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

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;

212

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.

213

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.

215

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

216

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.