Such ebb and flow must ever be,

As snowdrop on an infant's grave,

Then wherefore should we mourn? [1806. Or lily heaving with the wave

ELEGIAC STANZAS.

That feeds it and defends;

As Vesper, ere the star hath kiss'd
The mountain-top, or breathed the mist

(Addresseed to Sir G. H. B. upon the death That from the vale ascends.

of his Sister-in-law.)

O FOR a dirge! But why complain?
Ask rather a triumphal strain
When FERMOR's race is run;

A garland of immortal boughs

To twine around the Christian's brows,
Whose glorious work is done.

We pay a high and holy debt;
No tears of passionate regret
Shall stain this votive lay:
Ill-worthy, Beaumont! were the grief
That flings itself on wild relief
When Saints have pass'd away.

Sad doom, at Sorrow's shrine to kneel,
For ever covetous to feel,

And impotent to bear!

Such once was hers, - to think and think Their golden leaves upon the pathways,

On sever'd love, and only sink
From anguish to despair!

But nature to its inmost part
Faith had refined; and to her heart
A peaceful cradle given:

Calm as the dew-drop's, free to rest
Within a breeze-fann'd rose's breast
Till it exhales to Heaven.

Was ever Spirit that could bend
So graciously? — that could descend,
Another's need to suit,

My steps the Border-minstrel led."

The mighty Minstrel breathes no longer,
'Mid mouldering ruins low he lies; 8
And death upon the braes of Yarrow
Has closed the Shepherd-poet's eyes:

5 This lady [Mrs. Frances Fermor] had been a widow long before I knew her. Her husband was of the family of the lady celebrated in The Rape of the Lock. The sorrow which his death caused her was fearful in its character as described in this poem, but was subdued in course of time by the strength of her religious faith. I have been, for many weeks at a time, an inmate with her at Coleorton Hall, as were also Mrs. Wordsworth and my sister. The truth in the sketch of her character here given was acknowledged with gratitude by her nearest relaPale was her hue; yet mortal cheek tives. She was eloquent in conversation, Ne'er kindled with a livelier streak energetic upon public matters, open in When aught had suffer'd wrong, respect to those, but slow to communicate her personal feelings; upon these she When aught that breathes had felt a never touched in her intercourse with

So promptly from her lofty throne?—
In works of love, in these alone,
How restless, how minute!

wound;

Such look th' Oppressor might confound,
However proud and strong.

But hush'd by every thought that springs
From out the bitterness of things;
Her quiet is secure:

No thorns can pierce her tender feet,
Whose life was, like the violet, sweet,
As climbing jasmine, pure;

me, so that I could not regard myself as ingly surprised when I learnt she had her confidential friend, and was accordleft me a legacy of £100 as a token of her esteem.Author's Notes, 1843.

6 Alluding to the occasion of the poem Yarrow Visited. See page 165

7 Alluding to the occasion of the poem Yarrow Revisited. See page 167, note 10. 8 Sir Walter Scott died Sept. 21, 1832. 9 James Hogg, long and widely-distinguished at the Ettrick Shepherd," died in November, 1835.

Nor has the rolling year twice measured, | On which with thee, O Crabbe! forth

From sign to sign, its steadfast course,
Since every mortal power of Coleridge
Was frozen at its marvellous source;1

The rapt One, of the godlike forehead,
The heaven-eyed creature sleeps in earth:
And Lamb, the frolic and the gentle,
Has vanish'd from his lonely hearth.2

looking,

I gazed from Hampstead's breezy heath.
As if but yesterday departed,
Thou too art gone before; but why,
O'er ripe fruit, seasonably gather'd
Should frail survivors heave a sigh?

Mourn rather for that holy Spirit,
Sweet as the Spring, as ocean deep,

Like clouds that rake the mountain-sum- For Her who, ere her summer faded,

mits,

Or waves that own no curbing hand,
How fast has brother follow'd brother
From sunshine to the sunless land!

Yet I, whose lids from infant slumber
Were earlier raised, remain to hear
A timid voice, that asks in whispers,
"Who next will drop and disappear?"

Has sunk into a breathless sleep.1

No more of old romantic sorrows,
For slaughter'd Youth or love-lorn Maid!
With sharper grief is Yarrow smitten,
And Ettrick mourns with her their Poet
dead.5
[Nov., 1835.

3 The Rev. George Crabbe died Feb. 3, 1832.

4 Alluding to Mrs. Felicia Hemans, Our haughty life is crown'd with dark-who died May 16, 1835.

ness,

5 These verses were written extemLike London with its own black wreath, of the Ettrick Shepherd's death, in the pore, immediately after reading a notice

1 Samuel Taylor Coleridge died July 25, 1834.

2 Charles Lamb died Dec. 27, 1834.

Newcastle paper, to the Editor of which I sent a copy for publication. The persons lamented in these verses were all either of my friends or acquaintances. Author's Notes, 1843.

ELEGIAC STANZAS,

SUGGESTED BY A PICTURE OF PEELE CASTLE, IN A STORM,
PAINTED BY SIR GEORGE BEAUMONT.

I WAS thy neighbour once, thou rugged Pile!
Four summer weeks I dwelt in sight of thee:
I saw thee every day; and all the while
Thy Form was sleeping on a glassy sea.

So pure the sky, so quiet was the air!
So like, so very like, was day to day!
Whene'er I look'd, thy Image still was there;
It trembled, but it never pass'd away.

How perfect was the calm! it seem'd no sleep;
No mood, which season takes away, or brings:
I could have fancied that the mighty Deep
Was even the gentlest of all gentle Things.

Ah! THEN, if mine had been the Painter's hand,
To express what then I saw; and add the gleam,
The light that never was, on sea or land,
The consecration, and the Poet's dream;

-

I would have planted thee, thou hoary Pile
Amid a world how different from this!
Beside a sea that could not cease to smile;
On tranquil land, beneath a sky of bliss.

Thou shouldst have seem'd a treasure-house divine
Of peaceful years; a chronicle of Heaven;-
Of all the sunbeams that did ever shine
The very sweetest had to thee been given.

A Picture had it been of lasting ease,
Elysian quiet, without toil or strife;
No motion but the moving tide, a breeze,
Or merely silent Nature's breathing life.

Such, in the fond illusion of my heart,
Such Picture would I at that time have made:
And seen the soul of truth in every part,
A steadfast peace that might not be betray'd.
So once it would have been, - 'tis so no more;
I have submitted to a new control:
A power is gone, which nothing can restore;
A deep distress hath humanised my Soul."

Not for a moment could I now behold
A smiling sea, and be what I have been :
The feeling of my loss will ne'er be old;

This, which I know, I speak with mind serene.

Then, Beaumont, Friend! who would have been the Friend,

If he had lived, of Him whom I deplore,

This work of thine I blame not, but commend;
This sea in anger, and that dismal shore.

O, 'tis a passionate Work!-yet wise and well,
Well chosen is the spirit that is here;
That Hulk which labours in the deadly swell,
This rueful sky, this pageantry of fear!

And this huge Castle, standing here sublime,
I love to see the look with which it braves,
Cased in th' unfeeling armour of old time,

The lightning, the fierce wind, and trampling waves.

6 Throughout this piece, again, the feeling uppermost in the poet's mind is sorrow at the death of his brother. In one of his summer vacations while in college, he had spent four weeks in the neighbourhood of Peele Castle; and all that time the waters had remained perfectly unruffled and smooth, never ceasing to image in their depths the Castle standing near; and now a picture of the place, with the sea heaving under a mighty storm, the same sea which had been so calm and still, that it seemed to him "the gentlest of all gentle Things,"- -only reminds him of his brother's fate, and, from the fierce contrast, impresses him with a deeper sense of the terrible might which had slumbered so sweetly before his eye.

Farewell, farewell the heart that lives alone,
Housed in a dream, at distance from the Kind!
Such happiness, wherever it be known,
Is to be pitied; for 'tis surely blind.

But welcome fortitude, and patient cheer,
And frequent sights of what is to be borne!
Such sights, or worse, as are before me here.
Not without hope we suffer and we mourn.'

WRITTEN AFTER THE DEATH OF CHARLES
LAMB.8

To a good Man of most dear memory
This Stone is sacred. Here he lies apart

From the great city where he first drew breath,
Was rear'd and taught; and humbly earn'd his bread,
To the strict labours of the merchant's desk
By duty chain'd. Not seldom did those tasks
Tease, and the thought of time so spent depress,
His spirit, but the recompense was high,-
Firm Independence, Bounty's rightful sire;
Affections, warm as sunshine, free as air;
And, when the precious hours of leisure came,
Knowledge and wisdom, gain'd from converse sweet
With books, or while he ranged the crowded streets

7. This is justly regarded as one of the author's noblest and most characteristic pieces. Hardly any of them has been oftener quoted, or drawn forth more or stronger notes of admiration. Perhaps the higher function of Poetry has never been better expressed than in the last half of the fourth stanza. The author's private correspondence at the time shows that the shaping and informing spirit of the piece was not a thing assumed for any purpose of art. In a letter to a friend, dated March 16, 1805, he wrote as follows: "For myself, I feel that there is something cut out of my life which cannot be restored. I never thought of him but with hope and delight: we looked forward to the time, not distant, as we thought, when he would settle near us, when the task of his life would be over, and he would have nothing to do but reap his reward. I never wrote a line without a thought of its giving him pleasure: my writings, printed and manuscript, were his delight, and one of the chief solaces of his long voyages. But I will not be cast down; were it only for his sake, I will not be dejected: and I hope, when I shall be able to think of him with a calmer mind, that the remembrance of him dead will even animate me more than the joy which I had in him living."

8 Light will be thrown upon the tragic circumstance alluded to in this poem, when, after the death of Charles Lamb's Sister, his biographer, Mr. Sergeant Tal fourd, shall be at liberty to relate particulars which could not, at the time his Memoir was written, be given to the public. Mary Lamb was ten years older than her brother, and has survived him as long a time. Were I to give way to my own feelings, I should dwell not only on her genius and intellectual power, but upon the delicacy and refinement of manner which she maintained inviolable under the most trying circumstances. She was loved and honoured by all her brother's friends; and others, some of them strange characters, whom his philanthropic peculiarities induced him to countenance. The death of Charles Lamb himself was doubtless hastened by his sorrow for that of Coleridge, to whom he had been attached from the time of their being school-fellows at Christ's Hospital. Lamb was a good Latin scholar, and probably would have gone to college upon one of the school foundations but for the impediment in his speech. Author's Notes, 1843.