The Poetical Works of Ebenezer Elliott :: :: University of Virginia Library

“Write me a song for Betsy,” said thy sire:
Lady! it is already written—here,
On the charged brain, in tears, and gloom, and fire:
Read it when I am dust. My waning year
Is shaking down its leaves. I soon shall be
Safe, even from myself, where pain and fear
Disturb not him who sleepeth. Then to thee
The buried dead shall speak, and thou shalt hear
A spirit's voiceless words. He shall appear
To thee when awe is silence in thy soul—
Yea, thou with him shalt go withersoe'er
His feet have been. The lifeless shall control
The living: and, though worlds between us roll,
Dwell with thee in my thoughts, or linger near.

Then, lady! gaze with me o'er Wharncliffe lone;
Or stand, in thought, on Kinder's crest sublime;
Or hear a prophet's voice, from Grina stone,
Denounce thy country's tyrants, in my rhyme.
O that Peronnet Thompson's mental might,
Or thy stern lyre, John Milton, were my own;
Or that my voice were mountain thunders, blown,

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As from a trumpet, in the dead of night!
Then would I do the poor of Britain right;
Then should my song, like Russia's winter, freeze
Abaddon's host, guilt-petrified in flight;
And the roused spirit of Demosthenes,
Strong as heaven's flame from tempests ranged for fight,
Fulmine o'er darkened lands a storm of light.

“My voice,” men say, “is like a convent bell,
Rung by red light'nings, at the midnight hour,
While, crashing from the tempest-shaken tower,
Its moss-grown fragments mingle with the yell
Of winds that howl o'er graves.” But if I swell
The fire-toned thunder's hymn, I have no power
To shake to-morrow's rain-drop from a flower,
No wish to bring the deluge I foretell.
Yet, while the bell of ages tolls in vain
O'er buried tyrants, may I not be heard
By tyrants living, sinning, hated, fear'd;
And, like the midnight cannon's friendly roar,
Flash'd through the portals of the wind and rain,
Warn haughty navies from a fatal shore?

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CLOUDLESS STANAGE.

Why, shower-loved Derwent! have the rainbows left thee?
Mam-Tor! Win-Hill! a single falcon sails
Between ye; but no airy music wails.
Who, mountains! of your soft hues hath bereft ye,
And stolen the dewy freshness of your dales?
Dove-stone! thy cold drip-drinking fountain fails;
Sun-darken'd shadows, motionless, are on ye;
Silence to his embrace of fire hath won ye;
And light, as with a shroud of glory, veils
The Peak and all his marvels. Slowly trails
One streak of silver o'er the deep dark blue
Its feathery stillness, while of whispered tales
The ash, where late his quivering shade he threw,
Dreams o'er the thoughtful plant that hoards its drops of dew.

NOON ON GREAT KINDER.

When last I look'd on thee, thy brow was black
With trouble, and beneath it flames flashed out;
While on thine awful face the heav'ns flung back
The red glare of thy lightnings, Kinderscout!

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And all thy brethren answered with a shout
Their monarch's voice, that spake from sea to sea,
O'er all their cataracts. But now the trout
Sleeps in thy voiceless runlets. Now the bee
Alone is restless here: he sings to thee
An ode of praise, where, reddening like the rose,
Amid the hoof-marks of the thunder, glows
The cloud-fed berry; and the clouds, to me,
(While blusheth wide around the purple flower,)
Seem mute, in honour of thy noontide hour.

Mountains! ye awe and tire me. Fare ye well!
And let the tempests love ye. But, below,
The happy homed-and-hearth'd affections dwell.
Amid yon floral sea, where daisies blow
And children gather them, the village bell
Saith that the young are married; while the old
Talk of glad yesterdays, or fondly tell
Of buried loves. For joy is grief foretold!
And there young widows' hearts grow deadly cold,
And the poor orphan's smile is faint and brief,
When marriage chimes are heard o'er grange and wold.
Yet comfort there I seek, and joy in grief;
For man, by feelings strong as death controll'd,
Gives heart for heart, and knows that hearts are never sold.

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TO THOMAS CROSSLEY.

“Poetry,” critics say, “is dead or dying.”
Is life then dead, or can religion die?
She whose broad pinions gather strength by flying
O'er new-made graves, or manless halls, where sighs
The wind of midnight to the clouded sky,
And hurrying stars! E'en as the skylark flies,
Poetry lives and still will soar, while flows
A daughter's tear because her mother dies;
While on a child's grave grass or daisy grows;
Or o'er his coffin'd son a father bows
His locks of snow. Yes, Bard of Ovenden,
Poetry lives! for, lo! with thee she goes
Where leaps the streamlet down the breezy glen;
With me, where God bids law cursed slaves be men!

A DREAM.

I dream'd that, tired with travel, I return'd
To Blacklow's summit, and stood there with God
Alone, at midnight. Side by side we trod
The heath; and while around us rock'd and burn'd

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The mountains, like a mountain'd sea of flame,
A gilded worm pronounced in scorn His name!
I, with my foot, the reptile would have spurn'd,
But could not. We stood still as death! That worm
Then spun slim films around th' Almighty's form,
Binding the hands that lift the seas, the feet
That will tread out the stars! and while, in mirth,
It spake this curse, I heard my own heart beat:
“With worse than barrenness I curse thee, Earth!
Henceforth, let every child be hopeless from his birth!”

But God said, “No! surely thou shalt not see
Every child hopeless, because thou art vile;
For thou art thy own victim, watch'd by me,
And I sheath vengeance in a dreadful smile.
But ere I bless thy curses for mankind,
And make them curses infinite to thee,
Thousands of thousands, foodless as the wind—
Yea, thousand, thousand, thousand men shall be
Care-hunted to the grave, by thine and thee.
And thou more crimes and criminals shalt make,
Than all earth's monsters heretofore have made:
Hell from beneath shall rise to bless thee, Snake!
And Death, to sum his profits by thy trade,
Count through all ages past, their men and states betray'd.”

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CONISBOROUGH CASTLE.

In other days, time-darken'd Conisb'rough,
Men thought of Hengist when they spoke of thee!
My native river murmurs near thee now,
As then it murmur'd, hasting to the sea,
Through hazel bowers, where memory loves to be;
But in these days, thy pilgrims whisper low
The name of Scott, and join with his thy name.
Him, the Napoleon of Parnassus, thou
Hast seen with Shakspeare equal deem'd in fame;
Nor may the Cæsar of the Muses claim,
His throne unshared. Twice thirteen years are past,
Since hither, almost dead with care, I came,
What time another Cæsar fiercely cast
O'er earth his stormy shade, which kings beheld aghast.

Through Russian wastes that Cæsar chased a cloud:
Calm was its aspect; for it had the power
To make his crowded host a lifeless crowd,
He being conquer'd in that fated hour,
Which gave his queen destruction for a dower.
Slow was its motion, and few accents loud
Broke from its chamber'd thunder as it fled;
But, when it stopp'd and spake, the conqueror bow'd,

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Lower than vanquish'd kings, his laurel'd head.
They, waking from the vileness of their dread,
Gazed on the self-crown'd wretch, in mean surprise;
Then, with the vulgar dust, which he had spread
Around the consul's chair, bedimm'd his eyes,
And bade him die, as baffled baseness dies.

Yet better was it, that the Fool of Force
Triumph'd by force, and fell by force subdued,
Than that the ancient thrones of foot and horse
Had quelled, at once, the uproused multitude,
Whom giant wrongs with Titan might embued.
Well fought the people under Terror's wing;
And banded monarchs trembled, fled, and sued;
For Terror reign'd, Gaul's omnipresent king!
And homed, on tyrants' hearths the storm they brewed!
They serve us still, with strife! still, still renew'd;
The fight of fate accelerates their doom;
Themselves they mar, by battle, fraud, and feud;
And in large letters, of mixed flame and gloom,
Write, “The Republic! cometh, and will come.”

Come the Republic then! Or come the will
Of one wise despot! Let the Nation sway
Or be swayed well! But we will not be still
Of fifty thousand kingly-wolves the prey:
O Britain, sweep them from thy hearth away!

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What! shall they reign alone, like the simoom,
Kings of the dead? Not so! we toil, and pay;
And here we perish pall'd beneath their gloom—
Ere Mockery, throned o'er London's ashes, say,
“Behold a manless land! a nation's tomb!”
The heavens shall cry, Ha, ha! and shout their doom;
Their names shall be a byword of dismay;
Chaff for the whirlwind shall their pomp become;
Their homes be graves, and dust for ruin they.
Come the republic then! but not the strife
Of want-struck millions for immediate bread!
“The labour of the poor man is his life,”
And on our lives shall palaced fraud be fed?
“They who rob him, strike Me!” the Lord hath said;
“They break my everlasting covenant!
And therefore worms beneath their pride are spread;
For are not murderers number'd with the dead?
Fainting, their sons shall ask, their daughters pant,
For drink and bread, in vain; and both shall flee
Unbless'd, go where they may, o'er land or sea,
And learn how hard to bear are scorn and want!
For I (the poor man's God) his strength will be,
And shake the dead leaves down, but save the tree!”