Poems, Dialogues in Verse and Epigrams :: :: University of Virginia Library

Destined to fall upon it; but while strength
Is left me, I will rise to hail the morn
Of the stout-hearted who begin a work
Wherein I did but idle at odd hours.

The Faeries never tempted me away
From higher fountains and severer shades;
Their rings allured me not from deeper track
Left by Olympick wheel on ampler plain;
Yet could I see them and can see them now
With pleasurable warmth, and hold in bonds
Of brotherhood men whom their gamesome wreath
In youth's fresh slumber caught, and still detains.
I wear no cestus; my right hand is free
To point the road few seem inclined to take.
Admonish thou, with me, the starting youth,
Ready to seize all nature at one grasp,
To mingle earth, sea, sky, woods, cataracts,
And make all nations think and speak alike.

Some see but sunshine, others see but gloom,
Others confound them strangely, furiously;
Most have an eye for colour, few for form.
Imperfect is the glory to create,
Unless on our creation we can look
And see that all is good; we then may rest.
In every poem train the leading shoot;
Break off the suckers. Thought erases thought,
As numerous sheep erase each other's print
When spungy moss they press or sterile sand.
Blades thickly sown want nutriment and droop,
Although the seed be sound, and rich the soil;
Thus healthy-born ideas, bedded close,
By dreaming fondness perish overlain.
A rose or sprig of myrtle in the hair
Pleases me better than a far-sought gem.
I chide the flounce that checks the nimble feet,
Abhor the cruel piercer of the ear,
And would strike down the chain that cuts in two
The beauteous column of the marble neck.
Barbarous and false are all such ornaments,

257

Yet such hath poesy in whim put on.
Classical hath been deem'd each Roman name
Writ on the roll-call of each pedagogue
In the same hand, in the same tone pronounced;
Yet might five scanty pages well contain
All that the Muses in fresh youth would own
Between the grave at Tomos, wet with tears
Rolling amain down Getick beard unshorn,
And that grand priest whose purple shone afar
From his own Venice o'er the Adrian sea.
We talk of schools. . unscholarly; if schools
Part the romantick from the classical.
The classical like the heroick age
Is past; but Poetry may reassume
That glorious name with Tartar and with Turk,
With Goth or Arab, Sheik or Paladin,
And not with Roman and with Greek alone.
The name is graven on the workmanship.
The trumpet-blast of Marmion never shook
The God-built walls of Ilion; yet what shout
Of the Achaians swells the hearts so high?
Nor fainter is the artillery-roar that booms
From Hohenlinden to the Baltick strand.
Shakespeare with majesty benign call'd up
The obedient classicks from their marble seat,
And led them thro' dim glen and sheeny glade,
And over precipices, over seas
Unknown by mariner, to palaces
High-archt, to festival, to dance, to joust,
And gave them golden spur and vizor barred,
And steeds that Pheidias had turn'd pale to see.
The mighty man who open'd Paradise,
Harmonious far above Homerick song,
Or any song that human ears shall hear,
Sometimes was classical and sometimes not:
Rome chain'd him down; the younger Italy
Dissolved (not fatally) his Samson strength.

I leave behind me those who stood around
The throne of Shakespeare, sturdy, but unclean,

258

To hurry past the opprobrious courts and lanes
Of the loose pipers at the Belial feast,
Past mimeobscene and grinder of lampoon . .
Away the petty wheel, the callous hand!
Goldsmith was classical, and Gray almost;
So was poor Collins, heart-bound to Romance:
Shelley and Keats, those southern stars, shone higher.
Cowper had more variety, more strength,
Gentlest of bards! still pitied, still beloved!
Shrewder in epigram than polity
Was Canning; Frere more graceful; Smith more grand;
A genuine poet was the last alone.
Romantick, classical, the female hand
That chain'd the cruel Ivan down for ever,
And follow'd up, rapt in his fiery car,
The boy of Casabianca to the skies.
Other fair forms breathe round us, which exert
With Paphian softness Amazonian power,
And sweep in bright array the Attick field.

To men turn now, who stand or lately stood
With more than Royalty's gilt bays adorn'd.
Wordsworth, in sonnet, is a classick too,
And on that grass-plot sits at Milton's side;
In the long walk he soon is out of breath
And wheezes heavier than his friends could wish.
Follow his pedlar up the devious rill,
And, if you faint not, you are well repaid.
Large lumps of precious metal lie engulpht
In gravely beds, whence you must delve them out
And thirst sometimes and hunger; shudder not
To wield the pickaxe and to shake the sieve,
Well shall the labour be (though hard) repaid.
Too weak for ode and epick, and his gait
Somewhat too rural for the tragick pall,
Which never was cut out of duffel grey,
He fell entangled, “on the grunsel-edge
Flat on his face, and shamed his worshippers.”

259

Classick in every feature was my friend
The genial Southey: none who ruled around
Held in such order such a wide domain . .
But often too indulgent, too profuse.

The ancients see us under them, and grieve
That we are parted by a rank morass,
Wishing its flowers more delicate and fewer.
Abstemious were the Greeks; they never strove
To look so fierce: their Muses were sedate,
Never obstreperous: you heard no breath
Outside the flute; each sound ran clear within.
The Fauns might dance, might clap their hands, might shout,
Might revel and run riotous; the Nymphs
Furtively glanced, and fear'd, or seem'd to fear;
Descended on the lightest of light wings,
The graceful son of Maia mused apart,
Graceful, but strong; he listen'd; he drew nigh;
And now with his own lyre and now with voice
Temper'd the strain; Apollo calmly smiled.

LXIII. TO A FRIEND'S REMONSTRANCE.

Preacher of discontent! Then large indeed
Would be my audience, copious my display
Of common-places. Better curb and quell
Not by the bridle but the provender.

Sportsmen! manorial lords! of you am I.
Let us, since game grows scarcer every day,
Watch our preserves near home: we need but beat
About the cottage-garden and slim croft
For plenteous sport. Catch up the ragged child,
Kiss it, however frighten'd: take the hand
Of the young girl from out the artizan's
Who leads her to the factory, soon to wear
The tissue she has woven dyed in shame:
Help the halt eld to rule the swerving ass,
And upright set his crutch outside the porch,

260

To reach, nor stoop to reach, at his return.
'Tis somewhat to hear blessings, to confer
Is somewhat more. Wealth is content to shine
By his own light, nor asks he Virtue's aid;
But Virtue comes sometimes, and comes unaskt,
Nay, comes the first to conference.

There is one,
One man there is, high in nobility
Of birth and fortune, who erects his house
Among the heathen, where dun smoke ascends
All day around, and drearier fire all night.
Far from that house are heard the church's bells,
And thro' deep cinders lies the road, yet there
Walks the rich man, walks in humility,
Because the poor he walks with, and with God.
No mitred purple-buskin'd baron he,
Self-privileged to strip the calendar
Of Sabbath days, to rob the cattle's rest,
And mount, mid prance and neighing, his proud throne.

Of what is thinking now thy studious head,
O artist! in the glorious dome of Art,
That thou shouldst turn thine eyes from Titian's ray,
Or Raffael's halo round the Virgin's head
And Child's, foreshowing Paradise regain'd?
Of Ellesmere thou wert thinking; so was I.

LXIV. TO THE REVEREND CUTHBERT SOUTHEY.

Cuthbert! whose father first in all our land
Sate in calm judgment on poetic peer,
Whom hatred never, friendship seldom, warpt . .
Again I read his page and hear his voice;
I heard it ere I knew it, ere I saw
Who utter'd it, each then to each unknown.
Twelve years had past when upon Avon's cliff,
Hard-by his birth-place, first our hands were join'd;
After three more he visited my home.

261

Along Lantony's ruin'd aisles we walkt
And woods then pathless, over verdant hill
And ruddy mountain, and aside the stream
Of sparkling Hondy. Just at close of day
There by the comet's light we saw the fox
Rush from the alders, nor relax in speed
Until he trod the pathway of his sires
Under the hoary crag of Comioy.
Then both were happy.

War had paused: the Loire
Invited me; again burst forth fierce War.
I minded not his fury: there I staid,
Sole of my countrymen, and foes abstain'd
(Tho' sore and bleeding) from my house alone.
But female fear impell'd me past the Alps,
Where, loveliest of all lakes, the Lario sleeps
Under the walls of Como.

There he came
Again to see me; there again our walks
We recommenced . . less pleasant than before.
Grief had swept over him; days darken'd round:
Bellagio, Valintelvi, smiled in vain,
And Monterosa from Helvetia far
Advanced to meet us, mild in majesty
Above the glittering crests of giant sons
Station'd around . . in vain too! all in vain!

Perhaps the hour may come when others, taught
By him to read, may read my page aright
And find what lies within it; time enough
Is there before us in the world of thought.
The favour I may need I scorn to ask.
What sovran is there able to reprieve,
How then to grant, the life of the condemn'd
By Justice, where the Muses take their seat?
Never was I impatient to receive
What any man could give me: when a friend
Gave me my due, I took it, and no more . .
Serenely glad because that friend was pleas'd.
I seek not many, many seek not me,

262

If there are few now seated at my board,
I pull no children's hair because they munch
Gilt gingerbread, the figured and the sweet,
Or wallow in the innocence of whey;
Give me wild-boar, the buck's broad haunch give me,
And wine that time has mellow'd, even as time
Mellows the warrior hermit in his cell.