"Alas! when evil men are strong, No lite is good, no pleasure long.
The boy must part from Mosedale's groves,
And leave Blencathara's rugged coves,
And quit the flowers that summer brings
To Glenderamakin's lofty springs;
Must vanish, and his careless cheer
Be turn'd to heaviness and fear.
-Give Sir Lancelot Threlkeld praise !
Hear it, good man, old in days!
Thou tree of covert and of rest
For this young bird that is distress'd;
Among thy branches safe he lay,
And he was free to sport and play,
When talcons were abroad for prey.
"A recreant harp, that sings of fear
And heaviness in Clifford's ear!
I said, when evil men are strong,
No life is good, no pleasure long,
A weak and cowardly untruth!
Our Clifford was a happy youth,
And thankful through a weary time,
That brought him up to manhood's prime.
-Again he wanders forth at will,
And tends a flock from hill to hill:
His garb is humble; ne'er was seen
Such garb with such a noble mien ;
Among the shepherd grooms no mate
Hath he, a child of strength and state!
Yet lacks not friends for solemn glee,
And a cheerful company,
That learn'd of him submissive ways,
And comforted his private days.
To his side the fallow deer
Came, and rested without fear;
The eagle, lord of land and sea,
Stoop'd down to pay him fealty;
And both th' undying fish that swim
Through Bowscale Tarn did wait on him,
The pair were servants of his eye
In their immortality;
They moved about in open sight,
To and fro, for his delight.
He knew the rocks which angels haunt
On the mountains visitant;
He hath kenn'd them taking wing:
And the caves where fairies sing
He hath enter'd, and been told
By voices how men lived of old.
Among the heavens his eye can see
Face of thing that is to be;
And, it men report him right,
He can whisper words of might.
-Now another day is come,
Fitter hope, and nobler doom:
He hath thrown aside his crook,
And hath buried deep his book;
Armour rusting in his halls
On the blood of Clifford calls ;-
'Quell the Scot,' exclaims the lance-
'Bear me to the heart of France'
Is the longing of the shield--
Tell thy name, thou trembling field;
Field of death, where'er thou be,
Groan thou with our victory!
Happy day, and mighty hour,
When our shepherd, in his power,
Mail'd and horsed, with lance and sword
To his ancestors restored
Like a re-appearing star,
Like a glory from afar,
First shall head the flock of war!"
Alas! the fervent harper did not know
That for a tranquil soul the lay was framed,
Who, long compell'd in humble walks to go,
Was soften'd into feeling, soothed and tamed.
Love had he found in huts where poor men lie,
His daily teachers had been woods and rills,
The silence that is in the starry sky,
The sleep that is among the lonely hills.
In him the savage virtue of the race,
Revenge, and all ferocious thoughts were dead:
Nor did he change; but kept in lofty place
The wisdom which adversity had bred.
Glad were the vales, and every cottage hearth;
The shepherd lord was honour'd more and more: And, ages after he was laid in earth,
"The good Lord Clifford" was the name he bore.
YES! full surely 'twas the echo,
Solitary, clear, profound,
Answering to thee, shouting cuckoo !
Giving to thee sound for sound.
Unsolicited reply
To a babbling wanderer sent;
Like her ordinary cry,
Like-but oh how different!
Hears not also mortal life?
Hear not we, unthinking creatures!
Slaves of folly, love, or strife,
Voices of two different natures?
Have not we too ?-Yes we have
Answers, and we know not whence;
Echoes from beyond the grave,
Recognized intelligence!
Such within ourselves we hear
Ofttimes, ours though sent from far;
Listen, ponder, hold them dear;
For of God,-of God they are!
AS IT APPEARED TO ENTHUSIASTS AT ITS COMMENCEMENT."
O, pleasant exercise of hope and joy!
For mighty were the auxiliars which then stood
Upon our side, we who were strong in love!
Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive,
But to be young was very heaven! O, times!
In which the meagre, stale, forbidding ways
Of custom, law, and statute, took at once
The attraction of a country in romance!
When Reason seem'd the most to assert her rights,
When most intent on making of herself
A prime enchantress-to assist the work,
Which then was going forward in her name !
Not favour'd spots alone, but the whole earth,
The beauty wore of promise-that which sets
(To take an image which was felt no doubt
Among the bowers of paradise itself)
The budding rose above the rose full blown.
What temper at the prospect did not wake
To happiness unthought of? The inert
Were roused, and lively natures rapt away!
They who had fed their childhood upon dreams,
The playíellows of fancy, who had made
All powers of swiftness, subtility, and strength
Their ministers,—who in lordly wise had stirr'd
Among the grandest objects of the sense,
And dealt with whatsoever they found there
As if they had within some lurking right
To wield it;-they, too, who of gentle mood
Had watch'd all gentle motions, and to these
Had fitted their own thoughts, schemers more mild,
And in the region of their peace.ul selves;-
Now was it that both found, the meek and lofty
Did both find helpers to their heart's desire,
And stufi at hand, plastic as they could wish,—
Were call'd upon to exercise their skill,
Not in Utopia,-subterraneous fields,-
Or some secreted island, Heaven knows where!
But in the very world, which is the world
Of all of us-the place where in the end
We find our happiness, or not at all!
• Reprinted from "THE FRIEND."
It is no spirit who from heaven hath flown
And is descending on his embassy;
Nor traveller gone from earth the heavens t' espy!
"Tis Hesperus-there he stands with glittering crown,
First admonition that the sun is down,—
For yet it is broad daylight!—clouds pass by;
A few are near him still-and now the sky,
He hath it to himself-'tis all his own.
O most ambitious star! an inquest wrought
Within me when I recognized thy light;
A moment I was startled at the sight;
And, while I gazed, there came to me a thought
That even I beyond my natural race
Might step as thou dost now:-might one day trace
Some ground not mine; and, strong her strength above,
My soul, an apparition in the place,
Tread there, with steps that no one shall reprove!
COMPOSED A FEW MILES ABOVE TINTERN ABBEY, ON REVISITING THE BANKS OF THE WYE DURING A TOUR.
FIVE years have pass'd; five summers, with the length
Of five long winters! and again I hear
These waters, rolling from their mountain springs
With a sweet inland murmur. *-Once again
Do I behold these steep and lofty clifis,
Which on a wild secluded scene impress
Thoughts of more deep seclusion; and connect
The landscape with the quiet of the sky.
The day is come when I again repose
Here, under this dark sycamore, and view
These plots of cottage-ground, these orchard tufts,
Which, at this season, with their unripe fruits,
Are clad in one green hue, and lose themselves
Among the woods and copses, nor disturb
The wild green landscape. Once again I see
These hedge-rows, hardly hedge-rows, little lines
Of sportive wood run wild; these pastoral farms
Green to the very door; and wreaths of smoke
Sent up,
in silence, from among the trees!
With some uncertain notice, as might seem,
Of vagrant dwellers in the houseless woods,
Or of some hermit's cave, where by his fire
The hermit sits alone.
Though absent long,
These forms of beauty have not been to me
As is a landscape to a blind man's eye:
But oft, in lonely rooms, and 'mid the din
Of towns and cities, I have owed to them,
The river is not affected by the tides a few miles above Tintern.
In hours of weariness, sensations sweet,
Felt in the blood, and felt along the heart;
And passing even into my purer mind,
With tranquil restoration:-feelings too
Of unremember'd pleasure; such, perhaps,
As
may have had no trivial influence
On that best portion of a good man's life,
His little, nameless, unremember'd acts
Of kindness and of love. Nor less, I trust,
To them I may have owed another gift,
Of aspect more sublime; that blessed mood,
In which the burthen of the mystery,
In which the heavy and the weary weight
Of all this unintelligible world
Is lighten'd;-that serene and blessed mood,
In which th' affections gently lead us on,-
Until, the breath of this corporeal frame,
And even the motion of our human blood,
Almost suspended, we are laid asleep
In body, and become a living soul:
While with an eye made quiet by the power
Of harmony, and the deep power of joy,
We see into the life of things.
Be but a vain belief, yet, oh! how oft,
In darkness, and amid the many shapes
Or joyless daylight; when the fretful stir
Unprofitable, and the fever of the world,
Have hung upon the beatings of my heart,
How oft, in spirit, have I turned to thee,
O sylvan Wye! Thou wand'rer through the woods,
How often has my spirit turn'd to thee!
And now, with gleams of half-extinguish'd thought,
With many recognitions dim and faint,
And somewhat of a sad perplexity,
The picture of the mind revives again :
While here I stand, not only with the sense
Of present pleasure, but with pleasing thoughts
That in this moment there is life and food
Though changed, no doubt, from what I was when first
I came among these hills; when like a roe
I bounded o'er the mountains, by the sides
Of the deep rivers, and the lonely streams,
Wherever Nature led; more like a man
Flying from something that he dreads, than one
Who sought the thing he loved. For Nature then
(The coarser pleasures of my boyish days,
And their glad animal movements all gone by)
To me was all in all. I cannot paint
What then I was. The sounding cataract
Haunted me like a passion; the tall rock,
The mountain, and the deep and gloomy wood,
Their colours and their forms, were then to me
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