University of Virginia Library

To thee, my latest and not least-loved guide,
In those sequestered haunts where finer minds
Oft wander, where in still retreats of thought,
They pass untroubled days: to thee, the true
And Master-Poet of our time, I owe
Some tribute, and would fain connect thy name
With these, the records of some musing hours.

I have not looked upon thy living face,
Though once, a wayfarer, I stood beside
Thy gate, desirous to fulfil a wish
Long cherished. But a cloud had gathered then
Over thy dwelling; and the shrouded form
Of Death sate by thy threshold. I would not
Thrust myself in between thee and thy woe,—
So with some leaves from thy thick clustering sheaves
Of laurel, I passed up along the lake,
Upon a way familiar with thy feet,
Subdued before the sacredness of grief.

It was a peaceful evening of June,
When not a wind was whispering in the reeds
Of Rydal. Island, tree, and purpling hill
Beheld their shadows charmed to steadfastness
In the unbreathing water. The low chime
Of the church-bell spoke musical and clear
Over the lake.

'Tis pleasant, in these scenes
Of strange luxuriance and beauty spread
Around me,—brakes of myrtle, orange-groves,
Rose-thickets shadowed by the slanting palm,
And trellised vineyards, ripening in the warmth
Of Libyan skies,—to image once again
That summer eve, when I foot-wandering went
Through sweeter vales, and by the hedgerows wild,
Where blooming hawthorn scented English air.

Much in these past days I mused
Amid the scenes from which thy verse has drawn
Its genial inspiration;—much since then,
In other lands, of what my life of mind
In silent growth, has owed to strains of thine,
In their clear insight like a finer sense,
And meditative wisdom, which revealed
The charm of nature. For to me it chanced,
In my unguided youth, to wander far,
And, parched with intellectual thirst, to drink
At those polluted wells, which, for the bane
Of after-times, a strong but reckless art
Had opened. There I lingered long, in hope
To find refreshment, but strange bitterness
Was in the draught, and after it no sense
Of inward strength and freedom. Then, when first,
In this revulsion of the heart, I turned
To paths despised before, and felt the power
That dwelt in thy tranquillity,—the thoughts
That come from still communion with the forms
Of nature, whose low voices seemed to haunt
Thy song, as wind among the forest leaves,—
It was as if, while straying far and lone
Through a wide desert, I had suddenly
Found a green valley folded in fair hills,
And in the midst a fresh and lucid pool,
In whose unwrinkled deeps, each little spire
Of grass, each tuft of rushes, and each rock
Moss-stained that overhung it, had most clear
Reflection, with the statelier images
Of tree and girdling mountain. There I since
Have tarried willingly, still finding joy
And solace in that unpolluted air.
Nor, while for this more selfish gain I own
My thankfulness, am I less deeply stirred
In heart, when, glancing wider, I can trace
In purer tone and feeling, deeper love
And reverence for truth, and a return
To old and long-neglected paths of thought
(Paths through the thick-grown forest early cleared
By our forefathers), blessings manifold
The general age inherits with thy lays.

Enough we had, more than enough, of wild
And gloomy portraitures,—proud spirits driven
To frenzy by their passions, foaming out
Their shame,—minds whose depravity became
An inspiration, breathing through despair,
And clothing blasphemy with burning words.
There Vice made men heroic,—life appeared
A masquerade of phantoms, raised above
Our mortal stature, who, with devilish wails
From under their dark vizors, and anon
With devilish laughter, raved across its stage.

There came the sated sensualist, well-skilled
In self-anatomy, on whose thin lips
The bitterness of a bad heart frothed up
In sneers; with him, the sceptic, nobly-born,
But wretched, through whose strange soliloquies
Faltered some guilty secret, that might throw
A charm of mystery round his blighted youth.
Nor were there wanting outlaws, and self-spurned
Apostates, who, in ruin, still retained
Some mild redeeming virtue,—who could lead
Reckless and stormy lives, and trample shame
And honour under foot, and shout for joy
Through the dun smoke of battle, yet recall
Their fiery spirits, when their hawk-like flight
Was in its highest circle, to the lure
Of love; for love was linked with all, and threw
Its bland enchantment over scenes of blood.
Then the scene shifted to the chime of sweet
Voluptuous numbers,—gorgeous visions flushed
The odour-steaming air, rich stainèd lights,
And silken draperies, and lutes that breathed
A slumberous music to a damsel's tale,—
A lovelorn maiden, passing fair, who clung
To some strong, desperate nature with a fond
Fidelity, as the green plant twines round
A blasted tree.

And this was human life.
Such was its inward struggle, such its griefs
And joys,—for such our sympathies were claimed:
For wickedness that dragged its secret shame
Before the world,—for suffering that raised
Its selfish wail, unhumbled for the guilt
That caused it,—for despair which, from its depths,
At heaven still hurled defiance,—and for pride
That bore its curse in sullen self-retreat,
And unrepenting bared its Cain-like brow.

Thus to its highest heaven could song exalt
All that was false, unnatural, and vile.

Out of this faint and sickly atmosphere,
This strife of hateful passion, thou wert first
To lead us into pure and liberal air.
Thy skilful hand was first to find the chord
To which the heart responded,—from it drew
Mysterious harmonies, and struck it till
The mild vibration, drowned at first, rose clear,
Like some sweet, silvery voice, over the din
Of clamorous instruments. It held the time
Charmed by its mere simplicity, that made
A silence for itself, till all around
Its echoes multiplied and filled the land.
The freshness of the vernal woods possessed
Thy stately numbers,—sounds of summer-hills,—
The goings of the wind in the close tops
Of trees,—the babbling of the brook, that seems
To the old man's heart a voice from far-off days
Of childhood,—and from these its tones of strength
And tenderness it drew. So thou stoodst forth
The Interpreter of Nature to the mind,
To teach us all that lay beneath her sounds
And silences, her changes and repose,
The mystery of her kindredness with man,—
The likeness of a human face beneath
The veil of Isis, answering smiles and tears,—
An aspect shifting to our every mood,—
A beating heart that presses up to ours
In concord; to explain what we had felt
In hours of tranquil thought, but wanted words
To utter, and were glad without the will
To trace the hidden wellspring of our joy.
'T was thine, like some hierophant, to show
The fine relations which, unto the mind,
Invest the universe with glory and light
Unknown to sense; to make the soul infuse
Its own life into nature's lifeless forms,—
And then, receiving what it gave, to move
Among them as its thoughts; to take them up
Into its very substance, and evoke,
Where'er it turned, clear shapes and images
Of its emotions, flushed with fancy's hues.
Thus, interpenetrated by the mind,
The simplest scenes and pleasures to thy glance
Were beautified; and not a lonely bird
From whose small heritage of song thy soul
Was not enriched, and not a woodland flower
Over which thou, full-hearted, didst not stoop
And give it benediction. The blue smoke
Curling from cottage roofs awoke the sense
Of sympathy within thee with the life
Beneath. It spoke to thee of humble men,—
Their trials and their sorrows, the hard strife
Of poverty, the daily round of toil,
The anxieties of sickness, clouded days
Slow darkening to death. The gleams of joy
With which the meanest lot is brightened made
Thee glad, and all its genial virtues found
With thee their celebration. Thus thy art
Stood singular, like some pure instrument
Or temple-pipe reserved for lofty themes,
To chant, in solemn tones, the nobleness
Of love, and trust, and patience; to expound
The law of kindness, the calm power which dwells
In virtue and in gentleness; to show
The heroism of a life which walks
With meek endurance in its separate path
Of suffering; and the loveliness of hope,
And home-bred innocence, and simple truth.

And hence the freedom, purity, and glow
That gave thy verse its charm. Its voice was strong
And musical, as of the sounds that haunt
The hills,—its movement graceful in the joy
Of overflowing life,—its bloom the healthy flush
And freshness ministered by moorland winds
And bracing mountain air. Through all its veins
Health's glad unconscious pulses rose and fell,—
The beating of a manly heart was heard.

Such are thy well-earned honours; high, compared
With those inherited from powers debased,
And genius that could stoop to be the slave
Of sensual passion. It was well to lead
A wildered age back to the love and truth
Of uncorrupted nature. Yet renown
Still higher, which thou mightst have claimed and won,
Is wanting. There are deeper needs thy hand
Hath left unsounded,—and the loftiest ends,
Which this mysterious nature lives to serve,
Thine eye surveyed not. To those heights serene
Whence flow the springs of holy thought and deed,
Whence come the powers that mould immortal man
To his full strength of being, it is strange
That in this clearness of the Christian light
Thy strain has seldom soared. Thy chosen task
Might have been done, yet this, to crown it well,
Not left undone. For Nature, though endued
With ministries of good, which may avail
To soothe the spirit, fevered in the strife
And fret of selfish passions, and assuage,
As by the virtue of an anodyne,
That restlessness of heart which earthly cares
Engender, is most impotent to reach
That seat of strife secluded in the depths
Of spirit and of will,—the shadowy world
Wherein loud conscience and the broken law,
In dark array, against the trembling heart
Marshal their terrors, when the trumpet-peal
That rang on cloudy Horeb sounds again.
In that great resurrection of the soul,
When new-born thoughts, like seeds in the springmould,
Begin to burst their cells, and germinate
With restless life, it searches everywhere
For light, and only finds it when it looks
Where, high o'er drifting clouds, the signal-gleam
Of hope is set in heaven. Once the long trance
Is broken, and it feels the deadly weight,
The mystery of sin,—when struggling hard
To rend its bonds asunder, it but twines
The meshes of the net more closely round,—
That strength and power, through which it may attain
To freedom, from a higher sphere must come
Than the low circle of the universe
Horizoned by the eye. It faints beneath
This crushing load, the consciousness of guilt,
Whereto a haunting terror ever cleaves,
A shadow dark as death. Beholding now
The true end of its being, and the claim
Of an eternal law to all its love
And loyalty, the sense of its revolt
From God, and willing vassalage to sin,
Strikes through it as a pang, and, self-condemned,
Self-loathed, it bows its head without a plea,
Falls down before the awful light which hides
Eternal Majesty. O wondrous depth
Of grace unsearchable! a trembling hope
Is, for the lowly mourner, born from out
The travail of his soul,—a still small voice
Bids him look up, and see the Sacrifice
Upon the altar, and the pleading Priest
Upon the throne of Heaven, and, as he looks,
Speaks to him of forgiveness, soothes and stills
The alarm of conscience, and, with gentle strength,
Goes forth through all the regions of the soul,
And charms them into holy quietness.

Such is the reconcilement nature needs,—
Solution for her doubts, abiding peace
For an inbred disquietude, and health
For a deep-seated plague, not to be reached
Save through His ministering grace benign
Who has revealed Himself to man, apart
From inarticulate symbols, in the Word,
As a redeeming God. At peace with Him
Through this divine atonement, light is shed
On all the high relations which link man
To the Eternal, as his native seat
And heritage of being. Through the veil
That once concealed the shrine, an issuing gleam,—
Effulgence of the inner brightness,—falls
Upon the mind, and in the light of God,
As its clear element and new-born sense,
The eye, unsealed, beholds the glory of things
Invisible, the beauty of holiness,
The fair perfections that invest and crown
The Godhead, and in these man's perfect bliss
And consummation, as the heir of life
Immortal. Quickened by this light upspring
The seeds of holy virtue,—sacred powers
Send out their living fibres through the heart;
Its vast affections feel the kindling breath
Of the creating Spirit, and expand
Beneath his fostering strength. He, as a soul
Within the soul, fills it with vigorous life,
Transforms it by the holy power of love,
Exalts it to a generous liberty
Chartered by highest law, so that it knows
The blessedness of freedom, circumscribed
By one serene and all-embracing Will.
For as the same round sky encompasseth
The earth, and bounds with its blue shining walls
The furthest range of vision, all pure minds
Within that boundless circle breathe the air
Of freedom and of duty;—all their paths
Harmonious are but epicycles traced
In the large orbit of the Will Divine.
Thereunder all immortal natures stand
In stateliness and beauty, each most free,
Yet each most self-surrendered,—each apart
In its own perfectness, while the same type
Moulds and consummates all. As in a wood,
The trees that spring from the same seeds are one
In essence, and yet each, distinct in form,
Unfolds its individual growth and spread
Of branches,—the one type self-multiplied
In infinite variety.

Thus the soul,
By a new life pervaded, calmly grows
Through all its seasons to the glorious flower
Of its perfection. Thus to man are born
The peace, the joy, the bright ethereal hope,
For which he might search nature through and through,
But vainly,—which abide with him through all
The fleeting course and moonlike changefulness
Of Time. Thus suffering, transmuted, grows
The discipline of Faith, and is endued
With purifying virtue from above.
Not from the ground it springs, but down from Heaven
Descends, with power to deepen and to clear
The channels of the heart, too often choked
With growth pernicious, that the stream of life
May have a full and unimpeded flow.
A childlike love to God, now recognized,
In the large effluence of his love to man,
As a most tender Father,—love to Him
Who on the cross shed unpolluted blood
For man's redemption, is the living spring
Of saintly virtue, breathes through all the life
The spirit of a sacrifice,—begets
A love to all that God loves, and to man
As God's. Love is the charm, the exorcism
That casts the spirit of terror from the heart,—
That fear, akin to hate, which slavelike crouched
Before its master's eye, and did him cold
Reluctant service. Where such love abides,
The place is holy,—graces pure and fair,
Like temple-haunting birds, do thither come
As to a finer air, a quiet shrine
Within whose sacred shadows they may dwell
Untroubled. Thus, even now, in higher moods,
Some visitations of a heavenly joy,
Calm festivals of thought, are to the mind
Not unfamiliar. Thus the secret soul
Is conscious of a peace, which the vain world
Can neither give, nor touch, nor take away.
The storms of life may never reach the depth
Where that best gift is treasured,—as the wind,
That raves incessant on the mountain heights,
Ruffles not the clear pool that sunken lies
In their deep hollows. All the waves, which break
Around it, may not overwhelm the heart
That has the steadfast anchor of its hope
Within the veil, nor strain in one weak link
The chain that holds it grappled to the rock
That overbrows Eternity. And Death,
That shrouded, sleepless Phantom, King of Terrors,
Who holds out his dark riddle, hour by hour,
To all time's generations,—armèd Shadow
That haunts our path through every turn of life,
And with a soundless footfall treads behind,
And sends from far a dread presentiment
Across the spirit, and strikes a mortal blow
At earth's securest happiness,—unsolved
And ever-looming Mystery, for whose power
Nature hath no device nor charm of strength,
But only answers us with groan for groan,—
Is here discrowned: upon this holy soil
Draws off his sandal, and awaits a voice,—
Stands disenchanted in the glance of Faith,—
Unvizored of his spectral mask, he stands
Transfigured to an angel, who leads forth
The spirit from its prison, and all the way
Through the dark valley shows it in the mould
The footprints of the Lord of Life, there left
To mark for His redeemed the sacred path
To immortality. Celestial hope!
That shines, ascendant star in gloomy hours,
When some beloved form hath passed away,
Some kindred nature which the heart grew round
And lived in, which on its departure takes
Light from the sky, and gladness from the earth,—
The hope that it has entered into rest
Supernal, joined the saintly company
Who worship day and night, where never sin
Can come, nor pain, nor sorrow, and that soon
We too shall pass the golden gates, and swell
This lofty celebration, and rejoice
With those who went before us in a joy
Ineffable, and pure, and ending never,
Within the City of God.

O would that thou,
Poet of Nature! hadst more deeply felt,
And, having felt, unfolded in thy verse
These fears and struggles, hopes and hallowed joys!
Would thou hadst known that only in this depth
The strong foundations of our inward life
Are laid securely, and the building reared
To its divine completeness! Then thy song
Had been an oracle of higher truth
To man; then nature had not seemed less fair,
Nor elements and forms, which to thy mind
Gave forth their deep significance, become
Silent and charmless. Fuller harmonies
Had rolled therefrom over thy trancèd soul,
And thou, interpreting through them the voice
Of God, imparted to all visible things
A purer consecration. In that light,
More open vision would have been vouchsafed,—
Thy nobler task, to chant to after time,
Not nature's praise, but in sublimer strains
The praise of Him who formed it. For apart
From God thus recognized, and ever kept
In the mind's foreground, the exalted sense
Of outward grace and loveliness, may lead
To the enthronement of the work, in place
Of the great Master-Builder. Man may search
For influences to nurture and refine,
And dream he finds them there, and, thus beguiled,
Resign his being to a passionate love
Of that material beauty, which, with all
Its colours mingling in one gorgeous woof,
Is but the curtain hung before the shrine.
And would that, clear as thine, some other voice
Would lift rebuke against this tendency
Of a too sensuous age,—this overfond
Devotion to the beautiful and fair,
Which would seduce us from the personal God,
To worship some abstraction of the mind,
Clothed in the forms of nature! Men evoke
Some fantasy apparelled in cloudy pomp
Of words,—the Spirit of the Universe,
Or plastic Soul of Nature, or the Power
Of Intellectual Beauty,—and to this,
Their idol, out of dazzling images
And glowing thoughts compacted,—as of old
The desert Apis from the golden rings
And chains of Israel,—they proclaim a feast
Of high inauguration, and, with sound
Of sweetest minstrelsy, they set it up,
And call the world to worship. Let them learn
That nature, though to rarest spirit refined
In their ideal visions, is not God,
But from God,—that her glories, at their height,
Can be no avatar of the Divine,
No incarnation of all-ruling Mind.
Her ministration and her noblest aim
Are then fulfilled when, in her silent signs
And in the language of her face, we read
That He who formed her sits upon a throne
Which spurns divided honours.

Over all
His works let His high attributes of power,
Of majesty, of wisdom, and of grace,
Stand eminent,—like glittering spires that rise
High o'er a city's roofs, and lead the thoughts
To heaven. Thus, to the Greeks, who saw of old
The templed mount of Athens from the gulf,
The point of Pallas' spear, herself unseen,
Gleamed o'er the snowy Parthenon,—a sign
That there, the tutelar goddess kept her watch
Over the festive city.

It were well
That some, whose stately creed reserves no place
For evangelic truths, which to the heart
Of the unlettered peasant evidence
Their heavenly power, and build his being up
In silent sanctity,—some who would spurn,
As the weak dream of fancy, his belief
In the Eternal Spirit who renews
His inward life,—should learn that there may be
A mysticism of reason as of faith.
His thoughts may have a loftier range than theirs,
Who speak as if the self-included mind
By force of meditation could extract
All aids to strengthen, guide, and purify,
From nature,—be, in solitude, transformed
Into the likeness of the images
Of majesty and beauty it beholds.
The striving spirit may be thus upborne
Into some airy region, but can find
No wholesome nurture there,—nor calm confront
Its immortality, nor look through death
With an upholding hope. The mountain peaks
That seem so near to heaven, are cold and bare,—
Dead granite crusted with unfruitful snow.

These were thy haunts, O poet! and, though thou
Didst not leave Him unpraised, a firmer grasp,
A more habitual and presiding sense
Of His pure presence in thy life of thought
And consciousness, had given a sacred glow
And ardour to thy song. Thou then hadst felt
The pulses of thine inmost being beat
With quicker rapture, till thy fervid thoughts,
Power and emotion fused in fiery stream,—
Flowed forth and filled some vaster mould of song.

There was one
Whose name stands high upon his country's roll
Of poets, who, amidst a faithless age,
Stood forward for the honour of his God,—
Fresh be his memory to the ends of time,
The pensive bard of Olney! From the depths
Of an unknown despair he could proclaim
The heavenly hope to which the angels tuned
Their harps at Bethlehem, and, in the woe
Which crushed his gentle spirit, he could taste
An angel's joy to see each wanderer
Returning to that Father's house, whose gates
He deemed were closed on him. Within that heart
There dwelt a love of nature, deep, and true,
And fervent as was thine. To him the sight
Of wood, and sky, and mountain ministered
Pure and perpetual gladness. Yet, through all
Her voices manifold, he only heard
The voice of God; on all her fair domain,
In radiant signature and imagery,
He saw the golden letters of His name,
The name of Love. The common earth to him
Was holy ground, once trodden by the feet
Of One who stooped in human flesh to die,
A Man for man's redemption. In his song
Glowed inspiration as of altar-fire;
His foot had stood on sacred Olivet,
And on his low-bent head the cleansing dews
Of Jordan had been sprinkled.

Nature's voice
To him was not all gladness: he had been
Within the shrine. His ear had caught the sound
Of that mysterious symphony which breathes
Out of creation's heart to mortal woe,—
The under-tone in that undying wail
Wherewith the human generations mourn
Beneath the weight of evil. He had heard
The deepest notes which from the sevenfold pipe
Of Pan come to the spiritual ear,—
The creature groaning, travailing in pain,
As subject unto change, until the day
Of its redemption from the curse of sin

The time has been, when, listening to the high
And rapt discourse of that grey-headed sage
Thy Wanderer, who, in a low estate,
Cherished a thoughtful spirit, and could muse
In ripeness of experience on Man,
And Nature, and Life's changes, I have wished
That some occasion of his roving life
Had led his footsteps southward to the banks
Of Ouse. There he had haply learned some truths,
That had no place in his shrewd worldly-wise
Philosophy, from the poor Cottager,
Who drew her store of wisdom from one book,
The only one she had,—the Book of God.