Or fancies stealing forth to soothe the breast Tired with its daily share of earth's unrest Gentle awakenings, visitations meek; A kindly influence whereof few will speak, Though it can wet with tears the hardiest cheek.
And when thy beauty in the shadowy cave Is hidden, buried in its monthly grave; Then, while the Sailor, 'mid an open sea
Swept by a favouring wind that leaves thought free, Paces the deck-no star perhaps in sight,
And nothing save the moving ship's own light To cheer the long dark hours of vacant night— Oft with his musings does thy image blend, In his mind's eye thy crescent horns ascend, And thou art still, O Moon, that SAILOR'S FRIEND!
UEEN of the stars!-so gentle, so benign, That ancient Fable did to thee assign,
When darkness creeping o'er thy silver brow Warned thee these upper regions to forego, Alternate empire in the shades below— A Bard, who, lately near the wide-spread sea Traversed by gleaming ships, looked up to thee With grateful thoughts, doth now thy rising hail From the close confines of a shadowy vale. Glory of night, conspicuous yet serene, Nor less attractive when by glimpses seen Through cloudy umbrage, well might that fair face, And all those attributes of modest grace,
In days when Fancy wrought unchecked by fear, Down to the green earth fetch thee from thy sphere, To sit in leafy woods by fountains clear!
O still belov'd (for thine, meek Power, are charms That fascinate the very Babe in arms,
While he, uplifted towards thee, laughs outright, Spreading his little palms in his glad Mother's sight) 20 O still belov'd, once worshipp'd! Time, that frowns In his destructive flight on earthly crowns, Spares thy mild splendour; still those far-shot beams Tremble on dancing waves and rippling streams
With stainless touch, as chaste as when thy praise Was sung by Virgin-choirs in festal lays; And through dark trials still dost thou explore Thy way for increase punctual as of yore, When teeming Matrons-yielding to rude faith In mysteries of birth and life and death And painful struggle and deliverance-prayed Of thee to visit them with lenient aid.
What though the rites be swept away, the fanes Extinct that echoed to the votive strains; Yet thy mild aspect does not, cannot, cease Love to promote and purity and peace; And Fancy, unreproved, even yet may trace Faint types of suffering in thy beamless face.
Then, silent Monitress! let us-not blind To worlds unthought of till the searching mind Of Science laid them open to mankind; Told, also, how the voiceless heavens declare God's glory; and acknowledging thy share In that blest charge; let us-without offence To aught of highest, holiest, influence— Receive whatever good 'tis given thee to dispense. May sage and simple, catching with one eye The moral intimations of the sky,
Learn from thy course, where'er their own be taken, 'To look on tempests, and be never shaken'; To keep with faithful step the appointed way Eclipsing or eclipsed, by night or day, And from example of thy monthly range Gently to brook decline and fatal change; Meek, patient, stedfast, and with loftier scope, Than thy revival yields, for gladsome hope!
TO LUCCA GIORDANO
IORDANO, verily thy Pencil's skill
Hath here portrayed with Nature's happiest grace
The fair Endymion couched on Latmos-hill; And Dian gazing on the Shepherd's face In rapture, yet suspending her embrace, As not unconscious with what power the thrill Of her most timid touch his sleep would chase, And, with his sleep, that beauty calm and still.
O may this work have found its last retreat Here in a Mountain-bard's secure abode, One to whom, yet a School-boy, Cynthia showed A face of love which he in love would greet, Fixed, by her smile, upon some rocky seat; Or lured along where green-wood paths he trod. RYDAL MOUNT, 1846.
HO but is pleased to watch the moon on high Travelling where she from time to time en- shrouds
Her head, and nothing loth her Majesty Renounces, till among the scattered clouds One with its kindling edge declares that soon Will reappear before the uplifted eye A Form as bright, as beautiful a moon, To glide in open prospect through clear sky. Pity that such a promise e'er should prove False in the issue, that yon seeming space Of sky should be in truth the stedfast face Of a cloud flat and dense, through which must move (By transit not unlike man's frequent doom) The Wanderer lost in more determined gloom.
HERE lies the truth? has Man, in wisdom's
A pitiable doom; for respite brief
A care more anxious, or a heavier grief?
Is he ungrateful, and doth little heed
God's bounty, soon forgotten; or indeed,
Must Man, with labour born, awake to sorrow
When Flowers rejoice and Larks with rival speed
Spring from their nests to bid the Sun good morrow? They mount for rapture as their songs proclaim Warbled in hearing both of earth and sky; But o'er the contrast wherefore heave a sigh? Like those aspirants let us soar—our aim, Through life's worst trials, whether shocks or snares, A happier, brighter, purer Heaven than theirs.
COMPOSED OR SUGGESTED DURING A TOUR,
IN THE SUMMER OF 1833
[HAVING been prevented by the lateness of the season, in 1831, from visiting Staffa and Iona, the author made these the principal objects of a short tour in the summer of 1833, of which the following series of poems is a Memorial. The course pursued was down the Cumberland river Derwent, and to Whitehaven; thence (by the Isle of Man, where a few days were passed) up the Frith of Clyde to Greenock, then to Oban, Staffa, Iona; and back towards England, by Loch Awe, Inverary, Loch Goil-head, Greenock, and through parts of Renfrewshire, Ayrshire, and Dumfries-shire, to Carlisle, and thence up the river Eden, and homewards by Ullswater.]
DIEU, Rydalian Laurels! that have grown
And spread as if ye knew that days might come When ye would shelter in a happy home,
On this fair Mount, a Poet of your own,
One who ne'er ventured for a Delphic crown
To sue the God; but, haunting your green shade All seasons through, is humbly pleased to braid Ground-flowers, beneath your guardianship, self-sown. Farewell! no Minstrels now with harp new-strung For summer wandering quit their household bowers; 10 Yet not for this wants Poesy a tongue
To cheer the Itinerant on whom she pours
Her spirit, while he crosses lonely moors,
Or musing sits forsaken halls among.
WHY should the Enthusiast, journeying through this Isle,
Repine as if his hour were come too late?
Not unprotected in her mouldering state,
Antiquity salutes him with a smile,
'Mid fruitful fields that ring with jocund toil,
And pleasure-grounds where Taste, refined Co-mate Of Truth and Beauty, strives to imitate,
Far as she may, primeval Nature's style.
Fair Land! by Time's parental love made free, By Social Order's watchful arms embraced;
With unexampled union meet in thee,
For eye and mind, the present and the past; With golden prospect for futurity,
If that be reverenced which ought to last.
HEY called Thee MERRY ENGLAND, in old time; A happy people won for thee that name
With envy heard in many a distant clime;
And, spite of change, for me thou keep'st the same Endearing title, a responsive chime
To the heart's fond belief; though some there are Whose sterner judgments deem that word a snare For inattentive Fancy, like the lime
Which foolish birds are caught with. Can, I ask, This face of rural beauty be a mask
For discontent, and poverty, and crime; These spreading towns a cloak for lawless will? Forbid it, Heaven! and MERRY ENGLAND still Shall be thy rightful name, in prose and rhyme!
TO THE RIVER greta, NEAR KESWICK
Rumble along thy bed, block after block: Or, whirling with reiterated shock, Combat, while darkness aggravates the groans: But if thou (like Cocytus from the moans Heard on his rueful margin) thence wert named The Mourner, thy true nature was defamed, And the habitual murmur that atones
For thy worst rage, forgotten. Oft as Spring
Decks, on thy sinuous banks, her thousand thrones, IO Seats of glad instinct and love's carolling,
The concert, for the happy, then may vie With liveliest peals of birth-day harmony:
To a grieved heart the notes are benisons.
MONG the mountains were we nursed, loved
Thou near the eagle's nest-within brief sail,
I, of his bold wing floating on the gale, Where thy deep voice could lull me!
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