With rapture thrilled; whose Youth revered the
Of Saxon liberty that Alfred wore, Alfred, dear Babe, thy great Progenitor!
-Not He, who from her mellowed practice drew His social sense of just, and fair, and true; And saw, thereafter, on the soil of France Rash Polity begin her maniac dance, Foundations broken up, the deeps run wild, Nor grieved to see (himself not unbeguiled)— Woke from the dream, the dreamer to upbraid, And learn how sanguine expectations fade When novel trusts by folly are betrayed,— To see Presumption, turning pale, refrain From further havoc, but repent in vain,— Good aims lie down, and perish in the road Where guilt had urged them on with ceaseless goad, Proofs thickening round her that on public ends Domestic virtue vitally depends,
That civic strife can turn the happiest hearth Into a grievous sore of self-tormenting earth.
Can such a One, dear Babe! though glad and proud
To welcome thee, repel the fears that crowd Into his English breast, and spare to quake Less for his own than for thy innocent sake? Too late-or, should the providence of God Lead, through dark ways by sin and sorrow trod, Justice and peace to a secure abode,
Too soon-thou com'st into this breathing world; Ensigns of mimic outrage are unfurled.
Who shall preserve or prop the tottering Realm ? What hand suffice to govern the state-helm ? If, in the aims of men, the surest test
Of good or bad (whate'er be sought for or profest) Lie in the means required, or ways ordained, For compassing the end, else never gained; Yet governors and govern'd both are blind
To this plain truth, or fling it to the wind;
If to expedience principle must bow;
Past, future, shrinking up beneath the incumbent Now;
If cowardly concession still must feed
The thirst for power in men who ne'er concede; Nor turn aside, unless to shape a way For domination at some riper day; If generous Loyalty must stand in awe Of subtle Treason, in his mask of law, Or with bravado insolent and hard, Provoking punishment, to win reward; If office help the factious to conspire, And they who should extinguish, fan the fire- Then, will the sceptre be a straw, the crown
Sit loosely, like the thistle's crest of down; To be blown off at will, by Power that spares it In cunning patience, from the head that wears it.
Lost people, trained to theoretic feud! Lost above all, ye labouring multitude! Bewildered whether ye, by slanderous tongues Deceived, mistake calamities for wrongs; And over fancied usurpations brood, Oft snapping at revenge in sullen mood; Or, from long stress of real injuries fly To desperation for a remedy;
In bursts of outrage spread your judgments wide, And to your wrath cry out," Be thou our guide;" Or, bound by oaths, come forth to tread earth's
In marshalled thousands, darkening street and moor With the worst shape mock-patience ever wore ; Or, to the giddy top of self-esteem By Flatterers carried, mount into a dream Of boundless suffrage, at whose sage behest Justice shall rule, disorder be supprest, And every man sit down as Plenty's Guest! -O for a bridle bitted with remorse To stop your Leaders in their headstrong course! Oh may the Almighty scatter with his grace These mists, and lead you to a safer place, By paths no human wisdom can foretrace! May He pour round you, from worlds far above Man's feverish passions, his pure light of love, That quietly restores the natural mien
To hope, and makes truth willing to be seen! Else shall your blood-stained hands in frenzy reap Fields gaily sown when promises were cheap. Why is the Past belied with wicked art, The Future made to play so false a part, Among a people famed for strength of mind, Foremost in freedom, noblest of mankind? We act as if we joyed in the sad tune Storms make in rising, valued in the moon Nought but her changes. Thus, ungrateful Nation!
If thou persist, and, scorning moderation, Spread for thyself the snares of tribulation, Whom, then, shall meekness guard? What saving
Lie in forbearance, strength in standing still?
-Soon shall the widow (for the speed of Time
Nought equals when the hours are winged with
Widow, or wife, implore on tremulous knee, From him who judged her lord, a like decree; The skies will weep o'er old men desolate: Ye little-ones! Earth shudders at your fate, Outcasts and homeless orphans-
With emblematic purity attired
In a white vest, white as her marble neck Is, and the pillar of the throat would be But for the shadow by the drooping chin Cast into that recess the tender shade The shade and light, both there and every where, And through the very atmosphere she breathes, Broad, clear, and toned harmoniously, with skill That might from nature have been learnt in the hour
When the lone shepherd sees the morning spread Upon the mountains. Look at her, whoe'er Thou be that, kindling with a poet's soul, Hast loved the painter's true Promethean craft Intensely from Imagination take
The treasure, what mine eyes behold see thou, Even though the Atlantic ocean roll between.
A silver line, that runs from brow to crown And in the middle parts the braided hair, Just serves to show how delicate a soil The golden harvest grows in; and those eyes, Soft and capacious as a cloudless sky Whose azure depth their colour emulates, Must needs be conversant with upward looks, Prayer's voiceless service; but now, seeking nought And shunning nought, their own peculiar life Of motion they renounce, and with the head Partake its inclination towards earth
In humble grace, and quiet pensiveness Caught at the point where it stops short of sadness.
Offspring of soul-bewitching Art, make me Thy confidant! say, whence derived that air Of calm abstraction? Can the ruling thought Be with some lover far away, or one Crossed by misfortune, or of doubted faith? Inapt conjecture! Childhood here, a moon Crescent in simple loveliness serene,
Has but approached the gates of womanhood, Not entered them; her heart is yet unpierced By the blind Archer-god; her fancy free: The fount of feeling, if unsought elsewhere, Will not be found.
Her right hand, as it lies Across the slender wrist of the left arm Upon her lap reposing, holds-but mark How slackly, for the absent mind permits No firmer grasp a little wild-flower, joined As in a posy, with a few pale ears
The common light; whose stillness charms the air, Of yellowing corn, the same that overtopped
Or seems to charm it, into like repose;
Whose silence, for the pleasure of the ear,
Surpasses sweetest music. There she sits
And in their common birthplace sheltered it 'Till they were plucked together; a blue flower
Called by the thrifty husbandman a weed;
But Ceres, in her garland, might have worn That ornament, unblamed. The floweret, held In scarcely conscious fingers, was, she knows, (Her Father told her so) in youth's gay dawn Her Mother's favourite; and the orphan Girl, In her own dawn-a dawn less gay and bright, Loves it, while there in solitary peace She sits, for that departed Mother's sake. -Not from a source less sacred is derived (Surely I do not err) that pensive air Of calm abstraction through the face diffused And the whole person.
Words have something told More than the pencil can, and verily More than is needed, but the precious Art Forgives their interference-Art divine,
That both creates and fixes, in despite
Of Death and Time, the marvels it hath wrought.
Or changed and changing, I not seldom gaze Upon this solemn Company unmoved By shock of circumstance, or lapse of years, Until I cannot but believe that they- They are in truth the Substance, we the Shadows."”
So spake the mild Jeronymite, his griefs Melting away within him like a dream Ere he had ceased to gaze, perhaps to speak: And I, grown old, but in a happier land, Domestic Portrait! have to verse consigned In thy calm presence those heart-moving words: Words that can soothe, more than they agitate; Whose spirit, like the angel that went down Into Bethesda's pool, with healing virtue Informs the fountain in the human breast Which by the visitation was disturbed.
-But why this stealing tear? Companion mute, On thee I look, not sorrowing; fare thee well,
Strange contrasts have we in this world of ours! My Song's Inspirer, once again farewell!*
That posture, and the look of filial love Thinking of past and gone, with what is left Dearly united, might be swept away From this fair Portrait's fleshly Archetype, Even by an innocent fancy's slightest freak Banished, nor ever, haply, be restored
To their lost place, or meet in harmony So exquisite; but here do they abide, Enshrined for ages. Is not then the Art Godlike, a humble branch of the divine, In visible quest of immortality,
THE FOREGOING SUBJECT RESUMED.
AMONG a grave fraternity of Monks, For One, but surely not for One alone, Triumphs, in that great work, the Painter's skill, Humbling the body, to exalt the soul; Yet representing, amid wreck and wrong
Stretched forth with trembling hope-In every And dissolution and decay, the warm
From high Gibraltar to Siberian plains, Thousands, in each variety of tongue
That Europe knows, would echo this appeal; One above all, a Monk who waits on God In the magnific Convent built of yore To sanctify the Escurial palace. He- Guiding, from cell to cell and room to room, A British Painter (eminent for truth In character, and depth of feeling, shown
By labours that have touched the hearts of kings, And are endeared to simple cottagers)- Came, in that service, to a glorious work, Our Lord's Last Supper, beautiful as when first The appropriate Picture, fresh from Titian's hand, Graced the Refectory: and there, while both Stood with eyes fixed upon that masterpiece, The hoary Father in the Stranger's ear Breathed out these words :-" Here daily do we sit, Thanks given to God for daily bread, and here Pondering the mischiefs of these restless times, And thinking of my Brethren, dead, dispersed,
And breathing life of flesh, as if already Clothed with impassive majesty, and graced With no mean earnest of a heritage Assigned to it in future worlds. Thou, too, With thy memorial flower, meek Portraiture! From whose serene companionship I passed Pursued by thoughts that haunt me still; thou also-
Though but a simple object, into light Called forth by those affections that endear The private hearth; though keeping thy sole seat In singleness, and little tried by time, Creation, as it were, of yesterday— With a congenial function art endued For each and all of us, together joined In course of nature under a low roof
The pile of buildings, composing the palace and con. vent of San Lorenzo, has, in common usage, lost its proper name in that of the Escurial, a village at the foot of the hill upon which the splendid edifice, built by Philip the Second, stands. It need scarcely be added, that Wilkie is the painter alluded to.
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