The poetical works of Henry Alford :: :: University of Virginia Library

“Whether it be love, or it be science, that we handle, or whatever art pursue into its more secret places and higher forms, we must confess that we shall have found at length something (and that whereon all doth depend) which neither is nor belongs to, ourselves.”

In converse with a dear companion, the sources, progress, and accessories of youthful love are shown; and how this was not sufficient for the heart which yearned after the glories of God's Church.

The spring is coming round—the buds have burst,
And on the coppice-path, and in the bower,
The leaping spray of sunlight leaf-inwrought
Sports to the gentle bidding of the breeze:
And far away into the inner grove,

Bright green, the mosses cluster on the stems,
Till where the thickest arbour doth embower
Sweet solitary flowers of meekest eye,
That dwell for ever with the silent dews.
Sweet partner of my hopes, who through the young
And sunny years of life hast been to me
An opening bud most delicately nursed,
Methinks this day hath risen upon us two
As on the joyous earth and teeming wood—
To summon into life the folded flowers,
And bid our plant of love spring boldly up,
Fearing no check from frost, or blighting dew.
No one is present with us; none is here
But thou and I; so I may tell my thoughts,
Now thou hast picked thine apron full of flowers;
For I have much to tell.

Along the east
The clear pale light of the morn is brooding still;
And down our favourite path, on either side,
The little leaves are glittering in the sun;
So we will talk away the morning-tide
Under the soft bright April. Let us sit
Together on that slope, where cluster thick
The full-blown primroses, and playfully
The tender drooping wood-anemones
Toss to the breeze in turn their silver bells.

'Tis long since we were free to while away
So many hours in converse: and I feel
Strange yearnings to pour out my inner soul,
To open forth unto thee all the stores
Whereby my spirit hath been furnished
For the great war with evil.

Few have lived
As we have lived, unsevered; our young life
Was but a summer's frolic: we have been
Like two babes passing hand in hand along
A sunny bank on flowers. The busy world
Goes on around us, and its multitudes
Pass by me, and I look them in the face,
But cannot read such meaning as I read
In this of thine; and thou too dost but move
Among them for a season, but returnest
With a light step and smiles to our old seats,
Our quiet walks, our solitary bower.
Some we love well; the early presences
That were first round us, and the silvery tones
Of those most far-away and dreamy voices
That sounded all about us at the dawn
Of our young life,—these, as the world of things
Sets in upon our being like a tide,
Keep with us, and are ever uppermost.
And some there are, tall, beautiful, and wise,
Whose step is heaven ward, and whose souls have past
Out from the nether darkness, and been born
Into a new and glorious universe,
Who speak of things to come; but there is that
In thy soft eye and long-accustomed voice
Would win me from them all.

For since our birth
Our thoughts have flowed together in one stream:
All through the seasons of our infancy
The same hills rose about us—the same trees,
Now bare, now sprinkled with the tender leaf,
Now thick with full dark foliage; the same church,

Our own dear village-church, has seen us pray,
In the same seat, with hands clasped side by side;
And we have sung together; and have walked
Full of one thought, along the homeward lane;
And so were we built upwards for the storm
That on my walls hath fallen unsparingly,
Shattering their frail foundations; and which thou
Hast yet to look for,—but hast found the help
Which then I knew not—rest thee firmly there!

When first I issued forth into the world,
Well I remember—that unwelcome morn,
When we rose long before the accustomed hour
By the faint taper-light; and by that gate
We just now swung behind us carelessly,
I gave thee the last kiss:—I travelled on,
Giving my mind up to the world without,
Which poured in strange ideas of strange things,
New towns, new churches, new inhabitants:—
And ever and anon some happy child
Beneath a rose-trailed porch played as I past:
And then the thought of thee swept through my soul.
And made the hot drops stand in either eye:—
And so I travelled—till between two hills,
Two turf-enamelled mounds of brightest green,
Stretched the blue limit of the distant sea,
Unknown to me before:—then with strange joy,
Forgetting all, I gazed upon that sea,
Till I could see the white waves leaping up,
And all my heart leapt with them:—so I past
Southward, and neared that wilderness of waves,
And stopt upon its brink; and when the even
Spread out upon the sky unusual clouds,

I sat me down upon a wooded cliff,
Watching the earth's last daylight fade away,
Till that the dim wave far beneath my feet
Did make low moanings to the infant moon,
And the lights twinkled out along the shore;
Then I looked upwards, and I saw the stars,
Sirius, Orion, and the Northern Wain,
And the Seven Sisters, and the beacon-flame
Of bright Arcturus,—every one the same
As when I showed them thee.—“But yesternight,”
I said, “she gazed with me upon those stars:
Why did we not agree to look on them
Both at one moment every starlight night,
And think that the same star beheld us both?”

But I shall weary thee.—That very night,
As I past shorewards under the dark hills,
I made a vow that I would live on love,
Even the love of thee;—this all my faith,
My only creed, my only refuge this.
So day past after day; and every one
Gave me a fainter image of thy face,
Till thou wert vanished quite: nor could I then—
No, not with painful strain of memory,
Bring back one glimpse of thy lost countenance.
Then I would sit and try to hear thy voice,
And catch and lose its tones successively,
Till that, too, left me—till the very words
Which thou hadst written had no trace of thee—
But it was pain to see them. So my soul,
Self-bound and self-tormented, lingered on,
Evermore vainly striving after love,
Which evermore fled from her, till at last

She ceased to strive, and sunk, a lifeless thing—
No sense, no vigour—dead to all around,
But most to thee. Meanwhile the golden hours
Of life flowed on apace, but weary seemed
The universe of toil, weary the day;
I had no joy but sleep, rare visitant
Of my lone couch.

What times of purest joy
Were then my brief returns:—what greetings then,
What wanderings had we on our native slopes:
What pleasant mockings of the tearful past.
And I remember well, one summer's night,
A clear, soft, silver moonlight, thou and I
Sat a full hour together silently,
Looking abroad into the pure pale heaven:
Perchance thou hast forgotten; but my arm
Was on thy shoulder, and thy clustering locks
Hung lightly on my hand, and thy clear eye
Glistered beside my forehead; and at length
Thou saidst, “'Tis time we went to rest;” and then
We rose and parted for the night. No words
But those were spoken, and we never since
Have told each other of that moment. Oft
Has it come o'er me, and I oft have thought
Of sharing it with thee; but my resolve
Has been spread over with a thousand things
Of various import, till this April morn,
And we have shared it now.

But soon again
I left my home. There was no beauty now
Of lands new seen, but the same dreary road
Which bore me from thee first. I had no joy
In looking on the ocean; and, full sad

With inward frettings and unrest, I reached
That steep-built village on the southern shore.

Sometimes I wandered down the wooded dells
That sloped into the sea, and sat me down
On piles of rocks, in a most private place,
Not without melody of ancient stream
Down-dripping from steep sides of brightest moss,
And tumbling onwards through the dark ravine;
While the lithe branches of the wizard elm
Dangled athwart the deep blue crystalline.—
Often the memory comes o'er me now,
Like life upon a long-entrancèd corpse.
I knew not then aught of that inner soul
That giveth life to beauty—knew not then,
How moments of most painful vacancy
In beauty's presence, print their footmarks deep
On the soul's pathways, and how glory and light
Shine from them at a distance;—how we gather
Our treasures in the shade, and know them not
Till they steal lustre from the living sun,
Flattering the new-born vision of our souls
With richest stores of unprovided joy.

Sometimes I sat and strove to gather hope
Out of the blank cold future; but the years
Of onward life grew darker as I looked:
I saw sad shapes mustered along the path,
Beckoning with silent finger, and young hopes
That bloomed most delicately, stretched clay-cold
And ghastly pale upon the earth; and then
Hot tears burst from me, and my sinful soul
Wept herself dry in utter solitude.

Tears may not wash away the spirit's stain:—
The soul that sitteth down in dreariness,

Telling her sorrow to herself alone,
Is not the purest; for the very sting
Of the heart's bitterness hath power to spread
Most pestilent corruption, and its wound
Festereth within untended. Sin is a fire
Self-hated, self-tormenting—a wild pest
Of rabid flame, that roareth to be quenched,
And may not but in blood. Sin will have blood;
And if it find it not, will wrench abroad
The very heart that holds it, and will dip
Its hissing fangs deep in the purple stream,
Tainting the very issues of all life
With foul black drops of death; and, not so quenched,
Feed on the young supplies of vital joy,
Scorching the inner fountains of the soul.

But, like the sunrise on the dark wild sea,
There rose upon my spirit a great light:—
I was like one fast fettered in a cave,
Before whose dull and night-accustomed eyes
Some naphtha-fire, up-flaring from behind,
Marshals strange shadows on the rifted vault:—
Till there came by One of mild countenance,
And beautiful apparel, at whose touch
My chains fell round me, and I followed on
Up rugged steeps into the outer day:
But so sight-blasting was that lurid night,
That the clear light was all too pure for me,
The gentle moon too beautiful: but soon
I shall look forth undazzled; and ere long,
With purified and unbeclouded sight,
Gaze the broad sunshine in his place on high.

—“She hath loved much, and therefore is forgiven:”
Then Love is first; and, in the sleep of sin,
Come sudden startings of brief consciousness,
And breaks in the dull slumber, as from sounds
Of sweetest music, that give instant joy,
But mix the after-dreams with strange regret;—
As one who, wandering in the summer night,
Is ware of sudden light, and, looking up
Betwixt Orion and the Pleiades,
Sees pass along a trail of white star-fire,
That fades upon the night and leaves no trace;
One moment he rejoices, but the next
His soul is sad, because he is alone:—
Or (for we love to chase similitude
Into its close recesses when we speak
Of things but shadowed forth and half-defined)
Like one who hath seen play across his path
A glimmer of faint lightning, and stands still,
Breathlessly waiting, till the deep long moan
Of far-off thunder from a low-hung cloud
Hath died into the air,—then sets he forth,
By slopes of bright green larch, and hedgerows sweet
With thickest roses, to the cottaged knoll,
Where gleams against the blackness, pinnacled
From out its elms, his light, tall village tower

What can be purer than a soul forgiven?
He who hath never fallen, may err perchance
In the admission of a vague desire;
But when the spirit hath come out from thrall
Into the upper air of liberty,
She hath no backward longings, but looks on
Up the steep pathways of unfolding light.

Knowest thou not that it is sweetest far
After the languid pulse and sunken eye,
To go abroad beneath the sunny heaven,
Freely to breathe, and feel through all the frame
The indifference of justly-balanced health?

It may be that all evil teems with good:
It may be that the sorrows of this state
Are but the birth-pangs of a glorious life,
And all the hindrances of mortal flesh
A grosser matter than shall polish off,
Brightening the silver which it erst obscured.—

But stay we here, for we may search no more:
The heart is deeper than the power of words:
And language, many-voiced, doth not suffice
For all the combinations of pure thought;—
Even in the reasonings of the over-wise
Speech hath a limit, which she may not pass;
Then how much rather, when we talk of Love.

I have been somewhat cruel to thy flowers:
For I have cheated them of a few days
Of modest pride; they might have lived, perchance,
Hung round our shady arbour, duly fed
From the evening water-pot;—or, for quaint show,
Stuck deftly among leaves that knew them not,
Puzzled the after-thoughts of passers-by.
Their bloom is shed; but I have fetched for thee
Flowers blooming in the inner grove of thought,
Sweet nurslings of a never-fading spring—
The sunshine trophies of a victory
Fought for in frosts and darkness, and achieved
Only by light from heaven to see my foes.

Plato, Repub. b. vii. 1.

Lesson the Second.

“And in the temple-service of our souls, it does not become us, because we have sometimes seen the cloud fill the house of the Lord, and all our ministering has been lost in the glory, not to take our daily blessedness out of His mild and usual presence, or to think that we may prescribe to Him His occasions of brighter manifestation.”

The teaching of the young heart new washed from sin, by the wonderful works of God; and how, in the well-ordered soul, all nature hath its set and appointed place.

My sweet companion, who hast ever been
Beside me in all toils, refreshing oft
My weary spirit with low whisperings
Of hope that spoke not falsely; in whose sight
My young life floweth pleasantly along;
Sit thou beside me once again, and take
Thy magic pencils—they will serve thee well
To help thy patience; for my heart is full,
And I perchance may wander waywardly;
Besides, this bank is known to us of old;
For yonder is the ivy-girded trunk,
Bright mouldering timber, clothed with darkest green;
And yonder those two ashes on the steep
And grassy slope; and underneath, the moor
Stretches its pastured level far away
To the gray mountains and the Severn sea:
And from that very brake, the nightingale,
In the sweet silence of the summer-eve,

Poured forth a wavy stream of melody,—
Signal to one who waited with thick breath
And throbbing bosom, all afraid to speak
One low-breathed word;—that evening thou wert mine.

Sit thou beside me—we will talk no more
Of dim and cloudy childhood, ere the spring
Burst on us, when with searchings wearisome
We sought some centre for our errant hopes;
But underneath this sky of clearest June,
We will discourse, as we are wont, of things
Most gentle, of most gentle causes sprung,
That make no wave upon the stream of life,
That are not written in the memory's book,
That come not with observance; but from which,
As from a myriad stones, costly though small,
Is built upon the mansion of the blessed soul.

Look out upon the earth, or meditate
Upon the varying glories of the sky,
As we have looked on them from windy hills,
Or from the moonlit window; fullest joy
Flows on thy heart, and silent thankfulness
Drowns all thy struggling thoughts; doth not this bliss
Wax ever deeper with the years of life?
And when past pleasures come upon the soul
Like long-forgotten landscapes of our youth,
Are not these spots clad with peculiar light,
The brightest blossoms in the paradise
Of recollections of a soul forgiven?
There is no joy that is not built on peace;
Peace is our birthright, and our legacy,
Signed with a hand that never promised false.

And we have fed on peace; and the green earth,
With all that therein is, the mighty sea,
The breath of the spring-winds, and all the host
Of clustered stars, give fittest nourishment
To the peace-loving soul.

“Not as the world
Giveth, give I to you;” for what have souls
Whose vision labours with the film of sin,
Who struggle in the twilight of eclipse,
To do with beauty and the joy of thought?
Our very joys have been redeemed with blood;
Our very liberty is bought anew:
The unforgiven pleasures of the world
Are but a dance in chains; freedom of thought
Owes fealty to sin; and Fancy's self,
That airiest and most unfettered thing,
Is but the prisoned maniac's dream of bliss.

Oft have I listened to a voice that spake
Of cold and dull realities of life.
Deem we not thus of life: for we may fetch
Light from a hidden glory, which shall clothe
The meanest thing that is with hues of heaven.
If thence we draw not glory, all our light
Is but a taper in a chambered cave,
That giveth presence to new gulfs of dark.
Our light should be the broad and open day;
And as we love its shining, we shall look
Still on the bright and daylight face of things.

Is it for nothing that the mighty sun
Rises each morning from the Eastern plain
Over the meadows, fresh with hoary dew?
Is it for nothing that the shadowy trees

On yonder hill-top in the summer night
Stand darkly out before the golden moon?
Is it for nothing that the autumn boughs
Hang thick with mellow fruit, what time the swain
Presses the luscious juice, and joyful shouts
Rise in the purple twilight, gladdening him
Who laboured late, and homeward wends his way
Over the ridgy grounds, and through the mead,
Where the mist broods along the fringed stream?
Far in the Western sea dim islands float,
And lines of mountain-coast receive the sun
As he sinks downward to his resting-place,
Ministered to by bright and crimson clouds:
Is it for nothing that some artist-hand
Hath wrought together things so beautiful?
Noon follows morn—the quiet breezeless noon,
And pleasant even, season of sweet sounds
And peaceful sights; and then the wondrous bird
That warbles like an angel, full of love,
From copse and hedgerow side pouring abroad
Her tide of song into the listening night.
Beautiful is the last gleam of the sun
Slanted through twining branches; beautiful
The birth of the faint stars—first, clear and pale,
The steady-lustred Hesper, like a gem
On the flushed bosom of the West; and then
Some princely fountain of unborrowed light,
Arcturus, or the Dogstar, or the seven
That circle without setting round the pole.
Is it for nothing that the midnight hour
That solemn silence sways the hemisphere,

And ye must listen long before ye hear
The cry of beasts, or fall of distant stream,
Or breeze among the tree-tops—while the stars,
Like guardian spirits, watch the slumbering earth?

Can human energies be scattered all
In a long life—a slumber deep and chill
Settle upon the soul—a palsy bind
The spiritual limbs—and all the strings
Of that sweet instrument, the mind of man,
Remain untuned, untouched?—What if in dreams
The struggling fancy from her prison break
And wander undirected, gathering up
Unnatural combinations of strange things,
Of sights, it may be, beautiful and wild,—
Long gleaming reaches of some slow-paced stream,
And boats of gold and pearl, with coral masts,
Floating unguided in a faint green light
Of twisted boughs, and heavy-plumaged birds
Of many colours, roosting all the night
On rambling branches of a giant wood?—
And what if voices in the middle night
Full on thine ear in chimy murmurs rush,
That warble of deep skies and silver sheen,—
And bright eyes twinkle, far away but clear,
Receding as they twinkle, and with charm
Unknown the ravished spirit drawing on?
These are not wholesome nurture for the soul,
Nor sounds and sights like these the daily bread
It asks from Heaven: these are the errant paths
Of those great flaming brushes in the sky,
Now dangerously near the maddening fire,
Now chill and darkling in the gulfs of space,

Unlike the steady moderated course
Of habitable worlds.

There lie around
Thy daily walk great store of beauteous things,
Each in its separate place most fair, and all
Of many parts disposed most skilfully,
Making in combination wonderful
An individual of a higher kind;
And that again in order ranging well
With its own fellows, till thou rise at length
Up to the majesty of this grand world;—
Hard task; and seldom reached by mortal souls,
For frequent intermission, and neglect
Of close communion with the humblest things;
But in rare moments, whether Memory
Hold compact with Invention, or the door
Of Heaven hath been a little pushed aside,
Methinks I can remember, after hours
Of unpremeditated thought in woods
On western steeps, that hung a pervious screen
Before blue mountains in the distant sea,
A sense of a clear brightness in my soul,
A day-spring of mild radiance, like the light
First-born of the great Fiat, that ministered
Unto the earth before the sun was made.

Evening and morning—those two ancient names
So linked with childish wonder, when with arm
Fast wound about the neck of one we loved,
Oft questioning, we heard Creation's tale—
Evening and morning ever brought to me
Strange joy; the birth and funeral of light,—
Whether in clear unclouded majesty

The large Sun poured his effluence abroad,
Or the gray clouds rolled silently along,
Dropping their doubtful tokens as they passed;
Whether above the hills intensely glowed
Bright lines of parting glory in the west,
Or from the veil of faintly-reddened mist
The darkness slow descended on the earth;
The passage to a state of things all new,
New fears and new enjoyments,—this was all
Food for my seeking spirit: I would stand
Upon the jutting hills that overlook
Our level moor, and watch the daylight fade
Along the prospect: now behind the leaves
The golden twinkles of the westering sun
Deepened to richest crimson: now from out
The solemn beech-grove, through the natural aisles
Of pillared trunks, the glory in the west
Showed like Jehovah's presence-fire, beheld
In olden times above the Mercy-seat
Between the folded wings of Cherubim;—
I loved to wander, with the evening star
Heading my way, till from the palest speck
Of virgin silver, evermore lit up
With radiance as by spirits ministered,
She seemed a living pool of golden light;
I loved to learn the strange array of shapes
That pass along the circle of the year;
Some, for the love of ancient lore, I kept,
And they would call into my fancy's eye
Chaldæan beacons, over the drear sand
Seen faintly from thick-towered Babylon
Against the sunset, shepherds in the field,

Watching their flocks by night,—or shapes of men
And high-necked camels, passing leisurely
Along the starred horizon, where the spice
Swims in the air, in Araby the Blest;
And some, as Fancy led, I figured forth,
Misliking their old names; one circlet bright
Gladdens me often, near the Northern Wain,
Which, with a childish playfulness of choice
That hath not passed away, I loved to call
The crown of glory, by the righteous Judge
Against the day of His appearing, laid
In store for him who fought the fight of faith.

I ever loved the Ocean, as't had been
My childhood's playfellow: in sooth it was;
For I had built me forts upon its sands,
And launched my little navies in the creeks,
Careless of certain loss; so it would play
Even as it listed with them, I were pleased.
I loved to follow with the backward tide
Over rough rocks and quaintly delving pools,
Till that the land-cliffs lessened, and I trod
With cautious step on slippery crags and moist,
With sea-weed clothed, like the green hair of Nymphs,
The Nereids' votive hair, that on the rocks
They hang when storms are past, to the kind power,
That saved their sparry grottoes.

And at night
I wandered often, when the winds were up,
Over the pathless hills, till I could hear,
Borne fitly upon the hurrying blast,
The curfew-bell, with lingering strokes and deep,
From underlying town; then all was still

But the low murmuring of the distant sea;
And then again the new-awakened wind
Howled in the dells, and through the bended heath
Swept whistling by my firmly-planted feet.

Eternal rocks —that lift your heads on high,
Gray with the tracks of ages that have passed
Over your serried brows, with many a scar
Of thunder-stroke deep-riven: from out whose clefts
The gnarlèd oak, and yew, and tender ash,
Poured forth like waters, trail adown the steep,—
Ye stand to figure to our human view
The calm and never-altering character
Of great Eternity; like some vast pier
Fixed, while the fleeting tide of mortal things
Flows onward from its sight. The mighty men
Of ages gone have past beneath your crest
And cast an upward look, and ye have grown
Into their being, and been created part
Of the great Mind; and of your influence some
Hath past into the thoughts that live and burn
Through all the ages of the peopled world.
Your presence hath been fruitful to my soul
Of mighty lessons; whether inland far
Ye lift your jutting brows from grassy hills,
Or on the butt of some great promontory
Keep guard against the sleepless siege of waves.
Once I remember when most visible light
Shone from you on my spirit—'twas an eve
In fall of summer, when the weaker births
Of the great forest change their robes of green;
On such an eve, I climbed into a nook

Bowered with leaves and canopied with crags
On the loved border of the western shore.
Over the topmost cliff the horned moon,
Not eight days old, shone mildly; under foot
The mighty ocean rolled its multitude
Of onward-crowding ridges, that with crash
Of thunder broke upon the jutting rocks;
And in the northern sky, where not an hour
The day had sunk, a pomp of tempest-clouds
Passed wildly onward over the calm lines
Of the hue of faded sunset. Wearily
Sighed the thick oaks upon the seaward steep,
And the melancholy sea-bird wailed aloft,
Now poised in the mid-air, now with swift sweep
Descending; and again on balanced wings
Hovering, or wheeling dismally about,
With short importunate cry.

But ye the chief,
Trees, that along our pleasant native slope
Pendant with clustering foliage, in the light
Of parting evening sleep most peacefully,
Gathering to the eye your separate heads
Into a dark and misty mass of green;
Ye can bear witness how with constant care
I mourned your tribute to the autumn winds,
And hailed with you the sweet return of spring,
And watched with fondest care the tender green;
Ye sleep the winter through, and burst abroad
In the morning of the year; and sweetest songs
Sound through your arbours all the happy May,
Till callow broods take wing, and summer's sun
Darkens the tender green upon the leaf;

And then ye stand majestic, glorying
In strength of knotted trunk and branches vast,
Daring the noonday heat, that withers up
The orchis-flower and foxglove at your feet,
Save where your mighty shadows gloomily
Recline upon the underlying sward.
I looked upon you when the April moon
Sprinkled your forms with light, and the dewball lay
All night upon the branch: listening each year
When the first breeze might stir your boughs new-clothed,
Or when the rain all through the summer-day
Fell steadily upon the leaves, mine ear
Soothing, with the faint music's even chime.

These, and a thousand things that men pass by,
Served for my spiritual nourishment:
Nor wanted high example, to my heart
Laid often, and in secret cherished up
With oft-recurring sweet encouragement;
Nor words of import deep, that fall on us
In solemn places, when we note them not;
But most one sacred thought, linked in my breast
To a thousand memories that can never die—
Sounding upon me in the hallowed hour
Of Sabbath-service from the wondrous book;—
It was that He, the only Son of Heaven
That took His joys and woes from things below,
When He would pour His holy soul in prayer,
Went forth beneath the moonlight;—through the lines
Of trembling olive-leaves, to where the path
Came sudden out upon the open hill;—
There He stood waiting till the flame from heaven

Lighted upon the inward sacrifice
Of thoughts most pure: and then the holy words
Came musically forth upon the night,
More sweet than tinkling Kedron, or the pipe
Of distant nightingale: or on the cliff
Above the tossing lake He prayed and stood,
And through the flight of jarring elements
Came unimpeded swiftly gliding down
From the Father's hand a healing drop of peace
Upon His wounded soul. On mountain heights
All the mid-hours of night, with serried crags
Towering in the moonlight overhead,
And through a channelled dell stretching away
The plains of Galilee seen from afar,
Till morn alone He prayed: whether the cup
Of self-determined suffering passed athwart
His forward vision, and the Father's wrath
Upon His human soul pressed heavily,
Or for the welfare of His chosen flock
He wrestled in an agony of prayer
That their faith fail not. Even the love of Him
Now mingled in my bosom with all sounds
And sights that I rejoiced in: and in hours
Of self-arraigning thought, when the dull world
With all its saws of heartlessness and pride
Came close upon me, I approved my joys
And simple fondnesses, on trust that He
Who taught the lesson of unwavering faith
From the meek lilies of green Palestine,
Would fit the earthly things that most I loved
To the high teaching of my patient soul.
And the sweet hope that sprung within me now

Seemed all-capacious, and from every source
Apt to draw comfort; I perceived within
A fresh and holy light rise mildly up;
Not morning, nor the planet beautiful
That heads the bright procession, when the sun
Hath sunk into the west, is half so fair.
This was that Light which lighteth every man
That comes into the world; from the first gleam
Of momentary joy, that twinkles forth
Brightly and often from the infant's eye,
To that which seldom comes on common days,—
The steady overflow of calm delight
In the well-ripened soul; all thoughts which spring
From daily sights and sounds, all active hopes
Brought from the workings of the outer world
Upon the life within, here have their fixed
And proper dwelling-place.

As on the front
Of some cathedral pile, ranged orderly,
Rich tabernacles throng, of sainted men
Each in his highday robes magnificent,
Some topped with crowns, the Church's nursing sires,
And some, the hallowed temple's serving-men,
With crosiers deep-embossed, and comely staves
Resting aslant upon their reverend form,
Guarding the entrance well; while round the walls,
And in the corbels of the massy nave,
All circumstance of living child and man
And heavenly influence, in parables
Of daily-passing forms is pictured forth:—

So all the beautiful and seemly things
That crowd the earth, within the humble soul
Have place and order due; because there dwells
In the inner temple of the holy heart
The presence of the Spirit from above:
There are His tabernacles; there His rites
Want not their due performance, nor sweet strains
Of heavenly music, nor a daily throng
Of worshippers, both those who minister
In service fixed—the mighty principles
And leading governors of thought; and those
Who come and go, the troop of fleeting joys—
All hopes, all sorrows, all that enter in
Through every broad receptacle of sense.

Written in Brockley Coomb, Somersetshire.

“ουθ' εσπερος, ουθ' εωος ουτω θαυμαστος.”—Aristotle, Ethics; said of δικαιοσυνη.

Lesson the Third.

“The deuyll they say is dead,
The deuill is dead!
It may wel so be;
Or els they wold see
Otherwise, and flee
From worldly vanitie,
And foule covetousnes,
And other wretchednes,
Fickell falsenesse,
Varyablenesse
With unstablenesse. [OMITTED]
Farwel benignity!
Farwell simplicitye!
Farwell humilitye!
Farwel good charity!”
Skelton.

How parables look forth from the face of the world; and while Nature is the body, Truth is the soul. A yearning for the meekness and faith of the days that are past; and a lament over our waywardness and pride.

The dews descend, the soft and gentle dews;
Over the homeward meadows, stretching forth
Far into the gray mist, the cattle lie
Most tranquilly; the river's silver swathes
Move not, or slumber silently along;
The cups of the water-lilies are not stirred
By passing eddies, but with countenance
Turned up to heaven, they lie and let the dark
Come down on them, and then they pass beneath
Into their wat'ry bed, till the young morn

Looks slant upon the surface of the stream.
And there, among the golden company,
Floats like a queen that grand and ancient flower,
With name that passing from the charmèd tongue
Reminds us of low melodies in sleep
So honey-sweet, so musically soft:
Like Artemis on Erymanthus' ridge
Taking her pleasure in the mountain chase,
With the field-nymphs around her playing blithe,
Her beautiful brow she lifts among them all,
And easy to be known, though all are fair:
That flower of many honours, dwelt upon
By old prophetic light, in time of yore
A mighty parable of mystic things,
All sacred, leaf and bud and banded stalk,
And root that struck into the bed of Nile,
Or by the lake Mæotis, or perchance
Under the bank of Jordan fringed with palms:
Fit and accepted emblem of that first
Great resurrection of the chosen few,
When from the waters blank and desolate
They rose like thee; and token not unknown
Of other and of deeper tendencies
Of all things on this earth: how in the track

And visible procession of events
One tale is told, one moral figured forth,
Birth, death, and resurrection; birth, and death,
And resurrection, ever and anon
Held up in clearest light to human thought.
The milky tender seed is fashioned first
From the flower that dies in birth; through cruel blights
And under adverse skies, with pain and toil,
If not self-known, yet rendered evident
By the careful nature that it looketh for,
It ripens into age; and then it dies
In the brown ground, and chilly nights and snows
Pass over it; at last the kindly sun
Bursts out upon it, and it breaks its grave,
And issues forth, a beautiful green thing,
A fresh and lovely scion. And in things
That look less like our own humanity,
If we would search, the same great parable
Is ever taken up and told abroad,
And will be till the end. Beauty and Truth
Go hand in hand: and 'tis the providence
Of the great Teacher that doth clearest show
The gentler and more lovely to our sight,
Training our souls by frequent communings
With her who meets us in our daily path
With greetings and sweet talk, to pass at length
Into the presence, by unmarked degrees,
Of that her sterner sister; best achieved,
When from a thousand common sights and sounds
The power of Beauty passes sensibly
Into the soul, clenching the golden links
That bind the memories of brightest things.

So to that queenly virgin on the shore
Of old Phæacia, neither mortal man
Nor woman might be likened, but one branch
Of budding palm, in Delos that upsprung
Fast by Apollo's altar from the ground.
Thus, irrespective of all names of kind
Is heavenly Beauty—spread along the earth,
In all created things always the same.

Many have held that pure and holy truth
Dwells only in the solitary soul;
That man with man conversing may not share
Aught of the spiritual inward life;
That soul approaching within reach of soul
Fosters a longing after things cast off
With the first slough of Nature:—some have said
That the green earth, with all her leafy paths
And her blue hills, hath nothing of delight
Fitted for holy men;—yet they have loved
To wander in the twilight,—to recline
In the cool shade of a fresh-bursting tree,—
To look into the night, when from the sky
The moonlight broods upon the charmèd earth;
Yea, they have loved to take their playfellows
From simple children, and to loose awhile
The rigid bands of hardship self-imposed:
And then they tell of youth, and innocence,
And for a little moment sunshine bursts

Upon their souls—a transitory gleam;
For soon the clouds roll onward thick and fast,
Darkening the light within, till a deep night
Sets in, a damp and freezing night, wherein
Prowl evil beasts, and most unbridled crime
Walks unreproved.

As one in summer-tide
Pacing a weary road in evening light
After the sun hath set, with the young moon
Looking upon him from the purple mist
That floats above the west, saddens to think
That each step bears him farther from his love;
So in the interchange of daily words
With proud and heartless men, comes weariness
Upon my spirit, and my thoughts look back
To solitude, or sweet society
Of chosen souls, when two or three in peace
Gathered together, for a little hour
We held discourse in all humility
Of common dangers and of common hopes;
Till there came One among us who declared
Why all these things were so; till our hearts burned
Within us at the thoughts that flowed abroad
From one into the other; till we looked
And saw Him in the midst, as He had said,
Known in the feeling of our spirits: known
For that He blessed and brake as He was wont;
Known to be present in His messengers,
The daily calls and offices of life,
Which, like their Master, to the human kind
Go about doing good.

Despise not thou

The yearnings of a spirit ill at ease
To dwell with men that have no love for God—
Men of devices new and manifold—
Men who would disenshrine the heavenly crown
From the bright pole, and seek their best reward
In being catalogued with printed names,
And blazoning records of schismatic strife
In the far quarters of the world. O Love,
O Charity, that erst ascendant crowned
Our land with calm light like the star of eve!
Fast o'er the ocean fares the gathered gold,
Gathered from Britain's heart, while in her arms
Her famished myriads curse each coming morn;
And they who feed their thousands far away
By cold machinery that asks no toil,
Grudge the poor pittance of a labouring hour
To the home-duties of unwitnessed love.

Methinks I could have borne to live my days
When by the pathway side, and in the dells,
By shady resting-place, or hollow bank
Where curved the streamlet, or on peeping rock,
Rose sweetly to the traveller's humble eye
The Cross in every corner of our land;
When from the wooded valleys morn and eve

Passed the low murmur of the angel-bell;
Methinks I could have led a peaceful life
Daily beneath the triple-vaulted roof
Chanting glad matins, and amidst the glow
Of mellow evening towards the village-tower
Pacing my humble way;—most like to that
He in the spirit from the lonely isle
Saw, the beloved Apostle, round the throne,
And Him that sat thereon, glad companies
Resting not day nor night their song of praise.

Go ye about and search; set up a place
And fetch a compass: in the brightest fields,
And by the dwelling of the mighty sea,
The everlasting witness; go and seek
The sweetest flower that ever bloomed on earth;—
See ye search well, for this our land hath borne
Full many a fragrant cluster,—there hath come
From other times its sweet remembrance down;—
'Tis low, but ye may scent it from afar,
And ye may know its presence where it blooms,
Even in the faces of the men ye meet,
And in the little children. Many a quest
There hath been undertaken; many a man
Of tender spirit and soft step hath gone,
Lured on by specious promises, far forth,
And bitterly returned. We boast ourselves
In pride of art, and lift our heads on high,
Dangerously climbing, without care bestowed
To assure well the ground whereon is fixed
The ladder of our vaunting: where our sires
Laid deep and strong foundation, there we raise
Story on story vainly stretched aloft.

Celestial Meekness—purity of heart,
With all beloved and gentle memories
Of soul-refreshing things, up from the din
Of this most blasphemous and boasting age
Have taken flight into some purer air:
They have departed; never seek for them
In beautiful green places, or on slopes
Facing the west in any lovely land;
No sweet memorials of the sacrifice
By which man liveth, greet him on his way;
He walks in drear and dim disquietude,
Gathering no store for rest.

Eternal shame
Cleave to the mention of the men, whose hands
Pulled down from pathway-side and village-green
The holy emblem of our faith; whose trust
Lay not in truth, but power; to whom in vain
The word of caution was pronounced which bid
Take heed, lest with the tares ye sacrifice
Wheat also; doubly blind and faithless men,
Nursed in the gall of carnal bitterness,
Without one gentle spiritual thought;
Who in the end approved themselves to him
Who was their captain and their father, him
Who loves not order, hates all beautiful
And seemly things; when in their hour of dark
And devilish misrule, sceptre and crown,
The sacred types of firm and centred power,
Patterns of mighty things invisible,
Were trodden under foot of men; when full
On the calm face of Christ's own spouse, were blown
Pestilent slanders, and fell poisons poured
Into her holy cup.

They reasoned hard
Of so-deemed spiritual truths, and taught
The life of God to spend itself on words,
Objections, and divisions, and false depth
Of sentence intricate; they led the soul
Of human kind,—already prone to ill,
But now, in course of wholesome discipline,
Trained to bow down to Heaven-appointed rule,
And keep the harmony of God's great reign,—
To break its bonds in sunder, and in pride
To feel its strength and self-intrusted power,
And tempt alone the perilous path of life,
Where once the saints, a meek and comely band,
Walked strong in union. Trust me, it is hard,
It is most hard for gentle souls to live,
And not to burst abroad with every woe,
When words and offices of heavenly love
Win not an answer in the heartless world;
When all our piety and all our zeal
Lie like a level swamp. O slow the hearts,
And deaf the ears unto the voice of Heaven,
“I came not to send Peace upon the earth!”
True, we have tamed, or think that we have tamed
Outbreakings into blood; true, that the edge
Of persecuting sword is turned and dull;
The fierce depravity of human act
Roughs not our surface now; but with false care
Full deeply we have mixed our portion in,
Till the fell poison festers in all ranks,
And even the hearts we fold unto our breast
Are bitten, deadly bitten. Where is love?
Where is the blessed fold, that we may run

And shelter us? O God! they should have kept
A light upon the corners of Thy fold,
To guide the wanderers in the desert wide:
But they have fought for words, and striven for names,
And fallen down dead among the famished sheep;
And round us howls the desolating wind,
And each the other knows not; there hath fallen
Darkness that may be felt upon our path;—
But Thou art just, and righteous are Thy ways;—
Where are the calm retreats our fathers gave
To holy meditation? Where the fanes
That rolled their tribute of unceasing praise
Up to the gates of heaven? And where the towers,
Thick rising o'er the twice-converted land,
Warning the peasant in his simple toil
With never-failing memories of God?
From their sad ruins and their crumbling shafts
Hath gone a cry to Heaven. Ere now, methinks,
This island-home of ours should have been spread
With mighty temples, morn nor solemn eve
Wanting the voice of prayer. Oh, I could weep
Even at the thought of ancient blessedness:—
But we must pray and toil—the vengeance-cloud
Stoops tempest-laden on our godless land:
But we will forth, sweet love, and speak with God;
It may be we shall find a saving band
Of ten meek-hearted men;—blessed and wise,
Could we but win so many.

But the night
Falls down the heaven, and mists of silver dew
Strike chill upon the sense, and mournful thoughts

Come thick upon me, and the truant tears
Stand hot upon my cheek. Then cease we here,
And at some fitter time take up the lyre
In peaceful mood, and meditate sweet strains
For future years, of sorrow stayed on hope.

The lotus-flower.

“Οιμ δ' Αρτεμις εισι κατ' ουρεος ιοχεαιρα,
η κατα Τηυγετον περιμηκετον, η Ερυμανθον,
τερπομενη καπροισι και ωκειης ελαφοισι:
τη δε θ' αμα Νυμφαι, κουραι Διος αιγιοχοιο,
αγρονομοι παιζουσι: γεγηθε δε τε φρενα Λητω:
πασαων δ' υπερ ηγε καρη εχει ηδε μετωπα,
ρεια δ' αριγνωτη πελεται, καλαι δε τε πασαι:”

Hom. Od. ζ.

“ου γαρ πω τοιουτον ιδον βροτον οφθαλμοισιν,
ουτ' ανδρ' ουτε γυναικα: σεβας μ' εχει εις οροωντα.
Δηλω δη ποτε τοιον Απολλωνος παρα βωμω
φοινικος νεον ερνος ανερχομενον ενοησα.”

Hom. Od. ζ.

This cannot now (1852, nor now, 1865,) be said. The present time witnesses the noblest self-denying efforts on the part of our laity to reclaim the lost and relieve the needy. May they increase and prosper.

“If Mr Alford, with the help of Mr Wordsworth and Dr Arnold, should succeed in restoring crosses by our road-sides, much good might follow, and no harm that we know of.” Thus wrote the Edinburgh Review in 1836. But all who know the course of events in England since, will be aware that this whole matter has now assumed an entirely differ ent aspect. The reader will be good enough to judge of these lines, written thirty-three years ago, by the light cast on them by subsequent history. Compare also Lesson V., line 90.

Lesson the Fourth.

“Heaven-gates are not so highly arched
As princes' palaces; they that enter there
Must go upon their knees.”
Webster. Duchess of Malfi.

A journey into regions whence a prospect is taken of the world; into which is brought a view of the soul of man and its teaching, and a vision is related, with a prophecy, which Time hath proved to be true.

Rememberest thou that solemn eventide
When last we parted? we had wandered forth
Down that steep hill-path to the level moor;
It was not long before the golden sun
Wheeled sloping to the western mountain's brink,
And presently a canopy of clouds
Folded him in with curtains of deep fire—
And so he sunk, slow and majestical,
Leaving a wake of glory; every bird
Sung his last carol, poised upon his branch
Of night-repose, and every little flower
Closed in its beauties in its drooping breast.

We sat upon the green marge of a stream
Reed-skirted, and the fragments of faint light
Leapt in and out among the yellow stalks,
Or peacefully reposed within the breast
Of the mid-river. Our discourse had been
Of infancy and youth: the hills of fern

And meadows of thick cowslips floated past
Our mental vision, and a faint sweet smell
Seemed half to come upon some inward sense.
But we had ceased to speak, and on our ear
Dwelt the last words with oft-recurring sound,
Mingling most fitly with the distant fall,
And the low booming of the passing dorr.

I told thee, ere we parted home that night,
A thousand undistinguishable fears
Of heavy days to come; I mourned to see
Beauty and freedom—in the daily talk
Of men heard frequent, on the lips of all
A constant theme, undying sounds that set
The slumbering spirit of mankind on work—
That they were names alone; that the dull age
Knows not their presence passing daily by,
And seeks them where they dwell not; that we throw
Our dowry of sweet peace unto the winds;
That we have proudly sought and duly earned
A desolating curse from righteous Heaven.

Perchance thou art too young, and that smooth brow
Built upwards through thy gently-crispèd hair,
Hath not those records stampt indelibly
Which Care, severe historian, writes aloft
That all may read; perchance the tender blue
So deep within thine eyes is all too bright
And cloudless yet—perchance I spake of things
By thee unheeded. Purity and light,
Thy blessed chamber, thy beloved home,
Brothers and sisters, and in humbler life
Some chosen spirits of first thoughts and few,
These are thy helpmates; all thine outward world

Our wooded hills and thickly-cottaged vales;
Thine inward nurture fetched from communings
With the great Comforter, in stillest hours,
And from the pages of that wondrous Book,
Which deepens as we search, whence we may draw
Waters, that spring into eternal life.

As every day windeth its train along
Of sunny hours chequered with passing clouds,
We grow in spirit, and the holy work
Of God goes forward still. Each rising morn
Calls us from lightest slumbers to give thanks,
And every night we weave a wreath of praise
With sweeter blossoms of our rising Spring.
The holy leaven works, and all the lump
Ere long will penetrate: for all our life
Will speed as doth a dove upon the wing;
The day will seem no longer, when the sun
In age sets on us, than in this our morn
Seems the young dawning but an hour gone by.

Dear genius of my musings, let us now
Rise to the middle heaven, and thence look down
On the tossing waste of cares, and from the wall
Of Love's serenest temple, catch afar
The beatings of the fevered heart of the world.
Canst thou, bound to the chariot-path of God,
Traverse the dread circumference? Canst thou
Keep pace with the errant moon? or trace the star,
Night after night, that wanders over heaven?
Canst thou, the nursling of thy peaceful home,
Look without trembling down the dizzy height,
And see the flaming vapours rolled around
The journey of the day-god, and far off

Fringing the borders of the pendent world,
Dark cloudy heaps, that love to gather gloom
Even from the fields the sun hath sown with light?
Come, let us rise together: and as He
Whose raiment glistered on the wondrous Mount,
In sweetest converse with the Sons of Light,
Yet spoke of human pain, and that decease
He should accomplish at Jerusalem;
So take we into nearer sight of Heaven
Thoughts that are born of mortal suffering;
Thither ascending, where in open day
Of the full shining of God's countenance
Lie treasured all the secret sins of earth.

As one who wandering in the western land
Over a hill of golden-blossomed furze,
Amid gray rocks, where the red cup-moss grows
Above the straggling fern, when now with toil
Of straining limbs he gains the beaconed top,
Looks over into valleys wonderful,
Thick-timbered valleys, with their fair church-towers,
Stretched into hazy distance, till a bank
Of bright blue hills with outline gently curved
Stands up before the sunset; so my soul
Hath gained a vantage ground, and we can see
A stretch of airy prospect opening wide.
Dost thou not hear, beloved, how the air
Is trembling with the whisper of light wings?
These are the passengers that make their road
From God to men, and traffic in our hearts,
With cargoes of rich grace and help divine;
Repentant tears for nectar take they back,
Mourning for song: and there is joy in heaven.

Dost thou not see the underlying world
Clad with an outer zone of brooding light,
Whence, inward ever, sparkles leap and flash
Like the sea-spray beneath the evening star?
These are the tides of Hope, that daily fill
Life's river: thus it is decreed on high.
Because all light and gladness speeds away
Into the dark; and from the life of man
There floweth daily forth a stream of joy
Into a chasm whose depth we know not of;—
Therefore the soul doth day by day demand
Fresh food for strong desire; and therefore Hope,
Like ever-youthful Hebé to the throng
Of the immortals on Olympus' top,
Stands ministering, and from her golden cup
Deals sweetest potion to the thirsting soul.

It sorteth well with weakness to have need
To lean upon a stronger, and depend
Even for each step upon another's will:
It suiteth well with man's infirmity
To be linked fast with on ward-looking hope,
And doubt, and strong desire; to see but part
Of all before it, and but now and then
Gain a bright glimpse of beauty, now and then
To feel a sprinkling of the pleasant spray
Of the great ocean-stream of truth that laves
With living floods the walls of the city of life.

But wherefore doth infirmity still haunt
The mournful destinies of human kind?
Why, since the earth is full of beauty, lacks
Her best inhabitant in his best part
His rightful share apportioned? Why doth man,

Sole heir of misery, walk the happy earth,
Feeding on poisons, shut from perfect joy?

Because the beauties of this nether world
Are born, and live and die, and their reward
Is, that from them one particle of bliss
Makes way into the life of higher things,
Nourishing that whence nourishment may flow
Up to the soul of man, the holy place
Of this great natural temple. The small flower
That was our favourite in the happy years
Of childhood, in each scheme of riper days
Hath borne its part; but it hath long ago
Passed into earth and laid its beauty by:
And some that seem eternal,—the dark hills
And thickly-timbered valleys, the great sea,
The never-changing watchers of the sky,
Are daily testimonies, by whose word
Speaks the great Spirit to the soul of man.
So that their place is finally assigned
In universal being, and their rank
Defined, and to what end they minister,
And to that end how far.

But who shall set
Definite limits to the human soul,
Or bound the mighty yearnings of desire
Wherewith the spirit labours after truth?
All natural teaching,—all the thoughts that owe
Their being to the multitude of things
Which crowd upon us daily from without,
Go forward without labour; and when spurred
By call for mightier energies, the soul
Summons its hidden forces, and springs up

Mail-clad in most unvanquishable might,
A bright aspirant to a higher meed
Of beauty and desire; thence to look up
To some yet loftier spiritual throne.
Because the heart of man is capable
Of all degrees of purity and power;
Because the purest heart is mightiest
For strife with evil; therefore is the life
Of man encompassed with infirmity;
And therefore to the kingdom of our God
Much tribulation is the beaten path.

Shall miserable Man, the sport of winds
And the keen breath of the eager winter air,
Think condescension to bow down in woe,
To court his brother dust, and lift his cries,
Wafting against the thunder-thrones of Heaven
The incense of his wailings? Not that power
Is thereby sacrificed, or human souls
Lose aught of marvellous splendour;—know ye not
That he who kneels is higher than who stands?
The prostrate than the upright; the opprest
Than the oppressor? how more heavenly light
Breaks in upon the spirit through distress?
The reed that waves along the river's brink,
Spearing its way into the summer air,
Is not so glorious, as when laid by winds
It rests upon the mirror of the flood,
Gemmed with bright globes of dew; the stream that winds
Through unopposing flats its teeming way,
Floated with merchandise to the broad sea,
We love not like the tumbling mountain linn,

That hath not where to flow, breaking its path
Through fragments rough, and over mossy crags,
Down to the headlong cliff that tops the waves.

Hast thou not marked, how close together linked
Glory and Sadness walk; how never flower
Were half so beautiful, did we not know
That it must droop and wither? deem not then
That all the anguish-cries of this great world
Which reach us where we stand, find not in heaven
Fit greeting; there are those who minister
Outside the golden gates, to purify
The sorrow and the joy that enters there;
And I have heard from that bright visitant
Who comes to me each night, when my small flock
Is folded safe, by wearied Nature left
To the great Shepherd who can never sleep,
That oftentimes the pale and weeping souls
Dazzle them as they pass to meet their Lord
In glittering frost-robes of the purest spar
Circled with many crowns; and oftentimes
One who was joyous all, and in the world
Shone like a star, comes drooping in a mist,
And falters at the steep and narrow stair;
Nor enters, till with sprinkling and with words
The shadow of the earthy melt away.

Hear thou a vision—fitly told thee now
When we are parted from the nether world,
A dream of import strange, and prophecy
Which after-time shall prove. 'Twas on a night
Such as my spirit loves; moonlit and calm,
But veiled with amber mist, wherein there dwelt
Light, clothing equally the arch of heaven.

I had flown upwards on the stripping wings
Of meditation through the ample sky;
By the Queen-crescent, and past many a star
Thronged with unsinning shapes, whose atmosphere
Made clearer shining round me as I fled,
Reluctantly bound onward through the vast
And peopled universe: and now a light
Fell on me as from some self-shining tract,
Broad and uncentred: and I felt my thoughts
Grew pure and wonderful, and even this flesh
Into a glorious temple purified,
For such a saintly soul as now it shrined
Not all unfitting. And methought in sight
Full opposite, a beautiful green land,
In light not clear nor dark; a mellow day
Shed its soft influence over hill and dale,
And tenderest foliage down a hundred dells
Spread over paths that wound beside the bed
Of tinkling streamlets. Thickly scattered stood
Elm-shaded cottages, and wreathèd smoke
In bright blue curls went up, and o'er the vales
That lay toward the waves, slept peacefully.
'Twas such a land as summer travellers see
On Britain's western shores, who from the hills
Painfully climbed, beyond the Severn sea
Look over into Cambria, facing south,
To Aberavon, by the stream of Taff,
And old Glamorgan.—Then my fancy changed;
'Twas the third morning since my angel-guide
Landed me from strange voyage; scarcely yet
The search of this new home had given repose
To my way-wearied eyes. Thou canst not tell

How bright a morn it was; never such sun
Looked on the nether earth, as now above
Heaven's everlasting hills with perfect orb
Rose joyous, and from every brake the birds
Under the thick leaves starred with prisms of dew
Crowded their mellow warbles. Shapes in white
Over the lawns and by the hedge-row sides
Moved glorious; all the breathings of the air
Were full of joy, and every passing sound
Thrilled through me like the touch of her I love.
And on a sudden from an upland copse
Tangled with woodbine and lithe virgin-bower,
Broke forth a river of full melody,
Gushing like some long reach of pouring linn
In underlying valley, when the stars
Are out upon the mountain. Mute I turned
And listened, till the music of that voice
So took my senses captive, that I stood
Emptied of thought and human consciousness;
Like her who from the sulphur-steaming vale
Hurrying away in olden time, looked back
On Admah and Zeboim, and the plain
Of fruitful Sodom lately loved, and there,
As in her fondness she had looked, stood fixed.
“Hither,” it said, “come hither, child of earth,
Curb thy wild leapings of unquiet thought,
And glide into the calm of hope fulfilled.
Here is no sport of words, nor lying smile
Of rash undowried promise, hither come,
And I will show thee blest realities
More bright than earthly dreams.” As by a charm
Led on, I followed, through the scented air

Moving with speed of thought, till in a shade
Most like to that, where in the morn of life
I opened forth to thee mine inner heart
When thou hadst picked thine apron full of flowers,—
I saw an angel form, serene and tall,
Far lifted into blessedness of look
Above our mortal state; and yet methought
I knew her eyes, I knew her cast of shape:
As when we see a new-acquainted face
Fixed on us strangely with accustomed looks.
“Draw near,” she said, in that same wondrous voice
That filled the air of heaven, heard nigher now,
Like some clear organ, when the swell of song
Tempers the long-drawn music; “let me look
Into thy face, and read thine open soul.
For blessed angels see not as ye see
Down on the nether earth, each fleeting spark
Of high desire, and each conception bold
Of worthy daring, to the insight keen
Of heavenly spirits hath its proper form
And presence, as to thee its earthly veil:”—
And as she spoke, a flush of sudden love,
Like shade athwart a sunny upland thrown,
Passed on her cheek;—“Dear child, the child of tears,
Thou didst not know me; scarcely had thy face
Learned to acknowledge with uncertain calm
(Which mother-love would fain hear called a smile)
My careful ministrations, when a voice
Mysterious called, first softly and scarce heard,
Then loud and louder waxing—‘Come away’—
Till the dread sound struck on my throbbing brain,

And I was carried from thee. Ever since,
In the pure summer air of this sweet land,
God hath been ripening for enjoyment high
My patient spirit; but thine earthly speech
Hath not the signs that might disclose to thee
By what enlightening, what blessed sight,
These eyes have gained; or how the faithful sense,
Close-leaguing with the soul, searches unchecked
Things that lie hid beyond the visible blue
And past the flickering stars.

“But thou mayest know
Thus far, that there are many globes, as this
Hung in the middle firmament, where dwell
Pure spirits, ruling or obeying each
The gentle course of those their shining homes,
Or resting after lives of over-toil,
Or from the sources, at whose distant streams
They loved to drink on earth, feeding at will
Their ever-new desire; some by the flood
That girds the city of God, hold communing
With those that pass, or muse along the brink,
Or cull the lavish flowers; some that love best
To dwell in conflict, on the verge extreme
Sit of this tract of heaven, where night and day
The various plunging of the chafèd sea
Doth homage to their restless thirst of change.

“This isle of ours (to which I marvel how
Thy steps have come) its own inhabitants
Hath portioned: a blest tribe, who love the calm,
And tend these mystic plants, and night and morn

(For night and morn we mark, as on the earth,
Thought not with setting or returning light,
But with alternate song, and visits new
Of blessed ones from God) for worship meet,
Drawing the lengthened chant, and marrying
The raptures of Earth's sweetest melodies
To pure assurance of untroubled souls.
Thou sawest, if thy way I right divine
To have lain upward, for thou art not yet
As one of us, and shalt return to earth,
Where many valleys meet, a gulf of air,
Quiet, and full of this our ether-light;
Call this ‘the haven of Lost Hope’—for here
Speed all the holy souls who left the world
While Hope was young, and Promise in her bud;—
Hither they sped, and wait, till there shall sound
A call to higher meed of blessedness,
The second in Heaven's roll, (if we may trust
The songs of the bright quires that hover round,)
Next to the sainted ones, that fought the fight
Against the sword, or fire, or piercing scorn,
Enduring unto death. If truly rise
Thoughts on my spirit, (and responses false
Have seldom place in temples purified,)
Thou to this island after certain days
Shalt send a blest inhabitant, thyself,
Or other, from the chambers of thine heart
Unwilling parted, friend of hopes and fears.
Weep not,”—for one large tear, born first of joy,

And fully ripened by a throe of grief,
Rolled on my cheek,—“Weep not, for ill thou knowst
That earthly hope is like the precious ore,
Rough and unseemly, till unwelcome force
Crush it in sunder, and the glittering rack
Refine with fire, till its calm shining face
Give back the unbroken sky. Thou canst not tell
How rich a dowry Sorrow gives the soul,
How firm a faith, and eagle-sight of God.
So mayest thou see upon the Earth at night,
After a day of storms, whose sun hath set
In sorrow, when the horizontal round
Is hemmed by sullen clouds, there opens forth
High in the zenith a clear space, in which,
As in a gulf embayed, broods quietly
The glory of the Moon, from underneath
Her misty veil sent upwards; and the stars
Far up the avenues of light disclose.”

She ceased to speak—and aught of joy or fear
That might be left me from that voice divine
Not long was present; for along the shade
A troop of blessed children sporting past—
Oft have I mused ere now on ancient gems,
And sculptured forms of godlike symmetry,
And grace of pictured limbs; but never yet
Saw I such beauty, nor in song attained
So fair conceit, as now in light of Love
Shone in my sight these little ones of Heaven.
Naked they were, if that were nakedness
Which clothed the spirit pure with glorious veil,
The richest dress of God's own fashioning;
With perfect liberty and sport of limb

They gambolled by us on the summer turf,
Each chasing other, and in meetings fond
Twining their innocent arms, and snatching oft
Kisses of playful love; and then they stood
As children might have stood if children were
In the first Paradise, arm over arm,
Clad with a crimson glow, listening our talk,
Their little breasts panting with joy and play.
For there had flowed afresh from that sweet fount
Words of high import, and oft questioning
I dwelt upon her lips, and thus had stayed
Contented ever; but the light began
Slowly to wane around me, and her form
Dimmer and dimmer grew, her voice more faint,
Her answers rare and short;—the sporting band
Of holy children last remained in sight,
And parted last; and all around me then
Was darkness, till our grange, and humble Church,
And row of limes that eastward fence our home,
Now visible against the waking dawn
Came slowly into presence, and this Earth
Flowed in, and loosed the avenues of sense.

These lines almost interpret themselves. I never knew my beloved mother, who died when I was four months old.

These lines were written in 1834. On Aug. 31, 1850, Ambrose Oke Alford, the author's only surviving son, was taken from him almost suddenly in the midst of a joyous and hopeful boyhood. Some slight memorials of him will be found in the poems entitled Lacrymæ Paternæ.

Lesson the Fifth.

------“Churchyards are our cities, unto which
The most repair, that are in goodness rich.
There is the best concourse and confluence,
There the holy suburbs, and from thence
Begins God's city, New Jerusalem,
Which doth extend her utmost gates to them:
At that gate then, triumphant soul, dost thou
Begin thy triumph.”
Donne.

By a pilgrimage to a village churchyard, occasion is taken to speak of death; its wonderful and deep things, and some few of its records, not triumphs.

From the great sun light flows upon the earth;
And every thing that lives this summer morn
Looks joyous; all along the hills that stretch
Far southward, slowly sail the dazzling heaps
Of whitest vapour; but the upper heaven
Is deep and clear;—above the yellow fields,
Some thick with grain, and some with pointed sheaves
Spread as with tents, and some but yesterday
Joyed over with loud shouts of harvest joy,
The dizzy air swims onward:—in thick groups
Over the slopes, and in the cottaged dells,
Gathered in undistinguishable mass
Of dark luxuriance, elm, and solemn oak,
And tender ash, sleep in the lavish light.

Come, let us forth, my best beloved, and roam
Along the bowered lanes that thread the vales;

For on the bank beneath the arching shade
Hung purple strawberries, and interchange
Of leafy arbour, and field-path, and hill,
And the far sea, and undying dells,
Will prompt sweet themes of never-failing talk.

Oft have I seen, when on the mighty hills
That curve around our bay, in a close nook
Upon the westward slope, a village tower:
And I have stood and gazed upon its top
That looks above the trees, and thought my life
Would pass full pleasantly beneath its crest;
So quiet is it, so without pretence
Most lovely, that the throng of restless hopes
That ever leap unquiet in the soul
Might well be charmed, in such a presence, down
To sweet contentment; and the mellowed voice
Of the past hour hath come upon my ear
So sweetly, that I waited where I stood
To hear its sound again, rather than risk
Echoes less gentle on a near approach.
Bend we our journey thither; for the day
Is all our own, for ramble or for talk,
Or seat by the cool mountain stream, or hour
Of meditation by that modest church;
For, if I guess aright, there should be there
Ancient stone monument of honest men,
Or mouldering cross; and from that arboured nook
Yon hills will show most proudly. 'Tis not far:
Thou art a denizen of mountain air;
And the fresh breezes from the sea will fan
Our brows as we mount upward.

Gentlest Girl,
Thou wert a bright creation of my thought
In earliest childhood, and my seeking soul
Wandered ill-satisfied, till one blest day
Thine image passed athwart it. Thou wert then
A young and happy child, sprightly as life;
Yet not so bright or beautiful as that
Mine inward vision. But a whispering voice
Said softly, This is she whom thou didst choose;
And thenceforth ever, through the morn of life,
Thou wert my playmate, thou my only joy,
Thou my chief sorrow when I saw thee not:
And when my daily consciousness of life
Was born and died, thy name the last went up,
Thy name the first, before our Heavenly Guide,
For favour and protection. All the flowers
Whose buds I cherished, and in summer heats
Fed with mock showers, and proudly showed their bloom,
For thee I reared, because all beautiful
And gentle things reminded me of thee:
Yea, and the morning, and the rise of sun,
And fall of evening, and the starry host,
If aught I loved, I loved because thy name
Sounded about me when I looked on them.
So that the love of thee brought up my soul
To universal love; and I have learned
That there are voices in the silent earth
That speak unto the heart; that there is power
Granted from Heaven unto the humblest things;
And that not he who strives to gather up
Into his self-arranged and stubborn thoughts

The parables of Nature, meets with joy;
But he who patiently submits his soul
To God's unwritten teaching; who goes forth
Amidst the majesty of earth and sky
Humble, as in a mighty Presence; waits
For influence to descend; and murmurs not
If in his present consciousness no trace
Of admiration or of lofty thought
Be shown; in patience tarrying the full time,
Till the Beauty that hath passed into his soul
Shine out upon his thoughts.

Therefore I love
All calm and silent things; all things that bear
Least show of motion or unnatural force:
Therefore I love to mark the slow decay
Of ancient building, or of churchyard cross,
Or mouldering abbey; and as formerly
I mourned when I remembered how of old,
Where crumbling arches ivy-prop their shafts,
The proud aisle stood, and the full choir of praise
Rolled solemn from an hundred tongues;—so now
I seem to see that mighty Providence
Is justified; that more hath been revealed
On which the human soul hath lived and grown
In the departure of old glories; more
In cherished memories that keep at home
Within our breasts, than in the maintenance
Of busy action, which hath wrought their charm.

But we are drawing near. This bowered lane,
With glimpses of the southern bank of hills,
And ever through the bents the blessed sea
Far to the west, might stir a heavier heart

Than thine and mine to leap with childish joy.
Thanks to the arching boughs for stir of breeze
Scarce sensible but in their rustling leaves,
Yet even thus most cooling; thanks for shade
Dark and continuous as we further climb,
Like magic corridor deep down in earth,
Thickening to perfect black; whence, in the glare
Of sickly noon upon the autumn fields,
I have scared night-birds, and have watched the bat
Pass and repass alternate. How the sense
Hails the dense gloom, and hastens to the cool:—
Now rest thee here, where scarce the sun may see
Our pleasant refuge; where we scarce can tell
There is an outward universe, so close
And hallowed is the shade; save where, through length
Of dark perspective, yonder shine a group
Of sunny tombstones, and one window-pane,
Lit with the noon, is glittering like a star
Down even unto us.

I heard one say,—
It was an aged dame, whose humble cot
Fronted our churchyard wall,—she loved to look
When from the windows of the hallowed pile
The sunbeam came reflected; she could think
Fondly, she said, that there were those within
Whose robes were shining, thronging the deep aisles,
And the promised glory of the latter house
Would crowd upon her vision.

Think we thus:
And in yon vista of uncertain light
If we behold in fancy this our life

Chequered with dark and bright, and at its head
The emblem of our end,—let yonder gleam
Tell us of glory fetched by angel-hands
To spread upon us: be to us a spark
Lit at the altar of the Holy One,
Over the majesty of patient Death
Hovering, and waiting its appointed time
To kindle all to life.

But fabling thus
I've led thee from thy rest; and now at once
Opens upon our sight a goodly range
Of fretted buttresses, and the low porch
Invites us, with its antique seat of stone,
And cool religious shade. But as we climb
The churchyard steps, look back and see arise
As if in show, far o'er the bowering leaves,
The southern mountains: see o'er half the sky
Spread out, a mixture wild of hill and cloud.

Stand by me here, belovèd, where thick crowd
On either side the path the headstones white:
How wonderful is Death! how passing thought
That nearer than yon glorious group of hills,
Ay, but a scanty foot or two beneath
This pleasant sunny mound, corruption teems;
And that one sight of that which is so near
Could turn the current of our joyful thoughts,
Which now not e'en disturbs them.

See this stone,
Not like the rest, full of the dazzling noon,
But sober brown;—round which the ivy twines
Its searching tendril, and the yew-tree shade
Just covers the short grave. He mourned not ill

Who graved the simple plate without a name:

“This grave's a cradle, where an infant lyes,
Rockt fast asleepe with Death's sad lullabyes.”

And yet methinks he did not care to wrong
The Genius of the place, when he wrote “sad:”
The chime of hourly clock,—the mountain-stream
That sends up ever to thy resting-place
Its gush of many voices—and the crow
Of matin cock, faint it may be but shrill,
From elm-embosomed farms among the dells,—
These, little slumberer, are thy lullabyes:
Who would not sleep a sweet and peaceful sleep
Thus husht and sung to with all pleasant sounds?

And I can stand beside thy cradle, child,
And see yon belt of clouds in silent pomp
Midway the mountain sailing slowly on,
Whose beaconed top peers over on the vale;—
And upward narrowing in thick-timbered dells
Dark solemn coombs, with wooded buttresses
Propping his mighty weight—each with its stream,
Now leaping sportfully from crag to crag,
Now smoothed in clear black pools—then in the vales,
Through lanes of bowering foliage glittering on,
By cots and farms and quiet villages
And meadows brightest green. Who would not sleep
Rocked in so fair a cradle?

But that word,
That one word—“Death,” comes over my sick brain,
Wrapping my vision in a sudden swoon;
Blotting the gorgeous pomp of sun and shade,
Mountain, and wooded cliff, and sparkling stream,

In a thick dazzling darkness.—Who art thou
Under this hillock on the mountain-side?
I love the like of thee with a deep love,
And therefore called thee dear—thee who art now
A handful of dull earth. No lullabyes
Hearest thou now, be they or sweet or sad:
Not revelry of streams, nor pomp of clouds,
Not the blue top of mountain, nor the woods
That clothe the steeps, have any joy for thee.

Go to, then—tell me not of balmiest rest
In fairest cradle: for I never felt
One half so keenly as I feel it now,
That not the promise of the sweetest sleep
Can make me smile on Death. Our days and years
Pass onward, and the mighty of old time
Have put their glory by, and laid them down
Undrest of all the attributes they wore,
In the dark sepulchre: strange preference,
To fly from beds of down and softest strains
Of timbrel and of pipe, to the cold earth,
The silent chamber of unknown decay;
To yield the delicate flesh, so loved of late
By the informing spirit, to the maw
Of unrelenting waste; to go abroad
From the sweet prison of this moulded clay,
Into the pathless air, among the vast
And unnamed multitude of trembling stars;
Strange journey, to attempt the void unknown
From whence no news returns; and cast the freight
Of nicely treasured life at once away.

Come, let us talk of Death,—and sweetly play
With his black locks, and listen for a while

To the lone music of the passing wind
Into the rank grass that waves above his bed.

Is it not wonderful, the darkest day
Of all the days of life—the hardest wrench
That tries the coward sense, should mix itself
In all our gentlest and most joyous moods
A not unwelcome visitant: that Thought,
In her quaint wanderings, may not reach a spot
Of lavish beauty, but the spectre form
Meets her with greeting, and she gives herself
To his mysterious converse? I have roamed
Through many mazes of unregistered
And undetermined fancy; and I know
That when the air grows balmy to my feel,
And rarer light falls on me, and sweet sounds
Dance tremulously round my captive ears,
I soon shall stumble on some mounded grave;
And ever of the thoughts that stay with me,
(There are that flit away) the pleasantest
Is hand in hand with Death: and my bright hopes,
Like the strange colours of divided light,
Fade into pale uncertain violet
About some hallowed precinct. Can it be
That there are blessed memories joined with Death,
Of those who parted peacefully, and words
That cling about our hearts, uttered between
The day and darkness, in Life's twilight time?—
Oh, I could tell of one whose image comes
Before my inner sight—I knew her not—
That ancient dame I told thee of, whose eyes
Sought for Heaven's glories in the light of Earth,
She would speak of her, till her heart was full,

And I would weep for childish way wardness,
And long to be as she was. 'Twas her own
And only child; and never from her side
Long years, she said, had parted her; in joy
And beauty she grew up, ever her sire
Gladdening with smiles, and laying on his heart
Ointment of purest comfort. On a day
Heaven sent a worm into this summer flower.
She told me how they watched her fade away,
As we have watched the clouds of evening fade
After the sun hath set. Slow were her words,
And solemn, as she reached the parting tale:
“'Twas thus we sat and saw our only hope
Go down into the grave; for many months
It was a weary weary life to lead:
She weakened by degrees; and every day
Less light was in her eye, and on her cheek
Less colour; and the faint quick pulse that beat
In the blue veins that laced her marble wrist
Stole without notice on the wary touch.
Sometimes by day she asked if it were fair,
By night if it were starlight; that was all.
Ye should have seen her but a night and day
Before she died, how she sat up and spoke,
How of a sudden light most wonderful
Looked forward from her eyes, and on her cheek
Flushed colour, like a bloom from other lands,
The bloom that shows in flowers beyond the skies.
And then the words came forth most musical,
Low-toned and solemn, like the final notes
Of that grand anthem whose last strain is ‘Peace.’

She spoke of angels, seen in a half-light;
She spoke of friends, long-severed friends, that died
In early youth, some fair and tall, and some
Most innocent children, that with earnest gaze
Looked ever in upon her all the night,
And faded slow into the light of morn.
And so she passed away; and now her grave
Ten summers and ten winters hath been green.
We dug it in a still and shady place;
There is no headstone; for we deemed it vain
To carve her record in a mouldering slab,
Whose name is written in the Book of Life.”

I am not one whose pleasure is to weave
Tales highly wrought of sudden accident,
Unlooked-for recognition, or desire
Strangely fulfilled; but yet I have a tale
Which will bring tears of pity to thine eyes,
And summon all thy sadness to attend
A willing mourner in a funeral train.
Within our hilly bay, hard by the beach,
Dwelt one whose nightly service was to watch
All deeds of outlaws on the Channel trade.
Him on the cliff-side pathways we might see
Early and late, and meet in the dusk eve
Up the steep tracks, threading the oaken copse
That delves into the sea. One summer morn,
When the bright sun looked down upon the earth
Without a cloud, and all along the shore
Twinkled the restless sparkles, he rode by,
And passing offered salutation gay,

As one who in the beauty and the warmth
Of that most blessed morning bore a part.
That day we wandered, my dear friend and I,
Far off along the hills, up perilous paths
Gathering the rock-plants, or with hollowed hand
Scooping the streams that trickled down the dells:
Till from a peak we saw the fiery sun
Sink down into the sea, and twilight fell;
And ere we reached our cot, the distant lights
Shone from the Cambrian coast, and from the isle
Unseen in the mid-channel. From his cot
There looked into the bosom of the bay
A steady light; and when we reached our home
We slept and thought not of him. In the morn
Rumour was busy; and her minister,
Our bustling hostess, told how all the night
His anxious bride (for one short month ago
They gave their troths) had watched for his return;
How there came by a stranger with his horse,
Who answered not, when breathless she inquired
Where he was left, and why. Many with search
Hopeless and wearisome toiled all the day;
And when the evening came, upon the beach
Below that awful steep where winds the road
Cut in the mountain-side above the sea,
They found a cold and melancholy corpse
With out-stretched arms and strangely-gathered limbs,
Like one who died in sudden and sharp pain;
And deeply gashed on either side the brow
The gaping death-marks of a cruel fall.
Thou wouldst have wept to see her as she past
To snatch her scanty comfort of a look,

And then to see him, warm but now and gay,
And full of soft endearments, hidden deep
In the cold ground:—it was a blank still face,
But bearing trace of tears, and ashy pale,
Stiffened to stone by strong and sudden grief.
Her little stock of hopes, just anchored safe
In a calm port, were sent adrift again
Upon the howling wintry sea of life:
And she is fain to gather up afresh
The cast-off weeds of past prosperity,
And deck her as she may. But a sad rent
Hath sorrow made in her: nor can she now
Knit up her ravelled hopes, nor summon heart
To enter on Life's journey all alone,
A new and weary way. But time will come
When memory of her woe shall be to her
A sweet companion; Sorrow shall have past
Into her being, and have chastened well
The lawless risings of unquiet thought.

Nearer this tale hath carried me to think
Of mine own grief: should I not weary thee
With record of affliction, I would dwell
On playful hopes too pitilessly crushed,
And voices that made glad my soul erewhile,
Quenched in cold earth—coming like saddened bells
Far off and faint beneath the muffling clay.
But one there was that left me, whose fresh loss
Time, nor the changeful world, hath never healed.

I am not skilled with robe of artful verse
To cheat the destitution of deep woe:
Sorrow and I in the sunny days of youth
Have been but rare companions; I have loved
Rather in Beauty's temple ministrant
To treasure up sweet music, and enshrine
Thee, the bright Saint of my best holyday,
In some deep-fretted niche of Poesy;
But those short tidings reached me—and my heart
Was sorely stricken, and the bitter springs
Were broken up within me.

Gentle soul,
That ever moved among us in a veil
Of heavenly lustre; in whose presence, thoughts
Of common import shone with light divine;
Whence we drew sweetness, as from out a well
Of honey, pure and deep; thine earthly form
Was not the investiture of daily men;
But thou didst wear a glory in thy look,
From inward converse with the Spirit of Love:
And thou hadst won in the first strife of youth
Trophies that gladdened hope, and pointed on
To days when we should stand and minister
At the full triumphs of thy gathered strength.

The twain were rent asunder in an hour
Of which we knew not; and the face we loved
With common earth is mingled; but the Soul
Drinks deep of Beauty, and in vision clear
Searches the glorious features, from whose light
Flows every joy that shines on us below.

It was a question wonderful and deep,
“Who knoweth if to live be but to die,

And Death be Life?” In an unblessèd time
It passed from one whose lips were passages
For sweetest music, whose unwearied soul
Dwelt among human griefs; who loved to find
The wrecks of Joy and faded flowers of Hope.
Since have the wide Earth and the arch of Heaven
Rung with blest answer; and all Poesy,
And dreams of holy men, and crystal tears
Of the grave-circling mourners, have been blent
With light of Promise that can never fade.

'Twas the faint dawn; and from the waking Earth
Soft prayers were rising to the gate of Heaven;
The busy lark had been before, and sung
Floating in middle air, whether she love
To swell the incense of the offering Earth,
Or to be first of all created things
To give glad welcome to the peering Morn.
In old Verona sweetly slept the while
That Bard of blessed soul, to whom pure dreams
Ministered ever, and sweet strains of song
Lulled him with holy charm the night-hours through.
Stole not so softly now the slow-paced light
Into that chamber dim, as moved before
His sight the vision of his Laura's form;
All still and heavenly, and her lustrous eyes
Quietly bent upon him, angel-mild,
Not in the restlessness of earthly love,—
Most like (but more serene) the look of one
Who hath drunk deep of woe, and rests in faith.

They had been severed long: meeting like this
Might seem to warrant question. She replied,
(Thou canst not tell, love, how she said those words,
But thou hast heard those sweetest notes of all
Prest from the rapturous breast of nightingale,
That have their airy dwelling here and there
Circling thee where thou standest in the gloom,)
“I live, belovèd; but 'tis thou art dead;
Time is, when thou shalt live.”

See how the light
Dwells on yon mountain-side, marking each dell
And every buttress of the velvet turf,
So that we see the ribbed shadows stretch
Lengthened, as by the westering sun, along
This northward slope; and yet the day is high.
But turn we homeward; and that favoured hill
That overlooks our bay, reach, when the sun
Dips in the ocean brim. We may not lose,
After a day all consecrate as this,
The holy influence which on human souls
Flows from the sunset. Life, and earthly things,
And calls importunate for daily toil,
Grant not such respite often as this day
We two have freely shared. Thankfully rise,
Dear Sister of my heart, from thy low seat,
Thankfully rise, and softly move away;
Move like a dream; for all around us hangs
The balanced calm of hills and arching sky,
And the solemn sleep of Death; one startling word
Breaks the fair spell for ever.

Pass we hence;
And as that reverend Priest of Poesy,

Whose presence shines upon these twilight times,
Hath, in the churchyard in the mountains, done
One sacrifice whose scent shall fill the world;
So shall this hour be fresh in memory,
A time to speak of in our thankful prayers,
If hallowed light of universal love
Each rising thought have steeped, and there have passed
Into our spoken words, aught that may teach
To the world's restless heart the bliss of calm,
The heavenly joy of well-assurèd Hope,
And the strong searchings of the soul for God.

Selworthy, Somerset.

The “Gloria in Excelsis” of Pergolesi.

The Bay of Porlock. The incident here recorded happened in the summer of 1833.

The following lines are a humble tribute to the cherished memory of Arthur Henry Hallam, the wonder and delight of all who knew him. A far nobler monument has been raised to him in the “In Memoriam” of Alfred Tennyson.

“τις οιδεν, ει το ζην μεν εστι κατθανειν,
το καιθανειν δε ζην.”

Euripides.

Petrarca.

William Wordsworth

Lesson the Sixth.

“Now, to withdraw my pen,
And now a while to rest,
Me semeth it for the beste.
The fore castel of my ship
Shal glide and smothely slip
Out of the waves wode
Of the stormye floude:
Shote anker, and lye at rode,
And sayle not farre a brode,
Till the cooste be clere
That the lode starre appere:
My shyp now will I pere
Toward the port salu
Of our Saviour Jesu.”
Skelton.

The strain is changed, and the song is of the day of triumph; of the beauty and glory of earth as they minister to that day: of the yearnings of Man's heart for it: of the high blessedness of that day of all joy. The end, and a promise of more.

Erewhile of Death and human suffering
Spoke we, and lingered, as in some dark wood
The pilgrim lingers ere he dare approach
The golden shrine, where on his sight shall break
Light of pure grace from Heaven;—the end of toil
Is near; and through the trembling intervals
Of over-arching boughs, rich pinnacles
Spire up into the sky: the music deep
Of prayer-inviting bells fills all the air,
No longer heard in fitful swells and falls,
Over far fields and waters, but poured forth

As if the voice of the cathedral pile
From tower and transept, and the thousand forms
Of sculptured saints and angels, sent at once
Its hymn of holy rapture up to God.

As when the stars in heaven around the moon
Show brightly, and the under air is calm,
All headland tops and beacon-towers, and steeps,
Are clothed with visible light, and from above
The glory of the boundless firmament
Flows downward, and the heavenly host is seen,
The heart of him that watches by the fold
Swells in his breast for joy; so riseth now
My labouring bosom, and the choking tears
Are thronging on my voice for very joy
At prospect of the inner life divine.

Light from afar: The night is well-nigh spent,
The day at hand. No more of earthly woe,
Of conflict now no more. The laver pure
Of new Baptismal innocence, the Ark
That bears us through the flood which fell for sin,
And lands us in the country far away,
All love, all knowledge of divinest lore
Regained; the pathway shining like the light
That shineth ever to the perfect day,—
These be our converse now; yon solemn Church,
The sanctuary of Earth, with its flushed tower,

Is full in view: and we are here in peace
With the sunset falling round us, by our hearth;
Meet time for talk of mystic truths and high,
Best pondered on, when every fleeting thing
Is shut from our observance, and the sight
From outward lures turns inward on the soul.
And thou art with me, who hast ever been
The spirit of my song—no longer now
Half-known, untried, a theme of restless thought,
By self-distrusting fondness glorified;
But tried and known, approved and manifest,
Partaker of a thousand wakeful schemes,
And cares of daily love.

The April moon,
When she looks over thickets fresh in green,
Whose young leaves tremble in her golden light,
Tempereth not with such a peaceful charm
The rapturous gush of bowered nightingale,
As doth thy quiet look my struggling thoughts;
Nor, if I guess aright, doth the full song
Of the night warbler with more life endow
The slumbering moonlight, than these tuneful words
Thy patient spirit, rapt in holy calm
Of contemplation, married to desire,
Wandering or resting as affection leads.

We have been dwellers in a lovely land,
A land of lavish lights and floating shades,
And broad green flats, bordered by woody capes
That lessen ever as they stretch away
Into the distance blue; a land of hills,
Cloud-gathering ranges, on whose ancient breast
The morning mists repose; each autumn tide

Deep purple with the heath-bloom; from whose brow
We might behold the crimson sun go down
Behind the barrier of the western sea:
A land of beautiful and stately fanes,
Aërial temples most magnificent,
Rising with clusters of rich pinnacles
And fretted battlements; a land of towers
Where sleeps the music of deep-voiced bells,
Save when in holiday time the joyous air
Ebbs to the welling sound; and Sabbath morn,
When from a choir of hill-side villages
The peaceful invitation churchward chimes.
So were our souls brought up to love this Earth
And feed on natural beauty: and the light
Of our own sunsets, and the mountains blue
That girt around our home, were very parts
Of our young being; linked with all we knew,
Centres of interest for undying thoughts
And themes of mindful converse. Happy they
Who in the fresh and dawning time of youth
Have dwelt in such a land, tuning their souls
To the deep melodies of Nature's laws
Heard in the after-time of riper thought
Reflective on past seasons of delight.

But what is Beauty? why doth human art
Strive ever to attain similitude
With some bright idol of creative mind?
Why do the trembling stars, and mighty hills,
And forms of moving grace, and the deep fire
Of tender eyes, and gloom, and setting suns,
All feed in turn one unfulfilled desire?

Deep theme is this for youthful lovers' thought;
And fittest dwelt on when thy presence sheds
Sweet Peace around me; when then, if not now,
When in the clearest light of tranquil love,
Disrobed of Earth's unrest, like some fair star
Thou rulest in the firmament of thought.

Begin we then in humble strains, and search
With patient hope—it may be we shall find
If lowly caution guide our steps; for oft
Truth veileth back her bright and queenly form
From eyes of mortal men: and seek not we
To look within, for fear with too much light
One glimpse benight us: let it be enough
To rule the spirit into harmony
With the great world around: for everything
That therein is beareth a separate part
In the soul's teaching: let it be enough
Not by a stretch of thought, or painful strain
Of faculty acquired, but with pure love,
Pure and untaught, save what the inner light
Of the great Spirit teacheth, to lay bare
The soul to the influence of each little flower
That springs beneath our feet; and go our way
Rejoicing in the fond companionship
Of every humblest thing; communion blest
In the unpitied and unmurmured woes
And all the simple joys of Nature's babes.

Deep in a chamber of the inner soul
The folded principles of action lie
As in a bud enclosed, which ere the time
Of leaf-awakening Spring comes kindly on,
Containeth sprays and flowers that are to be;—

Thus think thou of the soul; for better thus
Than to desert the mighty parable
That falls unceasing on the ear of man,
And seek new processes of laboured thought
That have no fellows in the world of things.

Law is the King of all; we live and move
Not without firm conditions guarded well
In the great Mind that rules us. Manifold
Are the inward workings of the soul;—now seen
And open to the sense, as when we teach
Unto our anguished hearts sufferance of woe;
Now only visible to Angel sight
Or to the eyes of God—gradual and deep,
Owing no homage to the tyrant will.
But each and all, the wrested soul of man
Brings nearer to the course of laws divine:
Whether by strong self-chiding, or by length
Of intercourse with heavenly messengers,
Who veil their presence in the things of Earth.
And therefore Beauty is not spread in vain
Upon this world of man: God is not left
Without His witness; and the daily task
Of human kind is bound in closest ties
To natural Beauty; whether in the field
The lavish blessings of the open sky
Are shed around him, or in city vast
The Sun in crimson guise lift up his orb,
Clothing the mist, distinct with domes and towers,
In wreathed glories.

God doth nought in vain;
And from the searchings of benighted souls

Before the light arose, hath flowed to us
Great store of Truth; for in that mighty quest
Nought that was fair on Earth or bright in Heaven
Wanted its honour, or its place assigned,
Or careful culture, and all lovely things
Were ranged for guides along the path to God.

For his fire-beacon for a thousand years
The searching spirit of the lorn Chaldee
Held converse with the starry multitude;
He knew the lamping potentates that bring
Summer and winter, when they wax and wane:
Soothing his solitary soul with song
Low-hummed, of mighty hunters, or the queen
That blazed in battle-front; or if perchance
Of gentler mood, of Nineveh's soft king
Sardanapalus, that on roses slept,
Lulled by the lingering tremble of soft lutes;—
Deep melodies, whose echoes left the world
Before the empires rose, whose wrecks are we.
How proudly in his Paradise of Art
The old Egyptian must have worn his pomp,
Nature's first moulded form of perfectness
Wrought in her sport, and playfully destroyed
That she might try her artist hand again;
How beautiful was Greece: how marvellous
In polity, and chastened grace severe:
In nicely-balanced strains, and harmonies

Tuned to the varying passion; flute or lyre
Not unaccompanied by solemn dance
In arms, or movement of well-ordered youths
And maids in Dorian tunic simply clad;—
How rich in song, and artful dialogue,
Long-sighted irony, and half-earnest guess
At deeply-pondered truth.

But spirits pure
Deep drinking at the fount of natural joy,
Grew sad and hopeless as the foot of Death
Crept onwards; and beyond the deep-blue hills
And plains o'erflowed with light, and woody paths,
No safe abode of ever-during joy
Lifted its promise to the sight of Man.

“Farewell, farewell for ever—never more
Thy beautiful young form shall pass athwart
Our fond desiring vision;—the great world
Moves on, and human accidents; and Spring
New-clothes the forests, and the warm west wind
Awakes the nightingales;—but thou the while
A handful of dull earth, art not, and we
Insatiable in woe weep evermore
Around the marble where thine ashes lie.”
Such sounds by pillared temple, or hill-side
Sweet with wild roses, or by sacred stream
Errant through mossy rocks, saddened the air,
Whether ripe virgin on the bier were borne,
Or youth untimely cropped; or in still night
The Moon shone full, and choir of maidens moved

Through glades distinct with shadow, bearing vows
Of choicest flowers and hair,—fearful the while
Of thwarting influence or incautious word,
Till round the tomb they poured their votive wine
And moved in dance, or chanted liquid hymns
Soothing the rigid silence. “Fare thee well:
A journey without end, a wakeless sleep,
Or some half-joyful place, where feeble ghosts
Wander in dreamy twilight, holds thee now;
Thy joy is done: and thine espousals kept
Down in the dark house of forgetfulness.”

Home of our spirits,—whether terraced high
From Kedron's brook in thy Judæan hills,
A pleasant place, and joy of all the earth;
Or in a brighter vision opening forth
Thy gold-paved streets and jasper architraves,
Above, and free, and Mother of us all;
To thee my step would turn; to thy new songs
Fain would I tune the harp, that lightly skilled
Essays high music; in the eternal calm
Of thy pure air, and by thy living streams,
Drink long forgetfulness of earthly woe.
For thy sweet port this little bark long bound
Hath wandered on the waters; or my steps
Devious through many a land, each pleasant hill
Each mossy nook hath stayed on search for thee;
Still somewhat finding of wide-scattered joy,
Some thoughts of deep sweet meaning; but desire
Grows with my spirit's growth; and nought on earth
Is glorious now as it hath glorious been:
So doth my forward vision search, and read
In the dim distance tracks of severed light

Forerunning thy descent, by prophets seen
Of old in prospect, out of heaven from God;—
Our earth hath nought so blessed; not the grove
Budding in Spring, with choir of nightingales
Vocal in shadowy moonlight; not the crest
Of old Olympus, seat of Gods secure
Through the eternal ages, which nor wind
With rude breath dares to shake, nor rain to wet,
Nor flakes of floating snow; but ever stretch
The boundless fields of ether without cloud
Above, and dazzling sheen of whitest light
Plays round the holy summit.

—Art thou one
Before whose eyes bright visions have unveiled
Of peace and long-expected rest? to whom
There hath been shown some timber-shadowed home
In a fair country all prepared for thee,
Just shown and then withdrawn? to whom some heart
But yesterday in firmest union bound,
Hath vanished from the wide world utterly,
Leaving upon thy breast a dreary want,
As doth a strain of melody broken off

In a sweet cadence, on the longing ear?
Hast thou in very hopelessness of soul
Bowed down to tyrant power, cheating thy life
Of the sweet guidance of the will, and toiled
Bridled by strong necessity, unnamed
Save by proud reasoners on the mass of men,
A unit in the aggregate, a wheel
In the base system that unsouls our race;
While human feelings deep and pure within
Flow out to wife and child, brother and friend,
And thy tired spirit looks forth in faith to Him
Who helpeth them to right that suffer wrong?
Art thou a child of Nature's own, and lovest
To hold sweet communings with this fair world
More than to search thy heart, or interchange
Thought with the thought of other? is the Earth
To thee a well of never-failing joy?
Dost thou affect the charms of budding Spring,
Seat beneath arching shade, or with slow feet
To pace the flowery-mantled field, and cull
With careless hand the glory and delight
Of motley meadows? art thou deep in love
With the glorious changes of the dappled sky,
Whether the circle of the golden Sun
Shower the heavens with brightness, newly risen,
Scattering the morning frost, or glorify
The liquid clearness of the Summer heaven,
Or the West fade in twilight, till the dark
Fall on the fields, and Silence and sweet Peace
Pass hand in hand along the slumbering Earth:
Then looking from a chamber-casement high
Over paternal groves, beneath the Moon,

Listlessly pondering, hear the village-clock
Strike in the voiceless night?

All natural joy
From the dull heartlessness of mortal men
Set free for ever,—Liberty and Peace,
Desire and its fulfilment, side by side
Ranged ever, all the long bright days of heaven,
These shall be thine, in that fair city of God
Dwelling, where ever through the blessed streets
Serene light vibrates, and the starry gulfs
Of ether lie above in perfect rest.

But why delay and parley with delight
On this side of the river? steeply rise
The woody shores beyond, with palace-towers
And golden minarets sublimely crowned,
All full of light and glorious; and the stream
Is calm and silent, flowing darkly on
Among strange flowers, and thickets of deep shade:
Weary with toil, and worn with travel, plunge
From the green margin sweetly without fear;
Softly put back the wave on either side,
And skim the surface with thy nether lip;
Soon shalt thou press the flowers on yonder bank,
And rest on yielding roses. 'Tis not given
To trace thee: but most like some mighty stream
Under a rocky barrier working deep
With hollow gushings soon to burst afresh
Over a new land faintly pictured forth
Each day on our horizon: such art thou.

The righteous souls are in the hand of God;
No harm shall touch them,—laid securely by
Even in an infant's slumber, or perchance

In gradual progress of their mighty change:
The summer Sabbath is not half so calm
As is the blessed chamber where repose
After their earthly labours, fenced around
With guardian Cherubim that weary not,
The spirits of the just: not cave of sleep
In ancient Lemnos, murmured round by waves;—
Not the charmed slumber of that British king
Resting beneath the crumbled abbey-walls
In the westward-sloping vale of Avalon; —
Nor the ambrosial trance of Jove's great son
That fell beneath Troy walls,—whom Death and Sleep
On dusky-folded wings to Lycia land
Bore through the yielding ether without noise.

But who can tell the glories of the day
When from a thousand hills and wooded vales
This Earth shall send her tribute forth to God,
Myriads of blessed forms? when her old wound
Shall have been fully healed; the Covenant
Rule in the bright ascendant; while above
Throb through the air from new-awakened harps
Pulses of ancient song: and God's own Bride
Drest for her Husband, lift her sky-clear brow
Out of the dust?

She dwells in sorrow long:
Her sun of life and light hath sunk away;
Her night, far spent it may be, yet is thick

And hangeth heavily along the sky;
We cannot see her flowers that bloom around,
Save where in dazzling clusters through the dark
Her virgin lilies drink the scattered light:
She feedeth upon dew distilled from earth
And air, and transitory vapour dim;
But still there is a brightness in the West
Painfully traced by all her watchful sons;
Even the glory, at whose parting track
The men of Galilee stood gazing up
With shadowed foreheads, till the white-robed pair
Spoke comfort; and along the hopeful East
A clear pale shining, promise of a day
Glorious and wonderful; the fainting stars
Have lost their lustre: voice of wassail mirth
Is none, for the revels of Earth have passed away;
All chivalry and pomp that was of yore,
And fields of cloth of gold,—all delicate work
In metal and in stone, the pride of kings
And task of captive tribes, have ceased to be:
Man misseth his old skill, but ever wins
Upon the world the calm and steady light
Forerunning the great Sun; that lighteth now
Perchance fair orbs around us; soon to burst
In perfect glory on the earth we love.

Rise up, thou daughter of the brightest King
That ever wore a crown; awake and rise,
Forget thy people and thy father's house;
Thou that wert yeaned in winter dreariness,
Swathed in the manger of thy Love and Lord,
Shake off thy dust and rise; thine hour is come,
The marriage-morn is come, and all the bells

In Heaven are whispering with their silver tongues;
And the faint pulses of the sound divine
Are swimming o'er thee where thou liest yet
Unwaked;—the pomp of Seraphim ere long
Will be upon thee, and the sheen of Heaven
Fall on thy brow, as doth the glimpse of the East
Upon the folded flower.

My task is done:
The garlands that I wreathed around my brow
Are fading on it, and the air of song
Is passing from me. Thou art standing by,
Bent o'er thy Poet with love-lighted eyes,
And raptured look of ardent hope, that tells
Of holiest influences shed forth within.
I have not talked with one who cannot feel
Every minutest nourishment of thought;
For I have seen thee when the western gale
Blew loud and rude upon our native hills,
With bonnet doffed, courting the busy wind;
And I have looked on thee till my dim eyes
Swam with delight, and thou didst seem to me,
As I stood by thee on the aery steep,
Like a young Seraph ready poised for flight;
O sweet illusion: but in after-time
The truth shall follow: for we two shall stand
Upon the everlasting hills of Heaven,
With glorious beauty clothed that cannot die;
And far beneath upon the myriad worlds
All unimaginable glory spread,
Brighter than brightest floods of rosy light
Poured by the sunset on our western sea.
It will not matter to the soul set free

Which hemisphere we tenanted on earth;
Whether it sojourned where the Northern Wain
Dips not in Ocean, or beneath the heaven
Where overhead the Austral cross is fixed
Glistering in glory, or amidst the snows
Under the playing of the Boreal lights;
We shall be free to wander evermore
In thought, the spirit's motion, o'er the wide
And wondrous universe, with messages
To beautiful beings who have never fallen,
And worlds that never heard the cry of sin.
As one who in a new and beauteous land
Lately arrived, rests not till every way
His steps have wandered, searching out new paths
To far off towers that rise along the vales;
So to a thousand founts of light unknown
Our now enfranchised souls shall travel forth,
Rich with strange beauties: some, it may be, clad
With woods, and interlaced with playful brooks
And ever-changing shades, like this our home;
And some a wilderness of craggy thrones,
With skies of stranger hue; and glorious
With train of orbs attendant on their state,
Mingling their rays in atmospheres of Love.

But yet one word. Yon silver-fringèd clouds
That scale the western barrier of the world
Pile upon pile, seem to have borrowed gleams
Of that ethereal light I told thee of;
And the clear blue, so calm and deep behind
On which they sail, is like the mighty Soul,

Thus fathomless, thus dwelt in by strange things,
On which the forms of multitudinous thought
Float ever, bright or dark, or complicate
Of light and darkness; and the quiet stars
Are fountains of far-off and milder fire,
Nearer the throne of God; the hopes and joys
Of which I sung to thee, that make no wave
Upon the stream of memory; but from which
The spiritual senses take their power,
And from a myriad stones, costly though small,
Is built the mansion of the blessed soul.

Thus far in golden dreams of youth, I sung
Of Love and Beauty: beauty not the child
Of change, nor love the growth of fierce desire,
But calm and blessèd both, the heritage
Of purest spirits, sprung from trust in God.
Further to pierce the veil, asks riper strength,
And firmer resting on conclusions fixed
By patient labour, wrought in manly years.
Here rest we then: our message thus declared,
Leave the full echoes of our harp to ebb
Back from the sated ear: teaching meanwhile
Our thoughts to meditate new melodies,
Our hands to touch the strings with safer skill.

“ως δ' οτ' εν ουρανω αστρα φαεινην αμφι σεληνην
φαινετ' αριπρεπεα, οτε τ' επλετο νηνεμος αιθηρ,
εκ τ' εφανον πασαι σκοπιαι, και πρωονες ακροι,
και ναπαι, ουρανοθεν δ' αρ' υπερραγη ασπετος αιθηρ,
παντα δε τ' ειδεται αστρα, γεγηθε δε τε φρενα ποιμην.”

Hom. Il. θ.

The western division of the county of Somerset, bordering on Devonshire.

“νομος παντων βασιλευς.”

—Pindar.

“αστρων κατοιδα νυκτερων ομηγυριν,
και τους φεροντας χειμα και θερος βροτοις
λαμπρους δυναστας εμπρεποντας αιθερι
αστερας, οταν φθινωσιν, αντολας τε των.”

Æschyl. Agamemnon.

“At nos horrifico cinefactum te prope busto
Insatiabiliter deflebimus, æternumque
Nulla dies nobis mœrorem e pectore demet.”

Lucret. iii. 919.

“Ουλυμπον δ', οθι φασι θεων εδος ασφαλες αιει
εμμεναι: ουτ' ανεμοισι τινασσεται, ουδε ποτ' ομβρω
δευεται: ουτε χιων επιπιλναται: αλλα μαλ' αιθρη
πεπταται αννεφελος, λευκη δ' επιδεδρομεν αιγλη.”

Hom. Od. ζ. 40.

“Apparet Divûm numen, sedesque quietæ:
Quas neque concutiunt venti, neque nubila nimbis
Adspergunt, neque nix acri concreta pruina
Cana cadens violat: semperque innubilus æther
Integit et large diffuso lumine ridet.”

Lucret. iii. 18.

King Arthur, buried at Glastonbury in a sleep, from which legends say he shall awake and reign again.

“πεμπε δε μιν πομποισιν αμα κραιπνοισι φερεσθαι,
υπνω και θανατω διδυμαοσιν, οι ρα μιν ωκα
κατθεσαν εν Δυκιης ευθειης πιονι δημω.”

Hom. Il. π.

“οιη δ' αμμορος εστι λοετρων ωκεανοιο.

Hom. Il. ς.

“The School of the Heart” was written between the years 1831 and 1835—partly at Cambridge, partly at my first curacy, Ampton, near Bury St Edmunds, but mostly during vacation sojournings and rambles on the beautiful riviera of the North Somersetshire coast. It is addressed to her who is now, thank God, with me in the thirty-first year of wedded companionship. It served as the channel for the pouring out of the first poetic feelings of a young and fervid spirit. It is full of crudities, and totally wanting in arrangement,—rather a number of separate poems, very ill cemented together, than one coherent composition. The thought has sometimes occurred whether it might not be broken up; but I have come to the conclusion, that it is not for riper years to lay correcting hands on the productions of a time of life with which they have ceased to have natural sympathies. And so I have left “The School of the Heart” as it was from the first—appending a few notes explanatory of incident or of scenery.