Minor Poems, including Napoleon :: :: University of Virginia Library

It may be lovely, from the height
Of Skiddaw's summit, moss'd and grey,
To feed the inexhausted sight
On the magnificent array
Which such a prospect must display:
On Keswick's lowly, peaceful vale;
On Derwentwater's scatter'd isles;
On torrents, bright with morning's smiles,
Or mark'd by mist-wreaths pale.

134

II

I never gaz'd on such a scene;
Yet, if I give my fancy wings,
I half could think I there had been,
By force of her imaginings;
She in such witching beauty brings
The landscape to my mental eye;
I feel almost as if I stood
In its romantic solitude,
Beneath a cloudless sky.

III

But not in the exultant bliss
Of such a fascinating hour,
Hath scenery sublime as this,
Where lakes expand, and mountains tower,
Upon my heart so deep a power,
Or wakes in it such tender thrills,
As when, immers'd in busy thought,
And reveries by Memory brought,
I stand upon Stoke Hills.

135

IV

It is not that the landscape there
Can vie with Skiddaw's ampler scope;
Nor can Stoke Hills, so soft and fair,
With Cumbria's giant mountain cope:
What seest thou, standing on their slope,
Or loftiest eminence, to fill
The eye with rapture, or the mind
With transports, that thou might'st not find
On many another hill?

V

Outstretch'd beneath, indeed, may be,
In loveliness diversified—
A prospect beautiful, which he
Who has most frequently descried,
Still finds with many a charm supplied,
And lingers, as if loath to leave it;
Whether it bask in morning's glow,
Or evening's shades, succeeding slow,
Of softer charms bereave it.

136

VI

But a mere town, a pond, a river,
And meadows, sprinkled o'er with trees,
Whose light leaves in the sunshine quiver,
When stirr'd by each low, rustling breeze,—
Such objects, though they well may please
A heart that unto beauty clings;
Yet could not, of themselves, excite
Emotions, dearer than delight,
The well-known prospect brings.

VII

O! nothing is more true than this;
It is not through the eye alone
We gather either bale or bliss,
From scenes which it may gaze upon:
Their sweetest tint, their deepest tone,
That which most saddens or endears,
Is shed on them by thoughts and feelings,
Which rise, at Memory's still revealings,
From dreams of former years!

137

VIII

The scenes that met our early gaze,
The very turf we trod on then,
The trees we climb'd; as fancy strays
Back to those long-past hours again,
Revive, and re-appear, as when
The soul with sorrow kept no strife;
But, in its first imaginings,
Unfurl'd its own ethereal wings,
And sprang to light and life.

IX

Can ev'n the bright and fairy dreams
Of fiction wrought in poesy;
Or visions, with which fancy teems,
Of love, in love's idolatry,
Compare with childhood's memory?
No! these, ev'n when most pure their birth,
Have something in their loveliest guise,
Which, half instinctively, implies
They are of lower earth.

138

X

But the soul is not:—some, indeed,
Have said, that ere on earth it came,
(As by a power Divine decreed,)
To animate this mortal frame,
It pre-existed, still the same;
And more will own to man is given
A spirit, whose young life within,
Ere tamper'd with by conscious sin,
Was fed by thoughts from heaven!

XI

And its first joys, and hopes, and fears,
Were such as never more can meet
A parallel in after years;
Well may their memories be sweet!
'Tis more than earthly bliss to greet
Even a silent thought—which brings
Some token by its soothing powers,
It comes back from those happier hours,
With healing on its wings.

139

XII

Then wonder not that I prefer
Such scene to Skiddaw's prouder height;—
It is a still interpreter
Of more than meets the outward sight;
I look through vistas far more bright,
More fair, than outward vision gives;
And feel, when plac'd on such a spot,
My spirit's present griefs forgot,
As in the past it lives!