The Poetical Works of Robert Story

Who hath not felt, when rolls the passing-bell
Along the burthened air its heavy knell,
How wild the sounds—for whomsoe'er it toll?
It seems as if the newly parted Soul
Lingered a space, ere from the world she flew,
And spoke in those deep tones her last adieu!
—Such were the sounds along the vale that sighed
The calm sweet eve when Edward Stanley died;
And aged men who heard them on the breeze,
Shook their gray heads, and said that sounds like these,
So dull and heavy—bore a presage drear
Of other deaths and funeral-pageants near.
'Twas a weak thought; yet deep the death-bell sighed
The calm sweet eve when Edward Stanley died!

Born in a cot, whose little casement bright,
And blue smoke curling in the morning light
Cheered with an air of life a mountain glen,
But seldom trodden by the feet of men,
Beneath a widowed Mother's partial view,
Like some fair blossom Edward Stanley grew.
Few are the years, and soon they pass away,
Allowed by poverty to thoughtless play;

And forced for bread, when scarcely more than child,
To follow flocks that bleat along the wild,
He never knew, to early hardship bred,
The dreamy raptures of the sluggard's bed;
But ever at the cock's first larum shrill,
Started from dreamless sleep, and climbed the hill.
—Perchance the wintry morn was cold and clear,
And stars burnt faintly as the day drew near,
And his eye caught and gazed upon that one
Which lovelier seemed to him than all that shone,
Because the Hymn his mother taught to say,
Compared his Saviour to the Star of day!
—Perchance a frost-mist, thick and heavy, wove
Its mimic verdure over lawn and grove,
And he a steep and darksome way must tread
Ere he attain the mountain's sun-gilt head.
Thence looking round, his wonder into speech
Breaks forth—though other ears it cannot reach;
For all below in vapour white is hid,
And his own mountain—like an isle amid
The ocean—only bears its top sublime
Above the calm and boundless sea of rime,
O'er which the sun, in lonely grandeur rolled,
Pours his first hues of crimson and of gold!
—Perchance delicious Summer, calling out
All sights of beauty, breathed her airs about,
Gave a flushed whiteness to the daisied dell,
Green to the grove, and purple to the fell.
Then, on the heights 'mid fragrant heath reclined,
All he beheld was nutriment for mind—
The earth's fair face below, and, spread on high,
The blue eternal of the vaulted sky,
Which seemed as wove by Love's own hand, to span
The bright and beauteous world of favoured man—

The clouds, like ships which wafting winds convey
For ever sailing on—away—away—
Each was a source of thought and inward joy
To that meek, lonely, meditative Boy,
Of thought so holy, and of joy so deep,
The young enthusiast must pray or weep!

So passed his year. But when from distant dells
Floated the morning chimes of Sabbath bells—
When calm was all the air, when in the cloud,
The lark's strain softened into notes less loud,
And e'en the mountain rivulet seemed to gush
With murmur chastened to the sacred hush—
Young Edward, in his Sunday garments clad,
Marched by his Mother's side sedately glad;
Leaped with a bound the churchyard stile, but trod
With reverential step the holy sod—
Viewed with a sigh of mingled grief and awe
Memorials of a sire he never saw—
The plain, white, lettered stone, and half-sunk heap,
At which the lonely widow paused to weep.
In church, where gothic arch, and sculptured wall,
And sunbeams richer from their broken fall,
To Edward's unsophisticated youth
Increased the force of each familar truth,
On him who spoke he gazed with thoughtful eye,
The holy man commissioned of the sky,
And said with rising heart—“O what can be
So happy as the lot assigned to thee!”
Nor vanished then the thought, but served for talk
With his loved Mother on their homeward walk.

The following eve, his parent's board beside,
He sipped the juice by China's herb supplied—
A prized indulgence! Of the beverage mild
He drained his little cup, and archly smiled,

Shaking the settled leaves,—“Oh, you shall be
To-day the ancient gipsey-wife to me,
And read my fortune, mother!” He took up,
And gave into her hand the thrice-twirled cup.
But eager into destiny to look,
The listener's passive part he soon forsook,
Joined in the scrutiny, and first, elate,
Became the gay interpreter of fate—
“'Tis there, 'tis there! I see—I see it all;
The front, fair-windowed, of a parson's hall;
The church behind; the fresh green glebe before;
The pony pasturing by the coach-house door!
And see, a table spread; and see, a pair
At dinner or at tea are seated there—
'Tis you and I, my mother! O I'll make
Your heart so happy that it ne'er shall ache!”
Slight means will stem a rivulet near the source,
And give a new direction to its course;
From superstitious sign, but half believed,
Thus Edward's future life its bent received—
A scholar's praise, a pastor's reverenced name,
Thenceforth the objects of his heart became.

O! who can tell—save they whose youth has borne—
The ills a peasant boy must bear and scorn,
Ere he can conquer circumstance, and reach
Proprieties of style and charms of speech!
The child of rank patrician, learns by ear
A language elegant, correct, and clear;
Books, when his subsequent regard they claim,
Speak in a tongue familiar and the same;
And rules of writing but their sanction add
To perfect modes of speech—he knows no bad.
But when to him of rustic parents bred,
The young aspirant of the straw-roofed shed,

Whose dialect the store of words unfolds
The poor man's poor vocabulary holds—
To such when Learning deigns to spread her page,
She speaks the language of the world's first age;
Her words are strange, her illustrations dim,
Her definitions—undefined to him!
Through dictionaries huge, and grammars dry,
He pores with aching brain, and weary eye,
And heart that would despair—did not the Power
That animates us on from hour to hour,
Point with fair finger to the severing cloud—
The dawn's mild azure—and the rising proud
Of bright Success!

Young Edward soon had caught
Whate'er the skill of village masters taught.
Voiced as a prodigy by rural fame,
A neighbouring Squire with wonder heard his name,
Found him a brilliant proof, that rank and birth
Engross not all the intellect of earth,
And gained the praise the Great too seldom claim,
Of aiding Genius on his road to fame.
On Edward's heart his patron's bounty fell
Like showers of summer on the long-parched dell—
Freshening the green corn, till it waves to hope
The glittering promise of a splendid crop!
The confidence which Genius gives, had said—
“Press on—thou hast no foe, save Want, to dread!”
That foe was vanquished—Glory's path was clear—
And Edward entered on his bright career.

With speed proportioned to his ardent will,
He rose on Learning's far-retiring hill,
Till purer air he breathed, and saw where, foiled,
His duller seniors far beneath him toiled.

But without toil were his attainments made?
No—rising suns his studious hours surveyed;
And stars ascended o'er the eastern hill,
Rolled half their course, and found him sleepless still!
To friends, who trembled at the zeal which shed
Along his cheek a high consumptive red,
“The wheel must turn and turn, till life be o'er!”
He mildly said, and studied as before.
E'en his amusements, snatched at morning's rise
Or evening's fall, were studies in disguise.
Then did his mind the many charms engage,
That glow in Milton's or in Shakspeare's page,
Pope's polished couplets, touched and touched again,
Or Dryden's freer and far manlier strain.
To these, the master-minds of British song,
His breast responded with pulsations strong;
And rumour said that, kindled at their fire,
He waked at times an emulative lyre.
But this was mere conjecture; or, if true,
He left no relics of the strains it threw.
'Twas drawn from words which, when on death-bed laid,
To one poor listener Edward feebly said:

“Mother! I feel Death's hand is on me now,
And I shall soon be dust—and childless thou!
Thy pride in me, thy hopes, and—wilder still—
My own wild wishes scarcely time could fill,
All crushed and blighted now! O weep not so!—
This world, they tell us, is a world of woe;
I think not thus. For, ever to my sight
Its flowers were lovely, and its skies were bright;
And I had feelings, whence I know not given,
Which I for years would keep—nor long for Heaven!

Nay, deem me not profane; Heaven may be fair,
But Earth has triumphs which I burned to share!

“Mother! when comes (but do not—do not weep!)
The hour that lays me where my fathers sleep,
I would not wish above my mouldering dust
The cumbrous marble placed, or breathing bust—
(O! on such trophies, by the dead unfelt,
My waking dreams have fondly, vainly dwelt!)
Amid the rural churchyard's peaceful green,
Where sunbeams fall, and early flowers are seen,
Where the sweet redbreast, from adjoining yew,
Pours the soft song to spot so holy due,
May my last slumber be! and o'er my grave,
Its only honours, wilding blossoms wave—
There Spring's fair hand the primrose-knot bestow,
And Summer there the hardier daisy throw;
And long may these, by blighting storms unscathed,
Before the sun expand—in dews of morning bathed!”

He died—and so his humble grave they placed,
And such the flowers with which its turf is graced
Nor could Affection choose a fitter wreath
To honour him who calmly sleeps beneath.

An expression of the poet Leyden when remonstrated with for over-studying.

University of Virginia Library

Edward Stanley.