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

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.