Inspired-works potent over smiles and tears. And as round mountain-tops the lightning plays, Thus innocently sported, breaking forth Thou wert a scorner of the fields, my Friend, But more in show than truth; and from the fields, And from the mountains, to thy rural grave Of that fraternal love, whose heaven-lit lamp shrined Within thy bosom. "Wonderful" hath been The love established between man and man, "Passing the love of women ;' and between Man and his help-mate in fast wedlock joined Through God, is raised a spirit and soul of love Without whose blissful influence Paradise Had been no Paradise; and earth were now A waste where creatures bearing human form, Direst of savage beasts, would roam in fear, Joyless and comfortless. Our days glide on; And let him grieve who cannot choose but grieve That he hath been an Elm without his Vine, And her bright dower of clustering charities, That, round his trunk and branches, might have clung Enriching and adorning. Unto thee, cares, All softening, humanising, hallowing powers, Her love (What weakness prompts the voice to tell it here?) Was as the love of mothers; and when years, Was undissolved; and, in or out of sight, And season's difference-a double tree root; have been In union, in partition only such ; Still they were faithful; like two vessels launched From the same beach one ocean to explore But turn we rather, let my spirit turn The hermit, exercised in prayer and praise, Your dual loneliness. The sacred tie Is broken; yet why grieve? for Time but holds XV. EXTEMPORE EFFUSION UPON THE DEATH OF JAMES HOGG. WHEN first, descending from the moorlands, I saw the Stream of Yarrow glide Along a bare and open valley, The mighty Minstrel breathes no longer, On which with thee, O Crabbe! forth-looking, Mourn rather for that holy Spirit, No more of old romantic sorrows, XVI. INSCRIPTION FOR A MONUMENT IN CROSTHWAITE CHURCH, IN THE VALE OF KESWICK. YE vales and hills whose beauty hither drew The poet's steps, and fixed him here, on you, His eyes have closed! And ye, loved books, no more Shall Southey feed upon your precious lore, vowed Through his industrious life, and Christian faith Calmed in his soul the fear of change and death. I. IV. THERE was a time when meadow, grove, and Ye blessed Creatures, I have heard the call stream, The earth, and every common sight, To me did seem Apparelled in celestial light, The glory and the freshness of a dream. By night or day, The things which I have seen I now can see no more. Now, while the birds thus sing a joyous song, To me alone there came a thought of grief: The cataracts blow their trumpets from the No more shall grief of mine the season wrong; I hear the Echoes through the mountains throng, The Winds come to me from the fields of sleep, And all the earth is gay; Land and sea Give themselves up to jollity, And with the heart of May Doth every Beast keep holiday; Ye to each other make; I see The heavens laugh with you in your jubilee; My head hath its coronal, The fulness of your bliss, I feel-I feel it all. This sweet May-morning, On every side, In a thousand valleys far and wide, warm, And the Babe leaps up on his Mother's arm :- Doth the same tale repeat: V. Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting: But He beholds the light, and whence it flows The Youth, who daily farther from the east And by the vision splendid Is on his way attended; Shout round me, let me hear thy shouts, thou At length the Man perceives it die away, Thou Child of Joy, happy Shepherd-boy! And fade into the light of common day. 358 VI. Earth fills her lap with pleasures of her own; The homely Nurse doth all she can VII. Behold the Child among his new-born blisses, A mourning or a funeral, And this hath now his heart, To dialogues of business, love, or strife Ere this be thrown aside, And with new joy and pride The little Actor cons another part; But for those obstinate questionings Uphold us, cherish, and have powerto make Which neither listlessness, nor mad endeavour, Nor all that is at enmity with joy, Hence in a season of calm weather Our Souls have sight of that immortal sea Can in a moment travel thither, And see the Children sport upon the shore, X. Filling from time to time his "humorous stage " Then sing, ye Birds, sing, sing a joyous song! With all the Persons, down to palsied Age, As if his whole vocation VIII. Thou, whose exterior semblance doth belie Thou best Philosopher, who yet dost keep Mighty Prophet! Seer blest! And custom lie upon thee with a weight, IX. O joy! that in our embers The thought of our past years in me doth breed For that which is most worthy to be blest; Of Childhood, whether busy or at rest, And let the young Lambs bound We in thought will join your throng, Ye that pipe and ye that play, Ye that through your hearts to-day Be now for ever taken from my sight, Though nothing can bring back the hour Of splendour in the grass, of glory in the flower; We will grieve not, rather find Strength in what remains behind; In the primal sympathy Which having been must ever be ; In the faith that looks through death, XI. And O, ye Fountains, Meadows, Hills, and Forebode not any severing of our loves! To live beneath your more habitual sway. I love the Brooks which down their channels Even more than when I tripped lightly as they; The Clouds that gather round the setting sun won. Thanks to the human heart by which we live, With new-fledged hope still fluttering in his Thanks to its tenderness, its joys, and fears, To me the meanest flower that blows can give Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears. 1803-6. THE following Poem was commenced in the beginning of the year 1799, and completed in the summer of 1805. The design and occasion of the work are described by the Author in his Preface to the EXCURSION, first published in 1814, where he thus speaks: "Several years ago, when the Author retired to his native mountains with the hope of being enabled to construct a literary work that might live, it was a reasonable thing that he should take a review of his own mind, and examine how far Nature and Education had qualified him for such an employment. "As subsidiary to this preparation, he undertook to record, in verse, the origin and progress of his own powers, as far as he was acquainted with them. "That work, addressed to a dear friend, most distinguished for his knowledge and genius, and to whom the Author's intellect is deeply indebted, has been long finished; and the result of the investigation which gave rise to it, was a determination to compose a philosophical Poem, containing views of Man, Nature, and Society, and to be entitled the 'Recluse; as having for its principal subject the sensations and opinions of a poet living in retirement. "The preparatory Poem is biographical, and conducts the history of the Author's mind to the point when he was emboldened to hope that his faculties were sufficiently matured for entering upon the arduous labour which he had proposed to himself; and the two works have the same kind of relation to each other, if he may so express himself, as the Ante-chapel has to the body of a Gothic church. Continuing this allusion, he may be permitted to add, that his minor pieces, which have been long before the public, when they shall be properly arranged, will be found by the attentive reader to have such connection with the main work as may give them claim to be likened to the little cells, oratories, and sepulchral recesses, ordinarily included in those edifices." Such was the Author's language in the year 1814. It will thence be seen, that the present Poem was intended to be introductory to the RECLUSE, and that the RECLUSE, if completed, would have consisted of Three Parts. Of these, the Second Part alone, viz., the EXCURSION, was finished, and given to the world by the Author. The First Book of the First Part of the RECLUSE still remains in manuscript; but the Third Part was only planned. The materials of which it would have been formed have, however, been incorporated, for the most part, in the Author's other Publications, written subsequently to the EXCURSION. The Friend, to whom the present Poem is addressed, was the late SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE, who was resident in Malta, for the restoration of his health, when the greater part of it was composed. Mr Coleridge read a considerable portion of the Poem while he was abroad; and his feelings, on hearing it recited by the Author (after his return to his own country), are recorded in his Verses, addressed to Mr Wordsworth, which will be found in the "Sibylline Leaves," p. 197, ed. 1817, or "Poetical Works, by S. T. Coleridge," vol. i., p. 206.-ED. RYDAL MOUNT, July 13th, 1850. |