University of Virginia Library

II. VOL. II.

MISCELLANEOUS POEMS.

HYMN

WRITTEN FOR THE PRINTERS OF SHEFFIELD.

THE PRIMROSE.

Surely that man is pure in thought and deed,
Whom spirits teach in breeze-borne melodies;
For he finds tongue in every flower and weed,
And admonition in mute harmonies;
Erect he moves, by truth and beauty led,
And climbs his throne, for such a monarch meet,
To gaze on valleys, that, around him spread,
Carpet the hall of heav'n beneath his feet.
How like a trumpet, under all the skies
Blown, to convene all forms that love his beams,
Light speaks in splendour to the poet's eyes,
O'er dizzy rocks and woods, and headlong streams!
How like the voice of woman, when she sings
To her beloved, of love and constancy,
The vernal odours, o'er the murmurings
Of distant waters, pour their melody
Into his soul, mix'd with the throstle's song
And the wren's twitter? Welcome then, again,
Love-listening primrose; though not parted long,
We meet, like lovers, after years of pain.
Oh, thou bring'st blissful childhood back to me!
Thou still art loveliest in the lonest place;
Still, as of old, day glows with love for thee,
And reads our heav'nly Father in thy face.
Surely thy thoughts are humble and devout,
Flower of the pensive gold! for why should heav'n
Deny to thee his noblest boon of thought,
If to earth's demigods 'tis vainly given?
Answer me, sinless sister! Thou hast speech
Though silent. Fragrance is thy eloquence,
Beauty thy language; and thy smile might teach
Ungrateful man to pardon Providence.

SPENSERIAN.

[Sun of Destruction; ne'er again arise]

Sun of Destruction; ne'er again arise
The flamy gloom of flaming temples o'er,
To shout thy words of fire beneath red skies,
Athwart fire-gleaming sea, and burning shore—
“Burn, burn, till all is burnèd!” Never more
Let men say, “Light destroys.” No, rather crown
The Good dethroned with beams that shone of yore;
As when a bard, of yet unborn renown,
Casts o'er his deathless page the light of suns gone down.

SPRING.

Again the violet of our early days
Drinks beauteous azure from the golden sun,
And kindless into fragrance at his blaze;
The streams, rejoiced that winter's work is done,
Talk of to-morrow's cowslips, as they run.
Wild apple, thou art blushing into bloom!
Thy leaves are coming, snowy-blossom'd thorn!
Wake, buried lily! spirit, quit thy tomb?
And thou, shade-loving hyacinth, be born!
Then, haste, sweet rose! sweet woodbine, hymn the morn,
Whose dew-drops shall illume with pearly light
Each grassy blade that thick embattled stands
From sea to sea, while daisies infinite
Uplift in praise their little glowing hands,
O'er every hill that under heav'n expands.

A SHADOW.

A poor affrighted worm,
Where sky and mountain meet,
I stood before the storm,
And heard his strong heart beat.
He drew his black brows down—
My knees each other smote:
The mountains felt his frown,
His dark unutter'd thought
The mountains, at his scowl,
Pray'd mutely to the skies:
He spoke, and shook my soul;
He scorch'd me with his eyes.
Alone, beneath the sky,
I stood the storm before:
No! God, the Storm, and I—
We trode the desert floor;
High on the mountain sod,
The whirlwind's dwellingplace,
The Worm, the Storm, and God
Were present, face to face.
From earth a shadow brake,
E'en where my feet had trode;
The shadow laugh'd and spake
And shook his hand at God.
Then up it rear'd its head,
Beneath the lightning's blaze;
“Omnipotent!” it said,
“Bring back my yesterdays.”
God smiled the gloom away;
Wide earth and heav'n were bright;
In light my shadow lay,
I stood with God in light;
With Him who wings the storm,
Or bids the storm be still,
The shadow of a worm
Held converse on the hill.

ANTICIPATION.

Hail, Realm of gloom! whose clouds are ice! whose air
Is made of thought-sick sighs!
Whose fields are dead men's dust, from which despair
Shrinks as he dies!
Though on thee, and within (sad Infinite!)
Are darkness, death, and doom;
Beyond thee shines the sun of mind and might,
The Power that made thee, God—hail, Holy Light!
I come, I come.

PRESTON MILLS.

FAMINE IN A SLAVE SHIP.

THE DYING BOY TO THE SLOE BLOSSOM.

THE WONDERS OF THE LANE.

Strong climber of the mountain's side,
Though thou the vale disdain,
Yet walk with me where hawthorns hide
The wonders of the lane.
High o'er the rushy springs of Don
The stormy gloom is roll'd;
The moorland hath not yet put on
His purple, green, and gold.
But here the titling spreads his wing,
Where dewy daisies gleam;
And here the sun-flower of the spring
Burns bright in morning's beam.
To mountain winds the famish'd fox
Complains that Sol is slow
O'er headlong steeps and gushing rocks
His royal robe to throw.
But here the lizard seeks the sun,
Here coils in light the snake;
And here the fire-tuft hath begun
Its beauteous nest to make.
O then, while hums the earliest bee
Where verdure fires the plain,
Walk thou with me, and stoop to see
The glories of the lane!
For, oh, I love these banks of rock,
This roof of sky and tree,
These tufts, where sleeps the gloaming clock,
And wakes the earliest bee!
As spirits from eternal day
Look down on earth secure,
Gaze thou, and wonder, and survey
A world in miniature!
A world not scorn'd by Him who made
Even weakness by his might;
But solemn in his depth of shade,
And splendid in his light.
Light! not alone on clouds afar
O'er storm-loved mountains spread,
Or widely teaching sun and star,
Thy glorious thoughts are read;
Oh, no! thou art a wondrous book
To sky, and sea, and land—
A page on which the angels look,
Which insects understand!
And here, O Light! minutely fair,
Divinely plain and clear,
Like splinters of a crystal hair,
Thy bright small hand is here.
Yon drop-fed lake, six inches wide,
Is Huron, girt with wood;
This driplet feeds Missouri's tide—
And that Niagara's flood.
What tidings from the Andes brings
Yon line of liquid light,
That down from heav'n in madness flings
The blind foam of its might?
Do I not hear his thunder roll—
The roar that ne'er is still?
'Tis mute as death!—but in my soul
It roars, and ever will.
What forests tall of tiniest moss
Clothe every little stone!
What pigmy oaks their foliage toss
O'er pigmy valleys lone!
With shade o'er shade, from ledge to ledge,
Ambitious of the sky,
They feather o'er the steepest edge
Of mountains mushroom high.
O God of marvels! who can tell
What myriad living things
On these grey stones unseen may dwell;
What nations, with their kings?
I feel no shock, I hear no groan,
While fate perchance o'erwhelms
Empires on this subverted stone—
A hundred ruin'd realms!
Lo! in that dot, some mite, like me,
Impell'd by woe or whim,
May crawl some atoms cliffs to see—
A tiny world to him!
Lo! while he pauses, and admires
The works of Nature's might,
Spurn'd by my foot, his world expires,
And all to him is night!
O God of terrors! what are we?—
Poor insects, spark'd with thought!
Thy whisper, Lord, a word from thee
Could smite us into nought!
But should'st thou wreck our father-land
And mix it with the deep,
Safe in the hollow of thine hand
Thy little ones would sleep.

SLEEP.

Sleep! to the homeless, thou art home;
The friendless find in thee a friend;
And well is he, where'er he roam,
Who meets thee at his journey's end.
Thy stillness is the planet's speed;
Thy weakness is unmeasured might;
Sparks from the hoof of death's pale steed—
Worlds flash and perish in thy sight.
The daring will to thee alone—
The will and power are given to thee—
To lift the veil of the unknown,
The curtain of eternity—
To look uncensured, though unbidden,
On marvels from the seraph hidden!
Alone to be—where none have been!
Alone to see—what none have seen!
And to astonish'd reason tell
The secrets of th' Unsearchable!

THE FATAL BIRTH.

Foul parent of fair child, swollen Bread-tax! Thou,
On plunder'd commerce, didst beget Reform:
We see a bright to-morrow on her brow,
And make our hope thy nursling of the storm.
But many a fangèd worm, and biped brute,
On whose dark heart the eye of love ne'er smiled,
Would fain the promise of her morn refute.
Die then, dread power! and have no other child;
For it is written that thy second-born,
If second-born thou have, will thunder-strike
Temple and tower, of strength and splendour shorn
By hands with famine lean; and, Sampson-like,
Shaking the pillars of the gold-roof'd state,
Whelm high, and low, and all, in one remorseless fate.

EPIGRAM.

[“Come, at last?” said Horns to Eldon—]

“Come, at last?” said Horns to Eldon—
“Better late than never:
My Depute! Thou long hast well done;
Keep my seals for ever.”

TRANSPLANTED FLOWERS.

Ye living gems of cold and fragrant fire!
Die ye for ever, when ye die, ye flowers?
Take ye, when in your beauty ye expire,
An everlasting farewell of your bowers?
No more to listen for the wooing air,
And song-brought morn, the cloud-tinged woodlands o'er!
No more to June's soft lip your breasts to bare,
And drink fond evening's dewy breath no more!
Soon fades the sweetest, first the fairest dies,
For frail and fair are sisters; but the heart,
Fill'd with deep love, death's power to kill denies,
And sobs e'en o'er the dead, “We cannot part!”
Have I not seen thee, Wild Rose, in my dreams,
Like a pure spirit—beauteous as the skies,
When the clear blue is brightest, and the streams
Dance down the hills, reflecting the rich dyes
Of morning clouds, and cistus woodbine-twined?—
Didst thou not wake me from a dream of death?
Yea, and thy voice was sweeter than the wind
When it inhales the love-sick violet's breath,
Bending it down with kisses, where the bee
Hums over golden gorse, and sunny broom.
Soul of the Rose! What saidst thou then to me?
“We meet,” thou saidst, “though sever'd by the tomb:
Lo, brother, this is heav'n! And, thus the just shall bloom.”

SPENSERIAN.

[O'er Byron's dust our sorrows should be steel'd]

O'er Byron's dust our sorrows should be steel'd,
Or sternly burn, as, burning slow, he died—
Till one long groan from shuddering Greece reveal'd
That fate had done her worst; and o'er the tide
Loud yell'd the Turk his triumph-howl of pride.
Yet will they flow, these woman's drops; for thou
Didst die for woman, though her hand applied
No gentle pressure to thy fever'd brow:
O Byron, “thou, within, hadst that which passeth show!”

SPENSERIAN.

[Thou, Byron, wast—like him, the iron-crown'd—]

Thou, Byron, wast—like him, the iron-crown'd—
Thought-stricken, scorch'd, and “old in middle age.”
“All-naked feeling's” restless victims bound,
Ill could renown your secret pangs assuage.
Two names of glory in one deathless page!
Both unbeloved, both peerless, both exil'd,
And prison'd both, though one could choose his cage;
Dying, he call'd, in vain, on wife and child;
And in your living hearts, the worm was domiciled.

HYMN,

WRITTEN FOR THE ROTHERHAM POLITICAL UNION, AND SUNG THERE ON THE CELEBRATION OF THE PASSING OF THE THREE REFORM BILLS.

THE EXCURSION.

SONG.

[What! canst thou smile, thou heart of ice?]

SPENSERIAN.

[Even here, on earth, not altogether fade]

Even here, on earth, not altogether fade
The good and vile. Men, in their words and deeds,
Live when the hand and heart in earth are laid;
For thoughts are things, and written thoughts are seeds—
Our very dust buds forth in flowers or weeds.
Then let me write for immortality
One honest song, uncramp'd by forms or creeds,
That men unborn may read my times and me,
Taught by my living words, when I shall cease to be.

MAY.

Shade-loving Hyacinth! thou com'st again;
And thy rich odours seem to swell the flow
Of the lark's song, the redbreast's lonely strain,
And the stream's tune—best sung where wild-flowers blow,
And ever sweetest where the sweetest grow.
Who hath condensed, O broom! in thy bright flowers
The light of mid-day suns? What virgin's cheek
Can match this apple bloom—these glowing showers
Of glistering daisies? How their blushes speak
Of rosy hues that red o'er ocean break,
When cloudy morn is calm, yet fain to weep,
Because the beautful are still the frail!
Hark! 'tis the thrush!—he sings beneath the steep,
Where coolness ever charms the fountain'd vale!
How eloquently well he tells his tale,
That love is yet on earth, and yet will be,
Though virtue struggles, and seems born to fail,
Because fall'n man, who might be great and free,
Toils for the wolf, and bribes iniquity.
Thou are not false, sweet bird! thou dost not keep
The word of promise to our ear alone,
And break it to our hearts! Maids do not weep
Because thou feign'st; for thee no victims groan;
Thy voice is truth, and love is all thy own.
Then, for thy sake, I will not loathe man's face;
Will not believe that virtues are veil'd sins;
That bounty may be mean, and kindness base;
That fortune plays the game which wisdom wins;
That human worth still ends where it begins.
Though man were wholly false, though hope were none
Of late redemption from his sin-made woes,
Yet would I trust in God and goodness. On
From sun to sun the stream of mercy flows;
And still on humble graves the little daisy grows.

THE POLISH FUGITIVES.

WRITTEN FOR THE HULL POLISH RECORD.

SPENSERIAN.

[I saw a horrid thing of many names]

I saw a horrid thing of many names,
And many shapes. Some call'd it wealth, some power,
Some grandeur. From its heart it shot black flames,
That scorch'd the souls of millions, hour by hour;
And its proud eyes rain'd everywhere a shower
Of hopeless life, and helpless misery;
For, spoused to fraud, destruction was its dower!
But its cold brightness could not hide from me
The parent base of crime, the nurse of poverty!

SPENSERIAN.

[The marble forms of mortals half divine]

The marble forms of mortals half divine
Yield silently the impress grand of mind
To time and ruin: long the weltering brine,
With heaven's red bolt and reinless blast combined,
Assails the rock in vain: even in the wind,
Slow burns the mighty oak, the forest-king,
Majestic still: so, lofty souls, declined
From their high deeds, a careless mantle fling
O'er cureless wounds, and smile—though life is withering.

SPENSERIAN.

[A tear for thee? Not, Byron, if thy name]

A tear for thee? Not, Byron, if thy name
Shall be a watchword to unchain the slave,
Rolling o'er tyrants' hearts like thundering flame,
And kindling, as with soul, th' embattled wave;
Till conquering Freedom, on their briny grave,
Find Greeks like those who died at Salamis.
Arise, and equal them, ye modern brave!
Let past and future ages yield to this!
And be your names a spell, as Byron's was and is.

SPENSERIAN.

[A tear for Byron? Weakness mourns the weak]

A tear for Byron? Weakness mourns the weak,
And Beauty dies in weeping Love's embrace,
And common frailties common sorrows seek.
But Scourger of the scourgers of thy race!
Thou aw'st me so, that to thy resting-place
I bring stern feelings, not unmix'd with fear.
Standing before the fear'd of all the base,
I, who oft wept thee, cannot weep thee here,
Bard of the broken heart, high soul, and burning tear!

COME AND GONE.

A THUNDER STORM IN WINTER.

He spake to eye and ear! and, like a tree
Rooted in heaven, shot down the branchy flame,
While the blue moonlight vanish'd suddenly.
Brighter than light on snow, the brightness came,
Filling the vales with forests of strange fire,
The streams with blood; and flinging o'er the cloud
Banners of crimson, laced with silver wire.
Down to mute earth the giant darkness bow'd,
Giving the hill immeasurable height,
That propp'd the sky; then changed the troubled form,
While from his bosom fell the headlong weight
Of volley'd hail; and, whispering through the storm,
The thunderer spake again: “What fear'st thou? Live, poor worm!”

PROLOGUE TO THE CORN-LAW RHYMES.

For thee, my country, thee, do I perform,
Sternly, the duty of a man born free,
Heedless, though ass, and wolf, and venomous worm,
Shake ears and fangs, with brandish'd bray, at me;
Alone as Crusoe on the hostile sea,
For thee, for us, for ours, do I upraise
The standard of my song! for thine and mine
I toll the knell of England's better days;
And lift my hated voice that mine and thine
May undegrade the human form divine.
Perchance that voice, if heard, is heard too late:
The buried dust of Tyre may wake, and sway
Reconquer'd seas; but what shall renovate
The dead-alive, who dread no judgment-day?
Souls, whom the lust of gold hath turn'd to clay?
And what but scorn and slander will reward
The rabble's poet, and his honest song?
Gambler for blanks! thou play'st an idiot's card;
For, sure to fall, the weak attack the strong:
Ay, but what strength is theirs, whose might is based on wrong?

FROM GOETHE.

How like a stithy is this land!
And we lie on it like good metal
Long hammer'd by a senseless hand!
But will such thumping make a kettle?

CANNING.

He rose—a veteran proud of honest scars;
He stood—a bard, with lightning in his look;
He spoke—Apollo had the voice of Mars:
His frown all hope from phalanx'd faction took,
While flash'd his satire, like a falchion bared,
On all who meanly thought, or basely dared.
He spoke, and died. And therefore must the sky
Return to sunless, moonless, starless night?
And therefore must the hopes of commerce fly
To climes unsatrapp'd? O departing light,
Linger awhile! thy loveliness is might,
And youth, and glory. Earth, from east to west,
Uplift thy multudinous hands in prayer!
Laugh, stormy Russ! to thee the worst is best.
Shout, foes of Man! the scourge and rack prepare!
But, Erin, there is hope in thy despair.
And, Freedom! faint not thou, though Canning dies.
Weak is the State, and tottering to its fall,
That on one mind for strength and life relies;
That State should be an omen unto all
Who stand not self-supported, and appal
E'en tyrants, blindly digging their own graves.
But Freedom's hope, when other hope is none,
Calm, or perturb'd, remains; like winds and waves,
Alike surviving battles lost or won;
More deathless than the dust of Marathon.

FOREST WORSHIP.

A SONG IN EXILE.

ON AN ORIGINAL SKETCH,

DRAWN WITH A PENCIL ON A WALL, BY MY SON FRANCIS.

I saw a head, a young but lifeless face—
On its dark hair, and two white wings, reposed,
As on a pillow. Tears had left their trace
Down each sad cheek; beneath dim eyes half-closed,
The calm lips smiled; and like a sky arose,
Amid thick curls, the forehead domed for thought.
It lay, as if the soul—though worn with woes,
And bathed in parting tears—serenely sought
For strength in sleep, before it wing'd its flight
From darkness, doubt, and dust, to dwell with God, in light.

SONG.

[They sold the chairs, they took the bed, and went]

TO THE BRAMBLE FLOWER.

Thy fruit full-well the schoolboy knows,
Wild bramble of the brake!
So, put thou forth thy small white rose;
I love it for his sake.
Though woodbines flaunt and roses glow
O'er all the fragrant bowers,
Thou needst not be ashamed to show
Thy satin-threaded flowers;
For dull the eye, the heart is dull,
That cannot feel how fair,
Amid all beauty beautiful,
Thy tender blossoms are!
How delicate thy gauzy frill!
How rich thy branchy stem!
How soft thy voice, when woods are still,
And thou sing'st hymns to them;
While silent showers are falling slow
And, 'mid the general hush,
A sweet air lifts the little bough,
Lone whispering through the bush!
The primrose to the grave is gone;
The hawthorn flower is dead;
The violet by the moss'd grey stone
Hath laid her weary head;
But thou, wild bramble! back dost bring,
In all their beauteous power,
The fresh green days of life's fair spring,
And boyhood's blossomy hour.
Scorn'd bramble of the brake! once more
Thou bid'st me be a boy,
To gad with thee the woodlands o'er,
In freedom and in joy.

SPENSERIAN.

[All unmatch'd Shakspeare, and the blind old Man]

All unmatch'd Shakspeare, and the blind old Man
Of London, hymn in every land and clime
Our country's praise, while many an artisan
Spins for her glory school-taught lays sublime.
Them in her bosom, be they blank or rhyme,
Oblivious spirits gently will inter.
But three unborrow'd strains will to all time
Give honour, glory, highest laud to her—
Thalaba! Peter Bell! the Ancient Mariner!

THOMAS.

Thou art not dead, my son! my son!
But God hath hence removed thee:
Thou canst not die, my buried boy,
While lives the sire who loved thee.
How canst thou die, while weeps for thee
The broken heart that bore thee;
And e'en the thought that thou are not
Can to her soul restore thee?
Will grief forget thy willingness
To run before thy duty?
The love of all the good and true,
That fill'd thine eyes with beauty?
Thy pitying grace, thy dear request,
When others had offended,
That made thee look as angels look,
When great good deeds are ended?
The strength with which thy soul sustain'd
Thy woes and daily wasting?
Thy prayer, to stay with us, when sure
That thou from us wast hasting?
And that last smile, which seem'd to say—
“Why cannot ye restore me?”
Thy look'd farewell is in my heart,
And brings thee still before me.
What though the change, the fearful change,
From thought, which left thee never,
To unremembering ice and clay,
Proclaim thee gone for ever?
Thy half-closed lids, thy upturn'd eyes,
Thy still and lifeless tresses;
Thy marble lip, which moves no more,
Yet more than grief expresses;
The silence of thy coffin'd snow,
By awed remembrance cherish'd;
These dwell with me, like gather'd flowers
That in their April perish'd.
Thou art not gone, thou canst not go
My bud, my blasted blossom!
The pale rose of thy faded face
Still withers in my bosom.
O Mystery of Mysteries,
That took'st my poor boy from me!
What art thou, Death? all-dreaded Death!
If weakness can o'ercome thee?
We hear thee not! we see thee not,
E'en when thy arrows wound us;
But, viewless, printless, echoless,
Thy steps are ever round us.
Though more than life a mystery
Art thou, the undeceiver,
Amid thy trembling worshippers
Thou seest no true believer.
No!—but for life, and more than life,
No fearful search could find thee:
Tremendous shadow! who is He
That ever stands behind thee?
The Power who bids the worm deny
The beam that o'er her blazes,
And veils from us the holier light
On which the seraph gazes,
Where burns the throne of Him, whose name
The sunbeams here write faintly;
And where my child a stranger stands
Amid the blest and saintly,
And sobs aloud—while in his eyes
The tears, o'erflowing, gather—
“They come not yet!—until they come,
Heav'n is not Heav'n, my Father!
Why come they not? why comes not she
From whom thy will removes me?
O does she love me—love me still?
I know my mother loves me!
Then send her soon! and with her send
The brethren of my bosom!
My sisters too! Lord, let them all
Bloom round the parted blossom!
The only pang I could not bear
Was leaving them behind me:
I cannot bear it. Even in heaven
The tears of parting blind me!”

BIGOTRY.

When calm minds strongly shoot into the night
Their shafts of lightning, no roused hamlet screams;
But darkness dies, pierced through and through with light,
That casts in silence round its useful beams.
Not so, when Zealots twang into the dark,
Flight after flight, their mischief-whizzing spears;
Though, thunder-wing'd, they hit or miss the mark,
They never fail to fire their own long ears,
Which blaze with splendour not to be endured,
Except by them whose barns and corn-ricks are insured.

DON AND ROTHER.

FUNERAL HYMN.

FLOWERS FOR THE HEART.

Flowers! winter flowers!—the child is dead,
The mother cannot speak:
O softly couch his little head,
Or Mary's heart will break!
Amid those curls of flaxen hair
This pale pink ribbon twine,
And on the little bosom there
Place this wan lock of mine.
How like a form in cold white stone,
The coffin'd infant lies!
Look, Mother, on thy little one!
And tears will fill thine eyes.
She cannot weep—more faint she grows,
More deadly pale and still:
Flowers! oh, a flower! a winter rose,
That tiny hand to fill.
Go, search the fields! the lichen wet
Bends o'er th' unfailing well;
Beneath the furrow lingers yet
The scarlet pimpernel.
Peeps not a snowdrop in the bower,
Where never froze the spring?
A daisy? Ah! bring childhood's flower!
The half-blown daisy bring!
Yes, lay the daisy's little head
Beside the little cheek;
O haste! the last of five is dead!
The childless cannot speak!

TO FANNY.

A POET'S EPITAPH.

Stop, Mortal! Here thy brother lies,
The Poet of the Poor.
His books were rivers, woods, and skies,
The meadow, and the moor;
His teachers were the torn hearts' wail,
The tyrant, and the slave,
The street, the factory, the jail,
The palace—and the grave!
The meanest thing, earth's feeblest worm,
He fear'd to scorn or hate;
And honour'd in a peasant's form
The equal of the great.
But if he loved the rich who make
The poor man's little more,
Ill could he praise the rich who take
From plunder'd labour's store.
A hand to do, a head to plan,
A heart to feel and dare—
Tell man's worst foes, here lies the man
Who drew them as they are.

EPIGRAM.

[When long, the drama, in a sordid age]

When long, the drama, in a sordid age,
Had droop'd an exile; to the desert stage
Impassion'd nature, weeping as she smiled,
Led, by his trembling hand, her darling child:
Even from the worms upstarted buried spleen,
While Shakspeare's dust, in transport murmur'd— “Kean!”

THE DEATH-HUNTED.

LINES

WRITTEN AFTER SEEING, AT MR. JOHN HEPPENSTALL'S OF UPPERTHORPE, NEAR SHEFFIELD, THE PLATES OF AUDUBON'S BIRDS OF AMERICA.

“Painting is silent music.” So said one
Whose prose is sweetest painting. Audubon!
Thou Raphael of great Nature's woods and seas!
Thy living forms and hues, thy plants, thy trees,
Bring deathless music from the houseless waste—
The immortality of truth and taste.
Thou giv'st bright accents to the voiceless sod;
And all thy pictures are mute hymns to God.
Why hast thou power to bear th' untravell'd soul
Through farthest wilds, o'er ocean's stormy roll;
And, to the prisoner of disease, bring home
The homeless birds of ocean's roaring foam;
But that thy skill might bid the desert sing
The sun-bright plumage of th' Almighty's wing?
With his own hues thy splendid lyre is strung;
For genius speaks the universal tongue.
“Come,” cries the bigot, black with pride and wine—
“Come and hear me—the Word of God is mine!”
“But I,” saith He, who paves with suns his car,
And makes the storms his coursers from afar,
And, with a glance of his all-dazzling eye,
Smites into crashing fire the boundless sky—
“I speak in this swift sea-bird's speaking eyes,
These passion-shiver'd plumes, these lucid dyes:
This beauty is my language! in this breeze
I whisper love to forests and the seas;
I speak in this lone flower—this dew-drop cold—
That hornet's sting—yon serpent's neck of gold:
These are my accents. Hear them! and behold
How well my prophet-spoken truth agrees
With the dread truth and mystery of these
Sad, beauteous, grand, love-warbled mysteries!”
Yes, Audubon! and men shall read in thee
His language, written for eternity;
And if, immortal in its thoughts, the soul
Shall live in heaven, and spurn the tomb's control,
Angels shall retranscribe, with pens of fire,
Thy forms of Nature's terror, love, and ire,
Thy copied words of God—when death-struck suns expire.

ELEGY ON WILLIAM COBBETT.

LINES

ON SEEING UNEXPECTEDLY A NEW CHURCH, WHILE WALKING, ON THE SABBATH, IN OLD-PARK WOOD, NEAR SHEFFIELD.

From Shirecliffe, o'er a silent sea of trees,
When evening waned o'er Wadsley's cottages,
I look'd on Loxley, Rivilin, and Don,
While at my side stood truth-loved Pemberton;
And wonder'd, far beneath me, to behold
A golden spire, that glow'd o'er fields of gold.
Out of the earth it rose, with sudden power,
A bright flame, growing heavenward, like a flower,
Where erst nor temple stood, nor holy psalm
Rose to the mountains in the day of calm.
There, at the altar, plighted hearts may sigh;
There, side by side, how soon their dust may lie!
Then carven stones the old, old tale will tell,
That saddens joy with its brief chronicle,
Till Time, with pinions stolen from the dove,
Gently erase the epitaph of love;
While rivers sing, on their unwearied way,
The song that but with earth can pass away,
That brings the tempest's accents from afar,
And breathes of woodbines where no woodbines are!
Yet deem not that Affection can expire,
Though earth and skies shall melt in fervent fire;
For truth hath written, on the stars above—
“Affection cannot die, if God is Love!”
Whene'er I pass a grave with moss o'ergrown,
Love seems to rest upon the silent stone,
Above the wreck of sublunary things,
Like a tired angel sleeping on his wings.

RIBBLEDIN; OR THE CHRISTENING.

THE MALTBY YEWS.

BURNS.

THE TRICOLOR CROSS.

PARODIED FROM BERANGER'S “CROSS OF THE LEGION OF HONOUR.”

THE PILGRIM FATHERS.

A GLIMPSE OF THE FUTURE.

THE BALLOT.

ROCH ABBEY GATEWAY.

What dost thou here, lorn Ireland's dying daughter?
These holy walls, that erst, with open door
Welcomed the pilgrim—offering bread and water,
Prayer, rest, and counsel, to the way-worn poor—
Now mute and barren as the manless moor,
Would not, to Christ himself, afford a crumb!
Perish, unheard, thou spurn'd of lord and boor!
Poor Erin's waif! be Supplication dumb
Where Charity is deaf. At hallow'd gates
Hop'st thou for succour? Outcast! over them
Mourns ivied Ruin; or, within them, waits
Obstruction loop'd and ring'd with gold and gem;
And Mammon, plotting woe to harpied states,
Scowls from beneath his cloven diadem.
Fair was she, and her famish'd child was like her;
Nought lovelier mourns beneath the laughing skies.
As I approach'd, I saw the baby strike her;
It raged for food, while tears gushed from her eyes!
Why did she marry, in the land of sighs,
Where crimes, call'd laws, made by the lawless, named
Her child “Benoni?” Let the basely wise
Say, rather, why, self-duped and unashamed,
They curse God's blessings; and, with blasphemies,
Hallow the arrow at our vitals aim'd,
Lauding the madness that makes precious things,
Yea, things most precious, worthless! Heav'n is blamed,
And hope and action droop their palsied wings,
Because our lords are bread-tax-eating kings.

LEAVES AND MEN.

WILLIAM.

SONG.

[Mother! I come from God and bliss]

SONG.

[Man-like her lover was to see]

FOOTPATHS.

TO HOFLAND, THE ARTIST.

Go, Bard and Painter! to the desert. Limn
The mountain's soul, and bid that spirit stay.
So shall thy canvas be a glowing hymn
To God, in his great works; sung every day
By every eye that sees it with the heart,
While age-long years grow grey, and rock-built pomps depart.

ON A HEARTLESS SLANDERER.

“The unco guid” should pray with tears,
That thou may'st live a thousand years,
To hunt out flaws, and snarl, and laugh,
And then write Virtue's epitaph.

EPIGRAM.

[Life is short, and time is swift]

Life is short, and time is swift,
Roses fade, and shadows shift;
But the ocean and the river
Rise and fall and flow for ever:
Bard! not vainly heaves the ocean;
Bard! not vainly flows the river;
Be thy song then like their motion.
Blessing now, and blessing ever.

A POET.

THE SINLESS CAIN.

A BALLAD.

EPISTLE TO G. C. HOLLAND, ESQ., M.D.,

WITH MRS. LOUDON'S “PHILANTHROPIC ECONOMY; OR, THE PHILOSOPHY OF HAPPINESS.”

THE BROKEN HEART.

SATURDAY.

HOLIDAY.

O blessèd! when some holiday
Brings townsmen to the moor,
And, in the sunbeams, brighten up
The sad looks of the poor.
The bee puts on his richest gold,
As if that worker knew—
How hardly (and for little) they
Their sunless task pursue.
But from their souls the sense of wrong
On dove-like pinion flies;
And, throned o'er all, Forgiveness sees
His image in their eyes.
Soon tired, the street-born lad lies down
On marjoram and thyme,
And through his grated fingers sees
The falcon's flight sublime;
Then his pale eyes, so bluely dull,
Grow darkly blue with light,
And his lips redden like the bloom
O'er miles of mountains bright.
The little lovely maiden-hair
Turns up its happy face,
And saith unto the poor man's heart,
“Thou'rt welcome to this place.”
The infant river leapeth free,
Amid the bracken tall,
And cries, “FOR EVER there is One
Who reigneth over all;
And unto Him, as unto me,
Thou'rt welcome to partake
His gift of light, his gift of air,
O'er mountain, glen, and lake.
Our Father loves us, want-worn man!
And know thou this from me:
The pride that makes thy pain his couch,
May wake to envy thee.
Hard, hard to bear are want and toil,
As thy worn features tell;
But wealth is armed with fortitude,
And bears thy sufferings well.”

SONG.

[Nor alehouse scores, nor alehouse broils]

Nor alehouse scores, nor alehouse broils
Turn my good woman pale;
For in my pantry I've a keg
Of home-brewed ale.
The devil keeps a newspaper
Where tavern-wranglers rail,
Because it tempts his doomed and lost
To drink bad ale.
But I read news at second-hand,
Nor find it flat and stale;
While Hume's or Hindley's health I drink
In home-brew'd ale.
My boys and girls delight to see
My friends and me regale,
While Nancy, curtsying, deigns to sip
Our home-brew'd ale;
And when the widow'd pauper comes,
To tell her monthly tale,
I sometimes cheer her with a drop
Of home-brew'd ale;
It tells her heart of better days,
Ere she grew thin and pale,
When James, before the banker fail'd,
Drank home-brew'd ale.
I'll melt no money in my drink,
Where ruffians fight and rail:
The gauger never dipp'd his stick
In my cheap ale.
But when we household suffrage get,
And honest men prevail;
Then, hey, mechanics, for free trade,
And cheaper ale!

RUB OR RUST.

THE HOME OF TASTE.

THE SUMMER-HOUSE.

SONG.

[Let idlers despair! there is hope for the wise]

SONG.

[With hair grown grey, we look behind]

SONG.

[Free Trade, like religion, hath doctrines of love]

SONG.

[O'er Polonia's plains of glory]

THE WINTER SPEEDWELL.

A GHOST AT NOON.

SONG.

[Like a rootless rose or lily]

SONG.

[Sleep, sleep my love! thy gentle bard]

HE WENT.

HE WROTE.

HE CAME.

ON THE DEATH OF EARL FITZWILLIAM.

SABBATH MORNING.

Rise, young Mechanic! Idle darkness leaves
The dingy town, and cloudless morning glows:
O rise and worship Him who spins and weaves
Into the petals of the hedge-side rose
Day's golden beams and all-embracing air!
Rise! for the morn of Sabbath riseth fair!
The clouds expect thee—Rise! the stonechat hops
Among the mosses of thy granite chair:
Go tell the plover, on the mountain tops,
That we have cherish'd nests and hidden wings.
Wings? Ay, like those on which the seraph flings
His sun-bright speed from star to star abroad;
And we have Music, like the whisperings
Of streams in Heav'n—our labour is an ode
Of sweet sad praise to Him who loves the right.
And cannot He who spins the beauteous light,
And weaves the air into the wild flowers hues,
Give to thy soul the mountain torrent's might,
Or fill thy veins with sunbeams, and diffuse
Over thy thoughts the greenwood's melody?
Yea, this and more He can and will for thee,
If thou wilt read, engraven on the skies
And restless waves, that “sloth is misery;
And that our worth from our necessities
Flows, as the rivers from his clouds descend!”

TASTE.

THE WOODBINES OF JUNE.

THE REJECTED.

RAINBOWED MAY.

THE SPIRIT OF THE FIRST EMIGRANT.

Upon the dreadful battle-field, methought,
High on Breed's Hill, after the fight was done,
Amid the dead, yet fearing not the dead,
I stood before a form, that sadden'd night.
“Featureless presence! Are thy tresses mist?
Or hast thou lineaments? The blast unveils thee,
Visage of mystery! and swirls the cloud
That seems thy carpet.” From the earth it rose
Slow, from a nameless tomb, with human gore
Polluted in the fight of yesterday,
Nor scatter'd the red death-dews from a flower;
A dim form, mingling with the tempest's light,
All indistinct, as the moon's shrouded beams,
Seen thro' the snow flakes, when they fluttering fall,
Muffling the mountain echoes silently.
The seeming brow was turn'd to heav'n, the hands
In deprecation waved. “Cloud-involved moon!
Stars, that from earth's blood-bolter'd face withdraw
Your blasted beams,” exclaim'd a hollow voice;
“For peace I cross'd the sable rolling seas,
Left country, friends, all, but my God, for peace
To worship Him in truth and purity.
I first, from persecution flying, rear'd
The white man's home amid Columbian woods,
God's altar, in the unhewn temple wild
Of Nature. There, where bright Connecticut
Waters a sin-found Eden, with my sons
I kneel'd, and gave the God of deserts praise.
I kiss'd their hands; I bade them live in love,
And sometimes think of me; and then I slept.
They wept; they dug, near ocean's echoing shore,
My narrow bed of rest; and unknown flowers
Bloom'd o'er it, drooping lonely. But the blood
Of murder hath profaned the shuddering tomb,
And call'd the slumberer from his bed of worms.
In vain for peace, for peace I cross'd the seas,
And vainly left, far east, my mother's grave;
Nor may my children's children dwell in peace,
Nor worship God in truth and purity.”

HANNAH RATCLIFFE.

THE WAY BROAD-LEAF.

PROLOGUE TO WATT TYLER.

A PLAY, BY JOHN WATKINS.

While they whose sordid lusts oppress a state,
Forestall, because they dread, the public hate,
Slow to resent are nations; man endures
The curse of bondage, better than he cures.
We tremble when the ocean, white with foam,
Hails the deep voice of rivers roaring home,
And the black sky, which fire's wild instinct rends,
Like a Niagara of clouds descends;
But calm succeeds, the mountain'd plain subsides,
In music soon the meeken'd river glides,
And when the wholesome hurricane is o'er,
Earth wears a look more lovely than before.
Not always thus, when nations, stung to rage,
On kings and priests a war of vengeance wage;
E'en though triumphant, oft with ruin fraught,
The human tempest strengthens what it smote;
O'er rout or victory, derision names
A Louis Philippe, or a second James;
A Cromwell or Napoleon, cursed with might,
Turns hope to darkness, with portentous light,
Plague from the enthusiast's sinless Eden brings,
And plumed by Freedom, tramples on her wings.
Too seldom, if the righteous fight is won,
Rebellion boasts a Tell or Washington;
But if the champion of the People fail,
Foes only live to tell Misfortune's tale,
And meanness blots, while none to praise is nigh,
The hero's virtues, with a coward's lie.
To-night we bring, from his insulted grave,
A man too honest to become a slave:
How few admire him! few, perhaps, bewail'd!
He was a vulgar hero—for he fail'd:
Such glorious honours soothe the patriot's shade!
Of such materials History is made!
But had his followers triumph'd, where he fell
Fame would have hymn'd her village Hampden well,
And Watt the Tyler been a William Tell.

SONG.

[Bright Word of God! that shin'st on high]

CORONATION ODE.

WRITTEN FOR THE SHEFFIELD WORKING MEN'S ASSOCIATION.

VERSES

ON THE OPENING OF THE SHEFFIELD AND ROTHERHAM RAILWAY.

HYMN.

[Another wave is swallow'd by the sea]

Another wave is swallow'd by the sea
Of sumless waves!
Another year, thou past Eternity,
Hath roll'd o'er new-made graves!
They open yet—to bid the living weep,
Where tears are vain;
While I, unswept into the ruthless deep,
Storm-tried and sad, remain.
Why am I spared? Surely to wear away,
By useful deeds,
Vile traces, left beneath th' upbraiding spray,
Of empty shells and weeds.
If there are deeds, which no repentance need,
And all can do,
Why should one heart with vain contrition bleed,
Self-tried, and found untrue?
But there are things which time devoureth not;
Thoughts, whose green youth
Flowers o'er the ashes of the unforgot,
And words, whose fruit is truth.
Are ye not imaged in the eternal sea,
Things of to-day?
Deeds which are harvest for Eternity!
Ye cannot pass away.

TRAFALGAR.

HYMN.

[Nurse of the Pilgrim Sires, who sought]

LINES.

WRITTEN FOR THE SHEFFIELD MECHANICS' FIRST EXHIBITION.

HYMN.

[Lord! to the rose thy light and air]

[The present, future, past]

[Wrong not the labouring poor by whom ye live!]

[Lord! not for vengeance rave the wrong'd]

Lord! not for vengeance rave the wrong'd,
The withering hopes, the woes prolong'd!
Our cause is just, our Judge divine;
But judgment, God of all! is thine.
We call not on thy foes the doom
That scourged the proud of wretched Rome,
Who stole, for few, the lands of all,
To make all life a funeral.
But not in vain thy millions call
On thee, if thou art Lord of all;
And, by thy works, and by thy word,
Hark! millions cry for justice, Lord!

THE UNWRITTEN WORD.

EPITAPH.

FOR A MONUMENT TO MAJOR CARTWRIGHT.

Here lies the man, for virtues only known,
Who look'd on Truth's fair face, and saw his own:
Therefore, this humble verse attention craves;
For good men's lives are holier than their graves.

EPITAPH.

Greater than Colon, name renown'd
In famed Discovery's rolls,
Here lies Charles Dickens, who first found
That poor folks may have souls.

EPIGRAM.

[“Prepare to meet the King of Terrors,” cried]

“Prepare to meet the King of Terrors,” cried
To prayerless Want, his plunderer ferret-eyed:
“I am the King of Terrors,” Want replied.

COLONEL THOMPSON IN PALACE YARD.

Who is that small Napoleon-featured pleader?
The sage, whose metaphors are demonstrations;
The bard, whose music yet shall teach all nations
That ignorance is want, war, waste, and treason;
Thompson, the Hadyn and Molière of reason.
Clear-voiced as evening's throstle, o'er the booming
Of conscious forests heard when storms are coming,
He stills these thousands, like a people's leader.

PELHAM.

We spoke of Bulwer. “He was great
In style and thought.” Could he create?
“He could both execute and plan.”
His book was making then a stir,
And a still youth beside us sate.
“What do you think of Bulwer, Sir?”
And, placid-eyed, the youth replied,
“He is a Gentleman.”

INSCRIPTION.

Here lies the man who stripp'd Sin bare,
And kept her lean, on hard-earn'd fare;
Who forced the poor at home to stay,
But rode to church on Sabbath-day;
And went to heav'n, the sinless say,
Because he bother'd God with prayer,
And would not let Him have his way.

ANN.

EPIGRAM.

[Said Death to Pol Sly, “Put no rum in thy tea]

Said Death to Pol Sly, “Put no rum in thy tea,
Or die as thy mother died, aged twenty-three.”
Pol gave him an answer that struck the churl dumb,
“My mother, you know, put no tea in her rum.”

WRITTEN WITH A PENCIL IN DARTFIELD CHURCHYARD.

Man draws his fleeting breath
In doubt and fear,
Though life for ever blooms,
And smiling ev'n on tombs,
Bids beauty say to death,
“What dost thou here?”

EPIGRAM.

[The scoundrel's virtues Candid takes on trust]

The scoundrel's virtues Candid takes on trust,
But sifts for good men's faults their very dust.

STEAM IN THE DESERT.

GRACE BEFORE MEAT.

We thank Thee, Lord, for this our food,
By honest, useful efforts won:
Requite us still with good for good!
So let thy will on earth be done.

GRACE AFTER MEAT.

Lord, Thou hast given, oh, ever give
The food by which thy children live!
Blessings to them who blessings earn,
Not ill for ill, wilt Thou return.

EPITAPH ON A SKILFUL WORKMAN.

No column's capital lies shatter'd here;
Reader! a column's base demands thy tear.

HE IS NOT HERE.

BEWARE OF DOGMAS.

Two pilgrims, broiling in the sun,
Did once to Glasgow come.
Each had but twopence. James bought rum,
With all his cash; and Charles a bun—
Of his two pennies saving one.
Charles died of fever in a week!
James lives and thrives, is stout and sleek,
And keeps, abjuring rum and gin,
A Temperance inn.

WHO HATH A DEVIL?

Wrongs, in themselves, are feeble weeds,
And yet how fast they grow!
For slaves make tyrants, and the seeds
Of all that tyrants sow.
Weeds, tyrants know, wherever sown,
Will clothe in weeds the sod:
Therefore they say, “Man, mind thy own,
And leave the rest to God.”
But God hath will'd that wretched man
Shall work while it is day,
And help his brethren, if he can,
Along their painful way;
Nor fail to plant, as on he goes
From humble door to door,
Soul-featured Beauty's pink or rose,
To bless and raise the poor.

LET ME REST.

He does well who does his best:
Is he weary? let him rest:
Brothers! I have done my best,
I am weary—let me rest.
After toiling oft in vain,
Baffled, yet to struggle fain;
After toiling long, to gain
Little good with mickle pain;
Let me rest—But lay me low,
Where the hedgeside roses blow;
Where the little daisies grow,
When the winds a-maying go;
Where the footpath rustics plod;
Where the breeze-bow'd poplars nod;
Where the old woods worship God;
Where His pencil paints the sod;
Where the wedded throstle sings;
Where the young bird tries his wings;
Where the wailing plover swings
Near the runlet's rushy springs!
Where, at times, the tempest's roar,
Shaking distant sea and shore,
Still will rave old Barnesdale o'er;
To be heard by me no more!
There, beneath the breezy west,
Tired and thankful, let me rest,
Like a child, that sleepeth best
On its gentle mother's breast.

BRITISH RURAL COTTAGES IN 1842.

The scentless rose, train'd by the poor,
May sometimes grace the peasant's door;
But when will comfort enter there?
Beauty without, hides death within,
Like flowers upon the shroud of sin:
For ev'n the poor man's marriage-joys,
His wife, his sad-lipp'd girls and boys,
In mercy or in mockery given,
But brighten, with their “hour of heav'n,”
A life of ghastly toil and care:
His pay is pain, his hope despair,
Although the cottage-rose is fair!
Out of his weekly pittance small,
Three crowns, for children, wife, and all,
Poor British Slave! how can he save
A pittance for his evening's close?
No roses deck the workhouse-grave!
Where is the aged pauper's rose!

EPIGRAM.

[I know, thy vileness is thy might]

I know, thy vileness is thy might,
And that thou 'rt in thy weakness strong;
I do not ask thee to do right;
But, paltry creature, do no wrong.

YOUNG ENGLAND.

I met a sage who had been dead
A hundred years and more;
And still he said what he had said
A hundred years before:
Then, met I one (a rogue's sly son,)
Who printed what the other said,
And praised it, ev'n with tears:
Alas! he also had been dead
A hundred years.

EPIGRAM.

[In speech and print, in prose and song]

In speech and print, in prose and song,
Still aiding Starveall's right to wrong,
How oft the people's knaves have shown,
“That mine is his, and his his own!”

POOR CHARLES.

ON A ROSE IN DECEMBER.

Stay yet, pale flower, though coming storms will tear thee,
My soul grows darker, and I cannot spare thee.

WAR.

The victories of mind,
Are won for all mankind;
But war wastes what it wins,
Ends worse than it begins,
And is a game of woes,
Which nations always lose:
Though tyrant tyrant kill,
The slayer liveth still.

SONNET ON A PAIR OF SPECTACLES.

How many men, who liv'd to bless mankind,
Have died unthank'd! Far-teaching and self-taught,
They did what learning scorns to learn or teach;
Their deeds are portion of the general thought;
Their thoughts have pass'd into the common speech,
And labour's wages; yet they left behind
Nor name, nor record! save the good which grew
Out of the sacrifice that gives and saves.
Lo, what a tree is rising from their graves,
To shelter, ev'n on earth, the wise and true!
Then, worship not famed words, which, like the winds,
Or Homer's song, seem things that cannot die,
And ever lived: they are but names of minds
Whose good or evil speaks immortally.

TO FANNY ANN.

As the flower bloweth,
As the stream floweth,
Daughter of beauty,
Do thou thy duty.
What, though the morrow
May dawn in sorrow?
Ev'n as light hasteth,
Darkness, too, wasteth:
Morn then discloses,
Raindrops on roses!
Daughter of beauty,
What, then, is duty?
Time says, “Death knoweth!”
Death says, “Time showeth!”

LAW.

Lawgiver, if thy aim is good,
Make thy laws known, and understood.

MONODY ON JOHN KEATS.

TO A LADY,

WHO COMPLAINED THAT SHE COULD NOT DECYPHER MY SIGNATURE, AND THAT I HAD ADDRESSED HER AS A “CEMENT MANUFACTURER,” WHEREAS SHE WAS MOVING IN THE FIRST CIRCLES OF SOCIETY.

I'm sorry that my ill-scrawl'd name
Defeated my intent;
And that I styled so grand a dame,
“A maker of cement.”
Forgive me, Madam! I confess,
A grievous fault was mine:
I own'd your claim to usefulness,
But knew not you were fine.

TO WED, OR NOT TO WED.

THOMAS.
I'm tired of single life;
I'll live alone no more;
I'll wed a loved and loving wife;
My sire did so before:
How brightly, then, my fire will blaze!
How sweetly Ann will sing!
We shall be merry all our days,
As skylarks on the wing.

WILLIAM.
Bless'd is the mated bird;
And where she, brooding, cowers,
Melodies of the heart are heard,
Amid the hawthorn-flowers.
Though richest wines, their sweetness fled,
Grow dull, and acrid too;
I say not, “Thomas, do not wed!”
For God says, “Thomas, do!”

NOT FOR NOUGHT.

THOMAS HOBBES IN 1651.

The labour that but stirs the earth
Imparts to worthless matter worth.

ADAM SMITH 1766.

Wealth is not only coin or gold,
But beef, cloth, brandy, rye;
And all that can be bought or sold
Is property.

TURGOT IN 1774.

The right to buy is the right to sell,
And the right to get and save:
Free commerce is a consequence
Of the right to earn and have.

SONG.

[They say I'm old, because I'm grey]

OH, TELL US!

RELIGION.

What is Religion? “Speak the truth in love.”
Reject no good. Mend, if thou canst, thy lot.
Doubting, enquire,—nor dictate till thou prove.
Enjoy thy own—exceed not, trespass not.
Pity the scorners of life's meanest thing.
If wrong'd, forgive—that Hate may lose his sting.
Think, speak, work, get—bestow, or wisely keep.
So live, that thou may'st smile, and no one weep.
Be bless'd—like birds, that sing because they love;
And bless—like rivers, singing to the sun,
Giving and taking blessings, as they run;
Or soft-voiced showers, that cool the answering grove,
When cloudy wings are wide in heav'n display'd,
And blessings brighten o'er the freshen'd sod,
Till earth is like the countenance of God.
This is Religion! saith the bard of trade.

SONNET.

[In these days, every mother's son or daughter]

In these days, every mother's son or daughter
Writes verse, which no one reads except the writer,
Although, unink'd, the paper would be whiter,
And worth, per ream, a hare, when you have caught her.
Hundreds of unstaunch'd Shelleys daily water
Unanswering dust; a thousand Wordsworths scribble;
And twice a thousand Cornlaw Rhymers dribble
Rhymed prose, unread. Hymners of fraud and slaughter,
By cant call'd other names, alone find buyers—
Who buy, but read not. “What a loss in paper,”
Groans each immortal of the host of sighers!
“What profanation of the midnight taper
In expirations vile! But I write well,
And wisely print. Why don't my poems sell?”

EPIGRAM.

[Free Trade means work for beef, not bone]

Free Trade means work for beef, not bone;
It means that men are brothers;
That every man should have his own,
And nobody another's.

SONNET.

[John. In the sound of that rebellious word]

John. In the sound of that rebellious word
There is brave music. Jack, and Jacobin,
Are vulgar terms; law-link'd to shame and sin,
They have a twang of Jack the Hangman's cord:
Yet John hath merit which can well afford
To be call'd Jack's. By life's strange offs and ons!
Glory hath had great dealings with the Johns,
Since history first awaked where fable snored.
John Cade, John Huss, John Hampden, and John Knox!
Ay, these were names of fellows who had will.
John Wilson's name, far sounded, sounds not ill;
But how unlike John Milton's, or John Locke's!
John Bright, like Locke and Milton, scorns paid sloth;
And Johnson might have liked to gibbet both.

SONNET.

[Some famous authors trade in mental sleep]

Some famous authors trade in mental sleep,
Lulling grown babies with a printed beebee:
Profound the learn'd them call, the vulgar deep:
Though o'er their pages none can laugh or weep,
And dull as coffin'd dust may he or she be,
Their dear no-meaning sells, and that's enough:
If I don't understand Sir Riddles' stuff,
Sir Riddles does—how clever, then, must he be!
At shrines whose mysteries have gods of wood,
The age-long pilgrimage brings crowds to pray;
But in a month, a fortnight, or a day,
Dead drops th' immortal who is understood!
Clear as the crystal pane that fronts the north,
His worth is seen through, therefore nothing worth.

TAKE v. GIVE.

Said Play to Work, “Our tax on food
Is useful, though I say it.”
“To you it may be,” Work replied,
“Or why force me to pay it?”

SONNET.

[From cloud-swept Snowgate, Dearne! now swift, now slow]

From cloud-swept Snowgate, Dearne! now swift, now slow,
Thou comest, playing still a busy tune;
And while rich woodbines braid the locks of June,
And wild hedge-roses in her bosom glow,
That tune is sweet. On, sky-fed Wanderer, go!
Waste not at monkish Burton this bright hour;
Pass Darfield's meads, and many a blossom'd bower;
Bid Wath good night! and sleep at Conisbro',
In Don's cold arms. Here, scarcely heard to lisp,
Thy waters bask in evening's purply gold,
And round thy lilies — fresh, blush-tinged, and crisp—
Linger, as loth to leave this loveliest scene—
Bard of the Rustic Wreath! my tale is told;
I stand again, where thou hast often been.

ON THE CORONATION OF VICTORIA THE FIRST.

WRITTEN FOR THE PRINTERS OF SHEFFIELD.

FAREWELL TO RIVILIN.

WRITTEN FOR MUSIC, AT THE REQUEST OF A. WOOD, ESQ.

THE DEAD ARE LIVING.

Ask not the unreplying tomb,
“Where are the dead?”
But ask the hawthorn-bloom,
Returning still
To vale and hill;
The verdure, spread
Wide as the seas;
The flowers, the trees,
The river's song;
The gain that laughs, the loss that weeps
The strong deed of the strong,
That ever works, and never sleeps.
Or ask the ever-taking, ever-giving,
Deep ocean, and blue sky;
And they will tell thee, that the dead are living,
And cannot die.

A COWARD'S BLOW.

IVY.

“Let me forget,” the sufferer prays,
“Past failings, faults, and sorrows!
There is no use in Yesterdays
That do not bless To-morrows;
Who would not faint on life's dread waste,
And sicken at man's doings,
If the slow ivy made not haste
To cover the soul's ruins?”

EPITAPH,

ON AN ACTIVE TRADESMAN.

This headless column on a stone—
What may this mournful shaft betoken?
Pale orphans answer, with their moan,
“The key-stone of an arch is gone!
A mother's heart is broken.”

EPIGRAM.

[Companionship in toil or sorrow]

Companionship in toil or sorrow
Makes every man a brother:
Till we have work'd or wept together
We do not know each other.

WRITTEN AFTER READING GOETHE'S FAUST.

Clothe truth in light, and men shall deem thee mad;
But give to thought a dream's profundities,
And learning's self, for worth they never had,
Shall praise thy pages, and pronounce thee wise:
Old readers still shall find thee new to them,
As o'er thy lines for hidden wealth they pore,
To prop the Ancient House of Fallacies:
At each old nothing wondering more and more;
Shouting, “Eureka,” as they turn it o'er;
Shall each discoverer laud his special gem!
For deep and safe the buried meaning lies
That never lived, and therefore never dies.

EPITAPH.

Reader! since God expects thee, too,
Be, like our brother, kind and true;
Then, will three words thy worth express,
Honesty, Love, and Usefulness.

WOMAN.

LENT AND LOST.

LAND.

He ties up hands
Who locks up lands:
The lands which can't be sold and bought
Bring men and states to worse than nought:
The lands which can be freely sold
Are worth a world of barren gold.

EPIGRAM.

[What is a communist? One who hath yearnings]

What is a communist? One who hath yearnings
For equal division of unequal earnings:
Idler, or bungler, or both, he is willing
To fork out his penny, and pocket your shilling.

THE PEOPLE'S ANTHEM.

WRITTEN FOR MUSIC, AT THE REQUEST OF W. T. WOOD, ESQ.

LOVE STRONG IN DEATH.

We watch'd him, while the moonlight,
Beneath the shadow'd hill,
Seem'd dreaming of good angels,
And all the woods were still.
The brother of two sisters
Drew painfully his breath:
A strange fear had come o'er him,
For love was strong in death.
The fire of fatal fever
Burn'd darkly on his cheek,
And often to his mother
He spoke, or tried to speak:
“I felt, as if from slumber
I never could awake:
Oh, Mother, give me something
To cherish for your sake!
A cold, dead weight is on me,
A heavy weight, like lead:
My hands and feet seem sinking
Quite through my little bed:
I am so tired, so weary—
With weariness I ache:
Oh, Mother, give me something
To cherish for your sake!
Some little token give me,
Which I may kiss in sleep—
To make me feel I'm near you,
And bless you, though I weep.
My sisters say I'm better—
But, then, their heads they shake:
Oh, Mother, give me something
To cherish for your sake!
Why can't I see the poplar,
The moonlit stream and hill,
Where, Fanny says, good angels
Dream, when the woods are still?
Why can't I see you, Mother?
I surely am awake:
Oh, haste! and give me something
To cherish for your sake!”
His little bosom heaves not;
The fire hath left his cheek:
The fine chord—is it broken?
The strong chord—could it break?
Ah, yes! the loving spirit
Hath wing'd his flight away:
A mother and two sisters
Look down on lifeless clay.

TO THOMAS LISTER.

Friend, I return your English Hexameters, thanking you for them.
More than forty years since, I constructed such verses,
Choosing a lofty theme, too often worded unsimply.
Even now, I remember one stol'n line of the anthem:
“Thou for ever and ever, God, Omnipotent, reignest!”
Though my verbiage pleased me, long ago did it journey
Whither dead things tend. For Homer's world-famous metre
Cannot in English be pleasing. Saxon may write it in Saxon,
Oft for dactyl and spondee using iambic and trochee,
Pleased—and making a boast of his wasted labour and lost time;
But with grace and simplicity none can write it in our tongue,
Though the sturdy gothic oft runs into it promptly,
As it grandly does in these fine lines from the Bible:
“How art thou fall'n from heav'n, oh, Lucifer, son of the Morn!” and
“Why do the heathen rage, and the people imagine a vain thing?”
Not unpleasing always, mostly 'tis feeble, yet stilted,
Wanting, in wanting ease, the might which is mightiest, beauty.
Yet can it finely paint the beauty of form and of colour;
Skies, and the sea; or mountains cloud-like in distance, and stealing
Azure from heav'n; or the daisy fresh in the dewgleam of dawn; or
Young June's blush-tinted hawthorn, that scatters the snow of its dropp'd flowers
Over the faded cowslip, and roses embraced by the woodbine,
Under the mute, or songful, or thunder-whispering forest;
But from man's heart seldom it brings the tear, which the angels,
Knowing not sorrow, might almost in their blessedness envy.
Slow or rapid, sweet or solemn, in Greek and in Latin,
It is in English undignified, loose, and worse than the worst prose.
One advantage it has—it must be utter'd as prose is;
And as it may be wanted, if only as changes are wanted,
I subjoin the rule for its fitting or modern construction:
Every line must consist of six feet, dactyls and spondees,
Dactyls and trochees, or dactyls and both: A dactyl the fifth foot
Must be; a spondee or trochee the sixth: Each line must contain not
More than sixteen syllables, and not fewer than thirteen.

BULLY IDLE'S PRAYER.

Lord, send us weeks of Sundays,
A saint's day every day,
Shirts gratis, ditto breeches,
No work, and double pay!
Tell Short and Long they're both short now;
To Slow and Fast one meed allow;
Let Louis Blanc take Ashley's cow,
And Richmond give him hay!

HYMN.

[Still for rest on Sabbath day]

Still for rest on Sabbath day,
Air and light on “Labour's day,”
Let us toil—if toil we may;
Toil till death, if toil we may,
Toil till death for pauper's pay,
And our blessèd Sabbath day.

WILL IT RAIN?

GOOD MEN'S GRAVES.

Lone, they rest. Nor Snap, nor Snivel,
Robs, or pities virtue's dust!
Marble insults, Cant and Drivel
Build not o'er the just.
Them, in thought, the honest only
Visit, while they toil as slaves:
Oh, 'Tis true! the stars shine lonely
Over good men's graves.
All in silence, not in sorrow,
Read they on the wordless sod,
“These men's deeds will speak, to-morrow;
They are words of God;
Heard in heav'n, with tears of gladness;
Mute on earth! yet working there;
Bringing chains for rapine's madness,
Wings for chain'd despair.”

YOUNG POET'S PLAINT.

God, release our dying sister!
Beauteous blight hath sadly kiss'd her:
Whiter than the wild, white roses,
Famine in her face discloses
Mute submission, patience holy,
Passing fair! but passing slowly.
Though she said, “You know I'm dying,”
In her heart green trees are sighing;
Not of them hath pain bereft her,
In the city, where we left her:
“Bring,” she said, “a hedgeside blossom!”
Love shall lay it on her bosom.

ARTISAN'S OUTDOOR HYMN.

Again, oh, Lord, we humbly pray
That Thou wilt guide our steps aright:
Bless here, this day, tired Labour's day!
Oh, fill our souls with love and light!
For failing food, six days in seven,
We till the black town's dust and gloom:
But here we drink the breath of heav'n,
And here to pray the poor have room.
The stately temple, built with hands,
Throws wide its doors to pomp and pride;
But in the porch their beadle stands,
And thrusts the child of toil aside.
Therefore we seek the daisied plain,
Or climb thy hills, to touch thy feet;
Here, far from splendour's city-fane,
Thy weary sons and daughters meet.
Is it a crime to tell Thee here,
That here the sorely-tried are met?
To seek thy face, and find Thee near?
And on thy rock our feet to set?
Where, wheeling wide, the plover flies;
Where sings the woodlark on the tree;
Beneath the music of thy skies,
Is it a crime to worship Thee?
“We waited long, and sought Thee, Lord,”
Content to toil, but not to pine;
And with the weapons of thy Word
Alone, assail'd our foes and thine.
Thy truth and Thee, we bade them fear;
They spurn thy truth, and mock our moan!
“Thy counsels, Lord, they will not hear,
And Thou hast left them to their own.”

THE POOR MAN'S DAY.

Grahame.

HYMN.

[To live in vain! to live in pain!]

PRAYER.

Bless'd be thy name, Eternal One!
Thy kingdom come! thy will be done!
Give us, this day, our daily food;
Requite us, Lord, with good for good!
Aid us temptation to repel;
And from all evil guard us well:
For thine the kingdom still will be,
All glory, and all sov'reignty.

THE IMITATED LANE.

Now, Landscape-Maker, that with living trees
Createst Painting! thou should'st hither come,
And here learn how the town-sick heart to please.
Can'st thou not, in thy tiny wild, find room
For a wild lane, that with capricious ease
Shading or brightening self-taught branch or flower,
Will saunter gently to a seated bower?
Or lead thee through a cloudlet of green gloom,
Cheer'd by the music of its hidden rills,
To sudden sunburst? where the hunter's cot
Looks down on rivers, and the distant hills
Climb to the firmament, yet marry not
Their purple to the orange-blaze, that fills
O'er-arching heav'n with pomp,
And peace, and power!

ODE ON THE MARRIAGE OF VICTORIA THE FIRST.

THE SUN'S BIRD.

SCOTSMEN TO SCOTLAND,

WRITTEN FOR THE SCOTSMEN OF SHEFFIELD.

Thy Men of Men shall we forget,
Old Scotland? No. Where'er we be,
All lonely, or in exile met,
We think of them and thee.
Mother of Knox! “hast thou a charm”
That gives to all thy name who bear
Thoughts which unnerve the despot's arm,
And Will, to do and dare?
Thou bad'st him build on tyrant's bones
An altar to the Lord of Lords;
Thou gav'st him power to shatter thrones,
And vanquish kings, with words.
Stern Mother of the deathless dead!
Where stands a Scot, a freeman stands,
Self-stay'd, if poor—self-clothed, self-fed,
Mind-mighty, in all lands.
No mitred pleader need thy sons,
To save the wretch whom Mercy spurns;
No classic lore thy little ones,
Who find a Bard in Burns.
Their path, though dark, they will not miss;
Secure, they tread on danger's brink;
They say, “This shall be!” and it is;
For, ere they act, they think.
Mother of Burns! thy woe-nursed bard
Not always wisely thought or said;
He err'd, he sinn'd—but, oh, 'tis hard
To ban the voiceless dead!
Mother! thy doric speech hath power
The heart with passion's thrill to move;
But none could sing, in hall or bower,
Like him, thy Bard of Love.
Who dipp'd his words in lightning? Who
With thunder arm'd his stormy rhyme?
Who made his music tender, true,
Terse, terrible, sublime?
Who bade thy bard, in thrall, maintain
A freeman's port, where'er he trod?
Who taught the peasant to disdain
Proud Fashion's Minstrels? God.
Who gave the child of toil a lyre,
With living sunbeams wildly strung?
And taught his soul of living fire
Truth's universal tongue?
God. But with torture Faction fill'd
The cup he drain'd in gloomy pride:
What marvel, if the poison kill'd?
What marvel, if he died?
Few were his days, his fortunes foul;
Bravely he struggled, though not long;
And with a poet's glowing soul,
Drew near to God in song.
For Conscience to thy poet said,
“Burns! be a martyr!” “For the truth,
I will,” he cried—and bow'd his head,
And died, grey-hair'd in youth.
With little men he might not stay,
But hasted from a world unkind:
Oh, guess the worth he threw away,
By what he left behind!
And what a wreath his fame had worn,
Amid a world's immortal tears,
Had he, like England's Milton, borne
The fruit of sixty years!
But shall it of our sires be told
That they their “brother poor” forsook?
No! for they gave him more than gold;
They bought the brave man's Book!
Scotland! thy sons—and not unearn'd
This day of pleasing tears returns—
Are met to mourn thy trampled, spurn'd,
Poor, broken-hearted Burns.
And oft again, the kind, the brave,
Who sorrow's feast, like him, have shared,
Will meet, to honour in his grave
Thy glorious rustic bard.
Oh, spare his frailties!—write them not
On mute Misfortune's coffin-lid!—
Ev'n Bacon err'd, and greater Scott
Not always greatly did.
A fearful gift is flame from heav'n,
To him who bears it in his breast:
Self-fired, and blasted, but forgiv'n,
Let Robert's ashes rest.

ERIN, A DIRGE, FOR APRIL, 1847.

RHYMED RAMBLES.

IN THREE PARTS.

1. Part First.

TO G. C. HOLLAND, M.D.

Holland! thou lov'st the little songful lyre,
On which, well-pleased thy bidding to obey,
For the first time, I now attempt to play,
Fretting, with skill-less touch, the sonnet's wire.
Alas! the strings of this small harp require,
To bring forth half their worth, a master's hand!
Yet, as I wander through a lovely land,
And stop, at times, its marvels to admire,
May I not sing them too? Yea, while the breeze,
Sighing o'er moated grange, or castle bold,
Awakes the music of their ancient trees,
The lyre, beloved of bards whose fires re-cold,
That sweetest lyre I'll place before my knees,
And make my theme the wonders I behold.

POWERS OF THE SONNET.

Why should the tiny harp be chain'd to themes
In fourteen lines with pedant rigour bound?
The sonnet's might is mighter than it seems:
Witness the bard of Eden lost and found,
Who gave this lute a clarion's battle sound.
And, lo! another Milton calmly turns
His eyes within on light that ever burns,
Waiting till Wordsworth's second peer be found!
Meantime, Fitzadam's mournful music shows
That the scorn'd sonnet's charm may yet endear
Some long deep strain, or lay of well-told woes;
Such as, in Byron's couplet, brings a tear
To manly cheeks, or o'er his stanza throws
Rapture and grief, solemnity and fear.

EUGENE ARAM.

Knaresbro'! thou wilt be famous through all time,
Because poor Aram's history imparts
A dreadful unsolv'd riddle to all hearts—
A half-told secret, in its gloom sublime,
Though trite and common are death, want, and crime!
But Bulwer, o'er thy caverns, rocks, and trees,
Throws the deep charm of thoughtful melodies,
Heart cherish'd, like a dim cathedral's chime.
That charm will live when rock-built towers decay—
That charm, when rocks themselves are turn'd to dust,
Will to the slanderers of the great and just,
And the grim ghost of buried envy, say—
“Though Time hath plough'd your graves and ground thy bust,
I am not of the things which pass away.”

PLUMPTON.

Who would not here become a hermit? here
Grow old in song? here die, on Nature's breast,
Hush'd, like yon wild bird on the lake, to rest?
Then laid asleep beneath the branches sere,
Till the Awakener in the east appear,
And call the dead to judgment? Quietness,
Methinks the heart-whole rustic loves thee less
Than the town's thought-worn smiler. Oh! most dear
Art thou to him who flies from care to bowers
That breathe of sainted calmness! and, to me,
More welcome than the breath of hawthorn flowers
To children of the city, when delight
Leads them from smoke to cowslips, is the sight
Of these green shades, those rocks, this little sea.

BOLTON ABBEY.

Spirits of wonder, loveliness, and fear,
Dwell in these groves, beneath o'er-arching trees,
With the dim presence of their mysteries
Haunting the rocks and mountain shadows near:
They pass the lone enthusiast, wandering here,
By strangled Wharfe, or Barden's ancient tower;
Pass him, nor shake a dew-drop from a flower,
But with their whispers soothe his soul-taught ear,
As with a dream of prayer; until he starts,
Awaken'd from deep thoughts of Time's calm might
And Nature's beauty, and in awe departs;—
When, to the Abbey's moonlight-tinted walls,
The demon of the spectred river calls,
Mock'd by the voices of mysterious night.

THE VICARAGE.

The Vicar's house is smother'd in its roses,
His garden glows with dahlias large and new;
“Bees murmur in his limes the summer through;”
And on the seat beneath them often dozes
A better man than Calumny supposes.
His living is three hundred pounds a-year;
“But not of servants, wife, and children clear.”
He gives away his common right and closes,
And keeps no horse. When winter strips the tree,
To poor men's homes his wife and daughters go,
With needful gifts of flannel, food, or fire,
And made-wines for the sick. Now, would not he,
Who deem'd the labourer worth of his hire,
Have paid it to his faithful servant?—No.

POET v. PARSON.

A hireling's wages to the priest are paid;
While lives and dies, in want and rags, the bard!
But preaching ought to be its own reward,
And not a sordid, if an honest trade.
Paul, labouring proudly with his hands, array'd
Regenerated hearts in peace and love;
And when, with power, they preach'd the mystic dove,
Penn, Barclay, Clarkson, ask'd not Mammon's aid.
As, for its own sake, poetry is sweet
To poets—so, on tasks of mercy bound,
Religion travels with unsandaled feet,
Making the flinty desert holy ground;
And never will her triumph be complete
While one paid pilgrim upon earth is found.

BRIMHAM ROCKS.

Rocks! sacred deem'd to eldest fraud, when fear
First darken'd death's reality with dreams!
The spirit of your cruel worship seems,
Like a wolf's shadow, yet to linger here,
Deepening the gloom with peril still too near;
For guile and knowledge long have been allies,
Most pious found when preaching blasphemies,
Most treacherous when most trusted. But the year,
Whose seasons are all winters, soon must close;
Knowledge hath join'd the millions; and mankind
Are learning to distinguish friends from foes;
The eagle-eyed give sight unto the blind;
The eagle-wing'd are chasing crime-made woes;
The mighty-voiced are heard in every wind.

TREES AT BRIMHAM.

Gnarl'd oak and holly! stone-cropp'd like the stone!
Are ye of it, or is it part of you?
Your union strange is marvellously true,
And makes the granite, which I stand upon,
Seem like the vision of an empire gone—
Gone, yet still present, thou it never was,
Save as a shadow—let the shadow pass!
So perish human glories, every one!
But Rocks! ye are not shadows; Trees! ye cast
Th' Almighty's shadow o'er the homeward bee,
His name on Brimham! yea, the coming blast,
Beneath his curtains, reads it here with me;
And pauses not to number marvels past,
But speeds the thunder on o'er land and sea.

ROCK IDOL AT BRIMHAM.

Stone! did the hand of sacerdotal fraud
Shape thee into this vital type of things?
Or did a million winters, on their wings
Of scythe-like perseverance come abroad,
To bid Conjecture stand before thee awed,
And, almost severing thee from parent-earth,
Make thee a marvel? Vainly giv'st thou birth
To solemn fancies, building an abode
Around thee, for a world of shapeless ghosts;
Vainly they rise before me, calling up
Kings and their masters, and imagined hosts
That fight for clouds. What then? The heath-flower's cup
With dew-drops feeds this fountain ever clear,
And the ring'd ouzel whistles—“God is here!”

STUDLEY.

Behold! the Medicean Venus! O
Is not this beauty? Yes, for it is truth.
See how she bends in her eternal youth!
E'en thus she charm'd ten thousand years ago;
Ere painting's magic bade the canvas glow,
Or soul inspired the marble; thus she stood
Before her own Adonis of the wood!
The master-piece of sculpture? Artist! No.
In all divine perfection as she stands,
So came she, perfect, from th' Almighty's hands,
The masterpiece of Nature. Everywhere
His spirit walks; but he who in strange lands
Seeks her fair form, turns homeward in despair,
Then seeks it in his soul, and finds it there.

CRITICISM.

Yet art hath less of instinct than of thought,
All instinct though it seems; for as the flower
Which blooms in solitude, by noiseless power,
And skill divine, is wonderfully wrought,
So from deep study art's high charm is caught;
And as the sunny air, and dewy light,
Are spun in heavenly looms, till blossoms, bright
With honey'd wealth and sweetness, droop o'er-fraught,
And our eyes breathe of beauty; so the bard
Wrings from slow time inimitable grace;
So wins immortal Music her reward,
E'en with a bee's industry; and we trace
The sculptor's home-thoughts thro' his labours hard,
Till beams, with deathless love, the chisell'd face.

FOUNTAINS ABBEY.

Abbey! for ever smiling pensively,
How like a thing of Nature dost thou rise,
Amid her loveliest works! as if the skies,
Clouded with grief, were arch'd thy roof to be,
And the tall trees were copied all from thee!
Mourning thy fortunes—while the waters dim
Flow like the memory of thy evening hymn;
Beautiful in their sorrowing sympathy;
As if they with a weeping sister wept,
Winds name thy name! But thou, though sad, art calm,
And time with thee his plighted troth hath kept;
For harebells deck thy brow, and, at thy feet,
Where sleep the proud, the bee and red-breast meet,
Mixing thy sighs with Nature's lonely psalm.

PARTING TEARS.

Scenes which renew my youth, and wake again
Its earliest dreams of love and beauty!—here,
E'en as in heaven, found perfect, though the tear
Of frailty dims them with its earthly stain
Too often and too soon! I can remain
With you no longer; I must haste to things
That drink the ice, which in a moment brings
The chill of fifty winters, and their pain,
To the sick heart. Already I grow cold
In spirit; and the thought of leaving you
For alien scenes, where nothing good or new
Remains for crowds to show, or men to say,
Instructs me—not that I in years am old,
But that the tresses of my soul are grey.

RETURN TO SHEFFIELD.

To swelter in the town's distemper'd glow,
Heart-sick to sleep, and weary wake to strife,
To make a curse of hope, a broil of life,
And blight the rose to bid the cypress grow,
Pain's angel calls me; and I rise to go
Back from the castled wood, the sainted tower—
Scenes where man's home is lovely as a flower,
And he himself still fair, though stain'd with woe!
Where Nid, and Aire, and Wharfe through Eden glide,
Or Brimham's rocks of Druid terrors tell,
No longer, little lyre, may I abide;
No more with Nature's lonely powers to dwell,
I leave thee here on Skell's all-beauteous side;
Toy of the Titans! tiny Harp, farewell!!

2. Part Second.

TO THOMAS LISTER.

THE CHAINED EAGLE.

Slow Time seems swift. Since Charles stood here with me
Three years have pass'd o'er Wharncliffe's wood and stream;
And Charles is busy still, where'er he be,
Willing to labour, if he may but dream.
Poor Pemberton! the forest speaks of thee;
The eagles? No; they dwell with other things;
But he who caged them here, though chain'd, is free,
And might do better for us, with his wings,
Than flap his mental bonds, to flatter kings.
When will he fly away, and be at rest?
Can he roll back the ocean to its springs?
Ye chain'd in soul! what must be, shall be best:
To Space and Time, their food Improvement brings;
“We dwell with God in both,” Obstruction's poet sings.

CASTLE HOWARD.

Palfreyman! hither, with toil-strengthen'd frame,
What time Napoleon warr'd on Russian snows,
I came, a wanderer's privilege to claim,
And gaze on deathless death, and deathless woes.
The soul of truth glow'd then, as now it glows,
O'er all the life and glory of these walls;
Ideal Power, in pomp of gloom and flame,
Call'd on my spirit then as now he calls:
“Do not my sons,” he said, “deserve their fame?”
I could not scorn his bright star-written name,
Though, in her majesty heart-deified,
A beauteous friend, all graceful, with me came;
Yet I turn'd from him with a husband's pride,
And bless'd the LIVING WOMAN at my side.

THE THREE MARYS AT CASTLE HOWARD, IN 1812 AND 1837.

The lifeless son—the mother's agony,
O'erstrain'd till agony refused to feel—
That sinner too I then dry-eyed could see;
For I was harden'd in my selfish weel,
And strength and joy had strung my soul with steel.
I knew not then that man may live to be
A thing of life, that feels he lives in vain—
A taper, to be quench'd in misery!
Forgive me, then, Caracci! if I seek
To look on this, thy tale of tears, again;
For now the swift is slow, the strong is weak.
Mother of Christ! how merciful is pain!
But, if I longer view thy tear-stain'd cheek,
Heart-broken Magdalene! my heart will break.

WALKLEY.

Sarah and William Adams! here we stood,
Roof'd by the cloud, which cast his frown between
Wardsend and Loxley's moorlands. From the wood
Of one-starr'd Grenno, like a sea unseen,
The wind swept o'er us, seeming, in his might,
To shake the steadfast rocks; while, rushing keen
Beyond the edge of darkness, stormy light,
As from a league-wide trumpet, on the scene
A cataract of glory pour'd; and, bright
In gloom, the hill-tops islanded the night
Of billowy shade around us. Vale and hill,
Forest and cloud, were restless as a fight;
They seem'd as they would never more be still;
While, anchor'd over all, the high-poised kite
Saw the foam'd rivers dash their blue with white.

WORDS AND THINGS.

Our wordy friend in metaphor transcends
All mortal scribes—his figures always strike!
And when he makes of far-sought odds and ends
Pictures of nothing, wonderfully like,
He calls them “THOUGHTS that startle!” Evening blends
Green with her red and purple with her gold;
And, while yon all-hued sun-born rainbow bends
O'er blush-tinged peak, cragged glen, and shadowed wold,
Harmonized melodies in light are roll'd
Wherever lake reflects her dying beam,
Or mourns in Eden sad-voiced breeze, or stream,
Or showery cloud! but ne'er will man behold
The truth of beauty in a pedant's dream,
Cold as his sympathies, and false as cold.

MAUSOLEUM AT WENTWORTH.

Hither I came—when life itself was new,
And new this form of greatness dead and gone—
To tremble in the gloom which draws and drew
A purple veil o'er deathlike life in stone.
This man a pitying look on frailty threw:
Have I not heard a matron, good and true,
Speak of him, with a tear upon her cheek?
Knaves call'd him weak—but when was virtue weak?
O ye who wring the heart until it break,
And scourge pale nations with the wealth ye steal!
Here, if late pardon for your crimes ye seek,
To your cold souls the thoughts ye dread reveal;
Think of our vulture with the gory beak!
And of meek Rockingham, with humbled malice, speak.

WENTWORTH HOUSE.

“Now, for the enchanted palace of our youth!”
But what have I with palaces to do,
Taught as I am, by Nature, time, and truth,
That pride can envy pomp, and hate it too?
Yes; but the ideal of the fair and true
Lives here in marble, by creative mind
Made sacred to the glory of mankind;
And if ideal beauty cannot woo
Thy steps to enter Taste's proud temple—Go!
Yet, wherefore? Wentworth's princely halls can show,
By Vandyke limn'd, the form of one who knew
How best to strike a tyrant's basest blow.
Behold him! nor to curse his crimes be slow—
Behold fell Strafford! man's and freedom's foe!

PORTRAIT AT WENTWORTH.

Was he then human? Tools of Tyrants! could
This face be Strafford's? Strafford's! who his hands
Wrung in Hibernia's hair, and, drunk with blood,
Call'd murder wisdom! Brutal as his bands,
He startled hell with crime. His savage mood
Nor pity sooth'd nor reason's might could bow.
But Hampden dared withstand him, Pym withstood;
And men were found who laid his master low,
And sent the servant—whither tyrants go.
And, lo, at length, strange pangs his heart have riven!
There is a touch of feeling on his brow,
“For pledges left him by a saint in heav'n.”
No more than this, could royal Charles allow?
“Put not your trust in princes!” Why didst thou?

BUST AND PORTRAIT AT WENTWORTH.

This bust, which beautifully doth relate
What heav'n's beloved are born to do and be;
These lines, these hues, which long shall renovate
Thy gentleness, thy truth, thy purity;
Are all, Fitzwilliam! that remain of thee.
The steward of the trampled poor is gone!
The prince of charity hath bow'd to fate!
The godlike friend of him that wanteth one,
Finds good deeds done on earth his best estate.
How long for thee God bade his angel wait!
O reverend brow! thou conquerest Envy's frown,
And dead, half-humanizest Faction's hate;
As when a poet of time-tried renown
Casts o'er the world he left the light of suns gone down.

THRYBERG.

Scenes of my thoughtless youth! here are ye all;
Dalton! and Dalton school! and Dalton Deign!
But changed ye are! or I am. Mean and small
Ye seem, and humbled. Sunk into the plain,
The hill is dwarf'd with age. Its coronal
The glen hath lost, its ferny plumes, and, more
Than these, its freedom! Thryberg's verdant wall
Is here, and here the oak I knew of yore;
But who, to me, their grandeur can restore?
My heart hath made them bankrupt. Where they stood
Stand Wentworth's halls; but not, as heretofore,
Portall'd for gods. O far-known Silverwood!
O cavern'd Ravensfield! Don, flowing o'er
A narrower bed, bathes now a tamer shore.

PROSPECT FROM THRYBERG.

Thou only, Wincobank, reign'st undespoiled,
King of the valley of my youth and prime,
Through which the river, like a snake uncoil'd,
Wanders, though tamed, a match for conquering time.
Behind thee mountains, solemn and sublime,
Take from the stooping skies their purply gold;
And could I in that brightness steep my rhyme,
And steal yon glow of green and crimson, roll'd
Far o'er the realms of evening's western clime,
A tale of Nature's splendour should be told
Which Byron might transcribe for Scott, and deem
That earth, like heav'n, hath scenes which grow not old;
O let me dip my pencil in thy beam,
Thou setting sun! ere death cut short this fever'd dream.

RETROSPECTION.

World of my boyhood! art thou what thou wast?
Seen through the melancholy mist of years,
Thy woods a pale diminish'd shadow cast
O'er thoughts grown grey, and feelings dimm'd with tears.
Our spirits, biggen'd by their griefs and fears,
Sadden and dwindle, with their backward view,
All they behold. Chang'd world! thy face appears
Poor as the toy that pleas'd when life was new;
And mournful as th' inscription, trite and true,
That lingers on our little sister's grave.
Roch Abbey! Canklow! Aldwark! if I crave,
Now, a boy's joy, from some lone flower's deep blue,
Will your loved flowers assume a pensive hue?
Or smile as once they smiled, still growing where they grew?

ROCH ABBEY.

3. Part Third.

TO ELIZABETH.

CLOUDLESS STANAGE.

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

NOON ON GREAT KINDER.

TO THOMAS CROSSLEY.

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

A DREAM.

CONISBOROUGH CASTLE.

LYRICS FOR MY DAUGHTERS.

SONG.

[Oh, Love, thou art a heav'n on earth]

SONG.

[“The Home of Taste,” say souls of dust]

CHANT.

[The angels are our brothers]

The angels are our brothers;
Let us like them become,
And emulate in beauty
The first-born of our home:
Lord! we are thine, and they are thine:
In rescued Eden, let us twine
With mortal virtues love divine,
And be earth's angels!

SONG.

[When days of frost and snow were over]

SONG.

[Sing her a song of the white-headed one]

SONG.

[For Spring, and flowers of Spring]

SONG.

[When the pale worker faints]

PLAINT.

THE YEAR OF SEEDS.

1848.

I.

Toy of the Titans! Tiny Harp! again
I quarrel with the order of thy strings,
Establish'd by the law of sonnet-kings,
And used by giants who do nought in vain.
Was Petrarch, then mistaken in the strain
That charms Italia? Were they tasteless things
That Milton wrought? And are they mutterings
Untuneful, that pay Wordsworth with pleased pain?
No. But I see that tyrants come of slaves;
That states are won by rush of robbers' steel;
And millions starved and tortured to their graves,
Because as they are taught men think and feel;
Therefore, I change the sonnet's slavish notes
For cheaper music, suited to my thoughts.

II.

Far uplands, gleaming suddenly, advance;
And under the broad moon their farthest snows
Shine like the sunbright lakes of new-found lands;
While from her forehead she her dark hair throws,
And (lord of midnight,) the rapt poet stands
Mute as the Roman, from the shore of France
Gazing on Britain o'er the virgin sea;
And weaving then the fates that were to be,
For generations, times, and climes, and strands,
Unknown and unconceived. Oh, unborn Year!
Disclose the comings which the past commands,
The joy, the woe, the crime, the hope, the fear,
That bid the future join the ages gone,
Still uttering the eternal mandate, “On!”

III.

In the mark'd hut, whose flamed-up smoke declares
That morn approaches, heavily snores one
Who loves the moon, and seldom sees the sun:
Upon his chested picklocks, gun, and snares,
He sits, and nods. Starting, he wakes, and stares
Red as the fire, after his boys, who run
Through the quick-closing door, into the dun
Cold road, for warmth; while his gloom'd wife prepares
His morning supper. Why do men deny
His right to live by honest labour? Why,
Ev'n as the desert's tiger, is he free?
Gamekeeper once, now poacher, (When to be
Burglar and cutthroat?) the world's worst he dares;
Because he stole one of our Master's hares!

IV.

Why do the tears swell in his gloom'd wife's eyes?
To her and hers he is already lost.
Oh, conscious river, crisping in the frost!
Thou snow, that stiflest echo! and ye skies,
Alive with stars, that seem to watch the glade,
And, there, some object, that all ghastly lies!
The last night of the dying Year hath seen
Two widows and twelve orphans newly made!
And Law will have another victim soon.
Not ten yards from our Lady's wayside spring;
Where daisy-rill, iced o'er, is glittering,
The lover's gate, and gospel-thorn between;
Upon its back lies stark a horrid thing,
With dead eyes staring at the ghastly moon.

V.

Not die? Who saith that Nature cannot die?
Everywhere spreadeth, all things covereth
Echoless, motionless, unbounded snow
The vagrant's footfall waketh no reply:
Starved wretch! he pauseth—Whither would he go?
He listeneth finger-lipp'd, and nothing saith
Of all the thoughts that fill'd his soul with woe,
But, freezing into stiffness, lacketh breath.
Dumb deadness pilloweth day on every hill.
Earth has no sound, no motion the dead sky;
No current, sensible to ear or eye,
The muffled stream's unconquerable will.
The pulse of Being seemeth standing still;
And January is the King of Death.

VI.

Give not our blankets, tax-fed Squire, to him,
Thy willing pauper, with the dangerous brow!
He is not worthier, generous Squire, than thou,
But stronger far, and sound in wind and limb.
Know'st thou yon widow? She is wise and chaste;
And comely, though her famish'd eyes wax dim.
Her husband built a house upon the waste,
And lost it: they who found it should make haste
With help for her who, else, will die to-day.
She hath no blankets! and no parish-pay:
But she hath frosted feet, a fireless grate,
A well-swept floor—by neighbour's feet untrod!
Tears, which are ice; a starved dog, a clean plate,
Her wedding ring, her bible—and her God!

VII.

Ralph Leech believes (and he can read and write,)
That Conference Sunday-schools have saved the nation.
He would compel the dark to seek his light,
Yet hates, for freedom's sake, state-education.
That corn laws are “Man's wisdom, and God's mercy;”
That Prairie is the Book of Common Prayer;
And that one Shakspeare is a fat old Player;
He doubts no more than that Canton's in Jersey.
Though cold the night, how fast his chapel fills!
Why? Sir De Suckem hath a message sent,
Urging the Suckems of the People's Cause
To prop Saint Suckem's Navigation laws;
Therefore, our friends petition Parliament
Against cheap sugar, slavery, and steam mills!

VIII.

All hail, Westknab! Great Kinder! Blakelowscar!
Stanedge! Winhill! Storm's Blackstone! From afar
When ye come forth in ether clear and still,
Sad tidings ye convey to Hargate-rill
Of coming wreck and elemental war.
While broadens the bright sun, or noontide star;
As if, corrupted by their uncurb'd will,
The lofty and the bright rejoiced in ill.
So, when drew nigh doom'd Britain's baleful hour,
Portents of mightiest Evil Spirits cast
Dire brightness on the face of Evil Power;
And love and labour, heart-struck, stood aghast,
While horror wrote, beneath th' affrighted sky
A blood-red warning for eternity.

IX.

Rivers are torrents, vales and plains are lakes,
When February draws her curtains down.
Rain! rain! The universal snow forsakes
Moorland and mountain, forest, farm, and town.
Rain! Rain! it pours, it pours. Red land-floods drown
Blue ocean's baffled tide. With calm cold frown,
The cold grey rock, that saw death's cradle, wakes
From his old dream of drowth, to find his home
In cloud-hung deluge. The old forest shakes
His wrinkled forehead o'er the whirling foam
Of inland sea; and with the haste that takes
Life's sad last blessing, down the revels come
Of sky and upland, mix'd in cataract
That rioteth in waste, like one who long hath lack'd.

X.

How like the clear, bright ether, which brings fire,
Wind, rain, and darkness, is the cruel eye
Of plotting Statecraft! Everywhere conspire
Thrones, and thy despotlings, Feudality,
To crush the hopes of Freedom everywhere.
The spoil of nations is their common fund.
Their first card was the baffled Sonderbund;
They play'd and lost! and still to lose prepare.
But thou art reckless, Orleans! pause awhile.
Thou wilt not? Play, then. Ye again have lost,
Kings of the robb'd! and at your proper cost,
Must risk, henceforth, your stakes and trumps of guile.
What, though your Kinglings, in themselves a host,
Will pack your cards? They tremble, while they smile.

XI.

Oh, that the winds of March could wither up
The never-sleeping treachery of Kings!
What, though Commotion hath the whirlwind's wings,
If blind Misrule is still the Unwithstood?
What, though wrong'd men have startled Fraud and Force,
If the leagued dynasties of Foot and Horse
Brood o'er a new Niagara of blood,
And drunken Waste still hugs her empty cup?
Hark, how the World's benetted miscreancies
Chaunt their growl'd slang, for altar, jail, and throne,
While in the Bael of sworded villanies
Each paltry despotling protects his own!
Proving the soundness of the saw accursed,
That little tyrants always are the worst.

XII.

Cold sneerers, dead to pity, lost to shame!
It came, it cometh, “the tremendous gloom,”
That hurl'd the sire-dethroner to his doom;
God whispers—Hark! he names “The dreaded Name
Of Demogorgon!” Still your wolfish laws
Bare chain'd Prometheus to your vulture-claws;
And hope ye to escape the Torturer's fate?
Though long delay'd, it cometh, as it came!
It cometh—and will find you taught too late,
Soul-chaining, chain'd in soul, repentant never,
Darkest, yet darkening! Then, the fated frown
Will cast ye deep beneath all darkness down,
And brighten'd by your infamous renown,
All other infamy look bright for ever.

XIII.

Hath April wept herself into a dream
Of wondrous joy? or a reality
Fairer and brighter than all dreaming? Deem
Not lightly, Bard, of her regality
In goodness. Lo, the beautiful are strong!
Lo, gentlest-love is power, whose noiseless stream
Keeps fresh the sea of life, which else would teem
Only with plagues! Oh, gold-bill'd Ouzle's song!
Hath love's still might waked thee? Love's April! coldly
Primrosy airs breathe round thee. Clouds behold thee,
And mix thy music with their blushes. Morn,
Dew-glistening Morn, is silvering rock and tree,
While shadows shorten o'er the whitening thorn,
Perch'd on whose topmost-twig the woodwele hymneth thee.

XIV.

Red evening, in her green-and-silver robes,
Looks from the uplands on the lakes below,
O'er realms of hawthorn, white with little globes
In which is folded up May's fragrant snow.
With closing eyes, to sleep the daisies go;
Beneath the fire-flower'd broom awakes the hare;
And gentle winds are waiting, fain to blow
News of the open'd rose to sons of care
Who toil for coffins! where the brave despair.
There, lo, in Trade's dark street, his trade of woe
The ever-weary village-genius plies!
Poor Boy! he sees not that he daily dies;
Though oft he longs to see the pink'd flower grow
Where, wing'd with love's glad strength, the wheeling plover cries.

XV.

Oh, many-window'd House, whose light is gloom!
A homeless youth (brought by despair, to die
Where hope comes not,) pants in thy upper room,
And sees the May-Day lark ascend the sky;
But flower of May shall never meet his eye,
Nor mate the earth-worm's all-forgotten guest.
No. She who would have call'd the golden broom,
Or hawthorn-flower, to love him in the tomb,
Hath long been haven'd where the weary rest.
Who sees him weep? Who hears his latest sigh?
What hireling fiend mocks twice his parting groan?
His sire, his sister, the last friend, are gone
To Sin's Australia, where the bad thrive best;
And in a crowded world, he dies alone.

XVI.

Not here, not here! I beg it as a boon;
If ye dare weep and hope to be forgiv'n,
Lay not the poet of the village here,
Where comes no sunlight, save the grin of noon!
But to that grave-yard, full of peace and heav'n,
Where, not unhonour'd, rests a village seer,
(Who lived beloved, to die forgotten soon,)
Bear ye the child of flowers. Oh, lay him near
His grandsire's bones! for thither—when the wind
Bends the young twig, or shakes the old leaf down—
May stray (too scornful of the plunder'd town,)
Some hopeful, worth-respecting bard sublime.
Who (in man's ashes honouring human kind,)
May read the name of both, and do it into rhyme.

XVII.

Why? If the unremember'd are a crew
That yet will number all beneath the sun,
Though words outlive the evil that men do,
And written be their names in blood and flame,
Ev'n of the famous famed shall be not one!
Why lingers, then, on his greystone, the name
Of one whom all forget? Moss, water, air,
Day, night, ask Why? And our poor hearts declare
That ev'n this record is a sort of fame!
But though mute words may hallow long the spot
Where the forgotten say, “Forget us not,”
We write on graves the heart's last wish in vain!
And dust and lime, at last, alone remain
Where mind that was can never be again.

XVIII.

Would they were written, (and in heaven they are,)
The patient deeds of men of low estate!
Esteem'd so little, but how truly great!
When will their modest beams be hail'd afar,
And peacefully smile down the pomps of war?
Oh, when will Labour's weary sons descry,
Illumining with love an equal sky,
The honour'd rays of Toil's eternal star?
I know that our Redeemer lives; I know
That well He marks our strife with want and fear;
Our long-assured inheritance of woe!
I know that his good angels love to write
Our humblest deeds in everlasting light;
But Here Men Toil For Man's Redemption Here!

XIX.

And, Wordsworth, yet, thy soul, in good-abounding,
Will brim a world-wide cup, with purest good,
And be to sever'd lands a saviour flood,
(Not the loud-sounding, but the ever-sounding!)
With wafted blessings lonest isles surrounding:
The gentle ripple, and its low, sad wind,
Have found materials which the wise shall find
Broad cities of the just on all shores founding.
Grand is thy temple for the soul-freed slave,
“With its foundations laid beneath the grave!”
And safe the bud which thou “with dewdrops shieldest!”
Then, hymn not thou pomp's pagan-priests and stalls;
Doom'd statecraft's doom'd religion of stone walls!
Such things are cold dead rubbish, “where thou buildest.”

XX.

Not that there is no greatness in the fane
That homes the spirit of man's deepest dread;
Chapel, Morai, Cathedral! Not in vain
The temple built with hands its roof hath spread
Beneath th' unpillar'd blue, wherever rain
Falls, or fire burns. For if the sleepless main
Clasps not an isle man-peopled to his breast;
But there some tokens of Hope's doubt attest
The deathless sov'reignty of Death and Pain,
Great is the least! as will the greatest be,
When moss shall creep o'er London's homeless walls,
And, taught by nation-humbling funerals,
The Pilgrim of the Future there shall see
Dead Worship's Skeleton! and pausing sigh, “Saint Paul's!”

XXI.

Church of the Hamlet! thy grey tower and thee
Coeval elms hide from the passer-by:
Temple within a temple! thou can'st see,
Unseen thyself, the pilgrim, quietly
Seated below; or coming funeral;
Or wedding-party's quicker pace, to me
Sadder than funeral's slow solemnity,
Its young, white bearers, or its sable pall.
But I tread on thy graves. Lo, freshly blown,
June's trellised flowers o'er-top the ancient wall
Of the good curate's garden! peeping down,
As if to read, with me, on stones moss-grown,
Names of the dead! whose doings none recall;
Whose doom—Oblivion! is the doom of all.

XXII.

Though thou no cloud in breezeless heav'n beholdest,
Foreshowing Gentianella! from the clown
Thy bright intensity of blue thou foldest;
And he, assured of rain, his scythe lays down.
Hast thou no deeper knowledge? Say, for right
Strove roused France vainly? Shall the Muscovite
From Fiume steam for London? Eager, here,
To wreathe with thorn the patriot-martyr's crown,
And vaunt base scorn of hated Liberty,
The feudal horde snuffs coming mischief. Peer,
And squire, (and would-be squire and peer,) agree
To ban the wretch who struggles to be free;
And, grinning, shrug the yet-unknouted shoulders
That may be bared, ere long, to strange beholders.

XXIII.

Oh, can July with woodbines ring her fingers,
And crown with roses her too regal head,
While, pale as snow, distracted Freedom lingers,
Gazing on cities where her best have bled?
Worriers of Nations! render up your dead!
Calabrian Polecat! many dead are thine:
Twice on thy people's heart's blood hast thou fed.
Cur of Vienna! can thy teeth be red
With Roman gore, and desolation's wine,
And thou a Cæsar? Be thou, then, the last
That Roman will endure, or Europe see.
Oh, Etna's Isle! Rome! Venice! Italy!
Among your martyr's bones these vermin cast,
And on their doings let them feast or fast.

XXIV.

The footprints of departed life remain
For hours, or years, or age-long years of years,
On sand, clay, stone. Thus, chroniclers of tears
Die, but not so Time's History of Pain.
Rooted on graves, Truth bears a living flower!
Man may forgive, but wounds their scars retain
As warnings! and the Powers of Good ordain
That to forget shall not be in our power.
For worst ills, too, have roots: they are the fruit
Of plotted action worn to habitude;
And the grey dynasties of Force might live,
Safe in their privilege of fraud and feud,
If agony died recordless and mute,
And to forget were easy as forgive.

XXV.

The heath-flower reddens. Purple Guttergrub,
To slay the moorcock cometh, fierce and fighty.
King of a dog-cart, and his shooting-club;
Sublime in conflict with starved berry-getters;
And teaching poor folks to respect their betters;
He thinks he is, at least, the King Almighty.
How like a toothless bitch that fain would bite, he
Calls freetrade-humbugs “Scoundrel, Scamp, and Scrub!”
Yet, like a thief who sees a constable,
He drops, when blustering most, his under jaw!
Ho, every slave from Perth to Dunstable,
Take from your looms and plates this magnate's paw,
And he shall yet become of lawless Law
The best Reformer that the world e'er saw!

XXVI.

Seven-Childed Widow! are thy boys at home?
Why, singly, seek'st thou food on wastes of stone?
With coward outrage Kinglingdom hath sown
Even the desert! and they dare not come,
Though they are starving! Therefore, doth she roam
God's keeper'd Moor, eager to sell for bread
Its only crop. But, Tyrant-sparing Heav'n!
Down come the hills—a sea of fire and foam!
The small speck covereth Light, as with a shroud.
Thou art a Night of clouds, thou little cloud!
Who into lightning, with his heavy tread,
Stamps the blind darkness, o'er the mountains spread?
Where is the Mother of the starving seven?
She shrieks! Deaf Deluge seizeth her. She's dead.

XXVII.

August! 'tis passing pleasant to behold
Thy rising cornstack, and exulting wain;
Or, while the workers gather in the grain,
Gaze on thy seas of life-sustaining gold;
Or, wake the grey of earliest morn, and climb
Up to thy mountain'd wildernesses cold,
When nought is moving on the silent wold,
Except the shadow of heaven's only cloud.
Who would not seek thy solitudes sublime,
To tread their shoreless purple all alone.
And of their proud solemnity be proud?
Surely, the heart were made of steel or stone,
That did not feel their grandeur, and confess
“The might, the majesty of loneliness.”

XXVIII.

We are not lonely, Kinderscout! I stand
Here, with thy sire, and gaze, with him and thee,
On desolation. This is Liberty!
I want no wing, to lift me from the land,
But look, soul-fetter'd, on the wild and grand.
Oh, that the dungeon'd of the earth were free
As these fix'd rocks, whose summits bare command
Yon cloud to stay, and weep for Man, with me!
Is this, then, solitude? To feel our hearts
Lifted above the world, yet not above
The sympathies of brotherhood and love?
To grieve for him who from the right departs?
And strive, in spirit, with the martyr'd good?
“Is this to be alone?” Then, welcome solitude.

XXIX.

Month of the fire-tinged leaves! why shall December
Scatter them, saying, “Honour to the strong?”
Quietest Month of Robin Redbreast's song!
Month of its sweetest quietness, September!
Thought's Month! pale townsmen, stretch'd in pain, remember
Thy second bloom of dewy flowers, and long
In vain, to wander with the golden gorse,
Where heav'n's blue brightens, and thy blue bells throng
Over the uplands. Village children learn
Early, to seek them there. The poor man's horse
Rejoices, too; and while the gorgeous fern
Deepens the glory of thy yellow wastes,
The sad-brow'd gipsy to their greenness hastes,
And to thy fountain'd swamps the worm-fed birds return.

XXX.

Art thou a colourist? Mark, how yon red
Poppy, and that bright patch of yellow broom,
Cliff-borne above green depths and purply gloom,
Like spark and blaze on smiling darkness shed,
Give and take beauty! Mark, too, overhead,
How the rich verdure of this ancient tree,
And the deep purple of the bank agree
To thrive in partnership! And while the bed
Of the clear stream, through tints of every hue,
Lifts its bathed pebbles, lo! to brighten all,
The little harebell brings its bit of blue,
And is a gainer! happy to behold
Red blessing green, and purple gilding gold;
Of light and shade a marriage festival!

XXXI.

Ay, startle with the sound of falling leaves
Yon white-hair'd man, October! he, like thee,
To summer's glowing brightness fondly cleaves,
And doom'd no more of hope's glad crew to be,
Speaks of his mournful doom reproachfully.
His year hath gather'd in its golden sheaves.
The weary wretch complains, that he must sleep.
Because his work is done, the idler grieves;
Because he can no longer get or keep
The things that call on men to toil and weep.
Then, let thy far-off sea-voiced winds growl out
Their “Here-we-come!” forestalling accents deep
Of Doom's dread trumpet! when the heav'ns will shout,
“Hasten to Judgment, Child of Death and Doubt!”

XXXII.

Flower-weeping April starts to life again,
When arch October for November weaves
A wedding garment in a shroud of tears.
'Tis made of pearlets splinter'd from the rain;
Or dewdrops shaken from the nodding spears
That guard the cold roots of the bare blackthorn;
And flowers (like April's) hasten to adorn
Its mix'd hues, won from sunset. Through fall'n leaves
The primrose peeps! homed where the wren abides;
The violet, too! that would be loved, yet hides
Her beauty, dark with passion; and the whin,
Pale want's rough friend, laughs out to all “Good Morrow,”
And calls no child of woe a child of sin,
But, April-blossom'd, hoards a smile for sorrow.

XXXIII.

November's marriage-peal, far off, is booming:
The bridegroom's face is sorrowfully glooming;
He saith, “December's chilling mist is coming!”
His gait is feeble, and his back is bow'd.
The sad wind suddenly its moaning husheth;
Hark! scarcely heard, the unseen runlet gusheth!
But soon again the moaning wind outrusheth,
And seemeth bickering with some mournful cloud.
Beneath the sickly moon the owl is flying;
Not to the misty moon the owl is crying;
Not to the owl the startled rat replying:
November married April, and is dying!
Near him, his young bride patiently is sighing;
And, lo, the moon hath cast away her shroud!

XXXIV.

Alas, Victoria! Nation-loved Regina!
Thy Kinglings make their infamy our own.
England! where now is saviour-sold Messina?
Slain are her sons, her palaces o'erthrown.
Thy felon Steuart was not mean and base
As Blum's destroyer. Give him, then, thy hand,
Thou loathed of Nature! Dost thou know the land
In which the loathing earth-worm slinks not down,
When sad winds name thee, near her dwelling-place?
Betrayer of Mankind in Freedom's name!
Who doth not think of thee and thine with shame?
The damn'd of old, redeem'd by thy disgrace,
Brighten in hell. The angels suffer pain,
Blushing for thee, where Eliot, Hampden, Vane,
Ask of each other, “Died we, then, in vain?”

XXXV.

Methinks, I see thy bravest of the brave
Pale on his blighted deck. Whom tends he there?
The woman-fiend who serves a devil-queen,
And that queen's husband. On the deep they stare!
For, lo, upright, starts from his watery grave
One, whose death-pangs two there have caused and seen!
Shrieks the King-miscreant, “What with us wants he?”
And all see death! two, death and infamy!
Tired Hell's Deputed Traitress! thy worst foe,
When execration writes thy vilest deed,
Could not in damning story wish to read
A sadder trilogy of words of woe
Than “Britain! Nelson! Carracciolo!”
And yet thou seem'st not vile as thou would'st be!

XXXVI.

Realm-Stealing Patron of all states and men!
Thy flag the sign of peace-pretended war,
Wherever flying! would that thou could'st see
Thyself as others see thee! Thou would'st, then,
Knowing thyself, see others as they are.
Erin would cease to stench the ocean-wave
With victim-freights of helots, nick-named free;
Nor would that Hell of Nations be thy grave.
Oh, never may she see thee wreck'd with spoil!
A beggar, with all scorn by beggary named!
Pride's meanest cringer! asking leave to toil
Of her, once lowest of earth's poorest poor!
And in thy vileness hounded from her door,
Yet fain to kiss her foot, and not ashamed!

XXXVII.

Tyrants! ye are an unimproving race;
And 'tis the nature of the conquering base
To trample on the helpless till he die:
So, ye have advertised for Kossuth's head!
For Kossuth lives! nor yet is Freedom dead.
Oh, yet her blood will blaze from sky to sky!
Yet, yet o'er Man's Rebellion will be pour'd,
In seas of fire, the universal horde
Whose name is Slave! Then, wilt thou, Destiny,
Write in her blood, o'er blood-quench'd Hungary,
“Here thou hast won the gate of boundless sway;
Steam hence for London, Triple-Million'd Sword!”
Or, on the quenchless heav'ns, “Behold the way
To Petersburgh and Moscow, Liberty!”

XXXVIII.

What said that jailer jail'd, who would have been,
Had he been just, of men the greatest man?
“Europe, ere long, will be republican,
Or Cossack.” What say they, whom we have seen
Risking dominion for their own vile ban?
“Better the Cossack than the artisan!
Better one master, than the public will!”
Ay, dig your mean grave deep, ye swift to screen
Wrong and the wronger! for the self-betray'd
Are God's abandon'd. Ye shall be obey'd.
Long-waiting Nicholas is patient still;
Tending his work of deadliest sin and woe,
And for his neighbours, over plain and hill
Sowing worst weeds, which, ye have sworn, shall grow!

XXXIX.

I dream'd that God was Silence. Air was dead,
And Life a corpse laid out. The clouds had died
Of sunless cold. O'er all things snow was spread,
Mute as the billows of a frozen sea;
And, voiceless, the eternal wind swept wide
Under dumb skies, o'er steel-like sea and land.
Echo herself had perish'd, but reply
From her none needed was, where time forgot
The letters of his name, and sound was not,
And motion soundless; and all victory
Crown'd freezing Death, who, with world-covering hand,
And sword-like pen—and with an inward laugh—
On Mind's vast grave, wrote dead Hope's epitaph
In ice for ink: “Her Dream was Liberty.”

XL.

What Gods are these? Bright red, or white and green,
Some of them jockey-capp'd and some in hats,
The gods of vermin have their runs, like rats.
Each has six legs, four moving, pendent two,
Like bottled tails, the tilting four between.
Behold Land-Interest's compound Man-and-Horse,
Which so enchants his outraged helot-crew,
Hedge-gapping, with his horn, and view-halloo,
O'er hunter's clover—glorious broom and gorse!
The only crop his godship ever grew:
Except his crop of hate, and smouldering ire,
And cloak'd contempt, of coward insult born,
And hard-faced labour, paid with straw for corn,
And fain to reap it with a scythe of fire.

XLI.

Lo, here comes farmer Nimrod, on his grey!
Eager his victim's well-earn'd hate to brave,
And proud to be a tyrant and a slave,
He damns his feeders twenty times a day:
“What right to think of his concerns have they?”
Well can he bear the trader's land-made cares:
“Happy the poor,” quoth he; “for thrive who may,
A comfortable Workhouse still is theirs.”
Yet swaps he not his happiness for ours!
But in the page that lauds his right to wrong,
Reads weekly, That Trade's gains to him belong;
For what the country grows, the town devours!
“He needs nor towns, nor trade! but traders eat;
And they must pay his price! or he will grow no wheat.”

XLII.

All white below, and brightly blue above!
A fitting temple for Eternal Love,
December's World of snow and sky! art thou.
The groinings of its roof no stone require;
The spangles of its dome are worlds of fire;
Its pillars are the Everlasting Now.
Throned on his deeds, He reigns—by all beheld,
By all obey'd; soul-felt, and soul-adored,
And soul-proclaim'd; of Life and Death the Lord!
I kneel to Him in reverence, not in fear;
And on his forehead, easy to be spell'd,
Read his great precept, “Let the soul be free.”
Oh, God of Works! why should I worship here
A god of words, when I can worship Thee?

XLIII.

With words for chains, in links of prose or rhyme,
We proudly fix the Homeless in his place;
Naming Eternity, we think of time;
Naming Infinity, we think of space;
Of the worm's path, whose crawlings we can trace
On vast immutabilities of dust;
The deathless monuments of human trust,
Which passing hours, or moments, still efface.
Proud of our foolscap, and its jangled bells;
Blind to the All-Apparent, All-Unknown,
Who tips with suns his spires and pinnacles;
Our ignorance on our vanity we enthrone,
And in a little chapel of our own
Creep to the worship of dead syllables.

XLIV.

Blind leaders of the blind, by blindness led,
Men say to God, and his Eternal Year,
“Stop! it is finish'd! let your rushing skies
Rein in their fiery steeds, and be at rest.”
Yet do our altars stand, though built of sod!
Then, scorn not Error. Dateless is the faction
That, if they could, would bridle Mind's career,
And eagerly erase the words of light
O'er Truth's wide portals written to be read:
“All things that are, or were, are thought in action,
The testing of the Thinker's theories;
And they who limit knowledge, do their best
To stop, or hinder, Progress Infinite,
The Wisdom and the Happiness of God!”

XLV.

The morning of the last day of the year
Instructs me that my course is nearly run.
I thank Thee that I see another sun,
Father of Seasons! that I still am here
To do thy will; and that the dawn is near
Of a New Life for me. What have I won
In worthy strife? What good work unbegun
Awaits me? Father, I must soon appear
Before Thee, to be sentenced. If I strove
In kindness, I am safe. What is our own?
That only which we build for Thee and thine.
Who shall reap love, unless he sow in love?
If I have labour'd for myself alone,
I need no lock'd strong coffer: Nought is mine!

XLVI.

The evening of the Year's last day is come;
And on pale Erin's face, (but not like one
Who hath no hope,) with lingering gaze, the sun
Looks, pausing still to look. There is no bloom
On her closed lips, no passion on her brow;
Yet never seem'd she beautiful as now!
And pride and grandeur deepen in the gloom
Which his large brow casts o'er her winding-sheet
And lifeless locks. The blue sky is her tomb,
The sea her bier. “We part,” he says, “to meet;
Yet shalt thou live, and love, be bless'd, and bless;
Yet shalt thou—holy, happy, changed—arise.”
And he thanks God! with splendor-flashing eyes,
And firier fervor in his thankfulness.

XLVII.

Night! starless Night! thick darkness, floor'd with snow!
If this be death, the Soul of Things repairs,
In death, the strength by which th' immortals reign,
And suffering truth to be a martyr dares:
If this be death, in death the mind prepares
The growths of larger thought than yet hath been,—
The unconceived, that shall be felt and seen,
And bow the heav'ns, to lighten toil and pain:
If this be death, through death to life we go!
For what is death, but sleep in starless night?
In sleep, the childless sees her son restored;
In sleep, the widow clasps again her lord;
And sleep gives blissful tears to hopeless woe:
Then, why should Death the pillow'd soul affright?

XLVIII.

Answer me, Fear! Thou in the depths dost dwell
In darkest depth; for light is dark to thee,
And noon concealeth the dread Mystery
Which men call nothingness, and fate, and hell.
Profoundest Fear! who, closing thy wide eyes,
Beholdest God! and two eternities!
And shriek'st. “The One! The sole Infallible!”
Brave Trembler! Thou, who seek'st, and fear'st to find,
The Cause Uncaused of mindless things and mind,
The Unapproach'd, Unsearchable, Alone!
If pain thou know'st, if weakness knows thee well,
And if thy weakness is unmeasured might,
Answer me! Why should helpless Death affright
The Lifter of the Veil of the Unknown?

XLIX.

What doth it cover? Mystery and Thee.
Life Everlasting, and All-vital Sleep,
That Mystery is, and evermore will be.
Thou art all passions, all in one, dark Fear!
All passions of all men, the bond and free,
Whether they love, or hate, or laugh, or weep;
For all would have, and all who have would keep.
Then, lift the veil, and thy own features see
Beneath it, thou strong servant of Love's might!
Taught by the Progresser to show Man here
God's face in goodness only, and the right;
Reading his Name in darkness which is light;
And ever summoning the infinite
Of age-long moments, to complete his Year!

L.

And to the Father of Eternal days,
And fairest things, that fairer yet will be,
Shall I no song of adoration raise,
While Passion's world, and Life's great agony,
Are one dread hymn, dread Progresser! to Thee?
Thou, Love, art Progress! And be thine the praise
If I have ever loved thy voice divine,
And o'er the sadness of my slander'd lays
Flings its redeeming charm a note of thine.
Oh, Gentlest Might Almighty! if of mine
One strain shall live, let it thy impress bear;
And please wherever humble virtues twine
The rose and woodbine with the thorns of care,
Thriving because they love! Thy temple, Lord, is there!

BALLADS.

ONE OF THE HOMES,

A HEALTH OF TOWNS' BALLAD.

The small boy, in his home of sighs,
As if he hated man,
Died, with raised hand, and open eyes,
Frowning at little Ann.
Then, died his bird: she wept, she sigh'd:
'Twas worn to skin and bone;
But whether it of famine died,
Or fever, is not known.
She wept, but not for John—and yet
She loved her brother well;
She wept—wept for his little pet!
But why she could not tell.
Where frown'd its friend, his bird she put
Within the coffin small;
But then the lid refused to shut!
She thought she heard him call!
The dead hand propp'd the coffin-lid,
Above the dreadful frown;
It would keep up! it would, and did;
The joiner screwed it down.
And so, they slept in company;
The blighted feather'd flower!
And poor bud of humanity—
Both blighted in one hour.
Farewell, thou old street-shunning lane,
Where John whole hours would stay,
When welcomed flowers came back again,
To welcome rainbow'd May!
Flowers which by name he once could call!
For he, with childish pride,
Had kept, at home, a funeral
Of flowers, that weekly died.
His father, who loved wild flowers, too,
Had taught the child their names,
Though, with a florist's pride, he grew
Outlandish flowers, in frames.
Where lay the father on the floor,
Was laid the coffin small;
The mother lay behind the door,
So, there were four in all;
The blasted, black, once beauteous thorn,
That never more would grow;
The rose, once sweet as dewy morn;
The blighted bud of woe;
And, happiest there of all, the bird
That ne'er saw God's bless'd sun,
Or growing flower; ne'er saw, or heard,
Tree wave, or river run.
The rats peep'd out behind the door,
And loth they seem'd to go;
The rats jumped down beneath the floor,
Into the sewer below.
Men raised, in haste, the coffins three,
In fearful haste were they:
Ann, famish'd, follow'd gloomily,
And heard the parson pray.
Grey-hair'd he was, a grey-hair'd youth,
Kind, humble, just, and wise;
He look'd on woe-worn toil and truth
With pity's tearful eyes;
For he, a poor man's friendless son,
Once suffer'd long distress,
And hard up-hill his way had won
To honour'd usefulness.
His gown'd back to the wind he turn'd,
And waved the holy book:
On corpses three, by one child mourn'd
He look'd, with solemn look:
Behind him far, two youths well clad
Stood mute, with ladies two:
Before him gasp'd the bann'd and bad,
A poor death-daring crew:
One feebly clasp'd a dying child,
Sobbing; another said,
“Thank God for Plague!” and darkly smiled:
A third said, “God is dead!”
Their famine grinn'd—What could it less?
Their sadness wore a frown;
Their “loop'd and window'd raggedness”
Blasphemed the parson's gown.
But when that grey-hair'd pastor spoke,
Their prostrate hearts arose,
And trembling hope, like starlight, broke
On each despairer's woes:
“In life,” he said, “we are in death,
Through death to life we rise:
In fear man draws his fleeting breath,
In sorrow lives and dies:
We come like shadows—and are gone;
Dust are we, dust to be;
Until this mortal hath put on
Its immortality.”

DEVIL BYRON.

A BALLAD.

THE GIPSY.

AN OLD LEGEND MODERNIZED.

EPISTLE.

Since Ellen Rendall deigns to say,
“Write me a poem!” I obey.
Weeds in exchange for flowers, I send;
For the best letter ever penn'd,
The best bad rhymes I can compose—
Not strength in beauty, like thy prose;
Oh, not the wealth of feeling fine
Enriching every phrase of thine,
The fresh fruit of a sad heart's truth,
Flush'd over with the bloom of youth!
Rhymed words I write, and fain would write
A poem, with a poet's might.
But I am bow'd with years;
And cares that shed no tears,
Bend me towards my kindred dust.
When sorrows come, because they must,
With lips of ice, and looks of clay,
To turn the spirit's tresses grey;
Can stooping age (though fain he would,)
Write earnest thoughts in “weeping blood,”
And o'er his winter spread the glow
Of warm June's dewy roses? No.
Who to the rain-cloud can restore
The bow that “vanish'd in the storm”?
The quench'd heart's fires return no more!
But what I can I will perform.
Long ere I read a thought of thine,
I plann'd a lay, call'd Etheline;
A lay that oft, in hope and joy,
I may have ponder'd when a boy.
Feebly commenced, and idly cast
Aside, to be redeem'd at last,
A thousand lines the song will end;
A hundred are already penn'd.
Lady! I will inscribe to thee
A tale of Love and Jealousy,
And old, old times—when life was young,
And wisdom taught what passion sung.
Thou, Ellen, thou shalt be my Muse!
Power not his own the bard shall use;
Thy young soul's beauty, wisdom, truth,
Shall wake in me a dream of youth;
As when a stripling, (skill'd to fling
The glory of a seraph's wing
O'er all the woful gloom and strife
That dully chequer human life,)
Placing, with careless grace and ease,
The time-worn Harp before his knees,
O'er funeral Autumn's pensive flowers
A shower of splinter'd sunbeams showers,
And charms the haunted region round
With ecstacies of sight and sound;
Or, in the soul its thunder waking,
Kindles within the heart that's breaking
Fire, born of darkness that weeps fire
And thoughts that turn men pale,
Bidding the fallen still aspire,
Though still to fail;
And like the Adwick of my strain,
Each doom'd Prometheus smile at pain;
Or, school'd his dire reward to meet,
Die with sad pride, as Cæsar died
At imaged Pompey's feet.

ETHELINE.

BOOK I.

BOOK II.

BOOK III.

BOOK IV.

LAST LINES.