University of Virginia Library

ELEGY ON THE SAME, WRITTEN TWELVE YEARS LATER.

I crown thee, Brydges, with a baleful wreath,
And raise another deeper cry of death!
I seem ordain'd by mystery and fear
To breathe sepulchral horrors in thine ear,
And deck thee victim of some mortal curse,
With sullen garlands of funereal verse.
When Thou and thy two boys were wrench'd apart,
I raised the death-lament that thrill'd thy heart,
Yet soothed thy pride. It seem'd a stern decree
That let the tempest loose to shake thy tree,
And bear the crude fruit down,—but wild and rough
Though blew those angry gales, 'twas not enough!
A fiercer hurricane was yet to come:
It came; I heard, and shudder'd, and was dumb;
It swept away the best of all thy race,
And there was darkness in Jemima's place.
My loss was then severer far than thine:
I felt at first too stupid to repine:
But soon was roused to consciousness of pain
By stormy thoughts and tumults of the brain;
And then by lawless wretchedness betray'd,
I did but outrage mild Jemima's shade;
For, driven by passion to rebellion's verge,
I call'd the Furies to perform her dirge.
No Furies answer'd, but a little child
Look'd in my face and like her mother smiled.
As waters from the stricken rock devolved,
Smote by that look, my eyes in tears dissolved,
Wild bursts of tears, yet powerful to assuage
The fever and the impiety of rage.
My anguish now was calmer, not less keen:
I sought, afar, diversity of scene;
All heart-sick wretches hope to flee from care,
And still they flee to find her everywhere.
I stood beside the Rhine's chaotic fall:
What did that pomp of bounding waves recall?
Lone cataracts, and coy unnamed cascades,
And modest waterfalls in woody shades,
Among the hills of Westmoreland, where long
And oft Jemima listen'd to their song.
In Zurich's Grove at Gessner's tomb I wept
Not him, who there, but her who distant, slept,
And but for her sake wish'd to me bequeath'd
The adorning spirit that in Gessner breathed;
The double tribute of a painter-bard
Might so through time her sacred memory guard;
So might those features eloquently meek
Still to the heart with sure persuasion speak;
So might the world her sweet example save,
And Art be twice triumphant o'er the grave.
I climb'd the Kamor mountain ridged with fir,
To be a little nearer Heaven and Her.
In vain the Rheinthal smiled with all its vines:
The rocks of Appenzel, the gloomy pines,
And lonely ice-beds pleased my alter'd mind,
And the wild howling of the glacial wind.
How still in yon far mountain clefts, my soul,
Reposed the eternal snows of the Tyrol!
Thus still in death, as pure, as cold, as white,
She slept in the grim fold of breathless night.
I see her yet in that familiar room
Where last she lay, apparell'd for the tomb.
Trick'd out with sweet fantastic flowers she lay,
Cold to the touch that press'd the life-like clay,
Blind to the eyes that rivetted their gaze,
Deaf to the voice she loved in other days.
I bear to think, I bore to brood on this!
With lingering lips the passive brow to kiss,
And o'er the hush'd unsympathising corse
To stand in blank despair and vain remorse,
While all my faults, held light in happier times,
From death's pale shadow took the hue of crimes.
Not to a father need I tell her worth
Who saw its growth, to womanhood from birth;
Her lucid sense, without a stain of pride;
Her taste with pure simplicity allied;
Her tranquil manners, so reserved with ease;
Her care unwearied, not to shine, but please:
Her graceful truth, the ornament and bond
Of coy affections exquisitely fond;
Her temper, human nature's precious ore,
In sorrow's crucible refined the more.
Whether she graced her own paternal home,
Or shared a soldier's restless fate to roam;
Whether by blind adversity opprest,
Or worn by sickness, late her frequent guest;
Through many a trying year I never saw
Her will rebellious to her duty's law.
Nor e'er beheld an evil passion chase
Love from her lips nor beauty from her face.
Some minds repose in apathetic rest,
Without a feeling, negatively blest:
Patient because untempted to transgress;
But hers was sensibility's excess;
A nature quick, too full of hopes and fears,
All turn'd to smiles and tenderness and tears.
She sleeps in Britain's Eden, on the shore
Of mead-fringed Grasmere girt with mountains hoar!
Far from her native Kent: yet not forsaken
Of friends found faithful when my heart was shaken;
True friends as e'er appalling sorrow tried,
In-dwellers of the valley where she died.
Her relics too are of that earth a part,
Whose meanest flower has school'd its poet's heart;
And the same airs that stir the grass around
Her tomb, are agents to his thoughts profound;
Deepening the murmurs musically strong
Of Wordsworth's grand and philosophic song.
Brydges, remote from where thy fathers sleep,
While other hands than thine thy harvests reap,
Far from the hearth of Wootton and the hill
Whose greenwoods whisper thy young fancies still,
Thine age is whitening where Helvetian snows
From glowing sunsets catch the tints of rose;
Thine age embellish'd too with colours caught
From Fancy's richly-setting orb of thought.
Thine ear is greeted by the rushing Rhone,
And liquid voices of yet grander tone.
Lake, river, cataract, ravine, and glen,
Rock, forest, pike, are all within thy ken.
Charm'd land! which Nature in some frantic fit
Heaved to the skies, in monstrous masses split,
Nor blush'd to view the havoc she had made,
But gulf and chasm with dauntless eye survey'd:
And, here, with glaciers bridged the headland gaps,
There, flung her snows into the mountain laps;
Push'd the pale fountains down the stony fells,
And brimm'd with inland seas the nether dells;
And tossing verdure up and down the wild,
Exultant on her glorious chaos smiled!
Charm'd land! yet dearer to my longing heart
Our own wild North, its humble counterpart.
More dear for bliss and anguish, and the sake
Of that lorn grave by Grasmere's beauteous lake.—
O vale Elysian, and ye bosky nooks
Of Rydal, and thou pride of mountain-brooks,
Thou Rotha, linking with thy sonorous chain
Of argent, three Lake Naiads who sustain
A threefold mirror, where the wood-crown'd rocks
And ferny mountains sleek their shagged locks.
O haunts romantic, how could you betray?
And thou perfidious blossom-kirtled May,
What had I done to win thy smiling hate,
And make the loveliest of the months my fate?
Already had my mother sunk in death,
Kill'd by the sweet caresses of thy breath.
She, too, died young; and I remember well,
Child as I was, her beauty's healing spell;
And how her angel-smile could soften down,
To my young heart, a sterner parent's frown.
False May! I loved thee much and hate thee more,
How could I trust thy smile so false before?
'Neath the close texture of thy flowery woof
Our blest seclusion seem'd disaster-proof.
Never did bland insidious beauty lure
Like thine the soul to dreams of peace secure;
As when thine evil-eye the signal gave,
That doom'd Jemima to her early grave!
Time files away in every human heart
The points acute of sorrow's barbed dart;
Twelve years have pass'd, and their balsamic wings
Have fann'd my bosom and appeased its stings.
But she, whose spirit hover'd in the skies,
Could she oblivious be of earthly ties?
Oh, no; if ever nuptial love was true,
Not time alone, but she consoled me too.
I've seen her oft in solitude and night,
And she has o'er me waved a wand of light;
Cheer'd by her smile when fainting on my way,
I've seen her in the broad unconscious day;
Have heard her whispers, soft as dreams of song,
Clear through the tumult of the human throng.
Her spirit, though beatified, unchanged
In nature, proved the woman not estranged.
A surge-tost voyager on Biscay's bay,
I've seen her rise resplendent from the spray.
In Cintra's palace, in that ancient hall,
Where pomps heraldic blaze along the wall,
Brydges, of thee, her sire, I mused and sigh'd
In mood censorious of thy lordly pride,
And fond solicitude of jealous birth
That earth should glitter o'er its kindred earth.
Sudden her voice arose in soft reproof
From tesselated floor to pillar'd roof;
Back on my heart the meek remonstrance fell,
And hush'd the censure with its filial spell.
Where curved Mondego rolls through Coimbra's plains
I read the tenderest of Camoens' strains;
By that famed rock where Inez' fountain flows,
And letter'd marble breathes in verse her woes.
A well-known form was near me when I read,
And tears were gushing from the spectral dead;
Griefs snatch'd by genius from the urn of years,
Drew tears that fell into “the Fount of Tears.”
Thus still she haunts me wheresoe'er I roam,
And cheats my exile with the ghost of home.
One eve, again in Cintra's charmed bourne,
Land of enchantment even for those that mourn,
Midway I loiter'd up the craggy steep,
Where myrtles bloom, where infant fountains leap;
Where the rich orange blends its flower and food,
And rugged cork trees dwell on rocks as rude.
In that dread humour of the prostrate mind
When plaintless grief is but despair resign'd,
Lorn as I sate, beside the Afric bath,
She glided by me up the mountain-path!
Impell'd, I follow'd where the vision led,
Clad as she was in raiment of the dead.
On the tall peak she linger'd in her shroud,
'Tween Earth and Heaven like a silver cloud.
When near I drew, with watchful look upraised,
With eyes refulgent on the peak she gazed,
A crag with lichens stain'd and hoary moss,
And on its centre stood a reverend Cross!
One moment from my visionary guide
The type of mercy drew my glance aside,
And she had vanish'd! I was all alone
On the grey summit of that pile of stone;
Below, the sea expanded from the beach,
The Cross of Marble stood within my reach—
Emblems august for wretches that despond,
Salvation near, Eternity beyond!