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

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,

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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.

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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!

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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,

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(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.”

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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:—

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“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:

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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.

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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.

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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!