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

To Henry Brougham, Esq., the Friend of the Poor, and the Champion of Education, as a humble Tribute of Respect and Gratitude for his efforts in the great cause of Humanity, this tale of Enoch Wray (the incarnation of a century) is dedicated by the Author.

EXORDIUM.

Monopoly! if every funeral bough
Of thine be hung with crimes too foul to name;
Accursed of millions! if already thou,
Watch'd by mute vengeance and indignant shame,
Art putting forth thy buds of blood and flame,
What will thy fruitage be? No matter—wave
Thy branches o'er our hearts! and, like a pall,
Let thy broad shadow darken Freedom's grave!
Not yet the Upas of the Isles shall fall,
If ought shall stand. Spread, then, and cover all!
Fear'st thou the axe? Long since the feller died;
And thou art deaf to thunder. But, Black Tree!
Thine own fruits will consume thee in thy pride!

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O may thy inbred flame blast nought but thee,
When burns the beacon which the blind shall see!
Meantime, I make my theme the toil and grief
That water thee with tears—the fear and hate
Whose mutter'd curses fan thy deadly leaf—
Sad, silent changes—burning wrongs, that wait
To hear Delusion scream at Rapine's gate,
“Our master's cause is lost, and Hell's undone!”

BOOK I.

CONTENTS.

Continued Frost—Enoch Wray leaves his Cottage on a Visit to the Neighbouring Town—His Blindness and Poverty—His Familiarity with the old Roads of the Country—His Perplexity in the Town—Changes there—Rural Names of some of the Streets— Country-born Widow and Her Attempts at a Garden—Her Consumptive Boy, and His Flowers—Female Artisans Singing Hymns at their Labour—Meeting of Enoch Wray and his old Blind Servant.

I.

Through fiery haze broad glares the angry sun;
The travell'd road returns an iron sound;
Rings in the frosty air the murderous gun;
The fieldfare dies; and heavy to the ground,
Shot in weak flight, the partridge falls—his wound

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Purpling with scatter'd drops the crusted snow.
Loud thumps the forge; bright burns the cottage fire,
From which the tilter's lad is loth to go;
Well pleased the tramper sees the smoke aspire;
High flies the swan; each wild strange bird is shyer,
And, terror-taught, suspects hill, vale, and plain.

II.

Our poor blind father grasps his staff again—
O Heav'n! protect him on his way alone!
Of things familiar to him, what remain?
The very road is changed; his friend, the stone
On which he wont to sit and rest, is gone;
And ill the agèd blind can spare a friend!

III.

How lone is he, who, blind and near his end,
Seeks old acquaintance in a stone or tree!
All feeling and no sight! O let him spend
The gloaming hour in chat with memory!
Nor start from dreams to curse reality,
And friends more hard and cold than trees and stones!

IV.

He takes the townward road, and inly groans
At men, whose looks he does not see, but feel;
Men whose harsh steps have language! cruel tones

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That strike his ear and heart, as if with steel!
There dwelt they, ere Corruption's brazen seal
Stamp'd power's hard image on such dross as theirs?

V.

Thou meanest thing that Heav'n endures and spares!
Thou upstart dandy, with the cheek of lead!
How dar'st thou from the wall push those grey hairs?
Dwarf! if he lift a finger, thou art dead:
His thumb could fillip off thy worthless head—
His foot, uplifted, spurn thee o'er the moon!

VI.

“Some natural tears he drops, but wipes them soon;”
And thinks how changed his country and his kind,
Since he, in England's and in manhood's noon,
Toil'd lightly and earn'd much; or, like the wind,
Went forth o'er flowers, with not a care behind,
And knew nor grief, nor want, nor doubt, nor fear.

VII.

Beadle! how canst thou smite, with speech severe,
One who was reverenced long ere thou wast born?
No homeless, soulless beggar meets thee here,

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Although that threadbare coat is patch'd and torn:
His bursting heart repels thy taunt with scorn,
But deems thee human, for thy voice is man's.

VIII.

You, too, proud dame, whose eye so keenly scans
The king's blind subject on the king's high road!
You who much wonder that, with all our plans
To starve the poor, they still should crawl abroad!
Ye both are journeying to the same abode.
But, lady, your glad eye, o'er wave, and shore,
And shoreless heaven, with sightless speed may rove,
And drink resplendent joy; while he no more
Shall look on Nature's face: Rock, river, grove,
Hate's withering frown, the heart-sent blush of love,
Noon, midnight, morning, all are dark to him!

IX.

Thou, skater! motion-poised, may'st proudly swim
In air-borne circles o'er the glassy plain,
While beauty lauds thy graceful sweep of limb;
But to the blind, alas! her praise is pain:
It but recalls his boyish days in vain,
When he too, seen and praised, could see and praise.
To him there is no beauty but the heart's,
No light but that within; the solar blaze

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For him no colour to the rose imparts;
The rainbow is a blank; and terror starts
No ghost in darkness thicker than his own.

X.

Yet sweet to him, ye stream-loved valleys lone,
Leafless, or blossoming fragrant, sweet are ye!
For he can hear the wintry forest groan,
And feel the grandeur which he cannot see,
And drink the breath of Nature, blowing free.
Sweet still it is through fields and woods to stray;
And fearless wanders he the country wide,
For well old Enoch knows each ancient way;
He finds in every moss-grown tree a guide—
To every time-dark rock he seems allied:
Calls the stream “sister!” and is not disown'd.

XI.

Usurper of the hills! hast thou dethroned
The regal oak? He bows his honours hoar,
Too conscious of his fall, in vain bemoan'd;
He yields to thee, storm-loving sycamore!
And on the inland peak, or sea-beat shore,
Thou reign'st alike. But thee, though yonder hill
Stoops to thy height, our father planted here;
And still he loves thy palmy shade, and still,

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E'en when the snow-flake plumes thy branches sere,
He climbs the age-worn road that lingers near,
And seems, though blind, on distant hills to gaze.

XII.

But much he dreads the town's distracting maze,
Where all, to him, is full of change and pain.
New streets invade the country; and he strays,
Lost in strange paths, still seeking, and in vain,
For ancient landmarks, or the lonely lane
Where oft he play'd at Crusoe, when a boy.
Fire vomits darkness, where his lime-trees grew;
Harsh grates the saw, where coo'd the wood-dove coy;
Tomb crowds on tomb, where violets droop'd in dew;
And, brighter than bright heaven, the speedwell blue
Cluster'd the bank, where now the town-bred boor
(Victim and wretch, whose children never smile,)
Insults the stranger, sightless, old, and poor,
On swill'd Saint Monday, with his cronies vile,
Drunk for the glory of the holy isle,
While pines his wife, and tells to none her woes!

XIII.

Here, Enoch, flaunts no more the wild brier rose,
Nor basks the lizard here, or harmless snake.
No more the broom, in spring, all golden glows

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O'er the clear rill, that, whimpering through the brake,
Heard thy blythe youth the echoing vale awake.
All that was lovely then is gloomy now.
Then, no strange paths perplex'd thee—no new streets,
Where draymen bawl, while rogues kick up a row;
And fishwives grin, while fopling fopling meets;
And milk-lad his rebellious donkey beats;
While dwarfish cripple shuffles to the wall;
And hopeless tradesman sneaks to alehouse mean;
And imps of beggary curse their dad, and squall
For mammy's gin; and matron, poor and clean,
With tearful eye, begs crust for lodger lean;
And famish'd weaver, with his children three,
Sings hymns for bread; and legless soldier, borne
In dog-drawn car, imploreth charity;
And thief with steak from butcher runs forlorn;
And debtor bows, while banker smiles in scorn;
And landed pauper, in his coach and four,
Bound to far countries from a realm betray'd,
Scowls on the crowd, who curse the scoundrel's power,
While coachee grins, and lofty lady's maid
Turns up her nose at bread-tax-paying trade,
Though master bilketh dun, and is in haste.

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XIV.

Changed scenes, once rural—changed, and not defaced!
Far other woes were yours in time of old,
When Locksley o'er the hills of Hallam chased
The wide-horn'd stag, or with his bowmen bold
Waged war on kinglings. Vassal robbers prowl'd,
And, tiger-like, skulk'd robber lords for prey,
Where now groan wheelworn streets, and labour bends
O'er thousand anvils. Bled the feudal fray,
Or raved the foray, where the cloud ascends
For ever; and from earth's remotest ends
Her merchants meet, where hamlets shriek'd in flames.

XV.

Scenes, rural once! ye still retain sweet names,
That tell of blossoms and the wandering bee:
In black Pea-Croft no lark its lone nest frames;
Balm-Green, the thrush hath ceased to visit thee!
When shall Bower-Spring her annual corncrake see,
Or start the woodcock, if the storm be near?

XVI.

But, mourning better days, the widow here
Still tries to make her little garden bloom—
For she was country-born. No weeds appear,

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Where her poor pinks deplore their prison-tomb;
To them, alas! no second spring shall come!
And there, in May, the lilac gasps for breath;
And mint and thyme seem fain their woes to speak,
Like saddest portraits, painted after death;
And spindling wallflowers, in the choking reek,
For life, for life uplift their branches weak.
Pale, dwindled lad, that on her slated shop
Sett'st moss and groundsel from the frosty lea!
O'er them no more the tiny wren shall hop.
Poor plants!—poor child! I pity them and thee!
Yet blame I not wise Mercy's high decree.
They fade—thou diest; but thou to live again—
To bloom in heav'n. And will thy flowers be there?
Heav'n without them, would smile for thee in vain.
Thither, poor boy, the primrose shall repair,
There violets breathe of England's dewy air,
And daisies speak of her, that dearest one,
Who then shall bend above thy early bier,
Mourning her feeble boy for ever gone,
Yet long to clasp his dust for ever here!
No, no, it shall not want or flower or tear!
In thy worn hand her sorrow will not fail
To place the winter rose, or wind-flower meek;
Then kiss thy marble smile, thy forehead pale,
But not the icy darkness from thy cheek;
Then gaze—then press her heart that yet shall break;
And feebly sob—“My child, we part to meet!”

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XVII.

Hark! music still is here! How wildly sweet,
Like flute-notes in a storm, the psalm ascends
From yonder pile, in traffic's dirtiest street!
There hapless woman at her labour bends,
While with the rattling fly her shrill voice blends;
And ever, as she cuts the headless nail,
She sings—“I waited long, and sought the Lord,
And patiently did bear.” A deeper wail
Of sister voices joins, in sad accord—
“He set my feet upon his rock adored!”
And then, perchance—“O God, on man look down!”

XVIII.

And Enoch seeks, with pensive joy, the town;
For there his brother in misfortune dwells,
The old and sightless sawyer, once his own.
They meet—with pride and grief his bosom swells;
And how they once could see, each sadly tells.
But Charles is changed; and Enoch's bosom bleeds
To mark the change. Though aged but eighty years,
Bedrid and blind, the sorrowing sawyer needs
All friendly aid. Crack'd, on the wall, appears
His famous violin. No rival fears
His trembling hand, which never more shall call
The young, the gay, the manly, and the fair,
To penny hop or rustic festival!

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No fading prude again shall curl her hair,
Nor fop new whiskers buy, nor age repair
To hear him charm the loveliest of the land.
The tear is trembling in our father's eye;
Kindly he takes his ancient servant's hand,
Stoops to his whisper, to his feeble sigh
Sighs; and, with hands uplifted reverently,
And heav'nward eyes, upon his bended knees,
Implores the Father of the poor to spare
His pious friend, and cure his long disease;
Or give him strength his painful load to bear,
That, dying, he may show “what good men are:”
For Thou disdain'st not pray'r from lowly walls.
The squalid hovel, where the poor and just
Kneel, is, in thy sight, splendid as the halls
Where pray the proud — with contrite hearts, I trust—
Then highest when they know they are but dust.
O God! continue to thy grateful son
The grace which thou hast never yet denied
To humble faith, that bids thy will be done!
And let it still, in meekness, be his pride
To praise thy name, and hear it glorified!
Poor is thy son, and blind, and scorn'd, like me;
Yet thee we bless, that he can proudly say
He eats the hoarded bread of industry,
And that he hath not, in his evil day,
Tasted the bitterness of parish-pay.

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Though frail thy child, like all who weep below,
His life, thou know'st, has been no baneful weed;
He never gather'd where he did not plough,
He reap'd not where he had not scatter'd seed;
And Christ, we know, for sinners deign'd to bleed!
At thy tribunal want may be forgiv'n;
There, to be lowly is not to be base.
Oh, then—if equal, in the eye of Heav'n,
Are all the children of the human race;
If pomp and pride have in thy courts no place—
Let humble friends, who long have sojourn'd here
In love united, meet in love again,
Where dust, divorced from sin, and pain, and fear,
In ever-bless'd communion shall remain,
With powers that know not death, nor grief, nor stain,
Warbling to heav'nly airs the grateful soul!

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BOOK II.

CONTENTS.

A Fine Day in Winter—Enoch Wray seated in the Sunshine at his Cottage Door—His neglected Garden a Symptom of Poverty— The Condition of the Poor changed for the worse since the Patriarch was young—Great Events of his Time—Invasion of England by the Pretender—American War—French Revolution—Napoleon.

I.

Thou call'st the Village Patriarch to his door,
Brief, brilliant summer of a winter's day!
While the sweet redbreast, minstrel of the poor,
Perch'd on the blossoming hazel, trills his lay,
To cheer that blind, good man, old Enoch Wray.
Behold our Father, still unbow'd by time!
Eld with his gentle locks full gently plays;
And pain, in reverence, spares the man sublime:
How few such men grace these degenerate days!
E'en Death, though fain to strike, in awe delays,
As if immortal age defied his might.
Lo! where the peeping primrose comes again,
To see his sad, bright eyes, that roll in night,
While melts the hoar-frost on the cottage pane,
And dew-drops glitter in the lonely lane!

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Calm, as of old, with not one hoary hair
Changed, thou art listening for the vernal bee;
Thy fingers, like the daisy's petals fair,
Spread to the sun, that loves to look on thee—
Thou almost god-like in thy dignity!
Hark, how the glad rill welcomes thee with pride!
Ye have been friends and neighbours five-score years—
Father! the stream still loiters at thy side,
And still unchanged by envious time appears;
Like human life, it flows, a stream of tears—
But not to pass, like human life, away.

II.

What, though thy locks of venerable grey
Claim not with yon wild cliffs coeval date,
Yet, blind old man, shake hands with them, for they
Are dark like thee; and, by an equal fate,
They too, enduring long, shall perish late.
Thou see'st not Winco, in his dusky cap,
Lean'd on his elbow, as becomes his years,
With all the past beneath him, like a map,
O'er which he bends and ruminates in tears;
But how like thee that woe-marked hill appears!
Ye are not changeless, though ye long endure,
And Eld herself sees but what still hath been,
In him and thee. Nor art thou yet mature

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And ripe for death, but strong in age and green,
And alter'd less than this pathetic scene.
The cottage, where thy sire and his were born,
Seems, as of old, a hillock in the vale:
But many a chink admits the breezy morn;
Neglect long since divorced the jasmine pale
That clasp'd thy casement; and the sorrowing gale
Sighs o'er the plot where erst thy choice flowers bloom'd.
Ah! when the cottage garden runs to waste,
Full oft the rank weed tells of hopes entomb'd,
And points at man, once proud, now scorn'd, debased!
The dogs bark at him; and he moves, disgraced,
O'er wither'd joys which spring shall ne'er renew.

III.

Yet here, e'en yet, the florist's eye may view
Sad heirs of noble sires, once dear to thee;
And soon faint odours, o'er the vernal dew,
Shall tempt the wanderings of the earliest bee
Hither, with music sweet as poesy,
To woo the flower whose verge is wiry gold.

IV.

But on thy brow, O ne'er may I behold
Sadness!—Alas, 'tis there, and well it may!
For times are changed, and friends grow scarce and cold!

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O let not want “his ready visit pay”
To sightless age, that knew a better day!
O may no parish crust thy lips profane!

V.

Man, poor and blind, who liv'st in worse than pain!
Where'er thou art, thou helpless, wingless owl!
The worm, our eyeless sister, might disdain
Thee, subject to thy fellow's proud control.
But what a worm is he, the blind in soul,
Who makes, and hates, and tortures penury!
Ah! who shall teach him mercy's law sublime?
He who can sever wo and poverty,
Or pride and power, or poverty and crime;
He who can uninstruct the teacher, Time.
Oh, yet erect, while all around are bow'd,
Let Enoch Wray's majestic pride remain,
A lone reproach, to sting the meanly proud,
And show their victims—not, perhaps, in vain—
What Britons have been, and may be again.
O Age and Blindness, why should you be pair'd?
O sisters three, worst fates, Want, Blindness, Age!
Hope look'd from heav'n, beheld you, and despaired?
But now she rends her hair, in grief and rage;
Her words are prophecy, her dreams presage

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Evil to serf and lord; for want hath sworn
Thus, to the delver of the perilous mine,
And him who wakes with scrating file the morn—
“By the sad worm that dies not, I am thine,
And mine art thou; thy joys shall still decline
Till death; thy woes increase till death—toil on!”

VI.

But why forestall our griefs? Dark thoughts, begone!
Sufficient is its evil for the hour.
The verdant leaves drop from us one by one;
We need not shake them down. Life's weeping flower
Droops soon enough, however slight the shower;
And hope, unbidden, quits our fond embrace.

VII.

I will not read dejection in thy face,
Nor aught save tranquil hope and gentle doom;
But deem thee parent of a happy race,
Thy slumbers peaceful, distant yet thy tomb;
And, in thy autumn, late the rose shall bloom.
Come, let us walk, as we have often walk'd,
Through scenes beloved, that whisper of the past;
And talk to me, as thou hast often talk'd,
Of wingèd hours, too happy far to last,
When toil was bliss, and thrift could gather fast

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Funds to sustain his long life's tranquil close;
When faces wore no masks, and hearts were glad;
When freedom's champions were not labour's foes;
When no man deem'd the wise and honest mad;
And Pope was young, and Washington a lad.
Thou to the past can'st say, “Rise, live again!”
For, Enoch, well rememb'rest thou the time
When Britons till'd the Eden of the main,
Where manly thoughts were utter'd, e'en in rhyme,
And poverty was rare, and not a crime.
What envied England was, long years ago,
That times are alter'd, thou can'st truly tell;
And, if thy thoughts are flowers that bloom in snow—
If with the present and the past they dwell—
Then, of the lifeless, like a passing bell,
Speak to the living, ere they perish, too.
If memory is to thee a precious book,
Brightest where written first, and brightly true,
Turning the pictured pages, bid me look
On sunny meadow and rejoicing brook,
And toil-brown'd labour, as the throstle gay.

VIII.

Thou weepest, sightless man, with tresses grey!
But wherefore weep o'er ills thou can'st not cure?
The darkest hour will quickly pass away,
And man was born to suffer and endure.
But, come what may, thy rest is near and sure;

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Thy bed is made, where all is well with all
Who well have done. Then, Enoch, cease to mourn!
Lift up thy voice, and wake the dead! Recall
The deeds of other days! and from the urn
Of things which were, shake words that breathe and burn.
O'er the dark mantle of the night are shed
Sparks of the sun, in starry spangles proud:
In showery spring, when morn his radiant head
Veils, the rich broom, with glittering diamonds bow'd,
Is sunny light beneath the sunless cloud.
Though Nature to thine eye is vainly fair,
Green laugh the seasons, and the laughing light
Is verdant in thy soul—the flower is there
That wither'd four-score years ago, still bright,
And bathed in freshness by the dewy air.
And pitying spirits to thine ear repair
With tales, to which unsorrowing hearts are deaf;
And deeds, whose actors live not, live with thee;
Still laugh and weep long buried joy and grief
Which, speaking with thine eloquent tongue, shall be,
When thou art gone, alive to memory.
Thus to great men their country—when the bust,
The urn, the arch, the column fail—remains;
For ever speaks of godlike deeds the dust
Which feet immortal trod; and rocks, and plains,
When History's page no symbol'd thought retains,
Hear dim tradition talk of deathless men.

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IX.

Bright on the storm-swoll'n torrent of the glen
Is angry sunset; bright, and warm, and strong,
Are the rich visions which the poet's pen
Clothes in sweet verse; but brighter is the song
Of truth unwritten, from our fathers' tongue.
Ah! who starts now at Balmerino's name,
Which England heard pronounced in dreams, and woke?
Then every mountain had a voice of flame;
Blue Kinderscout to starting Snailsden spoke,
And fiery speech from troubled Stanedge broke.
Tell, Enoch, yet again, of that huge tree,
Old as the hills; that tree to whose broad shade
Your herds were driv'n, when age and infancy,
The thoughful matron, and the weeping maid,
Fled through the gloom where lonest Rivilin stray'd.
Speak of the cellar and the friendly well
In which thy mother, trembling, hid her plate;
The ancient cup, whose maker none can tell;
The massive tankard used on days of state;
And coins long hoarded, all of sterling weight.
Say how retired the robbers, disarray'd;
Boast of the arms thy sire was proud to wield;
Draw from its sheath, in thought, the trusty blade

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That drove rebellion o'er Culloden's field,
Opposed in vain by Highland dirk and shield;
And feel the blood-rust on its splendour keen!

X.

Then wing my spirit to a grander scene;
Let burning thoughts and words for utterance throng;
And bid me mark—though clouds will intervene
To veil the waters swift, and wild, and strong—
How pours the tide of human fate along.
Tell of sad strife with Britain's sons, who trod
Earth's virgin soil, beyond the sun-loved wave;
Men—owning no superior but their God,
Strong as their torrents, as their eagle, brave—
Who dug with Freedom's sword Oppression's grave!
Tell, too, of him, the warrior-sage, whose deeds
Uncursed the future, and enfranchised man!
But ah! not yet—Time's darkest hour succeeds,
Unmatch'd in woe since life and death began!
For Evil hath her place in Mercy's plan,
And long will furnish themes for mournful rhymes.

XI.

Speak!—if thy soul, too full of ancient times,
Will condescend of later deeds to tell—
Speak of the day of blood, the night of crimes,
The moral earthquake, and the earthly hell,
When slaves smote tyrants served too long and well.

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Say how attention listen'd, pale, in heav'n,
When—madden'd by Abaddon's legion brands,
And too, too deeply wrong'd to be forgiv'n—
They found redemption in their own right hands,
Purged with retorted fire their demon'd lands,
And clad in fresher green the calcined sod.

XII.

Nor him forget, the stripling demi-god,
Before whose glance the herded nations fled.
Tell how he crush'd the mountains with his nod,
Walk'd on the storm, and to convulsion said,
“Be still, thou babbler!” Tell how he who read
The doom of kings fail'd to foresee his own.
He placed upon his head the crown of steel;
But dream'd he of his grave in ocean lone?—
Toussaint! thy foe was doomed thy pangs to feel:
On jailer-England and on him her seal
Hath History set. For ocean's waste of waves
Fenced not his throne from million hostile swords;
Therefore he built on multitudinous graves
A tyrant's power, and strove to bind with cords
Thought; for she mock'd him with her wing of words
That withers armies. Who shall credit thee,
Genius? Still treacherous, or unfortunate,
Victim, or wronger! Why must Hope still see

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Thy pinions, plumed with light divine, abate
Their speed when nearest heav'n, to uncreate
Her glorious visions? Ay, since time began,
Creatures, with hearts of stone and brains of clay,
Scorning thy vaunt to wing the reptile, man,
O'er thee and thine have held barbarian sway;
And in the night which yet may have its day,
(The night of ages, moonless, starless, cold,)
If the rare splendour of the might of mind
Hath sometimes flash'd o'er plagues and errors old,
It flash'd but to expire, and leave behind
A deadlier gloom. But woodbine wreaths are twined
Round thorns; and praise, to merit due, is paid
To vulgar dust, best liked when earthy most.
While Milton grew, self-nourish'd, in the shade,
Ten Wallers bask'd in day. Misrule can boast
Of many Alvas; Freedom, oft betray'd,
Found her sole Washington. To shine unseen,
Or only seen to blast the gazer's eye;
Or struggle in eclipse, with vapours mean,
That quench your brightness, and usurp the sky;
Such, meteor spirits! is your destiny,
Mourn'd in times past, and still deplored in these.

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BOOK III.

CONTENTS.

Comparative Independence of Skilled Labour—Fine Sabbath Morning—Sunday Stroll of the Townsman—Coach-race—Misery and Misfortunes of the Poor—Congregation leaving the Village Church—Old Mansion—Country Youth working in the Town—Poacher of the Manufacturing Districts—Concluding Reflections.

I.

Ere Bedford's loaf or Erin's sty be thine,
Cloud-rolling Sheffield! want shall humble all.
Town of the unbow'd poor! thou shalt not pine
Like the fall'n rustic, licensed Rapine's thrall;
But, first to rise, wilt be the last to fall!
Slow are thy sons the pauper's trade to learn.
Though, in the land that blossoms like the rose,
The English peasant and the Irish kerne
Fight for potatoes—thy proud labourer knows
Nor Workhouse wages, nor the exile's woes.
Not yet thy bit of beef, thy pint of ale,
Thy toil-strung heart, which toil could ne'er dismay,
Nor yet thy honest, skill'd right hand shall fail;
Last, from thy hearths, the poor man's pride shall stray;
And still shall come thy well-paid Saturday,
And still thy morn of rest be near and sure.

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II.

Light! all is not corrupt, for thou art pure,
Unchanged, and changeless. Though frail man is vile,
Thou look'st on him—serene, sublime, secure,
Yet, like thy Father, with a pitying smile.
Light! we may cloud thy beams, but not defile.
Even on this wintry day, as marble cold,
Angels might quit their home, to visit thee,
And match their plumage with thy mantle, roll'd
Beneath God's throne, o'er billows of a sea
Whose isles are worlds, whose bounds infinity.
Why then is Enoch absent from my side?
I miss the rustle of his silver hair;
A guide no more, I seem to want a guide,
While Enoch journeys to the house of pray'r;
And ne'er came Sabbath day but he was there!
Lo, how like him, erect and strong, though grey,
Yon village tower, time touch'd, to God appeals!
But hark! the chimes of morning die away!
Hark!—to the heart the solemn sweetness steals,
Like the heart's voice, unfelt by none who feels
That God is love, that man is living dust;
Unfelt by none whom ties of brotherhood
Link to his kind; by none who puts his trust
In nought of earth that hath survived the flood,
Save those mute charities, by which the good
Strengthen poor worms, and serve their Maker best.

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III.

Hail, Sabbath! day of mercy, peace, and rest!
Thou o'er loud cities throw'st a noiseless spell.
The hammer there, the wheel, the saw, molest
Pale thought no more. O'er trade's contentious hell
Meek quiet spreads her wings invisible.
But when thou com'st, less silent are the fields
Through whose sweet paths the toil-freed townsman steals.
To him the very air a banquet yields.
Envious, he watches the poised hawk, that wheels
His flight on chainless winds. Each cloud reveals
A paradise of beauty to his eye.
His little boys are with him, seeking flowers,
Or chasing the too venturous gilded fly.
So by the daisy's side he spends the hours,
Renewing friendship with the budding bowers;
And—while might, beauty, good, without alloy,
Are mirror'd in his children's happy eyes—
In his great temple, offering thankful joy
To Him, the infinitely Great and Wise,
With soul attuned to Nature's harmonies,
Serene, and cheerful, as a sporting child.
His heart refuses to believe, that man
Could turn into a hell the blooming wild

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The blissful country, where his childhood ran
A race with infant rivers, ere began
King-humbling, blind misrule his wolfish sway.

IV.

Is it the horn that, on this holy day,
Insults the songs which rise, like incense sweet,
From lowly roofs, where contrite sinners pray,
And pious rustics, poor, yet clean and neat,
To hear th' apostle of the hamlet, meet?
They come, they come! behold, hark!—thundering down,
Two headlong coaches urge the dreadful race;
Woe to outsiders, should they be o'erthrown!
Be ready, Doctor, if they break a trace!
Twelve miles an hour — well done; a glorious pace!
Poor horses, how they pant, and smoke, and strain!
What then? our jails are full, and England thrives.
Now, Bomb! now, Bomb! Defiance lends again;
Hurrah? Bill Breakneck or the Devil drives!
Whip!—populous England need not care for lives.
O blessèd Sabbath! to the coach-horse thou
Bringest no pause from daily toil. For him
There is no day of rest. The laws allow
His ever-batter'd hoof, and anguish'd limb,
Till, death-struck, flash his brain with dizzy swim,

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Lo, while his nostrils flame, and, torture-scored,
Quivers his flank beneath the ruthless goad,
Stretch'd, on his neck each vein swells, like a cord!
Hark! what a groan! The mute pedestrian, awed,
Stops—while the steed sinks on the reeling road,
Murder'd by hands that know not how to spare!

V.

Now landed Trader, that, with haughty stare,
Throned in thy curtain'd pew, o'erlook'st the squire!
Be kind and saintly; give, for thou can'st spare,
A pittance to the destitute; enquire
If yon pale trembler wants not food and fire?
Though thou could'st thrive, say not all others can,
But look and see how skill and toil are fed;
Lo, merit is not food to every man!
Pious thou art, and far thy fame is spread;
But thy Saint Peter never preach'd cheap bread.
Though bright the sun, cold blows the winter wind:
Behold the tramper, with his naked toes!
Where for the night shall he a lodging find?
Or bid that homeless boy relate his woes;
O try to feel what misery only knows,
And be like him of Wincobank, who ne'er
Sent a fall'n brother heart-struck from his door!
Or be like Wentworth's lord, a blessing here!
O imitate the steward of the poor,
According to thy means, heav'n asks no more!

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Think of the hope of ten, the sire of nine,
The proud, skill'd man, wheel-shatter'd yesterday:
His wife will wring her hands ere eve decline;
And, ah! the next week's wages, where are they?
O soothe her, help her, name not parish pay!
Think, too, of her, the maid who dwelt alone,
Whose first, sole, hopeless love was Enoch Wray.
Forgotten ere she died, she lived unknown,
And told her love but once, passing away
Like a slow shadow, in her tresses grey.
Proud, though despised, she sternly paid for rent
Her all, her weekly eighteenpence, and died,
Rather than quit the home where she had spent
Twice forty years. Her last pawn'd rug supplied
A fortnight's food. None heard her if she sigh'd;
None saw her if she wept; or saw too late,
That tears were ice upon her lifeless face.
Her Bible on her lap, before the grate
That long had known no fire, gnawing a lace
With toothless gums—the last of all her race—
She died of cold and hunger in her chair.

VI.

The bell strikes twelve. The ancient house of prayer
Pours forth its congregated youth and age;
The rich, the poor, the gay, the sad, are there;
And some go thence, who, in their hearts, presage

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That one week more will end their pilgrimage.
First, in all haste, comes busy Bolus, croose
As bantam cock, and neat as horse fresh poll'd.
Then boys, all glad, as bottled wasps let loose,
Clapping their hands because their toes are cold.
Then the new Squire (more dreaded than the old)
Raised from the milk-cart by his uncle's will—
A Norfolk farmer he, who loved his joke,
At tax-worn tradesmen aim'd, with practised skill;
For, scorning trade, he throve, while traders broke,
And did not care a straw for Mister Coke.
Next, lo! the monarch of the village school,
Slow Jedediah comes, not yet the last.
Well can he bear the blame for stubborn fool;
Meekly he bows to yeoman, stumping past,
While Bolus, yet in sight, seems travelling fast.
Thou, Jedediah, learnèd wight, know'st well
Why rush the younglings from the porch with glee.
Dear to thy heart is Nature's breezy fell;
Deeply the captives' woes are felt by thee,
For thou art Nature's, Freedom's devotee!
Witness the moss that winter's rage defies,
Cull'd yesterday, beside the lizard's home;
Witness thou lichen of the precipice,
Beautiful neighbour of the torrent's foam,
Pluck'd, where the desert often sees him roam!—
Next comes the train who better days have known,
Condemn'd the taunts of paupers born to brook,

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With prostrate hearts, that mourn their hopes o'erthrown,
And downcast eyes, that shun th' upbraiding look.
Then comes his worship; then his worship's cook;
And then, erect as truth, comes Enoch Wray,
Bareheaded still, his cheek still wet with tears,
Pondering the solemn text, as best he may.
Lo, close behind, the curate meek appears!
Kindly he greets the man of five-score years,
The blind, the poor! while purse-pride turns away,
And whispering asks, half-wishful, half-afraid,
If Enoch has applied for parish pay?
Short-sighted curate! ply the worldling's trade,
Or, unpreferr'd, grow pale with hope delay'd,
And die, the victim of low craft and spite.
Short-sighted curate! do as worldlings do;
Flatter the wolf, for he can snarl and bite.
What, though thy life is pure, thy doctrine true?
The Squireling hates thee; Bolus hates thee too.
Physician, surgeon, umpire of thy flock!
Dar'st thou be wise beyond the learnèd schools?
How laughs the Doctor at thy little stock
Of drugs and simples! Burn thy useful tools,
Priest and Mechanic, scorn'd by knaves and fools!
Then fawn on wealth and spurn the all-shunn'd poor.
To grandeur's halls, a punctual dun, repair;
Or still shall honest rags besiege thy door,

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And thou be found at Want's bedside in pray'r,
While Pain moans low, and Death is watching there,
And Hope sees better worlds beyond the sky.

VII.

Near yonder archer yews—that solemnly
Keep aye upraised their desolate hands, in praise
Of the old heav'ns, and hoar antiquity—
Behold the Hall! There once dwelt Matthew Hayes,
A trading yeoman of the bygone days.
There, where his fathers sojourn'd on the plain,
And damn'd the French, yet loved all humankind,
His annual feast was spread, nor spread in vain;
There his own acres billow'd in the wind
Their golden corn. A man of vulgar mind,
He laugh'd at learning, while he scrawl'd his cross,
And rear'd his boy in sloth. But times grew worse:
War came—and public waste brought private loss;
And punctual bankruptcy, the thriving curse,
Beggar'd his debtors, till an empty purse
Answer'd all claims. He sold his land—then died,
Following his broken-hearted wife—and left
Their son, the heir of prejudice and pride,
To drink, and swear, of self-respect bereft,
And feed the day's debauch by nightly theft.
Behold his home, that sternly could withstand
The storms of more than twice a hundred years!
In such a home was Shakspeare's “Hamlet” plann'd,

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And Raleigh's boyhood shed ambitious tears
O'er Colon's wrongs. How proudly it uprears
Its tower of cluster'd chimneys, tufted o'er
With ivy, ever green amid the grey,
Yet envy-stung, and muttering evermore
To yon red villa, on the king's highway,
“Thou dandy! I am not of yesterday.”
Time seems to reverence these fantastic walls:
Behold the gables quaint, the cornice strong,
The chambers, bellying over latticed halls,
The oaken tracery, outlasting long
The carven stone; nor do their old age wrong
With laughter vile, or heartless jest profane!

VIII.

Why, Enoch, dost thou start, as if in pain?
The sound thou hear'st the blind alone could hear:
Alas! Miles Gordon ne'er will walk again;
But his poor grandson's footstep wakes thy tear,
As if indeed thy long lost friend were near.
Here oft, with fading cheek and thoughtful brow,
Wanders the youth—town-bred, but desert-born.
Too early taught life's deepening woes to know,
He wakes in sorrow with the weeping morn,
And gives much labour for a little corn.
In smoke and dust, from hopeless day to day,
He sweats, to bloat the harpies of the soil,
Who jail no victim, while his pangs can pay.

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Untaxing rent, and trebly taxing toil,
They make the labour of his hands their spoil,
And grind him fiercely; but he still can get
A crust of wheaten bread, despite their frowns;
They have not sent him like a pauper yet
For Workhouse wages, as they send their clowns;
Such tactics do not answer yet in towns.
Nor have they gorged his soul. Thrall though he be,
Of brutes who bite him while he feeds them, still
He feels his intellectual dignity,
Works hard, reads usefully, with no mean skill
Writes, and can reason well of good and ill.
He hoards his weekly groat. His tear is shed
For sorrows which his hard-worn hand relieves.
Too poor, too proud, too just, too wise to wed,
(For slaves enough already toil for thieves,)
How gratefully his growing mind receives
The food which tyrants struggle to withhold!
Though hourly ills his every sense invade
Beneath the cloud that o'er his home is roll'd,
He yet respects the power which man hath made,
Nor loathes the despot-humbling sons of trade.
But, when the silent Sabbath-day arrives,
He seeks the cottage, bordering on the moor,
Where his forefathers pass'd their lowly lives—
Where still his mother dwells, content though poor,
And ever glad to meet him at the door.

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Oh, with what rapture he prepares to fly
From streets and courts, with crime and sorrow strew'd,
And bids the mountain lift him to the sky!
How proud, to feel his heart not all subdued!
How happy to shake hands with Solitude!
Still, Nature, still he loves thy uplands brown—
That rock, that o'er his father's freehold towers!
And strangers, hurrying through the dingy town,
May know his workshop by its sweet wild flowers.
Cropp'd on the Sabbath from the hedge-side bowers,
The hawthorn blossom in his window droops;
Far from the headlong stream and lucid air
The pallid alpine rose to meet him stoops,
As if to soothe a brother in despair,
Exiled from Nature and her pictures fair.
E'en winter sends a posy to his jail,
Wreath'd of the sunny celandine—the brief,
Courageous windflower, loveliest of the frail—
The hazel's crimson star—the woodbine's leaf—
The daisy with its half-closed eye of grief—
Prophets of fragrance, beauty, joy, and song!

IX.

Bird! who would swelter with the laden throng,
That had thy wings? Earth spurners, you are free!
But thou must drag the chains of life along,
And, all but hopeless, till thou cease to be,
Toil, woe-worn Artisan! Yet, unlike thee

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Is minion'd Erin's sty'd and root-fed clown.
How unlike thee, though once erect and proud,
Is England's peasant slave, the trodden down,
The parish-paid, in soul and body bow'd!
How unlike thee is Jem, the rogue avow'd,
Whose trade is poaching! Honest Jem works not,
Begs not, but thieves by plundering beggars here.
Wise as a lord, and quite as good a shot,
He, like his betters, lives in hate and fear,
And feeds on partridge, because bread is dear.
Sire of six sons, apprenticed to the jail,
He prowls in arms, the tory of the night;
With them he shares his battles and his ale;
With him they feel the majesty of might;
No despot better knows that Power is Right.
Mark his unpaidish sneer, his lordly frown;
Hark, how he calls beadle and flunky liars!
See how magnificently he breaks down
His neighbour's fence, if so his will requires!
And how his struttle emulates the Squire's!
And how like Mistress Gig, late Betty Scrubb,
Or Mister Dunghill, with his British pride,
He takes the wall of Glossin and his cub,
Or loyal Guts, who, bursting, coughs, to hide
The wounded meanness he mistakes for pride!
Jem rises with the moon; but when she sinks,
Homeward, with sack-like pockets, and quick heels,
Hungry as boroughmongering ghoul, he slinks.

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He reads not, writes not, thinks not—scarcely feels;
Insolent ape! whate'er he gets he steals,
Then plays the devil with his righteous gain!

X.

O thou, whom conquer'd seas made great in vain,
Fall'n Venice! Ocean Queen no more! oppress'd
Nurse of true slaves, and lords whom slaves disdain!
Whisper thy sickening sister of the West
That Trade hath wings, to fly from climes unbless'd!
Trade, the transformer, that turns dross to bread,
And reaps rich harvests on the barren main;
Trade, that uproots wild flowers, and from their bed
Digs forth hard steel, to hew the bondman's chain:
Tamer of Tyrants, else opposed in vain!
And ye—once guardians of the fainting state,
Shades of the Rockinghams and Savilles! ye
Who lived when paupers did not dine on plate!
Wake!—can ye sleep? Indignant, wake! and see
Alms-taking wealth, alms-giving poverty!
Thou, too, undemonizer of the proud!
Religion, that canst raise and dignify
The heart which abject penury hath bow'd!
From gorgeous climes beneath the eastern sky,
Call home the lightning of thy seraph eye;
Gird thy almighty loins; thy work begin!
Plead for the pariah of the isles of woes,
And speak, with Luther's voice, to giant Sin!

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So may the year of tortured ages close
Ere the slow Angel start from his repose,
Like Stanedge, shaking thunder from his mane!

XI.

But who will listen when the poor complain?
Who read, or hear, a tale of woe, if true?
Ill fares the friendless Muse of want and pain.
Fool! would'st thou prosper, and be honest, too?
Fool! would'st thou prosper? Flatter those who do!
If, not unmindful of the all-shunn'd poor,
Thou write on tablets frail their troubles deep,
The proud, the vain, will scorn thy theme obscure.
What wilt thou earn, though lowly hearts may steep
With tears the page in which their sorrows weep?
Growl, if thou wilt, in vulgar sympathy
With plunder'd labour; pour thy honest bile
In satire, hiss'd at base prosperity;
And let his enviers, from their pittance vile,
Reward the pauper virtues of thy style.
But, hark! what accents of what slave enquire
Why rude mechanics dare to wield the quill?
He bids me from the scribbler's desk retire,
Rehoof my fingers, and forget my skill
In railing foully, and in writing ill.
O that my poesy were like the child
That gathers daisies from the lap of May,
With prattle sweeter than the bloomy wild!

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It then might teach poor Wisdom to be gay
As flowers, and birds, and rivers, all at play,
And winds, that make the voiceless clouds of morn
Harmonious. But distemper'd, if not mad,
I feed on Nature's bane, and mess with scorn.
I would not, could not if I would, be glad,
But, like shade-loving plants, am happiest sad.
My heart, once soft as woman's tear, is gnarl'd
With gloating on the ills I cannot cure.
Like Arno's exiled bard, whose music snarl'd,
I gird my loins to suffer and endure,
And woo Contention, for her dower is sure.
Tear not thy gauze, thou garden-seeking fly,
On thorny flowers, that love the dangerous storm,
And flourish most beneath the coldest sky!
But ye who honour truth's enduring form,
Come! there are heath flowers, and the fangèd worm,
Clouds, gorse, and whirlwind, on the gorgeous moor.

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BOOK IV.

CONTENTS.

Recitation of Manfred to Enoch Wray—Byron and his Contemporaries—First Perusal of “Schiller's Robbers:” followed by the Blindness of the Patriarch—Further Particulars of his History and Character.

I.

Enoch, the lights are darken'd on the hill,
But in the house a thoughtful watch is set;
Warm on the ancient hearth fire glimmers still;
Nor do the travellers their way forget;
Nor is the grasshopper a burthen yet.
Though blossoms on the mountain top the snow,
The maids of music yet are lingering near;
Still are the wakeful listeners wise to know;
Still to thy soul the voice of song is dear.
And when I read to thee that vision drear—
The Manfred of stern Byron—thou didst bend,
Fix'd, to drink in each touching word and tone.
On thy changed cheek I saw strong feeling blend
Impetuous hues; and tears fell, one by one,
From thy closed eyes, as on the moorland stone
The infant river drops its crystal chill.

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II.

Say, then, is Pope our prince of poets still?
Or may we boast, in these all rhyming days,
One climber of the Heliconian hill,
Whose classic spirit and unborrow'd lays
Johnson or caustic Swift had deign'd to praise?
Scott, whose invention is a magic loom;
Baillie, artificer of deathless dreams;
Moore, the Montgomery of the drawing-room;
Montgomery, the Moore of solemn themes;
Crabbe, whose dark gold is richer than it seems;
Keats, that sad name, which time shall write in tears;
Poor Burns, the Scotchman, who was not a slave;
Campbell, whom Freedom's deathless Hope endears;
White, still remember'd in his cruel grave;
Ill-fated Shelley, vainly great and brave;
Wordsworth, whose thoughts acquaint us with our own;
Didactic, earnest Cowper, grave and gay;
Wild Southey, flying, like the hern, alone;
And dreamy Coleridge, of the wizard lay:
These are true bards, who please not Enoch Wray!
But may not Byron, dark and grand, compete
With him who sung Belinda's ravish'd tress?
Chaste is the muse of Pope, and passing sweet;
But Byron is all fervour, rivalless
In might and passion. Woman's tenderness—

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When woman is most tender, most deplored—
Moves not like his; and still, when least divine,
He is a god, whose shrines shall be restored—
Apollo, self-dethroned. His mind a mine
Where night-born gems in cherish'd darkness shine,
He—thrice a Ford, twice an Euripides,
And half a Schiller—hath a Milton's power,
But not a Shakspeare's; strength, and fire, and ease,
And almost grace; though gloomy as the tower
Around whose dangerous brow storms love to lower,
His world is all within, like Enoch Wray's.

III.

The full-blown flower, maturely fair, displays
Intensest beauty, and the enamour'd wind
Drinks its deep fragrance. But could lengthen'd days
Have ripen'd to more worth dark Byron's mind,
And purged his thoughts from taint of earth refined?
Or would he have sent forth a fiercer glow,
And gloomier splendour, from his core of fire?
We know not what he might have been, but know
What he could not be. Proud of his high lyre,
We mourn the dead, who never can expire.
Proud of his fearless frown, his burning tear;
Proud of the poet of all hearts, who heard
The mute reproach of Greece; with zeal severe,

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We scrutinize our least injurious word,
Nor longer deem his spleeny whims absurd,
His pangs ridiculous, his weakness crime.

IV.

Heaven's fav'rites are short lived. Stern fate and time
Will have their victims; and the best die first,
Leaving the bad still strong, though past their prime,
To curse the hopeless world they ever cursed,
Vaunting vile deeds, and vainest of the worst.
And he who cannot perish is no more!
He died who is immortal, and must be,
To time's slow years, like ocean to the shore,
The sun to heav'n! He died where fell the free
Of ancient Greece; and Greeks his loss deplore.
There, where they fight, as fought their sires of yore,
In the great cause of all the good and great,
Liberty's martyr, England's, Europe's pride,
Girding his broken heart, he champion'd fate,
And laid down life—though not as Russell died,
To him, “by better ties than blood,” allied.
Beyond the deep he perish'd, far from all
That darken'd death with love; and, though the wave
Leagued with his foes to mock his dying call,
His dust is where his heart was, when he gave
Years of defeated glory for a grave,
Sighing in death his deathless love and woe.

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V.

Father! thy life has been prolong'd, to know
Strange times, strange men, strange changes, and strange lays;
The warrior-bard whom Athens, long ago,
Crown'd peerless heir of never-dying praise,
Hath found a greater. In those fearful days
When, tempest-driv'n, and toss'd on troubled seas,
Thought, like the petrel, loved the whirlwind best,
And o'er the waves, and through the foam, with ease,
Rose up into the black cloud's thund'rous breast,
To rouse the lightning from his gloomy rest;
Then, in the shadow of the mountains, dwelt
A lady, to whose heart high hopes were dear,
Who wildly thought, and passionately felt,
And strangely dream'd, that man—the slave of Fear,
And Pain, and Want—might be an angel here.
Full oft that lady of the glen remote
Called Enoch her wise mason; oft partook
His humble meal, while, mirror'd in his thought,
The pensive past assumed her own sweet look.
'Twas then she gave him her last gift, a book
Dark with strange power, and fearfully divine.
It chill'd his blood, it lifted up his hair;
Spirits of terror lived in every line;
A spell was on its pages of despair,
And burning woes, which Nature could not bear.

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'Twas grand, but dreadful as the thoughts that wrung
The son of morning, from the solar beam
Hurl'd to the centre, where his soul, unstrung,
Disdained submission still, too proud to seem
Unvanquish'd. Was it but a fearful dream,
That tale of Schiller's? Did the robber Moor
Pierce through Amelia's broken heart his own?
Smite the dark tower and shake the iron door?
And was he answered by a father's groan?—
Th' Avonian seer hath ceased to stand alone.
But thou no more shalt printed vision read,
Enoch! that dire perusal was thy last;
For, from thine eyeballs, with a spirit's speed,
Gone, and for ever, light and beauty pass'd.
Not that a horror and a woe too vast
Had quench'd thy brilliant orbs: nor was thy doom
Like his—the bard who sang of Eden's bowers,
The bard of lofty thought, all fire and gloom,
All might and purity—whose awful powers,
Too darkly strong for organs frail as ours,
Press'd on his visual nerve a pall-like night:
But God, who chastens whom he loves, ordain'd,
Although thy frame was vigorous, thy step light,
Thy spirit like th' autumnal gale unrein'd—
That thine should be affliction, well sustain'd,
To show the proud what humble worth can bear.

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VI.

Then hither, Pride, with tearless eyes repair!
Come, and learn wisdom from unmurmuring woe,
That, 'reft of early hope, yet scorns despair.
Still in his bosom light and beauty glow,
Though darkness took him captive long ago.
Nor is the man of five-score years alone:
A heav'nly form, in pity, hovers near;
He listens to a voice of tenderest tone,
Whose accents sweet the happy cannot hear;
And, lo, he dashes from his cheek a tear,
Caught by an angel shape, with tresses pale.
He sees her, in his soul. How fix'd he stands!
But, oh, can angels weep? Can grief prevail
O'er spirits pure? She waves her thin, white hands;
And while her form recedes, her eye expands,
Gazing on joys which he who seeks shall find.
There is an eye that watches o'er the blind:
He hath a friend—“not lost, but gone before”—
Who left her image in his heart behind.
But when his hands, in darkness, trembled o'er
Her lifeless features, and he heard no more
The voice whose last tone bless'd him, frenzy came!
Blindness on blindness! midnight thick and deep,
Too heavy to be felt!—then pangs, like flame,
That sear'd the brain—sorrow that could not weep;
Fever, that would have barter'd worlds for sleep!

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He had no tears, but those that inly pour,
And scald the heart; no slumbers, but the doze
That stuns the mourner who can hope no more;
But he had shudderings, stupor, nameless woes,
Horror, which only he that suffers knows.
But frenzy did not kill. His iron frame,
Though shaken, stood. The mind's night faded slow.
Then would he call upon his daughter's name,
Because it was her mother's! And his woe
Waned into resignation, pleased to show
A face of peace, without the smile it wore.
Nor did the widower learn again to smile
Until his daughter to her Albert bore
Another Mary, and on yonder stile
He nursed the babe, that sweetly could beguile,
With looks unseen, “all sadness but despair.”

VII.

Nay, Enoch, do not weep. The day is fair,
And flings bright lightnings from his helm abroad;
Let us drink deep the pure and lucid air,
Ere darkness call thee to her damp abode.
Hark, how the titling whistles o'er the road!
Holm, plume thy palms! and toss thy purple Torse
Elm! but, Wood Rose, be not a bride too soon!
Snows yet may shroud alive the golden gorse:

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Thou early-green! deem not thy bane a boon;
Distrust the day that changeth like the moon.
But still our father weeps. Ah! though all hues
Are dead to him, the floral hours shall yet
Shed o'er his heart their fragrance-loving dews!
E'en now, the daisy, like a gem, is set,
Though faint and rare, in winter's coronet.
Thy sisters sleep, adventurous windflower pale!
And thy meek blush affronts the celandine,
The starry herald of that gentlest gale
Whose plumes are sunbeams, dipp'd in odours fine:
Well may'st thou blush; but sad blight will be thine,
If glowing day shut frore in stormy night.

VIII.

Still dost thou weep, old man? The day is bright,
And spring is near: come, take a youngster's arm;
Come, let us wander where the flocks delight
At noon to sun them, when the sun is warm;
And visit them, beyond thy uncle's farm,
The one-arch'd bridge—thy glory, and thy pride,
Thy Parthenon, the triumph of thy skill;
Which still bestrides, and long it shall bestride,
The discontented stream, from hill to hill,
Laughing to scorn the moorland torrent still.
How many years hath he slept in the tomb
Who swore thy bridge would yield to one year's rain!
E'en London folks, to see and praise it, come;

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And envious masons pray, with shame and pain,
For skill like Enoch Wray's, but pray in vain.
For he could do what others could not learn,
First having learn'd what Heav'n alone can teach:
The parish idiot might his skill discern;
And younglings, with the shell upon their breech,
Left top and taw, to listen to his speech.
The barber, proudest of mankind confest
His equal worth—“or so the story ran”—
Whate'er he did, all own'd, he did it best;
And e'en the bricklayer, his sworn foe, began
To say, that Enoch was no common man.
Had he carved beauty in the cold white stone,
(Like Law, the unknown Phidias of our day,)
The village Angelo had quail'd to none
Whom critics eulogize, or princes pay;
And ne'er had Chantrey equall'd Enoch Wray,
Forgotten relic of a world that was!
But thou art not forgotten, though, alas!
Thou art become a stranger, sunny nook,
On which the changeful seasons, as they pass,
Wait ever kindly! He no more will look
On thee, warm bank! will see thy hermit brook
No more, no more. But kindled at the blaze
Of day, thy fragrance makes thy presence known.
Behold! he counts his footsteps as he strays!
He feels that he is near thy verdure lone;
And his heart whispers, that thy flowers are blown,

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Pale primrose, know'st thou Enoch? Long ago
Thy fathers knew him; and their child is dear,
Because he loved them. See, he bends him low,
With reverend grace, to thee—and drops a tear.
“I see thee not,” he sighs, “but thou art here;
Speak to a poor, blind man! And thou canst speak
To the lone blind. Still, still thy tones can reach
His listening heart, and soothe, or bid it break.
Oh, memory hears again the thrilling speech
Of thy meek beauty! Fain his hand would reach
And pluck thee—No! that would be sacrilege.

BOOK V.

CONTENTS.

An Excursion with Enoch Wray to the Mountains—Beautiful Winter Morning—Rivers of Hallamshire—Short Lived Grinder, contrasted with the Patriarch—The Moors—Mountain Bee— Enfeebled Snake—Lost Lad—The Desert, a fit Abode for Spirits—Christ's Love of Solitude—Reflections, suggested by the Desolation of the Scene.

I.

Come, Father of the Hamlet! grasp again
Thy stern ash plant, cut when the woods were young;
Come, let us leave the plough-subjected plain,
And rise, with freshen'd hearts, and nerves restrung,
Into the azure dome, that, haply, hung
O'er thoughtful power, ere suffering had begun.

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II.

Flowers peep, trees bud, boughs tremble, rivers run;
The redwing saith, it is a glorious morn.
Blue are thy Heavens, thou Highest! and thy sun
Shines without cloud, all fire. How sweetly, borne
On wings of morning o'er the leafless thorn,
The tiny wren's small twitter warbles near!
How swiftly flashes in the stream the trout!
Woodbine! our father's ever-watchful ear
Knows, by thy rustle, that thy leaves are out.
The trailing bramble hath not yet a sprout;
Yet harshly to the wind the wanton prates,
Not with thy smooth lisp, woodbine of the fields!
Thou future treasure of the bee, that waits
Gladly on thee, spring's harbinger! when yields
All bounteous earth her odorous flowers, and builds
The nightingale, in beauty's fairest land.

III.

Five rivers, like the fingers of a hand,
Flung from black mountains, mingle, and are one
Where sweetest valleys quit the wild and grand,
And eldest forests, o'er the silvan Don,
Bid their immortal brother journey on,

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A stately pilgrim, watch'd by all the hills.
Say, shall we wander where, through warrior's graves,
The infant Yewden, mountain-cradled, trills
Her doric notes? Or, where the Locksley raves
Of broil and battle, and the rocks and caves
Dream yet of ancient days? Or, where the sky
Darkens o'er Rivilin, the clear and cold,
That throws his blue length, like a snake, from high?
Or, where deep azure brightens into gold
O'er Sheaf, that mourns in Eden? Or, where roll'd
On tawny sands, through regions passion-wild,
And groves of love, in jealous beauty dark,
Complains the Porter, Nature's thwarted child,
Born in the waste, like headlong Wiming? Hark!
The poised hawk calls thee, Village Patriarch!
He calls thee to his mountains! Up, away!
Up, up, to Stanedge! higher still ascend,
Till kindred rivers, from the summit grey,
To distant seas their course in beauty bend,
And, like the lives of human millions, blend
Disparted waves in one immensity!

IV.

Beautiful rivers of the desert! ye
Bring food for labour from the foodless waste.
Pleased stops the wanderer on his way, to see
The frequent weir oppose your heedless haste.
Where toils the Mill, by ancient woods embraced,

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Hark, how the cold steel screams in hissing fire?
But Enoch sees the Grinder's wheel no more,
Couch'd beneath rocks and forests, that admire
Their beauty in the waters, ere they roar
Dash'd in white foam the swift circumference o'er.
There draws the Grinder his laborious breath;
There, coughing, at his deadly trade he bends.
Born to die young, he fears nor man nor death;
Scorning the future, what he earns he spends;
Debauch and Riot are his bosom friends.
He plays the Tory, sultan-like and well:
Woe to the traitor that dares disobey
The Dey of Straps! as rattan'd tools shall tell.
Full many a lordly freak, by night, by day,
Illustrates gloriously his lawless sway.
Behold his failings! hath he virtues, too?
He is no pauper, blackguard though he be.
Full well he knows what minds combined can do,
Full well maintains his birthright—He is free!
And, frown for frown, outstares monopoly!
Yet Abraham and Elliot, both in vain,
Bid science on his cheek prolong the bloom;
He will not live! he seems in haste to gain
The undisturb'd asylum of the tomb,
And, old at two-and-thirty, meets his doom!
Man of a hundred years, how unlike thee!

247

V.

But steeper hills look down on stream and tree;
I pray thee, pause, or, lo, I lag behind!
Ah, thou wilt prove an overmatch for me,
Despite the sad erectness of the blind.
Whoever walks with thee, though young, will find
'Tis hard for youth to emulate thy age.
They were adventurous Sampsons, that would try
To lift a load with Enoch, or engage
To fling a heavier quoit. And thigh to thigh,
And foot to foot, placed well and warily,
He who throws thee had need be in his prime.

VI.

The moors—all hail! Ye changeless, ye sublime,
That seldom hear a voice, save that of Heav'n!
Scorners of chance, and fate, and death, and time,
But not of Him, whose viewless hand hath riv'n
The chasm, through which the mountain stream is driv'n!
How like a prostrate giant—not in sleep,
But listening to his beating heart—ye lie!
With winds and clouds dread harmony ye keep;
Ye seem alone beneath the boundless sky;
Ye speak, are mute—and there is no reply!

248

Here all is sapphire light, and gloomy land,
Blue, brilliant sky, above a sable sea
Of hills, like chaos, ere the first command,
“Let there be light!” bade light and beauty be.
But thou art here, thou rarest cloudberry!
O health-restorer! did he know thy worth,
The bilious townsman would for thee resign
His wall-grown peach, well pleased. In moorland earth
Thee would he plant, thou more than nectarine!
Thou better grape! and, in thy fruit divine,
Quaff strength and beauty from the living bough.

VII.

This scene is ancient, Enoch must allow.
Marble is less enduring than the flower
That wither'd ages hence, and withers now,
Where, black as night, th' unalter'd mountain's tower,
And baffled Time sees things that mock his power.
I thank ye, billows of a granite sea,
That the bribed plough, defeated, halts below!
And thanks, majestic Barrenness, to thee,
For one grim region in a land of woe,
Where tax-sown wheat and paupers will not grow.
Here pause, old Man, the alpine air to taste:
Drink it from Nature's goblet, while the morn
Speaks like a fiery trumpet to the waste.

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Here despot grandeur reigns in pomp forlorn.
Despair might sojourn here, with bosom torn,
And long endure, but never smile again.
Hail to the tempest's throne, the cloud's high road,
Lone as the agèd sky, and hoary main!
The path we tread the Sherwood outlaws trode,
Where no man bideth, Locksley's band abode,
And urged the salient roe through bog and brake.

VIII.

Know'st thou our father, thou enfeebled snake,
That seek'st the sun too soon? Dost thou, in awe
And love, the seldom trodden path forsake?
To him, thou seem'st the very snake he saw
In ruddy boyhood. While thy folds withdraw,
Uncoil'd o'er cranshy roots, and fern-stalks dry,
He thinks he sees thee, colour'd like the stone,
With cruel and atrocious Tory eye,
And anxious look of dog that seeketh bone,
Or sour Scotch placeman, when his place is gone,
To feed some Whiggish fool, who will not eat.

IX.

Bee! that hast left thy sandy-coved retreat
Before the living purple hath purvey'd
Food for thee; potent pigmy! that the fleet
Wing'd moments of the past, and years, array'd
In patch-work, from the robe of things decay'd,

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Recall'st from sad oblivion! thou canst do
What mightest spirits cannot—Silence hears
Thy murmur; and our sire, who hears it too,
Lives o'er again a hundred pensive years.
Pathetic insect! thou hast brought fresh tears
To sightless eye-balls, and a channel'd cheek.
O that once more he could become a boy,
And see the morning o'er the mountains break
In clouds of fire, which, army-like, deploy—
That he might chase thee, with a hunter's joy,
Vainly, o'er moss, and heath, and plumy fern!

X.

Father! we stand upon the mountain stern,
That cannot feel our lightness, and disdains
Reptiles, that sting and perish in their turn,
That hiss and die—and lo! no trace remains
Of all their joys, their triumphs, and their pains!
Yet to stand here might well exalt the mind:
These are not common moments, nor is this
A common scene. Hark, how the coming wind
Booms, like the funeral dirge of woe, and bliss,
And life, and form, and mind, and all that is!
How like the wafture of a world-wide wing
It sounds and sinks—and all is hush'd again!
But are our spirits humbled? No! We string
The lyre of death with mystery and pain,
And proudly hear the dreadful notes complain

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That man is not the whirlwind, but the leaf,
Torn from the tree to soar and disappear.
Grand is our weakness, and sublime our grief.
Lo! on this rock, I shake off hope and fear,
And stand released from clay! yet am I here,
And at my side are blindness, age, and woe.

XI.

Far to the left where streams disparted flow,
Rude as his home of granite, dark and cold,
In ancient days, beneath the mountain's brow,
Dwelt, with his son, a widower poor and old.
Two steeds he had, whose manes and forelocks bold
Comb ne'er had touch'd; and daily to the town
They dragg'd the rock, from moorland quarries torn.
Years roll'd away. The son, to manhood grown,
Married his equal; and a boy was born,
Dear to the grandsire's heart. But pride, and scorn,
And avarice, fang'd the mother's small grey eyes,
That dully shone, like studs of tarnish'd lead.
She poison'd soon her husband's mind with lies;
Soon nought remain'd to cheer the old man's shed,
Save the sweet boy, that nightly shared his bed.
And worse days were at hand. The son defied
The father—seized his goods, his steeds, his cart:
The old man saw, and, unresisting, sigh'd:
But when the child, unwilling to depart,
Clung to his knees, then spoke the old man's heart

252

In gushing tears. “The floor,” he said, “is dry:
Let the poor boy sleep with me this one night.”
“Nay,” said the mother; and she twitch'd awry
Her rabid lip; and dreadful was the sight,
When the dwarf'd vixen dash'd, with fiendish spite,
Her tiny fist into the old man's face;
While he, soft-hearted giant, sobb'd and wept.
But the child triumph'd! Rooted to the place,
Clasping the agèd knees, his hold he kept,
And once more in his grandsire's bosom slept.
And nightly still, and every night the boy
Slept with his grandsire, on the rush-strewn floor,
Till the old man forgot his wrongs, and joy
Revisited the cottage of the moor.
But a sad night was darkening round his door:
The snow had melted silently away,
And, at the gloaming, ceased the all-day rain;
But the child came not. Wherefore did he stay?
The old man rose, nor long look'd forth in vain;
The stream was bellowing from the hills amain,
And screams were mingled with its sullen roar:
“The boy is in the burn,” said he, dismay'd,
And rush'd forth, wild with anguish. From the shore
He plunged; then, staggering, with both hands display'd,
Caught, screaming, at the boy, who shriek'd for aid,

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And sank and raised his hands, and rose, and scream'd!
He leap'd; he struck o'er eddying foam; he cast
His wilder'd glance o'er waves that yelp'd and gleam'd;
And wrestled with the stream, that grasp'd him fast,
Like a bird struggling with a serpent vast.
Still, as he miss'd his aim, more faintly tried
The boy to scream; still down the torrent went
The lessening cries; and soon, far off, they died;
While o'er the waves, that still their boom forth sent,
Descended, coffin-black, the firmament.
Morn came: the boy return'd not: noon was nigh;
And then the mother sought the hut in haste.
There sat the wretched man, with glaring eye;
And in his arms the lifeless child, embraced,
Lay like a darkening snow-wreath on the waste.
“God curse thee, dog! what hast thou done?” she cried,
And fiercely on his horrid eye-balls gazed:
Nor hand, nor voice, nor dreadful eyes replied;
Still on the corpse he stared with head unraised;
But in his fix'd eyes light unnatural blazed,
For Mind had left them, to return no more.
Man of the wither'd heart-strings! is it well?
Long in the grave hath slept the maniac hoar;
But of the “lost lad” still the mountains tell,
When shriek the spirits of the hooded fell,
And, many-voiced, comes down the foaming snow.

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XII.

Hail! silence of the desert!—I speak low
In reverence—here the falcon's wing is awed,
As o'er the deep repose, sublimely slow,
He wheels in conscious majesty abroad.
Spirits should make the desert their abode.
The meekest, purest, mightiest, that e'er wore
Dust as a garment, stole from crowds unbless'd
To sea-like forests, or the sea-beat shore,
And utter'd, on the star-sought mountain's breast,
The holiest precepts e'er to dust address'd.
Oh, happy souls of death-freed men, if here
Ye wander, in your noiseless forms, unseen!
Though not remote, removed from grief and fear,
And all that pride shall be, and guilt hath been;
While gentle death his shadow casts between
Thoughts seraph-wing'd, and man's infirmity!

XIII.

To live unseen, but not to cease to be!
Unheard, unseen, with men, or rocks, to dwell!
O that I were all thought and memory,
A wing'd intelligence invisible!
Then would I read the virgin's fears, and tell
Delicious secrets to her lover's heart,
By spectre-haunted wood, or wizard stream;
Or bid the awful form of Justice start,

255

And prompt the conscience-stricken murderer's scream;
Or scourge the rich man, in his ghastly dream,
For heartless deeds, unwept, and unatoned.

XIV.

Hail, Desolation! Solitude! and, throned
On changeless rocks, Eternity! Look down,
And say, What see ye?—Want, that vainly groan'd,
While Mercy gave him stones for food! The frown
Of guilt, on minds and hearts, in ruins strown!
Hate, torturing Constancy, that loved too well!
Majestic things, in gnats that live an hour!
Soul-bartering Faction, fain to buy or sell,
And 'spoused to Fraud, with kingdoms for a dower!
Ye sister forms of Nature's dread and power!
Stand ye upon the earth? Heav'n hath no cloud
To be a carpet for your dismal feet.
Ye stand upon the earth, and skies are bow'd
To knee your throne, this granite-pillar'd seat,
That is, and was, and shall be. Wildly beat,
Beneath your footstool, passions, feelings, deeds,
Like billows on the solitary shore,
Where baffled wave to baffled wave succeeds,
Spurn'd by the sullen rocks, with sullen roar,
And rising, falling, foaming evermore,
To rise, and fall, and roar, and foam in vain.

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XV.

Ye rocks! ye elements! thou shoreless main,
In whose blue depths, worlds, ever voyaging,
Freighted with life and death, of fate complain!
Things of immutability! ye bring
Thoughts that with sorrow and with terror wring
The human breast. Unchanged, of sad decay
And deathless change ye speak, like prophets old,
Foretelling Evil's ever-present day;
And, as when Horror lays his finger cold
Upon the heart in dreams, appal the bold.
O thou, Futurity, our hope and dread,
Let me unveil thy features, fair or foul!
Thou, who shalt see the grave untenanted.
And commune with the re-embodied soul!
Tell me thy secrets, ere thy ages roll
Their deeds, that yet shall be on earth, in heav'n,
And in deep hell, where rabid hearts with pain
Must purge their plagues, and learn to be forgiven!
Show me the beauty that shall fear no stain,
And still, through age-long years, unchanged remain!
As one who dreads to raise the pallid sheet
Which shrouds the beautiful and tranquil face
That yet can smile, but never more shall meet,
With kisses warm, his ever-fond embrace;
So, I draw nigh to thee, with timid pace,
And tremble, though I long to lift thy veil.

Mr. Abraham improved, it is said, and Mr. John Elliot invented, the grinder's preservative, which the grinders will not use!

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BOOK VI.

CONTENTS.

Enoch Wray versifies his Dream—His Anxiety to recite his Composition to his Neighbour, Alice Green—Snow-storm.

I.

Dreams! are ye vapours of the heated brain,
Or echoes of our deeds, our fears, our hopes?
Fever'd remembrances, that o'er again
Tell prose adventures, in poetic tropes,
While drowsy judgment with illusion copes
Feebly and vainly? Are ye paid when due?
Or, like our cobweb wealth, unfound when sought?
Be ye of stirling value, weigh'd and true,
Or the mere paper currency of thought,
By spendthrift fancy sign'd, and good for nought—
Enoch hath dream'd a dream, like saddest truth,
And done it into rhyme. And Alice Green—
The shrewish village quack, and ever sooth
Interpreter of dreams—can tell, I ween,
What signs and omens, rhymed or rhymeless mean.
With all a poet's ardour to rehearse
A vision, like the Florentine's of yore,
Feverish and nervous, muttering deathless verse,
He opens oft, and oft he shuts the door,
And every leaden minute seems a score.

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But he is storm-bound. To the marsh below,
While squattering ducks decend, and, with pale beams,
The hooded, ineffectual sun, through snow
That fell all night, and still is falling, gleams,
Like reason, struggling half awake, in dreams,
He hears the redbreast peck the frosted pane,
Asking admittance to the warm fireside;
And—while o'er muffled ruts each cart and wain
Moves without sound—he opes the casement wide,
To hail once more the guest he ne'er denied;
Then spreads his hands, to feel if yet the plumes
Of heav'n are wavering in the noiseless air;
Determined—when the burden'd sky resumes
Its lucid azure, clear, and cold, and fair—
Through paths of hidden peril to repair,
And have some harmless fun with Alice Green.
How wild, how wondrous, and how changed the scene
Since yesterday! On hill and valley bright
Then look'd broad heav'n, all splendid and serene;
And earth and sky were beauty, music, light.
But now the storm-cock shakes the powdery white,
With start impatient, from his shivering wings;
And, on the maple's loaded bough depress'd,
Perch'd o'er the buried daisy sweetly sings,
With modulated throat and speckled breast,
To cheer the hen bird, drooping in the nest
On dusky eggs, with many a dot and streak.

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II.

Love of the celandine and primrose meek!
Star of the leafless hazel! where art thou?
Where is the windflower, with its modest cheek?
Larch! hast thou dash'd from thy denuded brow
Blossoms, that stole their rose-hues from the glow
Of Even, blushing into dreams of love?
Flowers of the wintry beam and faithless sky!
Gems of the wither'd bank and shadeless grove!
Ye are where he who mourns you soon must lie;
Beneath the shroud ye slumber, tranquilly;
But not for ever. Yet a sudden hour
Shall thaw the spotless mantle of your sleep,
And bid it, melted into thunder, pour
From mountain, waste, and fell, with foamy sweep,
Whelming the flooded plain in ruin deep.
Yes, little silent minstrels of the wild,
Your voiceless song shall touch the heart again!
And shall no morning dawn on Sorrow's child?
Shall buried mind for ever mute remain
Beneath the sod, from which your beauteous strain
Shall yet arise in music, felt, not heard?
No! Faith, Hope, Love, Fear, Gladness, Frailty, all,
Forbid that man should perish. Like the bird
That soars and sings in Nature's festival,
Our souls shall rise—and fear no second fall—
Our adoration strike a lyre divine!

260

III.

Now, through the clearing storm, the sunbeams shine;
And, lo! the fluttering flakes are winnow'd fire!
Thinner and thinner fall the fleeces fine;
From mantled fells the umber'd clouds retire;
And heav'n, that stoop'd to earth, is lifted higher.
How Nature dazzles in her bridal vest!
Like air-blown fire on fire is light on snow.
A long-lost feeling wakes in Enoch's breast;
His sightless eye-balls feel a sapphire glow,
That speaks of hues and forms dead long ago—
The bright, the wild, the beautiful, the grand!

BOOK VII.

CONTENTS.

Enoch Wray's Dream.

I.

Gone! are ye gone? Bright dreams of youth, adieu!
Old, blind, and poor, I dream of dreadful things.
Methought I saw a man, renown'd and true,
Rise from the grave, upborne on sable wings,
Bradshaw his name, abhorr'd by slaves and kings.

261

His hue was Death's, his majesty his own.
There was a thoughtful calmness in his air:
Decision, like a ready sword undrawn,
Reposed, but slept not, on his forehead bare;
But Caution, too, and deep research were there.
At first, his lip curl'd fiercely, as he went
O'er fields, o'er towns, o'er souls, in baseness bow'd;
But, meeken'd soon, his awful visage blent
Sad beauty with his sternness, like the cloud
Whose tears are lightnings. “What!” he cried aloud,
“Is tyranny immortal? Oh, if here
Freedom yet linger, in what hated shed,
Where proud endurance scorns to drop a tear,
And woe-nursed virtues eat their hard-earn'd bread,
Nerves she the heart and hand that despots dread?
Hide not thy head in clouds, thou Rock, that saw'st
The Pyms and Hampdens! these, our sons, can feel
The pang of shame, though, dwarf'd in soul, they boast
Nor manly thoughts, nor hearts, nor hands of steel,
Like those that battled for the common weal.
Say, Rock, is that a Briton? that mean thing,
Who dares not lift his eyes above the feet
Of pauper Satraps, or the village king
Whom they depute to torture and to cheat?
Slave—free to toil, that idle wolves may eat!

262

What is a Briton? One who runs away,
To barter souls for untax'd wine abroad,
And curse his brutes, who sweat at home, and bray.
Art thou a Briton, Ass, that lov'st the goad,
And bray'st in honour of thy glorious load?—
Say, palaced pauper, drunk with misery's tears,
Did Russell, Fairfax, spring from gods like thee?
Or, scourge for poverty! is this Algiers?
Dog of the bread-tax-eating Absentee!
Our children feed thy lord—why growl at me?
Where are thy paper wings of yesterday,
Thou bankrupt gambler for the landed knave?—
Audacious poacher, scorn'st thou parish pay?
Kill'st thou God's hares to shun a beggar's grave?
What! is it better to be thief than slave?—
Wretch, that did'st kill thy sire, to sell him dead!
Art thou a Briton? Thou hast Strafford's brow.
Poor, corn-bill'd weaver, singing hymns for bread!
Could Hampden breathe where crawl such worms as thou?
Spirit of Pym! lo, these are Britons now!
Charles Stuart! are they worthy to be thine?
Thou smil'st in scorn, in triumph, and in pride.
And thou, at Marston taught by right divine,
Thou recreant patron of vain regicide!
Laugh'st thou at blasted hopes, whose vauntings lied?

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Beast, featured like the angels! can'st thou view
This dome, outstretch'd by God's geometry,
And doubt that Man may be sublime and true?
Or, while the boy smiles upward from thy knee,
Believe that slaves of slaves shall not be free?—
How like meek Laud yon Cadi-Dervise scowls!
A patent parson, made to please the squire!
Priest, Judge, and Jury, for the cure of souls!
Virtues like his no still small voice require;
He cries his wares, and is himself the crier.
No school is built, without his fulsome prayer,
Which fulsome prints, with fulsome praise, record;
No wretch is tried for want, but he is there
In solemn session, sourest on the board,
Where, like Saint Peter, he denies his lord.
O, Cant and Cunning! mark the contrast well;
The poor, damn'd here, are thankful, though they pine;
Through foul and fair, they limp t'wards heav'n or hell;
While he, (snug martyr,) when the day is fine,
Seeks Abraham's bosom, and a Tory's wine.
King of bad ale and hares! he shoots, and hunts;
Then whips, or jails, the woe that cannot pay;
Grants Lickgrub's license, and refuses Grunt's;
Or fines poor Strap, who shaved on Sabbath day;
And, like Saint Barebones, he detests a play.

264

Thrice-loyal Jefferies! greet with shout and song
The heir of all the Noodles of past years,
Lord Robert Shallow! ready, rough, and wrong,
He sheaths a world of wisdom in his ears,
Yet seems no witch, and is what he appears.
A sleepy watcher, he must feel to see,
And, born to teach, may yet be taught to read;
Bound by an accident, he hates the free;
And, deaf and blind when Truth and Justice plead,
Led by a shadow, seems to take the lead.
How like a snake, all frozen but the fangs,
His coldness threatens and his silence chills!
How like a poisonous icicle he hangs
O'er human hopes, and on the soul distils
All mean, malignant, and infectious ills!
The freezing cloud descends in snow or hail;
The hill-born deluge floods the reedy fen;
And shall not lords teach slaves, and Heav'n turn pale,
And the grave shudder, at this crowded den
Of wolves and worms?—O Nature, are they men?
O Time, is this the island of the just
And the immortal, in her virtues strong?
The land of Shakspeare? Worthy of our dust,
Because she guards the right, and loathes the wrong—
The land of Ireton's bones, and Milton's song?
Rise, Bard of our Republic!—wherefore rise,
Like Samuel to the troubled King of old?
Could'st thou flash living fire in Britons' eyes,

265

Would pigmy souls be minds of giant mould?
Oh, what could wake these worse than dead and cold?
But thou, O Rock! that watchest freemen's graves!
Well may'st thou veil thy lofty brow in shade,
Scorning to look on boroughmongering knaves,
And game-law'd, corn-law'd, war-worn, parish-paid,
Rag-money'd, crawling wretches, reptile-flay'd!—
What nameless curse comes next? Degraded Rome!
How like a Cæsar of thy days of shame,
He lolls behind his steeds, that ramp and foam
Through crowds of slaves, with long submission tame,
Hacks, not worth harness, void of tail and mane!
All praise to him, to whom all praise is due!
To him whose zeal is fire, whose rancour raves;
Sworn anti-catholic, and tried true-blue;
Champion of game-laws, and the trade in slaves;
Mouth of the bread-tax; purchased tongue of knaves;
All praise to him!—a menial yesterday,
And now a kingling, served by hate and fear;
The upstart buyer of yon ruins grey,
That mock his tax-built pandemonium near!
Clerk! Thief! Contractor! Boroughmonger! Peer!
His mercy would be cruelty in hell;
His actions say to God, ‘Submit to me!’
Dey of Starvation, dark and terrible!
Men's purses may submit to thy decree,
But why should conscience have no god but thee,

266

Thou charioted blasphemer? Hence, away
To Spain, or Naples, with thy loathsome scowl!
Why stay'st thou here, to fuddle tax'd tokay?
Go, be the Inquisition's holiest ghoul,
And gorge with blood thy sulky paunch of soul!—
But ye—poor Erin's cheerful exiles, born
To till the flint in unrepining pain!
Why bow ye to your foe, Hibernia's scorn?
This almoner, whom treadmills might disdain?
This pauper, worthier of the whip and chain?
Fools! let accusing scorn, in each calm eye,
Inform the tax-fed harpy and his hordes
That wrongs have brought forth thoughts which cannot die;
And that your wives have brought forth sons whose words
Shall sting like serpents' teeth, and bite like swords.
For what? Sad neighbour of the western star!
Land of the daring deed and splendid song!
For thee—whom worse than fiends, with worse than war
Aping base Cromwell, and his tyrant throng,
Torment for gold. Poor Land of deathless wrong!
Scathed Eden of the vainly roaring deep!
Are these thy gods?—the lowest of the low!
Are these the wolves, who make thy millions weep?
These lords of dungeons, partridge eggs, and woe,
That think the lightning's ruinous wing too slow?

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But—Isle of Tears! Hispania of the sea!
Mourner of ages, helpless in thy pain!
Still untransform'd, blood-weeping Niobe!
Mute, hopeless sufferer of the son-loved main—
Whom e'en thy own Fitzwilliam cheer'd in vain—
The dawn delay'd is nigh, the dismal morn,
The day of grief, without remorse and shame,
When of thy very famine shall be born
A fiend, whose breath shall wither hope, like flame;
Lean Retribution is his horrid name.
Behold his bare and sinew'd haggardness!
Behold his hide-bound arm, his fleshless thigh!
'Tis he! the fearless and the merciless!
I see his cheek of bone, his lifeless eye,
His frown—which speaks, and there is no reply!
I hear his mutter'd scorn, his taunting strain:
‘Oppressor! hath thy bondage set us free?
Is all thy long injustice worse than vain?
Art thou, too, fall'n, scourged, trampled, weak as we?
What! hath our destitution beggar'd thee?
And can'st thou tell why plunder'd states are poor?’

II.

The wild words ceased, and o'er the blasted moor
Slow fled the form of that fierce regicide;
While shriek'd beneath my feet the granite floor,

268

From stream to headlong stream. But, eager-eyed,
I gazed on stately shadows at my side;
For buried kings, whose will, erewhile, was law,
Around me, like the ghost of Hamlet, kept
Their state majestic, arm'd! And when I saw
Their cruel faces bathed in tears I wept.
But o'er my heart a deadlier chillness crept;
My white locks, every hair fear-stricken, stirr'd;
My limbs, all shaken, trembled every bone;
My pulse stood still! and in my soul I heard
The torrent, tumbling o'er the cold, grey stone,
Prophecy!—while the shadowy mountains lone,
That saw the Roman eagle's wearied wing—
Spake to the silence of the dead of old:
‘King of the Poor! thou wast, indeed, a king.
But com'st thou sorrowing from the charnel cold?
Henry Plantagenet, the uncontroll'd!
Why? Did thy gracious servants bid thee reign
O'er bread-tax'd vermin, and transform thy name
Into a synonyme and type of pain,
Written o'er famish'd realms in tears and flame?
King of the People! royal is thy fame;
Thou need'st not blush.’—‘First Edward! thou here, too?
King of the Kingdom, hail! But on thy brow
Why grows the saddening cloud? Is Peterloo
A nobler word than Falkirk? or wast thou
The nominee of kinglings, such as now

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Ordain what shall be best for states and thrones?
Did men like them, when thou wast loved and fear'd,
Glut death with blood, and cover earth with bones?’—
‘Third Edward! weepest thou? O prince revered!
Lord of the lance, to chivalry endear'd!
Still dost thou mourn the fall'n, the unrestored?
And was Napoleon, with his burning brain
Chain'd to the sunbeam, less to be deplored
On his hard rock, amid the groaning main,
Than captive John, with princes in his train,
Served by mute kings and pensive victory?
But thou art not that Edward who gave laws
To wolfish anarchists. Thou less than he
Who tamed the feudal beast, and pared his claws,
And tore the venomous fangs from rabid jaws,
And by and for the nation reign'd a king!
Dost thou, too, weep thy country's failing weal?
O doubt not that futurity will bring
For her a purchaser! The North hath steel,
The South hath gratitude; and slaves can feel—
What can they feel? the rankling of their chain.’”

III.

Our souls are lyres, that strangely can retain
The tones that trembled on their stricken chords;
And these, impress'd upon my heart, remain:

270

But the sad monarchs, leaning on their swords,
Vanish'd in darkness, with the closing words,
Like voiceless mists o'er ocean's sleepy waves.

IV.

What saw I next? A temple paved with graves!
Lo! on the floor a giant corpse lay bare!
And thousand, thousand, thousand, thousand slaves,
All dead and ghastly, kneel'd for ever there,
Statues of baseness, worshipping despair!
From many a battle-field and many a sea,
Cast forth by outraged earth and loathing tide,
They made a winter for eternity,
And seem'd like suppliant demons side by side,
For in their looks their crimes were petrified.
Bound by a spell, which ne'er, methought, would break;
Amid the dead I stood, the living one!
And, lo! the tears were froz'n on every cheek!
Ah, ne'er in solitude felt I so lone,
As in that crowd, whose tears were turn'd to stone!
The Titan corpse, sublime in stillness lay,
With marble looks, like power and pride asleep;
O God! its dreadful silence could dismay
More than the shriek of shipwreck o'er the deep!
And every lifeless form did seem to weep,
Gazing in trancèd horror and remorse,

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On the sad features of the mighty dead,
While, on the forehead of that giant corpse,
In letters of eternal fire, I read
This sentence: “I am he for whom ye bled,
Undying Death!—feast, Dogs, but lap no blood.”

V.

Then, lo! what, distant, seem'd the ocean's flood,
Smote on my heart, with clamour fierce and foul.
Wave shouldering wave, they shook me where I stood.
No winds urged on the billowy, living roll,
But whirlwind dwelt within it, like a soul,
Heaving the foamy, roaring surges high,
While all beside was voiceless, breathless fear;
And, lo! the foam was human agony,
Alive with curses, horrible to hear!
The waves were men!—a deluge wide and drear!
And while, all raving, all at once, they came,
Heap'd on each other, to devour the shore,
The flash of eyes made heav'n's red vengeance tame!
The thunder dared not whisper to the roar;
When, with their multitudinous hands, they tore
The rocks, that seem'd to live in bestial forms.
Lo! frozen there, the tiger's terror glared;
Stiffen'd the startled folds of fangèd worms;

272

Wolves grinn'd, like nightmare; glassy caymen stared;
And the boar's tusk, his powerless tusk, was bared
In fear—a tyrant's fear! High over head,
The despot eagle ceased his prey to tear;
His mighty pinions not for battle spread,
But stretch'd to fly, and palsied by despair.
Oh, what a hell of silent pangs was there,
When, like an angel sweeping worlds away,
Did that resistless sea of souls assail
And crush his foes to dust, in dreadful play,
Rending the monsters and their granite mail!
Then all was hush'd! a sea without a sail!
And, black with death, a strand of gory mud!

VI.

The vision changed; and, lo! methought I stood
Where sinners swelter in the penal glare
Of everlasting noon! A fiery flood,
As of steel molten, on their nerves all bare,
Rush'd from the brazen sky; and scorching air
Burn'd upward from red rocks of solid fire.
There I beheld a statesman, evil-famed,
With unremitting and intense desire
To quench immitigable thirst inflamed;
Stretch'd, moaning, on the cinderous marl; and named,

273

In scorn and rage, by spectres pitiless,
Who bade him, smiting their clench'd hands, restore
Their homes, their innocence, their happiness;
And, in dire mockery, to his hot lips bore
Rags, steep'd in black, thick, slippery, burning gore.
But when he dozed, worn out with pain, he dream'd
Of fire, and talk'd of fire that ever burn'd;
And through his frame, in all his vitals gleam'd
Fire; and his heart and brain, to cinder turn'd,
Still crack'd and blazed, while, tossing, low he mourn'd,
And from his eyes dropp'd tears of sable flame.
For now no longer in his fraudful brain
Schoon'd dreams of crime-bought good untinged with shame,
False as the mists that loom along the main
With shows of golden Ophir, sought in vain
Where fiends of shipwreck watch their prey, and smile.

VII.

Yet seem'd he not the vilest of the vile.
An apparition cold of life in stone,
Or life in ice, drew nigh, with lips of bile;
A visage to the awed spectators known,
That turn'd to frigid rancour, like his own,
Their fiery hatred. Frozen where they stood,

274

Chain'd by his smile petrific, and his eye
Whose serpent keenness sadden'd while it blazed—
“Make way!” they yell'd, “the fatal fool draws nigh;
The dog of kings, their whip for poverty,
Seeks here the luxury of infernal tears.”
Then shriek'd the prostrate wretch, as black he rose—
“Even here Democracy his standard rears!
Save me, my Brother, from unutter'd woes,
Worse even than Paine deserved or Ireland knows!”
“Thee? Aspect mean!” replied the new-arrived,
“Thee? And am I thy brother? Lo, on thee
I look with scorn—Driv'ler! whose fears contrived
To thrall arm'd kings, whom I was born to free.
And dost thou claim fraternity with me?
I blew not up a spark into a flame
That set the earth on fire: I drove no trade
In petty retail havoc: No! I came,
I saw, I conquer'd; and a world dismay'd
Found safety in my daring, that array'd
Slaves, who in freedom's fight like freemen fought,
And still are slaves.” Then, turning to the crowd
Of silent spectres—who regarded nought
But him, such awe controll'd them—he, with proud
Scorn, read their abject fear, and cried aloud—
“Hence, vile Plebeians! know your lord.” And well
The abject ghosts obey'd; for, while he spoke,
He raised his hand to strike; but, ere it fell,

275

Approaching sounds, that in the distance broke
Murmuring, arrested the descending stroke.
As, when black midnight melts from sky to sky,
And shriek the lightnings at the wrath of heav'n,
Air becomes fire, and, like a sea on high,
Wide whirlwind rolls his deluge, sear'd and riv'n,
While, with closed eyes, guilt prays to be forgiv'n,
So, sight shrank, conquer'd, from his visage frore,
That mock'd insulted fire with icy glare,
While seem'd the torrid clime to burn the more
As if incensed, and sounds swell'd on the air
Which told of foes that knew not how to spare.
Soon, spectre skeletons, like wolves in chase,
Came howling on. As outstretch'd greyhounds fleet,
Some with riv'n ribs, and one with half a face,
They came, all hungry, and their clattering feet
Stamp'd on the soil of adamantine heat.
Then sprang they on him, and his muscles rent
With cranching teeth; and still their hate increased
As fast it fed, and joyful sounds forth sent;
Yet from the rapturous banquet oft they ceased,
Exclaiming, in the pauses of the feast,
“Ice-hearted Dog!—when fell the crimson dew
At Wexford, there we died!—In dungeons we!
We of slow famine!—We at Peterloo!
We, by the mercy of the scourge set free!”
Unvanquish'd by relentless torture, he,

276

While crisp'd in fire his cold flesh, scorch'd and torn,
Forgot not, though he wept, the bearing high
And proud demeanour of a tyrant born,
But cried, uplooking to the hopeless sky—
“Thou, who inhabitest eternity!
Here, too, thy frown is felt, thy mercy just.”
But when those skinless dogs of hell had pared
The bones of their oppressor, and, with gust
Infernal, crunch'd his vitals, till the bared,
Cold, burning heart, with pulses unimpair'd,
Shone in its grated chamber, like a light
That saddens some snaked cavern's solitude;
Then, pangs of deathless hunger in their might,
Wrung savage howlings from his soul subdued;
And, thenceforth and for ever, he pursued,
Heading that dismal pack, the sentenced dead,
For food, for food! hunter of souls! with yell
Immortal, hounding on his fiends, while fled
Their prey, far shrieking through unbounded hell.
In ravenous ardour, sateless, horrible,
He champ'd together still his stony jaws.
O could the living heirs of fear and hate
See the lost trampler on eternal laws,
Taught by his voice of mourning, ere too late,
How would they shun his crimes to shun his fate,
And, e'en for mean self-love, be less than fiends!

277

BOOK VIII.

CONTENTS.

Ezra White unroofs the Cottage of Hannah Wray, the Widow of an imputed Poacher—He detects her and her Daughter in the Act of re-roofing their Cottage—He assaults the Mother, and is killed by the Daughter—Imprisonment, Trial, and Death of Hannah Wray.

I.

Kind souls! ye jail the peasant, while ye plough
The wild that loved to laugh around his home.
Where the broad common fed his father's cow,
And where himself, a fearless boy, could roam
Unquestion'd, lo! the infant rivers foam
No longer, through a paradise of fern!
Look how, like burden'd slaves, they steal through fields
That sullenly obey your mandate stern!
And how the tortured waste, reluctant, yields
Corn bought with souls, while soulless avarice builds
His palace, rafter'd with iniquity!

II.

Storm-smitten rock! and thou, time-wrinkled tree!
Where is the sun-loved cottage that of old
Ye screen'd from envious winds? And where is he

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Who dwelt in that lone cottage of the wold?
Far from the mountain bee he slumbers cold.
Thou, Enoch Wray, shalt hear the son no more
Who kill'd the harmless hare that ate his kale:
Atrocious crime! for which he sternly bore
Slow pain and wasting fever, in a jail.
He perish'd there. Then died his widow pale,
Who sleeps unsepulchred, and yet sleeps well.
But silly Jane, their child, still wanders here,
Seeking her mother on the stormy fell.
While freezes as it flows the scalding tear,
She lifts her left hand to her heart in fear,
And waves a fan of bracken in the right,
Forbidding evil sprites to melt the snow
That veils the fields once till'd by Ezra White.
Hark! how she grinds her teeth, and mutters low,
With black lips quivering — “God, let nothing grow!”
For Ezra White unroof'd their humble home,
And thrust them forth, and mock'd the mother's woe,
Bidding her, with her brat, a beggar roam,
Or hire a hearth of him who feeds the crow,
Or to the Workhouse, hope-abandon'd, go.
“I to the Workhouse?—I?” the widow cried,
And from her shoulders ript the kerchief thin,
Displaying to the tyrant, elder-eyed,
A breast that might have tempted saints to sin,
While all th' impassion'd woman raged within—

279

“I to the Workhouse?” and her forehead burn'd,
And swell'd the tortured heart that would not break;
And her neck thicken'd, and her visage turn'd
Black, and she gasped, long impotent to speak:
“I!—to the Workhouse? Rather will I seek
The welcome grave. But hope not thou to thrive!
Though, feeding on old crimes, and plotting new,
Thou yet may'st crawl, the meanest thing alive;
Here and hereafter thou shalt have thy due,
And this vile deed with snakes shall whip thee, Jew!
Am I thy tenant?—did I bid thee pay
The Squire my rent?—and are three pounds eleven?
Thou tyrant!—yet shall come thine evil day;
Yet shalt thou find there is a God in heav'n,
Although thy two fat farms have swallow'd seven.
God! see this glutton! how he crams and grasps,
Like death, for more—a beast of pray'r and prey.
Would all their maws were stuff'd with stings of wasps!
When shall I see them, on the bare highway
Toil, like their betters, for a groat a-day?
God! let him sow in vain! let nothing grow!
Be straw his harvest, grainless chaff his food!
To-morrow he will marry wealth and woe;
(Ah, Lucy Hargrove is for him too good!)
But may a mother's curse be on his blood!
May he die childless!” And she turn'd, and bent,
In passionate fondness, o'er her idiot child,
Weeping; then took her hand in haste, and went,

280

She cared not whither, uttering curses wild;
But paused, and groan'd, while Jane look'd up and smiled,
When Ezra's parting sneer shot through her brain.

III.

Morn rose, all splendid, o'er the frosty plain,
And Lucy Hargrove married Ezra White.
But Ezra strove to cheer his bride in vain;
Long stay'd the day, and linger'd long the night;
For Hannah's curse was on them like a blight.
The homeless widow seem'd to haunt their bed—
The idiot child to thunder at the door.
“They fire the stacks,” he growl'd; “I hear their tread.”
“O give them back their cottage on the moor;
How canst thou prosper if thou rob the poor?”
Cold lay the moonbeam on the glittering rock,
When Ezra gruffly left his troubled bride;
His early steps alarm'd the wondering cock;
And the fox saw him on the dim hill side,
Plodding through molten snow, with cautious stride
And horrid instinct, hither. But, behold!
Here laboured Hannah Wray, and silly Jane,
Fearless of blinding sleet, and blue with cold,
Busily roofing their sad cot again.
Flash'd Ezra's eyes, and rage fired every vein,

281

As when men wound a tiger. On he sprung,
And grasp'd the struggling widow by the throat,
Till white her eyes upturn'd, and forth her tongue
Protruded through retracting lips that caught
Sad hues from coming death, while anguish wrought
Terrific changes on her pensive cheek.
But Jane took up a stone, and smote his brow.
He fell, but held his prey; with strangled shriek,
He tried to heave his bulk, relaxing slow
His murderous gripe, and backward sank; then low
Dropp'd his large chin, and grim he gaped in death!
But long lay Hannah senseless—happy she,
If, senseless, she had yielded up her breath.
But her eyes closed, then open'd—what to see?
She gazed on Ezra's corpse in agony;
Then on her daughter; and then gush'd her tears.
The horrid future on her spirit gleam'd;
She trembled with unutterable fears;
And, while the wan dawn o'er the mountains beam'd,
She clasp'd her daughter to her breast and scream'd—
“No, I can die! they shall not hang my child!”
Then came the hue and cry; the parting wild
Of sunder'd bosoms, ne'er again to meet;
The dungeon'd weeks; and hope, that never smiled.
Yet once, in slumber, came a vision sweet,
Which bore her spirit to the dear retreat

282

Where still, she thought, her husband dwelt, and Jane
Still press'd the nipple, pillow'd on her breast;
The grave had lost its prey; the past its pain;
The dead had never died! But thoughts so bless'd
Could not endure. A darker dream oppress'd
The dosing captive. Not to see her die,
But dead, she thought, her child arrived, at last;
She saw herself a corpse; saw Jane draw nigh
Shrieking, to gaze upon that corpse, aghast;
And, shrieking, waked, with temples throbbing fast!
Then came the trial brief; the evidence
So clear, so false, so fatal; the sad eyes,
All gazing on convicted innocence,
But not in pity! her convulsive sighs,
Her sudden tears; the dread solemnities
Of sentence on the wrong'd and guiltless!—Oh,
Was there no pleader, by the laws allowed,
To aid the sufferer in her hour of woe?
No—not a voice in all that awe-struck crowd
Was raised for her whom fate had stunn'd and bow'd;
For her, who then must plead, or ne'er again.
Dreadful, O Death, are all thy paths of pain!
And many a wretch hath felt, but who shall tell
What pangs unnamed the convict must sustain,
Ere frailty, pale as snow, bids hope farewell,
And, for the living, tolls the passing bell?

283

Still, in her desolation, nightly she
Dream'd that the Lord had heard her earnest prayer;
Her child, she thought, poor Jane, was come to see
Her mother die, and beg a lock of hair,
Which she might kiss in tears and ever wear.
Dark roll'd the hours by cruel mercy given,
The waking hours of certainty and doom;
And, in her cell, she cried to earth and heav'n,
“O let my child sleep with me in the tomb!
Tomb! I shall have none!” And the echoing gloom
Mutter'd, even when she slept, her heavy sigh.

IV.

As if no heart had ever ached, no eye
Shed bitter tears, another morn arose,
All light and smiles; but, with the brightening sky,
Hannah awoke from dreams of death, to close
Her eyes in dreamless and profound repose.
But Jane came not! poor Jane was far away;
She, though oft told, knew not her mother's doom;
But much she wonder'd at her lengthen'd stay,
With saddening thoughts, and cheek that lost its bloom.
Hark! the bell tolls! and yet Jane is not come!
“But she, who murder'd pious Ezra White,
And trampled on his brains,” (so rumour lies,)
Ere minutes pass, must wrestle with the might

284

That none can vanquish. Lo! ten thousand eyes
Are gazing on the prison where she sighs!
The streets are paved, the house-tops piled with heads,
The windows choak'd with faces, anxious all
To look on all that man most hates and dreads.
Now the hush deepens near the fetter'd wall;
Now a dropp'd feather might be heard to fall;
Now, by the scaffold, hearts throb quick and loud;
Now, in dire stillness, hark, faint murmurs rise!
And, lo! the murderess bends above the crowd,
Bursting, with desperate strength, the cord that ties
Her arms, and rolling on all sides her eyes!
Chill'd, in a moment, chill'd is every heart.
“Where is my child?” she sobs; “My child!” she shrieks;
“O let me see my child, ere I depart!”
And long, for her who is not here, she seeks;
Then, to the crowd, with hands uplifted, speaks:
“Ye come to see a murderess? I am none.
A stainless conscience is my rock and tower.
'Tis true my foe to his account is gone;
But not for all this world's vain pomp and power
Would I have shorten'd his bad life an hour.
I die his victim, and die reconciled.
Kind hearts! ye melt—but which of ye will bear
A dying mother's keepsake to her child?

285

O for a kindred heart, my grief to share;
A kindred voice, to join my parting prayer!”
Lo! as she ended, on her bosom bent
A blind old pilgrim, who had left the throng
Weeping aloud, all pitied as he went!
She clasp'd him with a grasp convulsed and strong—
She kiss'd him fervently, and held him long.
“God bless thee, Enoch, for this last good deed!”
She sobb'd—and down her cheeks the tears gush'd free.
“But we must bear whatever is decreed.
Nay, father of my Joe, be firm, like me!
Hold up! be firm, as innocence should be!
Guiltless I go to join thy son in heaven.
Jane, too, is guiltless, though she kill'd our foe,
Who, when he died, had need to be forgiv'n.—
Bear to my child this tress; a month ago
'Twas raven black, and now 'tis white as snow.
Yes, Enoch, I am guiltless. Let them pare
My bones, and make a mockery of my frame;
They cannot stain my soul! and I can bear
What must be borne. Why, then, should my sad name,
Whenever utter'd, flush thy cheek with shame?
Poor Enoch! where thy murder'd son lies low,
I hoped to weep again; but hope deceives!
O might I rest with him!—no flower will blow
O'er me, no redbreast cover me with leaves!
This thought, despite my will, appals and grieves

286

My conquering soul, ere it take wing and soar.
Should one or two remember me in love,
Say I died guiltless.—Though we meet no more
On earth, an angel waits for us above;
But thou shalt nurse awhile my orphan dove,
Far from the parent bird—when I am free!”

V.

And all is o'er—the shock, the agony,
The low-breathed moan of sympathetic woe.
But silly Jane, still wandering gloomily,
Wears on her breast the lessening lock of snow;
And still she mutters, “God! let nothing grow:
God! may a mother's curse be on their blood!”

BOOK IX.

CONTENTS.

Secret Sorrow and Illness of Enoch Wray—He takes leave of Objects associated in his Mind with the Past.

I.

Why is our father's look so full of pain?
What silent malady, what secret woe,
Weighs on his gloomy heart and dizzy brain?
An evil which he seeks, yet dreads to know,
Not yet assured, suspected long ago.

287

Hath the dark angel of the night, that still
Delights in human agony and tears,
Appall'd his slumbers with predicted ill,
And confirmation of his worst of fears?
The cause I tell not, but th' effect appears
In sudden alteration, such as oft
Comes on the unailing agèd, when they seem
Strong as old eagles on the wing aloft.
Swift was the change and ghastly, as the gleam
Of baleful meteors on a midnight stream,
Blighting the waters. His Herculean frame
Stood, in the winds of March, erect and bold;
But when the cowslip—like a living flame
Kindled in April—burn'd its incense cold,
He seem'd the shadow of himself, and roll'd,
With a strange keenness, his benighted eyes.

II.

Bright shines the ice o'er which the skater flies,
Roofing the waters with transparent stone,
Firm as the rock, when umber'd evening dies,
But when the cloudy morn arises—gone.
So perish human glories, every one.
Oh, ne'er again, ye misty mountains dim!
When the frost parcheth on your sides the heath,
Shall its shrill histie whistle welcome him

288

Who once could see the tempest toss beneath
Your solemn brows, and to the vales bequeath
The volley'd hail, from clouds of every hue.

III.

The meanest thing to which we bid adieu,
Loses its meanness in the parting hour.
When long-neglected worth seems born anew,
The heart that scorns earth's pageantry and power
May melt in tears, or break, to quit a flower.
Thus, Enoch—like a wretch prepared to fly,
And doom'd to journey far, and come no more—
Seeks old acquaintance with a boding sigh.
Lo! how he weeps for all he loved of yore,
Telling to weeds and stones quaint stories o'er!
How heavily he climbs the ancient stile,
Whence, on the hill which he no more shall climb,
Not with a brief, albeit a mournful smile,
He seems to gaze, in reverie sublime,
Till heard afar and saddening all the clime,
Slow swings from yonder tower the passing bell!

IV.

There is a flower—the housewife knows it well—
A flower, which long hath graced the warm hedge side
Of Enoch's dying neighbour, Andrew Gell;

289

Whose spleeny sire he pummell'd for his pride,
Ere beauteous Mary Gold became a bride.
It is the flower which (pious rustics say)
The virgin-mother on her bosom wore.
It hoards no dew-drop, like the cups of May,
But, rich as sunset, when the rain is o'er,
Spreads flamy petal from a burning core;
Which, if morn weep, their sorrowing beams upfold,
To wake and brighten, when bright noon is near.
And Enoch bends him o'er the marigold;
He loves the plant, because its name is dear.
But on the pale green stalks no flowers appear,
Albeit the future disc is growing fast.
He feels each little bud with pleasing pain,
And sighs in sweet communion with the past;
But never to his lip, or burning brain,
The flower's cold softness shall he press again,
Murmuring his long-lost Mary's virgin name.

V.

Deep in the vale, where, known to humble fame,
Poor Enoch's rival in immortal verse,
The Village Poet, lives—well skill'd to frame
The beauteous slipper, and the sonnet terse,
Wise to compose, and willing to rehearse;
A kind good man, who knows our father's worth,
And owns his skill in everything but rhyme;
Sage, too, and meek, as any wight on earth,

290

Save that he laughs at transitory time,
And deems his own a deathless name sublime;—
There, by the brook, cowers a low edifice,
With honeysuckled wall, and ivied roof,
A warm safe nest, in which two mortal mice
Might slumber through existence, far aloof
From city folks, whose sickly looks give proof
That, whatsoe'er is theirs, thou, Health, art not.
A dial, by our skilful father made,
Instructs the inmates of that little cot;
The masterpiece, which first his skill display'd,
When all to him their wondering homage paid.
Lo! on a visit, mournfully he wends,
To feel the dial, his acquaintance old;
But, by the way, in pensive musing bends
O'er ancient landmark, now half sunk in mould:
Shake hands, sad friends, for times are changed and cold!
But, lo! he enters at the garden gate!
Awhile in chat the rival poets stand:
He feels the bench, where oft in youth he sate;
The shed, which, long ago, he built and plann'd;
And now the dial is beneath his hand.
Ah, the slow shadow, measuring the swift hours,
While his touch wanders o'er the figured plane,
Baffles his patient finger's cunning powers!
But man, the shadow, mocks grey Time in vain!
Dusky, we pass away; he laughs amain;

291

His sportive trade it is to mow us down;
He plays at death, and is industrious too!
Thou dark and sorrowing mortal, yet unmown,
Weep—but thy sun-clock, as of old, is true!
Oh, better weep than do as others do,
Whose eyes discredit all save what they see!
But thou deny'st not beauty, colour, light;
Full well thou know'st, that, all unseen by thee,
The Vernal Spirit, in the valleys bright,
Is scattering diamonds over blossoms white.
She, though she deign to walk, hath wings of gold
And plumes all beauteous; while in leafing bower,
The chrysalis, that ne'er did wing behold,
Though born to glide in air o'er fruit and flower,
Disproves the plume, the beauty, and the power,
And deems it quite impossible to fly.

VI.

Farewell ye mountains, neighbours of the sky!
Enoch will tread your silky moss no more;
But here he breathes your freshness. Art thou nigh,
Grey moth of April? On the reedy shore,
For the last time he hears thee, circling o'er
The starry flower. Broad poplar, soon in bloom,
He listens to thy blossomy voice again,
And feels that it is vernal! but the tomb

292

Awaits him, and thy next year's flow'rs, in vain,
Will hearken for his footsteps. Shady lane,
Where Fearn, the bloody, felt his deadly arm!
Gate, which he climb'd, to cut his bow of yew
From the dark tree of ages! Upland farm,
His uncle's once! thou furzy bank, whose hue
Is of the quenchless fire! adieu, adieu,
For ever! Thy soft answer to the breeze,
Storm-strengthen'd sycamore! is music yet
To his tired spirit: here, thou King of Trees,
His own hand did thine infant weakness set;
But thou shalt wear thy palmy coronet
Long, long, when he is clay. Lake of the Mill,
That murmurest of the days when vigour strung
His oary feet, farewell! He hears thee still,
And in his heart beholds thy banks, o'erhung
By every tree thou knew'st when he was young!
Forge!—built by him, against the ash-crown'd rock,
And now with ivy grown, a tussock'd mound—
Where oft himself, beneath the hammer's shock
Drew forth the welded steel, bright, blue, and sound!
Vale of the stream-loved abbey, woodland-bound!
Thou forest of the Druids! O thou stone,
That once wast worshipp'd!—pillar of the past,
On which he lean'd amid the waste alone!
Scorner of change! thou listenest to the blast
Unmoved as death; but Enoch travels fast.

293

Thatch'd alehouse, still yclept the Sickles cross'd!
Where died his club of poverty and age—
Worst blow of all! where oft the blacksmith toss'd
His truth-deciding coin; and, red with rage,
The never-silenced barber wont engage
In argument with Enoch! Fountain dim,
In which his boyhood quench'd the sultry beam!
School, where crown'd monarchs might have learn'd of him
Who sway'd it, how to reign! Cloud-cradled stream,
That in his soul art eloquent as a dream!
Path-pencill'd hill, now clad in broomy light!
Where oft in youth he waked the violets cold,
When you, love-listening stars, confess'd the might
Of earthly beauty, and o'er Mary Gold
Redden'd with passion, while his tale he told!
Rose, yet unblown! thou future woodbine flower!
Majestic foxglove, still to summer true!
Blush of the hawthorn! glad May's sunny shower!
Scenes long beloved, and objects dear, adieu!
From you, from earth, grey Enoch turns his view;
He longs to pass away, and soon will pass.
But not with him will toil and sorrow go!
Men drop, like leaves—they wither, and, alas!
Are seen no more! but human toil and woe
Are lasting as the hills, or ocean's flow,
Older than Death, and but with Death will die.

294

VII.

Ye sister trees, with branches old and dry!
Tower'd ye not huge as now, when Enoch Wray,
A happy lad, pursued the butterfly
O'er broomy banks, above the torrent's spray,
Whence still ye cast the shadow of your sway?
Lo—Grey-hair'd Oaks, that sternly execrate
The poor man's foes, albeit in murmurs low!
Or, with a stormy voice, like that of fate,
Smiting your wrinkled hands, in wrath and woe,
Say to th' avenging lightnings, “Why so slow?”
Lo! that glad boy is now a man of pain!
Once more he totters through the vernal fields;
Once more he hears the corncrake on the plain;
The vale invites him, where the goldring builds,
And the wild bank that primrose fragrance yields;
He cannot die, without a sad adieu
To one sweet scene that to his heart is dear;
Yet—would he dream his fears may not be true,
And miss a draught of bitterest sorrow here—
His feet will shun the mill-dam, and the weir
O'er which the stream its idle brawling sends.

VIII.

But, lo! t'wards Albert's mill the Patriarch wends!
(His own hands rear'd the pile: the very wheels
Were made by him; and where the archway bends,

295

His name, in letters of hard stone, appeals
To time and memory.) With mute step, he steals
Along the vale, but does not hear the mill!
'Tis long since he was there. Alas! the wave
Runs all to waste, the mighty wheel is still!
Poor Enoch feels as if become a slave;
And o'er his heart the long grass of the grave
Already trembles! To his stealthy foot,
Around the door thick springs the chance-sown oat.
While prune their plumes the water-hen and coot,
Fearless and fierce the rat and otter float,
Catching the trout in Albert's half-sunk boat:
And, pendent from each bucket, fat weeds dip
Their slimy verdure in the listless stream.
“Albert is ruin'd, then!” his quivering lip
Mutters in anguish, while with paler beam
His sad eye glistens. “'Tis, alas, no dream!
Heav'n save the blood of Enoch Wray from shame!
Shame undeserved, the treadmill of the soul!”
Thus Enoch mutely prays, but does not blame
Albert, who could not, well he knows, control
The fate that hurl'd him down to fortunes foul.
Triumphant Science! what avail thy deeds,
Thy sailless navy, and thy steam-drawn car,
If growing power to deeper misery leads?
If weeds and worms thy tenfold harvest mar?
And all thy fruits but fatten waste and war?

296

England is changed since Enoch was a lad.
Grubs dream'd not then that earth for them was made;
Men did not sweat to bloat the weak and bad,
In hopeless sorrow faithful though betray'd;
Nor was toil famine; nor was gambling trade.
Albert is strong, laborious, frugal, just;
But danger lurk'd where safety seem'd to be,
And cloudless thunder turn'd his hopes to dust.
While navies sank on fortune's sunny sea,
Unskill'd to save his little bark was he.
In dreadful calm, the viewless storm increased;
Most fatal, when least dreaded, came the blow
That still was nearest when expected least;
And none who felt the stroke could see the foe;
But all was wondering fear and helpless woe.
The servant took the master by the nose;
The beggar'd master slunk aside to die;
Down dropp'd the cobweb Crœsus, stunn'd; he rose,
And fell again, he knew not how or why.
Like frost and thaw in April's fickle sky,
The wretched rich, and not less wretched poor,
Changed places miserably; and the bad
Throve, while the righteous begg'd from door to door:
None smiled, save knaves; but loudly laugh'd the mad,
Even at their prayers, and then they kick'd the sad.
And still men fought with shadows, and were slain.
For ruin smote, nor warning gave at all—
Unseen, like pestilence, and fear'd in vain!

297

But when red battle wings the whirling ball,
The cannon flashes ere the victims fall,
Loud bursts the roar, and then is heard the groan.

IX

What is this plague, unsearchable and lone,
Sightless and tongueless, till a wild voice howls
When nations die? What is this power unknown?
And whence this strange simoom that withers souls?
O ask the empire-swallowing deep, that rolls
Black o'er lost wealth and long-forgotten fame!

X.

Shall I, lost Britain! give the pest a name
That, like a cancer, eats into thy core?
'Tis Avarice, hungry as devouring flame;
But, swallowing all, it hungers as before,
While flame, its food exhausted, burns no more.
O ye hard hearts that grind the poor, and crush
Their honest pride, and drink their blood in wine,
And eat their children's bread without a blush,
Willing to wallow in your pomp, like swine,
Why do ye wear the human form divine?
Can ye make men of brutes, contemn'd, enslaved?
Can ye grow sweetness on the bitter rue?
Can ye restore the health of minds depraved?

298

And self-esteem in blighted hearts renew?
Why should souls die to feed such worms as you?
Numidian! who didst say to hated Rome—
“There is no buyer yet to purchase thee!”
Come, from the damn'd of old, Jugurtha, come!
See one Rome fall'n!—another, mightier, see!
And tell us what the second Rome shall be!
But long, O Heav'n! avert from this sad land
The conflict of the many with the few,
When, crumpled, like a leaf, in havock's hand,
The great, the old, shall vanish from the view,
And slaves be men, all traitors, and all true!
Nor from the fierce and iron-breathing North,
That grimly blosoms with the sword and spear,
Call a new Alaric and his robbers forth,
To crush what worth is left untrampled here,
And shake from Freedom's urn dust still too dear,
While trade-left Thames pours mute his shipless wave!
But thou, our Father, journeyest to the grave,
A Briton, like thy sires, the fear'd of old!
Thou shalt not see outlandish king or slave
Conquer the green isle of the stern and bold,
That despots, erst, though leagued with hell, controll'd.
The land where Hampden fell and Russell bled,
Is yet no barrack for invading hordes;
Mary is undefiled, her boy unled
To slaughter, by their country's foreign lords.
Yet hast thou seen our fratricidal swords

299

Assail the bondsmen, struggling to be free;
And strike for tyrants, destined, soon or late,
To thank our crimes, by which they reign, and be
Black vengeance to our hearths, and righteous fate.
But go!—no second spring can renovate
Thy blighted soul. A moment, big with woe,
O'er thee hath roll'd another hundred years.
Go, to the cottage of thy childhood, go!
Where green, as in thy youth, the vale appears,
And Mary's love awaits her sire, in tears.
Go to thy cottage—not with humbled look
And stealthy pace, a thing of guilt and fear!
But thou, alas, dependence canst not brook!
E'en pity now is insult to thine ear;
Fall'n is thy crest, thy heart is cold and drear.
Yet go thou to thy home, though daily there
Some little comfort is retrench'd; nor blame
The child, who veil'd her griefs her sire to spare.
“Though Mary is become an ill-starr'd name,
Why should her father feel the pang of shame?”
How often from thy side doth she retire
To weep alone! “Shall he who gave us all—
Shall Enoch Wray, the soul of fearless fire,
The good, the proud, become in age a thrall?”
Oh, not for this the lord of shroud and pall
So long hath pass'd him on his gloomy way!
No; he who hears the voiceless worm complain
Hath heard his spirit for dismission pray:

300

“O, let me, Lord, my God, till death, retain
My humble pride, a name without a stain!
When the flesh fail'd not, Lord, I lean'd on Thee!
Though the flesh fails, let not my soul be moved!
But now release me, if thy will it be—
O let thy child rejoin the lost and loved!
For long on earth have I thy mercy proved,
And my heart yearns to bless thy name in heav'n.”

BOOK X.

CONTENTS.

Horrors of Paupery to Independent Minds—Enoch Wray visits the Churchyard, where he reads the Grave-Stones with his Fingers —Death of the Patriarch.

I.

Life! who would live, to be the helpless prey
Of sordid avarice? O neglected Age,
That, bedrid, lingerest in prolong'd decay!
Who would, like thee, a war all hopeless wage
With foes that mock his grief and scorn his rage?
How sad the sight, when, far from all he loves,
By crowds pursued, the slander'd terrier flies,
Till, wounded by his lord in unknown groves,

301

He mingles looks of love with piteous cries,
And, smiling on his dear destroyer, dies!
How terrible, to wake, interr'd alive,
And shriek for instant aid, which cannot come;
And scare the worm, that yet shall feed; and strive,
Beneath relentless earth, in airless gloom,
With desperate wrench, to dispossess the tomb!
More dreaded still, lost Captive, is thy fate,
To whom a grave is given, and death denied,
For life entomb'd by unforgiving hate,
Who bids despair, thy chamberlain, provide
Hope's coffin'd corpse, to mate thy sleepless side!
But direr, sadder than all these, is man
Wasted by want and superhuman toil;
Or fall'n from decent competence, and wan
With grief, and forced, while heart and brain recoil,
To beg a crust on his paternal soil,
Or ask his equals for a pauper's pay.

II.

But thou art not a pauper, Enoch Wray!
Free hast thou lived, in honesty and pride,
A hundred summers; bright hath been thy day,
Even in its gloom; and on the grave's dark side
Thou little hast to fear, and nought to hide—
Prepared to die, as good men wish to die.

302

III.

Hark!—like a spirit preaching from the sky,
“Repent ye, for the kingdom is at hand!”
An iron voice—as if Eternity,
Dethroning Time, sent forth his high command—
Speaks to the awed heart of the silent land.
From yonder tower, time-darken'd, thunder-scarr'd,
Still the deep toll is floating on the air;
It calls our father to the lone churchyard;
Ah, many, many of his friends are there!
And Age, at five-score years, hath few to spare!
Thou antique Fane! that, in thy solemn suit
Of carven flowers, and stone-embroidery grand,
(Old, yet unshaken; eloquent, though mute,)
Tower'st like the sculptured guardian of the land!
Thy reverend looks what bosom can withstand,
And feel nor throb like love, nor chill like fear,
Nor glow like adoration? The leaves fall
Around thee—men fall with them; both are here;
While thou alike view'st bridal-robe and pall,
Sovereign of marriage and of funeral!
Witness of Ages, and memorial hoar
Of generations, to eternity
Gone, like the hour that can return no more!
Grey Enoch is a child compared with thee;
Yet man like him thou ne'er again shalt see!

303

How would it gladden thy bewilder'd eyes,
(Duskèd with cobweb films, and colours old,
And with long gazing on dim blazonries,)
Could'st thou, in these degenerate times, behold
A pair like Enoch Wray and Mary Gold,
As to the altar, in their youth, they came;
He, like a warrior to the battle feast,
With cheek of downy light and umber'd flame,
A presence glorious as the bright'ning east;
She, bending at his side, with charms increased,
Like chaste Andromache by Hector led;
Her arm in his, her gentle eyes depress'd,
Her neck and face with burning crimson spread,
And lovely as maternal beauty's breast,
Beneath the soft cheek of her child caress'd,
Returning love for love and smile for smile!
But, oh, not now, thou venerable pile!
Comes he, with genial thoughts to rapture true,
But with sad heart, though not without a smile,
To bid his old remembrances adieu;
And, ere he mingle with the clay, renew
Feelings, which, when the dust that moulders here,
Could sympathize with animated clay,
Joy'd with its joy, return'd it tear for tear,
And, bidding sorrow look for brighter day,
Pointed to heav'n, but did not “lead the way.”
Now on the tombstones, which of old he laid,

304

(Pages with silent admonition fraught,)
He kneels; and, in the twilight of thy shade,
Reads, with his fingers, what his chisel wrought;
Perchance th' effusions of his pensive thought,
Full oft recited in his soul with pride.

IV.

Erect, like youth, stands this sepulchral stone:
But what is youth? a flower; and life? a dream.
Read!—for youth, life, the flower, the dream, are gone:
Read!—“Death is life! I am not what I seem:
Think of poor Henry still! but rightly deem.”

V.

The next is dateless; but, aged eighteen years,
Died she, whom hardest hearts have ceased to blame;
The kind still read her epitaph with tears:—
“Here rests a stranger—she had once a name:
Weep for the gentle dust that died of shame.”

VI.

They did not lay his bones where four roads meet.
Although his crime was grief, which some called pride,
Wrong not the wrong'd, who slumbers at thy feet!
“Was Jones a coward? Honest, yet belied,
He was too brave to live disgraced, and died.”

305

VII.

In yonder grave heaven's grateful debtor lies,
Struck blind in youth—old Shiloh Hollischart.
“The beam of beauty left his cheerful eyes,
To glow more deeply, brightly, in his heart.”
Read, mortal! be instructed, and depart.

VIII.

“Tears for the slander'd! tears—but shed too late.
Come! if thou come to weep, traducer fell,
Whose slighted love hath done the work of hate!
But thou, perchance, hast yet more lies to tell
Of her who loved but thee, and loved too well?”

IX.

This still retreat, thou faithful to the dead,
Claims thy attentive pause, demands thy tear!
Stop! read again th' inscription, often read:—
“Remember me; and, weeping, linger here,
If still to thee thy Harcourt's name is dear!
But, if thou wed again, O come not near!”

X.

A broken mast, a bursting wave, a child
Weeping, a woman frantic on the shore—
Rude stone! thou tell'st a story sad and wild:—

306

“Pain, want, unkindness, all ‘afflictions sore,’
Disease, suspense, with constancy I bore;
My heart was broken—Letty lies with me;
And now we know that Matthew died at sea.”

XI.

No sculptured stone informs the passer by
That the poor clown is now the Squireling's peer:
Here lies a rogue, whose crime was poverty!
And just Sir Cornlaw sleeps in marble near!
Bones of the treadmill'd slave!—what do ye here?
Oh, shame to bread-tax'd England's bought-and-sold!
The loathsome wretch, who toil'd, and starved, and died,
And he whose merit was a robber's gold,
Repose, like married equals, side by side!
Audacious Death, is Mammon thus defied?
What, shall the parish-paid of yesterday
Rest with the sacred boroughmongering great?
Why fence ye not a pauper's Golgotha,
Where, buried without bell, these dogs may wait
The crowing cock, while rich men rot in state?

XII.

But to one grave the blind man's eyes are turn'd,
Move where he may—and yet he seeks it not.
He communes with the poor, the lost, the mourn'd,
The buried long, by all but him forgot:

307

The hated?—no; his bosom never burn'd
With fire so base: the dreaded?—no; he spurn'd
Fear, as unworthy of the human breast.
Why does he pause on his dark pilgrimage?
Hath he forgot what love remembers best?
O stoop and find, in this familiar page,
The mournful story, dearest to his age!
“Here Lucy rests, who, in this vale of tears,
Dwelt thirty weeks:—Here waits the judgment-day
Her brother James, who died, aged fifty years:
Here slumbers sinless Anne, who lived a day:
Children of Mary and of Enoch Wray.”
His finger pauses, like a trembling wand,
Held o'er desponding hope by mercy. Lo!
Another line, cut by another hand,
On the cold stone, from which he riseth slow;
But it is written on his heart of woe;
“Mary! thou art not lost, but gone before.”

XIII.

Oh, no!—not lost. The hour that shall restore
Thy faithful husband, Mary, is at hand;
Ye soon shall meet again, to part no more;
By angels welcomed to their blissful land,
And wander there, like children, hand in hand,
To pluck the daisy of eternal May.

308

XIV.

It is the evening of an April day.
Lo! for the last time, in the cheerful sun
Our father sits, stooping his tresses grey,
To hear the stream, his ancient neighbour, run,
Young as if time had yesterday begun.
Heaven's gates are like an angel's wing, with plumes
Of glorious green and purply gold on fire:
Through rifts of mountainous clouds, the light illumes
Hill-tops and woods, that, pilgrim-like, retire;
And, like a giant's torch, burns Morthern spire.
Primrosy odours, violet-mingled, float
O'er blue-bells and ground-ivy, on their wings
Bearing the music of the blackbird's note;
Beneath the dewy cloud the woodlark sings,
But on our father's heart no gladness flings.
Mary bends o'er him, mute. Her youngest lad
Grasps, with small hand, his grandsire's finger fast;
Well knows the old man that the boy is sad;
And the third Mary, as she hurries past,
Trembles, and looks towards the town aghast.
Enoch hears footsteps of unwelcome sound,
While at his feet the sightless mastiff lies;
And, lo! the blind dog, growling, spurns the ground!
“Two strangers are approaching,” Enoch cries;
But Mary's throbbing heart alone replies.

309

A stern, “Good day, sir!” smites his cheek more pale;
A rude collision shakes him in his chair;
The Bible of his sires is mark'd for sale!
But degradation is to him despair;
The hour is come which Enoch cannot bear!
But he can die!—and in his humble grave,
Sweet shall his long rest be, by Mary's side;
And o'er his coffin (uninscribed) shall wave
The willow tree, beneath the dark tower's pride,
Set by his own sad hand when Mary died.
Though basely branded with a poacher's name,
Poor Joseph slumbers in a distant tomb;
Though Joseph's widow died a death of shame,
Still there was mercy in the old man's doom!
But now—dependence and disgrace are come!
“Albert,” he sighs, “will perish by this blow.—
Where is he?”—No reply.—“And shall the throng
Of paupers see my daughter weekly go
For parish alms? No, Heav'n! I yet am strong;
Restore my sight! or I have lived too long.”
The vain, vain wish, too mighty, leaves him faint;
His visage wan assumes a darkening hue;
The blind dog whines a melancholy plaint,
And ghastly roll his eyes of pallid blue;
E'en the hard bailiffs dread the scene to view.
Lyre of the past! O, art thou, then, unstrung?
The boy resigns his grandsire's finger cold;
A sweet word lingers on our father's tongue—

310

“Mary, dear Mary.”—But the tale is told:
With her whose virgin name was Mary Gold,
He hears, in heav'n, his swooning daughter shriek.
And when the woodbine's cluster'd trumpet blows;
And when the pink's melodious hues shall speak,
In unison of sweetness with the rose,
Joining the song of every bird that knows
How sweet it is of wedded love to sing;
And when the fells, fresh-bathed in azure air,
Wide as the summer day's all golden wing,
Shall blush to heav'n, that Nature is so fair,
And man condemn'd to labour, in despair;—
Then, the gay gnat, that sports its little hour;
The falcon, wheeling from the ancient wood;
The redbreast, fluttering o'er its fragrant bower;
The yellow-bellied lizard of the flood;
And dewy morn, and evening—in her hood
Of crimson, fringed with lucid shadows grand—
Shall miss the Patriarch; at his cottage door
The bee shall seek to settle on his hand,
But from the vacant bench haste to the moor,
Mourning the last of England's high-soul'd poor,
And bid the mountains weep for Enoch Wray!
And for themselves!—albeit of things that last
Unalter'd most; for they shall pass away
Like Enoch, though their iron roots seem fast
Bound to the eternal future, as the past!

311

The Patriarch died! and they shall be no more.
Yes, and the sailless worlds, which navigate
Th' unutterable deep that hath no shore,
Will lose their starry splendour, soon or late!
Like tapers, quench'd by Him whose will is fate!
Yes, and the Angel of Eternity,
Who numbers worlds, and writes their names in light,
Ere long, O Earth, will look in vain for thee,
And start, and stop, in his unerring flight,
And, with his wings of sorrow and affright,
Veil his impassion'd brow and heav'nly tears!