The creatures of the busy social world,
Soldiers, and politicians, lawyers, authors,
Churchmen, and men of commerce, fluttering insects
Of buzzing fashion;—most in morning rambles
Seeking by air and exercise, and impulse
Of viewing nature's wonders to beguile
The loneliness and savage imagery,
Which overcomes the feebleness of spirits
Of artificial creatures bred in cities;
A vain enervating and languid course
Of days to seek a false enjoyment in!

Roving along the river's banks, or clambering
The rocky summits by the brushwood twigs,
Or by the circling or meandring paths
Cut thro dwarf woods, hard labouring up the steeps
To hamlets perch'd like eagle eyries high
Among the snowy clouds, where yet the haunts
Of mountain-peasantry at crowded marts
Are found with human commerce babbling loud,
And striking by the sight of wild costume,
Of Alpine loneliness, where half the winter
In snow immur'd they sleep their hours away!

Yet here the busy passions, here the cunning
Of bargain-makers, the pert vanity
Of ogle-eyed coquets, in restless search
Of admiration, the devices subtle
Of craving avarice, and the dull obstinacy
Of boors, from ignorant demand ne'er driven!

But, O how active in these mighty frolics
Of nature is imagination's power!
Here where the ruin'd turret, hanging still
On heights of seeming inaccessibility,
Impels the mind to work upon the hardihood
Of feudal gallantry, yet richly dight
With chivalrous adornments of grand feasts,
The music and the dance, and beauty's eyes
Reigning their influence,”—the heart-rousing tale
Of damsels in distress, by giants held
Imprison'd, and by fell enchanter's wands
Kept in delusion's sense-distracting wiles,
In danger to the pure fidelity,
Sworn to some favour'd lover,—with a store
Of fictions raising up the hair on end,—
Visit thy poet's dreams, and daily musings:—
And here with half-shut eyes he sits, absorb'd
In visions, while the torrents roar, and sparkles
Of upthrown spray awake him now and then;
And from his seat he starts, and recollects
He yet is mingled with the damping intercourse
Of daily life, and groveling characters,
Who lick the dust alone, and crawl the earth;
And soon the bell will sound to summon him

To crowded table of world-judging strangers.

Beneath the scorching sun too oft I rambled
Over thy burning rocks; when fierce disease
Rag'd in my veins, and made my painful footsteps
Trembling and insecure; and thus when winter
Came sharp at Florence over Arno's waves,
Curdled my blood again, and I once more
On the sad couch of sickness doom'd to linger,
Pass'd many a month, while o'er me death his dart
Held. Still I strove the mental flame to nurse,
And with the visions of the moral fable,
And curious rolls of antiquarian lore,
Alternately my agonies I sooth'd:
Nor yet are all the fruits of those fair studies
Utterly faded and forgotten. Willoughby,
Thy fiction, seemingly historic, draws
Sometimes the thoughtful reader's eye, where shines
Raleigh's adventrous spirit, mingled with
Thy softer sufferings, sweet Arabella,
Punish'd for too much royalty of blood!

And thus the genealogic lore work'd out
From many a dry and uninviting source,
Stands in fair types of thy illustrious city,
O Florence, ancient seat of mighty genius,
Of splendid arts and learning from the dust
Of black oblivion to full life recall'd!
Sometimes 'tis good that we should quit the world,
And in earth's most magnificent solitudes
New-plume our wings for contemplation.
But th'intermixture of the odious puppets

Of that world's most delusive stage, our steps
Following, defeats the working of the spell.
Strange mixtures in my mind did that month's residence
Produce;—and not less strange, perchance, upon
The morbid current of my heated veins,
By force of the sulphureous waters, that
The vapoury rocks threw forth. There, Coningsby,
I clos'd thy tragic Tale: a tale neglected
By the hard-hearted reading multitude;
Yet, confident am I, not undeserving
Of sensibility's abundant tears.

These Baths did for a time appease the tumults
Raging within my being's purple streams:
But much I doubt, if they did not repell,
Rather than cure. For never from that year
Has my blood rightly flow'd. And then the troubles
Of mind and heart, without the added pangs
Of a disorder'd body, were sufficient
To overwhelm gigantic strength of spirit!

But Italy, O Italy, in charms
Of Nature most profuse, would I could live
With thee! The Alpine passage to thy realms
Gave me new life by its stupendous grandeur.

And thou, O Florence, smiling then in warmth,
Like spring, though dark November's clouds in other
Climes were collecting o'er the misty sky!

But Winter came at last,—and with a vengeance,
As sharp as in the dreaded North! And now
I sunk once more, and bow'd to kiss the feet
Of Death. In that forever-fam'd abode,

My hours were doom'd to the sick chamber's bounds,
And where adored poetry, and rich painting,
And magic sculpture, reign'd o'er every scene,
And shone on every wall; where history,
And all the mellowest eloquence of learning,
Haunted all sites; and Medicean splendor
Was intertwined with every hallow'd object,
All was a blank to me! For in the tortures
Of my convulsed frame, and use of limbs
Lost, my position was scarce more auspicious,
Than in some dull unconsecrated haunt.

Then once more with the spring the fever'd blood
Seem'd it's sad venomous bitterness to calm,
And now where Virgil's holy relics lie,
And o'er the Neapolitan Bay the summit
Of proud Vesuvius vomits fluid flames,
My destiny convey'd me. Pisa fam'd
In all Italian annals, and of late
To Britons dear for its most noble poet's
Abode, in the hurried tempest-shaken days
Preceding his heroic Grecian death,
I pass'd, and at Livornia's busy port
First cast my eyes on Mediterranean waves.

Thence round Italia's shores, and sea-gem'd isles,
Elba, and Sarde, and many a name in story
Familiar, for eleven long sunburnt days,
We voyag'd—not without full many a peril
Of tempest and of pirates; and with joy
Laugh'd, and were near convuls'd, when that bright Bay
Of glorious beauty and sublimity

Mix'd, to whose shores our frail and crowded bark
Was destin'd, open'd on our dazzled view.
'Twas noon, the end of May:—the radiant sun
Was on the bosom of the mighty waters,
And on the tops of the unnumbered promontories,
Towns, hamlets, castles, villas; and St.-Elmo
Shew'd her magnificent summit. To the harbour,
Crowded with ships of many a distant nation,
Our prow in joy exulting cut its way.

The solar beams now with a flame intolerable
Shot right upon our heads: and still we had
T'endure the torments long of quarantine,
Mid crowded vessels, filth, and stench, and noise,
Lock'd closely side to side,—the suffering
Was scarce endurable;—and then, to crown it,
My passport was irregular,—and I
Was threaten'd with a prison, and had nearly
Incurr'd that order of a despot power.

Now in that beautiful and unrival'd city
Hotels were crowded, and around the beds,
And on the floors where we repos'd, were seen
Scorpions disporting in dire multitudes.
But soon, Chiaia, thy enchanting spot
Receiv'd us, with Vesuvius on our left,
The Bay before us—and upon the rock
Of laurel to the right where Sannazaro
Dwelt, the still worship'd tomb where Virgil sleeps!
There six sweet months of nature's highest brilliance
We whil'd away, though Carbonari troubles
For a short moment clouded our fair joys

With fear and peril, and at last the storm
Blackening, and seemingly about to burst,
Drove us away to Rome. It was an earthly
Paradise, inasmuch as nature's charms
Could make it one—and ill departed from!
For Rome—the heavy air to me o'ercame
All its attractions. Not a day of health
There could I find, and gladly did I seek,
After four months another change of climate.

Then thee, Ferrara, fam'd for Estè's house,
And Tasso's amorous madness, and ye hills
Of Euganean lustre, that the beams
Of eve on Petrarch's holy age reflected;
And Padua, thee; and most of all immortal
Gem of the Adriatic, wave-clad Venice!

And then a roll of names which but to mention
Awakens all the treasures of the mind
Verona, Bergamo, Vicenza, Milan,
Turin and Chambery, and steep Mont Cenis.

And then again we to thy Lake return'd,
O subject of my song, and where an empress
Had late resided, took up our abode.
Intensely here my literary labours
I plied, and clos'd the haunted Tale of Huntley
And Alice Berkeley, and Sir Ambrose Grey,
And shriek-filld Hellingsley's spoil-coverd hall:
And here the Tale of Odo's Count went on,
Where innocent and most angelic Bertha
Bore on the scaffold an heroic death.

And now upon the dry and most perplex'd

Question of Wealth of nations, and the means
Of wise and economic circulation,
I meditated deeply, and thus clear'd
To my own mind's conviction the enigma.

And then the Bibliomania, which had long
Infected my researches, came again
To occupy too many of my hours.
And all the while the torments of affairs
Of wretched business, and the wiles of cunning
Extortion, wickedness, ingratitude,
Audacious insult, inconceivable
Perversion of the laws, meant for protection,
To instruments of wrong and ravenous rapine!
And during all, a heart by nature timid,
Morbid, and rous'd with dangerous emotion
At slightest cause for care, grief, or regret:
And when they touch'd, losing the happy train
Of those ideas to the Muses suited.
But ever in my utmost agonies
I struggled still the trembling pen to guide,
And call'd the frighten'd Muse to calm my breast.

Yet what will not malignity pervert?
This energy of stout resistance, which
May fairly arrogate the name of virtue,
Has oft-times by the cruelty of censure
Been deem'd a reckless disregard of duties!
As if the virtue were in brooding over
Evils we cannot change! as if to smile,
And live in regions of imagination,
When coarse reality is unendurable

Misery, were a crime to be reproach'd!
“But when” it may be said, “your enchanted ears
“Are listening to Elysian waterfalls,
“You will not hearken to the trumpet's call,
“When summon'd back to duty!” It may be,
The Muse's votary is sometimes lost
In this delirium: will he be the less
In the wild depths of unresisted grief?

But now incessant were th'insulting calls
On my most outrag'd spirit! Morns and nights
Scarcely suffic'd for the exhausting tasks,
Necessity and just defence impos'd
On my worn pen. But my afflicted heart,
Ah, far more than my pen, was work'd and worn.

It was an iron winter, most severe
In its extremities of snow and storm.
Right up against the roaring Lake the windows
Of my abode, now far within the city,
Lay. One dark morning in December's depth,
As by the blazing fire on that romance
Most magical above all others of
The great Magician of the North, the Pirate,
My eyes, imagination, heart, intent
I sat, a shriek came down the Lake, the House
Trembled and rock'd, and twice from my shook chair
Was I near tumbled on the floor: the bells
Through all the house rang, and St. Peter's sounded,
And all the church bells thro the town were shaken,
And also gave the signal. 'Twas an earthquake!—
Slight—but appalling! Ah! how often since

Have I on the portentous moment dwelt!
In the same room, and by the self-same fire,
After an interval of an hundred months,
When I had dwelt in many a far abode,
And once for eight and twenty months again
My native soil inhabited, some sudden
Convulsion struck upon my vital strings;
And eight and forty hours I gasp'd for breath.

Then came the sleepless bed again; the appetite
Gone; and the loss of limbs; and eighteen nights
Of dangerous agony, and strange excitement
Of intellect, beyond its natural power;
Bursts of wild brilliance hitherto unknown
To my weak faculties; unintermitted
Toil of the intellect e'en for nineteen
Successive hours; and still the body torn;
Limbs paralis'd, and all the mortal part
Of earthly mould, sick even to death's door!

Thus it appears, as if the soul can work,
In bold defiance of the body's will:—
And sometimes blazes most, when it is nearest
To its departure. Much I've travel'd since
In mind and heart; and in my own conceit
Have far advanc'd. I cannot count the pages
Of various matter I have written and printed
Since that most perilous crisis,—poetry,
And prose-romance, and politics, and memoirs;

And dry antiquities, and moral essays,
On which my busy pen is ever running.
“Accursed scribbler!” cries the wretch, whose false
Concoctions, like th'enchanter's forceful spear,
My plume goes forth to pierce, and open lay
His snares of dread destruction to the sun!
“Scribendi cacoethes! odious passion!
“Be fire to its relentless energies,
“And light upon it quickly, and consume it!”

Not yet thou grand destroyer! O not yet
Will be thy wish accomplish'd! I have slept
At times, 'tis true, amid 'this morning's task,
As if my strength was failing, and that weakness
And age, not fire and violence, would consume me!
There are, on whose enormous wickedness
When I am call'd to meditate, the' emotion
Exhausts my spirits more than other labour
By day and night continued! My torn nerves
Long tremble and distort, ere they subside
Again, the calm idea to permit!
I am the being but of impulses,
And when my heart cannot direct, and light,
My head is barren, and my hand is weak.
I have no abstract intellect, and cannot
Act by what cold dry reason calls a duty;—
The worse for me! for I am told 'tis this
Which only virtue constitutes! and feeling
And grand emotion, though 'tis on the side
Of virtuous sympathies, and love of beauty,
And admiration of heroic conduct,

Is but an impulse of involuntary
Unconscience-sprung, and therefore valueless, passion!
As for myself, I cannot comment thus
In my severest and most self-condemning
Moments! For impulses, if they are good,
Must spring from virtue's fountains: a bad heart
Can never pour forth pure and blessed waters!
It may produce them mingled: but the taste,
The scent, the penetrating eye, th'effect,
After a moment's pause upon the bosom,
Will the infusion of the ill discover:—
The false bursts, murmurs, flashes, sparkles, dies!

If such are these effusions, if the vapour
Of false emotion swells them, if the thoughts
Come not direct and unsophisticate
From the undrug'd and uninfected bosom,
If the heart's fiat be not on their utterance,
Then sweep them to the pit where they may perish,
And never bubble, murmur, sparkle more!
And may I be obedient to the doom
That I shall then deserve, and hide my head
In just obscurity, and linger out
The little remnant of my days in silence,
And sink into the grave, unwept, unknown!

END OF BOOK II.

March 1830: see the note at the end of the Poem on Modern Aristocracy. Geneva, 1831.

BOOK III.

Over thine Eastern head, O Lake, how grand
Lausanne her ancient holy spires erects!
I need not trace her history: but Britons
Ever associate it with Gibbon's name!
—A name now universal!—I can trace it
With selfish fondness from its private source
On the white cliffs, where Dover's frowning towers
O'erlook the ocean of the straits, that separate us
From rival Gaul. There, having climb'd the heights,
That from the town wash'd by the waves ascend,
With panting labour;—leaving on our right
The tower, the draw-bridge, and gigantic walls
Of the stupendous Castle, ever noted
In all the pages of old England's annals,
On a light chalky soil we journey northward,
A little inward from the fearful edge
Of those tremendous cliffs, which Shakespeare's pen
Forever has immortalised;—a scatter'd

Hamlet and humble church,—where from the rim
That overlooks the dashing billows, slopes,
From the cliff westerly, the sheepwalk,—stands:
And close adjoining the obscure remains
Of the old manor-house. How little now
Are these to outward sight! But the creative
Mind beholds in them a most noble spot;
The source, the cradle of a mighty genius;
Nor will it doubt, that when the rural lords
Were wandering o'er these ocean-misted fields,
In days of the Tudorian Princess, or
Under the feeble but tyrannic rod
Of Scotish Stuart's race, to vulgar eyes
Only like rival squires of plough-tail memory,
That in their brains the fruitful seeds were working
Of future European eminence!

How have I trac'd them in the parish records
With a fond microscopic industry,
Which fools and half-philosophers call dull!
There the great grandsire of the younger stock
Whence sprung th' Historian, planted his young offset
From an old root, as antiquaries tell us,
Of credit in cotemporary days,
(For thus, old Philipot, hast thou recorded!)—
It was a fief bought from th'impoverish'd fortune
Of a most gallant Peer, whom wise Elizabeth
Plac'd on green Erin's barbarous habitants
To rule rebellion by a fearless sword!
The tasteless recklessness of times gone by
May unacquainted be with Borough's name!

But 'twas of primal ancientry, and sprung
From Cantium's Earl in the heroic times
Of the first royalty of proud Plantagenet:
And in its source e'en higher than that name
Of glorious feudal splendor! For the searcher
Of genealogical sagacity
Will trace it as a lineal male descendant
Of the first race of Merovingian kings!
And hence Jerusalem in the first Crusades
Drew its third Monarch.—O thou beautiful,
Illumin'd Spirit—who with piercing eyes
And rapturous gaze the misty veil withdrawest,
With which Time covers Truth! is it then possible
That thou the stigma shouldst incur of dryness,—
Of barren curiosity—of trifling
Research and labour? O most odious envy!
O most mean, vulgar, ignorant conceit!
O most accurs'd mistaker of dull darkness
For light! Thou hast no pleasure but to blast
The seeds of glory, and nip in the bud
The blossoms and the fruit of all that's grand!

So thus with thee, old Lord of these high lands,
Wash'd by the Ocean's spray! thy sword was all,
Or nearly all th'inheritance thou hadst
In worldly goods; and therefore was the glory
Of thy most princely origin forgotten!
And now Necessity, that ever gripes
Magnanimous merit, forc'd from thy possession
This humble but belov'd manorial heritage;
And the small purchase fell to Gibbon's lot!

Now two and forty years have pass'd away,
Since with fond eye I visited the relics
Of this decaying mansion, and its church,
A structure mean, neglected, unadorn'd,
On whose cold pavement were the stones inscribed
With a few names and dates;—all that remain'd
Within these sacred walls of the memorials
Of a once-numerous race. And then again
Thro the old manor-house with searching eye,
And heart that almost beat with curiosity,
I forward forc'd my steps: the little hall,
Earth-floor'd, was now a filthy magazine
For wood and lumber: here and there initials
And dates remain'd in carve-work: and my eye
Glow'd, when the heraldric ensigns round the cornice
Of one apartment, blazon'd in their colours,
Still shone—a lion and three scallop-shells.
A coat not unbecoming nobler stocks!
And underneath the date—One thousand and
Six hundred twenty seven!—'Twas the grandfather
Of him, whose son, a too well known Director
Of the mad South-sea Bubble, made his fortune,
Lost it again by punishment deserv'd,
And then again remade it. But the old man,
His father, from a younger brother's share,—
One of a numerous bed—had carv'd himself
A plentiful endowment in the City,
Whither the younger shoots of gentilitial
Trees were accustom'd to resort for nutriment,—
Matthew, his name baptismal: still it stands

Recorded in the old parochial Register.
The date—let sceptics note it well, and search—
Was, sixteen hundred forty two—precise.
The Historian, of his son, the bubble-monger,
A brief but spirited portraiture has given.
A year or two before the Historian's birth
He died, respected, rich, and of a fame
For talents, and intelligence political,
As well as mercantile. His long removal
From native soils had drop'd his Kentish ties,
And little to his children and his grandson
He left of the remembrance.

But the Muse
Must wander back again to more remote
æras, when in a narrower sphere the race
Busied themselves. When Puritanic rage
Troubled the land with civil broils, they took,
If I have not mis-spelt, the people's part.
And yet I a tradition have, obscure
And half-forgotten, of the contrary:
Rich they then were assuredly, and bought
Many fair lands: and sons and daughters flourish'd
Spous'd to the worthiest of the neighbouring houses.
There Digges, and Cowper, lyric Sandys, and Hammond,
And Marsham, and Anacreon Stanley, and Wyatt,
Fair Aucher of remote antiquity,
And St.-Leger of Norman lustre,—Finet
And Mennis, courtly wits—and learned Boys,
And travel'd Bargrave, scientific Rooke,
And Harflete, and the truly eminent Twysdens,

Judge and Historian, and the accomplish'd Dering,
Though by wise Clarendon too well remember'd
For an unlucky vanity.

Enough
Perchance of barren catalogue I've given:
But who will wonder if here wit and learning
Shone in a province, where for centuries
Sackville and Sydney, names for ever dear,
Presided. Mute, and with shorn beams, and lost,
Are now those growing lamps! and a dull cloud
Of heavy and impenetrable vapour
Sits o'er the province! Not a name but thine,
O Tenterden; and thine, accomplish'd Prelate
Of Peterborough's mitre, now adorns it!

Then, Gibbon, was thy wife by close alliance
From the same mother sprung with her, the wife
Of one who, fam'd in law and politics
From the first Charles's reign to despot-driving
William, was ever on the side of freedom!
Maynard, to whom the patriot monarch gave
The seals of equity in his old age!—
And thus the city draper, in alliance
Nephew to him who held the royal seals,
Kept his head high among the sons of commerce.

Meantime Westcliffe's old Hall receiv'd at intervals
The congregated branches: to the cliffs
They wander'd, and in half-regretful memory
Heard the waves beat beneath them, and beheld
The white cliffs and the glittering towers of Calais
Across the tumbling tides in beautiful

And heart-arousing colours lift themselves!
Then oft they stroll'd to gaze upon the Castle,
Or to the busy town beneath, whose harbour
Crowded with entrances and exits, ever
Supplied a moving, rich variety.
And much they talk'd of their ascending hopes;
And of their rival children; and the fire
That shone already in their eyes, when fame
And wealth and honours, and the distant grandeur,
That far beyond the bounds of provinces
Of petty circuit, stretch'd to grasp the world,
And in dim vision they beheld the glories
That after on their proud posterity
Should fall!

And here the fortune-teller came,
And taking an unmarried damsel's hand,
And archly looking in her timid eye,
Said “Fair one, there is gloom upon thy countenance
“Mix'd with those streaks of glowing light, which laugh
“Rosily through the clouds!
“I do not say these streaks of light shall conquer,
“And keep off evil from thy future fate:—
“Much shalt thou have to suffer! Yet infus'd
“Into thy cup shall also be much joy!
“E'en here upon thy natal spot shalt thou
“Know some few years of pleasure in a love
“Not unbecoming thee! But yet it shall
“Be mix'd with cares, and terrors, and distractions,
“And much thy thoughtless, but good-nature'd husband
“Shall waste; and shall at last exhaust the patience

“Of friends as well as foes; and then shall Ruin
“Come irrecoverable; and sweep all!
“And then again with weeping and convuls'd
“Embraces shalt thou be withdrawn away,
“With all thy little ones, across th'Atlantic,
“And in American woods among barbarians
“End thy last days!—O weep not, sigh not, tremble not!
“Thou art a young enthusiast, and thou lovest
“Glory; and dost delight to make the future
“Over the present rule! Then let the flame
“Of hope upon that swelling bosom play!
“For of those little ones, who by thy side
“Will weeping hang, and, when the stormy howl
“Of billows o'er thy rolling vessel breaks,
“Will shriek, and clasp thee, and for help from thee
“Uselessly call, shall come a future race,
“Whose sway shall o'er the northern Continent,
“Thy destiny, be mighty! and whose name,
“When future empires, threatning the old world,
“Shall rise among the most renown'd, shall shine;
“And Randolph's race,—and of their female blood
“Intrepid patriot Jefferson,—shall trace
“Their blood to thee!” Thus ended, the proud maid
A golden tribute to the palm applied.

Then smiling came a comrade, on the arm
Of the fair damsel leaning; from the stock,
And of the name, who from the town below
The castle, came that day upon a visit.
“And thou too, pretty one, went on the Gypsy,
“Wilt hear thy fortune!—well; it shall be told;

“And thou wilt not repent it! Look not sceptical!
“Seest thou not at a distance, on the edge
“Of the cliff sporting there, a manly form
“Double thy girlish age! Not for a lover
“Thou canst behold him now! He has already
“A faithful wife! and see that little infant
“Hanging in fearful gaiety on his skirts!
“It is his only child! and not thro her
“The name can be preserv'd! But let me whisper
“Soft in thine ear; lest he should hear the secret
“Of fate;—the mother of that little one
“Will but a little while survive: and then—
“Start not! yes, thou shalt be his wedded wife!
“Now pause!—and think upon thy fate!—I have not
“Yet told, what still more deeply may, perchance,
“Affect thee! thou shalt have a son; but he
“Shall die in youth; yet not before his father.
“That father in the bloom of manhood shall
“Sink to the grave; and in a little space
“Thou shalt in other nuptials comfort seek!

“Then of thee shall be born a child of lustre,
“Who shall on Britain's woolsack sit with fame
“Unrival'd, almost through a glorious reign;
“And wealth and honours shall acquire, and found
“A noble race of potent chiefs, and hold
“Proud Hardwick's Earldom many a generation!

“But dost thou ask what fate the little one,
“To which thou shall be stepmother, may have?
“I cannot tell thee all! I see before me
“The spirit of a future trembling Being,

“Who shall be a devoted morbid creature
“Of all the Muses; and to him will fall
“The lot, to tell the story of this little one:
“For he from her will his corporeal blood
“Draw; and full much of those from whom he springs
“It will be his delight to tell,—defying
“Envy's and folly's ever-ready censures;
“And feeding his wild fancy with the thought,
“That in the group of common blood, of those
“Now met within my sight, there is a spirit
“Of rarer intellect, not oft bestow'd
“Through a whole race; and which shall long endure,
“And not be in successive generations
“Spent! But the world will still believe him wild,
“And give but little credit to his visions!”

And now the Gypsy vanish'd, and the mind
Of each who heard her, with the mysteries
Was touch'd; and thought by day, and dreamt at night,
Of all the glimmering future. Of that future
My task goes on th'unfoldings to relate.
I have the birth related of the draper,
Born in the ancient manor-house, abutting
Upon the lofty cliffs oppos'd to Calais.
Edward, the son, enlarg'd his father's dealings;
And was a London merchant, of his class
Among the first. At length ambition led him,
Or most rapacious love of gain, to join
Those windy projects, call'd the Southsea Bubble,
Such as, though reason laughs at, were again
Re-acted in this isle scarce six years past.

Remote at length from natal spots, which went
To strangers, he the evening of his days
Clos'd near that city, where the scene was plac'd
Of his most busy, money-getting life.
Then to another province his rich son
Transplanted, spent his days with country squires.
But for inheritance the paternal temper
Knew not, diminishing the heap his sire
Delighted to accumulate: a man
Of moody humour—speculative, silent,
Keeping lock'd up within his working brain
His unsubstantial projects,—melancholy
When what he hop'd had not succeeded, yet
Not telling why!—and when death came, his fortune
Found to be more than half dissolv'd away.

And now we reach the child, to whom this song
Is rigidly appropriate,—the immortal
Historian of Declining Rome.—Lausanne,
How much of that stupendous task didst thou
Each morning shine upon! though not with thee
The mighty project first arose. In Rome
Itself the light of that gigantic scheme
First broke upon the young and fervid author.
Early emancipated from the trammels
Of roofs paternal, he commenc'd to be,
When yet a child, a winged citizen
Of the wide world's exaustless climes and people.
In that ill-form'd and feeble frame of body

A rich, a vigorous, and plastic soul
Resided, and in infancy began
To seek for food out of the common reach.

But all was bent upon the tale of man
Acting beneath the chains of social ties,
And form'd by artificial policy.
First the false glare of oriental fable
Attracted him: but by degrees the sober
Investigation of that history,
Now philosophic call'd, absorb'd the keen
Yet patient faculties of his dissecting
And critic mind. The wild imaginations
Of range poetic were to him unknown.
The reigning literature of the French school,
And above others plausible Voltaire,
Too much delighted and misled his taste,
And made him sceptical, ironical,
Piquant, and pointed, far beyond the bounds
A pure and classic taste approves. In truth
A genius of the highest tone and reach
Did not belong to him! Even and formal,
His style and thoughts in one unvarying mould
Were cast. A constant balancing of periods,
An artful application of one mode
Of keen dissection and comparison,
A calm resolve to measure, weigh, adjust;
A stream clear, unperturb'd, and imperturbable,
A patient industry, which, as 'twas calm,
Was ne'er exhausted, erudition varied
Of ancient and of modern lore,—combin'd

To constitute a work unrival'd yet,
And never likely to be fairly rival'd.

In that most admirable edifice
Of symmetry and grace, and rich materials
Drawn from all learning's granaries measureless,
The very Notes, brief, pointed, big with meaning
And critical discussion, are alone
Sufficient to secure immortal fame.
The mind that such a subject could compress
Into so small a space, in luminous
Narration, had a faculty to pierce,
Arrange, and recompose, which minds sagacious
Must contemplate with wonder, and with ceaseless
Praise.

When upon th'Historian's windows shone
The morning sun by Alpine heights reflected,
With what a consciousness of tranquil pleasure
He rose, his daily web to weave in threads
Of golden light, that still engag'd the eye,
Though of one endless pattern. Dear retreat,
Where all the little passions of ambition,
And restless vanity, and odious rivalry,
Of that small world so ignorantly call'd
The great, and fashion's ideotic judgments,
The vile ennui of vile activity
In most debasing trifles,—were forgot!

Here the mind free to follow its own native
Excursions, its own native pure emotions
To suffer and to nurse; its own opinions
To rest upon; by no rude blind resistance

To be assaulted and confus'd, could give
Full scope to its own energies. The turmoil
Of agitated, agitating life,
In the curs'd workings of the restless passions,
In crowded walks of the stirr'd social world,
Will not permit the gathering creations
Of plastic minds to work themselves to form,
And visible embodiment. In solitude
Of natural unalloy'd sublimities,
The spirits of th'invisible regions
Come forth, and play the gambols on man's brain.
In solitude a man may yet be wicked:
In the world's crowded bustle, and loud stir
Of imitation, he cannot be good!
But are the fruits of mental genius goodness,
If they be not true likewise, as they're able?
They must as least have partial truth to give them
The character of genuine genius!
It is but feeble and affected talent,
Which cannot truth elicit. If it can,
And does not, then it is pure wickedness!

Chang'd are the times: of yore the petit maître
Of fashion was a very frivolous creature:
And if the mighty and o'erwhelming flame,
That overset the ancient dynasty
Of France, was pregnant of predominant evil,
It had some cleansing purgatives, and pour'd
A vigour where naught reign'd but feebleness.
All European manners had decayed
Into effeminate artifice, and vice

Of imitative luxuries, where refinement
Of faint o'erpolish'd pleasures damp'd the soul.
Then affectation run thro all the tastes
And occupations of society,
And literature, corrupted and unnerv'd,
Languish'd in vapid and inane productions.

But O ye breezes of the mountains, freshen'd
By exhalations of the spreading waters,
How bracing ye came o'er the frame relax'd
Of Rome's Historian, when from London's smoke,
Its feverish streets, its government corrupt,
Its petty passions, its revolting forms,
He threw himself in your sublime embrace!

With what emotion I have visited,
(As every traveller) the plain abode,
The refuge where his daily task he plied:
The little garden arbour, where he wrote,
And the broad glorious prospect, which his pen
With rapture celebrates.

But he return'd!
Affection call'd him to his native land;
Fatigue of body to a frame diseas'd
Gave aggravated injury: he linger'd
But a few months in torture, and then died,
Full short of the allotted age of man.

Then did I lose the honour and delight,
But just begun, of a reviv'd alliance!
How little did I think, when I delay'd
His offered visit from the petty fear
A house unroof'd and full of noisy workmen

Would incommode his delicate nerves, th'excuse
Would close the opportunity for ever,
And that in three short months he would be sleeping
In the unhearing grave! He was a guest
Once at thy table, Wootton, when his fate
Plac'd him on Dover's heights, a soldier's duty
To execute with his provincial corps!
It does not seem as if, when in that castle,
Which for a thousand years has bid defiance
To haughty Gallia, he was well aware
How near he was the sacred spot, whence sprung
The long succession of his ancestors!

Lively and clear was his imagination,
Though somewhat quaint; and he, it seems, delighted
With ancestorial fondness to look back
On days long past. “And,” here when sitting calm
Under the crowded and magnificent oaks
Ofwood-crown'd Wootton, “here” he might have said
“The little one, of which the Gypsy spoke,
“To her fond father clinging, on the edge
“Of those stupendous native cliffs, that hang
“Over the Ocean frowning on the towers
“Of Calais,—O yes, here the little one
“In future days nurs'd up her manly brood
“Sprung from my grandsires; and this gloomy boy,
“Whose lightest auburn locks profusely flow
“Upon his shoulders, and in whose dark eye
“I can discern bright beams of casual flash
“Piercing through darkness, has no vulgar hopes,
“Or aptitudes: that shyness is the nurse

“Of brooding thoughts and high imaginations;
“And he, whate'er be his success, or fame,
“Will give his soul to study and to fiction.
“From him at last the line shall I recover,
“By which the series of my ancestors
“Deep into the ingulphing night of Time
“I may with an unerring clue retrace!
“And he shall honour me and mine, and boast
“With reverential regard my name;
“And when of princely blood, that in his veins
“Flows by a thousand channels, he may talk,
“Still uneclipsed me and mine shall he
“Deem for th'intrinsic qualities of mind,
“Which blaze, as he will argue, far above
“Rank, riches, titles, kingdoms, worldly power!”

And then he might cry, “Gypsy, come again,
“And tell another tale, so full of pleasure,
“As that which to my grandsires, and their fathers
“And mothers, thou didst tell, ere we departed
“From our paternal heritage, by guess
“(And I would not miscalculate it), nearly
“An hundred years ago! For as thou wert
“A prophetess, I must believe thee spirit,
“And thou perchance mayst still those woodlands haunt

“And oft perhaps from Dover's cliffs, when storms
“Rage, and the billows dash against the clouds,
“And now aloft the groaning vessel rides,
“And now sinks down again into the gulph
“Of whelming waters, inland tak'st thy way,
“And o'er the hills and vallies intervening,

“A little southward to the left inclin'd,
“Frequentest halls of squires, and hearths of cottagers.
“O tell the chronicle of what has past
“In those wild regions, since the name of Gibbon
“Departed from its ancestorial lands!
“But tell me most the future fate of him,
“Who now addresses thee! Who burns with fire
“Of fame, which yet he scarce can firmly dare
“To hope will be fulfill'd to his ambition!”
Thus to the Gypsy he perchance had spoken,
And if he spoke it, were this lively Gypsy
A very prophetess, she would have said
“Thy hopes shall be fulfil'd, and thou shalt ride
“Upon the wings of fame full mightily;
“For many a year thy gorgeous web shall grow
“Upon the Leman Lake; and when 'tis finish'd,
“And to the world unroll'd, all eyes shall gaze
“With admiration on it; but for thee
“It shall thy doom be, to thy native land
“In haste to come, the triumph to enjoy;—
“But then alas! thine earthly days shall close!”

And now, ye waters, and ye varied banks,
Cloath'd with towns, castles, hamlets, and fair villas,
What object next shall my Muse bring to notice?
I see thy walls upraising from the waves
Their massy towers, O Chillon! but on thee
I hesitate to touch, for he, the Bard
From Diodati's chateau, has already
Blaz'd thee with modern notice: yet the song
Is not amongst his happiest efforts there!

If I may freely speak, the mystic strain
Of modern affectation rules too much;—
A catchy, forc'd, irregular, obscure,
Distorted manner; a false air of swell
And inspiration! The plain truth suffices
To fill an uncorrupted reader's mind.

The tale of Bonnivard the chroniclers
Have told with more precision. It is full
In modern books: the antiquarian searches
Of Grenus and of Galiffe have again
Brought it to light:—the hero of the story,
A man of ardent spirit, and a lover
Of liberty, a bold and firm reformer,
Against the bigoted and tyrannic House
Of Savoy a declar'd and open enemy.
But he was rash, impetuous, and wild,
Irregular in manners and opinions.
He knew that Savoy's sovereign sought revenge
For his resistances; and on his way
Careless he ventur'd forth, trusting to faith
Of those who ne'er had kept their word, when interest
Or passion prompted them to disregard it!

And thus his passport scorn'd, into the hands
Disguis'd of that perfidious Prince he fell,
Under the character of highway robbers,
Who gave him up to the arch enemy.
And then to Chillon's water-circled walls
Was he transported: but at first not deep
Into its dungeons: when at last, for cause
Now unrecorded, he was low consign'd

To those dark, damp, and deathlike prison vaults!
Five years he linger'd there; nor is it easy
To give belief that he could life and mind
So long preserve in that terrific depth
Of misery, since free again in limbs
And buoyant spirits he came forth, and liv'd
Yet a few years. But fitter for the Chronicler
Than for the Muse is this minute discussion:
Nor dare I dwell upon a tale, which Byron
With firey and o'erwhelming pen has touch'd.

What the great mind, with native powers endow'd,
By resolution and by industry,
Can do, no sage perchance has yet expounded.
It cannot utterly o'ercome the pangs
And faults of body; but it nearly can
Effect this mighty conquest, and to spirit
Raise the clay-mould. Perchance the firey mind
In damp and cold may make the current flow
Of earthly blood; and may o'erpower the darkness
Of death itself: but 'tis the loss of hope
And self-reliance that destroys the spell.
Then the blood chills, and at the mercy falls
Of all external and material things.
“What we believe that we can do, we can do;”
And want of confidence destroys all power.
Thus genial beams of fame, and the gay cheers
Of others, can alone bring forth the fruits
Of many a rich but timid spirit, which

Knows not its own puissance, till the warmth
Of praise acts on it: without sun what fruit
Can ripen? and then who will toil, and toil,
Hopeless of recompence, and unassur'd
That these fatiguing toils give use or pleasure?
We cease to sing to those who will not hear;
We waste not voices on the passing breeze;
We frame not long creations that may lie
Folded and hid within our own scrutoires.
The love of fame, if it but be a love
That follows worthy labours, is a passion
Virtuous, in degree as it is warm.
He who is dull to it, is selfish, sensual,
And impotent of aught sublime or fair.

What traveller thro Europe's bounds has left
The sight of thee, Geneva, unregarded?
Where mighty bards have trod, I ever look,
And see their visions hang upon the spot!
And you, ye idols of my childhood, manhood,
And latest age, O Milton, and O Gray,
Hither, when bending to sublime Italia
Your breathless footsteps, with delight ye came,
And tarried on the noble heights of Jura,
To gaze upon the bursting lake before you,
And snow-clad, craggy, numberless, in height
And shape forever varied, Alpine summits,
Crown'd by Mont Blanc, his head among the clouds,
Gainst which the sun's resisted beams of gold
In vain their flames impell'd! a fate congenial
Guided your purposes! Your taste, your feelings,

Your erudition, your commanding strength
Of reason, your deep love of meditation
And solitude, your eye to nature's charms
Open, enraptur'd, curious; glowing words,
Exalted, picturesque; the holy flame
Of most profound devotion, simple fare,
And simple garb, and hate of worldly races,
And worldly tracks of base ambition, and
Of craving appetite of worldly lucre!

There are perchance who will condemn this union
Of men unequal in the quantity
Of fruits which they behind them left, if not
In quality and essence! 'Twill be said,
The latter Bard has no creative powers
Display'd; and that without creation none
Dare to the fame aspire of mighty poets.
The grand invention of the Epic, Gray
Never, 'tis true, attempted: but his lyrics
Are with invention rich of ornament
At least, if not design. It was the fault
Of morbidness, that wither'd in the bud
All the magnificent fruits, that in the fountains
Of his resplendent genius glanc'd, and died!
Ample and bright creation lay within
The compass of those vigorous burning powers;
But sorrow from his cradle, the keen sufferings
Of a fond mother, the base moodiness
Of a sour, selfish, rash, and spenthrift father,
Fix'd an incurable gloom upon his heart.

Not so heroic-minded Milton: he,

Tho not th'advancement worthy of his merit
He found, and tho his Muse found few
If audience fit, yet bated not a jot
Of hope; nay, rather gave full effluence
To a mind overflowing with grand thoughts
And gorgeous imagery. But the times of trouble,
When civil discord stain'd the fields with blood,
Came, and the Bard to liberty's defence
Gave all the studies of his days and nights.
And when his eyes, “in this sublime defence
O'erplied,” their vision lost, his spirit sunk not,
But rising in gigantic energy
Of inward light, as outward objects, shut
From his perception, were as if they were not,
His faculties miraculous, of high
Creation, glow'd with more abundant brightness.

Ah! with what exquisite intensity
Of mental pleasure did his moments pass,
Thus occupied, while Gray in sad ennui
Linger'd away a life, where in the bosom
The fire pent up, smoulder'd in smoke away.
Then came the sickness of the heart; the blood
Poison'd with vapours; and the limbs convuls'd;
And death, a kind releaser. Ere the course
Of nature, duly exercised, had brought
This earthly being to an end, had seeds
Of glowing genius, congregated in
The narrow limits of a feeble frame,
Consum'd the boundaries of their abode.

Short was the sojourn that the lyric Bard

Made on the beautiful expanse, Geneva,
Of thy sweet rainbow-painted waves, embosom'd
In mountains of a thousand shapes and colours,
Nor yet had met his heart, or caught his ear
The music of thy magic words, Rousseau!
O with what rapture, when they reach'd him, did
His bosom and his fancy drink them in!

In vain we search the processes of mind,
And causes of the different characters
Of human genius. Rocks, and mountains, lakes,
And all the wonders of sublimity
In nature's forms, had seem'd to be the proper
Food of poetic and creative faculties.
Not so experience of the happier spirits
Born on the borders of the Leman waters:
Studies of graver cast are theirs; to sciences
Exact are bent their labours; and of fancy
They deem the lights are but delusive vapour.
Strange thought! but judging from the common cup
Of drink, produc'd as nectar, which assumes
The name of poetry, less far removed
From truth, than critics may at first suppose.
The draught, which the corrupted multitude
Joys in, with every nauseous stimulant
Is mingled in predominant excess.
It is a false exhilaration, pregnant
With every poison.

But what is real poetry? Not folly;—
But highest truths told in the highest manner!
To them all sciences are merely naught;—

They teach the movements of the soul;—the actions
Of the most susceptible heart; the thoughts,
Which not cold reason, but the holy fire
Of inspiration, dictates. Not to dress
In childish ornaments most common objects,
And make them pass for wonderful with vulgar
And ideotic minds: not with vain toil
The fillagree of costly gold and silver
Into fantastic forms to work, that eyes,
Of curious trifles passionate, may gaze on;
But to throw lights into those depths, where only
Imagination's flame can pierce;—the secrets,
Which most it man behoves to know: for what
Comparatively is the boasted science
Of vegetation, animal, material
Life, and its laws? But that which represents
The spirit in fantastic and untrue
Manner discharging its fine operations,
Is not the lesson of the genuine Muse.

Truth is a beauty, which rejects in scorn
All empty ornament; and most rejects it,
When it would cover faults: the tricky glare
O' the painter, who essays to draw attention
By tints unchaste, graceless, extravagant,
The universal scorn incurs. Not so
The labouring, turgid, falsely-swelling poet.
Oft for a time he captivates the multitude,
And e'en the critic, who aspires to know
A lesson far above the multitude's
Pretensions. He who takes a composition,

Which aims at praise poetic, and when read,
Has learn'd no lesson of sound wisdom from it,
Has spent his moments on a fruit not genuine.
In our old poets who enjoy'd a name,
There is not ought but wisdom: there we seek
For lore profound of moral science, vers'd
In all the nice perplexities, which fate
Ordains that man by study should evolve!
Thus Spenser, Shakespeare, Milton, Cowley, Davenant;
Thus Davies, Waller, Butler, Denham, Dryden,
And Pope and Prior, and neglected Harte:
Thus old George Sandys, and even Wither's Muse,
Once vulgar deem'd.—To fountains such as these
Of living waters, he who seeks for knowledge
Of life must go; and day and night must linger
Over their springs; and in their memories,
And in their hearts, retain the bright impression
Of their exhilaration and their incense.

But from the Muse I see a frown, and hear
Her angry voice! “Hast thou forgot,” she cries
“One of my favorite and most gifted votaries?”
Oblivion not to be forgiv'n! O thou,
Of whom though not in metre, every word
Was poetry, O mellow, wise, enchanting,
O moralist, with fiction's magic rich,
O graceful, eloquent, affecting Addison;
O glory of most chaste and beautiful language,
Of pure, illumin'd, accurate, and deep
Thought, and in all the nicer shades of ethics
An oracle of never-erring judgment!

How could I for a moment thee forget?
But darkness soon came on;—and darkness long
Has been with light profusely intermingled.
Genius has flash'd; but lightning false, and thunder,
By th'artificial workmen of the stage,
Have caught the public eye and ear, and fascinated
With most corrupt and foolish admiration!
Hobgoblins as deform'd and forc'd, as play
Their part upon a country stage to ignorant,
Open-month'd, hair-upstanding, rustic gazers,
Have won the laurel for most empty heads!
And thus the mob will hug th'absurd, before
The graceful and the just. But far away
Have I again departed from my theme!

Coppet, of thee my Muse has early spoken:
And something of the brilliant emanations
Of deeply-meditating, somewhat dark,
And labour'd priestess of wise oracles,
The passionate De Staël, has she essay'd!
But Coppet's chateau other sages knew,
A century before. There critic Bayle
A portion of his controversial life
Pass'd. The incessant labours of a mind
Acute, investigating, fervid, sceptical,
Delighting in dissection, yet preserve
An undiminish'd interest. But ill
Conflicts with good in measuring the value
Of those sharp mental fruits. A mind that seeks
For faults and for objections, is too apt
To contemplate but parts,—and not the whole.

Thus Bayle: for grand and general views he never
With comprehensive pencil could dash out.
With microscopic eye he search'd and found
The petty contradiction and defect.
To take for granted nothing; to doubt ever,
Is not the part of wisdom! But another,—
A minister of State, on whose ability
And wisdom, not full half a century
Gone by, the destiny of mighty France,
And thence of civil rule and kingly power
Throughout the world, depended, was the lord
Of this domain, and here in age and grief,
And disappointment, anxious cares, and danger,
Spent his last clouded days. Insane conceit,
Self-estimate delusive, vanity,
And unchastised ambition, led astray
A mind and heart for an inferior station
Well fitted, and in humbler labours wise
And virtuous! Necker was a charlatan
In politics, and did not see how little
The hocus-pocus of the desk can change
The wealth of nations, and financial trick,
And gamblings on th'exchange, can operate
Upon a nation's want of means to meet
The exigences of its actual costs.

O strange delusion in a numerous people,
Ingenious, fertile in resources, clear,
To lore both moral and political
Happily fram'd, but turbulent, and changeable,
And light, and vain. It was a fatal blindness

Which made the rich financier trust his powers
For such a function in such frightful times,
When all the waves were roaring, and o'erleaping
Their bounds. Full little of the history
Of th'human heart knew he; or of the wheels
By which the politics of states are mov'd;—
A man of abstract notions, full of saws,
And figures to direct the counting house
By rule and measure, and methodical
Arrangement. O 'twas always “the account—
Th'account deliver'd!” and the task was done
In his conception, and the storm must cease,
And waters must subside, and the fond dove
Come forth in safety, and the olive pluck!
That such a simple creature should suppose
He held the wand of wisdom, would be strange,
Did we not see that folly rules the world!

But O how bitter must have been the workings
Of disappointed hope and foil'd ambition,
When in this solitude, which lonely breezes
Moaning along the lake made lonelier,
Or where the tempest, nurs'd among the gorges
Of the gigantic snow-clad ridgy mountains,
Made to the heart diseas'd and vex'd more gloomy,
The vain proud ostentatious fallen man
Reflected on the issues of his toils,
His speculations, his miscarriages!
“O do not hold” as on the banks he roam'd,
Or from his window saw the morning dawn
Glance on Mont-Blanc's cloud-cover'd top, “O do not

“Hold such a melancholy tone! I am not
“Nerv'd for the voices of the elements!—
“The voice of man in social life, the music
“Of streets, saloons, conclaves, and palaces,
“Befits my sicken'd soul, to give it comfort;
“Poets may talk of mountains, lakes, and torrents,
“And woods and hills and vallies! I believe,
“It is but affectation! Man for man
“In social life was form'd:—there is no other
“Delight in our existence. Nature torn
“By storms, or billows, or the threatening burst
“Of fire destructive darting thro the skies,
“Why should it be delightful to refinement
“In human habits? Rather let the savage
“Rejoice in that which not the polish'd arts
“Of social man have into being brought!
“If my ambition's projects had succeeded,
“The music of saloons, the bending knee,
“The reverential tone of deep applause,
“Had met me morn and night; and had shut out
“The roar of elements, and the depressing
“Shadows of savage nature! I am now
“A poor deserted store-diminish'd man,
“Whom none regard; on whom a tribe ferocious
“Full often thirst to dip their hands in blood:
“But still I doubt not, 'tis a foolish world,
“Not I, have been in error!—I will write!
“My pen is still my pleasure—and will shew
“By figures, and by mathematical
“Proof, that I ever was myself in the right,

“And all the world was wrong! For who is ignorant,
“There is no certainty except in figures!
“All else is vague conjecture, and vile, shadowy
“Fancy, of vapours and inanity
“Bred, and in useless smoke mounts and expires.”

END OF BOOK III.

At Putney.

Possunt, quia posse videntur.

BOOK IV.

When the world sleeps, then best my task I ply;—
Then from the world's obtrusions I repose
Secure; and as a breath, a frown, a word,
Can discompose me, the security
Nurses the workings of my morbid spirit!

There are who censure such infirmities,
As but the fancies of vile whim and humour:
But they are men, who draw their judgments from
The hardness of their own froze hearts and heads.
He, to whom fate the labour has assign'd
The mental loom to work, must necessarily
Have nerves and feelings finer than the vulgar;
And be more quickly sensible to wrong,
Insult, and taunt, or e'en the laugh of eye,
The scorn disguis'd, the hidden disapproval,
The treachery that lurks within the heart
Of rivalry or envy. But the outward
Evils of life, that by the glare of day

Assault us, when contending man is busy
Upon the stage, in mischief ever rife,
These interrupt incessantly our progress
Under the broad sun's beams: then thee, O Night,
I hail, and in thy silence and repose
My web goes on in regular advance.
To see the task grow under us, and, night
By night, its palpable increase exhibit,
Sustains our energies, and nurses hope.

It is gradation, which in life supports
The waste of labour. He, who finds the days
Of his strait-bound existence waste away,
Yet nothing done, and no progression made,
Sickens, and loses all the moving force
That carries on the fruitful labourer.
With nothing done, and nothing we can do,
Ennui consumes us; and when of to-morrow
Our prospect only is the self-same thing,
Th'internal organs almost cease to work;
There is no breath of hope to drive them on!

The idle are of men the most unhappy:
Peril, and toil extreme, and injury,
And ceaseless crosses; insult, treachery,
Disease, and all the agonies of mind
And body, more enjoyment know by fitful
Contrasts, than vapoury stagnant idleness:
And he, who has not tried his powers, can never
Guess the extent of their capacity.
Step after step, year after year, they often
Expand, and see the thickest clouds before them

Dissolve, and distant objects, which it seem'd
Impossible to reach, come nearer, nearer,
Till they are touch'd. Short lives have numerous days
And nights, of which if not e'en one is lost,
Much may be done by them: but when the thread
Is far spun out, to what a wonderful
Amount may human labour raise the heap!

By constant exercise the powers, within
The little circle of the human skull,
Contain a world of more sublimity,
And beauty, and of brilliance, than the outward
Globe, and the fair creations on its surface,
Shew even to the clearest, most intelligent,
And most enquiring and most sensitive eye.
But yet sometimes the fury of the flame,
And dazzle of the blaze, is too consuming
For man's weak body, and he dies, or falls
Into irrevocable disarrangement.

The faculties may flame till they burn up!
It is the conscience, that perchance may calm
And methodise them; an o'erruling care
To give a due direction to their energies!
There are around us spirits, who will aid
Our virtuous efforts; but who yet will leave us
To our own wickedness, if vice prevails
In our first thoughts, and we make no endeavour
T'aspire to good. It is a mystery,
Whence come our earliest aspirations!
If they come from external interference,
Then wherefore are we made responsible?

100

If they spring up within us, ere our reason
Can operate, then also does it seem
Hard to condemn us! Yet it may be said,
When reason comes, it ought to moderate,
Repress, and new-direct.—Alas, in vain
Into these mystic works of mind we dive!
We cannot tell why faculties of mind,
Of heart, of temper, so extremely variant,
Are given at our birth;—and why the chance
Of happiness, both earthly and hereafter,
Is so diversified, and different,
In quality and in degree! We know not,
If in a preexistent state our conduct
May not have brought this seeming distribution
Of inequality upon our doom!
But we must ever keep our faith in darkness,
That Providence is just! The noblest beings
Humanity produces, are yet frail;
And close, familiar, nice inspection will
Shew a few spots;—a few sad weaknesses
Of heart; a few defaults of mind unsound;
Of temper a few strange perversities!

And all may be forgiven but disguise;
But curst hypocrisy, of sins the worst,
The mother of all other sins; of falsehood
The dire and inextinguishable brooder!
Where once it enters, there the energies
Are turn'd to poison, and the streams of life
Corrupted; and the voice is from a blessing
Turn'd into ill; and bears the breath of wrong,

101

Delusion, treachery, extortion, ruin!
The hypocrite no single quality,
Good, generous, or e'en neutral, can possess;
And in hell flames for ever he will burn!
The devil there has hold of him entire,
And he will treat him for his lawful prey.

My flight is as the disobedient hawk's,
Who, by the falconer let loose to chase
His prey, darts off beyond his destined objects,
And takes his airy circuits out of sight,
And tarries ere he hears his master's call.
But close again, O Lake, upon thy banks,
Burgundian and Alpine, I will fix
My meditations.—Lofty-mounted villa,
La Boissière! thou dost turn thy noble front
Upon a glorious prospect! Genthod, thou
More humble in thy site, and somewhat dank
The vapours of the Lake appear around thee;
But by a curious Sage, of mind aspiring,
And ardent industry, once consecrated!
All Europe rings of Bonnet's name! La Boissière,
By Tronchin honour'd, name in the Republic
Held dear for ages, yet to him who venerates
Rousseau's unrival'd genius and hard fate,
Somewhat obscur'd by a dark stain of bigotry,
And persecution sharp and little merited!

But ye, dear villas, both of you the haunts
Of genius, which my song has hitherto
Left unregarded! if I love the lore
Of eloquent and most enlighten'd history,—

102

As in my heart I do,—why have I thee,
Illustrious Müller, with neglect so long
Treated? Thou art a shining star, to chase
The gather'd clouds from tales of ancient days!
In erudition rich, in genius strong,
By ardent passions borne upon thy way,
Copious in sentiment, in moral wisdom
Flowing and ever varied; seeing deep
Into the heart of man, in language vigorous
And clear; laborious and exact as those
Who have no fountains of their own; concise
And comprehensive, although overflowing!

It may be doubtful if the Muse should ever
Mix with the world. In actual life is aways
A coarseness, which deranges her creations.
Is it then ask'd, how she should know mankind,
Their manner, and their passions? By the light
Of her imagination, which will give
A true view; ever deep,—not on the surface!

O sad reality! There is in Man
Of base and selfish passions a predominance!
And he who mingles with society
In daily conflict, comes at last to bend
His mind to all its tricks and artifices;
For in the world by manners delicate,
And course of action pure, we cannot long
Proceed! without a spot and stain incurable
There is no wordling! Fair at first full many
May seem; but there is poison in the heart!

Then I will close my doors again, and live

103

Only within myself. O books! O study!
Ye never can fatigue, or be exhausted!
As the mind labours, it still stronger grows,
And every day the mist recedes, and opens
New prospects, and perplexities untie
Themselves, and clues sharpen and multiply.

The clock strikes Five; and yet my morning task
Is scarce begun! Of stupifying sleep
I have too much enjoy'd! But I must farther
Into broad day extend my' allotted toils!
What though with many a cold look, many a sneer,
The web goes on, it has not yet relax'd,
Nor shall relax,—though every intermixture
With the world's bustle much endangers it.

On Solitude and on Society
Philosophers have written and disputed.
Thus eloquent and most pure-hearted Cowley;—
Thus learned Evelyn;—but as poets ever
Write the best prose, so did the bard excell
The natural philosopher, though he
Had written of woods and trees with love and science.
He, to whom nature has not given the boon,
Labours in vain, and learning is but weight
Injurious to the head, which has not springs
To bear it, and throw off the groaning pressure.
Let e'en the most ingenious well beware,
How far they give an idle trust to memory's
Obtruded stores;—for what is ready made,
Is tempting, but still valueless. The borrow'd
Is empty in the utterance of the borrower.

104

That which a man repeats, unless he thinks it,
Is vapoury wind. The head is all delusions
Without the testimony of the heart!
“O what prosaic common-place!” exclaims
The would-be critic: “not a flower of poetry!
“No image;—no invention: not an art,
“Or spell, we call for in the Muse! but truth,
“Plain truth, or that which so affects to be!
“Why, I had always held that poetry
“Consists in fiction! We can have plain truth
“In prose abundantly: and from the bard
“A world unlike ourselves we hope to see,
“Dress'd up with all the ornaments, the finery
“Of labouring art can give it:—golden words,
“And sounding metre by harmonious rule!
“Of our old poets this is not the fashion,
“We know too well: but if we speak with frankness,
“We must admit, that praise of these old strains
“Is but a prejudice; and from boasted Milton,
“Left to ourselves, we nothing draw but slumbers!
“It is a task to read him;—not a pleasure,
“As pedants strive with most affected praise
“To make us think! In our own days the Muse
“The notes of genuine merit first has reach'd!
“Look at the splendor of her imagery!
“Look at the rich creation of her scenes,
“And characters and language! at the magic,
“In which she deals! the mystic passionateness;
“The wonders;—the inhabitants of air;
“Goblins and ghosts, and monsters of the fancy,

105

“Which seize the soul with wonder; bear it off,
“And lap it in Elysium! Here the Muse
“Shines in her proper sphere; and should be worship'd.”

Thus he, who in the school of art has learn'd
His lessons cold and technical. Not I
In that misleading school was taught! And now
Fearless my own opinions I pronounce;
And fearless act upon them! In my age
My literary destiny is fix'd;
And I no longer tremble at the will
Of the capricious multitude. To speak
With frankness is a high delight, that satisfies
The conscience, and is never persecuted
By cloud-chasing ennui, or the keen dart
Of irresistible regret! The heart,
When unoppos'd, unforc'd, is ever right.

'Tis Sunday! The church bells all ring around,
And float upon the Lake; and on the breeze
Mount to my windows! yet not far they reach,
By Jura and by Alps to be reechoed:
But in the lightsome atmosphere, which streams
Of current airs do purify, the sounds
Are to the ear and bosom stirring music.
To live among the grandeurs, and the beauties
Of nature, varied in their forms and tints,
Awakens, deepens, fortifies, and fires
The energies of mind. The changing hues
Of the blue vault of Heaven create delight:
But where the surface of the earth is flat,
Those changes are less frequent and more faint.

106

Not joys material these: upon the brain
And bosom they depend; and only move,
As they associate with the shadowy tribes
Of mental essence. Yet it must be own'd,
Imagination does not here prevail;
But logic cold; and hard experiment:
And what are call'd the natural sciences,
Though somewhat strangely call'd! The mind is nature,
And of the highest order: mind to study,
Is man's most elevated toil and duty!
What science so essential? what requires
Faculties so refin'd, and so sagacious?
If brother-men alone by their external
Semblance we know, how trivial is that knowledge;
How by false surfaces it is misleading!

Into the heart Imagination only
Can look; and have access unto the shrine,
Where all the passions play! Who does not view
Daily these operations, is unknowing
Of the great science of humanity.
O search not what is strange! O do not think,
Because it no one's head or heart before
Enter'd, 'tis therefore excellent! It is
When others give responses, and acknowledge
The thought and feelings are exactly such,
As are familiar to the secret movements
Of their own minds, that the due test is reach'd
Of genuine genius. And whoever leads
His listeners into error on the character
Of man; his modes of thought; his sensibilities;

107

His estimates of life; and of the objects
Of nature; is an oracle of falsehood;
A wicked conjurer! Eternal truth
Is the sole object man should have in search.
It is of these false oracles the most
Of censurers speak, when they condemn the Muses,
As filling minds with mischievous delusions,
And irritating them to evil passions!
Extravagance, exaggeration, monstrous
Union of incompatible elements,
Is but the joinery of a vile artist!

Trite are these protests; said a thousand times:—
But they cannot too often be repeated!
It is upon extravagance the candidates
For th' laurel now their chief pretensions place!
It is extravagance the public calls for,
And deems it proof of most decisive merit!
Thus æras new of poetry have risen;
Thus Milton, Dryden, Pope, are tame; thus readers,
As writers, swell like the balloon inflated
With gas! Into the heavens they travel high;
But there learn nought; and down they fall again,
Oft by a perilous descent; and sometimes
To death itself. It is but the insanity
Of inspiration false,—of false contortions,
And Phaetonic flights! and the cure lies
In studying Milton's most severe and plain
Passages;—his most unadorned lore
Of moral and divine philosophy.

Beautiful is description of the scenes

108

Of Nature as she is: but beautiful,
And sublime also, is the exhibition
Of mystic mind; its workings; and th'opinions
Thence drawn; the axioms, rules, directions
Of life's most intricate and thorny ways!
Then when the heart, and not the intellect,
Ought to decide, comes elevation, majesty,
And fortitude, to make the right resolve!

Why do we call for imagery? forever
Imagery!—as if all were materialists;
And nothing better?—If the mind distinguishes
Man above other creatures, 'tis the nature
Of the mind is the most exalted subject
Poets can deal with.—Nothing in the strain
Of poets reaches excellence, that is not
Mingled of all the faculties of mind,
Fancy, imagination, passion, reason,
Judgment, and memory;—and above all
Sagacity—a power of mind distinct,
Yet little notic'd separately: it is
A gift intuitive; a light, that comes
From heaven; and flashes its intelligence
Unlabour'd and unsought:—thus comes the strain
The voice of wisdom's self; and not a tale
Of th' nursery, which ignorance, and dulness
Affecting gravity, dare to pronounce it!

But least of all the play of words, the tinsel
Of gorgeous and unmeaning emptiness,
Is pardonable, though it gain the cheer
Of foolish fashion! It is a gold leaf,

109

As valueless as that which makes a glitter
On the child's gingerbread:—a group of wonders,
As silly as the rude magician's
At country fairs: no real secret taught;
No solid knowledge given! The true Muse
Speaks, what in gravest questions we may cite;
The judgment of the most intelligent,
And most profound;—the consciencious edict
Of holy and inspir'd determination!

O glittering expanse of waves cærulean,
What have I learn'd from thee? Full many a year
I've dwelt upon thy banks, and much I've thought,
And read, and learn'd, and dream'd, and seen in vision
By day, and have by mental toil created:
And I have suffer'd much in mind and body;
But yet I trust I have advanc'd in wisdom,
And also in both elevation,
And purity of heart. There is a rectitude,
To which the whole ambition of our minds
Ought to be bent: the plausible, the cunning,
The selfish,—ah, how base it is! The world
It may advance us in; but not one moment
Can it give satisfaction to the conscience:
It is in solitude, and in our own
Internal feelings, we must truly live.
There is a monitor within, which always
Tells us when we have struck upon the right.

Long in a mist we travel;—all around,
Is seen by glimpses; and e'en as our eyes
Are eager, and our apprehension pants

110

To grasp at all, confusion multiplies,
And long we see less clearly than the dull.
But the clouds move away with time, and labour,
And patience; while the added mist of passion
Subsides; and strength, and brightness, and tranquillity,
And fortitude, and sentiment exalted,
Combine, and give that self-dependence, which
Constitutes power, and strict ascendancy
Of character! But in the scornful estimate
Of the mole-eyed practitioner in cavils,
Much have I trifled;—wanting method, unity
Of purpose and of labour; pleas'd with fictions,
And baubles; searching curiosities
Not worth the cost of time, or waste of intellect;
And scribbling in profusion what the pruning knife,
Or polish of the file, has ne'er receiv'd.
O, how uncandid, and how ignorant,
And dull, to call on all to rule themselves
By one unvaried method! Let the candidates
For fame, pursue a thousand different paths;
Yet equally at the same end arrive!

The pruning knife, the file, may be to some
Instruments necessary; but to others
They may be death; they may let out the sap,
And wither up the pores; and clear away
The tints and features, strength, and character!
With some all is in the first burst of thought,
And language that comes with it; and cold labour
Not mends, but at each anxious touch destroys it.
All that is grand or tender, is the dart

111

Of inspiration. Who will doubt that Shakespeare,
Without premeditation or correction,
Pour'd forth the torrents of his magic strains?
Fast as the swift uninterrupted stream,
Hasten'd his mind his lips and pen, and stop'd not
To mend what was sufficient for his purpose.
From labour comes obscurity, confusion
Of metaphors, abruptness, and the break
Of natural associations,
Of thought, and imagery, and sentiment.
There may be sound; and outwardly a fair
Array of rich poetical ideas;
But it is only to the ear and eye,—
Not to the head or heart. They are but sounds
Tinkling, and shadows of factitious spirits!
The bard cannot rehearse but what he sees,
Hears, and believes, the moment of his utterance.
The genuine poet cannot be affected;
The ferment of his bosom would at once
Throw off all veil, all labour'd artifice;
And render the whole process of disguise,
And shape unnatural, impossible!

Who ever reads the mighty bard of Avon,
And for a moment has to seek his meaning?
Who ever in his airiest, loftiest flights,
Of visions even most imaginative,
Did not in his own fancy find a mirror
And echo? Wherefore this, but that he wrote
Only what Nature prompted and believed?

O do not give the name of art to poetry!

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It is not art! It is a true infusion
Of portions of the great Creator's power!
The poet is not gifted with the faculty
Creative over matter: but the spiritual
He can create, and with a living force,
Which is reality, and operates
On matter like the tribes of mind, sent forth
E'en by the omnipotent Deity himself!

Upon thy banks, O Lake, much have I mused,
And sometimes in new tracks pursued my searches.
In lands far distant from our natives homes
Our minds expatiate with more liberty:
All local prejudices, which 'tis difficult
To clear by th' root, there by degrees give way,
Nor leave a trace behind. Then we become
True citizens of a capacious world.
Around our infancy too oft have grown
Some early fears, affections, hatreds, envies,
Which cloud the mind and heart; and are rank spots
To be wip'd cleanly out. Man cannot judge
Of man, till those impressions deep, we took
In childhood, are effac'd; where accident
Works upon weakness. Thro' the globe the same
Minds, passions, virtues act; and we may seek
Genius and learning spread in every clime;
And best perchance, we seek it far from home,
Because we there judge with more equal candour,
And are not sensible of petty vapours,
Bred in the morbid sensibility
Of some diseased part, in youth contracted.

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Fresh airs, moreover, give a novelty
Of strength to parts, where the mind has been worn,
And its due figures somewhat clouded over,
Or twisted and deform'd. New objects give
An impulse to the current of the blood,
And chasing the invigorated stream
Thro the sick bosom, rise in brilliancy
Of their gold-tinted sprays up to the brain,
And fortify the frame and soul together!

Such aid, O Mountain Lake, I owe to thee!
To keep the mind in vigour there perchance
Something of time and place and opportunity
Requires. To live to future ages, asks
A spirit and a mellowness of fruit
Of intellectual faculties, not fashion'd
Merely to the caprices of the moment.
Fashions with every generation change:
But the attraction which depends on fashion,
Becomes disgusting to its successor:
And he, who has no other, dies forever,
And is forgotten. Truth, and style, and genius
Are the same always. Passion, as she's frank,
And unaffected, speaks with little difference
After the lapse of centuries: the characters
Of Shakespeare in their moments of excitement
Vary not from the modern day, while authors
Of note inferior speak another language,
Which even in their own time was most quaint,
Most artificial, and affected. Thus
Would want of inspiration ever try

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To fill the place of genius. E'en in Chaucer
After four centuries, the style, and colour,
Accent, and collocation of the words,
Is still the same, wherever there is freedom,
And fire and vigour rising above art
And labour. Mere affected scholars write
The language of the day; but genuine bards,
And busy statesmen of original
And powerful minds, in one enduring tone
Pour forth the workings of their mighty bosoms,
And intellectual effervescences.
Thus when the language is found obsolete,
Labour'd, distorted, overdress'd, the thought
Is not worth seeking: either 'tis not genuine,
Or it is triteness hid in ornament.

Discoverers in science may be useful;
But all their merits are transmissible:
They are, like money, things of circulation,
And equally available to all.
But the fine essence of imaginative
Genius eludes transmission, and thus lives
And breathes alone in the identical words
Of its creator. Therefore poets live
Forever in the presence of posterity.

Rousseau, most eloquent, and most seducing
Creator, who thy magic language can
Transfer to his own pages? It escapes
In the vain trial, and expires in air!
Intensity was thine of most ideal
Happiness:—in the world thou wert not good!

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The world excited all thy evil passions;
And solitude thy virtuous! Foolish censurer,
Who deems thee not sincere, because thine actions
Do not to th'effusions of thy mind accord!
Thou couldst not write that, which thou didst not feel!
Thy lakes, and rocks, and mountains;—of thy childhood
The haunted scenes! how couldst thou fly from them,
And seek for shelter among unknown strangers?
Thou foundst it in a kind but wanton dame,
To whom perchance much of corrupt in thee
Was owing! O how strange and mingled was
The tissue of thy life! The mixed threads
Of wild insanity were ever there:
And thy predominant fancy ever rul'd thee,
As if th'ideal objects were material!
Perhaps thou couldst not overcome the visits,
Unsought by thee, of spiritual presences!
And if they would inebriate thy soul
With hopes delusive, and mislead thy faith
In beauties, which existed not on earth,
Not to thy conscience would the crime belong!

How different from Voltaire! to him each fault
Of envy, hatred, artifice, was deep
Premeditation, laid to bring about
Some wicked end! When in that habitation,
Which now I see before me, he survey'd
The rolling lake, and saw the evening sun
Reflected from Mont-Blanc, and heard in nights
Of wintry darkness cross his windows come
The howling storm, that rode upon the waters,

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By mountain torrents fed, he no sublimity
Of soul experienc'd; but alone he mus'd
Upon the world, its wit, its fashions, follies;
On artificial man;—on imagery,
Merely as secondary instruments
To dress his studied and factitious thoughts!
Better were he mix'd in the levity
Of gay Parisian streets, than circled by
Cragg'd rocks of everlasting snow, and lonely
Expanses of cloud-tinted waters, sounding
Only with nature's echoes from the torrents
Of ice-bound wintry rains, dissolv'd by spring;—
Or the scarce audible halloo of bargemen
Descending with their loaded freights. To him,
Whose converse is with human wit and cunning,
All nature's grandeur is but ennui!

In wit abundant, in mere spriteliness
Of intellect ingenious, clear, judicious,
Where is the sentiment, th'imaginary,
The fair, the tender, the sublime, in him
The Lord of Ferney, still gay France's idol!
Why should we wonder, that a nation cherishes
A bard, the very mirror of itself?
It will be argued that to know mankind,
Not as they ought to be, but as they are,
Is the most useful knowledge. The position
Is plausible;—but yet it is delusive.
By lonely study we may also know
Man as he is; but not as he amid
The conflict of the crowded city is,

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But in the purity of solitude,
Nurs'd in the loftiness of nature's charms,
And only conversant with nature's voice.

There is a baseness in the constant force,
With which men's faults and weaknesses are spied,
Where all excites a jest, or witticism,
Or sharp rebuke. More specious than profound,
The multifarious writer thus proceeds:
All follow him, and all delight in him;
For all most easily can apprehend him.

Rousseau demands a passionate heart, and visionary
Fancy. Of him the lyric Gray has spoken,
With adoration of his eloquence
And beauties. But there is another Sage,
Of name imposing, and whose luminous judgment
Most rarely errs; and he with bitterness
Of critical aspersion has condemn'd
This fam'd Genevan citizen to ignominy.
Of revolutionary anarchy
The advocate of ancient institutions
Deem'd him the fire-brand: for the supposition
Of this black crime th'enthusiastic Burke
Could find no mercy. It is true the mobs
Of radical destruction on their lips
Had ever Rousseau's name: but he perchance
Was far too subtle and too tender for them:
And much it may be doubted, if he added
To the long-laid and wide spread elements
Of blood-thirsty explosion. His own native
City shut also its barr'd gates to him;

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And burnt his eloquent disquisitions
On man's political rights with too much bigotry,
And harsh injustice;—not to say servility
To other states,—unheard, unsummon'd, and
Absent in distant lands,—and though the crime,—
If crime it was,—was not with them committed.

Look at the candour, and the charity,
And simple grief, with which on that occasion
Th'eloquent citizen bemoan'd his fate.
His country was a stepmother to him,
And yet the high of its inhabitants
Cherish'd the ceaseless hatreds of their sires
Against him, still insensible to all
The glory, on their ancient walls he brought!
Hatred political but rarely wars
With the illustrious dead! And who, like Rousseau,
In splendid genius 'mong Genevan annals
Shines! That the native of a small republic
Should war with kings, and courts, and luxuries,—
Is this surprising? Liberty he lov'd:
It was of th'very essence of his mind
And heart: and yet he found that liberty
Not always in republics flourishes.

There oligarchies rule too frequently;
And factions rage, and acts of cruel tyranny
Are practis'd by the wantonness of powers
New-got. In France the charg'd conspiracy
Of philosophic politicians
May be suspected to have credit for
More active mischief than it did: the seeds

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Were laid far more remotely; the destruction
Of the last remnant of the constitution
By Medicean tyranny and intrigue,
After the death of the heroic Henry,
And the Grand Louis' despot power, and wasteful
Ambition, form'd a mine, whose sure explosion,
In its due hour all statesmen wise foresaw.
Thus the sagacious, veil-withdrawing chief
Of French memorialists, the wise Saint-Simon,
Foretold, long ere the club'd Encyclopedists
Their poison hid in flowers, thro' every page
Spread: for the unendurable corruption
Of the grand monarch's court must have at last
Rous'd the most servile and neck-broken people!

And thou, magician, exil'd from thy country,
Wide o'er the earth in care and sorrow wandred'st;
Then didst thou pass the ocean straits 'twixt Calais
And Dover; and beneath the white cliffs landed,
Didst see the fields of liberty, so call'd,
And Cantium's meadows green, and gentle hills,
And winding vallies; and its peasantry,
Ruddy and neatly clad; and its bluff manners,
And scorn of strangers, and provincial pride;
The haughty castle frowning o'er the waves,
The Conqueror took from Harold, slain at Hastings;
And yet a few leagues inland o'er the downs,
Where Cæsar once encamp'd, the rising tower
Lofty, and beautiful in gothic symmetry,
Of that far-fam'd Cathedral, where St.-Austin
Preach'd, and where Becket of his blood incurr'd

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The forfeit for his pride prelatical!
But thy capricious humour could not brook
The coldness of a melancholy people,
And thy Theresa, to whose wicked temper,
And devilish arts, thou didst commit thy happiness,
Hourly gave all her poison to afflict thee
With discontent, and foul suspicion
Of thy best friends. Then Hume, the calm historian,
Somewhat, perhaps, ironical and heartless,
Rous'd thy mad jealousy and deep revenge;
Then Walpole's poignant wit thy vanity
And self-esteem too cruelly assaulted.

In the delightful solitude of Stafford's
Peace-breathing woodlands, with thy flowers and garden,
A guest, with all thy wants provided for,
Thou might'st have been serenely happy, had
The friend attendant on thee pour'd the balm
Of comfort on thy troubled nerves and heart!
But ever did she fan thy brooding cares,
And jaundic'd disbelief; and thou returnedst
Insanely tortur'd from a kind asylum.
But never on thy natal spot, belov'd
With intermingled passions of resentment
And indignation, to take up thy residence!
For as we love, we hate; and as no other
Scenes the same keen delight can give us, none
Can the same pains and agonies inflict!

Few were the years that after thy return
Thou lingerd'st out thy melancholy life;
And, as 'tis said, at last by thine own hand

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Clos'd it.—It is a strange mysterious tale;
But horror at the base and faithless conduct
Of her, who was the scourge of thy existence,
Rumour assigns the cause: and I have heard
From those who've seen the model of thy skull,
The bullet mark is there. Thy fame was high,
But never could it satisfy the craving
Of thy vain appetite: or morbid humour
Made thee insensible to its extent.

'Tis strange, that Nature should endow a few
With such superiority of genius,
That they should overcome the rivalry
Of ages; and contending still against
Novelty, fashion, labour, art, and aid
Of the light of high minds preceding them,
Should still hold onward their eclipsing course.
How can it be that those high-gifted beings
Can so much life upon their pages throw?
Well has De Staël, in her most early effort
At literary fame, evolv'd thy character!

High-mounted, in Lausanne's vicinity,
Stands Aubonne! There Tavernier from his travels
Rested,—a chosen spot, adapted well
T' his Oriental taste, where fortune's favour
Crown'd him with wealth: but Riches, it is said,
Have wings and fly away; and so with him!
And after all his luxuries, necessity
Drove him to his old occupations.

Hast thou not heard of Vevay? Every Briton
Has heard of Vevay, where in the dust the relics

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Slumber of England's stern republican,
Ludlow! In this delightful spot he spent
His latter lonely days, when Charles return'd!
Not idle, but still weaving well his daily
Task, the yet valued tale of history!
There the Lake winds, and cross its waves are seen
At distance the precipitous heights wood-crownd
Of fam'd La Meillerai! of which when lovers
Read, they all tremble, as at Rimini
Dante the tale of the unhappy Pair
Relates, where fatal was the book to both!

At the Lake's head we cross'd the marshy grounds
By Villeneuve: and then enter'd on the route
From Italy by Vallais! where we fell
On Savoy's ancient territories,—Savoy
Ever from its first origin despotic,
Ambitious, self-aggrandising, and reckless
Of right; ferocious to Genevan freedom;
And still its ancient claims by ruse and arms
Not utterly abandoning; but worn
At last with age, and sinking into feebleness,
And now its chiefs expir'd; but its crown fallen
Into the hands of a more vigorous scion.

Then come we to Ripaille, in history noted
For the Count-Pope and his retirement thither,
When Rome's proud mitre was surrender'd by him:
But on the tale my Muse refrains to enter,
Touch'd by Voltaire, the world's great favourite.

Here agriculture flourishes in Chablais;
But hardly live the peasantry, and hard

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Their wrinkled visages, and spare tall figures;
And by the iron rod of bigot power,
Priest-ridden, are they cruelly oppress'd!

And now thro Cologny we pass again,
And once more Byron's residence salute.
Was he more happy in these scenes of grandeur,
With lakes and mountains, such as in his childhood
Fed his romantic fancy, than in scenes
Of Italy; Venice, Ravenna, Pisa
Perchance less stirring to imagination?
O no! the struggles of a firey heart,
Yet tender;—of high hopes of love, ambition,
Friendship, respect, esteem, at once destroy'd,
Were here in their first agonies: the tempest
Allow'd but briefest intervals of peace.
But as the sorrow and the indignation
Were strong, so was the brilliance of the mind:
The Bard perhaps did never more intensely
Feel, and more powerfully describe, than now.

Here Manfred he conceiv'd amid the rocks
And crags of Chamouni; and sure than Manfred
His Muse a nobler poem ne'er produc'd!
New images, new sentiments, a tone
Of sad mysterious rhythmical melody,
Softness, sublimity, and altogether
A magic inspiration; to himself
Peculiar;—which in every word is Byron,—
Byron;—and no one else—to every one's
Perception, only Byron! when from the height,
The giddy height seductive of destruction

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Manfred descends, we shudder at each step,
And follow him with breathless agitation.
There are who call the mighty bard a borrower!
Let the dull censurer ponder on those strains!
But not for ever on a favourite poet
Must I prolong my verse monotonous!

Eaux-Vives! I now return to you! To see
The white sail of the barge in glimmering distance
O'er the blue waters gaining on the eye!
And watch the tide dashing against thy walls,
And listen to its melancholy murmurs.
But now my boiling blood, by solar heats
Reflected from the glassy surface, when
At the oar labouring;—while the treacherous blast
Bred in the mountains, like a thief in th' night,
Cross the luxurious moment of suspence,—
Arrests my intellectual purposes.
But still Romance, and theories abstruse
Of dry hard arithmetical researches
Into the causes by which nations flourish
In wealth material, by alternate mixture
Relieve each other, and by resolution
Two tasks I close;—thus, Coningsby, to thee
I give th'approaching crisis; and thus end
A weightier labour, on the Population
Of Kingdoms, and how far increase contributes
To happiness, and strength! Now twelve long years
Want but a month or two to be completed,
Since thus I felt, and spoke, and acted. Time
Has since gone fertile in events and thoughts;

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But ever on myself I must not dwell.

Geneva! though thine idol has been liberty,
Too often hast thou felt the hand of Power,
And long and various have thy troubles been
Between obedience and command. Thy people
Have ever rife and stirring at resistance
Been; discontented, giving little faith
To those who ruled them, and suspicious ever
Of usurpation of unnecessary
Force, and a wanton exercise of proud
Authority! and many a harrowing tale
Of punishment and death in the resistance
Fills your impressive annals! does there live
The heart that will not weep at Fatio's death?
There was a fierce relentless cruelty
In it, which never yet distain'd the power
Of monarchs! He, condemn'd to death for acts
Of politic resistance, doubtfully
Construed as crimes of treason to the state,
Remanded back to prison, the next morning
Was call'd into the court, and coolly shot
In presence of the Syndics. At the notice
He stood undaunted, calmly from his cell
Came forth, and with heroic firmness met
His cruel fate! Thus faction was repress'd,
If it was faction: but a small Republic,
With powers that from their origin were never
Defin'd precisely, might admit in candour
The difference of opinion in strong minds,
Well educated, and of probity

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Unquestion'd; and if punishment was necessary
To keep the bonds over a restless people;
Not death! But death the despot bigot Calvin
Had taught, a century and half before,
Was due to those who differ'd from their rulers
E'en in the theory of points abstruse.

O Servet! thy recording spirit tells
A bosom-rending story, which the fame
Of Calvin never can wipe out! Thyself,
Didst thou not, as a leader of the Church
Reform'd, claim freedom from Rome's dogmatism?
And why was difference from thee to draw
The forfeiture of life? Burnt at the stake!
O horrible beyond all other cruelties!
“Blood only may be spilt for blood!” says Burke:
And I would willingly thou shouldst have died,
As thou hadst made thine enemy to die!
Thou wast a bigoted enthusiast,
And if a stern corrector of foul manners
Thou wast, I much suspect it was a mode
To feed thy love of power and vanity;—
Not from pure virtue! How could virtue prompt,
Nay how could it consent to such a deed,
As Servet's death? Was it to be found
In dictates of that Gospel, which thou boastedst
Thine only guide to be? What charity,
If in the heart it is not, can in essence
Belong to him who most pretends to piety?
And without charity what true religion?

O Calvin, in the strange dominion given

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Thro' Europe to thy doctrines, mingled evil
Disturb'd all ancient policies and powers.
Thence came the surly hypocritic Puritan,
Fierce as Rome's faction, and not less intriguing.
Thus Tudor's wise and most magnanimous princess
Spent her last days 'tween two devouring fires!
Then vulgar insolence and most nonsensical
Rejection of all ornament,—the spoiler
Of all that wak'd devotion thro' the fancy,
Of imagery grand, or fair, or passionate,
Went forth, and with the texts of scripture ever
Distorted, misapplied, and ignorantly
Construed, upon his lips, but to his heart
Never in due streams reaching, overturn'd
Sincerity, and natural impulses,
And probity of conscience, and good faith
In conduct, labouring like moles
At mischief under ground; and sowing seeds,
That in explosion of all civil policy
Might one day end.

But, eloquent Hooker, thou
Wert the firm prop to the true church: thy labours
In wisdom, argument, and powerful language,
Yet flourish green! From very childhood I
With reverence pass'd thy simple parsonage
In the sweet vale where Barham's Roman way
Ever attracts th'historic traveller.
And thy remaining monument inscrib'd
By the time-honour'd name of Cowper's sires!

But I have reach'd the close of the division,
That order to my tedious song prescribes.

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BOOK V.

It is the nineteenth morning since I first
Begun the strain on thee, beloved Lake!
And yet my daily task has been unbroken!
Thus perseverance has its own reward!
We know not what we can do till we try!
Much of the dead my strains have dwelt upon;
Naught of the living! First of thee, the friend
Of the great lyric bard whom first I lov'd,
And who still holds unchang'd my adoration,
Of moral Gray;—Bonstetten,—in thine age
Who the vivacity of youth retainest!
Scholar, philosopher, “of imagination
Compact” of multifarious knowledge pregnant;—
And thou, in deep political knowledge wise,
And statist admirable, D'Ivernois,
Whose friendship and attention in my days
Of long long sickness ne'er have been relax'd;
And classical Prevost, in philosophic

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Lore not less fam'd; and thou, profound Sismondi,
Of European fame; historian, critic,
Liberty's great defender; philosophic
And eloquent narrator of the days
Of Italy's free and resplendent glories,
Who now the tale of France in copious volumes
Unfoldest; and thou, traveller, whose pages
Piquant, sagacious, brief, original,
Just, ever win attention, caustic Simond!
And thou last annalist of thy native land
Of lakes and mountains, Picot! and thou, Fazy,
Fam'd for thy eloquence in senate, wise
In that profound economy, on which
Depends the people's happiness, with heart
Devoted to their good!—and Coindet, thou,
To whose rich stores and generous openness,
Whate'er of curious note I have recorded,
Is due; and Maunoir, thou of mark'd vivacity,
And spiritual genius! and ye, learned jurists,
Rossi and Bellot! and thou last, not least,
In friendship and in hospitality
Warmest,—renown'd upon the private stage,—
The oracle, thro whose lips miraculous Shakespeare
Speaks;—Lullin, whose most ancient name is trac'd
Thro all the annals of Genevan story,
From its first Counts, before the House of Savoy
Oppress'd them, and extinguish'd! Of thy fame,
De Candolle, I am little qualified
To speak, for, I alas! am ignorant
Of that sweet science, of which thou dost shine

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Preeminent thro Europe! but thy pen,
Eloquent, searching, and profound in tracing
Resemblances and variations in
The forms and features of humanity,
In various climes and nations, I can follow
With admiration and delight! Ah, some,
Of name renown'd, whom I have known, are gone,
But ripe in honours, to their quiet graves!
Pictet, in philosophic searches vers'd,
And his more various-minded Brother; critic,
Political economist, in agriculture
Practical, and as theorist, renown'd!
And thou too, latest lost, by all lamented,
Piercing and clear Dumont: though I protest
Against thy doctrines of political
Impossibility, more plausible
Than with man's passionate nature practical.

But here I must repeat the wonder, that
No poets in this ample list are found!
A cause there must be in the history
Of mind for this, although unknown to me!
What scenery more suited to a poet?
Then is it in the climate? It cannot
Rise from hereditary disposition,
Because Genevan families are sprung
From mingled nations! As the poet's power
Lies in the mind, not matter, it would seem
Of climates and of countries independent:
But with the organs of the brain depress'd,
Derang'd, diseas'd, perchance imagination

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Can only act imperfectly! alas,
We search in vain in these mysterious shrines;
We have no eye can penetrate them clearly:
There may be sensibility extreme
In th'heart: and yet the fancy, and still more
Th'inventive faculty, may be deficient.
Beings constructed thus can be affected
By strains pathetic; but to the creation
Of imagery, and visions of ideal
Magnificence, be quite unapprehensive,
And moved still less! To them the voice of poetry
Is but an idle sound! Let them pass by
The lyre, and shut their ears, and close their hearts!
I cannot envy them! They may be pitied:
But would do well to moderate their scorn!
It is the scorn of dulness, which affects
Contempt for what it cannot understand!

We hear there is no wisdom but in logic:
Then Providence has given us no intuitive
Knowledge, and nothing sound we can arrive at,
Except by chains of single steps;—thus slow
Our wisdom must advance; but in a blaze
Imagination her intelligence
Gives; and we see not single points, but all
At once, living and dead, matter and mind,
Coalescing, or conflicting, or in labour
By separate paths and instruments to reach
One end. And thus she sees what passion prompts,
What conscience dictates: the two springs of action;
Which reason vainly struggles to presage.

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And thus it is we from the Muse must learn
Our most sagacious lessons of mankind.

O blind and foolish, who affect to scorn
The Muse! Without her what were all, that gladdens
The higher qualities of our existence?
All that delights in nature's scenery comes
From her! All sentiment, all elevation
Of thought; all that enchants in female beauty;
All that inspires the ear in harmony
Of voices, and of instruments, and sounds
Breath'd by the elements; or from the woods;
From herds and flocks in meadows or on plains,
From ocean's billows; or from mountain torrents,
Or gentle murmuring streams. In the first dawn
Awaking, 'tis imagination's light
That beams the hopes of coming day before us.
When we return at eve, fatigued with labour,
Imagination paints the joys of rest!
And when we would look back in meditation
To see life in its brilliant tints reviv'd,
It is alone upon the Muse's volume
We turn to find it duly animated!
There goes the touch of magic to the heart,
And secret springs are mov'd; and to the fancy
Blaze all at once the past, the present, future,
Uniting in one picture to the eye,
With life more brilliant than reality!
Then we forget our mortal ligaments,
And for a moment are all spiritualiz'd.

Who will not find in Shakespeare wiser axioms,

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Lore more adapted to men's hearts and business,
Than in all volumes of philosophers
Collected into one? Who will not find,
In Milton more reveal'd divinity,
Than in the pages of the theologians?
There holy inspiration: there the moral
Severe, profound, and pure, and comprehensive
In the elucidation of Man's nature!

There Davenant, of the Epic laurel wreath
Most worthy, ill rewarded, most unjustly
Neglected and forgotten, tells his tale,
Enrich'd at every incident with lore
Moral and intellectual in abundance,
Express'd with nervous brevity and clearness,
Pure, elegant, harmonious, pointed, noble!
There Spenser pours his endless imagery
Of moral allegory, where the chivalrous
Figures, and gorgeous fictions of enchantment,
Almost o'ercome the senses! but beneath
Those veils is couch'd the whole philosophy
Of moral truths; and never can the study
Exhausted be! Thus Bards of ancient date
Most dealt in ethic doctrines. O lov'd Cowley,
Whose bosom was a limpid spring of purity,
Of flowers from woods and meadows, violets
And primroses, of sentiment as virtuous
As the sweet sylvan solitude thou lov'dst!
In thy enchanting language is reflected
The image of an heart by genius warm'd,
By learning strengthen'd, by a virtuous conscience

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Directed, beaming with benevolence,
And cheerful rays of natural simplicity!

Then comes the comic Hudibras, of wit
And learning mingled into essences;—
Whose golden ore, where'er we search, is found,
And forms a coin to pass throughout the world,
Among the wise:—still the collision sparkles
And strikes a light, wherever it conflicts:
Nor Denham is in thee the moral lore
Wanting: the couplet strong, concise, with thought
Weighty, in strain harmonious pours along!
Thy heart, perchance, was sensitive and morbid,
And thou couldst not the wandring levities
Bear of thy young fair wife amid a court
Luxurious, profligate; of others reckless,
And harden'd to th'effects of the worst injury,
Man to break up the social ties indulges.
Then did that genius, which light minds believ'd
To be a dreamer lost in reveries,
Begin to wander from its bounds, and grief
And jealousy with strange chaotic visitings
Disturb'd thy brain, and thou didst wildly wander
A maniac! And yet did no compunction
Touch the fair bosom of that fallen Beauty,
Whose noble blood, the relic of an House
Of ancient Barons, then by James's tyranny,
And basest thirst of lucre, sunk in ruin,
Had in her more exalted feelings planted!

Alas! for beauty in a sensual Court
Poison'd, there is no herb to cleanse the stain!

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After long interval came Prior's Muse,
Whose Song of Solomon, now little read,
Will be immortal; while on the sweet tale
Of Henry and of Emma every lover
Will hang with ears enraptur'd, in despite
Of Johnson's cold and tasteless criticism.

Of Dryden I have sung before, and here
Will not repeat a judgment trite and stale.
Nor aught of thee, of harmony the chief,
Sage Pope! Then came a fashion new, and imagery
Alone was deem'd worthy the Muse's praise.
Thus Thomson won his laurels, well-deserv'd!
But that which teaches how our intellectual
Being to manage, is the wisdom prime!
All imagery is only from material
Existence drawn.

Enough of poets here!
There is a subject, which at the perilous crisis
We live in, rages more. It is the fate
Political of nations: but I'll away with't:
It is too grave for pleasure; and too big
Perchance in its results for human wisdom!
Great poets have in perilous crises liv'd,
Yet have not sung the less. Thus Buckhurst, Milton!
But I, the humblest of the humble, have not
The magnanimity to persevere,
If that dread topic is not kept aloof!

Does fame add to our happiness?—The preacher
Tells us that all is vanity. Cool thought
Agrees not with him:—but it is a fame

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Stedfast which is not empty: when it fluctuates,
The ebb gives more of pain, than the flow, pleasure.

Thus Mason felt, when he grew out of fashion:
Humour and spleen o'erwhelm'd him. Hayley, by fate
Not less depressive follow'd, kept his cheerfulness,
And warm benevolence of heart. To him
Not of the poet's faculties inventive
Nature had been profuse; but of a mind
Gentle, and elegant, of taste chastised,
Rich in accomplishments in literature,
And full of tender moral sentiment:
Yet not profound; and too inclin'd to trust
To borrow'd stores: a fault less oft occurring
Perchance to Britain, than to other nations.

The searching air of Leman's lake should well
Stir the original spirits of the mind;
But yet it is not here;—it is not here,—
That the fresh fountains of unaided thought,
And powers divine of bright imagination
Have been bestow'd, or have themselves unfolded,
With that one grand exception, eloquent
Intense Rousseau! for not to thee, De Stael
The fate was given to be born or bred
Upon the Lake: nor hadst thou powers inventive
In high degree; but rather force, acuteness,
Sagacity, and fine discrimination.

To theologic lore Geneva once
Her mental toils applied, voluminous
And cumbersome:—tomes now upon the shelf
Sleeping in dust: the Diodatis, Pictets,

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Turrettini's, Lullin's, thus! But Godefroy, jurist,
Lives to this day in memory of the learned!
Philosophy and Science, O Geneva,
Were ever thy prime favourites! De Saussure,
Geologist thro' Europe known, and Bonnet,
And thou still living ornament, De Candolle!
Then Casaubon, in classic lore profound;—
Greek, above all! Nor ought I thee to pass,
In natural history vers'd, biographer
Of thy fam'd city's literary toils,
And critic most industrious, Senebier!

Withdraw the veil from Time; trace back the ways
That he has pass'd; and read upon these tracks
The marks, the cyphers, and the mysteries
Inscribed in a thousand characters!
It is an edifying lesson,—mix'd
Too oft with crimes, and causes of regret,
And seeds of future evil.—On, the world,
With all the faults of governments, has gone
Hitherto! But it seems as if a crisis
Approaches near, when it will go no longer!
Then anarchy will come; and dogs of Ruin
Will be let loose to prey upon the world!
Where'er assembled mobs will rule, there can be
Nothing but devastation, famine, death!
All civil policy may be abus'd;
But without government men are wild beasts.
I would have power and authority
Forever watch'd with lynx-ey'd force and courage!
But not destroy'd!—Reform; but not destruction;—

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Is the wise freeman's object! Laws abus'd
Are a most terrible pestilence: but lawless
Savages are yet worse! Let Ruin come,
As on the fall of the great Roman Empire,
And those dark ages which ensued, as nothing
Compar'd with those which now the world will cover,
Hereafter will appear! a poison bitterer,
And far more virulent, has been infus'd!
O! one false step of one weak man sometimes
Leads to the world's deep woe for generations!
Who caus'd America's rebellion, nearly
Seventy conflicting years of anger past?
Who by a word scarce thirty months ago
Stirr'd up the tempest brooding now o'er England?
Who by mad ordinances madly plann'd,
And weakly executed, at a blow
Level'd a dynasty of a thousand years;
And made a flourishing nation, with new being
Just mounting to unheard prosperity,
To tremble on a mine of utter ruin?
Herds of barbarians from the north will come;
And utter devastation prostrate all!
Where codes of law are fighting for, there soon
Will be no law at all! tho law itself,
When it is bad, is worse perchance than none!

If Providence permits this globe of habitants,
Condemn'd to sin from Adam, to go on,
From the tremendous downfall, which the threat,
Of civil policy o'erthrown must bring.
Brute force will lord it o'er the world again,

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And tyrants new will power despotic win
By the blood-thirsty sword! then by degrees
Arts, learning, laws, and wisdom's institutions,
Will recommence! but centuries will pass,
Ere they will reach again the happy point,
From which they will have fallen! There is a time,
When rage, and something like insanity,
Infects mankind! and such, perhaps, the day
We live in! while th'aspiring men, who love
Power with a bigoted idolatry,
Outrage the true defenders of the bonds,
Of absolute necessity to hold
Society together. Let not monarchs,
If they do not promote the general happiness,
Rule for a day!—But, under due restraint,
I do believe a monarchy the best
For the general welfare! power will be corrupt
Always,—whatever be its form—or kingly,
Or oligarcic, or republican!
And ever ought by counterbalancing
Poises to be controul'd! th'elite among
The people, rais'd by education, wealth,
Talent, and character, should have a strong
Opposing weight on every government,
Sufficient to restrain it in its course,
But not to check and paralyse its motions!
A prurience of change; a wilful crossing
Of mild authority; a constant cavil
At laws by custom render'd venerable,
And easily and contentedly coercive,

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Is folly and vain shallow self-sufficiency,
Not to be pardon'd! Subtle theory
Against experience is the Paradise
Of fools! When practice shews itself by facts
Of ill productive, then to theory
We must resort, new measures to devise;—
And he who reasons best, and can propose
With most sagacity, deserves the wreath!
But custom is a bond less easily broken
Than legislative chains, and far less galling!
The old irregular mansion of our infancy
Is more delightful than a new-built palace!
Security, bought at the cost of guards
Still greater than the worth of what's secur'd,
Is a strange insult upon human intellect:
And legislation, which will interfere
To thwart, not forward, the productive labours
Of man's devises, arts, must be cur'd by force,
If reason will not be attended to!—

Foolish, base-hearted, most contemptible,
And odious optimists,—who think that power
Ever must be i'th' right! when power in truth
Forever tends to wrong, if 't be not bound
In chains of iron! Wisdom is the child
Of Genius, and of Virtue, nurs'd by Toil!
And statesmen are not always wise, nor have
Talent, or conscience! They are mainly men
Uplifted by intrigue, or accident,
Or hard, dull, unimpressible audacity!
Unswerving, positive, direct, because

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No other light except their own they see!
Palpable truths they miss; and dwell upon
Mysterious errors, since the artifice
Excites what the simplicity of wisdom
Cannot affect! Thus if there be a falsehood
As gross, as it is mischievous, their bigotry
In their heart holds it never to be mov'd,
While all which ought to be for granted taken,
They name it prejudice to save from doubt!

Thus on they go;—and thus the part they play,
For anarchists their projects to pursue!
In Britain's empire thus the fatal quarter
Of an whole century has pass'd away;
Yet almost all has error been, and blindness,
And feebleness of intellect, and worst,
Most mischievous of all, sad, pusillanimous,
And selfish vacillation! Even wrong,
Firmly pursued, may by bold accident
Attain its ends! but vacillation never!—
It is the chasing of a feeble light,
That glimmers now on this side, now on that,
Now in the centre;—and invites annoyance!

It will be ask'd, where then was Canning's splendor
Of intellect, and magnanimity
Of resolution? But his course of rule
Was short, ere Death o'ertook him, and his plans
Not yet develop'd for a proper judgment
Of their effects, or their prospective wisdom;
And when he clos'd his eyes, a mighty darkness
Came o'er the nation! What has since occurr'd,

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Has, much of it, fall'n on strange governors,
Full of alternate rashness and concession,
Whence evils are yet in their cradle, which
Shall soon convulse the world, and shake, perhaps,
The constitution of six hundred years
To atoms.—Much it wanted of repair:
But those repairs were far too long defer'd,
And crowds of speculative jobbers force
Their services to pull the building down,
And utterly rebuild it to their own
Wild fancies: and it is most probable,
Rebuilt it will be, to appease the craving
Appetites of their measureless ambition.
Then down will come the ancient towers and spires,
To the clouds reaching; and th'irregular
But not incongruous diversities,
Plann'd by a long succession of wise ages,
As time and fit occasion dictated,
And as experience gave the certain lesson
Of the necessity; but now, if built
After the fashion of the crotchet-mongers,
'Twill be, perhaps, but as a citizen's box,—
Dwarfs, lions, monsters, serpents, wolves, and bears!

Thus in opinion, not in imagery,
For many a page have I my stores pour'd out;
And there are critics, who with obstinacy
Swear that in imagery alone is poetry
Of the true fountain to be found. Such narrow
Notions, which little of poetic vein
Would leave in greatest poets, merit not

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Response. All of high wisdom is for poetry
Matter the most profound and valuable.
We cannot think with power and force and clearness,
Unless imagination the materials
Presents: and thus from lofty, burning, views
Results sublimity of thought and feeling:
Poetry is no gewgaw, or mere plaything!
Let them who read not for the intellect,
To gingling rhymes, or monstrous visions go!
To teach us how to think is the prime lesson,
And how to feel! For whence draw we our honey,
When like the bee we would extract the sweets
From flowers of poetry? The moral axiom,
The sentiment we sieze upon; not images
Glaring, and gorgeous; monsters, mysteries!
Of Shakespeare's strains divine whence do we take
The passages for ever on our lips?
All that relates to simple daily movements
Of human bosoms! of opinion's stores
And of the colours of our common life!

Who lives among the mountains and the lakes,
Has his heart warm'd, and intellect exalted,
E'en tho' his lips are silent, and in outward
Shape he may rude and barbarous appear.
The eye cannot survey grandeur of matter,
And be unmov'd! And strong variety
Of shadowing tints, changing and beautiful,
Affects the labourer at his daily work,
And fills his breast with cheerful energy!
A flat dull atmosphere, impending over

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A flat dull country, undiversified,
Depresses deep the spirit, and of hope
Clouds all the rays: and hope alone can lead us
Along beneath life's ever-pressing burden!
It is variety that freshens us;
And there is no variety but in hope!
All is in mind: we have no real joy
But in the mind! and matter pleases only,
As it is clad and tinted by the mind.
And thus it is, that poets give the energy,
And sole attraction to all human things!
For they with thought and sentiment array them,
And this is the association, which
Makes the creative essence of true poetry.

There is, perhaps, a discipline of brain,
Which tends not to unite but separate,
These thoughts and feelings, miscall'd adventitious;
And this they may deem science;—sound philosophy
Worthy their toils; and forasmuch as fashion
Governs mankind too much; and this the fashion
That has upon the banks of Leman's Lake
Prevail'd for ages; it may be the cause
That poetry has never flourish'd here;
Where nature gave the scenes most fit to nurse it!

Old stern ascetic Calvin, to the Muses
Odious, and hating them as wicked Syrens,
His distillations of sour antidotes
Spread far and wide and deep;—from which the blood
May ne'er be purified. Enthusiasm;—
Yet no imagination, and no sentiment:—

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Strange contradiction!—Narrowness, and bigotry,
And puritanism in its odious sense!
Delusions! Are the joys of life delusions?—
They are realities:—and innocent,
And virtuous realities: to fright them,
And hue and cry them off is flagrant crime!
Why not deal with them in the scenes, where nature
Has been profuse of her magnificence?
Are they nip'd in the bud? Is every nascent
Idea, and emotion, crush'd at once;—
And then the channels of the heart and brain
Clos'd; and a formal artificial character
Of intellect forc'd rudely in its place?

A poet is a gardener, who sows flowers,
Balm, and herbs medicinal, and lays out
The ground in lawns, and woods, and lakes, and forests,
And murmuring rills, and tumbling roaring torrents!
And is his art, and labour, valueless,
And trifling, and insipid? 'Tis the spell
That makes the blood to flow in kindling tides,
And turns the drink of life into pure nectar!
We are whate'er we think ourselves; and all
Of our existence is imagination:
Tear but the veil; and all beneath is hideous.
There's no such thing as metaphysical:
Matter and mind must always go together,
In the mysterious lot of this strange life!—
But Mind will turn the matter into spiritual,
If duly nurs'd! and all will take the colours
And essences of intellectual

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Existence.—By due force of mind, and will,
We can controul and new direct our passions,
And almost overcome their human grossness;
And the mean, selfish passions, which most rule us
At first, may be most perfectly subdued.
First in the infant, jealousy appears
Raging beyond controul: then anger fierce,
And vengeance hot or sullen, wearing off
Quick, or in moody meditation nurs'd:
Then cunning, falsehood, fraud, and selfish arts,
And sensual appetites, and craving avarice,
And mingled most with virtue, love of fame,
Generous often, sometimes noble,—sometimes
Mean, criminal, or childish and absurd.
For some will win distinction at the cost
Of vice outrageous; or by wearing caps
Of bells from folly borrow'd.—Only Genius,
To Virtue wedded, can be great on earth!
And where no wisdom is, there is no genius;
And where no virtue, neither is there wisdom!
What is not virtuous, never can be wise;
For without virtue is no happiness:
And what is wisdom, but to know the way
Happiness to attain? Regret pursues
All evil; and thus counteracts enjoyment,
Which for a moment may from Vice be drawn.
All high exertion of the mental powers,
Not in the cause of Vice, is in itself
Pleasure intense. Thus Dante, Petrarch, Milton,
Tasso, and Spenser, and unrival'd Shakespeare,

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Must have enjoy'd at times excess of rapture,
Inferior mortals cannot e'en conceive!

The powers of mind, by nature's boon profusely
Bestow'd, expand by exercise and nurture,
To an excess no thought anticipates;
And with the impulse of true inspiration
Out of themselves into another being
Are borne! With them we may converse with awe;
And listen, as to oracles: their lore
Is breath'd from higher regions: in the night
Spirits descend upon their eyelids, or
Come whispering on the breeze; or in the rays
Of the sweet silvery moonlight dance and sing.
Thus are the streams of their own knowledge fed;
And when they ope the fountains of their hearts,
A radiance bursts, as when the sun at once
Darts from some massy cloud; and fragrance rises,
And notes of tender music issue forth.
Then comes a wild delirium o'er the faculties,
And bosom of high-chorded sensibility.

But with the earth, as with the floating music
That travels in the air, they have choice converse.
Into the secret temple of men's hearts
They enter; and draw thence upon the glass
Of their own fancies all the tender movements,
Of which the pictures can instruct or please.
Thousands there are of noble bosoms, which
Are agitated by sublime emotions,
Or tenderness most exquisite and pure:
Yet are not gifted with the art to paint them,

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And others' sympathy to exercise.
These call the magic accents of the bard,
The glories of their bosoms to communicate.

O literature! to thee alone we owe,
That by th'accumulated stores of wisdom,
Time and experience gather, we can profit!
Except for thee, each age for self alone
Had lived! and each successive generation
Had to renew its same experiments.
Now what our grandsires thought and felt in æras,
And manners widely different from our own,
We have before us, for comparison,
In animated colours! Thus we see,
That genius ever thinks and feels the same.

Hither, the Reformation's capital,
Came many a fugitive from the fire and stake,
When Mary Tudor, the ferocious child
Of the eighth Harry, mounted England's throne,
And the angelic Jane, the victim daughter
Of ducal Suffolk, on the scaffold paid
The forfeit of her life, to feed th'ambition
Of those from whom she drew her hapless being.
O lively, learned, innocent, and pious,
Simple, and wise! the tears forever flow
Of all posterity upon thy fate!
But thy heart-breaking tale is too well known;
And yet too long to be repeated here!
Here daring Knox, intemperate and brutal,
Ferocious foe of Caledonia's beauty,
Mary, of Stuart's race, his anti-popery

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Cherish'd and spread; and puritanic hatred
To power monarchic loudly bellow'd out.
Here Whittingham, whom after his return
Rich Durham for its northern deanery own'd,
And whom the Psalms acknowledge for a versifier,
Rested four years from persecution's fangs.
Here lies the book! the archives of the State
Retain it still, which they deliver'd up,
When they took leave in native soils to seek
Their residence: the annals of their birth
Their marriages, and deaths! The future dean
His nuptials here with his French wife contracted.

O silent Night, beneath thy mantle lives
Calm Contemplation in her happiest mood!—
Then busy Interruption sleeps; and all
The restless passions of mankind are still.
In the turmoil of human converse never
The Muse her stream with force and frankness gives:
We cannot mingle with the world, and have
Our tempers and our feelings undisturb'd.
And under irritation the weak hand
Can from the lyre no sounds of harmony draw.

There are who think, the products of the mind,
Being unembodied, are but useless shadows:
“Act; do not talk or write,” they cry,—“for words
Are but the hollow whistling of the wind!”
To brutal exhortations, such as these,
There is no answer but indignant scorn:
And when the mind is high, the human station
May be—among the lowest,—not debased.

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The mind is acting on the face of things,
And still directs their movements, and their colours;
Tho' unperceiv'd: and wide Opinion spreads
Her influence, when the current glides along
Viewless. It is opinion, sentiment,
Not reason, guides the world. The head alone,
Without the heart's assent, will do but little:
Dry arguments fall dead upon the hearer,
And are forgotten. Bulky folios
Of artificial, temporary, inferences,
In every age are printed, reign a little while,
And then are cast away as worthless waste:
The natural effusions of pure genius
Live, and are green for ever. The mind wanders,
Rich in the blessing of ubiquity;
And casts her piercing gleams throughout all space.

But in strange days we live, and it may be
Permitted for a time that mere brute force
Should rule;—if mind her just dominion yield
By false assent. In all past ages, mind,
In every nation, civilised or barbarous,
Has heretofore been governor, and will
Again, tho' for a moment bodily
Strength should o'ercome! Mankind cannot be made
Anew, after the lapse of many thousands
Of years: the principle innate of power,
And of obedience, will be still the same:
And the same course will be again to run
From savageness to polish, and the arts.
First will the sword, and cruel tyranny,

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Prevail; then civil government, and laws,
And sway, by wisdom and refinement soften'd;
Mingled, perchance, with humour and corruption:
And often needing the opposing hand
Of those submitted to the harsh misrule.
But not to call the people for a lasting
Instrument of controul, if it be true
That man by reason and by conscience cannot
Govern himself, but wants the force of laws,
And power, his passions and desires to bind,
And hold his hands from injuring another.

No power not strictly necessary is
Endurable in monarchs, oligarchs;—
And surely least of all in strict republics.
Who ever but an ideot dream'd, that monarchs
Had power bestow'd for their own gratification?
Where will the silly optimist be found,
Who gives his faith, that power will not abuse
Its franchises and functions, when it dares?
It is the duty of a citizen,
All necessary puissance to uphold;—
But all beyond, with arm magnanimous,
And voice untrembling firmly to resist;
To put to scorn the insolence of office,
Nor fear the field of battle, nor the scaffold.
Wisdom in council is a quality
Not to be spar'd in those, who would aspire
Duties of state to execute; and weakness
Is a crime worthy of a mighty vengeance,
To those who undertake the perilous labours

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They are unfitted to perform with talent.
And is then legislation a light duty?
If it be light, why have such grievous errors
Disgrac'd our statute-books, and brought destruction,
Fire, famine, blood, on a misgovern'd people?
Is it enough to vote, and not to judge,
To think, discriminate, suggest, invent,
With moral principles be well imbued,
To know the heart of man, and all his passions,
And modulate provisions to his nature?

In the last stage of a declining State,
When luxury, and rank corruption, spread
Their poisons o'er the land, and to the heart-strings,
When all is deep and complex artifice,
And evil is immix'd indissolubly
With every institution, not a step,
But by profound sagacity, can be taken
Safely. Then minds unexercis'd, unaided
By wisdom's stores, and how much more if weak
In native faculties, must fail to do
The work of difficulty put upon them!
'Tis said, they can but go with leading heads,
And rule by numbers!—but where is the judgment
To fix upon the leader? and is all
To rest upon the shoulders, and the talents,
And probity of one or two alone?
'Tis by the conflict of commanding intellects,
Affairs of state are managed with due wisdom:
And intellect is now almost extinct
In legislators, and in politicians:

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In Britain almost of the last was Canning!—
A man of florid rhetoric,—of heart
Bold and decisive;—not of primal genius,
Or most profound and most sagacious judgment;
Versatile, proud, ambitious, vain! “Who bore
No rival brother near the throne!”—but cross'd
By politics perverse, and taunting bigotry;
And when his light was out, no other lamp
To guide us thro the darkness of the world,
Where tempests were in every quarter brooding.

Then sunk we all at once a thousand fathom
Deep in all Europe's eyes! The warrior bold
Lost in the cabinet his irresistible
Decision; and in wavering feebleness,
Now arbitrary recklessly, now yielding
When all the policy was in resistance,
The country to the brink of ruin brought,
From which, perchance, it cannot now be sav'd.
It was, when Freedom, e'en to licence, was
A crying rage, most grievously ill-tim'd
By military tactics to endeavour
A liberal people to be ruler over!
And by his fiat to expect to carry
Each measure,—scorning ever to give reasons!
Instructing all his myrmidons to laugh
At eloquence and argument, as wind!
“To act, and not to talk” was the fool's taunt:
And weak, forsooth, and blindfold, was each act!
Yet not the less insulting!—If we now
Are in a dangerous experiment

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Engag'd, to him we owe it!—Naught remain'd
But the essay to make: there was no choice,
And the least evil only could be taken!
Peril is clamour'd by the Tory bigot!
In what state-crisis is not peril ever?
But we must balance perils!—Reason here
Had a resistless force:—not mob-like passion;
And senseless cry of discontented labour!

Time generates corruptions, which calm reason
Must not be hard and idle to correct!
Lightly to change an ancient institution,
Is a vile treason against sense and rights.
But 'tis the bigotry of fools to hold
To their abuses: and to never bend
To circumstances, and to change of seasons!
A poise between the people and the crown
Is the best project of a government:
But much that poise is weaken'd, if it holds
Means for monopoly in Honour's market,
And thus the state's high functions can extort.
Then, to the crown and people equally faithless,
A fungus of corruption it becomes;
And irritates revenge, and nurses up
Thoughts of destruction in its adversaries:
And mingles with the body, which should be
Of pure aristocratic elements
Compos'd, the fruits of base dishonest lucre,
And new nobility by riches purchas'd:
And against new nobility the people
By natural impulse turn!

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Stern Johnson ask'd if ever politics
Disturb'd one's rest? He liv'd in days far other
Than these, in which we ever tread on mines!
Then Governments had only once in centuries
Been to the bottom ras'd! Now all is trembling,—
Shook to its basis! But too long it suits not
To linger on one note! Helvetia's mountains
Avoided not the shock of civil discord:
Nor ever can they safe and tranquil be,
If the flame shall be put in blaze again;
And much the sparks we see, as of Vesuvius,
Before some grand irruption: horrific rumbles
Groan from within; and the dread crater opens!

Nature alone is beautiful, and grand,
And good. Man ever is disturb'd by evil
And death-pursuing passions.—Governments
Too often have been held as individual
Property. Thus too many ages felt
The Pays de Vaud the iron rod of Savoy:
And beautiful Lausanne her fate submitted
To the congenial spirit of the Mitre:
While Chablais never yet has shaken off
The ancient yoke of Savoy and of Maurienne:
A race that by its gradual accretions,
In eight long ever restless centuries,
From a small rill swell'd to a mighty river;
And enter'd deep upon Helvetia's borders,
And France confronted, thus a slice from Burgundy
Dividing, while the walls of the diminutive,
But most magnanimous Geneva, kept

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At bold defiance their assaults delusive.

Then Austria in Helvetia's northern districts
Its origin Hapsburgian ne'er forgot,
And ever had its eye, and its ambitions,
Upon its cradle; or at least the cradle
Of 'its extinguish'd dynasty of males;
For tis not true, Lorraine's more ancient house
Sprung from the same male stock: its origin,
Of the imperial line of old Franconia,
Ascends to loftier honours in the night
Of time,—tho hitherto untrac'd by all
Its proper genealogists; and least
By Calmet, whose most erudite and toilsome
Fame was ill merited in this due task.
But still the force puissant of the house
Rules o'er the Tyrol, and, with black outspread
Wings, on the skirts of the free Cantons hangs!

Once this great empire, the asserted heritage
Of mighty Charlemagne, or rather of
Old Rome's imperial purple, bow'd e'en low
To th'ground beneath Napoleon's conquering sword,
And irresistible ambition:
But it has risen again, and, like a giant,
With strength refresh'd!—and now no symptom gives
Of age, or of decay: while other empires
And kingdoms all are trembling. Is it wisdom,
Or policy, or courage, or heroic
Usage of arms? Or better, readier, skill
In statesmanlike financial economy,
Or in commercial enterprise and wealth?

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Or in the laws to make a people happy,
And strong in body and in mental courage?
Ah! surely not the latter! and for artifice,
If it succeeds a little while, it never
Lasts when the habit of deceit is known.
It will be still the rallying point of Europe:
But, like the rest, at length perchance will crumble
To dust. Ere half a century is gone,
The world again may into massy darkness
And utter ruin fall; and institutions
Civil, the growth of countless ages, blow
Into the air at once, and all the arts
Be prostrate, and mankind roam savages,
And howl among the woods, thirsting for blood;
And seeking food amid the beasts of prey!
It must be so, if merely brutal force
Permitted be to level all the laws!

They, whom it is the object of the laws
To govern, cannot be the governors:
Nor is it possible, that there can be
The liberty, that may with laws dispense!
From the creation there has always been
Among mankind a government and power
Supreme, tho' very rarely unabus'd.
Yet it must be, with all its bad concomitants,
Which ever the most watchful checks demand.

There cannot be hereditary right
To injure, or to tyrannise over others:
But an hereditary right to govern
With justice, wisdom, lenity, in modes

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Prescrib'd by law, may be, and ever has been!
And nothing but this right can keep a nation
Free from the dangers of the restless stirrings
Of craving and ne'er-satisfied ambition!

Thus monarchs may be seated in their power
Legally, wisely, of necessity:
But constitutions form the chains to keep them
Within their limits, which they otherwise
Would overflow, producing devastation
In the domains they ought to fertilise.

END OF BOOK V.

159

BOOK VI.

Didst thou ne'er visit the magnificent
Cathedral of Lausanne? There thou hast seen
A noble altar-tomb of Otto Grandson!
He was a hero true of chivalry,
And in his age fell in a noble duel,
Fighting with all the gallantry of youth.
He was, I think, if memory does not fail me,
Last of the males of his illustrious race:
In courts and camps his gallant life had pass'd;
And gloried most, where ladies' eyes reign influence.
In Vaud's dominions, where his ancient name
And spreading lands, impos'd a sway superb,
There was a lady fair, the idol wife
Of a young neighbouring chieftain, whom this Lord
Of Coppet and of Grandson ever view'd
With admiration; and perchance with glances
Unholy; and it may be, that the dame,
Thro' vanity and coquetry, return'd

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Those ogles: then the flame of jealousy
Waked in the husband's bosom to a fire
Consuming: but the dame and lord of Coppet,
Each swore their innocence: yet ah! the tears,
And protestations, of a female heart
Were but as wind to an enraged husband.
Gallant and fearless, tho to years declining,
Great Otto held his head, and went his way.
He had his word and oath put forth;—and who
Would dare to disbelieve him? He, not he,
Would be controul'd by false suspicions; nor
Avoid the innocent courtesies due to beauty!
Thus often when he met, in social concourse
Of arms, and fair ones, and the moving tones
Of music, and the awakening minstrel's song,
The persecuted lady,—he refrain'd not
The glance of pleasure, and the gentle word:
And between gratitude and fear, the dame
Could not controul her deep emotions,
Which the mad husband deem'd the proof of guilt.
The discord rais'd between the chiefs became
Contagious: and surrounding chieftains, with
Their clans, took each their several part; and wore
The colours and the badges of their party.

O, what a life of anxious turbulent passion
The lady led! yet not unmix'd with raptures
To be the cynosure of wondring eyes,
And to behold the hero, who for her
In gallant daring spent his vigorous age.
Then she the heroine of the poet's lyre

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Became; and the idolatry of warm,
Mysterious, spell-breathing imagination
Invested her with charms, not hers; nor ever
To human beauty lotted: but delirium
Of hope and vanity inebriated her;
And she was willing to believe them hers.

Love, hope, revenge, and moments of idolatry
Shook her griev'd husband's mind and frame to madness;
And he at times beheld her as an angel,
That never must be wrested from his arms.
Then she grew scornful, and herself deluded
That she for earthly love was too celestial.
And still the factions grew, and the whole province
In a fierce civil war became involv'd.
Now Savoy's Prince, in whose domains it lay,
Banish'd the hero of the tale; the torch
That lighted these disturbances to flame!
In England and in France the gallant lover
Long tarried, the companion bright of heroes,
Of ladies' eyes the wonder and delight:
And when at last the irrepressible
Love of his native lands recall'd him home,
The jealousies and the vindictive passions
Of the relentless husband still pursued him!

Perhaps it was the indiscretion rash
Of female vanity or female love,
That rous'd the lion to his prey again!
The jealous watchfulness beheld the bosom
Heave at the sound of Ottos' name, or saw
Her footsteps bending to old haunts; or heard

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Her whispers in a dream; or caught the tear,
That trembled in her eye! then raged again
Fiercer than ever the desire for vengeance:
And thus he challeng'd Otto to the single
Combat: and the firm but worn-out hero gladly
Took up the gauntlet, tho his hoary age
Freed him from answering the requisition:
For now his hair was white, and he had pass'd
His sixtieth year: but he had skill, and native
Strength far beyond his younger combatant.

Now every eye and bosom was engag'd
Upon the fearful contest: heroicly
The old man fought; and long the war was doubtful:
But either by the feebleness of years,
Or chance, or destiny, the blow at last
Came; and his eyes in death at once were clos'd.
And there he lies, clad in his coat of mail,
Upon that altar-tomb! Behold the pales
And scallops on the bend;—a noble shield
Well-known in England, when to Margaret,
The kingly Tudor's mother, we our eyes
Heraldric turn; for of the blood was she;
And drew a noble patrimony from them.

But we have much of Grandson's castle heard,
When Charles, the Rash, of Burgundy, assail'd it:
And the rich diamond was the prize besought,
Long buried, found at last, as Montolieu
Has in her Châteaux Suisses with eloquence
And fancy well related: a strange tale
She has confounded with it,—from what source

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I know not,—thus pretending to connect
This precious gem as that which ages after
The name of the Pitt Diamond got, from him
Who bought it of an Indian chief, thus founding
The fortunes of Britannia's greatest ministers;
And thus perhaps the destiny of all Europe.
Strange history of one single mine-drawn product
Passing to France, the greatest ornament
Of all that gorgeous court; and then at last
Like a sun glaring on Napoleon's sword.

And thus the tale of Grandson ends:—at least
Upon its ancient patrimonial lands
In England long a scion of the stock
In rich baronial power and splendor shone;
And much I boast that thence I draw my blood
Thro' various channels; and amid the store
Of my armorial ensigns ever paint
Th'heraldric figures of their feudal shield.
Early was the paternal line of sires
I spring from, by direct espousal join'd
To this great house Burgundian, when transported
To that Welsh border, where the conqueror's chieftain
Made inroads on the wild and obstinate Britons;
As he, the great magician of the North,
Has well recounted in his spell-like tales.

And thus I venture, in a calm defiance
Of sneers, and taunts, and smiles, and sharp remonstrances,
Still of myself to speak; for who can tell
So surely of another's thoughts and feelings,
As of his own? And what the passages

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In other poets—Milton, Cowley, Cowper,
And yet an hundred more, to which we turn
With most delight? By one congenial taste
All hang on those fond undisguised effusions,
Where all the secret moves of their own hearts
They open lay; confess their weaknesses;
Put forth their hopes; let out the hidden springs
Of their ambitions, toils, and vanities;
And justify, or wail with tears of sorrow,
The paths that they have trodden. If they speak
The truth, they find an echo in the bosoms
Of all their readers: but if false, the tone
Betrays them; then the listener has his triumph
In the ascendant o'er a vain pretender.
Truth is for ever simple; affectation
And labour are the proofs of base disguise.
There is no eloquence, where there is labour;
And rarely truth: and what with toil is written,
But slowly catches others' apprehension.
It has abruptness, and the natural
Alliance of ideas is destroyed:
For in the mind Nature implants her links;
And these we follow as by intuition.
Among the innumerable charms of Shakespeare
This, this is not the least.

Historic Tales
Form an essential portion of my song.
Therefore I must not pass in silence thee,
Ripaille!—down close upon the rippling waters
The ruins of thine ancient palace stand,—

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Adjoining Thonon in the Chablais! Savoy
Still o'er that ancient heritage holds her sceptre.
There the first Duke of that now royal House
Twice in retirement from ambition's thorns
Sought the tranquillity of solitude.
Strange was his fate,—from princely sovereign
To privacy,—and then to sovereign power
Ecclesiastic, as Rome's Pontiff, rais'd;—
And then the proud tiara's power again
Resign'd, once more to privacy with thee
Retir'd, Ripaille!—But not as hermit strict,
Cell-like, and self-denying, as, tis said:
But with his choice companions, gay, luxurious,
And pleasure-seeking! Luxury and peace
Could not keep off the dart of death.—He died
Within these walls, ere long! To him Lausanne,
And old Geneva's beautiful abode,
Familiar were. But witty Voltaire's Muse
Has moralis'd upon his fate; and I
Fly from a theme touch'd by a popular author.

From what old root the princely race of Savoy
Derived their primal growth, historians differ.—
Of Saxon, some;—from the old stock of kings
Burgundian, others:—in the ninth or tenth
Century, they began their wings expand,
And never lost the active principle
Of gradual aggrandisement, by arms,
By marriages, by policy, by ruse!
In Italy, in Burgundy, in France
Th'extension ever equally was sought:

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Never at rest, their schemes they still were planning:
But all this turbulence of spirit ended
In feebleness at last, and abdication.

And thus the circuit of thy Lake, Geneva,
Has my Muse made, descriptive sometimes,—oftner
Dealing in sentiment, and observation,
Thought, argument, and intellectual matter.
If we can cull the images of Nature
With more of brilliance than reality,
Then it is good:—but surely 'tis an higher
Task to associate them with intellect;
And teach the duller minds to comment on them;
And how to feel; and with what other images
To join them. Of all Milton's poetry
Three parts are intellectual; not material.
Thus I agree with Pope, not to approve,
“Where pure description holds the place of sense!”
Where nothing but the fancy is amused,
It is a somewhat barren entertainment.
Ever we wish in noblest poetry,
To have a stretch of all the faculties;
And not alone the bosom, and the fancy,
And bright imagination's powers creative,
To exercise; but to improve the judgment;
And by a clearer, broader view of things,
To draw conclusions more enlarg'd, and just
Without imagination is no poetry;
And without judgment also the production
Cannot the glory of the higher class
Attain. Among the Muse's favourites,

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Of right admitted, who will dare to name
One, not possess'd of all the powers of mind,
In strong predominance? True bards are never
Idle and empty dreamers: they are moral
Philosophers, of th' classes most enlighten'd.
There is no genuine poetry, but in truth;—
Truth in the principle, and similitude!—

The thoughtless may raise up their eyes, and stare,
Since they have heard that poetry is fable!
But they forget that fiction still may be
The vehicle of Truth! It is the fabled
And allegorical embodiment
Of abstract Truth! If it embodies Falsehood,
'Tis but a vile and base delusion!
Nor will the charms of Falsehood be enduring.
We may be caught a moment by delusive
Colours; but soon they fade before our eyes:
And never does the loveliness of Truth
Require factitious ornaments: in her nakedness
She is most lovely! Thus the majesty
Of thought in Milton's strains is most sublime,
When plainest! Thus all floridness is empty;—
The mark of a weak artificial mind!—
But when the ornament is of the essence
Of the high thought, not then can it be empty!
For sometimes do the thought, and its accompanying
Language of illustration, rise together!
Trite thoughts in flowery language are like harlots
In gaudy millenery: fine without;—
Faded, deform'd, and spiritless within.

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When a thought wants the setting off of dress,
It is a proof 'tis worthless in itself.

Never the movements of the subtle mind,
Rich in its treasur'd stores, will be exhausted.
Genius may ever ply her toils upon them,
And still develop something new and useful.
The shades of difference, the nice distinctions,
Of which the course of time and of occasion
Calls for th'observance; th'inexhaustible
Varieties of application,
Demand original faculties of judgment.
The power of combination, and comparison,
And keen discrimination, and command
Of words, to others to communicate them
Clearly and forcibly. It is a talent
Of enviable puissance to seize
New features, strong and undeniable,
Not hitherto observ'd, and bring them forth
To meet th'assent of every future gazer.
For how innumerable are the minds,
That can assent and follow;—yet not lead!
The few, that on their own resources live,
Will not disturb themselves by others' dictates,
But still with their own faculties examine,
And form their judgments on their own convictions.
Then there is always freshness in the manner;
And to old truths an added testimony.
But repetition of old borrow'd tunes
Is like the music of the organ grinder,
Filling the streets and air with heedless noises.

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The memory is a treacherous quality,
If too much faith be put upon its stores;
For it the higher faculties seduces
Into a sleeping idleness, while all
Is ready, free from labour of creation,
For the demand which each occasion raises.
But there's a stirring and inquisitive spirit,
Which will not rest on pledge of others' word:
But still must set its own impatient instruments
To work; and sift and balance, and essay
All by strict tests and measures of its own.
Then Memory, the storekeeper, is useful
To furnish the materials,—not alone
From other sources drawn, but by the powers
Of th'architect's own mind already form'd
In simpler combinations, or as elements
For future buildings. Yet go thro the authors
In many languages with critical
Acumen;—you will find originality
Most rare!—It chiefly is the borrow'd store,
Somewhat disguis'd by foreign ornament.
Yet they who have the faculties ever working,
Fermenting, new-composing, are too apt
To have th'impressions of the memory
Disturb'd, derang'd, and many times defac'd.
When the same subject they again renew,
They re-create; and do not bring again
The old creation; often cast, indeed,
In the same mould; and of identical likeness.

But they, who venture for themselves to think,

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And yet cannot think right, would do far better
To tread in others' paths, and follow guides.
Originality in being wrong
Is not a merit worthy of the laurel;
But only fit to raise a stare, like conjurers
At country wakes! The forms of Nature never
Must outrag'd or exaggerated be.
“Truth” as the critic Johnson nobly says,
“Always sufficient is to fill the mind!”—
One tint too much; one over-strained feature;
One combination false; one evil junction
Of heterogeneous elements, destroys
The spell, and utterly dissolves the merit.
The strong exaggeration is not genius;
It is the artifice of the sterile bungler:
And ever in the richest minds the thought,
That lies beneath, is stronger and more glowing
Than the free, frank, involuntary language,
Which, hurried forward, follows it in vain.
For rapid thought did never yet permit
The stay for studied words: and he, who labours
Upon the scent, will ne'er arrest his prey.
We cannot on the blazes of the sky
Steadily look for a continuance;
But must avert our eyes on other objects:
And while we look, the blaze is gone; and other,
And other shapes and hues, burst from the clouds,
And call us to pursue them; and the charm
Is vanish'd, if we seize not at the moment.

We read, or only ought to read, for wisdom;

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And what deludes, is the reverse of wisdom.
False hues, false facts, and false associations,
If for a moment they assent and faith
Impose, with folly's poisons misdirect:
And if no faith they waken, then no pleasure
Can they arouse: for where belief there is not,
There is no charm. Thus fairy superstitions,
Which the mind is not nurtur'd to give ear to,
Are but a child's amusements; and all mysteries,
Which judgment and which reason will admit not,
Ill suit the taste of a sound intellect.
“I hate what I cannot believe!” said Horace.
Then fools of some most babyish invention
Cry, “'tis a pretty fancy!”—Fancy thus,
When she in artificial fiction deals,
Wastes all her toil in gewgaws; and her breath
Exhausts in blowing bubbles. 'Tis not harmless;
For the true strain it to discredit brings;
And in one censure critics, and the world,
Of bosoms hard and stupid heads, involve
All who in metre write, and strike the strings
Of the lyre, false or genuine. All, which they,
Who sounder minds and sterner tastes affect,
Have said in cold disparagement of poetry,
Only to these false fablings will apply.

What other human being, in the strength
And soundness equally, as in the lustre
Of intellect, could e'er compare with Dante,
Petrarch, and Spenser, and divinest Milton?
All highest human wisdom; all opinion

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Most lofty and enlighten'd; all exalted
Sentiment, in the Muse's strains is found.
And if it be an idle empty note,
Bearing no solid and instructive matter,
It is not of the Muse:—the Muse will never
Own it, as from the fount of Helicon.

And why should not the Muses be the deities,
Who of the soundest lore their lessons give?
Are not the faculties, which separately
In other intellectual beings live,
United all in them? 'Twould then be strange,
Did they not clearer see, and deeper pierce
Than others? Above all, intuitive knowledge
Is theirs, and half-inspir'd sagacity,
Which sees the complex workings of the soul,
And from its causes draws the line of action,
Which time, and the strong tide of human things,
Will gradually unfold in man's existence.

He, who believes that he can stir a step
From censure safe, and from sinister comments,
Is a most inconvenient self-deceiver.
Passions of Envy and of Jealousy
Over the world predominate; and Dulness
Mistakes, or will not even notice take.
Th'objector—and the world is ever full
Of keen objectors,—will with plausibility
Exclaim, that if my theory were true
Of th' poet's art;—its uses and abuses—
Then the true bard would ever find the fame
He merits, and pretenders be proscrib'd:—

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But that it is not so; and they who, judging
By tests here urg'd, are empty charlatans,
Are oft the idols of the multitude,
While genius pines neglected, and e'en starves.

All this, no doubt, is strange, and contradictory;
But 'tis, perhaps, the fearfulness of judging
By one's own feelings, and the evil custom
Of following the leader, when some critic,
Who learn'd his art by measure and by rule,
Has got pessession of the public ear.
The false dominion is by lapse of time
Broken; and the true flame bursts forth at last
Thro clouds and darkness; and forever after
Shines unobstructed. Milton thus, and Collins,
And many another bard, who struggled long
With his unkind cotemporaries, lives.
The mob of readers read not what they like;
But what it is the fashion to admire:
They read that they may talk, and be prepar'd
With knowledge of the topics others talk of:—
And what is artificial, is more easily
Learn'd than the natural; for native merit
Requires a mirror bright by nature's force.
Those mirrors are not rare; but rarely trust
To their own strength and action. Popular taste
Is, as sage Horace, in past ages, sung,
As fleeting and capricious as the winds.

If the sole spur of fame be popular clamour,
Then will the track of fame be false and vulgar.
The bard must be prepar'd t'encounter coldness,

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Unblighted, and uncheck'd; and onward go
Firm and undaunted; while around him fools
Are cheer'd, and on men's shoulders mounted high.

But oft is Genius morbid,—and neglect
Withers her heart, or turns the brain to madness.
Thus most unhappy Collins!—when his notes
Divine, fell dead upon the public ear,
With deep resentment to the flames he gave
Those precious monuments of inspiration;
Then wild disorder his benighted fancy
Afflicted, and his bodily vigour fail'd,
And a few years he pin'd in gloom, or shrieked
His sorrows thro his native city's cloisters;
And found tranquillity but in an early grave!

But this submission to the world's unkindness
Was but a weakness, which detracted from
The grandeur of his genius. Not, with swords
Of public vengeance hanging over him,
Did Milton's spirit quail. In poverty
And blindness he went on to weave the web
Of his immortal Epic:—and he died
Tranquil and happy in maturity
Of years. His calm self-estimate, and confidence
In his own glorious powers, was never shaken
By all the deadly frost of biting breaths,
Or dark aversion of a vicious court,
And flinty-hearted people. “If they hear not,”
He said, “posterity will hear, and glorify
“My spirit! and while floating in the skies,
“My ghost will listen to the swelling notes,

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“That on the wings of winds shall bear my name
“Throughout all countries, and all distant ages!”

To ponder on the growing web was rapture,
E'en though no other knew it but himself:
'Tis true he could not with his outward eyes
See it; but in his mental vision brightly
It shone;—and he, above all earthly power
Of kings and rulers, flourish'd; and in scorn,
With stern republican virtue sat and mus'd!—

And now I to myself return!—“What, egotisms?
“Eternal egotisms!”—Yes, egotisms!
Johnson has said, that the obscurest person,
If frankly he the movements will relate
Of his own heart and mind, can be amusing,
And e'en instructive! and the cavilling public
With lively interest has ever read
The auto-biographic page, if vanity
And falsehood do not their disgusting poison
Infuse too copiously. The writer may
Deceive himself, but if he wilfully
Will others misinform, then scorn will justly
His portion be! And there is no deception,
Which will avail to mingle the ungenuine
With the sincere! The marked difference strikes
A common reader; and the artifice
At once explodes, and wakes contempt and hatred.

'Tis said that pity nearly is allied
To scorn; but surely this has been incautiously
And incorrectly hazarded by sages.
Pity is more allied to love and friendship.

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It is superiority, which wakens
Distrust, and jealousy, fear, and avoidance.
With common weaknesses, and common frailties
We sympathise: but him, who is above us
In strength of heart, and freedom from the follies
And imperfections of humanity,
We may admire and fear, but rarely love.
When the illustrious and exalted bosom
Is soften'd by adversity, we then
With all its sorrows take companionship.
Reserve is but the trait of a false pride,
And heart of cowardly dread of strict observance:
'Tis by the nice inspecting of himself
And undisguised disclosure, that we learn
Man's inward nature: if we know not that,
Our knowledge is but barren, and of naught.

Then, if I have forever made confession
Of all my feelings; of the injuries,
And troubles, and misfortunes, that my lot
Has destin'd me in a tempestuous life
Incessantly to strive with,—am I wrong?
And if I tell the common ills of life,
The hopes destroy'd, the light mortifications,
The scorn of “boobies mounting o'er one's head.”
The sting of calumny, the dart of envy,
They are the conflicts all have to encounter;—
Whence sympathy' or instruction all may draw;
And thus when in a glass we see the workings
Reflected, we can better study them:
The shades are often nice, and tints are flying;

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And when the pen or pencil does not fix them,
They are too airy for comparison,
Too subtle, and of too much evanescence,
Shadowy, and changeable as is the rainbow.

But it is crime, it seems, to talk of self,
E'en in th'endeavour to detect these movements
Of intellectual and invisible spirit;
And all those impulses, by which the blood
In hidden tracks circulates round the heart!

There is likewise in literature a secret
History, wisdom well may wish to learn:
The hopes, the fears, mischances, and defeats
Of the Bard's life, are not a trifling theme.
But then the question comes, “who is a Bard?”—
And not to me the multitude allow
The boon is given. Surely to write in metre,
Cannot alone a poet constitute!
It is a spirit indefinable;
A flame of intellect, and glowing heart,
Which rules and measures at defiance sets;
Which comes with exhalations from the fountain
Of sweetness and of purity; which wakes
In the air music, and involuntarily
The human bosom on its floating stream
Bears away with it; which analysis
Defies, and laughs at all the critic's laws;
And by its own internal force, where all
Of outward look is simple, shadowy, empty,
With a resistless power of magic works.

It is a partial dispensation of

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The breathings of some higher class of beings.
'Tis not the language, but the thought and feeling,
Which makes the spell; and in the humblest prose,
And words least ornamented, it may shine!
And thus it shines in Bunyan's vulgar phrase.—
Perchance it rises from the living presence
Imagination to all objects gives;
And from that presence there is warmth and vigour,
Which memory has not the power t' impart:
Memory gives alone a faint, and partial,
And technical resemblance,—not the living
Object; and with no actual passions burns.
Oft 'tis a memory of words and signs,
Not of the very images: then 'tis cold
E'en as the sculptor's stone, or painter's canvass.
But from the elements, which Nature's scenery
Plants on the fancy's mirror, and the intuitive
Impressions of some celestial objects,
And aspirations, and emotions loftier,
Inventive genius joins, and thus creates,
The presence of a million rapturing visions.

This is the genuine theory of poetry;
Not the dogmatic dulness of cramp pedants,
Whose knowledge is mechanical and barren.
Not all the labour, learning, art, that mind
Can most apply, will aught avail to wake
From the lyre's strings the Muse's genuine tones.
'Tis not the subject, nor the elements
Of which the theme is woven,—'tis the warmth,
The life, the tints, the atmosphere; the halo

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Of brightness, and of glory that surrounds it;
Which in the fountains of Imagination
Springs, and is fann'd, and flames. There is no fruit
Of poetry, in other climes that ripens.
When in the hot-bed of mechanical heat
'Tis rais'd, it has no flavour; and it dies!

Thus I approach my task's allotted bound!
In six and twenty nights successively
No interruption has disturb'd its progress.
Much it has babbled, reckless of due order;
And much, it will be said, of no connection
With its pretended subject. Let it be:
Let the mean cavil, as it can, prevail!
'Tis vain to make responses to objections,
Which from the temper, not the reason, come!
My Muse, I trust, has made no great omissions
In noticing the worthies that belong,
O Lake sublime, to thy enchanting circuit!
In scientific lore she has no ventures;
And in describing natural scenery,
Best by the pencil touch'd, she has been thrifty.
The thought, the sentiment, the character
Of human intellect—the heart of man,—
She has attempted most with daring hand
Frankly to draw the veil from. If the touches
Be neither true, nor plausible; nor worthy
Regard, the cypher'd leaves will be a waste,
That the winds soon will scatter in the air.
But if of men, life, manners, their pursuits,
And their opinions, there be justice, force,

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Or honourable feeling, in his judgments,
Then will his mental toils have not been vain!

It is not from the stores of memory,
But from th'internal fountain we must speak:
All that the memory gives, is stale and faint;
And adds no knowledge to the minds of others.
The repetition of the self-same things;
The mimickry of notes; the mocking bird,—
Is not alone inane;—it is disgusting!
Nothing more rare than the original songster;
Nothing so common as the mocking-bird!—

So, when the great Magician of the North
Bursts forth with a new note, a thousand echoers
Start up at once, and indiscrimination
Believes them genuine rivals, or perchance
Superior, if there be defects, or negligences,
Which trick and effort can exaggerate!

And so again, when by a spell the eloquent
Creator of Otranto's Castle told
His witch-like, horror-breathing, tale, competitors
Rose numerous, and their stories wild of ghosts,
And gothic halls, and battlements, and helmets,
Giants, and dwarfs, and pigmies, multiplied:
But never one in spirit, or the genuine
Essence of that, which made the charm, succeeded.

There is no place for mediocrity;
No hope, no saving point. So Horace sung:—
And who has since his judgments countervail'd?
All the mechanical produce of the press,
For vulgar readers manufactur'd, is

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A curse, a poison! It dissolves the force
Of mind, and all its elements; misleads,
Where there is interest in error; damps
Th'originator in his wasting toils;
Destroys the fire of genius; and the laurel
Blights with the counterfeit of rays eclipsing.
Then comes ennui, and cold neglect, and scorn,
And mean confusion of the high and worthy
With charlatanic dealers in the trade
Of words, and borrow'd thoughts, and stolen facts,
And pourings of quick poison in the cauldron.

Two centuries, and perchance another half,
Have pass'd, since England, and perhaps all Europe,
The trade began of manufacturing
A mental food to please the public appetite.
Then Robert Greene and Thomas Nash, and others,
Their boon associates, gain'd their daily bread
By furnishing the press with tales and fancies,
In prose and verse, fitted to gratify
The undiscerning taste of common minds.
The lore was mingled much with conversational
Phrases and topics;—full of vulgar saws,
And trite opinions, and the modes of judging
Of life familiar to the popular talk:
But they were men of genius, and debas'd
Their faculties, for want, and gain of lucre.
They liv'd in misery; they died in poverty;
And in the ages, that succeeded them
Their writings were waste paper, held in scorn
Their very names, and even of their authors,

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Forgotten; though, again, the present day
Seeks them to gratify the rich collectors
Of ancient rarities; and curious critics
Are willing an imaginary merit
To find in them; and truly they sometimes
Manners and language usefully illustrate:
And here and there a burst of fire, and eloquence,
Breaks forth, that has the seeds of life in it.

In this strange world 'tis vain to seek to separate
The good and evil:—they together grow!
But yet th'abuses of the press are frightful;—
A pestilence which daily wretchedness,
Prostration of the mind, affliction, ruin,
And death itself, works out! the chymical drug
The particles of governments dissolving,
And letting loose the chains that tie the dogs
Of anarchy! Then, on the contrary,
Where were th'englight'nment of the world without it
What should we do at the deprival of
The eloquence of genius, and of wisdom?

Authors are now so multitudinous,
That awe and reverence for the occupation
Is gone; and general readers have no talent
The genuine from the mechanical
To separate;—nay, rather would prefer
The false;—which has more method, and more polish.
But then they meet the men, and find them common
In all their notions and their feelings; and
In apprehension dull, in fancy lifeless:
And thus they cry, “it wants no qualities

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Of eminence to have success in letters.”

So genius and so learning lose the power
Of doing good by awe and reverence:
And thus the spur is blunted, that would urge us
“To scorn delights and live laborious days.”
It was the love of glory, that led on
Mortals upon their spiritual wings to keep
Their course, in spite of earth's impediments.
But when the cheer is ceas'd, and all is dead
Of human voices, then the force of man
Lasts not, in an exhausting track to bear
His onward way! Thus Genius pines in silence,
While false pretenders wrest away the chaplet.

O thirst of money! 'Tis the universal
Passion of human kind:—not thirst of fame!
When I have said that I have work'd for fame
Thro my woe-follow'd life, few have believ'd me!
And work'd not only without gain of money,
But at its mighty cost; and knowing too,
Beforehand, it would be a cost,—not gain!
And if there be a few, who have giv'n faith
To the assertion, of those few still fewer
But blame it as a folly, if not crime!
Then others, if I neither yet have gain'd,
Nor could gain if I would, assume 'tis proof
Complete, I have not genius, nor e'en talent!
They say, the judgment of the multitude
Alone, is testimony due of merit:—
And that to please a few, is the result
Of whim, and partiality, and prejudice.

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But yet not always has the popular writer
The highest worth, or force, or taste, or knowledge.
Sometimes there is a base necessity,
Down to the popular taste to write,—not up!

Then, as it is my folly to be frank,
And many a mighty ill has risen from it,
Let me confess, (for frank confessions always
Relieve my loaded heart,) that I could never
The public please, or gain a kind reception!—
'Tis natural, that they, who have the fortune
To suit the people, should insist upon it
To be the only true criterion
Of real merit.—Yet does reason justify
The rule? And are the many loftier-minded
And wiser, than the few, whom nature's gifts
Endow, and toils of learning still improve?
Judgment and taste in part are the results
Of nice and wide comparison. The multitude
Cannot have leisure for this painful culture.

Sometimes, as in the mighty northern bard,
The magical creator of high tales,
The gifted few and general public voice
Concur! It is where Nature's touches strike,
With art unmingled, on the human bosom!—

But they who struggle in the common bustle
Of life, and by its common passions move,
To a sympathy with those sublimer notions,
Which actuate the few, are too insensible.
Those impulses disturb their daily courses,
And render the rough path, they have to tread,

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Too painful to a temperament refin'd,
And blood rais'd to a sensitive excess.

Why should I fear my thoughts and sentiments
To lay before the world, if I believe them
True? Scorn, or ridicule, cannot affect
Wisdom, or truth, or virtue:—generous feelings
May be the mockery of brutal vice;
Or shameless hardness of an icy heart:
But soon the scorn will turn upon the scorner,
And he be cover'd by his earthly foulness.

'Tis affectation, and base artifice,
Which ought to tremble at the piercing eye
Of rival candidates for fame and favour.
When art is in her odious colours shewn,
When false pretension is expos'd to view
Bare, then for fame comes killing ignominy:—
But not for what is said in perfect faith,
And with intention virtuous. If indeed
It be faint, trite, and foolish,—in the scorn,
Or dead neglect, which covers it, there is
A sting, or breath-stopping oppression, hard
To bear, and carefully to be avoided.
But ere the self-delusion prompts the utterer
His voice to lift upon the public stage,
There must be in the foolish, and the stupid,
Some wilful error in the estimate
Of force and of acquirement. Man is reckless
Of brother man's self-love, and lets him know,
In terms which cannot be misunderstood,
Where nature has been sparing of her gifts.

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It is, perhaps, th'effect, of evil habit,
That of themselves men make erroneous estimates:
Nature points out to them where they are weak;
And trial, and comparison, a lesson
Of certainty they cannot fly from, gives.

For public censure, and for public praise,
In all the minor literary journals,
It now is prov'd, and known to all the world,
That they are bought and sold, and hireling scriblers
Are kept in pay by grasping publishers,
To recommend their goods by fulsome flatteries,
And odious falsehoods. But pursued too far,
Fraud, trick, and gross mendacity, will explode
At last; and some new artifice must soon
Be plann'd, and enter'd on, to vend bad wine!
'Tis true, the mean deception is discover'd
Ere long, but not until the bad commodity
Is sold; and thus the vendor gains his purpose;
And for a time supports a thriving trade.

Then all intruders on the lucrative
Profession they are driving, these apt penmen
Pursue with vengeance to extermination,
To brethren of the quill,—of the same factions—
Alone will they mercy and peace extend;—
Or liberty to enter in the regions
Of authorship, as members of the elect!
By rules precisely the reverse of those,
On which true criticism must be built,
They ply the instruments of their base trade,—
Their rules and measures. More of loathsome art,

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And toil mechanical, the more with them
The merit;—and the more of natural gift
And inspiration, less to be distinguish'd,
Or pass'd without some scoff, or taunt, or bitterness,
Or wicked and malign misrepresentation.
With them,—who works for fame, is or a fool,
Or a most dangerous miscreant, who must be
Crush'd for the common benefit of the trade!
Does chance or hard necessity e'er press
The genuine son of Genius to the faction?
But in those cells of mean intrigue, amid
Foul lucre's birds of prey he draws his breath;
Clouds, vapours, pestilence, absorb his faculties,
And turn his powers to poison and corruption.

Yet there's an outward and most plausible semblance
Oft in this hot-bed produce, which has poignancy
For vicious tastes: but soon it rots, and dies;
Has no revival; and is heard no more:
For it has naught of native life in it;
And only breathes by fashion, and caprice.

But the true strain will live for ever;—frost
And snow and blight and tempest cannot injure it,
Or paralyse the force and glow of spirit,
That circuit thro its arteries and elements.
After the lapse of ages still it lives
And breathes, e'en as at first it liv'd and breath'd.

No artificial poet;—none whose flame
Was secondary and derivative,
Has ever liv'd in fame for half a century
Beyond his mortal life, though many an one

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Of this inferior merit has obtain'd
A temporary reputation.

The days and hours are drawing to an end,
When I approach the close of my farewell.
My Muse has freely flow'd without or effort,
Or artifice, or polish, or disguise.
It has no claim upon the ground of ornament,
Or illustration, or concinnity
And happiness of phrase, or harmony
Of metre: nor can place its hope of favour
But in the force and rectitude of thought,
And purity of native sentiment.
If, though these thoughts and sentiments be true,
They yet be stale and trite, they claim no mercy;—
And I well know they will not, cannot, have it!
The matter may be found conformable
To much of many an author, who precedes me.
Not therefore is it borrow'd: if it has
The stamp of truth, but little can it differ;
For truth is constant and immutable.

Yet not the less, e'en though already said,
May be the use of saying it again,
Grounded upon concurrence of observance,
And sympathy of bosom, if there be
The charm of novel language, and fresh life.—
The borrower is ever known by technical
Marks of his theft; and artificial phrases
Identical; and trains of thought the same,
When not allied by nature but by whim.

But in the paths of lonely meditation

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For sixty years have I explor'd my way;
Nor sought a guide, nor trod upon the steps
Of others;—oft in darkness; oft in storms;
Oft by the fairy lights of silver moonbeams;
And sometimes in the garish glow of day,
Beneath meridian suns. The stores we gather,
We are not willing should exhaust themselves,
Pent up within the bosom's dark abode:
That which is sought in solitude, is sought
Full oft for social purposes;—alone
We do the task, which is for fellow-man;
And but retire to think with more intenseness
Upon humanity;—its griefs and joys!
'Tis only by incessant pondering,
That we can know the mysteries of man's nature:
And by the unrelaxing exercise
Of all the mental faculties, can gain
Precision of ideas, and command
Of language, to express them properly.
Much it imports us all, the lights and shades
Of moral science, deeply and precisely
To be familiar with; the human character
In all its passions and varieties
To see reflected, as upon a mirror,
And all the tribes of just association
To clear and strengthen in our feeble minds.
We do not love to think exclusively,
And have no sympathy with fellow-beings.

But few are they, who in their riper years
Care for the tricks or gems of poetry.

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'Tis only in the essence of the matter,
The spirit of the Muse, an audience sound
Can take delight, and in the simplest words,
And plainest dress, and rudest numbers, may
That spirit live, and be communicated!—

If the strain be too long; of dull reflection
Too copious,—in sentiment affected,
Or false, unvirtuous, and inanimate;
If imagery in portion due be wanting,
And if too intellectual, immaterial,
In incident deficient, and in pathos;
Beyond the requisite limits of a poem
Didactic,—which pretends not to the charms
Of vulgar fable,—let it have the fate
It shall in candour merit! Not on one
Task of the mind do I rely for favour!
Much have I labour'd, and in various walks,
E'en though but rarely cheer'd by human praise.
And now, when at the age of man arriving,
I do not find my humble faculties clouded,
But can from midnight to the seventh hour
Prolong the task unwearied, then be ready
For the day's ordinary occupations;
It is a load thrown off my bosom;—lighter
I feel at the discharge; and if no day
Passes without some innocent toil perform'd,
I feel a joy that I can shew the progress
Of my existence by some visible sign,
That marks the course of one day from another.

There was a time when the disorder'd current

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Of my blood, like a weight upon my brain
Sat, and oppress'd it;—thus for two sad years
And more, my faculties were dull and stagnant:
But all at once the vapour broke away;
And in an instant my o'er-mantled brain
Burst to a flame, that ever since has blaz'd!

And still, O Leman Lake, on thy beloved
Waters I daily look; and see the sun
Rise over Alpine mountains; nor has once
Sleep overpower'd me at its earliest dawn,
For thirteen months successively. And now,
For nine and forty nights uninterrupted,
Have I the strain continued;—and I close.

END OF BOOK VI.

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BOOK VII.

It is a charge against me, that I cherish
The love of praise too much: they mean the love
Of flattery. Now I deny the charge:
I love to gain th'attention of the wise
And good:—for who would labour day and night,
Yet gain no notice? who does so, must have
A most egregious confidence in self!—
Who has a powerful apprehensiveness,
Knows his own faults, and weaknesses, and failures;
And ever to the test of others' judgments
Is driven with a just anxiety!
He hails approval therefore with delight;
But this is not a love flattery!
'Tis ever thus, where to a vase two handles
Exist to hold it by, they take the wrong:
And where there is a candid and uncandid
Comment, to which a quality is subject,
The harsh censorious world th'uncandid take,

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A rectitude of thought and sentiment
Is the grand praise, to which the noble-minded
Aspire: but of that rectitude what proof
Other than commendation can be had?
And who is he who can presume to say;
“I to myself am all; and 'tis sufficient
“Of my own mighty mind to have th'approval!”—
Each one may have perverse associations,
And some delusive sentiments, which meet not
The sympathy of others. Then to learn
By praise, one's writings from these ills are free,
Is a just satisfaction. A mind enlighten'd
By clear, pure, accurate, and kindly views;—
A bosom of benevolent, and generous,
And glowing feelings; a fine faculty
Of lucid language, easily educ'd,
Are worthy of “the fostering dew of praise!”

But it is true, that we must guard our passion
For this approval, and for lofty fame!
It may too fiercely grow upon our hearts,
And burn us up, or lead us wide astray:
It must not breed conceit, or insolence,
Scornful neglect, or puff'd up vanity.—
Without the spur of this sublime aspiring,
How could the checks and fogs of life be conquer'd?
The melancholy Young has in his satires
Shewn that the love of fame is universal!
Distinction, good or bad!—for to be notic'd;
And 'tis sufficient—e'en for folly' or crime.
But if the passion be for virtuous fame—

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Of intellectual loftiness, 'tis judg'd
With all severity and mean distortion!
Fame is capricious; often she is long
In coming, but with labour due, and prayer,
And perseverance, she will come at last;
Yet not perchance until the grave has clos'd
The human ear, and back again to earth
Consign'd the mortal part. The Spirit in the air
No doubt will hear the tributes consecrated
To the cold tomb! O what delight it is
To think our memories will still survive,
After the spark of mortal life is out!
It will be pleasant to have left a record
Of our opinions and imaginations;
Of that which rais'd the tremblings of the heart,
And fill'd the eye with rapture, and awaken'd
The hand to strike the lyre's resounding strings.

To let life glide away in barren silence,
Nothing done, plann'd, or hop'd, or even dream'd,
Is an existence of true wretchedness!
I would have every day throughout the year
By some increase to wisdom's treasures mark'd:
The page of learning, and intelligence,
And reason high, must not be slumber'd over;
Attention deep, and ever exercis'd,
And recollection most severely task'd,
And nice discrimination; and the movements
Of bosom, always in strong excitation,
Watch'd with an hand that shadows can embrace,
Are necessary to supply the appetite

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Of virtuous and long-enduring glory.
No certain bliss is in a sensual being:
The pleasures pall; and then become disgusting:
The meanest being has a conscience, which
Reproaches him for falling from the state
Of intellectual desires and hopes.
Each day steals from him some material part
Of an existence, which is wearisome;
Yet for the hope of better gives the fear
Of something worse:—a dark perplexing road,
All clouds, and cares, and heaviness to tread!

Ever to intellect there is a novelty,
Which each successive day brings forth; the eye
Grows stronger, and sees further, and more clearly;
And every day the old materials, turning
To some new use, gain some new interest.
The faculties by practice grow more vigorous,
Subtle, and sharp.

In a false path, surrounded by false lights,
And in the heat of a factitious air,
Sometimes the mind adds toil intense to toil,
By necromancer's wand to raise delusions.
Thus Calvin, in the fervor of his zeal
Religious, strangely blind and harsh became;
And what he claim'd himself from bigot Rome,—
The liberty of thought,—gave not to others;
But persecuted it, when contrary
To his own dogmas, not alone with punishment;
But death, e'en at the stake in burning flames!
Had he his doctrines preach'd, where Rome's religion

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Prevail'd, he would assuredly have deem'd it
Impious and merciless, the same infliction
Of mortal vengeance to have given to him!
Yet did Rome deem his doctrines as repugnant
To the true faith! Let us then take the worst
Of Servet that his enemies pronounce;
'Tis said that he was restless, turbulent,
Free-thinking, of an evil genius,
Dealing in dangerous speculations,
And blasphemously upon holy secrets
Prying, a sceptic in the mysteries
Of necessary faith! 'Tis thus that Rome
Deem'd of the liberal Protestant! But then,
O Calvin, boasting that thou fledst away
From impious and idolatrous persecution,
And that thou wast thyself the blest apostle
Of freedom and pure worship,—didst become
Relentless persecutor of whoever
With thee agreed not; and 'tis said that treachery
Thy vengeance aggravated! From thy secret
Intrigues and accusations in a foreign
State he was sued, and driven by fear to exile;
And when to the abodes, where thou preach'dst liberty
As to a land of refuge and protection,
He came, a prison met him at thy urgency,
And thou becam'st his most blood-thirsty accuser!

Then nothing but the stake would satisfy
Thy craving appetite of cruel death!
And thus he was condemn'd for free opinion
Upon a point of subtle speculation;

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Last to the stake was brought;—the faggots round him
Pil'd,—and the fire applied to burn his body,
And loose his soul from mortal frame in torment!
But the wind blew the flames away, and slowly
His body was consum'd to death; as if
The elements combin'd his pain to lengthen;
And he in his excruciating dolour
Cried out: “O quicker burn, thou fire! O quicker!
“And end my agonies, and Calvin's triumph!
“See with what gloating joy he turns upon me
“His furious eyes! and blesses the rude blasts,
“That draw aside the fire, that it may slower
“Perform its work, and thus augment my sufferings!
“Is this the man of mercy;—the apostle
“Of mild religion? the fam'd instrument,
“The mind of man from slavery to deliver?
“Peace, and benevolence, and charity,
“To preach to all? More vehemently Rome
“In her ferocious despotism never
“Raged! ah me! from wolf to still more ravenous,
“Blood-sucking, and heart-tearing tyger, I
“Have fall'n a victim! Rome, resume your prey;
“And, as he deals with me, so deal with him!”

Then the wind blew the smoke away; the flames
Ascended bright; and then a mighty cloud
Came o'er the sky, and thunder roll'd, and lightning
Darted; and Servet then gave up the ghost;—
And Calvin trembled, and went home to gloom,
Half sullenly delighted, half afraid.
Now worn with cares, ambition, pride, revenge,

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Mingled with holy zeal, he pin'd away,
And died exhausted at a middle age.

It would not be unmeet, if the bold Muse
Should enter into this Man's mystic heart;
This stiff-neck'd puritan; this bold corrector
Of moral sinfulness; this harsh usurper
Of freedom for himself, of tyranny
Over the minds and hearts and acts of others!
I am not willing to dethrone a name
From exaltation by long ages sanction'd:
But who can reconcile the death of Servet
With a good heart, or holy principles?
It was th'undoubted principle of Calvin
To pull down all above him;—all below,
Under his feet to tread. The subtle poison
Of his insidious doctrines shot contagion
Thro all old governments, and like some chymical
Element, could dissolve and separate
Ties and alliances of time and reason.

If there be mysteries in papal doctrines,
Not less are those of Calvin! They 're pretences,
Under a spiritual cloak to gratify
A temporal ambition; and to cover
Sensual indulgence of all wordly vices
By odious, cunning, mean hypocrisy.
Treachery, breach of faith, and robbery,
And reckless selfishness, are thus encourag'd;
And yet not thus exactly did the Founder
Of this puissant sect conduct himself.
Many of the sterner virtues he himself

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Rigidly practis'd; toilsome, abstinent,
Direct, unhypocritical, forbearing
In self indulgence, but in pride and anger
And bitter vengeance,—those three most imposing
And irreligious passions;—a believer
In his own doctrines; zealous and devout
In the Creator's service,—day and night,
Working to the great end he undertook!

And such is man's immingled being; such
His imperfections and his woeful frailties!
High virtues and high vices;—pride satanic,
With adoration of the Deity;
And with a daily prayer that love and kindness
Might in the heart grow up, relentless cruelty,
Chains, rods, the sword, the stake, the flames, the halter,
With reason sound and most severe, delusion
And blindness where a favourite doctrine rose;
A love of freedom, yet a bigot faith;
Irrational belief on Heaven's Election,
And favouritism, which would be impeachment
Of the Divinity's unbending justice;—
Faith separated from action, the most dangerous
Doctrine for human virtue.

In days of old the punishment of death
Distains the pages of all history:—
As if for slight offences man might take
Away the existence of a brother being!
And above all, for wrongs against the State,
Where doubtful policy may justify
Various opinion. Governments, that boasted

200

Of liberty, were scarce more merciful,
Or sparing of the sword of final punishment.
Alas, all power is wanton, if not cruel!
It matters not its form—or king, or oligarchy,
Or constitution, or e'en pure republic!
A war against authority, 'tis said,
Must be suppress'd, or that authority
Can for a moment only hold its sway!

Check, and a retribution may be necessary;
But not by death,—except for such rebellion
As aims at life of others! Thus we read
With pity, or with horror, the strange tale
Of Spiffame's execution in the Molard!
He was a man of high accomplishments,
Of learning, intellect, and genius,
A statesman, and a courtier, hospitable,
Splendid, and witty, and of blandest manners:
And for religion's sake had refuge taken
Within this Reformation's capital!
But he was call'd capricious and inconstant,
And sigh'd again for wider scenes of action;
And sought within the bosom of Rome's church
To be receiv'd once more, and for reward
To get a bishopric: he was betray'd
Back to his puritanic domicile!—
There was the lock of private muniments
Broken, and a false document of marriage,
To gain his heritage for a bastard issue,
Brought forth, and made a capital accusation
Before the high tribunal of the State!

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He was found guilty, sentenc'd, e'en to death;
And in three fleeting days dragg'd out, and executed.

There are, who of some secret acts of treason
With Savoy's Prince suspect him; but for acts
Not tried or charg'd, no principles of justice
Allow a man to suffer! It is said
He died repentant of his heinous sins,
In the pure temperament of sanctity;
Acknowledging the justice of his sentence;
And the sad close of his deceitful life!
O hypocrites, who aggravate the dreadful
Infliction of a death of violence,
And shame, by adding to it false confessions!
Who would admit the rectitude of judgment,
That was about to take away his being,
For such a crime committed years before,
In dissolute days, and never acted on?

Here Calvin's fierce and unforgiving spirit
Rul'd o'er the minds of magistrates and statesmen!
It was a fearful time that I would not
Have liv'd in, notwithstanding all the boast
Of golden ages of our ancestors!
But Calvin and his advocates contended,
Fierceness alone could counteract the licence
Of times so dissolute!—and what of evil,
The change of false religion had brought with it,
Must be corrected by a pure religion!
But that cannot be pure, which deals in death,
And blood, the scaffold, hatchet, and the torture!
Not home with them did Whittingham, and Knox,

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A pure religion bring;—but sow'd the seeds
Of discord, and of war, and rank distrust,
And hatred, and of future rapine, cruelty,
And fields and rivers cover'd with the slain.
Then the arts ceas'd before the cries of war
And canting hypocrites rul'd o'er the land!

Thus Caledonia's beautiful and suffering
Queen was by Knox's rudeness with foul language
Ever insulted; and the eloquent
Buchanan upon kings his venom cast!
Kings may abuse their power; and thus will power
In all hands be at moments ill administer'd:—
But power there must be still! in anarchy
Will be alone the power of strength and wickedness!
The puritan loves power, and is relentless
Against all other power, except his own!

In England a great noble, of high quality,
The puritanic party's cause espous'd;—
The favourite of his Queen, the prince luxurious,
Who liv'd in all the pride of feudal splendor,—
Dudley, of Leicester Earl; a man by crimes,
Adulteries and murders, stigmatis'd,
As Cumnor's shrieks, and ghostly stain, will witness.
He for the church's spoil design'd it well
Such patronage to offer; and old Burleigh,
Though wise, yet cunning also, held with him.
And thus the heroic princess between puritans,
And plots of jesuits, had an anxious life.
Sagacious wisdom much it ask'd to meet
Counter-ferocity, and counter-cunning!—

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Quickness and courage and magnanimous
Decision were her gifts, and lifted her
Above the pits and tempests that beset her!
By opposite defects her successor
Fell into pitiable feebleness:
And then the puritanic faction grew,
Till in its hour of pride it fell to arms.

But we must to the fountain-head return,
And talk of him, the chronicler of Genevan
Events and manners. Modern annalists
Have told strange stories of his latter fate:
The tale of Chillon did not end his sufferings.
O Bonivard, when from that vault, those chains,
And that dark domicile beneath the waves,
Thou didst escape to daylight and to freedom,
Didst thou not think thy wretchedness and wrongs
Had clos'd, and that the future would be days
Of peace, and sun-beams, and of social pleasure?
But thou hadst fiery blood, that would not rest
Contented with exemption from sharp misery:
And thou the puritanic whip didst suffer
For thy irregularity of manners!
The nuptial ceremony in the church
Twice celebrated, not enough for thee,
Thou didst a third companion at the altar
Choose, in the bloom of youth and gaiety,
At thy bold fancy's call; but she, of temper
Too spritely for thy faded age, with power
Tyrannic, and ferocious blows o'er-rul'd thee!
Then came the accusation that she took

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A younger lover to her arms, a crime
Puritan cruelty adjudg'd to death.
And now, without the husband's charge or will,
The wretched woman, and her paramour
Alledg'd, were brought before the state-tribunal,
Solemnly each protesting innocence;—
Then to the torture they were put, to force
Confession; and in agony extreme,
Beyond th'endurance of their human strength,
Each own'd the crime; yet still it is believ'd
They were not guilty. But to mercy's sway
There then was no concession. Unavailingly
They heard the dreadful sentence, and by hand
Of public executioner they died!

Now, Bonivard, were all thy natural movements
Of tenderness by long misfortunes harden'd;
And wast thou grown to human misery callous?
For thou didst still survive, and still pursuedst
Thy wonted occupations! If to stone
Thy breast had not been turn'd, thou must have died!
The story of thy life proclaims, how far
E'en to old age man can retain existence,
Under a long intense unbroke succession
Of inexpressive sorrows, pangs, and horrors.

Up to a certain point, disease, and wrong,
And sorrow, soften and ameliorate
The human heart:—beyond that point they harden it,
And utterly extinguish sympathy.

Thus in a battle a great general,
Used all his life to warfare, with calm eye

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Sees fields all strewn with slain of friends and foes,
Which not distract his thoughts, or rob his rest!

But death upon the scaffold is a trial,
Which human courage would beforehand seem
Not equal to!—But female innocence
And loveliness has stood the test, and risen
Glorious above it! seen the block, the axe
With its sharp edge, before her, and yet stood
Unmov'd, with eyes of glowing light, and scarce
A tear of sorrow mingled with their rays!
And thus when that sad axe would in a moment
End a career which offer'd love and rank
And wealth and fame, and all that this fair scene
Of worldly pleasures has to offer mortals,
O lady Jane! O noblest of the Greys,
Proud Suffolk's pure and most celestial daughter,
Fair, virtuous, learned, blest with love and hope,
And admiration of fair nature's scenes,
And joy e'en in the luxury of innocent
Existence, yet thy mighty soul could raise
Its courage to behold the instrument
Serenely, that would separate thee from all;
And in a moment bathe thy frame in blood!

He, who with narrow ken would view the mind
Of man, and have no candour for its frailties,
Ever miscalculates, and deludes himself:
He knows not what man can do, in defiance
Of specks and weaknesses, or faults enormous:
By some base narrow measure would the world
Chain man's expanding spirit; and his fires

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Extinguish,—with cold freezing waters trying
To prove to him his utter inability.

Public opinion always is capricious:
He, who has not a firm self-confidence,
Can nothing do; for he will meet with checks
Ever in places wrong.—On merit fame
Sometimes attends;—but, I suspect, too often
Not for the worth, but some factitious quality!
He, who would work for immortality,
Must throw away the thought of temporary
Applause, and never bend to popular taste.
Of the works, which for a short moment please
The public appetite, how few survive!

And how should it be other? Taste and judgment
Spring from high gifts, by culture and comparison
Improv'd! He has a mercenary soul,
Who to the public test himself debases!
But he who does not this, will many a taunt,
And many a reprobation harsh encounter,
As if it were his duty to conform
To what the multitude adjudge the best!—
Thus in his lonely labours he has not
Even the cheer of friends, when if they soften
Hours of anxiety, they are a balm
Friends ought to bless! but they would have him work,
E'en as a slave, for money! Who would take
The author's, as a mercenary calling?
For money-getting work the task is better,
E'en to break stones upon the public road!
For then at least the thoughts are free and open,

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And the reward is sure and uncapricious;—
With no illusive measure of the toil!

There is no inward comfort in the labour,
When the mind works for aught but truth alone!
To mix a potion for the public draught
With sweets, and stimulants, and drugs, and poisons,
Is loathsome travel to a noble heart!
The price the deleterious draught may sell for,
Cannot keep down compunctious pains of conscience:
And when the sin is past, and yet the pay
Miss'd, and no plaudit follows,—then how sharp
The pang!—the baseness e'en for nothing done!

A conscious force of genius its reward
Has in its work, and its own approbation.
But still the cheer of brother-men is grateful,
And sometimes will the spirit fail without it,
And lose that consciousness and self reliance!
We may despise the people's windy clamour,
And yet not trust “the still small voice” within!
We are beset with blights, and clouds, and frosts,
So thickly and so fiercely, that the fire
Must be almost too pure, and too enduring
For mortal frailty, if it ne'er abates
Its warmth, and hope, and heavenly aspiration.

When the soul is most visionary, and
The flame most intellectual, comes some earthly
Damp, and destroys the spell; for in a morbid
Mould is the magic airiness of genius
Inclos'd, and when it pleads its sensibility,
It is but mock'd, and taunted, and insulted.

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If the nerves were not sensitive to movements
Quick and intense, then there could be no genius.
O cruel and irrational to call
The mind, whose praise is, to the balmy breeze
That it is tremulous, and utters music,
To shew resistance firm to the rude blast!
A sensibility to good alone;—
A rocklike, flintlike bosom to the bad,—
Where is it to be found? O do not call us
To excellence impossible! It breeds
Hypocrisy alone, the worst of sins!

There are, who think that in the Muse's song
Nor wisdom's store, nor good is to be found!
They are strange, ignorant, and worthless beings,
Who thus can deem! whose misinstructed brains
Mistake the trifles of false poetry
For streams from Helicon! The Muse disdains
But with high truths to deal, which draw the veil
From the bad movements of man's heart and head,
And teach what man it most behoves to know.
The flowers of poetry are the petty ornaments,
Which stern and lofty censors scorn to value:
It is the force and majesty of thought,
Which the Muse most acknowledges for hers.

Thus in the ancient records of her art
We look for sterling matter; for the stream
Of ore, that over golden channels passes.
There not the little flowers, that from the banks
Upon its surface are reflected, shine.
Deep lie its treasures, yet transparent, in

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Their gem-like beds, which give their stores to mingle
With the rich-laden current! Genuine beauty,
Or majesty, disdains factitious dresses!
We live but to direct, by issuing rays
From the mind's lamp, and throw around the brightness
That in the shrine of intellect is nurs'd.
All is a mystery without, unless
The inward mind the secret clues develop.
The face of matter barren is, and dull,
Without the mind's associations.
But only to a few is the boon given
To light the fire, and throw the rays abroad;
And e'en that fire must much be fann'd and blown,
Ere its due lustre it will reach, and clear
Itself from smoke and glimmerings:—then the damps
It must defy, and burn with constancy.

Not to the present—only to the future—
Forever must the flame's ascent be rais'd!
The rays it gives, can only fix their station
Over the tomb: the present race will shun
The guide, and rather wil-o'-wisps run after!
Truth is not pleasant to the sensual,
Vicious, and profligate;—and literature
Of artifice is easier as a labour
Of gain and dirty lucre, than the flow
Which issues from the fount of nature's power.
By their own rules and instruments, by which
They work themselves, will critics others judge:
And while mechanically they instruct
The multitude, mechanical will be

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The multitude in censure or applause.

But artifice forever will be variant
In motion and in form:—it is its essence;—
The only mode by which it whets the appetite.
Thus all that it into distinction lifts,
Must fall again, as wave upswallows wave!

The gift of genius may be rare, but oftenest
It in the bud is blighted; or from clouds
Cannot emerge, thro' human opposition;
Thro' sorrow, or mischance, or want of nourriture
Of the seeds sow'd by nature,—sometimes copiously;—
Or thro' defect of cheers, or want of courage;
Or envy, jealousy, and cunning malice:
Nor more infrequent, and less pardonable,
Thro' vile submission to enjoyments sensual.

Far have I wander'd,—now here, and now there,
Glancing: but this was e'er allow'd to be
The Muse's clear prerogative, and 'twere well
If poetry were always as informal!
Rapidity of movement, and of distant
Objects the prompt association, makes
One of the bard's most magic faculties.
The flimsy trick of poetry to the ear
And eye, and little to the intellect,
May pass with fools and children—not the wise.

Who loses all his days in seeking knowledge,
Vain, empty, fill'd with windy vapour only,
Might do as well in picking straws and pebbles.
It puffs him up with self-sufficiency
For what is worthless, and misleads the mind.

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It is the imagination and the reason,
Which wanders over mind and matter, makes
The majesty, and power, and use of genius:
Not excellence in some one narrow class
Of learning, or of art!—Thus Shakespeare's book,
Above all others, is the universal
Favourite of those who can the language read!
Not ornate language, as the Laureat ever
Well preaches to the world, can long delight,—
More than we always can on sweetmeats feed.
It is the thought,—the ore, and not the workmanship,
Which gives the sterling value. Glittering words
Soon tire and nauseate: they are baby's play!
We cannot long read what is artificial:
It is a natural eloquence, which bears us
Onward without fatigue, or loss of interest.

He, who is rich in mind intuitive,
And well has cultur'd it, can never speak,
But out he pours a stream of golden ore:—
Some metal which may turn to useful coin.
But ornamental trickery of poetry
Is but a glittering shadow, for a moment
That flashes, then deserts one, and expires.
Thoughts multiply on thoughts, and words on words,
When we retain the natural associations
Of mental movements: if we interrupt them,
To reassume them one by one is slow:—
The tardiness of motion still augments,
Till all is toil and artificiality.

Not much will he advance upon his task,

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To whom it is a painful and dull labour.

But after all that I, and all that men
More eloquent and wise, have said, the Muse
Will seem a trifler to a large proportion
Of man's ungrateful race:—her fruits are thankless,
And gain not favour, or respect, or smiles:
But if her lessons be not sound and rational,
And teach not as much wisdom as philosophers,
Then let her be rejected and despised!

Much have I travel'd on the grateful theme
Of this strange land of waters and of mountains,
Where the seventh part of my o'erclouded life
I have taken my abode in age and sickness.
No varnish'd story have I told; no sentiment
Factitious utter'd: if exaggeration
Is found in aught, let it be blotted out!
But to be fervid, is not to exaggerate!

Full many a mighty task, and many a care
Have I impos'd upon myself, at peril
Of mockery of a laughing thoughtless world;—
Tasks which a long life would require to execute,
When I am at its very termination!
But innocent and wise are these delusions,
That from us hide the day of our departure!

Great questions in all States are moving now:—
In Albion, above all! my stirring brain
Cannot be tranquil on them. Parliament
Well-constituted is the fount of right,
Liberty, and security of person:
And utterly the nation's wealth, and utterly

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The welfare of the Poor, on sapient laws
Depends! and heartlessly and stupidly
Have both by blind enactments been destroy'd.
But will they wisdom in their new condition
Hear? Ministers are rarely great in talent;—
Still less in genius! Canning was rhetorical;
But I am far from sure that he was wise!—
The living I by name will not describe!

O who are they that blow up the machinery
Of produce, and then wonder it supplies not
The nation's wants? who leave without employment
The labourer to starve, while lands lie barren?
Who plot the means to make him live in idleness
At others' cost, while he might make returns
For all that he consumes, and give a profit!
Who can find stores to feed him improductively,
Yet want the stores that he could well replace!
Who can find means to send him cross th'Atlantic,
In barbarous lands the native to expell,
Far from his country, friends, and fond affections,
At a most wasteful cost; yet want the store
In toil productive to support his strength?

O vile infatuation! when the barren
Rock will repay due labour! when the fruit
Is in proportion to the cost and art!
This paper-money so misdeem'd as empty—
Does it give food and task-work to the Poor,
Whose fate it is by sweat of brow to live?
Then how can it be empty, immaterial,
And valueless? The food must co-exist,

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Or paper would have naught to act upon!
But does it then to channels left untilled,
And less conducive to the nation's welfare;
Draw it? O no! the very obvious contrary:—
It draws from none, because it reproduces:—
Or even if it draw, it would from luxury
And idleness to the deserving draw it!
Delusions strange, because so clear and palpable!

Ah! pruriency of law-making has been
Among the sins or follies of the age!
Each self-sufficient booby thinks himself
A legislator wise and heaven-born.
And thus we put chains on the things, whose essence
Is freedom; and set free what should be bound.
We force the labourer to be paid as charity
The sustenance, which is the due return
For what he has produc'd:—and then by strange
Perversity of contradiction we
Tell him he has a right to sustenance,
And pay, without the recompense of labour.

The poor laws, as they stand, are a device
To rouse all parishes into fierce conflict,
Each with the other, and to make the poor
Footballs to be backward and forward kick'd
From one place to the other, and to feed
The law's most ravenous and blood-sucking minions.

We take away the means for the employment
Of those who live by labour, by the forceful
Enactments of the Senate's interference:
And then when they are madden'd to rebellion,

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And fire and blood, we punish them with death!
We take away the means of the employers,
Yet tell them that they must support the poor
Without return of produce! We remove
The check to population nature gives;
And in its place an impulse false contrive:
We force the augmentation, and extinguish,
At the same moment, all the means to feed it:
We multiply the taxes, and suppress
In the same breath the instruments to pay them:
We drive the people, under all the oppression
Of artificial incumbrances,
Back to the barbarous device of barter!

And this the wisdom of a British Parliament!
Of statesmen proud, and insolent, and high-bearing
Of their own intellects the vain pretensions!
But wisdom does not always with advancement
Go in the thorny pathway of political
Ambition, where by ruses and manœuvres
The post is often won; where flowery words
And smooth unmeaning voices,—miscall'd eloquence,—
Enchant the air and ears, and win the race.
Talent and virtue in the eyes of Government
Avail but little: for the power of State
Lies in the regions of Intrigue and Favour!
He who is cloath'd in office, is deem'd wise,
Tho ignorant, and tho by nature feeble.
Thus boobies have the function to prepare,
And pass, the rules that guide a nation's welfare.

Hence these enormous wrongs in policy,

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Errors incredible, which plunge a people
In misery, and gloom, and hate, and famine!
Hence wealth, that is the sword, by which a kingdom
Alone in modern days can warfare wage,
Becomes exhausted, or its riches rather
Buried in earth, and lost by suffocation:
Our taxes to increase, and yet diminish
Our riches, is insanity most hopeless.
Not to augment our debt, but to augment
Our means of payment, is the only chance
To ease a nation from the load that stifles it.
All payment from the same amount of income
Is a delusion which but aggravates
The evil;—drawing from the industrious
And most productive, to enrich the drones.

But statesmen ever busy in intrigues,
And pressure of the troubles of the day,
Cannot spare time to think, research, invent.
Let but the day be struggled through,—enough
Is done! and that which raises least discussion,
And passes easiest with the multitude,
Because it is most trite and most familiar,
Is best with them, if least of toil it costs!
And thus, as on Committees on Elections,
“Knock out the brains, and then knock out the brains,”
And all is well! and who are emptiest,
And dread the beaten road, are favour'd most!

To make a statesman and a legislator,
Demands the mental faculties all high
In their degree, and all in union, all

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Well cultivated, and in constant exercise,
The dull incessant plodder will work blindly;
And as he nothing of his way before him
Sees, he will crush his head against a wall,
Or sink into unfathomable pits;
Or from the path direct go wide astray.
Laws must be regulated well to suit
Men's passions, habits, customs, and caprices.
Imagination only can look inward,
And see the movements of the human heart:
The toils mechanical of office cannot
Give it, nor arithmetical profoundness;—
But it must be the lamp of genius, opening
A prospect wide in a broad blaze of light.

Thus am I ever ranging o'er the world,
Taking my flight, O Leman, from thy banks!
But once again,—(I cannot tell how often
I have been straying,)—I return to thee!
And here in quiet I my meditations
Nurse; and with novel food my mind repair.
I think upon the troubles, at a distance,
Of policy which agitate my country:
And though I sometimes wish to join the brawls,
Yet cool reflection ever makes me bless
The calmer scenes, more fitted to my age.
I have not nerve for the turmoil and bustle
Of rude, contentious, cavilling assemblies!
But rather choose to ponder in the solitude,
That opens nature's grandeur to my view.
Here where I see Aurora drive away

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The billowy mists of vapour from the summits
Of Alpine majesty, and spiral mountains
Aspire to heaven, and in the solar rays
Blazon their rude shapes,—from their craggy points
Reflecting beams of tints innumerable,—
Here from precipitous heights the deep blue wave
Of Rhone I see into one common flood
Fall with the Arve; then down through southern France
Far to the sea its gather'd exit seek!
Here to the East Helvetia's numerous craggs
Gigantic, with variety of outline,
That draw the clouds with every golden hue
Fring'd, or transparent, raise the sight to rapture!
Far from the stage, on which is play'd the drama
Of busy life, should man, who has the means,
The tranquil tenor of existence pass!
Frail and deceitful are the glittering objects
Of the world's passion: they cost dear, and win not
The boon expected: not esteem, but calumny
Too oft is the result: and if base lucre
Because of choosing paths of proud ambition,
It is the road of loss, and not of gain.

But yet the grandeur and variety
Of nature's scenery the common mind
Leaves unaffected: mountains, roaring streams,
And precipices, and blue spreading waters,
And meads and woods and vallies, might awaken
Genius e'en in the dull: but, ah, they leave
The intellect in its own native state.
The dweller in the mountains has not grander

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Thoughts, than the habitant of dirty streets!

Excitement and collision are, perchance,
Requisite to bring forward human faculties;
And thus it is, the troubles of ambition
Produce their own reward. We must not slumber
Away this precious, labour-doom'd existence:
And if we fall to idleness, the vapours
Collect about our brains, and gradually
The strength and fire extinguish. Silence thus,
Or murmurs of the breeze, or lull of streams,
Or song of birds, to tranquil sleep disposes us,
And we are apt in motionless tranquillity
To lose the hours to noble efforts destin'd.
To give to rest its relish we must toil
Hard; but without strong impulse who will rouse
Himself from calm repose? And thus retirement,
However in description it may shine,
Is yet of doubtful preference. Learned Evelyn,
Who wrote of woods and forests, and the nature
Of trees, and gardening, and all sylvan pleasures,
A little treatise against solitude
Penn'd eloquently, while Mackenzie's pen,
Who all his life in busy courts had spent,
Pleaded for deep seclusion, books, and peaceful
Self-entertainment.—So it is with man;—
Never with his own destiny content!

'Tis when the mind is full, that Nature's scenery
Works with a tenfold charm; for then it hangs
Associations on each glittering object;
And the redoubled stimulants experiences

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In all that round about it lives, and grows;
Or motionless, or in its barren state
Abides. The statesman, and the traveller,
And he, who in the intellectual contests
Of man's rivality, has thought and felt
Much, and his brain has ever kept in movement,
The more of wonder and magnificence
In natural objects shews itself before him,
Is more excited into lively flow
Of the rich streams that circuit thro the mind;
But he, who to corporeal labour bent,
A life but little above animal
Passes, no difference, perchance, may know
Between a mountainous and dull flat country.
And he who may be born amid gigantic
Shapes of creation, by familiarity
May lose the quickness of enraptur'd wonder
At the sublimity display'd before him!

Imagination has been represented
A Sylvan Goddess, who in solitude
Mid nature's grandeur holds her still abode:
But she is immaterial, and regards not
Embodied shapes, or the globe's substances.
Yet atmospheres affect the spirit, when
In earthly mould enclos'd, because it acts
By aid of matter. Habitants, O Leman,
Upon thy banks, of beverage celestial
From Helicon's pure fountain ought to drink:
But it would seem that strangers only drink it,
And not thy natives!—Vain the scrutiny

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In Nature's secrets!—But Imagination
The lamp of life's most precious knowledge is;—
Of moral wisdom, and religious faith.
All other science, all exact researches
Into material qualities, are trifles
Compar'd to this, which only genius can
Penetrate, view, arrest, define, and paint.

But stay my hand; and let my voice retain
Its long-protracted breath,—lest I becoming
Tedious, my lyre should cloy upon the ear!
Naught of recondite has it forward brought;
No novel tones, as censors will contend;
But Memory at least has been awaken'd;
And something of association new
Been offer'd to the mind by sameness satiated.
We know the borrow'd stores, that always travel
In the same route, and in the same strict order
Of method and alliance; words alone
Chang'd for their synonimes as a thin disquise:
But order new has something of the novelty
E'en of a minor quality of invention.

Should all the thoughts in language here recorded
To all familiar be,—yet of sincere,
And frank, and clear and simple, and withall
Just, they may not be utter'd quite in vain.
For by a sympathy we love to see
Our own emotions in a mirror pass
Shadow'd before us!

A mantle all of gold begins again
Invest the Eastern sky, and o'er the Alpine

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Summits mounts gradually higher and higher,
Driving the billowy vapours all before it,
And piercing them with dazzling rays. My task
I reassume, that verges to its end.
But short though it may be, my own may be
Still shorter;—Simond, by some years my junior,
Is gone before me, e'en with scarce a warning:
Death struck him in a moment; he had sense
No more—scarce breathing thro a darksome night.
Thus I may at this moment hold the pen,
And be the next a lump of lifeless clay.
And yet I meditate a thousand projects,
As if I had a length of days before me!

Tombs of the Bards in ten long books have I
With hope insane for future task design'd.
O ye, who mock me for my vain creations
Of airy castles, and impossible wishes,
Who see me with my snow-white locks, and wrinkled
Features, and step infirm, and shaking hand,
And tell me of the grave, to which alone
I ought to turn my eyes, and thoughts, and feelings,
You are as stupid, as you are hard-hearted!
Your voices are but whistling wind to me,—
As empty and as forceless, as discordant!
While I a few choice spirits can engage,
And Wordsworth, Southey, Lockhart disapprove not,

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Those sarcasms only on themselves return!

If mid the cares, that like a thousand vultures
Prey on my heart, I can the moments soothe
By occupations innocent, no crime,
Or folly, surely is in the indulgence.
He, who expects too much from human nature,
Does but suppress the little it can do.
Hypocrisy, or stupor, is the consequence
Of the perfidious counsel thus obtruded.
But Gibbon wisely said, that he who could not
Counsel himself, was but a broken reed,
That every wind could blow away to atoms!

Thus for the first six books did I perform
Uninterruptedly my morning task:
For 'twas the morning, tho the task begun
The first hours after midnight's sound was heard:
In seven and twenty days the work was done.
Shall I repent it? Much is there combin'd,
I never else had brought together: much
Of thought and sentiment I never else
Had from my mind evok'd.—The clock strikes one!
Deep and distinctly from the town it comes:
And I must throw the dews of sleep away.

But now again by some strange new caprice
Of intellect, its paces and its flights
Are slow; and I with labour this the last
Part of my long performance execute.

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Who ventures in the public eye to act,
Or meditate, or shew his sensibility,
Must for malignant censure be prepared.
Envy, and jealousy, and consequent
Detraction, are the actuating passions
Of man;—yet strangely oft do we admire
In secret those whom openly we criticise;
And by degrees is approbation won,
Or else extorted from th'unwilling heart!

Shall we in silence and in stupor pass
Our days, for fear of cavil and detraction?
The storms, that buffet us, but stronger make us,
And animate our faculties to actions:
Defiance is sometimes a noble feeling.

Few are the cheers, that through a troubled life
Have borne me onward:—my reliance then
Has been on the indignant impulses
Rous'd by ungenerous and wrongful blows.
Then it is said, that I am querulous,
And ever of my injuries am prating!
Defiance and complaint have not a tone
Of sympathy: complaint for pity calls,
And breathes not battle. I am more inclin'd
To think that indignation is my tone!

But it is said, we must not talk of self,
For good or bad, for pity or for anger.
Yet if the knowledge of internal movement
Be the prime lesson, whence with so much certainty
Can we the picture of another's bosom
Describe as of our own?—It is the cavil

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Of that disparagement, which blackens life!

There are, who will deny there is a difference
In native gifts of mind; but think apparent
Superiority is accidental,
Or flows from labour, or is mere pretence.
And all,—that they may rob it of the honour;
And love, esteem, respect, applause withhold.

But all of real excellence is genius;—
Not art, or labour. From the springs of mind
It comes unborrow'd: but it must be aided,
And warm'd by suns,—by exercise and culture
Unveil'd!—Or “in the deep unfathom'd cave
The gem will buried lie!” For Genius never
The treasure at the bottom knows, till tried.
Johnson profoundly said, “with the necessity
Comes the ability!” 'Tis so with genius!
Necessity cannot create the power;—
But only draw it forth.

The genuine strength
Survives the grave, and hovers o'er the tomb!
The fame, that was in life deserv'd, is green,
And flourishing, after the lapse of ages.
The language of true genius ne'er decays,
Nor obsolete becomes; and each one sees
Something peculiar to himself, which others
Have not deliver'd, nor, perchance, e'en thought!
The fruits of genius by repeated reading
Ne'er become stale and common-place: a living
Fire in them dwells; and vigour to the last,
As in a green old age, pervades their veins.

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But never must the exercise relax
The constant discipline; the constant effort.
Genius, the more it writes, it writes the better;
But toil and industry, without the gifts
Of nature, fade, grow duller, and exhaust.

Books multiply beyond the utmost reach
Of man's attention; but unborrow'd thoughts,
And flames by art unlighted, are most rare.
And 'twould be well, were groaning shelves discumber'd
Of artifice, and nauseous repetitions:
Whence precious time is lost in seeking ore,
Where nothing can be found but dross and staleness.

There is no torment greater than a stupor:—
'Tis not tranquillity;—it is despair!
Then every object in horrific tints
Displays itself;—and comfort is in naught.
Then mind and frame are motionless, except
Beneath the writings of disgust and agony.
And thus the mind will be, that, form'd for effort
And unfatigued activity, is idle.
The fogs, that settle on it, breed disease,
That like a demon sits upon the heart!

Thus ever must I travel, and my faculties
Keep in incessant motion, which the more
They work, are buoyant more, and more elastic.
And thus with deep regret, and sighs and tears,
I backward look on years that I have lost;
Discourag'd with a mean and criminal cowardice,
By censure, or neglect, or cold reception;—
Which ever fortitude, and manliness,

227

Should breast, and rise against with proud disdain.
The world by pulling others down suppose
That they can raise themselves into their places:
And finding fault they think a proof of talent,
And that themselves the work could better do.
Affected scorn is the prevailing tone
Of visage, that upon the multitude
Of human countenances holds the sway;
Or heartless ridicule, or stern aperity.

And now, ye Waters, glittering in the sun
In tints of deepest azure, from the theme
Of your majestic beauties I must part.
Be silent now, my Lyre, till thou beginnest
Another chosen subject. Who will hear thee,
I hail with joy, and tears of gratitude;—
Who will reject thee, with tranquillity,
Now I am old and philosophic grown,
I leave to their own tastes, and harsher judgments!

END OF BOOK VII, AND LAST.

He died Saturday morning 2 July 1831, after a few hours illness. He was a man of acute, just, and intuitive talent. See his Tours in England, Switzerland, and Italy.

Between 23 May and 18 June, 1831.

Written 5 July, 1831.