XCIII.LOUGHRIGG.
I
Would they not judge untruly who should deem
I had no friends but those I named in song?
Would it not be ungentle thus to dream,
And do poetic silence heartless wrong?
II
The meadow-brooks with their sweet clamor guide
Their bending selves to a most wayward time,
Will earth and sky less waywardly preside
O'er the meek wills of poets in their prime?
III
So hath it been, dear Loughrigg! that till now
My song hath touched less often than it might
At thy fair mountain havens, which do glow
With such a wealth of hues in this clear light.
IV
Oft as a poet, feeble at my craft,
Did I seek shelter in Helvellyn's fame,
And, with poor fraud, on my dull verses graft
Fresh sound and fulness from his mighty name.
V
Yet it were hard if this most wondrous dawn,
With its whole sheet of purest sunlight, thrown
From the blue laughing skies o'er thy rough lawn,
Cold bubbling brook, and lichen-written stone—
VI
Yes—it were hard, if such an hour at least
Laid not on me some little tax of song,
For thee, the table where, as at a feast,
All the rich kinds of mountain beauty throng.
VII
Thou art a world in miniature, a land
Wrought with such curious toil, as if in mirth
Nature had thrown thee from her dexterous hand
To be a sportive model of the earth.
VIII
All made by laws, green cleft and sinuous path
Cross, like great mountain outlets, every way;
And the long outline, which thy summit hath,
Mimics rude Alp and splintered Himalay;
IX
Or like a Cross to Christians thou mayest seem,
With thy four points to lake or river bent,
Sunk in a font, and luring Heaven to gleam
On thee through that redeeming element.
X
When first I saw thee, butterworts had set
Their sickly stars about thy hundred springs,
With one blue flower apiece, content to let
The fresh fern fan them with its neighbouring wings.
XI
The fern was like green dust upon the hill,
Which vernal winds might almost blow away;
But it changed dresses with the months at will,
And with the cold its fashions grew more gay.
XII
Ne'er have I felt the might of morning rest
Its cold fresh welcome half so strong and free,
As on thy heathy side and windy crest,
Except in early daybreaks out at sea.
XIII
Oft, o'er the noonday woods, on thy west crown
My rhyming fancy woodland visions weaves,
Till, with old boyish impulse darting down,
I plunge and lose myself among the leaves.
XIV
Thy southern scars, all masked with oak-wood bowers,
Like feudal dwellings, mouldering whitely, shine
Through the soft nights of summer, as the towers
In the deep yellow moonlight on the Rhine.
XV
To winter's cold-eyed sun, o'er snowy drifts
That scriptural tree, the juniper, doth lean,
While many a patch of wannest silver shifts
O'er the strange dazzling sheet of white and green.
XVI
One rainy summer, often as I stood
Within yon churchyard, gazing on thy side,
One brow of thine with an incessant flood
Of fruitful sunlight rose in gleamy pride.
XVII
Let the wet skies be loaded e'er so much,
That lighting up no dreary mist could swage:
Care might as soon efface the angelic touch
On the bright brow of sanctified old age.
XVIII
Many a calm fancy and sweet-sounding word
To thee, dear Loughrigg! do of right belong;
And, though thy name of softness be unheard,
Thou of all mountains art mine undersong.
XIX
In tempted times, when my weak soul did need
More than earth's props and stays, I fled to thee;
And in thy sunken haunts I now may read
The secrets of my own biography.
XX
O may no wind wake up for other ears
The sad confessions trusted to thy keeping;
But, for the Cross that pardons and the tears
That win us grace, dear mountain, leave them sleeping!
