User: Can you write me a poem about wordsworth, ben jonson and camelot?
Assistant: Sure, here's a poem about wordsworth, ben jonson and camelot:
  consideration as are music and the history of music.
Any careful investigation of the history of English poetry would
characterized by "an oratorical pomp, a classical correctness, a
inaugurated, a new spirit thus began to manifest itself in our
poetical literature, that literature itself would remain to him
Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of
The Cotter's Saturday Night
For a' that and a' that
On the Receipt of my Mother's Picture
Ode on St. Cecilia's Day
Alexander's Feast
On the Morning of Christ's Nativity
Wordsworth's Sonnet to Milton
The Mad Maid's Song
Song: Go, lovely Rose
Herrick's Ode for Ben Jonson
Venus's Advice to Adonis on Hunting
Sigh no more, Ladies
Sunshine and Cloud (Sonnet xxxiii.)
The World's Way (Sonnet lxvi.)
The Courtier's Life
From Virgil's Æneid
Waly, waly
The Bailiff's Daughter of Islington
Robin Hood and the Widow's three Sons
Cavaliers"; "Ballads of Scotland," etc.
On either side the river lie
Long fields of barley and of rye,
That clothe the wold{1} and meet the sky:
And through the fields the road runs by
To many-towered Camelot{2};
And up and down the people go,
Gazing where the lilies blow
Round an island there below,
The island of Shalott.
Willows whiten, aspens quiver,
Little breezes dusk{3} and shiver
Through the wave that runs forever
By the island in the river
Flowing down to Camelot;
Four gray walls, and four gray towers,
Overlook a space of flowers,
And the silent isle imbowers
By the margin, willow-veiled,
Slide the heavy barges, trailed{4}
By slow horses; and unhailed
The shallop flitteth silken-sailed,
Skimming down to Camelot:
But who hath seen her wave her hand?
Or at the casement seen her stand?
Or is she known in all the land,
The lady of Shalott?
Only reapers, reaping early
In among the bearded barley,
Hear a song that echoes cheerly
From the river winding clearly,
Down to towered Camelot:
And by the moon the reaper weary,
Piling sheaves in uplands airy,
Listening, whispers, "'Tis the fairy
There she weaves by night and day
A magic web{5} with colors gay.
She has heard a whisper say,
A curse is on her if she stay
To look down to Camelot.
She knows not what the curse may be,
And so she weaveth steadily,
And little other care hath she,
And moving through a mirror clear
That hangs before her all the year,
Shadows of the world appear.
There she sees the highway near
Winding down to Camelot:
There the river-eddy whirls,
And there the surly village-churls,
And the red cloaks of market girls
Pass onward from Shalott.
Sometimes a troop of damsels glad,
An abbott on an ambling pad,{6}
Sometimes a curly shepherd-lad
Or long-haired page in crimson clad,
Goes by to towered Camelot;
And sometimes through the mirror blue,
The knights come riding two and two:
She hath no loyal knight and true,
But in her web she still delights
To weave the mirrored magic sights,
For often through the silent nights
A funeral, with plumes and lights,
And music, went to Camelot;
Or, when the moon was overhead,
Came two young lovers lately wed.
"I am half-sick of shadows," said
A bow-shot from her bower-eaves,
He rode between the barley-sheaves,
The sun came dazzling through the leaves,
And flamed upon the brazen greaves
Of bold Sir Lancelot.
A red-cross{8} knight forever kneeled
To a lady in his shield
That sparkled on the yellow field,
Beside remote Shalott.
The gemmy bridle glittered free,
Like to some branch of stars we see
Hung in the golden Galaxy.{9}
The bridle-bells rang merrily
As he rode down to Camelot:
And from his blazoned baldric{10} slung
A mighty silver bugle hung,
And as he rode his armor rung,
Beside remote Shalott.
All in the blue unclouded weather
The helmet and the helmet-feather
Burned like one burning flame together,
As he rode down to Camelot.
As often through the purple night,
Below the starry clusters bright,
Some bearded meteor,{11} trailing light,
Moves over still Shalott.
His broad clear brow in sunlight glowed;
On burnished hooves his war-horse trode;
From underneath his helmet flowed
His coal-black curls as on he rode,
As he rode down to Camelot.
From the bank and from the river
He flashed{12} into the crystal mirror,
"Tirra lirra," by the river{13}
She left the web, she left the loom,
She made three paces through the room,
She saw the water-lily bloom,
She saw the helmet and the plume,
She looked down to Camelot.
Out flew the web and floated wide;
The mirror cracked from side to side;
"The curse is come upon me," cried
In the stormy east-wind straining,
The pale yellow woods were waning,
The broad stream in his banks complaining,
Heavily the low sky raining
Over towered Camelot;
Down she came and found a boat
Beneath a willow left afloat,
And round about the prow she wrote,
And down the river's dim expanse--
Like some bold seër in a trance,
Seeing all his own mischance--
With a glassy countenance
Did she look to Camelot.
And at the closing of the day
She loosed the chain, and down she lay;
The broad stream bore her far away,
Lying, robed in snowy white
That loosely flew to left and right--
The leaves upon her falling light--
Through the noises of the night
She floated down to Camelot:
And as the boat-head wound along
The willowy hills and fields among,
They heard her singing her last song,
Heard a carol, mournful, holy,
Chanted loudly, chanted lowly,
Till her blood was frozen slowly,
And her eyes were darkened wholly,
Turned to towered Camelot;
For ere she reached upon the tide
The first house by the water-side,
Singing in her song she died,
Under tower and balcony,
By garden-wall and gallery,
A gleaming shape she floated by,
A corse between the houses high,
Silent into Camelot.
Out upon the wharfs they came,
Knight and burgher, lord and dame,
And round the prow they read her name,
Who is this? and what is here?
And in the lighted palace near
Died the sound of royal cheer;
And they crossed themselves for fear,
All the knights at Camelot;
But Lancelot mused a little space;
He said, "She has a lovely face;
God in his mercy lend her grace,
"But Arthur spied the letter in her hand,
Stoopt, took, brake seal, and read it; this was all:
'Most noble Lord, Sir Lancelot of the Lake,
I, sometime called the maid of Astolat,
Come, for you left me taking no farewell,
Hither, to take my last farewell of you.
I loved you, and my love had no return,
And therefore my true love has been my death. . . .
Pray for my soul and yield me burial.
Pray for my soul thou too Sir Lancelot,
As thou art a knight peerless.'"[24:A]
"Far off they saw the silver-misty morn
Rolling her smoke about the Royal mount,
That rose between the forest and the field.
At times the summit of the high city flash'd;
At times the spires and turrets half-way down
Prick'd thro' the mist; at times the great gate shone
Only, that open'd on the field below:
Anon, the whole fair city had disappear'd."
"And on his brest a bloodie crosse he bore,
The deare remembrance of his dying Lord,
For whose sweete sake that glorious badge he wore,
And dead, as living ever, him ador'd;
Upon his shield the like was also scor'd,
For soveraine hope, which in his helpe he had.
Right, faithfull, true he was in deede and word;
But of his cheere did seeme too solemne sad;
Yet nothing did he dread, but ever was ydrad."
I come from haunts of coot{1} and hern,{2}
I make a sudden sally,
And sparkle out among the fern,
To bicker{3} down a valley.
By thirty hills I hurry down,
Or slip between the ridges,
By twenty thorps,{4} a little town,
And half a hundred bridges.
Till last by Philip's farm I flow
To join the brimming river,
For men may come and men may go,
But I go on forever.
I chatter over stony ways,
In little sharps and trebles,
I bubble into eddying bays,
I babble on the pebbles.
With many a curve my banks I fret
By many a field and fallow,
And many a fairy foreland{5} set
With willow-weed and mallow.
I chatter, chatter, as I flow
To join the brimming river,
For men may come and men may go,
But I go on forever.
I wind about, and in and out,
With here a blossom sailing,
And here and there a lusty trout,
And here and there a grayling,
And here and there a foamy flake
Upon me, as I travel,
With many a silvery waterbreak
Above the golden gravel,
And draw them all along, and flow
To join the brimming river,
For men may come and men may go,
But I go on forever.
I steal by lawns and grassy plots,
I slide by hazel{6} covers;
I move the sweet forget-me-nots
That grow for happy lovers.
I slip, I slide, I gloom,{7} I glance,
Among my skimming swallows;
I make the netted sunbeams dance
Against my shady shallows.
I murmur under moon and stars
In brambly wildernesses;
I linger by my shingly{8} bars;
I loiter round my cresses;
And out again I curve and flow
To join the brimming river,
For men may come and men may go,
But I go on forever.
"Here, by this brook, we parted; I to the East
And he to Italy--too late--too late:
. . . . . . . . . Yet the brook he loved
. . . . . . . seems, as I re-listen to it,
Prattling the primrose fancies of the boy,
To me that loved him; for, 'O brook,' he says,
'O babbling brook,' says Edmund in his rhyme,
'Whence come you?' and the brook, why not? replies:
'I come from haunts of coot and hern,'" etc.
In reading this poem, observe how strikingly the sound is made to
"Courage!" he said, and pointed toward the land;
"This mounting wave will roll us shoreward soon."
In the afternoon they came unto a land,
In which it seemed always afternoon.
All round the coast the languid air did swoon,
Breathing like one that hath a weary dream.
Full-faced above the valley stood the moon;
And like a downward smoke, the slender stream
Along the cliff to fall and pause and fall did seem.
A land of streams! some, like a downward smoke,
Slow-dropping veils of thinnest lawn, did go;
And some through wavering lights and shadows broke
Rolling a slumbrous sheet of foam below.
They saw the gleaming river seaward flow
From the inner land: far off, three mountain-tops,
Three silent pinnacles of aged snow,
Stood sunset-flushed: and, dewed with showery drops,
Up-clomb the shadowy pine above the woven copse.
The charmed sunset lingered low adown
In the red West: through mountain clefts the dale
Was seen far inland, and the yellow down
Bordered with palm, and many a winding vale
And meadow, set with slender galingale;
A land where all things always seemed the same!
And round about the keel with faces pale,
Dark faces pale against that rosy flame,
The mild-eyed melancholy Lotos-eaters came.
Branches they bore of that enchanted stem,
Laden with flower and fruit, whereof they gave
To each, but whoso did receive of them,
And taste, to him the gushing of the wave
Far, far away did seem to mourn and rave
On alien shores; and if his fellow spake,
His voice was thin, as voices from the grave;
And deep-asleep he seemed, yet all awake,
And music in his ears his beating heart did make.
They sat them down upon the yellow sand,
Between the sun and moon upon the shore;
And sweet it was to dream of Father-land,
Of child and wife, and slave; but evermore
Most weary seemed the sea, weary the oar,
Weary the wandering fields of barren foam.
Then some one said, "We will return no more;"
And all at once they sang, "Our island home
Is far beyond the wave; we will no longer roam."
There is sweet music here that softer falls
Than petals from blown roses on the grass,
Or night-dews on still waters between walls
Of shadowy granite, in a gleaming pass;
Music that gentlier on the spirit lies,
Than tired eyelids upon tired eyes;
Music that brings sweet sleep down from the blissful skies.
Here are cool mosses deep.
And thro' the moss the ivies creep,
And in the stream the long-leaved flowers weep,
And from the craggy ledge the poppy hangs in sleep.
Why are we weighed upon with heaviness,
And utterly consumed with sharp distress,
While all things else have rest from weariness?
All things have rest: why should we toil alone,
We only toil, who are the first of things,
And make perpetual moan,
Still from one sorrow to another thrown:
Nor ever fold our wings,
And cease from wanderings,
Nor steep our brows in slumber's holy balm;
Nor hearken what the inner spirit sings,
"There is no joy but calm!"
Why should we only toil, the roof and crown of things?
Lo! in the middle of the wood,
The folded leaf is woo'd from out the bud
With winds upon the branch, and there
Grows green and broad, and takes no care,
Sun-steeped at noon, and in the moon
Nightly dew-fed; and turning yellow
Falls, and floats adown the air.
Lo! sweetened with the summer light,
The full-juiced apple, waxing over-mellow,
Drops in a silent autumn night.
All its allotted length of days,
The flower ripens in its place,
Ripens and fades, and falls, and hath no toil,
Fast-rooted in the fruitful soil.
Hateful is the dark-blue sky,
Vaulted o'er the dark-blue sea.
Death is the end of life; ah, why
Should life all labour be?
Let us alone. Time driveth onward fast,
Let us alone. What is it that will last?
All things are taken from us, and become
Portions and parcels of the dreadful Past.
Let us alone. What pleasure can we have
To war with evil? Is there any peace
In ever climbing up the climbing wave?
All things have rest, and ripen toward the grave
In silence; ripen, fall, and cease:
Give us long rest or death, dark death, or dreamful ease.
How sweet it were, hearing the downward stream,
With half-shut eyes ever to seem
Falling asleep in a half-dream!
To dream and dream, like yonder amber light
Which will not leave the myrrh-bush on the height;
To hear each other's whispered speech;
Eating the Lotos day by day,
To watch the crisping ripples on the beach,
And tender curving lines of creamy spray;
To lend our hearts and spirits wholly
To the influence of mild-minded melancholy;
To muse and brood and live again in memory,
With those old faces of our infancy
Heaped over with a mound of grass,
Two handfuls of white dust, shut in an urn of brass!
Dear is the memory of our wedded lives,
And dear the last embraces of our wives
And their warm tears: but all hath suffered change;
For surely now our household hearths are cold:
Our sons inherit us: our looks are strange:
And we should come like ghosts to trouble joy.
Or else the island-princes over-bold
Have eat our substance, and the minstrel sings
Before them of the ten-years' war in Troy,
And our great deeds, as half-forgotten things.
Is there confusion in the little isle?
Let what is broken so remain.
The gods are hard to reconcile:
'Tis hard to settle order once again.
There _is_ confusion worse than death,
Trouble on trouble, pain on pain,
Long labour unto aged breath,
Sore task to hearts worn out by many wars,
And eyes grown dim with gazing on the pilot-stars.
But, propped on beds of amaranth and moly,
How sweet (while warm airs lull us, blowing lowly)
With half-dropped eyelids still,
Beneath a heaven dark and holy,
To watch the long bright river drawing slowly
His waters from the purple hill--
To hear the dewy echoes calling
From cave to cave thro' the thick-twined vine--
To watch the emerald-coloured water falling
Thro' many a wov'n acanthus-wreath divine!
Only to hear and see the far-off sparkling brine,
Only to hear were sweet, stretched out beneath the pine.
The Lotos blooms below the barren peak:
The Lotos blows by every winding creek:
All day the wind breathes low with mellower tone:
Thro' every hollow cave and alley lone
Round and round the spicy downs the yellow Lotos-dust is blown.
We have had enough of action, and of motion we,
Rolled to starboard, rolled to larboard, when the surge was
seething free,
In the hollow Lotos-land to live and lie reclined
On the hills like gods together, careless of mankind.
For they lie beside their nectar, and the bolts are hurled
Far below them in the valleys, and the clouds are lightly curled
Round their golden houses, girdled with the gleaming world:
Where they smile in secret, looking over wasted lands,
Blight and famine, plague and earthquake, roaring deeps and fiery
But they smile, they find a music centred in a doleful song
Steaming up, a lamentation and an ancient tale of wrong,
Like a tale of little meaning tho' the words are strong;
Chanted from an ill-used race of men that cleave the soil,
Sow the seed, and reap the harvest with enduring toil,
Storing yearly little dues of wheat, and wine and oil;
Resting weary limbs at last on beds of asphodel.
Surely, surely, slumber is more sweet than toil, the shore
Than labour in the deep mid-ocean, wind and wave and oar;
Oh, rest ye, brother mariners, we will not wander more.
"Thence for nine whole days was I borne by ruinous winds over the
The Child is father{1} of the Man;
And I could wish my days to be
Bound each to each by natural piety.
There was a time when meadow, grove, and stream,
The earth, and every common sight,
To me did seem
Apparelled{2} in celestial light,
The glory and the freshness of a dream.
It is not now as it hath been of yore;--
Turn wheresoe'er I may,
By night or day,
The things which I have seen I now can see no more.
The rainbow comes and goes,
And lovely is the rose;
The moon doth with delight
Look round her when the heavens are bare;
Waters on a starry night
Are beautiful and fair;
The sunshine is a glorious birth;
But yet I know, where'er I go,
That there hath passed away a glory from the earth.
Now, while the birds thus sing a joyous song,
And while the young lambs bound
As to the tabor's{3} sound,
To me alone there came a thought of grief:
A timely utterance gave that thought relief,
And I again am strong.
The cataracts{4} blow their trumpets from the steep;
No more shall grief of mine the season wrong;
I hear the echoes{5} through the mountains throng;
The winds come to me from the fields of sleep,{6}
And all the earth is gay;
Give themselves up to jollity,{7}
And with the heart of May{8}
Doth every beast keep holiday.
Thou child of joy,
Shout round me, let me hear thy shouts, thou happy shepherd-boy!
Ye blessed creatures, I have heard the call
Ye to each other make; I see
The heavens laugh with you in your jubilee;
My heart is at your festival.
My head hath its coronal,{9}
The fulness of your bliss, I feel--I feel it all.
Oh evil day if I were sullen
While Earth herself is adorning
This sweet May morning,
And the children are culling
On every side,
In a thousand valleys far and wide,
Fresh flowers, while the sun shines warm,
And the babe leaps up{10} on his mother's arm:
I hear, I hear, with joy I hear!
A single field which I have looked upon,
Both of them speak of something that is gone:
The pansy{12} at my feet
Doth the same tale repeat.
Whither is fled the visionary gleam?
Where is it now, the glory and the dream?
Our birth is but a sleep{13} and a forgetting:
The soul that rises with us, our life's star,
Hath had elsewhere its setting,
And cometh from afar;
Not in entire forgetfulness,
And not in utter nakedness,
But trailing clouds of glory do we come
From God, who is our home.
Heaven lies about us in our infancy!
Shades of the prison-house begin to close
Upon the growing boy,
But he beholds the light, and whence it flows,
He sees it in his joy;
The youth, who daily farther from the East
Must travel, still is nature's priest,
And by the vision splendid
Is on his way attended;
At length the man perceives it die away,
And fade into the light of common day.
Earth fills her lap with pleasures of her own;
Yearnings she hath in her own natural kind,
And even with something of a mother's mind,
And no unworthy aim,
The homely nurse doth all she can
To make her foster-child, her inmate man,
Forget the glories he hath known,
And that imperial palace whence he came.
Behold the child{14} among his new-born blisses,
A six years' darling of a pigmy size!
See, where 'mid work of his own hand he lies,
Fretted by sallies of his mother's kisses,
With light upon him from his father's eyes!
See at his feet some little plan or chart,
Some fragment from his dream of human life,
Shaped by himself with newly-learned art--
A wedding or a festival,
A mourning or a funeral;
And this hath now his heart,
And unto this he frames his song.
Then will he fit his tongue
To dialogues of business, love, or strife:
But it will not be long
Ere this be thrown aside,
And with new joy and pride
The little actor cons another part,
Filling from time to time his 'humorous stage'{15}
With all the persons, down to palsied age,
That Life brings with her in her equipage,
As if his whole vocation
Were endless imitation.
Thou, whose exterior semblance doth belie
Thy soul's immensity;
Thou, best philosopher, who yet dost keep
Thy heritage, thou eye among the blind,
That, deaf and silent, read'st the eternal deep,
Haunted for ever by the eternal mind,--
Mighty prophet! seer blest!{16}
On whom those truths do rest,
Which we are toiling all our lives to find,
In darkness lost, the darkness of the grave;
Thou, over whom thy immortality
Broods like the day, a master o'er a slave,
A presence which is not to be put by;
Thou little child, yet glorious in the might
Of heaven-born freedom on thy being's height,
Why with such earnest pains dost thou provoke
The years to bring the inevitable yoke,
Thus blindly with thy blessedness at strife?
Full soon thy soul shall have her earthly freight,
And custom lie upon thee with a weight,
Heavy as frost, and deep almost as life!
O joy, that in our embers
Is something that doth live,
That nature yet remembers
What was so fugitive!
The thought of our past years in me doth breed
Perpetual benediction: not indeed
For that which is most worthy to be blest--
Delight and liberty, the simple creed
Of childhood, whether busy or at rest,
With new-fledged hope still fluttering in his breast:--
Not for these I raise
The song of thanks and praise;
But for those obstinate questionings
Of sense and outward things,
Fallings from us, vanishings;{17}
Blank misgivings{18} of a creature
Moving about in worlds not realized,
High instincts before which our mortal nature
Did tremble like a guilty thing surprised:
But for those first affections,
Those shadowy recollections,
Which, be they what they may,
Are yet the fountain light of all our day,
Are yet a master light of all our seeing;
Uphold us, cherish, and have power to make
Our noisy years seem moments in the being
Of the eternal silence: truths that wake,
To perish never;
Which neither listlessness, nor mad endeavor,
Nor man nor boy,
Nor all that is at enmity with joy,
Can utterly abolish or destroy!
Hence in a season of calm weather,
Though inland far we be,
Our souls have sight of that immortal sea
Which brought us hither,
Can in a moment travel thither,
And see the children sport upon the shore,
And hear the mighty waters rolling evermore.
Then sing, ye birds! sing, sing a joyous song!
And let the young lambs bound
As to the tabor's sound!
We in thought will join your throng,
Ye that pipe and ye that play,
Ye that through your hearts to-day
Feel the gladness of the May!
What though the radiance which was once so bright
Be now forever taken from my sight,
Though nothing can bring back the hour
Of splendor 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 soothing thoughts that spring
Out of human suffering;
In the faith that looks through death,
In years that bring the philosophic mind.
And O ye fountains, meadows, hills, and groves,
Forebode not any severing of our loves!
Yet in my heart of hearts I feel your might;
I only have relinquished one delight
To live beneath your more habitual sway.
I love the brooks, which down their channels fret,
Even more than when I tripped lightly as they:
The innocent brightness of a new-born day
Is lovely yet:
The clouds that gather round the setting sun{19}
Do take a sober coloring from an eye
That hath kept watch o'er man's mortality;
Another race hath been, and other palms are won.
Thanks to the human heart by which we live,
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.
'A simple child
That lightly draws its breath,
And feels its life in every limb,
What should it know of death?'[44:A]
immortality. But let us bear in mind that, though the idea is not
"Happy those infant days, when I
Shined in my angel-infancy!
Before I understood this place
Appointed for my second race,
Or taught my soul to fancy aught
But a white, celestial thought;
When yet I had not walked above
A mile or two from my first Love,
And looking back at that short space
Could see a glimpse of his bright face."
Shelley, in "A Lament," hints at the same thought:
"O world! O life! O time!
On whose last steps I climb,
Trembling at that where I had stood before,
When will return the glory of your prime?
No more--oh, never more!
"Out of the day and night
A joy has taken flight;
Fresh spring, and summer, and winter hoar,
Move my faint heart with grief, but with delight
No more--oh, never more!"
"My heart leaps up when I behold
A rainbow in the sky.
So was it when my life began;
So is it now I am a man;
So be it when I shall grow old,
Or let me die!
The child is father of the man;
And I could wish my days to be
Bound each to each by natural piety."
Compare with Milton's lines in 'Paradise Regained,' Bk. IV:
"The childhood shows the man
As morning shows the day."
"Lost Echo sits amid the voiceless mountains."
side."--_Hales._ "The fields that were dark during the hours of
"Haste thee nymph and bring with thee
Jest and youthful jollity."
"For May will have no sluggardy a-night:
The season pricketh every gentle heart,
And maketh him out of his sleep to start."
"Only, one little sight, one plant,
. . . whene'er the leaf grows there
Its drop comes from my heart, that's all."
--_Browning's May and Death._
maintained by the Buddhists. Tennyson says:
"As old mythologies relate,
Some draught of Lethe might await
The slipping through from state to state.
"And if I lapsed from nobler place,
Some legend of a fallen race
Alone might hint of my disgrace."--_Two Voices._
"Behold the child, by Nature's kindly law,
Pleased with a rattle, tickled with a straw;
Some livelier plaything gives his youth delight,
A little louder, but as empty quite."--_Essay on Man._
When Wordsworth wrote of
"A six years' darling of a pigmy size,"
"Moreover, something is or seems,
That touches me with mystic gleams,
Like glimpses of forgotten dreams;
"Of something felt, like something here;
Of something done, I know not where;
Such as no language may declare."
Do we revert so fondly to the walks
Of childhood, but that there the soul discerns
The dear memorial footsteps unimpair'd
Of her own native vigor, thence can hear
Reverberations and a choral song,
Commingling with the incense that ascends
Undaunted toward the imperishable heavens,
From her own lonely altar?"
We walked along, while bright and red
Uprose the morning sun;
And Matthew{1} stopped, he looked, and said,
'The will of God be done!'
A village schoolmaster was he,
With hair of glittering gray;
As blithe a man as you could see
On a spring holiday.
And on that morning, through the grass,
And by the steaming rills,
We travelled merrily, to pass
A day among the hills.
'Our work,' said I, 'was well begun:
Then, from thy breast what thought,
Beneath so beautiful a sun,
So sad a sigh has brought?'
A second time did Matthew stop,
And fixing still his eye
Upon the eastern mountain-top,
To me he made reply:
'Yon cloud with that long purple cleft
Brings fresh into my mind
A day like this which I have left
Full thirty years behind.
And just above yon slope of corn
Such colors, and no other,
Were in the sky, that April morn,
Of this the very brother.
With rod and line I sued the sport
Which that sweet season gave,
And, to the church-yard come, stopped short
Beside my daughter's grave.
Nine summers had she scarcely seen,
The pride of all the vale:
And then she sang;--she would have been
A very nightingale.
Six feet in earth my Emma lay;
And yet I loved her more,
For so it seemed, than till that day
I e'er had loved before.
And, turning from her grave, I met,
Beside the churchyard yew,
A blooming girl, whose hair was wet
With points of morning dew.
A basket on her head she bare;
Her brow was smooth and white:
To see a child so very fair,
It was a pure delight!
No fountain from its rocky cave
E'er tripped with foot so free;
She seemed as happy as a wave
That dances on the sea.
There came from me a sigh of pain
Which I could ill confine;
I looked at her, and looked again:
And did not wish her mine!'
Matthew is in his grave, yet now,
Methinks, I see him stand,
As at that moment, with a bough
Of wilding{2} in his hand.
This poem was written in 1799, and published the following year.
occupations."
"Ten ruddy wildings in the wood I found."--_Dryden._
Behold her, single in the field,
Yon solitary highland lass!
Reaping and singing by herself;
Stop here, or gently pass!
Alone she cuts and binds the grain,
And sings a melancholy strain;
O listen! for the vale profound
Is overflowing with the sound.
No nightingale did ever chaunt
More welcome notes to weary bands
Of travellers in some shady haunt
Among Arabian sands:
A voice so thrilling ne'er was heard
In spring-time from a cuckoo-bird,
Breaking the silence of the seas
Among the farthest Hebrides.
Will no one tell me what she sings?--
Perhaps the plaintive numbers flow
For old, unhappy, far-off things,
And battles long ago:
Or is it some more humble lay,
Familiar matter of to-day?
Some natural sorrow, loss, or pain,
That has been, or may be again?
Whate'er the theme, the maiden sang
As if her song could have no ending;
I saw her singing at her work,
And o'er the sickle bending;--
I listened, motionless and still;
And, as I mounted up the hill,
The music in my heart I bore,
Long after it was heard no more.
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH was born at Cockermouth, a town in Cumberland,
"The moving accident is not my trade,
To freeze the blood I have no ready arts;
'Tis my delight, alone in summer shade,
To pipe a simple song for thinking hearts."
"Every great poet," he said, "is a teacher; I wish either to be
considered as a teacher or as nothing."
And he avowed that the purpose of his poetry was "to console the
"Love had he found in huts where poor men lie,
His daily teachings had been woods and rills,
The silence that is in the starry sky,
The sleep that is among the lonely hills."
transparent with, the thought."
'Tis the middle of night by the castle clock,
And the owls have awaken'd the crowing cock,
And hark, again! the crowing cock,
How drowsily it crew.
Sir Leoline, the Baron rich,
From her kennel beneath the rock
She maketh answer to the clock,
Four for the quarters, and twelve for the hour;
Ever and aye, by shine and shower,
Sixteen short howls, not over loud;
Some say, she sees my lady's shroud.
Is the night chilly and dark?
The night is chilly, but not dark.
The thin gray cloud is spread on high,
It covers but not hides the sky.
The moon is behind, and at the full;
And yet she looks both small and dull.
The night is chill, the cloud is gray:
'Tis a month before the month of May,
And the Spring comes slowly up this way.
The lovely lady, Christabel,
Whom her father loves so well,
What makes her in the wood so late,
A furlong from the castle gate?
She had dreams all yesternight
Of her own betrothed knight;
Dreams that made her moan and leap
As on her bed she lay in sleep;
And she in the midnight wood will pray
For the weal of her lover that's far away.
She stole along, she nothing spoke,
The sighs she heaved were soft and low,
And naught was green upon the oak
But moss and rarest mistletoe:
She kneels beneath the huge oak tree,
And in silence prayeth she.
The lady sprang up suddenly,
The lovely lady, Christabel!
It moaned as near as near can be,
But what it is she cannot tell.--
On the other side it seems to be
Of the huge, broad-breasted, old oak tree.
The night is chill; the forest bare;
Is it the wind that moaneth bleak?
There is not wind enough in the air
To move away the ringlet curl
From the lovely lady's cheek--
There is not wind enough to twirl
The one red leaf, the last of its clan,
That dances as often as dance it can,
Hanging so light, and hanging so high,
On the topmost twig that looks up at the sky.
Hush, beating heart of Christabel!
Jesu, Maria, shield her well!
She folded her arms beneath her cloak,
And stole to the other side of the oak.
What sees she there?
There she sees a damsel bright,
Drest in a silken robe of white,
That shadowy in the moonlight shone:
The neck that made that white robe wan,
Her stately neck and arms were bare;
Her blue-vein'd feet unsandal'd were,
And wildly glitter'd here and there,
The gems entangled in her hair.
I guess, 'twas frightful there to see
A lady so richly clad as she--
Beautiful exceedingly!
"Mary, mother, save me now!"
(Said Christabel,) "And who art thou?"
The lady strange made answer meet,
And her voice was faint and sweet:--
"Have pity on my sore distress,
I scarce can speak for weariness:
Stretch forth thy hand, and have no fear!"
Said Christabel, "How camest thou here?"
And the lady, whose voice was faint and sweet,
Did thus pursue her answer meet:--
"My sire is of a noble line,
And my name is Geraldine:
Five warriors seized me yestermorn,
Me, even me, a maid forlorn:
They choked my cries with force and fright,
And tied me on a palfrey white.
The palfrey was as fleet as wind,
And they rode furiously behind.
They spurred amain, their steeds were white:
And once we cross'd the shade of night.
As sure as Heaven shall rescue me,
I have no thought what men they be;
Nor do I know how long it is
(For I have lain entranced I wis)
Since one, the tallest of the five,
Took me from the palfrey's back,
A weary woman, scarce alive.
Some mutter'd words his comrades spoke:
He placed me underneath this oak;
He swore they would return with haste;
Whither they went I cannot tell--
I thought I heard, some minutes past,
Sounds as of a castle bell.
Stretch forth thy hand" (thus ended she),
"And help a wretched maid to flee."
Then Christabel stretch'd forth her hand
And comforted fair Geraldine;
"O well, bright dame! may you command
The service of Sir Leoline;
And gladly our stout chivalry
Will he send forth and friends withal
To guide and guard you safe and free
Home to your noble father's hall."
She rose: and forth with steps they pass'd
That strove to be, and were not, fast.
Her gracious stars the lady blest,
And thus spake on sweet Christabel:
"All our household are at rest,
The hall is silent as the cell;
Sir Leoline is weak in health,
And may not well awaken'd be,
But we will move as if in stealth,
And I beseech your courtesy,
This night, to share your couch with me."
They cross'd the moat, and Christabel
Took the key that fitted well;
A little door she open'd straight,
All in the middle of the gate;
The gate that was iron'd within and without,
Where an army in battle array had march'd out.
The lady sank, belike through pain,
And Christabel with might and main
Lifted her up, a weary weight,
Over the threshold of the gate:
Then the lady rose again,
And moved, as she were not in pain.
So free from danger, free from fear,
They cross'd the court: right glad they were.
And Christabel devoutly cried
To the lady by her side;
"Praise we the Virgin all divine
Who hath rescued thee from thy distress!"
"Alas, alas!" said Geraldine,
"I cannot speak for weariness."
So free from danger, free from fear,
They cross'd the court: right glad they were.
Outside her kennel the mastiff old
Lay fast asleep, in moonshine cold.
The mastiff old did not awake,
Yet she an angry moan did make!
Never till now she utter'd yell
Perhaps it is the owlet's scritch:
They pass'd the hall, that echoes still,
Pass as lightly as you will!
The brands were flat, the brands were dying,
Amid their own white ashes lying;
But when the lady pass'd, there came
A tongue of light, a fit of flame;
And Christabel saw the lady's eye,
And nothing else saw she thereby,
Save the boss of the shield of Sir Leoline tall,
Which hung in a murky old niche in the wall.
"O softly tread," said Christabel,
"My father seldom sleepeth well."
Sweet Christabel her feet both bare,
And, jealous of the listening air,
They steal their way from stair to stair,
Now in glimmer, and now in gloom,
And now they pass the Baron's room,
And still as death, with stifled breath!
And now have reach'd her chamber door;
And now doth Geraldine press down
The rushes of the chamber floor.
The moon shines dim in the open air,
And not a moonbeam enters here.
But they without its light can see
The chamber carved so curiously,
Carved with figures strange and sweet,
All made out of the carver's brain,
For a lady's chamber meet:
The lamp with twofold silver chain
Is fasten'd to an angel's feet.
The silver lamp burns dead and dim;
But Christabel the lamp will trim.
She trimm'd the lamp, and made it bright,
And left it swinging to and fro,
While Geraldine, in wretched plight,
Sank down upon the floor below.
"O weary lady, Geraldine,
I pray you, drink this cordial wine!
It is a wine of virtuous powers;
My mother made it of wild flowers."
"And will your mother pity me,
Who am a maiden most forlorn?"
Christabel answered--"Woe is me!
She died the hour that I was born.
I have heard the gray-hair'd friar tell,
How on her death-bed she did say,
That she should hear the castle-bell
Strike twelve upon my wedding-day.
O mother dear! that thou wert here!"
"I would," said Geraldine, "she were!"
But soon with altered voice, said she--
"Off, wandering mother! Peak and pine!
I have power to bid thee flee."
Alas! what ails poor Geraldine?
Why stares she with unsettled eye?
Can she the bodiless dead espy?
And why with hollow voice cries she,
"Off, woman, off! this hour is mine--
Though thou her guardian spirit be,
Off, woman, off! 'tis given to me."
Then Christabel knelt by the lady's side,
And raised to heaven her eyes so blue--
"Alas!" said she, "this ghastly ride--
Dear lady! it hath wilder'd you!"
The lady wiped her moist cold brow,
And faintly said, "'Tis over now!"
Again the wild-flower wine she drank:
Her fair large eyes 'gan glitter bright,
And from the floor whereon she sank,
The lofty lady stood upright:
She was most beautiful to see,
Like a lady of a far countrée.
And thus the lofty lady spake--
"All they who live in the upper sky,
Do love you, holy Christabel!
And you love them, and for their sake
And for the good which me befell,
Even I in my degree will try,
Fair maiden, to requite you well.
But now unrobe yourself; for I
Must pray, ere yet in bed I lie."
Quoth Christabel, "So let it be!"
And as the lady bade, did she.
Her gentle limbs did she undress,
And lay down in her loveliness.
But through her brain of weal and woe
So many thoughts move to and fro,
That vain it were her lids to close;
So half-way from the bed she rose,
And on her elbow did recline
To look at the lady Geraldine.
Beneath the lamp the lady bow'd,
And slowly roll'd her eyes around;
Then drawing in her breath aloud
Like one that shudder'd, she unbound
The cincture from beneath her breast;
Her silken robe and inner vest,
Dropt to her feet, and full in view,
Behold! her bosom and half her side--
A sight to dream of, not to tell!
O shield her! shield sweet Christabel.
Yet Geraldine nor speaks nor stirs;
Ah! what a stricken look was hers!
Deep from within seems half-way
To lift some weight with sick assay,
And eyes the maid and seeks delay;
Then suddenly as one defied
Collects herself in scorn and pride,
And lay down by the maiden's side!--
And in her arms the maid she took,
And with low voice and doleful look
These words did say:
"In the touch of this bosom there worketh a spell
Which is lord of thy utterance, Christabel!
Thou knowest to-night, and wilt know to-morrow
This mark of my shame, this seal of my sorrow;
But vainly thou warrest,
For this is alone in
Thy power to declare,
That in the dim forest
Thou heardest a low moaning,
And foundest a bright lady, surpassingly fair:
And didst bring her home with thee in love and in charity,
To shield her and shelter her from the damp air."
been framed in English words. We know of no existing poem in any
pathos and tenderness and sorrowful beauty as only humanity can
Hail to thee, blithe spirit!
Bird thou never wert,
That from heaven, or near it,
Pourest thy full heart
In profuse{1} strains of unpremeditated art.
Higher still, and higher,
From the earth thou springest
Like a cloud of fire;
The deep blue thou wingest,{2}
And singing still dost soar, and soaring ever singest.
In the golden lightning
Of the sunken sun,{3}
O'er which clouds are brightening,
Thou dost float and run,
Like an unbodied joy whose race is just begun.
The pale purple even
Melts around thy flight;
Like a star of heaven,
In the broad daylight
Thou art unseen, but yet I hear thy shrill delight.
Keen as are the arrows
Of that silver sphere,
Whose intense lamp narrows
In the white dawn clear,
Until we hardly see, we feel that it is there.
All the earth and air
With thy voice is loud,
As, when night is bare,
From one lonely cloud
The moon rains{4} out her beams, and heaven is overflowed.
What thou art we know not;--
What is most like thee?
From rainbow clouds there flow not
Drops so bright to see,
As from thy presence showers a rain of melody.
Like a poet hidden
In the light of thought,
Singing hymns unbidden,
Till the world is wrought{5}
To sympathy with hopes and fears it heeded not:
Like a high-born maiden
In a palace tower,
Soothing her love-laden
Soul in secret hour
With music sweet as love, which overflows her bower:
Like a glow-worm golden
In a dell of dew,
Scattering unbeholden
Its aërial hue
Among the flowers and grass, which screen it from the view:
Like a rose embowered
In its own green leaves,
By warm winds deflowered,
Till the scent it gives
Makes faint with too much sweet these heavy-winged thieves.
Sound of vernal showers
On the twinkling grass,
Rain-awakened flowers,
All that ever was
Joyous, and clear, and fresh, thy music doth surpass.
Teach us, sprite{6} or bird,
What sweet thoughts are thine:
I have never heard
Praise of love or wine
That panted forth a flood of rapture so divine.
Chorus hymeneal,{7}
Or triumphal chaunt,
Matched with thine would be all
But an empty vaunt--
A thing wherein we feel there is some hidden want.
What objects are the fountains
Of thy happy strain?
What fields, or waves, or mountains?
What shapes of sky or plain?
What love of thine own kind? what ignorance of pain?
With thy clear keen joyance
Langour cannot be:
Shadow of annoyance
Never came near thee:
Thou lovest; but ne'er knew love's sad satiety.
Waking or asleep;
Thou of death must deem
Things more true and deep
Than we mortals dream--
Or how could thy notes flow in such a crystal stream?
We look before and after,
And pine for what is not:{8}
Our sincerest laughter
With some pain is fraught:
Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought.
Yet if we could scorn
Hate, and pride, and fear;
If we were things born
Not to shed a tear,
I know not how thy joy we ever should come near.
Better than all measures
Of delight and sound,
Better than all treasures
That in books are found,
Thy skill to poet were, thou scorner of the ground!
Teach me half the gladness
That thy brain must know,
Such harmonious madness
From my lips would flow,
The world should listen then, as I am listening now.
This is perhaps the most perfect lyric of its kind in the English
explanation.
"For sweetness the 'Ode to a Skylark' is inferior only to
Coleridge, in rapturous passion to no man. It is like the bird
it sings,--enthusiastic, enchanting, profuse, continuous, and
alone,--small, but filling the heavens."--_Leigh Hunt._
From the forests and highlands
We come, we come;
From the river-girt islands,
Listening to my sweet pipings.
The wind in the reeds and the rushes,
The bees on the bells of thyme,
The birds on the myrtle-bushes,
The cicale above in the lime,
And the lizards below in the grass,
Were as silent as ever old Tmolus{1} was,
Listening to my sweet pipings.
Liquid Peneus{2} was flowing,
And all dark Tempe lay
In Pelion's shadow, outgrowing
The light of the dying day,
Speeded by my sweet pipings.
And the Nymphs of the woods and waves,
To the edge of the moist river-lawns,
And the brink of the dewy caves,
And all that did then attend and follow,
Were silent with love,--as you now, Apollo,{4}
With envy of my sweet pipings.
I sang of the dancing stars,
I sang of the dædal{5} earth,
And of heaven, and the Giant wars,{6}
And love, and death, and birth,
And then I changed my pipings,--
Singing how down the vale of Mænalus
I pursued a maiden,{7} and clasped a reed:
Gods and men, we are all deluded thus;
It breaks in our bosom, and then we bleed.
All wept--as I think both ye now would,
If envy or age had not frozen your blood--
At the sorrow of my sweet pipings.
"With him the clear-singing mountain-nymphs
Move quick their feet, by the dark-watered spring
In the soft mead, where crocus, hyacinths,
Fragrant and blooming, mingle with the grass
Confused, and sing, while echo peals around
The mountain's top."
Keats, in "Endymion," thus apostrophizes Pan:
"O Hearkener to the loud clapping shears,
While ever and anon to his shorn peers
A ram goes bleating: Winder of the horn,
When snouted wild-boars routing tender corn
Anger our huntsmen: Breather round our farms,
To keep off mildews, and all weather harms:
Strange ministrant of undescribed sounds,
That come a-swooning over hollow grounds,
And wither drearily on barren moors:
Dread opener of the mysterious doors
Leading to universal knowledge--see,
The many that are come to pay their vows
With leaves about their brows!"
=Sylvans.= Deities of the fields and forests.
_syrinx_, or pastoral pipe." See Ovid's _Metamorphoses_.
A ship is floating in the harbor now;
A wind is hovering o'er the mountain's brow;
There is a path on the sea's azure floor,--
No keel has ever ploughed that path before;
The halcyons{1} brood around the foamless isles;
The treacherous ocean has forsworn its wiles;
The merry mariners are bold and free:
Say, my heart's sister, wilt thou sail with me?
Our bark is as an albatross whose nest
Is a far Eden of the purple east;
And we between her wings will sit, while Night
And Day and Storm and Calm pursue their flight,
Our ministers, along the boundless sea,
Treading each other's heels, unheededly.
It is an isle under Ionian{2} skies,
Beautiful as a wreck of paradise;
And, for{3} the harbors are not safe and good,
This land would have remained a solitude
But for some pastoral people native there,
Who from the elysian, clear, and golden air
Draw the last spirit of the age of gold,{4}--
Simple and spirited, innocent and bold.
The blue Ægean girds this chosen home,
With ever-changing sound and light and foam
Kissing the sifted sands and caverns hoar;
And all the winds wandering along the shore
Undulate with the undulating tide.
There are thick woods where sylvan forms abide;
And many a fountain, rivulet, and pond,
As clear as elemental diamond,
Or serene morning air. And far beyond,
The mossy tracks made by the goats and deer
(Which the rough shepherd treads but once a year)
Pierce into glades, caverns, and bowers, and halls
Built round with ivy, which the waterfalls
Illumining, with sound that never fails,
Accompany the noonday nightingales.
And all the place is peopled with sweet airs.{5}
The light clear element which the isle wears
Is heavy with the scent of lemon-flowers,
Which floats like mist laden with unseen showers,
And falls upon the eyelids like faint sleep;
And from the moss violets and jonquils peep,
And dart their arrowy odor through the brain,
Till you might faint with that delicious pain.
And every motion, odor, beam, and tone,
With that deep music is in unison:
Which is a soul within the soul,--they seem
Like echoes of an antenatal dream.{6}
It is an isle 'twixt heaven, air, earth, and sea,
Cradled, and hung in clear tranquillity;
Bright as that wandering Eden, Lucifer,{7}
Washed by the soft blue oceans of young air.{8}
It is a favored place. Famine or blight,
Pestilence, war, and earthquake, never light
Upon its mountain-peaks; blind vultures, they
Sail onward far upon their fatal way.
The wingèd storms, chaunting their thunder-psalm
To other lands, leave azure chasms of calm
Over this isle, or weep themselves in dew,
From which its fields and woods ever renew
Their green and golden immortality.
And from the sea there rise, and from the sky
There fall, clear exhalations, soft and bright,
Veil after veil, each hiding some delight:
Which sun or moon or zephyr draw aside,
Till the isle's beauty, like a naked bride
Glowing at once with love and loveliness,
Blushes and trembles at its own excess.
Yet, like a buried lamp, a soul no less
Burns in the heart of this delicious isle,
An atom of the Eternal, whose own smile
Unfolds itself, and may be felt not seen
O'er the gray rocks, blue waves, and forests green,
Filling their bare and void interstices.
This isle and house are mine, and I have vowed
Thee to be lady of the solitude.
And I have fitted up some chambers there
Looking towards the golden eastern air,
And level with the living winds which flow
Like waves above the living waves below.
I have sent books and music there, and all
Those instruments with which high spirits call
The future from its cradle, and the past
Out of its grave, and make the present last
In thoughts and joys which sleep but cannot die,
Folded within their own eternity.
Our simple life wants little, and true taste
Hires not the pale drudge Luxury to waste
The scene it would adorn; and therefore still
Nature with all her children haunts the hill.
The ringdove in the embowering ivy yet
Keeps up her love-lament; and the owls flit
Round the evening tower; and the young stars glance
Between the quick bats in their twilight dance;
The spotted deer bask in the fresh moonlight
Before our gate; and the slow silent night
Is measured by the pants of their calm sleep.
Be this our home in life; and, when years heap
Their withered hours like leaves on our decay,
Let us become the overhanging day,
The living soul, of this elysian isle--
Conscious, inseparable, one. Meanwhile
We two will rise and sit and walk together
Under the roof of blue Ionian weather;
And wander in the meadows; or ascend
The mossy mountains, where the blue heavens bend
With lightest winds to touch their paramour;{9}
Or linger where the pebble-paven shore
Under the quick faint kisses of the sea
Trembles and sparkles as with ecstasy;--
Possessing and possessed by all that is
Within that calm circumference of bliss,
And by each other, till to love and live
We shall become the same, we shall be one
Spirit within two frames, oh wherefore two?
One passion in twin hearts, which grows and grew
Till, like two meteors of expanding flame,
Those spheres instinct with it become the same,
Touch, mingle, are transfigured; ever still
Burning, yet ever inconsumable;
In one another's substance finding food,
Light flames too pure and light and unimbued
To nourish their bright lives with baser prey,
Which point to heaven and cannot pass away:
One hope within two wills, one will beneath
Two overshadowing minds, one life, one death,
One heaven, one hell, one immortality,
And one annihilation!
Woe is me!
The wingèd words on which my soul would pierce
Into the height of Love's rare universe
Are chains of lead around its flight of fire--
I pant, I sink, I tremble, I expire!
"Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting."
"It was no reason then for her
To wanton with the sun, her lusty paramour."
Swifter far than summer's flight,
Swifter far than youth's delight,
Swifter far than happy night,
Art thou come and gone:
As the earth when leaves are dead,
As the night when sleep is sped,
As the heart when joy is fled,
I am left alone, alone.
The swallow Summer comes again,
The owlet Night resumes her reign,
But the wild swan Youth is fain
To fly with thee, false as thou.
My heart each day desires the morrow,
Sleep itself is turned to sorrow,
Vainly would my winter borrow
Sunny leaves from any bough.
Lilies for a bridal bed,
Roses for a matron's head,
Violets for a maiden dead,
Pansies let my flowers be:
On the living grave I bear,
Scatter them without a tear,
Let no friend, however dear,
Waste one hope, one fear, for me.
Leigh Hunt says: "Assuredly, had he lived, he would have been the
"Calling the lapsèd soul,
And weeping in the morning dew."
My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains
My sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk,
Or emptied some dull opiate to the drains
One minute past, and Lethe-wards{1} had sunk:
'Tis not through envy of thy happy lot,
But being too happy in thy happiness,--
That thou, light-winged Dryad{2} of the trees,
In some melodious plot
Of beechen green, and shadows numberless,
Singest of summer in full-throated ease.
O for a draught of vintage, that hath been
Cooled a long age in the deep-delved earth,
Tasting of Flora and the country-green,
Dance, and Provençal song,{3} and sun-burnt mirth!
O for a beaker full of the warm South,
Full of the true, the blushful Hippocrene,{4}
With beaded bubbles winking at the brim,
And purple-stained mouth;
That I might drink, and leave the world unseen,
And with thee fade away into the forest dim:
Fade far away, dissolve, and quite forget
What thou among the leaves hast never known,
The weariness, the fever, and the fret
Here, where men sit and hear each other groan;
Where palsy shakes a few, sad, last gray hairs,
Where youth grows pale, and spectre-thin, and dies;
Where but to think is to be full of sorrow
And leaden-eyed despairs;
Where Beauty cannot keep her lustrous eyes,
Or new Love pine at them beyond to-morrow.
Away! away! for I will fly to thee,
Not charioted by Bacchus and his pards,{5}
But on the viewless wings of Poesy,
Already with thee! tender is the night,
And haply the Queen-Moon is on her throne,
Clustered around by all her starry Fays;
But here there is no light,
Save what from heaven is with the breezes blown
Through verdurous glooms and winding mossy ways.
I cannot see what flowers are at my feet,
Nor what soft incense hangs upon the boughs,
But, in embalmed darkness, guess each sweet
Wherewith the seasonable month endows
The grass, the thicket, and the fruit-tree wild;
White hawthorn, and the pastoral eglantine;{6}
Fast-fading violets covered up in leaves;
And mid-May's eldest child,
The coming musk-rose, full of dewy wine,
The murmurous haunt of flies on summer eyes.
Darkling{7} I listen; and for many a time
I have been half in love with easeful Death,
Called him soft names in many a mused rhyme,
To take into the air my quiet breath;
Now more than ever seems it rich to die,
To cease upon the midnight with no pain,
While thou art pouring forth thy soul abroad
In such an ecstasy!
Still wouldst thou sing, and I have ears in vain--
To thy high requiem{8} become a sod.
Thou wast not born for death, immortal Bird!
No hungry generations tread thee down;
The voice I hear this passing night was heard
In ancient days by emperor and clown:
Perhaps the self-same song that found a path
Through the sad heart of Ruth, when, sick for home,
She stood in tears amid the alien corn{9};
The same that oft-times hath
Charmed magic casements, opening on the foam
Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn.
Forlorn! the very word is like a bell
To toll me back from thee to my sole self!
Adieu! the fancy cannot cheat so well
As she is famed to do, deceiving elf.
Adieu! adieu! thy plaintive anthem fades
Past the near meadows, over the still stream,
Up the hill-side; and now 'tis buried deep
In the next valley-glades:
Was it a vision, or a waking dream?
Fled is that music:--do I wake or sleep?
"A slow and silent stream,
Lethe, the river of oblivion, rolls
Her watery labyrinth, whereof who drinks
Forthwith his former state and being forgets--
Forgets both joy and grief, pleasure and pain."
Longfellow, in "The Goblet of Life," says:
"No purple flowers--no garlands green,
Conceal the goblet's shade or sheen,
Nor maddening draughts of Hippocrene,
Like gleams of sunshine, flash between
Thick leaves of mistletoe."
=pards.= Spotted beasts.
See Dryden's "Alexander's Feast," third stanza, page 160.
"I know a bank where the wild thyme blows,
Where oxlips and the nodding violet grows,
Quite over-canopied with luscious woodbine,
With sweet musk-roses and with eglantine."
"Everywhere about us they are glowing--
Some like stars, to tell us Spring is born;
Others, their blue eyes with tears o'erflowing,
Stand like Ruth amid the golden corn."
Full on this casement shone the wintry moon,
And threw warm gules on Madeline's fair breast,
As down she knelt for heaven's grace and boon;
Rose-bloom fell on her hands, together prest,
And on her silver cross soft amethyst,
And on her hair a glory, like a saint:
She seem'd a splendid angel, newly drest,
Save wings, for heaven:--Porphyro grew faint:
She knelt, so pure a thing, so free from mortal taint.
Anon his heart revives: her vespers done,
Of all its wreathed pearls her hair she frees;
Loosens her fragrant bodice; by degrees
Her rich attire creeps rustling to her knees:
Half-hidden, like a mermaid in sea-weed,
Pensive awhile she dreams awake, and sees,
In fancy, fair St. Agnes in her bed,
But dares not look behind, or all the charm is fled.
Soon, trembling in her soft and chilly nest,
In sort of wakeful swoon, perplexed she lay,
Until the poppied warmth of sleep oppressed
Her soothed limbs, and soul fatigued away;
Flown, like a thought, until the morrow-day;
Blissfully havened both from joy and pain;
Clasped like a missal where swart Paynims pray:
Blinded alike from sunshine and from rain,
As though a rose should shut, and be a bud again.
Stolen to this paradise, and so entranced,
Porphyro gazed upon her empty dress,
And listened to her breathing, if it chanced
To wake into a slumberous tenderness;
Which when he heard, that minute did he bless,
And breathed himself: then from the closet crept,
Noiseless as fear in a wide wilderness,
And over the hushed carpet, silent, stept,
And 'tween the curtains peeped, where, lo!--how fast she slept.
Then by the bed-side, where the faded moon
Made a dim, silver twilight, soft he set
A table, and, half anguished, threw thereon
A cloth of woven crimson, gold, and jet:--
O for some drowsy Morphean amulet!
The boisterous, midnight, festive clarion,
The kettle-drum, and far-heard clarionet,
Affray his ears, though but in dying tone:--
The hall-door shuts again, and all the noise is gone.
And still she slept an azure-lidded sleep,
In blanched linen, smooth, and lavendered,
While he from forth the closet brought a heap
Of candied apple, quince, and plum, and gourd;
With jellies soother than the creamy curd,
And lucent syrups, tinct with cinnamon;
Manna and dates, in argosy transferred
From Fez; and spiced dainties, every one,
From silken Samarcand to cedared Lebanon.
These delicates he heaped with glowing hand
On golden dishes and in baskets bright
Of wreathed silver: sumptuous they stand
In the retired quiet of the night,
Filling the chilly room with perfume light.--
"And now, my love, my seraph fair, awake!
Thou art mine heaven, and I thine eremite:
Open thine eyes, for meek St. Agnes' sake,
Or I shall drowse beside thee, so my soul doth ache."
Thus whispering, his warm, unnerved arm
Sank in her pillow. Shaded was her dream
By the dusk curtains:--'twas a midnight charm
Impossible to melt as iced stream:
The lustrous salvers in the moonlight gleam;
Broad golden fringe upon the carpet lies:
It seemed he never, never could redeem
From such a steadfast spell his lady's eyes;
So mused awhile, entoiled in woofed phantasies.
Awakening up, he took her hollow lute,--
Tumultuous,--and, in chords that tenderest be,
He play'd an ancient ditty, long since mute,
In Provence called "La belle dame sans mercy":
Close to her ear touching the melody;--
Wherewith disturbed, she uttered a soft moan:
He ceased--she panted quick--and suddenly
Her blue affrayed eyes wide open shone:
Upon his knees he sank, pale as smooth-sculptured stone.
Her eyes were open, but she still beheld,
Now wide awake, the vision of her sleep:
There was a painful change, that nigh expelled
The blisses of her dream so pure and deep.
At which fair Madeline began to weep,
And moan forth witless words with many a sigh
While still her gaze on Porphyro would keep;
Who knelt, with joined hands and piteous eye,
Fearing to move or speak, she looked so dreamingly.
"Ah, Porphyro!" said she, "but even now
Thy voice was at sweet tremble in mine ear,
Made tuneable with every sweetest vow;
And those sad eyes were spiritual and clear:
How changed thou art! how pallid, chill, and drear!
Give me that voice again, my Porphyro,
Those looks immortal, those complainings dear!
Oh leave me not in this eternal woe,
For if thou diest, my Love, I know not where to go."
Beyond a mortal man impassioned far
At these voluptuous accents, he arose,
Ethereal, flushed, and like a throbbing star
Seen 'mid the sapphire heaven's deep repose;
Into her dream he melted, as the rose
Blendeth its odor with the violet,--
Solution sweet: meantime the frost-wind blows
Like Love's alarum pattering the sharp sleet
Against the window-panes; St. Agnes' moon hath set.
'Tis dark: quick pattereth the flaw-blown sleet:
"This is no dream, my bride, my Madeline!"
'Tis dark: the iced gusts still rave and beat:
"No dream, alas! alas! and woe is mine!
Porphyro will leave me here to fade and pine.--
Cruel! what traitor could thee hither bring?
I curse not, for my heart is lost in thine,
Though thou forsakest a deceived thing;--
A dove forlorn and lost with sick unpruned wing."
"My Madeline! sweet dreamer! lovely bride!
Say, may I be for aye thy vassal blest?
Thy beauty's shield, heart-shaped and vermeil dyed?
Ah, silver shrine, here will I take my rest
After so many hours of toil and quest,
A famished pilgrim,--saved by miracle.
Though I have found, I will not rob thy nest,
Saving of thy sweet self; if thou think'st well
To trust, fair Madeline, to no rude infidel."
"Hark!'tis an elfin-storm from faery land,
Of haggard seeming, but a boon indeed:
Arise--arise! the morning is at hand;--
The bloated wassailers will never heed:--
Let us away, my love, with happy speed;
There are no ears to hear, or eyes to see,--
Drowned all in Rhenish and the sleepy mead:
Awake! arise! my love, and fearless be,
For o'er the southern moors I have a home for thee."
She hurried at his words, beset with fears,
For there were sleeping dragons all around,
At glaring watch, perhaps with ready spears--
Down the wide stairs a darkling way they found,
In all the house was heard no human sound.
A chain-drooped lamp was flickering by each door;
The arras, rich with horseman, hawk, and hound,
Fluttered in the besieging wind's uproar;
And the long carpets rose along the gusty floor.
They glide, like phantoms, into the wide hall!
Like phantoms to the iron porch they glide,
Where lay the Porter, in uneasy sprawl,
With a huge empty flagon by his side:
The wakeful bloodhound rose, and shook his hide,
But his sagacious eye an inmate owns:
By one, and one, the bolts full easy slide:--
The chains lie silent on the footworn stones;
The key turns, and the door upon its hinges groans.
And they are gone: ay, ages long ago
These lovers fled away into the storm.
That night the Baron dreamt of many a woe,
And all his warrior-guests, with shade and form
Of witch and demon and large coffin-worm,
Were long be-nightmared. Angela, the old,
Died palsy-twitch'd with meagre face deform;
The Beadsman, after thousand aves told,
For aye unsought-for slept among his ashes cold.
Madeline, the beautiful daughter of a rude and rich old baron, is
"_At last there started up an unfortunate Scotch peasant (Burns),
Let not Ambition mock their useful toil,
Their homely joys, and destiny obscure;
Nor Grandeur hear, with a disdainful smile,
The short but simple annals of the Poor.{3}--_Gray._
My loved, my honored, much respected friend!
No mercenary bard his homage pays;
With honest pride, I scorn each selfish end,
My dearest meed, a friend's esteem and praise:
To you I sing, in simple Scottish lays,{4}
The lowly train{5} in life's sequestered scene;
The native feelings strong, the guileless ways;
What Aiken in a cottage would have been;
Ah! though his worth unknown, far happier there I ween.
November chill blaws loud wi' angry sugh;{6}
The short'ning winter-day is near a close;
The miry beasts retreating frae the pleugh;
The black'ning trains o' craws to their repose;
The toil-worn Cotter frae his labor goes,--
This night his weekly moil is at an end,--
Hoping the morn in ease and rest to spend,
And weary, o'er the moor, his course does hameward bend.{7}
At length his lonely cot appears in view,
Beneath the shelter of an aged tree;
Th' expectant wee things toddlin', stacher thro'
To meet their dad, wi' flichterin noise an' glee.
His wee bit ingle, blinkin' bonnily,
His clean hearth-stane, his thriftie wine's smile,
The lisping infant prattling on his knee,
Does a' his weary carking cares beguile,
An' makes him quite forget his labor an' his toil.{8}
Belyve, the elder bairns{9} come drapping in,
At service out, amang the farmers roun';
Some ca'{10} the pleugh, some herd, some tentie rin
A cannie errand to a neibor{11} town:
Their eldest hope, their Jenny, woman grown,
In youthfu' bloom, love sparkling in her e'e,
Comes hame, perhaps, to shew a braw new gown,
To help her parents dear, if they in hardship be.
Wi' joy unfeigned, brothers and sisters meet,
An' each for other's welfare kindly spiers:
The social hours, swift-winged, unnoticed fleet;
Each tells the uncos that he sees or hears;
The parents, partial, eye their hopeful years,
Anticipation forward points the view.
The mother wi' her needle an' her shears,
Gars auld claes look amaist as weel's the new;
The father mixes a' wi' admonition due.
Their master's and their mistress's command,
The younkers a' are warned to obey;
And mind their labors wi' an eydent hand,
And ne'er, tho' out o' sight, to jauk or play:
"And, oh! be sure to fear the Lord alway,
And mind your duty, duly, morn and night!
Lest in temptation's path ye gang astray,
Implore His counsel and assisting might:
They never sought in vain that sought the Lord aright!"{14}
But, hark! a rap comes gently to the door;
Jenny, wha kens the meaning o' the same,
Tells how a neibor lad came o'er the moor,
To do some errands, and convoy her hame.
The wily mother sees the conscious flame
Sparkle in Jenny's e'e, and flush her cheek;
Wi' heart-struck anxious care inquires his name,
While Jenny hafflins is afraid to speak;
Weel pleased the mother hears, it's nae wild worthless rake.
Wi' kindly welcome Jenny brings him ben;{15}
A strappin' youth; he takes the mother's eye;
Blythe Jenny sees the visit's no ill ta'en;
The father cracks of horses, pleughs, and kye.{16}
The youngster's artless heart o'erflows wi' joy,
But, blate and lathefu', scarce can weel behave;
The mother, wi' a woman's wiles, can spy
What makes the youth sae bashfu' an' sae grave;
Weel pleased to think her bairn's respected like the lave.
O happy love! where love like this is found!
O heart-felt raptures! bliss beyond compare!
I've paced much this weary, mortal round,
And sage experience bids me this declare:--
If Heaven a draught of heavenly pleasure spare,
One cordial in this melancholy vale,
'Tis when a youthful, loving, modest pair,
In other's arms breathe out the tender tale,
Beneath the milk-white thorn that scents the evening gale!
Is there, in human form, that bears a heart,
A wretch, a villain, lost to love and truth,
That can, with studied, sly, ensnaring art,
Betray sweet Jenny's unsuspecting youth?
Curse on his perjured arts! dissembling smooth!
Are honor, virtue, conscience, all exiled?
Is there no pity, no relenting ruth,
Points to the parents fondling o'er their child?
Then paints the ruined maid, and their distraction wild!
But now the supper crowns their simple board,--
The halesome parritch, chief o' Scotia's food:
The sowpe their only hawkie{17} does afford,
That 'yont the hallan snugly chows her cood;
The dame brings forth in complimental mood,
To grace the lad, her weel-hained kebbuck, fell,
An' aft he's prest, an' aft he ca's it guid;
The frugal wifie, garrulous, will tell
How 'twas a towmond auld, sin' lint was i' the bell.{18}
The cheerfu' supper done, wi' serious face,
They, round the ingle, form a circle wide;
The sire turns o'er, wi' patriarchal grace,
The big ha'-Bible,{19} ance his father's pride;
His bonnet{20} rev'rently is laid aside,
His lyart haffets wearing thin an' bare;
Those strains that once did sweet in Zion glide,
He wales a portion with judicious care;
And "Let us worship God!" he says, with solemn air.
They chant their artless notes in simple guise;
They tune their hearts, by far the noblest aim:
Perhaps "Dundee's" wild warbling measures rise,
Or plaintive "Martyrs," worthy of the name,
Or noble "Elgin" beets{21} the heavenward flame,
The sweetest far of Scotia's holy lays:
Compared with these, Italian trills are tame,
The tickled ears no heart-felt raptures raise;
Nae unison hae they with our Creator's praise.
The priest-like father reads the sacred page,
How Abram was the friend of God on high;
Or Moses bade eternal warfare wage
With Amalek's ungracious progeny;
Or how the royal bard did groaning lie
Beneath the stroke of Heaven's avenging ire;
Or Job's pathetic plaint, and wailing cry;
Or rapt Isaiah's wild, seraphic fire;
Or other holy seers that tune the sacred lyre.
Perhaps the Christian volume is the theme,
How guiltless blood for guilty man was shed;
How He, who bore in Heaven the second name,
Had not on earth whereon to lay His head:
How His first followers and servants sped;
The precepts sage they wrote to many a land:
How he, who lone in Patmos banished,
Saw in the sun a mighty angel stand;
And heard great Babylon's doom pronounced by Heaven's command.
Then kneeling down, to Heaven's Eternal King,
The saint, the father, and the husband prays:
Hope "springs exulting on triumphant wing,"{22}
That thus they all shall meet in future days:
There ever bask in uncreated rays,
No more to sigh, or shed the bitter tear,
Together hymning their Creator's praise,
In such society, yet still more dear;
While circling time moves round in an eternal sphere.
Compared with this, how poor Religion's pride,
In all the pomp of method and of art,
When men display to congregations wide
Devotion's every grace, except the heart!
The Power, incensed, the pageant will desert,
The pompous strain, the sacerdotal stole{23};
But, haply, in some cottage far apart,
May hear, well pleased, the language of the soul;
And in His book of life the inmates poor enroll.
Then homeward all take off their several way;
The youngling cottagers retire to rest:
The parent-pair their secret homage pay,
And proffer up to Heaven the warm request,
That He, who stills the raven's clamorous nest,
And decks the lily fair in flowery pride,
Would, in the way His wisdom sees the best,
For them and for their little ones provide;
But, chiefly, in their hearts with grace divine preside.
From scenes like these old Scotia's grandeur springs,
That makes her loved at home, revered abroad:
Princes and lords are but the breath of kings;
"An honest man's the noblest work of God:"{24}
And certes, in fair virtue's heavenly road,
The cottage leaves the palace far behind;
What is a lordling's pomp?--a cumbrous load,
Disguising oft the wretch of human kind,
Studied in arts of hell, in wickedness refined!
O Scotia! my dear, my native soil!
For whom my warmest wish to Heaven is sent,
Long may thy hardy sons of rustic toil
Be blest with health, and peace, and sweet content!
And, oh, may Heaven their simple lives prevent
From luxury's contagion, weak and vile!
Then, howe'er crowns and coronets be rent,
A virtuous populace may rise the while,
And stand a wall of fire around their much-loved isle.
O Thou! who poured the patriotic tide
That streamed thro' Wallace's{25} undaunted heart,
Who dared to nobly stem tyrannic pride,
Or nobly die, the second glorious part,
(The patriot's God peculiarly Thou art,
His friend, inspirer, guardian, and reward!)
O never, never, Scotia's realm desert;
But still the patriot, and the patriot-bard,
In bright succession raise, her ornament and guard!
"My heart for fear gae sough for sough
To hear the thuds," etc.
"The ploughman homeward plods his weary way."
"On all thy hours security shall smile,
And bless thine evening walk and morning toil."
"Go, Mary, go, and call the cattle home."
"It warms me, it charms me,
To mention but her name;
It heats me, it beets me,
And sets me a' on flame."
--_Burns's Epistle to Davie, a brother poet._
"Hope springs eternal in the human breast."
=amaist=, almost.
=belyve=, by and by.
=blate=, bashful.
=blinkin=, gleaming.
=carking=, fretting.
=certes=, certain.
=claes=, clothes.
=convoy=, accompany.
=drapping=, dropping.
=eydent=, diligent.
=flichterin=, fluttering.
=haffets=, temples.
=hafflins=, half.
=halesome=, wholesome.
=hallan=, partition wall.
=hameward=, homeward.
=kebbuck=, cheese.
=kens=, understands.
=lave=, the rest.
=miry=, muddy, dusty.
=parritch=, porridge.
=pleugh=, plough.
=spiers=, inquires.
=stacher=, stagger.
=strappin'=, strapping, stout.
=tentie=, attentively.
=towmond=, twelvemonth.
=uncos=, unknown things, new.
=wales=, chooses.
=wee bit=, little.
=wee things=, little folks.
=weel-hained=, well-kept.
=wiles=, knowledge.
=youngling=, youthful.
=younkers=, youngsters, children.
='yont=, on the other side of.
Wee, modest, crimson-tippéd flow'r,
Thou's met me in an evil hour;
For I maun crush amang the stoure
Thy slender stem.
To spare thee now is past my power,
Thou bonnie gem.
Alas! it's no thy neibor sweet,
The bonnie lark, companion meet!
Bending thee 'mang the dewy weet
Wi' spreckled breast,
When upward springing, blythe to greet
The purpling east.
Cauld blew the bitter-biting north
Upon thy early humble birth;
Yet cheerfully thou glinted forth
Amid the storm,
Scarce reared above the parent earth
Thy tender form.
The flaunting flowers our gardens yield,
High sheltering woods an' wa's maun shield;
But thou, beneath the random bield
O' clod or stane,
Adorns the histie stibble-field,
Unseen, alane.
There, in thy scanty mantle clad,
Thy snawie bosom sunward spread,
Thou lifts thy unassuming head
In humble guise:
But now the share uptears thy bed,
And low thou lies!
Such is the fate of artless maid,
Sweet flow'ret of the rural shade!
By love's simplicity betrayed,
And guileless trust,
Till she, like thee, all soiled, is laid
Low i' the dust.
Such is the fate of simple bard,
On life's rough ocean luckless starred!
Unskilful he to note the card
Of prudent lore,
Till billows rage, and gales blow hard,
And whelm him o'er!
Such fate to suffering worth is given,
Who long with wants and woes has striven,
By human pride or cunning driven
To misery's brink,
Till, wrenched of every stay but Heaven,
He, ruined, sink!
Even thou who mourn'st the Daisy's fate,
That fate is thine--no distant date;
Stern Ruin's ploughshare drives, elate,
Full on thy bloom,
Till crushed beneath the furrow's weight,
Shall be thy doom.
=bield=, protection.
=bonnie=, pretty.
=glinted=, passed quickly.
=histie=, barren.
=spreckled=, speckled.
=stibble=, stubble.
=wrenched=, deprived.
Is there, for honest poverty,
That hangs his head, and a' that?{1}
The coward slave, we pass him by,
We dare be poor for a' that!
For a' that, and a' that,
Our toils obscure, and a' that;
The rank is but the guinea's stamp,{2}
The man's the gowd{3} for a' that!
What though on hamely fare we dine,
Wear hoddin gray, and a' that;
Gie fools their silks, and knaves their wine,
A man's a man for a' that!
For a' that, and a' that,
Their tinsel show, and a' that;
The honest man, though e'er sae poor,
Is king o' men for a' that!
Ye see yon birkie,{4} ca'd a lord,
Wha struts, and stares, and a' that;
Though hundreds worship at his word,
He's but a coof{5} for a' that;
For a' that, and a' that,
His riband, star, and a' that;
The man of independent mind,
He looks and laughs at a' that.
A prince can mak a belted knight,
A marquis, duke, and a' that;
But an honest man's aboon{6} his might,
Guid faith, he maunna fa'{7} that!
For a' that, and a' that,
Their dignities, and a' that;
The pith o' sense, and pride o' worth,
Are higher ranks than a' that!
Then let us pray that come it may--
As come it will for a' that--
That sense and worth, o'er a' the earth,
May bear the gree,{8} and a' that.
For a' that, and a' that,
It's coming yet, for a' that,
That man to man, the warld o'er,
Shall brothers be for a' that!
To raise a man above the brute,
And mak him ken himsel,'
is their portion in life; for whom the great epochs and
"His is that language of the heart
In which the answering heart would speak,
Thought, word, that bids the warm tear start,
Or the smile light the cheek.
"And his that music to whose tone
The common pulse of man keeps time,
In cot or castle's mirth or moan,
In cold or sunny clime."
When the British warrior queen,
Bleeding from the Roman rods,
Sought, with an indignant mien,
Counsel from her country's gods,
Sage beneath the spreading oak
Sat the Druid, hoary chief;
Every burning word he spoke
Full of rage, and full of grief.
"Princess! if our aged eyes
Weep upon thy matchless wrongs,
'Tis because resentment ties
All the terrors of our tongues.
"Rome shall perish--write that word
In the blood that she has spilt;
Perish, hopeless and abhorr'd,
Deep in ruin as in guilt.
"Rome, for empire far renown'd,
Tramples on a thousand states;
Soon her pride shall kiss the ground,--
Hark, the Gaul is at her gates!
"Other Romans shall arise,
Heedless of a soldier's name;
Sounds, not arms,{1} shall win the prize;
Harmony the path to fame.
"Then the progeny that springs
From the forests of our land,
Arm'd with thunder, clad with wings,{2}
Shall a wider world command.
"Regions Cæsar never knew
Thy posterity shall sway;
Where his eagles never flew
None invincible as they."{3}
Such the bard's prophetic words,
Pregnant with celestial fire,
Bending as he swept the chords
Of his sweet but awful lyre.
She, with all the monarch's pride,
Felt them in her bosom glow,
Rush'd to battle, fought and died;
Dying, hurled them{4} at the foe.
Ruffians, pitiless as proud,
Heaven awards the vengeance due;
Empire is on us bestowed,
Shame and ruin wait for you.{5}
Boadicea was queen of the Iceni, a powerful and warlike tribe of
Oh, that those lips had language! Life has passed
With me but roughly since I heard thee last.
Those lips are thine--thy own sweet smile I see,
The same that oft in childhood solaced me;
Voice only fails, else how distinct they say,
"Grieve not, my child, chase all thy fears away!"
The meek intelligence of those dear eyes
(Blessed be the art that can immortalize,
The art that baffles Time's tyrannic claim
To quench it) here shines on me still the same.
Faithful remembrancer of one so dear,
O welcome guest, though unexpected here!
Who bidst me honor with an artless song,
Affectionate, a mother lost so long,
I will obey, not willingly alone,
But gladly, as the precept were her own:
And, while that face renews my filial grief,
Fancy shall weave a charm for my relief,
Shall steep{1} me in Elysian reverie,{2}
A momentary dream that thou art she.
My mother! when I learnt{3} that thou wast dead,
Say, wast thou conscious of the tears I shed?
Hovered thy spirit o'er thy sorrowing son,
Wretch even then, life's journey just begun?
Perhaps thou gavest me, though unfelt, a kiss;
Perhaps a tear, if souls can weep in bliss.
Ah! that maternal smile! It answers--Yes.
I heard the bell tolled on thy burial day,
I saw the hearse that bore thee slow away,
And, turning from my nursery window, drew
A long, long sigh, and wept a last adieu!
But was it such?--It was.--Where thou art gone
Adieus and farewells are a sound unknown.
May I but meet thee on that peaceful shore,
The parting word shall pass my lips no more!
The maidens, grieved themselves at my concern,{4}
Oft gave me promise of thy quick return.
What ardently I wished I long believed,
And, disappointed still, was still deceived.
By expectation every day beguiled,
Dupe of _to-morrow_ even from a child.
Thus many a sad to-morrow came and went,
Till, all my stock of infant sorrow spent,
I learned at last submission to my lot;
But, though I less deplored thee, ne'er forgot.
Where once we dwelt our name is heard no more,
Children not thine have trod my nursery floor;
And where the gardener Robin, day by day,
Drew me to school along the public way,
Delighted with my bauble coach, and wrapped
In scarlet mantle warm, and velvet capped,
'Tis now become a history little known,
That once we called the pastoral house our own.
Short-lived possession! but the record fair
That memory keeps, of all thy kindness there,
Still outlives many a storm that has effaced
A thousand other themes less deeply traced.{5}
Thy nightly visits to my chamber made,
That thou mightst know me safe and warmly laid;
Thy morning bounties ere I left my home,
The biscuit, or confectionary plum;{6}
The fragrant waters on my cheek bestowed
By thy own hand, till fresh they shone and glowed;
All this, and more endearing still than all,
Thy constant flow of love, that knew no fall,
Ne'er roughened by those cataracts and brakes
That humor interposed too often makes;{7}
All this still legible in memory's page,
And still to be so to my latest age,
Adds joy to duty, makes me glad to pay
Such honors to thee as my numbers may;
Perhaps a frail memorial, but sincere,
Not scorned in heaven, though little noticed here.
Could Time, his flight reversed, restore the hours,
When, playing with thy vesture's tissued flowers,
The violet, the pink, and jessamine,
I pricked them into paper with a pin
(And thou wast happier than myself the while,
Wouldst softly speak, and stroke my head and smile),
Could those few pleasant days again appear,
Might one wish bring them, would I wish them here?
I would not trust my heart--the dear delight
Seems so to be desired, perhaps I might.--
But no--what here we call our life is such
So little to be loved, and thou so much,
That I should ill requite thee to constrain
Thy unbound spirit into bonds again.
Thou, as a gallant bark{8} from Albion's coast
(The storms all weathered and the ocean crossed)
Shoots into port at some well-havened isle,
Where spices breathe, and brighter seasons smile,
There sits quiescent on the floods that show
Her beauteous form reflected clear below,
While airs impregnated with incense play
Around her, fanning light her streamers gay;
So thou, with sails how swift! hast reached the shore,
"Where tempests never beat nor billows roar."{9}
And thy loved consort on the dangerous tide
Of life long since has anchored by thy side.
But me, scarce hoping to attain that rest,
Always from port withheld, always distressed--
Me howling blasts drive devious, tempest tost,
Sails ripped, seams opening wide, and compass lost,
And day by day some current's thwarting force,
Sets me more distant from a prosperous course.
Yet, oh, the thought that thou art safe, and he!
That thought is joy, arrive what may to me.
My boast is not, that I deduce my birth
From loins enthroned and rulers of the earth;
But higher far my proud pretensions rise--
The son of parents passed into the skies!
And now, farewell--Time unrevoked has run
His wonted course, yet what I wished is done.
By contemplation's help, not sought in vain,
I seem to have lived my childhood o'er again;
To have renewed the joys that once were mine,
Without the sin of violating thine:
And, while the wings of Fancy still are free,
And I can view this mimic show of thee,{10}
Time has but half succeeded in his theft--
Thyself removed, thy power to soothe me left.
circumstances with those of a more noble character.
"To die is landing on some silent shore,
Where billows never break nor tempests roar."
Here lies, whom hound did ne'er pursue,
Nor swifter greyhound follow,
Whose foot ne'er tainted morning dew,
Nor ear heard huntsman's halloo;
Old Tiney, surliest of his kind,
Who, nursed with tender care,
And to domestic bounds confined,
Was still a wild Jack hare.
Though duly from my hand he took
His pittance every night,
He did it with a jealous look,
And, when he could, would bite.
His diet was of wheaten bread,
And milk, and oats, and straw;
Thistles, or lettuces instead,
With sand to scour his maw.
On twigs of hawthorn he regaled,
On pippins' russet peel,
And, when his juicy salads failed,
Sliced carrot pleased him well.
A Turkey carpet was his lawn,
Whereon he loved to bound,
To skip and gambol like a fawn,
And swing his rump around.
His frisking was at evening hours,
For then he lost his fear,
But most before approaching showers,
Or when a storm drew near.
Eight years and five round-rolling moons
He thus saw steal away,
Dozing out all his idle noons,
And every night at play.
I kept him for his humor's sake,
For he would oft beguile
My heart of thoughts that made it ache,
And force me to a smile.
But now beneath this walnut shade
He finds his long last home,
And waits, in snug concealment laid,
Till gentler Puss shall come.
He, still more agèd, feels the shocks
From which no care can save,
And, partner once of Tiney's box,
Must soon partake his grave.
Westminster, he entered the Middle Temple and was articled to a
Cowper was not a great poet; but he was the first to abandon the
Sweet was the sound, when oft at evening's close
Up yonder hill the village murmur rose.
There as I pass'd, with careless steps and slow,
The mingling notes came soften'd from below:
The swain responsive as the milkmaid sung,
The sober herd that low'd to meet their young,
The noisy geese that gabbled o'er the pool,
The playful children just let loose from school,
The watch-dog's voice that bay'd the whispering wind,
And the loud laugh that spoke the vacant mind--
These all in sweet confusion sought the shade,
And fill'd each pause the nightingale had made.
But now the sounds of population fail,
No cheerful murmurs fluctuate in the gale,
No busy steps the grass-grown footway tread,
For all the bloomy flush of life is fled--
All but yon widow'd, solitary thing,
That feebly bends beside the plashy spring;
She, wretched matron--forc'd in age, for bread,
To strip the brook with mantling cresses spread,
To seek her nightly shed, and weep till morn--
She only left of all the harmless train,
The sad historian of the pensive plain!
Near yonder copse, where once the garden smiled,
And still where many a garden-flower grows wild;
There, where a few torn shrubs the place disclose,
The village preacher's{1} modest mansion rose.
A man he was to all the country dear,
And passing{2} rich with forty pounds{3} a year;
Remote from towns he ran his godly race,
Nor e'er had changed, nor wished to change, his place;
Unpractised he to fawn, or seek for power,
By doctrines fashioned to the varying hour;
Far other aims his heart had learned to prize,
More skilled to raise the wretched than to rise.
His house was known to all the vagrant train;
He chid their wanderings, but relieved their pain:
The long-remembered beggar was his guest,
Whose beard descending swept his aged breast;
The ruined spendthrift, now no longer proud,
Claimed kindred there, and had his claims allowed;
The broken soldier,{4} kindly bade to stay,
Sat by his fire, and talked the night away,
Wept o'er his wounds or, tales of sorrow done,
Shouldered his crutch and showed how fields were won.
Pleased with his guests, the good man learned to glow,
And quite forgot their vices in their woe;
Careless their merits or their faults to scan,
His pity gave ere charity began.
Thus to relieve the wretched was his pride,
And e'en his failings leaned to virtue's side;
But in his duty prompt at every call,
He watched and wept, he prayed and felt for all;
And, as a bird each fond endearment tries
To tempt its new-fledged offspring to the skies,
He tried each art, reproved each dull delay,
Allured to brighter worlds, and led the way.
Beside the bed where parting life was laid,
And sorrow, guilt, and pain by turns dismayed,
The reverend champion stood. At his control
Despair and anguish fled the struggling soul;
Comfort came down the trembling wretch to raise,
And his last faltering accents whispered praise.
At church, with meek and unaffected grace,
His looks adorned the venerable place:
Truth from his lips prevailed with double sway,
And fools who came to scoff remained to pray.
The service past, around the pious man,
With steady zeal, each honest rustic ran;
Even children followed with endearing wile,
And plucked his gown to share the good man's smile.
His ready smile a parent's warmth expressed;
Their welfare pleased him, and their cares distressed;
To them his heart, his love, his griefs were given,
But all his serious thoughts had rest in heaven.
As some tall cliff that lifts its awful form,
Swells from the vale, and midway leaves the storm,
Though round its breast the rolling clouds are spread,
Eternal sunshine settles on its head.{5}
Beside yon straggling fence that skirts the way,
With blossomed furze unprofitably gay,
There in his noisy mansion,{6} skilled to rule,
The village master taught his little school.
A man severe he was, and stern to view;
I knew him well, and every truant knew;
Well had the boding{7} tremblers learned to trace
The day's disasters in his morning face;
Full well they laughed with counterfeited glee
At all his jokes, for many a joke had he;
Full well the busy whisper circling round
Conveyed the dismal tidings when he frowned.
Yet he was kind, or, if severe in aught,
The love he bore to learning was in fault;
The village{8} all declared how much he knew;
'Twas certain he could write, and cipher too;
Lands he could measure, terms and tides{9} presage,
And e'en the story ran that he could gauge:{10}
In arguing, too, the parson owned his skill;
For e'en though vanquished, he could argue still;
While words of learned length and thundering sound
Amazed the gazing rustics ranged around;
And still they gazed, and still the wonder grew
That one small head could carry all he knew.
But past is all his fame. The very spot
Where many a time he triumphed is forgot.
"And fain was their war-broken soldier to stay!"
Goldsmith wonderfully improved the original."
"Ruin seize thee, ruthless King!
Confusion on thy banners wait;
Tho' fanned by Conquest's crimson wing,{1}
They mock the air with idle state.{2}
Helm, nor hauberk's{3} twisted mail,
Nor e'en thy virtues, Tyrant, shall avail
To save thy secret soul from nightly fears,
From Cambria's{4} curse, from Cambria's tears!"
Such were the sounds that o'er the crested pride
Of the first Edward scattered wild dismay,
As down the steep of Snowdon's{5} shaggy side
He wound with toilsome march his long array.
Stout Gloster{6} stood aghast in speechless trance:
"To arms!" cried Mortimer,{7} and couched his quivering lance.
On a rock{8} whose haughty brow
Frowns o'er cold Conway's foaming flood,
Robed in the sable garb of woe,
With haggard eyes the poet stood,
(Loose his beard, and hoary hair
Streamed, like a meteor, to the troubled air{9})
And with a master's hand, and prophet's fire,
Struck the deep sorrows of his lyre.{10}
"Hark, how each giant-oak, and desert cave,
Sighs to the torrent's awful voice beneath!
O'er thee, oh King! their hundred arms they wave,
Revenge on thee in hoarser murmurs breathe;
Vocal no more, since Cambria's fatal day,
To high-born Hoel's{11} harp, or soft Llewellyn's lay.
"Cold is Cadwallo's tongue,
That hushed the stormy main:{12}
Brave Urien sleeps upon his craggy bed:
Mountains, ye mourn in vain
Modred, whose magic song
Made huge Plinlimmon{13} bow his cloud-topt head.
On dreary Arvon's shore{14} they lie,
Smeared with gore, and ghastly pale:
Far, far aloof th' affrighted ravens sail;
The famished eagle{15} screams, and passes by.
Dear lost companions of my tuneful art,
Dear as the light that visits these sad eyes,
Dear as the ruddy drops that warm my heart,{16}
Ye died amidst your dying country's cries--
No more I weep. They do not sleep.
On yonder cliffs, a griesly band,
I see them sit,{17} they linger yet,
Avengers of their native land:
With me in dreadful harmony they join,
And weave with bloody hands the tissue of thy line.
"Weave the warp, and weave the woof,{18}
The winding sheet of Edward's race.
Give ample room, and verge enough
The characters of hell to trace.
Mark the year, and mark the night,
When Severn shall re-echo with affright
The shrieks of death, thro' Berkley's roof that ring,
Shrieks of an agonizing king!{19}
She-wolf of France,{20} with unrelenting fangs,
That tear'st the bowels of thy mangled mate,
From thee be born, who o'er thy country hangs
The scourge of heaven.{21} What terrors round him wait!
Amazement in his van, with Flight combined,
And Sorrow's faded form, and Solitude behind.
"Mighty victor, mighty lord!
Low on his funeral couch he lies!{22}
No pitying heart, no eye, afford
A tear to grace his obsequies.
Is the sable warrior{23} fled?
Thy son is gone. He rests among the dead.
The swarm, that in thy noontide beam were born,
Gone to salute the rising morn.
Fair laughs the morn, and soft the zephyr blows,{24}
While proudly riding o'er the azure realm
In gallant trim the gilded vessel goes;
Youth on the prow, and Pleasure at the helm;
Regardless of the sweeping whirlwind's sway,
That, hushed in grim repose, expects his evening prey.
"Fill high the sparkling bowl,
The rich repast prepare;
Reft of a crown, he yet may share the feast:
Close by the regal chair
Fell Thirst and Famine scowl{25}
A baleful smile upon their baffled guest.
Heard ye the din of battle{26} bray,
Lance to lance, and horse to horse?
Long years of havoc urge their destined course,
And thro' the kindred squadrons mow their way.
Ye towers of Julius,{27} London's lasting shame,
With many a foul and midnight murder fed,
Revere his consort's faith, his father's fame,
And spare the meek usurper's{28} holy head.
Above, below, the rose of snow,
Twined with her blushing foe,{29} we spread:
The bristled boar{30} in infant-gore
Wallows beneath the thorny shade.
Now, brothers, bending o'er the accursed loom,
Stamp we our vengeance deep, and ratify his doom.
"Edward,{31} lo! to sudden fate
(Weave we the woof. The thread is spun.)
Half of thy heart{32} we consecrate.
(The web is wove. The work is done.)
Stay, oh stay! nor thus forlorn
Leave me unblessed, unpitied, here to mourn:
In yon bright track, that fires the western skies,
They melt, they vanish from my eyes.
But oh! what solemn scenes on Snowdon's height
Descending slow their glittering skirts unroll?
Visions of glory, spare my aching sight!{33}
Ye unborn ages, crowd not on my soul!
No more our long-lost Arthur we bewail.
All hail, ye genuine kings, Britannia's issue, hail!
"Girt with many a baron bold
Sublime their starry fronts they rear;
And gorgeous dames, and statesmen old
In bearded majesty, appear.
In the midst a form divine!{34}
Her eye proclaims her of the Briton-line;
Her lion-port, her awe-commanding face,{35}
Attempered sweet to virgin-grace.
What strings symphonious tremble in the air,
What strains of vocal transport round her play.
Hear from the grave, great Taliessin,{36} hear;
They breathe a soul to animate thy clay.
Bright Rapture calls, and soaring as she sings,
Waves in the eye of heaven her many-colored wings.
"The verse adorn again
Fierce War, and faithful Love,{37}
And Truth severe, by fairy Fiction drest.
In buskined measures{38} move
Pale Grief, and pleasing Pain,
With Horror, tyrant of the throbbing breast.
A voice, as of the cherub-choir,
Gales from blooming Eden bear;
And distant warblings lessen on my ear,
That lost in long futurity expire.
Fond,{39} impious man, think'st thou yon sanguine cloud,
Raised by thy breath, has quenched the orb of day?
To-morrow he repairs{40} the golden flood,
And warms the nations with redoubled ray.
Enough for me; with joy I see
The different doom our fates assign.
Be thine despair, and sceptred care;
To triumph, and to die, are mine."
He spoke, and headlong from the mountain's height
Deep in the roaring tide he plunged to endless night.
"Mocking the air with colors idly spread."
"Nor on the shaggy top of Mona high."
"The rude sea grew civil at her song,
And certain stars shot madly from their spheres,
To hear the sea-maid's music."
--_Midsummer Night's Dream_, Act ii, sc. 1.
"As dear to me as are the ruddy drops
That visit my sad heart."
"On the steep
Where your old bards, the Druids lie."
=griesly.= Grisly. From the A.-S. _grisli_, dreadful.
"Glittering lances are the loom,
Where the dusky warp we strain,--
Shafts for shuttles, dipt in gore,
Shoot the trembling cords along;
Swords that once a monarch bore,
Keep the tissue close and strong."
--_The Fatal Sisters_, translated by Gray,
from the Norse.
"She-wolf of France, but worse than wolves of France."
=bray.= From Gr. _bracho_, to clash.
Margaret, and his father, Henry V.
"In the sty of the most deadly boar."
"The wretched, bloody, and usurping boar
That spoiled your summer fields and fruitful vines,
Swills your warm blood like wash."
"Her who knew that Love can vanquish Death,
Who kneeling, with one arm about her king,
Drew forth the poison with her balmy breath,
Sweet as new buds in spring."
"Fierce warres and faithful love shall moralize my song."
"Sinks the day-star in the ocean bed,
And yet anon repairs his drooping head."
Some to Conceit{1} alone their taste confine,
And glitt'ring thoughts struck out at ev'ry line;
Pleas'd with a work where nothing's just or fit;{2}
One glaring Chaos and wild heap of wit.{3}
Poets, like painters, thus, unskill'd to trace
The naked nature and the living grace,
And hide with ornaments their want of art.
True wit is nature to advantage dress'd;
What oft was thought, but ne'er so well express'd;{4}
Something, whose truth convinc'd at sight we find,
That gives us back the image of our mind.
As shades more sweetly recommend the light,
So modest plainness sets off sprightly wit.
For works may have more wit than does 'em good,
As bodies perish through excess of blood.
Others for Language all their care express,
And value books, as women men,{5} for dress:
Their praise is still,--the style is excellent;
The sense, they humbly take upon content.{6}
Words are like leaves; and where they most abound,
Much fruit of sense beneath is rarely found:
False eloquence, like the prismatic glass,
In gaudy colors spreads on ev'ry place;
The face of nature we no more survey,
All glares alike, without distinction gay:
But true expression, like th' unchanging sun,
Clears and improves whate'er it shines upon;
It gilds all objects, but it alters none.
Expression is the dress of thought, and still
Appears more decent, as more suitable;
A vile conceit in pompous words express'd
Is like a clown in regal purple dress'd:
For diff'rent styles with diff'rent subjects sort,{7}
As sev'ral garbs with country, town, and court.
Some by old words to fame have made pretence,
Ancients in phrase, mere moderns in their sense;
Such labor'd nothings, in so strange a style,
Amaze th' unlearn'd, and make the learned smile,
Unlucky, as Fungoso{8} in the play,
These sparks{9} with awkward vanity display
What the fine gentleman wore yesterday;
And but so mimic ancient wits at best,
As apes our grandsires, in their doublets drest.
In words, as fashions, the same rule will hold;
Alike fantastic, if too new or old:
Be not the first by whom the new are try'd,
Nor yet the last to lay the old aside.
But most by numbers judge a poet's song,
And smooth or rough, with them, is right or wrong:
In the bright muse, tho' thousand charms conspire,
Her voice is all these tuneful fools admire;
Who haunt Parnassus{10} but to please their ear,
Not mend{11} their minds, as some to church repair,
Not for the doctrine, but the music there.
These equal syllables alone require,
Tho' oft the ear the open vowels tire;{12}
While expletives their feeble aid do join;
And ten low words oft creep in one dull line:
While they ring round the same unvaried chimes,
With sure returns of still expected rhymes;
Where'er you find "the cooling western breeze,"
In the next line, it "whispers through the trees":{13}
If crystal streams "with pleasing murmurs creep,"
The reader's threaten'd (not in vain) with "sleep":
Then, at the last and only couplet fraught
With some unmeaning thing they call a thought,
A needless Alexandrine ends the song,{14}
That, like a wounded snake, drags its slow length along.{15}
Leave such to tune their own dull rhymes, and know
What's roundly smooth, or languishingly slow;
And praise the easy vigor of a line,
Where Denham's strength and Waller's{16} sweetness join.
True ease in writing comes from art, not chance,
As those move easiest who have learn'd to dance.
'Tis not enough no harshness gives offence,
The sound must seem an echo to the sense:
Soft is the strain when Zephyr gently blows,
And the smooth stream in smoother numbers{17} flows;
But when loud surges lash the sounding shore,
The hoarse, rough verse should like the torrent roar:
When Ajax{18} strives some rock's vast weight to throw,
The line too labors, and the words move slow:
Not so, when swift Camilla{19} scours the plain,
Flies o'er th' unbending corn, and skims along the main.
Hear how Timotheus'{20} vary'd lays surprise,
And bid alternate passions fall and rise!
While at each change, the son of Libyan Jove{21}
Now burns with glory, and then melts with love;
Now his fierce eyes with sparkling fury glow,
Now sighs steal out, and tears begin to flow:
Persians and Greeks like turns of nature found,
And the world's victor stood subdu'd by sound!
The power of music all our hearts allow,
And what Timotheus was, is Dryden now.
Avoid extremes; and shun the fault of such,
Who still are pleas'd too little or too much.
At ev'ry trifle scorn to take offence,
That always shows great pride, or little sense:
Those heads, as stomachs, are not sure the best,
Which nauseate all, and nothing can digest.
Yet let not each gay turn thy rapture move;
For fools admire, but men of sense approve:
As things seem large which we through mists descry;
Dulness is ever apt to magnify.
Some foreign writers, some our own despise;
The ancients only, or the moderns prize.
Thus wit, like faith, by each man is apply'd
To one small sect, and all are damn'd beside.
Meanly they seek the blessing to confine,
And force that sun but on a part to shine,
Which not alone the southern wit sublimes,
But ripens spirits in cold northern climes;
Which from the first has shone on ages past,
Enlights the present, and shall warm the last;
Tho' each may feel increases and decays,
And see now clearer and now darker days.
Regard not, then, if wit be old or new,
But blame the false, and value still the true.
Some ne'er advance a judgment of their own,
But catch the spreading notion of the Town;
They reason and conclude by precedent,
And own stale nonsense which they ne'er invent.
Some judge of authors' names, not works, and then
Nor praise nor blame the writings, but the men.
Of all this servile herd, the worst is he
That in proud dulness joins with Quality.{22}
A constant critic at the great man's board,
To fetch and carry nonsense for my Lord.
What woful stuff this madrigal would be,
In some starv'd hackney sonneteer, or me?
But let a Lord once own the happy lines,
How the wit brightens! how the style refines!
Before his sacred name flies ev'ry fault,
And each exalted stanza teems with thought!
"Mend your speech a little
Lest it may mar your fortunes."
"Warms in the sun, refreshes in the breeze,
Glows in the stars, and blossoms in the trees."
"That limping old bard
Whose fame on 'The Sophy' and 'Cooper's Hill' stands."
"As yet a child nor yet a fool to fame,
I lisped in numbers, for the numbers came."
Descend, ye Nine!{1} descend and sing;
The breathing instruments inspire,
Wake into voice each silent string,
And sweep the sounding lyre!
In a sadly pleasing strain,{2}
Let the warbling lute complain:
Let the loud trumpet sound,
Till the roofs all around
The shrill echoes rebound;
While in more lengthen'd notes and slow,
The deep, majestic, solemn organs blow.
Hark! the numbers soft and clear
Gently steal upon the ear;
Now louder, and yet louder rise,
And fill with spreading sounds the skies:
Exulting in triumph now swell the bold notes,
In broken air, trembling, the wild music floats,
Till, by degrees, remote and small,
The strains decay,
And melt away,
In a dying, dying fall.
By music, minds an equal temper know,{3}
Nor swell too high, nor sink too low.
If in the breast tumultuous joys arise,
Music her soft, assuasive{4} voice applies;
Or, when the soul is press'd with cares,
Exalts her in enlivening airs.
Warriors she fires with animated sounds;
Pours balm into the bleeding lover's wounds:
Melancholy lifts her head,
Morpheus rouses from his bed,
Sloth unfolds her arms and wakes,
Listening Envy drops her snakes;
Intestine war no more our passions wage,
And giddy factions hear away their rage.
But when our country's cause provokes to arms,
How martial music every bosom warms!
So when the first bold vessel dared the seas,
High on the stern the Thracian raised his strain,{5}
While Argo saw her kindred trees
Descend from Pelion to the main.
Transported demi-gods{6} stood round,
And men grew heroes at the sound,
Inflamed with glory's charms;
Each chief his sevenfold shield display'd,
And half unsheathed the shining blade:
And seas, and rocks, and skies rebound,
To arms! to arms! to arms!
But when, through all the infernal bounds{7}
Which flaming Phlegethon surrounds,
Love, strong as death,{8} the poet led
To the pale nations of the dead,
What sounds were heard,
What scenes appear'd,
O'er all the dreary coast!
Dreadful gleams,
Dismal screams,
Fires that glow,
Shrieks of woe,
Sullen moans,
Hollow groans,
And cries of tortured ghosts!
But, hark! he strikes the golden lyre;
And see! the tortured ghosts respire,
See, shady forms{9} advance!
Thy stone, O Sisyphus, stands still,{10}
Ixion rests upon his wheel,
And the pale spectres dance;
The Furies sink upon their iron beds,
And snakes uncurl'd hang listening round their heads.
By the streams that ever flow,
By the fragrant winds that blow
O'er the Elysian flowers;
By those happy souls who dwell
In yellow meads of asphodel,
Or amaranthine bowers;
By the heroes' armed shades,
Glittering through the gloomy glades,
By the youths that died for love,
Wandering in the myrtle grove,
Restore, restore Eurydice to life:
Oh take the husband, or return the wife!
He sung, and hell{11} consented
To hear the poet's prayer;
Stern Proserpine relented,
And gave him back the fair.
Thus song could prevail
O'er death and o'er hell,
A conquest how hard and how glorious!
Though fate had fast bound her
With Styx nine times round her,
Yet music and love were victorious.{12}
But soon, too soon, the lover turns his eyes:
Again she falls, again she dies, she dies!
How wilt thou now the fatal sisters move?
No crime was thine, if 'tis no crime to love.
Now under hanging mountains,
Beside the falls of fountains,
Or where Hebrus wanders,
Rolling in meanders,
All alone,
Unheard, unknown,
He makes his moan;
And calls her ghost,
For ever, ever, ever lost!
Now with furies surrounded,{13}
Despairing, confounded,
He trembles, he glows,
Amidst Rhodope's{14} snows:
See, wild as the winds, o'er the desert he flies;
Hark! Hæmus resounds with the Bacchanals' cries--
Ah see, he dies!
Yet even in death Eurydice he sung,
Eurydice still trembled on his tongue,
Eurydice the woods,
Eurydice the floods,
Eurydice the rocks, and hollow mountains rung.
Music{15} the fiercest grief can charm,
And fate's severest rage disarm;
Music can soften pain to ease,
And make despair and madness please:
Our joys below it can improve,
And antedate the bliss above.
This the divine Cecilia found,
And to her Maker's praise confined the sound.
When the full organ joins the tuneful choir,
The immortal powers incline their ear;
Borne on the swelling notes our souls aspire,
While solemn airs improve the sacred fire;
And angels lean from heaven to hear.
Of Orpheus now no more let poets tell,
To bright Cecilia greater power is given;
His numbers raised a shade from hell,
Hers lift the soul to heaven.{16}
"This angel had of roses and lilie
Corones two, the which he bare in honde,
And first to Cecile, as I understonde,
He yaf that on, and after gan he take
That other to Valerian hire make."
"While the organs maden melodie,
To God alone thus in hire hert song she;
'O Lord, my soule and eke my body gie
Unwemmed, lest that I confounded be.'"
There is also a tradition in the church that St. Cecilia was the
"Of Peleus' son, Achilles, sing, O Muse."
"Tell me, O Muse, of that sagacious man
Who, having overthrown the sacred town
Of Ilium, wandered far," etc.
Milton invokes the
"heavenly Muse that on the secret top
Of Oreb, or of Sinai, didst inspire
That shepherd," etc.
renowned.
"Lap me in soft Lydian airs,
Married to immortal verse, . . .
That Orpheus' self may heave his head
From golden slumber on a bed
Of heaped Elysian flowers, and hear
Such strains as would have won the ear
Of Pluto to have quite set free
His half-regain'd Eurydice."
"What could the Muse herself that Orpheus bore,
The Muse herself for her enchanting son,
Whom universal nature did lament,
When by the rout that made the hideous roar,
His gory visage down the stream was sent,
Down the swift Hebrus to the Lesbian shore?"
"The barbarous dissonance
Of Bacchus and his revellers, the race
Of that wild rout that tore the Thracian bard
In Rhodope, where woods and rocks had ears
To rapture, till the savage clamor drown'd
Both harp and voice; nor could the Muse defend
Her son."
"Music hath charms to soothe the savage breast."
"O Music! sphere-descended maid,
Friend of pleasure, wisdom's aid!"
"Soft is the music that would charm forever."
REFERENCES: Johnson's _Lives of the Poets_; Stephen's _Hours in a
=Lord Herbert of Cherbury= (1581-1648). Odes and short poems.
'Twas at the royal feast,{1} for Persia won
By Philip's warlike son:
Aloft in awful state
The godlike hero sate
On his imperial throne:
His valiant peers were placed around;
Their brows with roses and with myrtles bound:{2}
(So should desert in arms be crowned.)
The lovely Thais,{3} by his side,
Sate like a blooming Eastern bride
In flower of youth and beauty's pride.
Happy, happy, happy pair!
None but the brave,
None but the brave,
None but the brave deserves the fair.
Happy, happy, happy pair!
None but the brave,
None but the brave,
None but the brave deserves the fair.
Timotheus,{4} placed on high
Amid the tuneful quire,
With flying fingers touched the lyre:
The trembling notes ascend the sky,
And heavenly joys inspire.
The song began from Jove,{5}
Who left his blissful seats above,
(Such is the power of mighty love.)
A dragon's fiery form belied the god:
Sublime on radiant spires he rode.
The listening crowd admire the lofty sound,
A present deity,{6} they shout around;
A present deity, the vaulted roofs rebound:
With ravish'd ears
The monarch hears,
Assumes the god,
Affects to nod,{7}
And seems to shake the spheres.
With ravish'd ears
The monarch hears,
Assumes the god,
Affects to nod,
And seems to shake the spheres.
The praise of Bacchus then, the sweet musician sung,
Of Bacchus ever fair and ever young:
The jolly god in triumph comes;
Sound the trumpets; beat the drums;
Flush'd with a purple grace,
He shows his honest face:
Now give the hautboys{8} breath; he comes! he comes!
Bacchus, ever fair and young,
Drinking joys did first ordain;
Bacchus' blessings are a treasure,
Drinking is the soldier's pleasure;
Rich the treasure,
Sweet the pleasure;
Sweet is pleasure after pain.
Bacchus' blessings are a treasure,
Drinking is the soldier's pleasure;
Rich the treasure,
Sweet the pleasure;
Sweet is pleasure after pain.
Sooth'd with the sound, the king grew vain;
Fought all his battles o'er again;
His glowing cheeks, his ardent eyes;
And, while he Heaven and Earth defied,
Changed his hand, and check'd his pride.
He chose a mournful muse,
Soft pity to infuse:
He sung Darius{10} great and good,
By too severe a fate,
Fallen, fallen, fallen, fallen,
Fallen from his high estate,
And welt'ring in his blood;
Deserted at his utmost need,
By those his former bounty fed:
On the bare earth expos'd he lies,{11}
With not a friend to close his eyes.{12}
With downcast looks the joyless victor sate,
Revolving in his alter'd soul
The various turns of chance below;
And, now and then, a sigh he stole,{13}
And tears began to flow.
Revolving in his alter'd soul
The various turns of chance below;
And, now and then, a sigh he stole,
And tears began to flow.
The mighty master smil'd to see
That love was in the next degree:
'Twas but a kindred sound to move,
For pity melts the mind to love.{14}
Softly sweet, in Lydian{15} measures,
Soon he sooth'd his soul to pleasures.
War, he sung, is toil and trouble;
Honor, but an empty bubble;{16}
Never ending, still beginning,
Fighting still, and still destroying;
If the world be worth thy winning,
Think, oh think it worth enjoying!
Lovely Thais sits beside thee,
Take the good the gods provide thee.
The many{17} rend the air with loud applause;
So Love was crown'd, but Music won the cause.
The prince, unable to conceal his pain,
Gaz'd on the fair
Who caus'd his care,
And sigh'd and look'd,{18} sigh'd and look'd,
Sigh'd and look'd, and sigh'd again;
At length, with love and wine at once oppress'd,
The vanquish'd victor sunk upon her breast.
The prince, unable to conceal his pain,
Gaz'd on the fair
Who caus'd his care,
And sigh'd and look'd, sigh'd and look'd,
Sigh'd and look'd, and sigh'd again;
At length, with love and wine at once oppress'd,
The vanquish'd victor sunk upon her breast.
Now strike the golden lyre again;
A louder yet, and yet a louder strain.
Break his bands of sleep{19} asunder,
And rouse him, like a rattling peal of thunder.
Hark, hark, the horrid sound
Has raised up his head!
As awaked from the dead,
And amaz'd he stares around.
Revenge! revenge! Timotheus cries,
See the Furies{20} arise:
See the snakes that they rear,
How they hiss in their hair,
And the sparkles that flash from their eyes!
Behold a ghastly band,
Each a torch in his hand!
Those are Grecian ghosts,{21} that in battle were slain,
And unburied remain
Inglorious on the plain:
Give the vengeance due
To the valiant crew.{22}
Behold how they toss their torches on high,
How they point to the Persian abodes,
And glittering temples of their hostile gods!
The princes applaud with a furious joy;
And the king seiz'd a flambeau with zeal to destroy;
Thais led the way,{23}
To light him to his prey,
And like another Helen, fired another Troy.
And the king seiz'd a flambeau with zeal to destroy;
Thais led the way,
To light him to his prey,
And like another Helen, fired another Troy.
Thus, long ago,
Ere heaving bellows learn'd to blow,
While organs{24} yet were mute;
Timotheus to his breathing flute,
And sounding lyre,
Could swell the soul to rage, or kindle soft desire.
At last divine Cecilia came,
Inventress of the vocal frame;{25}
The sweet enthusiast, from her sacred store,
Enlarged the former narrow bounds,
And added length to solemn sounds,
With Nature's mother-wit, and arts unknown before.
Let old Timotheus yield the prize,
Or both divide the crown:
He rais'd a mortal to the skies;
She drew an angel down.{26}
At last divine Cecilia came,
Inventress of the vocal frame;
The sweet enthusiast, from her sacred store,
Enlarged the former narrow bounds,
And added length to solemn sounds,
With Nature's mother-wit, and arts unknown before.
Let old Timotheus yield the prize,
Or both divide the crown:
He rais'd a mortal to the skies
She drew an angel down.
"This ode is Dryden's greatest and best work."--_Macaulay._
"Come, thou monarch of the vine,
Plumpy Bacchus with pink eyne."
"By foreign hands thy dying eyes were closed;
By foreign hands thy decent limbs composed."
"And then the lover,
Sighing like a furnace."
"Pity swells the tide of love."
"Pity's akin to love."
"And ever against eating cares,
Lap me in soft Lydian airs."
"And all the while sweet Musicke did divide
Her looser notes with Lydian harmony."
"Honor is a mere scutcheon."
instrument, generally used the word in the plural number. "Father
Such was the rise of this prodigious fire,{1}
Which, in mean buildings first obscurely bred,
From thence did soon to open streets aspire,
And straight to palaces and temples spread.
The diligence of trades, and noiseful gain,
And luxury, more late, asleep were laid;
All was the Night's, and in her silent reign
No sound the rest of Nature did invade.
In this deep quiet, from what source unknown,{2}
Those seeds of fire their fatal birth disclose;
And first few scattering sparks about were blown,
Big with the flames that to our ruin rose.
Then in some close-pent room it crept along,
And, smouldering as it went, in silence fed;
Till the infant monster, with devouring strong,
Walk'd boldly upright with exalted head.
Now, like some rich or mighty murderer,
Too great for prison which he breaks with gold,
Who fresher for new mischiefs does appear,
And dares the world to tax him with the old,
So scapes the insulting fire his narrow jail,
And makes small outlets into open air;
There the fierce winds his tender force assail,
And beat him downward to his first repair.
The winds, like crafty courtesans, withheld
His flames from burning but to blow them more:
And, every fresh attempt, he is repell'd
With faint denials, weaker than before.
And now, no longer letted{3} of his prey,
He leaps up at it with enraged desire,
O'erlooks the neighbors with a wide survey,
And nods at every house his threatening fire.
The ghosts of traitors from the Bridge{4} descend,
With bold fanatic spectres to rejoice;
About the fire into a dance they bend,
And sing their sabbath notes with feeble voice.
Our guardian angel saw them where they sate,
Above the palace of our slumbering King;
He sighed, abandoning his charge to Fate,
And drooping oft look'd back upon the wing.
At length the crackling noise and dreadful blaze
Call'd up some waking lover to the sight;
And long it was ere he the rest could raise,
Whose heavy eyelids yet were full of night.
The next to danger, hot pursued by fate,
Half-clothed, half-naked, hastily retire;
And frighted mothers strike their breasts too late
For helpless infants left amidst the fire.
Their cries soon waken all the dwellers near;
Now murmuring noises rise in every street;
The more remote run stumbling with their fear,
And in the dark men justle as they meet.
So weary bees in little cells repose;
But if night-robbers lift the well-stored hive,
An humming through their waxen city grows,
And out upon each other's wings they drive.{5}
Now streets grow throng'd and busy as by day;
Some run for buckets to the hallow'd quire;
Some cut the pipes, and some the engines play,
And some more bold mount ladders to the fire.
In vain; for from the east a Belgian wind
His hostile breath through the dry rafters sent;
The flames impell'd soon left their foes behind,
And forward with a wanton fury went.
A key{6} of fire ran all along the shore,
And lighten'd all the river with a blaze;
The waken'd tides began again to roar,
And wondering fish in shining waters gaze.
Old Father Thames rais'd up his reverend head,
But fear'd the fate of Simois{7} would return;
Deep in his ooze he sought his sedgy bed,
And shrank his waters back into his urn.
The fire meantime walks in a broader gross;{8}
To either hand his wings he opens wide;
He wades the streets, and straight he reaches cross,
And plays his longing flames on the other side.
At first they warm, then scorch, and then they take;
Now with long necks from side to side they feed;
At length, grown strong, their mother-fire forsake,
And a new colony of flames succeed.
To every nobler portion of the town
The curling billows roll their restless tide;
In parties now they straggle up and down,
As armies unopposed for prey divide.
One mighty squadron, with a sidewind sped,
Through narrow lanes his cumber'd fire does haste,
By powerful charms of gold and silver led
The Lombard bankers and the Change to waste.
Another backward to the Tower would go,
And slowly eats his way against the wind;
But the main body of the marching foe
Against the imperial palace is design'd.
Now day appears; and with the day the King,
Whose early care had robb'd him of his rest;
Far off the cracks of falling houses ring,
And shrieks of subjects pierce his tender breast.
Near as he draws, thick harbingers of smoke
With gloomy pillars cover all the place;
Whose little intervals of night are broke
By sparks that drive against his sacred face.
More than his guards his sorrows made him known,
And pious tears which down his cheeks did shower;
The wretched in his grief forgot their own;
So much the pity of a king has power.
He wept the flames of what he lov'd so well,
And what so well had merited his love;
For never prince in grace did more excel,
Or royal city more in duty strove.
This selection from Dryden's long and very tedious poem, "Annus
describes in his verses:
"What lets but one may enter?"--_Shakespeare._
effective.
Dim as the borrow'd beams of moon and stars
To lonely, weary, wand'ring travellers,
Is Reason to the soul: and as on high,
Those rolling fires discover but the sky,
Not light us here; so Reason's glimmering ray
Was lent, not to assure our doubtful way,
But guide us upward to a better day.
And as those nightly tapers disappear,
When day's bright lord ascends our hemisphere;
So pale grows Reason at Religion's sight;
So dies, and so dissolves in supernatural light.
Some few whose light shone brighter, have been led
From cause to cause, to nature's secret head;
And found that one first principle must be,
But what, or who, that Universal HE;
Whether some soul incompassing this ball,
Unmade, unmov'd, yet making, moving all,
Or various atoms' interfering dance
Leap'd into form, the noble work of chance,
Or this great All was from eternity--
Not even the Stagirite himself could see,
And Epicurus guess'd as well as he;
As blindly groped they for a future state,
As rashly judged of providence and fate.
In this wild maze their vain endeavors end:
How can the less the greater comprehend?
Or finite Reason reach Infinity?
For what could fathom God were more than He.
JOHN DRYDEN was born on the 9th of August, 1631, at Aldwincle All
Thackeray's _English Humorists_.
This is the month, and this the happy morn,
Wherein the Son of Heav'ns eternal King,
Of wedded Maid and Virgin mother born,
Our great redemption from above did bring:
For so the holy Sages once did sing:
That he our deadly forfeit should release,{1}
And with his Father work us a perpetual peace.
The glorious form, that light unsufferable,
And that far-beaming blaze of majesty,
Wherewith he wont{2} at Heav'ns high council-table
To sit the midst of Trinal Unity,
He laid aside; and, here with us to be,
Forsook the courts of everlasting day,
And chose with us a darksome house of mortal clay.{3}
Say, heav'nly muse, shall not thy sacred vein
Afford a present to the Infant God?
Hast thou no vers, no hymn, or solemn strein
To welcome him to this his new abode
Now while the Heav'n by the suns team untrod
Hath took no print of the approaching light,
And all the spangled host keep watch in squadrons bright?
See how from far upon the eastern rode
The star-led Wisards{4} haste with odours sweet;
O run, prevent{5} them with thy humble ode,
And lay it lowly at his blessed feet;
Have thou the honour first thy Lord to greet,
And join thy voice unto the angel quire,{6}
From out his secret altar toucht with hallow'd fire.
It was the winter wilde
While the Heav'n-born childe
All meanly wrapt in the rude manger lies;
Had doff't her gaudy trim,
With her great Master so to sympathize:
It was no season then for her
To wanton with the sun her lusty paramour.{7}
Onely with speeches fair
She woo's the gentle air
To hide her guilty front with innocent snow,
And on her naked shame,
Pollute with sinfull blame,
The saintly veil of maiden{8} white to throw:
Confounded that her Makers eyes
Should look so near upon her foul deformities.
But he, her fears to cease,
Sent down the meek-eyed Peace,
She, crown'd with olive green, came softly sliding
Down through the turning sphear,{9}
His ready harbinger,{10}
With turtle{11} wing the amorous clouds dividing,
And, waving wide her mirtle wand,
She strikes a universall peace{12} through sea and land.
No war, or battails sound,
Was heard the world around;
The idle spear and shield were high up hung;
The hooked chariot{13} stood
Unstain'd with hostile blood;
The trumpet spake not to the armed throng;
And kings sate still with awfull eye,{14}
As if they surely knew their sovran Lord was by.
But peacefull was the night
His raign of peace upon the earth began;
The windes, with wonder whist,{15}
Smoothly the waters kist,
Whispering new joyes to the milde ocean,
Who now hath quite forgot to rave,
While birds of calm sit brooding on the charmed wave.
The stars, with deep amaze,
Stand fixt in stedfast gaze,
Bending one way their precious influence,{16}
And will not take their flight
For{17} all the morning light
Or Lucifer{18} that often warn'd them thence;
But in their glimmering orbs did glow,
Untill their Lord himself bespake, and bid them go.
And, though the shady Gloom
Had given day her room,
The sun himself withheld his wonted speed,
And hid his head for shame,
As his inferiour flame
The new-enlightn'd world no more should need;
He saw a greater sun appear
Than his bright throne or burning axle-tree{19} could bear.
The shepherds on the lawn{20}
Or ere{21} the point of dawn
Sate simply chatting in a rustick row;
Full little thought they than
That the mighty Pan{22}
Was kindly com to live with them below;
Perhaps their loves, or else their sheep,
Was all that did their silly{23} thoughts so busie keep.
When such musick sweet
Their hearts and ears did greet
As never was by mortall finger strook,{24}
Divinely warbled voice
Answering the stringed noise{25}
As all their souls in blissfull rapture took;
The air, such pleasure loth to lose,
With thousand echo's still prolongs each heav'nly close.{26}
Nature that heard such sound
Beneath the hollow round{27}
Of Cynthia's seat the airy region thrilling,
Now was almost won
To think her part was don,
And that her raign had here its{28} last fulfilling;
She knew such harmony alone
Could hold all Heav'n and Earth in happier union.
At last surrounds their sight
A globe of circular light,
That with long beams the shame-fac't Night array'd;
The helmed Cherubim,{29}
The sworded Seraphim
Are seen in glittering ranks with wings displaied,
Harping in loud and solemn quire
With unexpressive{30} notes to Heav'n's new-born Heir.
Such musick (as 'tis said)
Before was never made
But when of old the sons of Morning sung,{31}
While the Creator great
His constellation set,
And the well-ballanc't world on hinges{32} hung,
And cast the dark foundations deep,
And bid the weltring{33} waves their oozy channel keep.
Ring out, ye crystall sphears;{34}
Once bless our humane ears
(If ye have power to touch our senses so),
And let your silver chime
Move in melodious time,
And let the base of Heav'ns deep organ blow,
And with your ninefold harmony
Make up full consort{35} to th' angelike symphony.
For, if such holy song
Enwrap our fancy long,
Time will run back and fetch the age of Gold;{36}
And speckl'd Vanity
Will sicken soon and die,
And leprous sin will melt from earthly mould;{37}
And Hell itself will pass away,
And leave her{38} dolorous mansions to the peering day.
Yea, Truth and Justice then
Will down return to men,
Orb'd in a rainbow; and, like glories wearing,
Mercy will set between,
Thron'd in celestiall sheen,
With radiant feet the tissued clouds down stearing;
And Heav'n, as at som festivall,
Will open wide the gates of her high palace hall.{39}
But wisest Fate sayes no;
This must not yet be so;
The Babe lies yet in smiling infancy,
That on the bitter cross{40}
Must redeem our loss,
So both himself and us to glorifie;
Yet first to those ychain'd{41} in sleep
The wakefull trump{42} of doom must thunder through the deep.
With such a horrid clang
As on Mount Sinai rang,{43}
While the red fire and smould'ring clouds out brake;
The aged Earth, agast,
With terrour of that blast,
Shall from the surface to the center shake;
When at the worlds last session{44}
The dreadfull Judge in middle air shall spread his throne.
And then at last our bliss
Full and perfect is,
But now begins; for from this happy day,
Th' old Dragon{45} under ground,
In straiter limits bound,
Not half so far casts his usurped sway;
And, wroth to see his kingdom fail,
Swindges{46} the scaly horrour of his foulded tail.
The oracles are dumm;{47}
No voice or hideous humm
Runs through the arched roof in words deceiving.
Apollo from his shrine
Can no more divine,
With hollow shreik the steep of Delphos{48} leaving.
No nightly trance, or breathed spell,
Inspires the pale-ey'd Priest from the prophetic cell.
The lonely mountains o'er
And the resounding shore
A voice of weeping{49} heard and loud lament;
From haunted spring and dale
Edged with poplar pale
The parting{50} Genius is with sighing sent;
With floure-inwov'n tresses torn
The nimphs in twilight shade of tangled thickets mourn.
In consecrated earth,
And on the holy hearth{51}
The Lars and Lemures moan with midnight plaint
In urns and altars round,
A drear and dying sound
Affrights the Flamins{52} at their service quaint
And the chill marble seems to sweat,
While each peculiar power forgoes{53} his wonted seat.
Forsake their temples dim,
With that twise batter'd god{55} of Palestine;
And mooned Ashtaroth,
Heav'ns queen and mother both,
Now sits not girt with tapers holy shine;
The Lybic Hammon shrinks his horn;
In vain the Tyrian maids their wounded Thammuz mourn;{56}
And sullen Moloch, fled,
Hath left in shadows dred{57}
His burning idol all of blackest hue;
In vain with cymbals ring
They call the grisly{58} King
In dismall dance about the furnace blue;
The brutish{59} gods of Nile as fast,
Isis, and Orus, and the dog Anubis last.
Nor is Osiris seen
In Memphian grove or green
Trampling the unshowr'd grass{60} with lowings loud,
Nor can he be at rest
Within his sacred chest;
Naught but profoundest hell can be his shroud;
In vain with timbrel'd anthems dark
The sable-stoled sorcerers bear his worshipt ark.
He feels from Judas land
The dredded Infants hand;
The rayes of Bethlehem blind his dusky eyn;{61}
Nor all the gods beside
Longer dare abide,
Not Typhon huge ending in snaky twine:
Our Babe, to show his Godhead true,
Can in his swaddling bands controul the damned crew.
So, when the Sun in bed,{62}
Curtain'd with cloudy red
Pillows his chin upon an orient wave,
The flocking shadows pale
Troop to th' infernal jail;
Each fetter'd ghost slips to his severall grave;
And the yellow-skirted Fayes
Fly after the night-steeds, leaving their moon-lov'd maze.
But see the Virgin blest
Hath laid her Babe to rest;
Time is our tedious song should here have ending;
Heav'ns youngest teemed{63} star
Hath fixt her polish'd car,
Her sleeping Lord with handmaid lamp attending;
And all about the courtly stable
Bright-harness'd angels sit in order serviceable.{64}
"Thy slanders I forgive, and therewithal
Remit thy other forfeits."
"Therefore the antique wizards well invented
That Venus of the fomy sea was bred,"
meaning by "antique wizards" ancient philosophers.
"I prevented the dawning of the morning."--_Psalm_ cxix. 147.
"I will have nothing to hinder me in the morning, for I will
prevent the sun rising."--_Izaak Walton_, _Compleat Angler_.
"When I am dead, strew me o'er
With maiden flowers."
Parkes's _Topography of Hampstead_, 1818, contains the following:
"The office of harbinger still exists in the Royal Household, the
"So was the Titaness put downe and whist."
It also meant _to keep silent_, as in Surrey's "Virgil":
"They whisted all, with fixed face intent."
=birds of calm.= Halcyons. See note 1, page 78.
"Happy constellations on that hour
Shed their selectest influences."
"The gilded car of day
His glowing axle doth allay."
"But this heart
Shall break into a hundred thousand flaws
Or ere I'll weep."
"And such, I ween, the brethren were
That came from Canaän,
The brethren Twelve, that kept yfere
The flocks of mightie Pan."
"The silly virgin strove him to withstand."
Chaucer, in the "Reves Tale," uses it in the more modern sense of
"These sely clerkes han ful fast yronne."
But in the "Legend of Good Women" it has another meaning:
"O sely woman, full of innocence."
The meaning of this word has completely changed.
"Now strike the golden lyre again."
"At every _close_ she made, th' attending throng
Replied, and bore the burden of the song."
"The fair, the chaste, the unexpressive she."
"And hears the unexpressive nuptiall song."
regulated by harmonic laws, they necessarily formed as a whole a
"Sure she was nigher to heaven's spheres,
Listening the lordly music flowing from
The illimitable years."
"The music of the spheres! list, my Mariana!"
"There's not the smallest orb which thou behold'st
But in his motion like an angel sings
Still quiring to the young-eyed cherubims."
"If Nature thunder'd in his opening ears,
And stunn'd him with the music of the spheres,
How would he wish that Heaven had left him still
The whispering zephyr and the purling rill!"
"Her voice, the music of the spheres,
So loud, it deafens mortals' ears,
As wise philosophers have thought,
And that's the cause we hear it not."
"A blisful lyfe, a peseable, and so swete,
Ledde the peplis in the former age."--_Chaucer._
"Can any mortal mixture of earth's mould
Breathe such divine, enchanting ravishment?"
"Those blessed feet
Which fourteen hundred years ago were nail'd
For our advantage, on the bitter cross."
yburied, ybrent, yfonden, ygeten, yclad, yfraught, etc.
=wakefull.= Awakening.
"Henceforth thou art the Genius of the shore."
Milton, in "Paradise Lost," says:
"Thammuz came next behind,
Whose annual wound in Lebanon allur'd
The Syrian damsels to lament his fate
In amorous ditties all a summer's day."
=sacred chest= = =worshipt ark=, below.
"They also serve who only stand and wait."
descriptive poems, "L'Allegro" and "II Penseroso"; and the elegy,
Milton! thou shouldst be living at this hour:
England hath need of thee; she is a fen
Of stagnant waters; altar, sword, and pen,
Fireside, the heroic wealth of hall and bower,
Have forfeited their ancient English dower
Of inward happiness. We are selfish men;
Oh! raise us up, return to us again;
And give us manners, virtue, freedom, power.
Thy soul was like a star, and dwelt apart;
Thou hadst a voice whose sound was like the sea;
Pure as the naked heavens, majestic, free,
So didst thou travel on life's common way,
In cheerful godliness; and yet thy heart
The lowliest duties on herself did lay.
REFERENCES: Masson's _Life and Times of John Milton_; _Milton_
Johnson's _Lives of the Poets_; Hazlitt's _English Poets_.
Live, live with me, and thou shalt see
The pleasures I'll prepare for thee:
What sweets the country can afford
Shall bless thy bed, and bless thy board.
The soft sweet moss shall be thy bed,
With crawling woodbine over-spread:
By which the silver-shedding streams
Shall gently melt thee into dreams.
Thy clothing next, shall be a gown
Made of the fleeces' purest down.
The tongue of kids shall be thy meat;
Their milk thy drink; and thou shalt eat
The paste of filberts for thy bread
With cream of cowslips butterèd:
Thy feasting-table shall be hills
With daisies spread, and daffadils;
Where thou shalt sit, and Red-breast by,
For meat, shall give thee melody.
I'll give thee chains and carcanets
Of primroses and violets.
A bag and bottle thou shalt have,
That richly wrought, and this as brave;
So that as either shall express
The wearer's no mean shepherdess.
At shearing-times, and yearly wakes,
When Themilis his pastime makes,
There thou shalt be; and be the wit,
Nay more, the feast, and grace of it.
On holydays, when virgins meet
To dance the heys with nimble feet,
Thou shalt come forth, and then appear
The Queen of Roses for that year.
And having danced ('bove all the best)
Carry the garland from the rest.
In wicker-baskets maids shall bring
To thee, my dearest shepherdling,
The blushing apple, bashful pear,
And shame-faced plum, all simp'ring there.
Walk in the groves, and thou shalt find
The name of Phillis in the rind
Of every straight and smooth-skin tree;
Where kissing that, I'll twice kiss thee.
To thee a sheep-hook I will send,
Be-prank'd with ribbons, to this end,
This, this alluring hook might be
Less for to catch a sheep, than me.
Thou shalt have possets, wassails fine,
Not made of ale, but spicèd wine;
To make thy maids and self free mirth,
All sitting near the glitt'ring hearth.
Thou shalt have ribbands, roses, rings,
Gloves, garters, stockings, shoes, and strings
Of winning colors that shall move
Others to lust, but me to love.
--These, nay, and more, thine own shall be,
If thou wilt love, and live with me.
Good morrow to the day so fair;
Good morning, sir, to you;
Good morrow to mine own torn hair,
Bedabbled with the dew.
Good morning to this primrose too;
Good morrow to each maid;
That will with flowers the tomb bestrew
Wherein my Love is laid.
Ah! woe is me, woe, woe is me,
Alack and well-a-day!
For pity, sir, find out that bee,
Which bore my Love away.
I'll seek him in your bonnet brave;
I'll seek him in your eyes;
Nay, now I think they've made his grave
I' th' bed of strawberries.
I'll seek him there; I know, ere this,
The cold, cold earth doth shake him;
But I will go, or send a kiss
By you, sir, to awake him.
Pray hurt him not; though he be dead,
He knows well who do love him;
And who with green turfs rear his head,
And who do rudely move him.
He's soft and tender, pray take heed,
With bands of cowslips bind him,
And bring him home;--but 'tis decreed
That I shall never find him.
Lord, thou hast given me a cell,
Wherein to dwell;
A little house, whose humble roof
Is weather proof;
Under the spars of which I lie
Both soft and dry;
Where thou, my chamber for to ward,
Hast set a guard
Of harmless thoughts, to watch and keep
Me, while I sleep.
Low is my porch, as is my fate;
Both void of state;
And yet the threshold of my door
Is worn by th' poor,
Who thither come, and freely get
Good words, or meat.
Like as my parlor, so my hall
And kitchen's small;
A little buttery, and therein
A little bin,
Which keeps my little loaf of bread
Unchipt, unflead;
Some brittle sticks of thorn or briar
Make me a fire,
Close by whose living coal I sit,
And glow like it.
Lord, I confess too, when I dine,
The pulse is thine,
And all those other bits that be
There placed by thee;
The worts, the purslain, and the mess
Of water-cress,
Which of thy kindness thou hast sent;
And my content
Makes those, and my belovèd beet,
To be more sweet.
'Tis thou that crown'st my glittering hearth
With guiltless mirth,
And giv'st me wassail bowls to drink,
Spiced to the brink.
Lord, 'tis thy plenty-dropping hand
That soils my land,
And giv'st me, for my bushel sown,
Twice ten for one;
Thou mak'st my teeming hen to lay
Her egg each day;
Besides, my healthful ewes to bear
Me twins each year;
The while the conduits of my kine
Run cream, for wine:
All these, and better, thou dost send
Me, to this end,--
That I should render, for my part,
A thankful heart;
Which, fired with incense, I resign,
As wholly thine;
--But the acceptance, that must be,
"I sing of brooks, of blossoms, birds, and bowers,
Of April, May, of June, and July-flowers;
I sing of May-poles, hock-carts, wassails, wakes,
Of bride-grooms, brides, and of their bridal-cakes.
I write of Youth, of Love;--and have access
By these, to sing of cleanly wantonness;
I sing of dews, of rains, and, piece by piece,
Of balm, of oil, of spice, of ambergris.
I sing of times trans-shifting; and I write
How roses first came red, and lilies white.
I write of groves, of twilights, and I sing
The court of Mab, and of the Fairy King;
I write of Hell; I sing, and ever shall
Of Heaven,--and hope to have it after all."
Go, lovely Rose,
Tell her that wastes her time and me,
That now she knows
When I resemble her to thee
How sweet and fair she seems to be.
Tell her that's young,
And shuns to have her graces spied,
That had'st thou sprung
In deserts where no men abide,
Thou must have uncommended died.
Small is the worth
Of beauty from the light retired;
Bid her come forth,
Suffer herself to be desired,
And not blush so to be admired.
Then die, that she
The common fate of all things rare
May read in thee,
How small a part of time they share
Who are so wondrous sweet and fair.
Poets may boast, as safely vain,
Their works shall with the world remain:
Both bound together, live or die,
The verses and the prophecy.
But who can hope his line should long
Last, in a daily-changing tongue?
While they are new, envy prevails;
And as that dies our language fails.
When architects have done their part,
The matter may betray their art:
Time, if we use ill-chosen stone,
Soon brings a well-built palace down.
Poets, that lasting marble seek,
Must carve in Latin or in Greek:
We write in sand, our language grows,
And, like the tide, our work o'erflows.
Chaucer his sense can only boast,
The glory of his numbers lost!
Years have defac't his matchless strain,
And yet he did not sing in vain.
The beauties which adorn'd that age,
The shining subjects of his rage,
Hoping they should immortal prove,
Rewarded with success his love.
This was the gen'rous poet's scope,
And all an English pen can hope;
To make the fair approve his flame,
That can so far extend their fame.
Verse thus design'd has no ill fate,
If it arrive but at the date
Of fading beauty, if it prove
But as long-liv'd as present love.
That which her slender waist confin'd
Shall now my joyful temples bind;
No monarch but would give his crown
His arms might do what this has done.
It was my heaven's extremest sphere,
The pale which held that lovely deer:
My joy, my grief, my hope, my love,
Did all within this circle move!
A narrow compass! and yet there
Dwelt all that's good and all that's fair:
Give me but what this riband bound,
Take all the rest the sun goes round.
Where dost Thou careless lie
Buried in ease and sloth?
Knowledge that sleeps, doth die;
And this security,
It is the common moth
That eats on wits and arts, and [so] destroys them both.
Are all the Aonian{1} springs
Dried up? lies Thespia waste?
Doth Clarius'{2} harp want strings,
That not a nymph now sings;
Or droop they as disgrac'd,
To see their seats and bowers by chattering pies{3} defac'd?
If hence{4} thy silence be,
As 'tis too just a cause,
Let this thought quicken thee:
Minds that are great and free
Should not on fortune pause;
'Tis crown enough to virtue{5} still, her own applause.
What though the greedy fry
Be taken with false baits
Of worded balladry,
And think it poesy?
They die with their conceits,
And only piteous scorn upon their folly waits.
Then take in hand thy lyre;
Strike in thy proper strain;
Sol's chariot for new fire,
To give the world again:
Who aided him, will thee, the issue of Jove's brain.{7}
And, since our dainty age
Cannot endure reproof,
Make not thyself a page
To that strumpet the stage;
But sing high and aloof,
Safe from the wolf's black jaw, and the dull ass's hoof.{8}
"Virtue is her own reward."--_Dryden_, _Tyrannic Love_.
"Virtue, a reward to itself."--_Walton_, _Compleat Angler_.
"Virtue is its own reward."--_Prior_, _Imitations of Horace_.
Queen and huntress, chaste and fair,
Now the sun is laid to sleep;
Seated in thy silver chair,
State in wonted manner keep;
Hesperus entreats thy light,
Goddess excellently bright.
Earth, let not thy envious shade
Dare itself to interpose;
Cynthia's shining orb was made
Heaven to clear, when day did close;
Bless us then with wished sight,
Goddess excellently bright.
Lay thy bow of pearl apart,
And thy crystal-shining quiver;
Give unto the flying heart
Space to breathe, how short soever;
Thou that mak'st a day of night,
Goddess excellently bright.
To draw no envy, Shakespeare, on thy name,
Am I thus ample to thy book and fame;{1}
While I confess thy writings to be such,
As neither Man nor Muse can praise too much.
'Tis true, and all men's suffrage. But these ways
Were not the paths I meant unto thy praise;
For seeliest{2} ignorance on these may light,
Which, when it sounds at best, but echoes right;
Or blind affection, which doth ne'er advance
The truth, but gropes, and urgeth all by chance;
Or crafty malice might pretend this praise,
And think to ruin where it seemed to praise.
But thou art proof against them and, indeed,
Above the ill fortune of them, or the need.
I therefore will begin: Soul of the age!
The applause, delight, the wonder of our stage!
My SHAKESPEARE rise! I will not lodge thee by
A little further, to make thee a room:{3}
Thou art a monument without a tomb,
And art alive still while thy book doth live,
And we have wits to read, and praise to give.
That I not mix thee so my brain excuses,--
I mean with great, but disproportioned Muses;
For if I thought my judgment were of years,
I should commit thee surely with thy peers,
And tell how far thou didst our Lyly{4} outshine,
Or sporting Kyd, or Marlowe's mighty line.
And though thou hadst small Latin and less Greek,
From thence to honor thee I would not seek
For names, but call forth thund'ring Æschylus,{5}
Pacuvius, Accius,{6} him of Cordova dead,
To life again, to hear thy buskin tread,
And shake a stage; or when thy socks{7} were on,
Leave thee alone for a comparison
Of all that insolent Greece or haughty Rome
Sent forth, or since did from their ashes come.
Triumph, my Britain, thou hast one to show,
To whom all scenes of Europe homage owe.
He was not of an age, but for all time!
And all the Muses still were in their prime,
When, like Apollo, he came forth to warm
Our ears, or like a Mercury to charm!
Nature herself was proud of his designs,
And joyed to wear the dressing of his lines,
Which were so richly spun, and woven so fit,
As, since, she will vouchsafe no other wit.
The merry Greek, tart Aristophanes,
Neat Terence, witty Plautus,{8} now not please;
But antiquated and deserted lie,
As they were not of Nature's family.
Yet must I not give Nature all; thy Art,
My gentle Shakespeare, must enjoy a part.
For though the poet's matter nature be,
His art doth give the fashion; and that he{9}
Who casts to write a living line, must sweat
(Such as thine are) and strike the second heat
Upon the Muses' anvil, turn the same,
And himself with it, that he thinks to frame;
Or for the laurel he may gain to scorn;
For a good poet's made, as well as born.
And such wert thou! Look, how the father's face
Lives in his issue, even so the race
Of Shakespeare's mind and manners brightly shines
In his well-turnèd and true filèd lines,
In each of which he seems to shake a lance,
As brandished at the eyes of ignorance.
Sweet Swan of Avon!{10} what a sight it were
To see thee in our waters yet appear,
And make those flights upon the banks of Thames,
That so did take Eliza and our James!
But stay, I see thee in the hemisphere{11}
Advanced, and made a constellation there!
Shine forth, thou Star of Poets, and with rage
Or influence chide or cheer the drooping stage,
Which, since thy flight from hence, hath mourned like night,
And despairs day but for thy volume's light.
"Renownèd Spenser, lie a thought more nigh
To learned Chaucer; and rare Beaumont, lie
A little nearer Spenser, to make room
For Shakespear in your threefold, fourfold tomb."
"Then to the well-trod stage anon,
If Jonson's learned sock be on,
Or sweetest Shakespeare, Fancy's child,
Warble his native wood-note wild."
Also, "Il Penseroso," 97. See note on _buskin_, page 139.
"He that hath feasted you these forty years,
And fitted fables for your finer ears,
Although at first he scarce could hit the bore;
Yet you, with patience, hearkening more and more,
At length have grown up to him, and made known
The working of his pen is now your own:
He prays you would vouchsafe, for your own sake,
To hear him this once more, but sit awake.
And though he now present you with such wool
As from mere English flocks his muse can pull,
He hopes when it is made up into cloth,
Not the most curious head here will be loth
To wear a hood of it, it being a fleece,
To match or those of Sicily or Greece.
His scene is Sherwood, and his play a tale
Of Robin Hood's inviting from the vale
Of Belvoir, all the shepherds to a feast;
Where, by the casual absence of one guest,
The mirth is troubled much, and in one man
As much of sadness shown as passion can."
Robert Herrick wrote of him thus:
Say how or when
Shall we, thy guests,
Meet at those lyric feasts,
Where we such clusters had,
As made us nobly wild, not mad?
And yet each verse of thine
Out-did the meat, out-did the frolic wine.
Or come again,
Or send to us
Thy wit's great overplus;
But teach us yet
Wisely to husband it,
Lest we that talent spend;
And having once brought to an end
That precious stock,--the store
Of such a wit the world should have no more."
"_In fifty-two years, without counting the drama, two hundred and
"Thou hadst been gone," quoth she, "sweet boy, ere this,
But that thou told'st me thou wouldst hunt the boar.
O, be advised! thou know'st not what it is
With javelin's point a churlish swine to gore,
Whose tushes never sheathed he whetteth still,
Like to a mortal butcher bent to kill.
"On his bow-back he hath a battle set
Of bristly pikes, that ever threat his foes;
His eyes, like glow-worms, shine when he doth fret;
His snout digs sepulchres where'er he goes;
Being moved, he strikes whate'er is in his way,
And when he strikes his crooked tushes slay.
"His brawny sides, with hairy bristles arm'd,
Are better proof than thy spear's point can enter;
His short thick neck cannot be easily harm'd;
Being ireful, on the lion he will venture:
The thorny brambles and embracing bushes,
As fearful of him, part, through whom he rushes.
"Alas, he nought esteems that face of thine,
To which Love's eyes pay tributary gazes;
Nor thy soft hands, sweet lips and crystal eyne,
Whose full perfection all the world amazes;
But having thee at vantage,--wondrous dread!
Would root these beauties as he roots the mead.
"O, let him keep his loathsome cabin still;
Beauty hath nought to do with such foul fiends:
Come not within his danger by thy will;
They that thrive well take counsel of their friends.
When thou didst name the boar, not to dissemble,
I fear'd thy fortune, and my joints did tremble.
"But if thou needs wilt hunt, be ruled by me;
Uncouple at the timorous flying hare,
Or at the fox which lives by subtlety,
Or at the roe which no encounter dare:
Pursue these fearful creatures o'er the downs,
And on thy well-breathed horse keep with thy hounds.
"And when thou hast on foot the purblind hare,
Mark the poor wretch, to overshoot his troubles
How he outruns the wind and with what care
He cranks and crosses with a thousand doubles:
The many musets through the which he goes
Are like a labyrinth to amaze his foes.
"Sometime he runs among a flock of sheep,
To make the cunning hounds mistake their smell,
And sometime where earth-delving conies keep,
To stop the loud pursuers in their yell,
And sometime sorteth with a herd of deer:
Danger deviseth shifts; wit waits on fear:
"For there his smell with others being mingled,
The hot scent-snuffing hounds are driven to doubt,
Ceasing their clamorous cry till they have singled
With much ado the cold fault cleanly out;
Then do they spend their mouths: Echo replies,
As if another chase were in the skies.
"By this, poor Wat, far off upon a hill,
Stands on his hinder legs with listening ear,
To hearken if his foes pursue him still:
Anon their loud alarums he doth hear;
And now his grief may be compared well
To one sore sick that hears the passing-bell.
"Then shalt thou see the dew-bedabbled wretch
Turn, and return, indenting with the way;
Each envious brier his weary legs doth scratch,
Each shadow makes him stop, each murmur stay:
For misery is trodden on by many,
And being low never relieved by any."
Hark, hark! the lark at heaven's gate sings,
And Phoebus 'gins arise,
His steeds to water at those springs
On chaliced flowers that lies;
And winking Mary-buds begin
To ope their golden eyes:
With everything that pretty is,
My lady sweet, arise:
Arise, arise.
Sigh no more, ladies, sigh no more,
Men were deceivers ever,
One foot in sea and one on shore,
To one thing constant never:
Then sigh not so, but let them go,
And be you blithe and bonny,
Converting all your sounds of woe
Into Hey nonny, nonny.
Sing no more ditties, sing no moe,
Of dumps so dull and heavy;
The fraud of men was ever so,
Since summer first was leafy:
Then sigh not so, but let them go,
And be you blithe and bonny,
Converting all your sounds of woe
Into Hey nonny, nonny.
Full many a glorious morning have I seen
Flatter the mountain-tops with sovereign eye,
Kissing with golden face the meadows green,
Gilding pale streams with heavenly alchemy;
Anon permit the basest clouds to ride
With ugly rack on his celestial face,
And from the forlorn world his visage hide,
Stealing unseen to west with this disgrace:
Even so my sun one early morn did shine
With all-triumphant splendor on my brow;
But out, alack! he was but one hour mine;
The region cloud hath mask'd him from me now.
Yet him for this my love no whit disdaineth;
Suns of the world may stain, when heaven's sun staineth.
Tired with all these, for restful death I cry,--
As, to behold desert a beggar born,
And needy nothing trimm'd in jollity,
And purest faith unhappily forsworn,
And gilded honor shamefully misplaced,
And maiden virtue rudely strumpeted,
And right perfection wrongfully disgraced,
And strength by limping sway disabled,
And art made tongue-tied by authority,
And folly, doctor-like, controlling skill,
And simple truth miscall'd simplicity,
And captive Good attending captain Ill:
Tired with all these, from these would I be gone,--
Save that, to die, I leave my Love alone.
Guyon findes Mammon in a delve{1}
Sunning his threasure hore{2};
Is by him tempted, and led downe
To see his secrete store.
As Pilot well expert in perilous wave,
That to a stedfast starre{3} his course hath bent,
When foggy mistes or cloudy tempests have
The faithfull light of that faire lampe yblent,{4}
And cover'd heaven with hideous dreriment,{5}
Upon his card and compas firmes{6} his eye,
The maysters of his long experiment,
And to them does the steddy helme apply,
Bidding his winged vessell fairely forward fly:
So Guyon having lost his trustie guyde,
Late left beyond that Ydle lake, proceedes
Yet on his way, of none accompanyde;
And evermore himselfe with comfort feedes
Of his own vertues and praise-worthie deedes.
So, long he yode,{7} yet no adventure found,
Which fame of her shrill trumpet worthy reedes{8};
For still he traveild through wide wastfull ground,
That nought but desert wildernesse shewed all around.
At last he came unto a gloomy glade,
Cover'd with boughes and shrubs from heavens light,
Whereas he sitting found in secret shade
An uncouth, salvage,{9} and uncivile wight,
Of griesly hew and fowle ill-favour'd sight;
His face with smoke was tand, and eies were bleard,
His head and beard with sout were ill bedight,{10}
His cole-blacke hands did seeme to have been seard
His yron cote, all overgrowne with rust,
Was underneath enveloped with gold;
Whose glistring glosse, darkned with filthy dust,
Well yet appeared to have beene of old
A worke of rich entayle{12} and curious mould,
Woven with antickes{13} and wyld ymagery;
And in his lap a masse of coyne he told,
And turned upside downe, to feede his eye
And covetous desire with his huge threasury.
And round about him lay on every side
Great heapes of gold that never could be spent;
Of which some were rude owre, not purifide
Of Mulcibers{14} devouring element;
Some others were new driven, and distent
Into great Ingowes and to wedges square;
Some in round plates withouten moniment{15};
But most were stampt, and in their metal bare
The antique shapes of kings and kesars straunge and rare.
Soone as he Guyon saw, in great affright
And haste he rose for to remove aside
Those pretious hils from straungers envious sight,
And downe them poured through an hole full wide
Into the hollow earth, them there to hide.
But Guyon, lightly to him leaping, stayd
His hand that trembled as one terrifyde;
And though himselfe were at the sight dismayd,
Yet him perforce restraynd, and to him doubtfull sayd:
"What art thou, man, (if man at all thou art)
That here in desert hast thine habitaunce,
And these rich hils of welth doest hide apart
From the worldes eye, and from her right usaunce?"
Thereat, with staring eyes fixed askaunce,
In great disdaine he answerd: "Hardy Elfe,
That darest view my direfull countenaunce,
I read thee rash and heedlesse of thy selfe,
To trouble my still seate, and heapes of pretious pelfe.
"God of the world and worldlings I me call,
Great Mammon, greatest god below the skye,
That of my plenty poure out unto all,
And unto none my graces do envye:
Riches, renowme, and principality,
Honour, estate, and all this worldes good,
For which men swinck{16} and sweat incessantly,
Fro me do flow into an ample flood,
And in the hollow earth have their eternall brood.
"Wherefore, if me thou deigne to serve and sew,{17}
At thy commaund lo! all these mountaines bee:
Or if to thy great mind, or greedy vew,
All these may not suffise, there shall to thee
Ten times so much be nombred francke and free."
"Mammon," (said he) "thy godheads vaunt is vaine,
And idle offers of thy golden fee;
To them that covet such eye-glutting gaine
Proffer thy giftes, and fitter servaunts entertaine.
"Me ill besits,{18} that in derdoing, armes
And honours suit my vowd daies do spend,
Unto thy bounteous baytes and pleasing charmes,
With which weake men thou witchest, to attend;
Regard of worldly mucke{19} doth fowly blend,
And low abase the high heroicke spright,{20}
That joyes for crownes and kingdomes to contend:
Faire shields, gay steedes, bright armes be my delight;
Those be the riches fit for an advent'rous knight."
"Vaine glorious Elfe," (saide he) "doest not thou weet,{21}
That money can thy wantes at will supply?
Sheilds, steeds, and armes, and all things for thee meet,
It can purvay in twinckling of an eye;
And crownes and kingdomes to thee multiply.
Do not I kings create, and throw the crowne
Sometimes to him that low in dust doth ly,
And him that raignd into his rowme thrust downe,
And whom I lust do heape with glory and renowne?"
"All otherwise" (saide he) "I riches read,
And deeme them roote of all disquietnesse;
First got with guile, and then preserv'd with dread,
And after spent with pride and lavishnesse,
Leaving behind them griefe and heavinesse:
Infinite mischiefes of them doe arize,
Strife and debate, bloodshed and bitternesse,
Outrageous wrong, and hellish covetize,
That noble heart as great dishonour doth despize.
"Ne thine be kingdomes, ne the scepters thine;
But realmes and rulers thou doest both confound,
And loyall truth to treason doest incline:
Witnesse the guiltlesse blood pourd oft on ground,
The crowned often slaine, the slayer cround;
The sacred Diademe in peeces rent,
And purple robe gored with many a wound,
Castles surprizd, great cities sackt and brent;
So mak'st thou kings, and gaynest wrongfull government.
"Long were to tell the troublous stormes that tosse
The private state, and make the life unsweet:
Who swelling sayles in Caspian sea doth crosse,
And in frayle wood on Adrian gulf doth fleet,
Doth not, I weene, so many evils meet."
Then Mammon wexing wroth: "And why then," sayd,
"Are mortall men so fond{22} and undiscreet
So evill thing to seeke unto their ayd,
And having not complaine, and having it upbrayd?"
"Indeede," (quoth he) "through fowle intemperaunce
Frayle men are oft captiv'd to covetise;
But would they thinke with how small allowaunce
Untroubled Nature doth herselfe suffise,
Such superfluities they would despise,
Which with sad cares empeach{23} our native joyes.
At the well-head the purest streames arise;
But mucky filth his braunching armes annoyes,
And with uncomely weedes the gentle wave accloyes.{24}
"The antique world, in his first flowring youth,
Fownd no defect in his Creators grace;
But with glad thankes, and unreproved truth,{25}
The gifts of soveraine bounty did embrace:
Like Angels life was then mens happy cace;
But later ages pride, like corn-fed steed,
Abusd her plenty and fat swolne encreace
To all licentious lust, and gan exceed
The measure of her meane and naturall first need.
"Then gan a cursed hand the quiet wombe
Of his great Grandmother{26} with steele to wound,
And the hid treasures in her sacred tombe
With Sacriledge to dig. Therein he fownd
Fountaines of gold and silver to abownd,
Of which the matter of his huge desire
And pompous pride eftsoones he did compownd;
Then avarice gan through his veines inspire
His greedy flames, and kindled life-devouring fire."
"Sonne," (said he then) "lett be{27} thy bitter scorne,
And leave the rudenesse of that antique age
To them that liv'd therein, in state forlorne:
Thou, that doest live in later times, must wage{28}
Thy workes for wealth, and life for gold engage.
If then thee list my offred grace to use,
Take what thou please of all this surplusage;
If thee list not, leave have thou to refuse:
But refused doe not afterward accuse."
"Me list{29} not" (said the Elfin knight) "receave
Thing offred, till I know it well be gott;
Ne wote but thou didst these goods bereave
From rightfull owner by unrighteous lott,
Or that bloodguiltinesse or guile them blott."
"Perdy,"{30} (quoth he) "yet never eie did vew,
Ne tong did tell, ne hand these handled not;
But safe I have them kept in secret mew
From hevens sight, and powre of al which them poursew.
"What secret place" (quoth he) "can safely hold
So huge a masse, and hide from heaven's eie?
Or where hast thou thy wonne,{31} that so much gold
Thou canst preserve from wrong and robbery?"
"Come thou," (quoth he) "and see." So by and by
Through that thick covert he him led, and fownd
A darkesome way, which no man could descry,
That deep descended through the hollow grownd,
And was with dread and horror compassed arownd.
At length they came into a larger space,
That stretcht itselfe into an ample playne;
Through which a beaten broad high way did trace,
That streight did lead to Plutoes griesly rayne.{32}
By that wayes side there sate internall Payne,
And fast beside him sat tumultuous Strife:
The one in hand an yron whip did strayne,
The other brandished a bloody knife;
And both did gnash their teeth, and both did threten life.
On thother side in one consort there sate
Cruell Revenge, and rancorous Despight,
Disloyall Treason, and hart-burning Hate;
But gnawing Gealousy, out of their sight
Sitting alone, his bitter lips did bight;
And trembling Feare still to and fro did fly,
And found no place wher safe he shroud him might:
Lamenting Sorrow did in darknes lye,
And Shame his ugly face did hide from living eye.
And over them sad Horror with grim hew
Did alwaies sore, beating his yron wings;
And after him Owles and Night-ravens flew,
The hatefull messengers of heavy things,
Of death and dolor telling sad tidings,
Whiles sad Celeno, sitting on a clifte,
A song of bale and bitter sorrow sings,
That hart of flint asonder could have rifte;
Which having ended after him she flyeth swifte.
All these before the gates of Pluto lay,
By whom they passing spake unto them nought;
But th' Elfin knight with wonder all the way
Did feed his eyes, and fild his inner thought.
At last him to a little dore he brought,
That to the gate of Hell, which gaped wide,
Was next adjoyning, ne them parted ought:
Betwixt them both was but a little stride,
That did the house of Richesse from hell-mouth divide.
Before the dore sat selfe-consuming Care,
Day and night keeping wary watch and ward,
For feare least Force or Fraud should unaware
Breake in, and spoile the treasure there in gard:
Ne would he suffer Sleepe once thither-ward
Approch, albe his drowsy den were next;
For next to Death is Sleepe to be compard;{33}
Therefore his house is unto his annext:
Here Sleep, ther Richesse, and Hel-gate them both betwext.
So soon as Mammon there arrivd, the dore
To him did open and affoorded way:
Him followed eke Sir Guyon evermore,
Ne darknesse him, ne daunger might dismay.
Soone as he entred was, the dore streight way
Did shutt, and from behind it forth there lept
An ugly feend, more fowle then dismall day,
The which with monstrous stalke behind him stept,
And ever as he went dew watch upon him kept.
Well hoped hee, ere long that hardy guest,
If ever covetous hand, or lustfull eye,
Or lips he layd on thing that likte him best,
Or ever sleepe his eie-strings did untye,
Should be his pray. And therefore still on hye
He over him did hold his cruell clawes,
Threatning with greedy gripe to doe him dye,
And rend in peeces with his ravenous pawes,
If ever he transgrest the fatal Stygian lawes.
That houses forme within was rude and strong,
Lyke an huge cave hewne out of rocky clifte,
From whose rough vaut the ragged breaches hong
Embossed with massy gold of glorious guifte,
And with rich metall loaded every rifte,
That heavy ruine they did seeme to threatt;
And over them Arachne high did lifte
Her cunning web, and spred her subtile nett,
Enwrapped in fowle smoke and clouds more black than Jett.
Both roofe, and floore, and walls, were all of gold,
But overgrowne with dust and old decay,
And hid in darkenes, that none could behold
The hew thereof; for vew of cherefull day
Did never in that house it selfe display,
But a faint shadow of uncertain light:
Such as a lamp, whose life does fade away,
Or as the Moone, cloathed with clowdy night,
Does show to him that walkes in feare and sad affright.
In all that rowme was nothing to be seene
But huge great yron chests, and coffers strong,
All bard with double bends, that none could weene
Them to efforce by violence or wrong:
On every side they placed were along;
But all the grownd with sculs was scattered,
And dead mens bones, which round about were flong;
Whose lives, it seemed, whilome{34} there were shed,
And their vile carcases now left unburied.
containing the argument, or a brief summary of the narrative,--in
"By this the northerne wagoner had set
His sevenfold teme behind the stedfast starre
That was in ocean waves yet never wet,
But firme is fixt, and sendeth light from farre
To all that in the wide deepe wandring arre."
"For all his armour was like salvage weed
With woody mosse bedight, and all his steed
With oaken leaves attrapt, that seemed fit
For salvage wight, and thereto well agreed
His word, which on his ragged shield was writ,
_Salvagesse sans finesse_,[233:1] shewing secret wit."
"For every wight that loved chevalrie."
=derdoing.= Dare-doing; doing daring deeds.
"The wind bloweth where it listeth."--_John_ iii. 8.
=wote.= Understood. See note 21 above.
"How wonderful is Death!
Death and his brother Sleep!"
Calme was the day, and through the trembling ayre
Sweete-breathing Zephyrus did softly play
A gentle spirit, that lightly did delay
Hot Titans{1} beames, which then did glyster fayre;
When I, (whom sullein care,
Through discontent of my long fruitlesse stay
In princes court,{2} and expectation vayne
Of idle hopes, which still doe fly away
Like empty shadows, did afflict my brayne,)
Walkt forth to ease my payne
Along the shoare of silver streaming Themmes{3};
Whose rutty{4} bank, the which his river hemmes,
Was paynted all with variable flowers,
And all the meades adorned with dainty gemmes
Fit to decke maydens bowres,
And crown their paramours
Against{5} the brydale-day, which is not long;
Sweet Themmes! runne softly, till I end my song.
There, in a meadow, by the rivers side,
A flocke of Nymphes I chaunced to espy,
All lovely daughters of the Flood{6} thereby,
With goodly greenish locks, all loose untyde,{7}
As each had been a bryde;
And each one had a little wicker basket,
Made of fine twigs, entrayled{8} curiously,
In which they gathered flowers to fill their flasket,{9}
And with fine fingers cropt{10} full feateously
The tender stalkes on hye.{11}
Of every sort which in that meadow grew,
They gathered some; the violet, pallid{12} blew,
The little dazie that at evening closes,
The virgin lillie, and the primrose trew,{13}
With store{14} of vermeil roses,
To deck their bridegroomes posies{15}
Against the brydale-day, which was not long:
Sweet Themmes! runne softly till I end my song.
With that{16} I saw two Swannes of goodly hewe
Come softly swimming downe along the lee{17};
Two fairer birds I yet did never see;
The snow which doth the top of Pindus strew,
Did never whiter shew,
Nor Jove himselfe, when he a swan would be
For love of Leda, whiter did appeare.
Yet Leda was (they say) as white as he,
Yet not so white as these, nor nothing near{18}:
So purely white they were,
That even the gentle stream, the which them bare,
Seem'd foule to them, and bad his billowes spare
To wet their silken feathers, least they might
Soyle their fayre plumes with water not so fayre,
And marre their beauties bright,
That shone as heavens light,
Against their brydale day which was not long:
Sweet Themmes! runne softly, till I end my song.
Eftsoones{19} the Nymphes, which now had flowers their fill,
Ran all in haste to see that silver brood,
As they came floating on the cristal flood;
Whom when they sawe, they stood amazed, still,
Their wondring eyes to fill;
Them seem'd they never saw a sight so fayre,
Of fowles, so lovely, that they sure did deeme
Them heavenly borne, or to be that same payre
Which through the skie draw Venus silver teeme;
For sure they did not seeme
To be begot of any earthly seede,
But rather angels, or of angels breede;
Yet were they bred of Somers-heat,{20} they say,
In sweetest season, when each flower and weede
The earth did fresh array;
So fresh they seem'd as day,
Even as their brydale day, which was not long:
Sweet Themmes! runne softly till I end my song.
Then forth they all out of their baskets drew
Great store of flowers, the honour of the field,
That to the sense did fragrant odours yeild,
All which upon those goodly birds they threw,
And all the waves did strew,
That like old Peneus{21} waters they did seeme,
When downe along by pleasant Tempes shore,
Scattred with flowres, through Thessaly they streeme,
That they appeare, through lillies plenteous store,
Like a brydes chambre flore.
Two of those Nymphes, meane while, two garlands bound
Of freshest flowres which in that mead they found,
The which presenting all in trim array,
Their snowie foreheads therewithall they crownd
Whilst one did sing this lay,
Prepar'd against that day,
Against their brydale day, which was not long:
Sweet Themmes! runne softly, till I end my song.
"Ye gentle Birdes! the worlds faire ornament
"And heavens glorie, whom this happie hower
"Doth leade unto your lovers blissfull bower,
"Ioy may you have, and gentle hearts content
"Of your loves couplement;{22}
"And let faire Venus, that is Queene of Love,
"With her heart-quelling Sonne{23} upon you smile,
"Whose smile, they say, hath vertue to remove
"All loves dislike, and friendships faultie guile
"Let endlesse peace your steadfast hearts accord,
"And blessed plentie wait upon your bord{25};
"And let your bed with pleasures chast abound,
"That fruitfull issue may to you afford,
"Which may your foes confound
"And make your ioyes redound
"Upon your brydale day, which is not long."
Sweet Themmes! runne softly, till I end my song.
So ended she; and all the rest around
To her redoubled{26} that her undersong,
Which said, their brydale day should not be long:
And gentle Eccho from the neighbour{27} ground
Their accents did resound.
So forth those joyous Birdes did passe along
Adowne the lee, that to them murmurde low,
As he would speake, but that he lackt a tong,
Yet did by signes his glad affection show,
Making his streame run slow.
And all the foule which in his flood did dwell
Gan flock about these twaine, that did excell
The rest, so far as Cynthia doth shend{28}
The lesser stars. So they, enranged well,
Did on those two attend,
And their best service lend
Against their wedding day, which was not long:
Sweet Themmes! runne softly, till I end my song.
At length they all to mery London came,
To mery London, my most kyndly nurse,{29}
That to me gave this lifes first native sourse,
Though from another place I take my name,
An house of auncient fame;
There when they came, whereas those bricky towres
The which on Themmes brode aged backe doe ryde,
Where now the studious lawyers have their bowers,{30}
There whylome wont the Templer Knights to byde,
Till they decayd through pride;
Next whereunto there standes a stately place,{31}
Where oft I gayned giftes and goodly grace
Of that great lord, which therein wont to dwell,
Whose want too well now feels my freendles case;{32}
But ah! here fits not well{33}
Old woes, but ioyes, to tell
Against the brydale daye, which is not long:
Sweet Themmes! runne softly, till I end my song.
Yet therein now doth lodge a nobler peer,{34}
Great Englands glory, and the worlds wide wonder,
Whose dreadfull name late through all Spaine{35} did thunder,
And Hercules two Pillors{36} standing neere
Did make to quake and feare:
Faire branch of honor, flower of chevalrie!
That fillest England with thy triumphs fame,
Ioy have thou of thy noble victorie,
And endlesse happinesse of thine owne name
That promiseth the same;
That through thy prowesse, and victorious armes,
Thy country may be freed from forraine harmes,
And great Elisaes glorious name may ring
Through all the world, fill'd with thy wide alarmes,
Which some brave muse may sing
To ages following,
Upon the brydale day which is not long:
Sweet Themmes! runne softly, till I end my song.
From those high towers this noble lord issuing,
Like radiant Hesper,{37} when his golden hare
In th' ocean billows he hath bathed fayre,
Descended to the rivers open vewing,
With a great train ensuing.
Above the rest were goodly to bee seene
Two gentle Knights of lovely face and feature,
Beseeming well the bower of any queene,
With gifts of wit and ornaments of nature,
Fit for so goodly stature,
That like the Twins of Iove{38} they seem'd in sight,
Which decke the bauldricke{39} of the heavens bright;
They two forth pacing to the rivers side,
Receiv'd those two faire Brides, their loves delight;
Which,{40} at th' appointed tyde,
Each one did make his Bryde
Against their brydale day, which is not long:
Sweet Themmes! runne softly, till I end my song.
"And two fair populous towns were sculptur'd there;
In one were marriage pomp and revelry,
And brides, in gay procession, through the streets
With blazing torches from their chambers borne,
While frequent rose the hymeneal song."
See, also, Spenser's "Faerie Queene," I, xii, 38.
"All that glisters is not gold."
--_Shakespeare_, _Merchant of Venice_, Act ii, sc. vii.
"Know one false step is ne'er retrieved . . .
Nor all that glisters gold."
"Full little knowest thou that hast not tride,
What hell it is in suing long to bide:
To lose good dayes that might be better spent;
To wast long nights in pensive discontent;
To speed today, to be put back tomorrow;
To feed on hope, to pine with feare and sorrow;
To have thy Princes grace, yet want her Peeres;
To have thy asking, yet waite manie yeeres;
To fret thy soule with crosses and with cares;
To eate thy heart through comfortlesse dispaires;
To fawne, to crowche, to waite, to ride, to ronne;
To spend, to give, to want, to be undonne."
"Oh, could I flow like thee, and make thy stream
My great example, as it is my theme!
Though deep, yet clear; though gentle, yet not dull;
Strong without rage; without overflowing full."
And Pope praises the stream in still more extravagant terms:
"No seas so rich, so gay no banks appear,
No lake so gentle, and no spring so clear."
See, also, Spenser's "Faerie Queene," IV, xi.
"I'll charm his eyes against she do appear."
"Thou, too, great father of the British floods!"
=feateously.= Neatly, skilfully. Compare Chaucer:
"And French she spake ful fayre and fetisly."
"A chambre had he in that hostelrie
Ful fetisly ydight with herbes sote."
"The rathe primrose that forsaken dies."
And Shakespeare's "The Winter's Tale," Act iv, sc. iii;
"Pale primroses that die unmarried."
=vermeil.= Vermilion. Commonly used as a noun.
"His corps was carried downe along the lee,
Whose waters with his filthy bloud it stayned."
"As when two warlike brigandines at sea,
With murdrous weapons arm'd to cruell fight,
Do meete together on the watry lea."
"Through long watch, and late daies weary toile,
She soundly slept, and carefull thoughts did quite assoile."
"In bed he slept not for my urging it,
At board he fed not for my urging it."
"Wedding is great Juno's crown--
O blessed bond of board and bed!"
=undersong.= Refrain, burden.
condition."
My lute, awake! perform the last
Labor that thou and I shall waste;
And end that I have now begun:
And when this song is sung and past,
My lute! be still, for I have done.
As to be heard where ear is none;
As lead to grave in marble stone,
My song may pierce her heart as soon;
Should we then sing, or sigh, or moan?
No, no, my lute! for I have done.
The rock doth not so cruelly,
Repulse the waves continually,
As she my suit and affection:
So that I am past remedy;
Whereby my lute and I have done.
Proud of the spoil that thou hast got
Of simple hearts thorough Love's shot,
By whom, unkind, thou hast them won;
Think not he hath his bow forgot,
Although my lute and I have done.
Vengeance shall fall on thy disdain,
That makest but game of earnest pain;
Trow not alone under the sun
Unquit to cause thy lovers plain,
Although my lute and I have done.
May chance thee lie withered and old
In winter nights, that are so cold,
Plaining in vain unto the moon;
Thy wishes then dare not be told:
Care then who list, for I have done.
And then may chance thee to repent
The time that thou hast lost and spent,
To cause thy lovers sigh and swoon:
Then shalt thou know beauty but lent,
And wish and want, as I have done.
Now cease, my lute! This is the last
Labor that thou and I shall waste;
And ended is that we begun:
Now is thy song both sung and past;
My lute, be still, for I have done.
In court to serve, decked with fresh array,
Of sugared meats feeling the sweet repast;
The life in banquets and sundry kinds of play,
Amid the press of worldly looks to waste:
Hath with it joined oft times such bitter taste,
That whoso joyes such kind of life to hold,
In prison joyes, fettered with chains of gold.
--At the threshold of her chamber door
The Carthage lords did on the Queen attend:
The trampling steed, with gold and purple trapped,
Chewing the foaming bit there fiercely stood.
Then issued she, awaited with great train,
Clad in a cloak of Tyre embroidered rich.
Her quiver hung behind her back, her tress
Knotted in gold, her purple vesture eke
Buttoned with gold. The Trojans of her train
Before her go, with gladsome Iulus.
Æneas eke, the goodliest of the rout,
Makes one of them, and joineth close the throng.
Like when Apollo leaveth Lycia,
His wint'ring place, and Xanthus, stood likewise,
To visit Delos his mother's mansion,
Repairing eft and furnishing her quire.
The Candians and the folk of Driopes,
With painted Agathyrsi shout and cry,
Environing the altars round about,
When that he walks upon Mount Cynthus' top,
His sparkled tress repressed with garlands soft
Of tender leaves, and trussed up in gold,
His quiver and darts clattering behind his back--
So fresh and lusty did Æneas seem.
But to the hills and wild holts when they came
From the rock's top the driven savage rose.
So, from the hills above on the other side,
Through the wide lawns they gan to take their course.
The harts likewise, in troops taking their flight,
Raising the dust, the mountain-fast forsake.
The child Iulus, blithe of his swift steed
Amids the plain, now pricks by them, by these;
And to the encounter wisheth oft, in mind,
The foaming boar instead of fearful beasts,
Or lion brown, might from the hill descend.
From Tuscan' came my lady's worthy race;
Fair Florence was some time their ancient seat;
The western isle, whose pleasant shore doth face
Wild Camber's cliffs, did give her lively heat:
Fostered she was with milk of Irish breast;
Her sire an earl; her dame of princes' blood:
From tender years, in Britain she doth rest
With king's child, where she tasteth costly food.
Hunsdon did first present her to my een:
Bright is her hue, and Geraldine she hight:
Hampton me taught to wish her first for mine:
And Windsor, alas, doth chase me from her sight.
Her beauty of kind, her virtues from above;
Happy is he that can obtain her love.
Wyatt resteth here that quick could never rest:
Whose heavenly gifts increased by disdain,
And virtue sank the deeper in his breast;
Such profit he by envy could obtain.
A head where wisdom mysteries did frame,
Whose hammers beat still in that lively brain,
As on a stithe where that some work of fame
Was daily wrought, to turn to Britain's gain.
A hand that taught what might be said in rhyme;
That reft Chaucer the glory of his wit;
A mark, the which (unperfected for time)
Some may approach, but never none shall hit.
An eye whose judgment none effect could blind,
Friends to allure and foes to reconcile,
Whose piercing look did represent a mind
With virtue fraught reposed void of guile.
A heart where dread was never so imprest
To hide the thought that might the truth advance;
In neither fortune lost, nor yet represt,
To swell in wealth, or yield unto mischance.
A valiant corpse, where force and beauty met,
Happy alas, too happy but for foes,
Lived, and ran the race that nature set
Of manhood's shape, when she the mould did lose.
The earth his bones, the heavens possess his ghost.
O waly,{1} waly, up the bank,
O waly, waly, doun the brae,{2}
And waly, waly, yon burn-side,{3}
Where I and my love were wont to gae!
I lean'd my back unto an aik,
I thocht it was a trustie tree,
But first it bow'd and syne{4} it brak',--
Sae my true love did lichtlie{5} me.
O waly, waly, but love be bonnie
A little time while it is new!
But when it's auld it waxeth cauld,
And fadeth awa' like the morning dew.
O wherefore should I busk{6} my heid,
Or wherefore should I kame my hair?
For my true love has me forsook,
And says he'll never lo'e me mair.
Noo Arthur's Seat{7} sall be my bed,
The sheets sall ne'er be press'd by me;
Saint Anton's well sall be my drink;
Since my true love's forsaken me.
Martinmas wind, when wilt thou blaw,
And shake the green leaves off the tree?
O gentle death, when wilt thou come?
For of my life I am wearie.
'Tis not the frost that freezes fell,
Nor blawing snaw's inclemencie,
'Tis not sic cauld that makes me cry;
But my love's heart grown cauld to me.
When we cam' in by Glasgow toun,
We were a comely sicht to see;
My love was clad in the black velvet,
And I mysel' in cramasie.
But had I wist before I kiss'd
That love had been so ill to win,
I'd lock'd my heart in a case o' goud,
And pinn'd it wi' a siller pin.
Oh, oh! if my young babe were born,
And set upon the nurse's knee;
An' I mysel' were dead and gane,
And the green grass growing over me!
The king sits in Dunfermline town,
Drinking the blude-red wine;
"O whare will I get a skeely skipper,
To sail this new ship of mine!"
O up and spake an eldern knight,
Sat at the king's right knee,--
"Sir Patrick Spens is the best sailor,
That ever sail'd the sea."
Our king has written a braid letter,
And seal'd it with his hand,
And sent it to Sir Patrick Spens,
Was walking on the strand.
To Noroway o'er the faem;
The king's daughter of Noroway,
'Tis thou maun bring her hame."
The first word that Sir Patrick read,
Sae loud, loud laughed he;
The neist word that Sir Patrick read,
The tear blinded his e'e.
"O wha is this has done this deed,
And tauld the king o' me,
To send us out, at this time of the year,
To sail upon the sea?
"Be it wind, be it weet, be it hail, be it sleet,
Our ship must sail the faem;
The king's daughter of Noroway,
'Tis we must fetch her hame."
They hoysed their sails on Monenday morn,
Wi' a' the speed they may;
They hae landed in Noroway,
They hadna been a week, a week,
In Noroway, but twae,
When that the lords o' Noroway
Began aloud to say,--
"Ye Scottishmen spend a' our king's goud,
And a' our queenis fee."
"Ye lie, ye lie, ye liars loud!
Fu' loud I hear ye lie.
"For I brought as much white monie,
As gane my men and me,
And I brought a half-fou o' gude red goud,
Out o'er the sea wi' me.
"Make ready, make ready, my merrymen a'!
Our gude ship sails the morn."
"Now, ever alake, my master dear,
I fear a deadly storm!
"I saw the new moon, late yestreen,
Wi' the auld moon in her arm;
And, if we gang to sea, master,
I fear we'll come to harm."
They had not sailed a league, a league,
A league but barely three,
When the lift grew dark, and the wind blew loud,
And gurly grew the sea.
The ankers brak, and the topmasts lap,
It was sic a deadly storm;
And the waves cam o'er the broken ship,
Till a' her sides were torn.
"O where will I get a gude sailor,
To take my helm in hand,
Till I get up to the tall top-mast,
To see if I can spy land?"
"O here am I, a sailor gude,
To take the helm in hand,
Till you go up to the tall top-mast;
But I fear you'll ne'er spy land."
He hadna gane a step, a step,
A step but barely ane,
When a bout flew out of our goodly ship,
And the salt sea it came in.
"Gae, fetch a web o' the silken claith,
Another o' the twine,
And wap them into our ship's side,
And let na the sea come in."
They fetched a web o' the silken claith,
Another of the twine,
And wapped them round that gude ship's side,
But still the sea came in.
O laith, laith, were our gude Scots lords
To weet their cork-heel'd shoon!
But lang or a' the play was play'd,
They wat their hats aboon.
And mony was the feather-bed,
That flattered on the faem;
And mony was the gude lord's son,
That never mair cam hame.
The ladyes wrang their fingers white,
The maidens tore their hair,
A' for the sake of their true loves;
For them they'll see na mair.
O lang, lang, may the ladyes sit,
Wi' their fans into their hand,
Before they see Sir Patrick Spens
Come sailing to the strand!
And lang, lang, may the maidens sit,
Wi' their goud kaims in their hair,
A' waiting for their ain dear loves!
For them they'll see na mair.
O forty miles off Aberdeen,
'Tis fifty fathoms deep,
And there lies gude Sir Patrick Spens,
Wi' the Scots lords at his feet.
=skeely=, skilful.
=skipper=, captain.
=braid=, open, not private.
=half-fou=, a quart, dry measure.
=lift=, sky. (Still used in Scotland.)
There was a youthe, and a well-beloved youthe,
And he was a squires son;
He loved the bayliffes daughter deare,
That lived in Islington.
Yet she was coye, and would not believe
That he did love her soe,
Noe nor at any time would she
Any countenance to him showe.
But when his friendes did understand
His fond and foolish minde,
They sent him up to faire London,
An apprentice for to binde.
And when he had been seven long yeares,
And never his love could see,--
"Many a teare have I shed for her sake,
When she little thought of mee."
Then all the maids of Islington
Went forth to sport and playe,
All but the bayliffes daughter deare;
She secretly stole awaye.
She pulled off her gowne of greene,
And put on ragged attire,
And to faire London she would go
Her true love to enquire.
And as she went along the high road,
The weather being hot and drye,
She sat her downe upon a green bank,
And her true love came riding bye.
She started up, with a colour soe redd,
Catching hold of his bridle-reine;
"One penny, one penny, kind sir," she sayd,
"Will ease me of much paine."
"Before I give you one penny, sweet-heart,
Praye tell me where you were borne."
"At Islington, kind sir," sayd shee,
"Where I have had many a scorne."
"I prythee, sweet-heart, then tell to mee,
O tell me, whether you knowe
The bayliffes daughter of Islington."
"She is dead, sir, long agoe."
"If she be dead, then take my horse,
My saddle and bridle also;
For I will into some farr countrye,
Where noe man shall me knowe."
"O staye, O staye, thou goodlye youthe,
She standeth by thy side;
She is here alive, she is not dead,
And readye to be thy bride."
"O farewell griefe, and welcome joye,
Ten thousand times therefore;
For nowe I have founde mine owne true love,
Whom I thought I should never see more."
There are twelve months in all the year,
As I hear many say,
But the merriest month in all the year
Is the merry month of May.
Now Robin Hood is to Nottingham gone,
_With a link a down, and a day_,
And there he met a silly old woman,
Was weeping on the way.
"What news? what news? thou silly old woman,
What news hast thou for me?"
Said she, "There's my three sons in Nottingham town
To-day condemned to die."
"O, have they parishes burnt?" he said,
"Or have they ministers slain?
Or have they robbed any virgin?
Or other men's wives have ta'en?"
"They have no parishes burnt, good sir,
Nor yet have ministers slain,
Nor have they robbed any virgin,
Nor other men's wives have ta'en."
"O, what have they done?" said Robin Hood,
"I pray thee tell to me."
"It's for slaying of the king's fallow deer,
Bearing their long bows with thee."
"Dost thou not mind, old woman," he said,
"How thou madest me sup and dine?
By the truth of my body," quoth bold Robin Hood,
"You could not tell it in better time."
Now Robin Hood is to Nottingham gone,
_With a link a down, and a day_,
And there he met with a silly old palmer,
Was walking along the highway.
"What news? what news? thou silly old man,
What news, I do thee pray?"
Said he, "Three squires in Nottingham town
Are condemn'd to die this day."
"Come change thy apparel with me, old man,
Come change thy apparel for mine;
Here is ten shillings in good silvèr,
Go drink it in beer or wine."
"O, thine apparel is good," he said,
"And mine is ragged and torn;
Wherever you go, wherever you ride,
Laugh not an old man to scorn."
"Come change thy apparel with me, old churl,
Come change thy apparel with mine;
Here is a piece of good broad gold,
Go feast thy brethren with wine."
Then he put on the old man's hat,
It stood full high on the crown:
"The first bold bargain that I come at,
It shall make thee come down."
Then he put on the old man's cloak,
Was patch'd black, blue, and red;
He thought it no shame, all the day long,
To wear the bags of bread.
Then he put on the old man's breeks,
Was patch'd from leg to side:
"By the truth of my body," bold Robin can say,
"This man loved little pride."
Then he put on the old man's hose,
Were patch'd from knee to wrist:
"By the truth of my body," said bold Robin Hood,
"I'd laugh if I had any list."
Then he put on the old man's shoes,
Were patch'd both beneath and aboon;
Then Robin Hood swore a solemn oath,
"It's good habit that makes a man."
Now Robin Hood is to Nottingham gone,
_With a link a down and a down_,
And there he met with the proud sheriff,
Was walking along the town.
"Save you, save you, sheriff!" he said;
"Now heaven you save and see!
And what will you give to a silly old man
To-day will your hangman be?"
"Some suits, some suits," the sheriff he said,
"Some suits I'll give to thee;
Some suits, some suits, and pence thirteen,
To-day's a hangman's fee."
Then Robin he turns him round about,
And jumps from stock to stone:
"By the truth of my body," the sheriff he said,
"That's well jumpt, thou nimble old man."
"I was ne'er a hangman in all my life,
Nor yet intends to trade;
But curst be he," said bold Robin,
"That first a hangman was made!
"I've a bag for meal, and a bag for malt,
And a bag for barley and corn;
And a bag for bread, and a bag for beef,
And a bag for my little small horn.
"I have a horn in my pockèt,
I got it from Robin Hood,
And still when I set it to my mouth,
For thee it blows little good."
"O, wind thy horn, thou proud fellòw!
Of thee I have no doubt.
I wish that thou give such a blast,
Till both thy eyes fall out."
The first loud blast that he did blow,
He blew both loud and shrill;
A hundred and fifty of Robin Hood's men
Came riding over the hill.
The next loud blast that he did give,
He blew both loud and amain,
And quickly sixty of Robin Hood's men
Came shining over the plain.
"O, who are these," the sheriff he said,
"Come tripping over the lee?"
"They're my attendants," brave Robin did say;
"They'll pay a visit to thee."
They took the gallows from the slack,
They set it in the glen,
They hanged the proud sherìff on that,
Released their own three men.
Among the earliest and most popular of English ballads are those
relating to Robin Hood. This noted, half-mythical outlaw was the
All-Father, and perfected by Bragi, the musician of the gods. As,
Sapience. . . . It is the scholastic phase of poetry._"--TAINE.
As mydsomer flowre;
Jentill as fawcoun
Or hawke of the towre:
With solace and gladnes,
Moche mirthe and no madness,
All good and no badness,
So joyously,
So maydenly,
So womanly,
Her demenyng
In every thynge,
Far, far passynge
That I can endyght,
Or suffyce to wryghte,
Of mirry Margaret,
As mydsomer flowre,
Jentyll as fawcoun
Or hawke of the towre:
As pacient and as styll,
And as full of good wyll
As faire Isaphill;
Swete pomaunder,
Stedfast of thought,
Wele made, wele wrought;
Far may be sought,
Erst that ye can fynde
So corteise, so kynde,
As mirry Margaret,
This mydsomer floure,
Jentyll as fawcoun
Or hawke of the towre.
He is set so hye
In his ierarchye
Of frantike frenesy,
And folish fantasy,
That in chambre of stars{1}
Al maters ther he mars,
Clapping his rod on the borde,
No man dare speake a worde:
For he hath al the saying
Without any renaying.
He rolleth in his Recordes;
He saith, "How say ye, my lordes?
Is not my reason good?"
Borne up on every syde
With pompe and with pryde,
With trump up alleluya,{2}
For dame Philargyria{3}
Hath so his hart in hold.
Welcome, dame Simonia,{4}
With dame Castamergia,{5}
To drink and for to eate,
Sweete ipocras{6} and sweete meate.
To keep his fleshe chaste
In Lente, for his repaste
He eateth capons stewed,
Fesaunt and partriche mewed--
Spareth neither mayd ne wife--
This is a postel's{7} life!
Taine calls Skelton "a virulent pamphleteer, who jumbles together
'Though my rhyme be ragged,
Tatter'd and jagged,
Rudely rain-beaten,
Rusty, moth-eaten,
Yf ye take welle therewithe,
It hath in it some pithe.'"
As to the coarseness which characterizes his verses, it cannot be
Selections from Four Minor Poets.
Then unto London I dyd me hye,
Of all the land it beareth the pryse:
"Hot pescodes," one began to crye,
"Strabery rype, and cherryes in the ryse";
One bade me come nere and by some spyce,
Peper and safforne they gan me bede,
But for lack of mony I myght not spede.
Then to the Chepe I began me drawne,
Where mutch people I saw for to stand;
One ofred me velvet, sylke, and lawne,
An other he taketh me by the hande,
"Here is Parys thred, the fynest in the land";
I never was used to such thyngs indede,
And wanting mony, I might not spede.
Then went I forth by London stone,
Th[o]roughout all Canwyke streete;
Drapers mutch cloth me offred anone;
Then comes me one, cryed, "Hot shepes feete";
One cryde "makerell," "ryshes grene," an other gan greete;
One bad me by a hood to cover my head,
But for want of mony I myght not be sped.
Then I hyed me into Est-Chepe;
One cryes rybbs of befe, and many a pye:
Pewter pottes they clattered on a heape;
There was harpe, pype, and mynstralsye.
"Yea, by cock! nay, by cock!" some began crye;
Some songe of Jenken and Julyan for there mede;
But for lack of mony I myght not spede.
Then into Corn-Hyll anon I yode,
Where was mutch stolen gere amonge;
I saw where honge myne owne hoode,
That I had lost amonge the thronge;
To by my own hood I thought it wronge,
I knew it well as I dyd my crede,
But for lack of mony I could not spede.
The taverner tooke me by the sleve,
"Sir," sayth he, "wyll you our wyne assay"?
I answered, "That can not mutch me greve:
A peny can do no more than it may";
I drank a pynt, and for it did paye;
Yet sone a-hungerd from thence I yede,
And wantyng mony, I cold not spede.
Then hyed I me to Belyngsgate;
And one cryed, "Hoo! go we hence!"
I prayd a barge-man, for God's sake,
That he wold spare me my expence.
"Thou scapst not here," quod he, "under two pence;
I lyst not yet bestow my almes dede."
Thus, lackyng mony, I could not spede.
Then I convayd me into Kent;
For of the law wold I meddle no more;
Because no man to me tooke entent,
I dyght me to do as I dyd before.
Now Jesus, that in Bethlem was bore,
Save London, and send trew lawyers there mede!
For who so wantes mony with them shall not spede.
=anone=, at once.
=Chepe=, the market. Cheapside, still a famous street in London.
=dyght=, disposed.
=greete=, cry out.
=mede=, reward, wages.
=pescodes=, pease.
=ryse=, bough or twig.
=ryshes=, rushes.
=spede=, proceed, do.
Rightwisenes chastised al robbours,
By egall balaunce of execucion,
Fraud, falsë mede, put backward fro jurours,
True promes holde, made no delacioun;
Forswearing shamed durst enter in no toun,
Nor lesingmongers, because Attemperaunce
Had in that world wholy the governaunce.
That golden world could lovë God and drede,
All the seven dedes of mercy for to use,
The rich was ready to do almës dede,
Who asked harbour, men did him not refuse;
No man of malice would other tho accuse,
Defame his neighbour, because Attemperaunce
Had in that world wholy the governaunce.
The true marchant by measure bought and sold,
Deceipt was none in the artificer,
Making no balkes, the plough was truely hold,
Abacke stode Idlenes, farre from labourer,
Discrecion marcial at diner and supper,
Content with measure, because Attemperaunce
Had in that world wholy the governaunce.
Of wast in clothing was that time none excesse;
Men might the lord from his subjectës know;
A difference made twene povertie and richesse,
Twene a princesse and other statës lowe;
Of horned boastës no boast was tho blowe,
Nor counterfeit feining, because Attemperaunce
Had in that world wholy the governaunce.
This golden world long whylë dyd endure,
Was none allay in that metall sene,
Tyll Saturne ceased, by record of scripture,
Jupiter reygned, put out his father clene,
Chaunged obrison into silver shene,
Al up so downe, because Attemperaunce
Was set asyde, and loste her governaunce.
Wald my gud lady lufe me best,
And wirk eftir my will,
I suld ane Garmond gudliest
Gar mak hir body till.
Off hie honour suld be hir hud,
Upoun hir heid to weir,
Garneist with governance so gud,
Na demyng suld hir deir.
Hir sark suld be hir body nixt,
Of chestetie so quhyt,
With schame and dreid togidder mixt,
The same suld be perfyt.
Hir kirtill suld be of clene constance,
Lasit with lesum lufe,
The mailyheis of continuance
For nevir to remufe.
Hir gown suld be of gudliness
Weill ribband with renowne,
Purfillit with plesour in ilk place,
Furrit with fyne fassoun.
Hir belt suld be of benignitie,
About hir middill meit;
Hir mantill of humilitie,
To tholl bayth wind and weit.
Hir hat suld be of fair having
And her tepat of trewth,
Hir patelet of gude pansing,
Hir hals-ribbane of rewth.
Hir slevis suld be of esperance,
To keip hir fra dispair;
Hir gluvis of the gud govirnance,
To hyd hir fyngearis fair.
Hir schone suld be of sickernes,
In syne that scho nocht slyd;
Hir hoiss of honestie, I ges,
I suld for hir provyd.
Wald scho put on this Garmond gay,
I durst sweir by my seill,
That scho woir nevir grene nor gray
That set hir half so weill.
=esperance=, hope.
=fassoun=, manners.
=garmond=, garment, costume.
=governance=, discretion.
=hals-ribbane=, neck-ribbon.
=kirtill=, skirt.
=lasit=, fastened.
=mailyheis=, eyelet-holes.
=pansing=, thought.
=patelet=, ruffet.
=sark=, shirt, chemise.
=seill=, knowledge.
=sickernes=, security.
=tholl=, withstand.
Quhen Merche wes with variand windis past
And Appryle had, with her silver schouris,
Tane leif at Nature with ane orient blast,
And lusty May, that muddir is of flouris,
Had maid the birdis to begyn thair houris
Amang the tendir odouris reid and quhyt,
Quhois armony to heir it wes delyt:
In bed at morrow, sleiping as I lay,
Me thocht Aurora, with hir cristall ene
In at the window lukit by the day,
And halsit me, with visage paill and grene;
On quhois hand a lark sang fro the splene,
Awalk, luvaris, out of your slomering
Sé hou the lusty morrow dois up spring.
Me thocht fresche May befoir my bed up stude,
In weid depaynt of mony diverss hew,
Sobir, benyng, and full of mansuetude
In brycht atteir of flouris forgit new
Hevinly of colour, quhyt, reid, broun and blew,
Balmit in dew, and gilt with Phebus bemys;
Quhyll all the house illumynit of her lemys.
Slugird, scho said, awalk annone for schame,
And in my honour sum thing thou go wryt;
The lark hes done the mirry day proclame,
To raise up luvaris with comfort and delyt;
Yit nocht incressis thy curage to indyt,
Quhois hairt sum tyme hes glaid and blisfull bene,
Sangis to mak undir the levis grene.
Then callit scho all flouris that grew on feild
Discirnyng all thair fassionis and effeiris
Upone the awfull Thrissil scho beheld
And saw him kepit with a busche of speiris;
Considering him so able for the weiris
A radius croun of rubeis scho him gaif,
And said, In feild go furth and fend the laif:
And sen thou art a King, thou be discreit;
Herb without vertew thow hald nocht of sic pryce
As herb of vertew and of odour sueit;
And lat no nettill vyle, and full of vyce,
Hir fallow to the gudly flour-de-lyce;
Nor latt no wyld weid, full of churlicheness,
Compair hir to the lilleis nobilness.
Nor hald non udir flour in sic denty
As the fresche Rois, of cullour reid and quhyt:
For gife thow dois, hurt is thyne honesty;
Considring that no flour is so perfyt,
So full of vertew, pleasans, and delyt,
So full of blisful angeilik bewty,
Imperiall birth, honour and dignité.
countries.
=effeiris=, affairs.
=fallow=, betroth.
=forgit=, made, created.
=halsit=, hailed.
=houris=, morning orisons.
=mansuetude=, gentleness.
=morrow=, morning.
=muddir=, mother.
=orient=, eastern.
=speiris=, spears.
=thrissil=, thistle.
=weid=, garments.
O hie honour, sweit heuinlie flour degest,
Gem verteous, maist precious, gudliest.
For hie renoun thow art guerdoun conding,
Of worschip kend the glorious end and rest,
But quhome in richt na worthie wicht may lest.
Thy greit puissance may maist auance all thing,
And pouerall to mekill auaill sone bring.
I the require sen thow but peir art best,
That efter this in thy hie blis we ring.
Of grace thy face in euerie place sa schynis,
That sweit all spreit baith heid and feit inclynis,
Thy gloir afoir for till imploir remeid.
He docht richt nocht, quhilk out of thocht the tynis;
Thy name but blame, and royal fame diuine is;
Thow port at schort of our comfort and reid,
Till bring all thing till glaiding efter deid,
All wicht but sicht of thy greit micht ay crynis,
O schene I mene, nane may sustene thy feid.
Haill rois maist chois till clois thy fois greit micht,
Haill stone quhilk schone vpon the throne of licht,
Vertew, quhais trew sweit dew ouirthrew al vice,
Was ay ilk day gar say the way of licht;
Amend, offend, and send our end ay richt.
Thow stant, ordant as sanct, of grant maist wise,
Till be supplie, and the high gre of price.
Delite the tite me quite of site to dicht,
For I apply schortlie to thy deuise.
=auance=, advance.
=conding=, condign, worthy.
=crynis=, diminishes.
=dicht=, relieve.
=glaiding=, happiness.
=guerdoun=, reward.
=mekill=, much, mickle.
=poureall=, the poor.
=puissance=, power.
=quhilk=, who, which.
=quhome=, without whom.
=wicht=, person, wight.
Whan that Aprille with his schowrës swoote
The drought of Marche had perced to the roote,
And bathed every veyne in swich licour,
Of which vertue engendred is the flour;
Whan Zephirus eek with his swetë breethe
Enspired hath in every holte and heethe
The tendre croppës, and the yongë sonne
Hath in the Ram{1} his halfë cours i-ronne,{2}
And smalë fowlës maken melodie,
That slepen al the night with open eye,
So priketh hem nature in here corages:--
Than longen folk to gon on pilgrimages,
And palmers for to seeken{3} straungë strondes,
To fernë halwes, kouthe in sondry londes;
And specially, from every schirës ende
Of Engelond, to Caunterbury they wende,
The holy blisful martir{4} for to seeke,
That hem hath holpen whan that they were seeke.{5}
Byfel that, in that sesoun on a day,
In Southwerk at the Tabard{6} as I lay,
Redy to wenden on my pilgrimage
To Caunterbury with ful devout corage,
At night was come into that hostelrye
Wel nyne and twenty in a compainye,
Of sondry folk, by aventure i-falle
In felaweschipe, and pilgryms were thei alle,
That toward Caunterbury wolden ryde;
The chambres and the stables{7} weren wyde,
And wel we werën esed attë beste.
And schortly, whan the sonnë was to reste,
So hadde I spoken with hem everychon,
That I was of here felaweschipe anon,
And madë forward erly for to ryse,
To take our wey ther as I yow devyse.
But nathëles, whil I have tyme and space,
Or{8} that I forther in this talë pace,
Me thinketh it acordaunt to resoun,
To tellë yow al the condicioun{9}
Of eche of hem, so as it semede me,
And whiche they weren, and of what degre;
And eek in what array that they were inne:
And at a knight than wol I first bygynne.
A KNIGHT ther was, and that a worthy man,
That from the tymë that he first bigan
To ryden out, he lovede chyvalrye,{10}
Trouthe and honour, fredom and curteisye.
Ful worthy was he in his lordës werre,
And therto hadde he riden, noman ferre,
As wel in Cristendom as in hethënesse,{11}
And evere honoured for his worthinesse.
At Alisaundre{12} he was whan it was wonne,
Ful oftë tyme he hadde the bord bygonne{13}
Aboven allë naciouns in Pruce.{14}
In Lettowe hadde he reysed and in Ruce,
No cristen man so ofte of his degre.
In Gernade{15} attë siegë hadde he be
Of Algesir, and riden in Belmarie.
Whan they were wonne; and in the Greetë see{16}
At many a noble arive hadde he be.
At mortal batailles hadde he ben fiftene,
And foughten for our feith at Tramassene
In lystës thriës, and ay slayn his foo.
This ilkë worthy knight hadde ben also
Somtymë with the lord of Palatye,{17}
Ageyn another hethen in Turkye:
And evermore he hadde a sovereyn prys.
And though that he was worthy, he was wys,
And of his port as meke as is a mayde.
He nevere yit no vileinye ne sayde
In al his lyf, unto no maner wight.{18}
He was a verray perfight gentil knight.
But for to tellen you of his array,
His hors was good, but he ne was nought gay.
Of fustyan he werede a gepoun
Al bysmotered with his habergeoun.
For he was late ycome from his viage,
And wentë for to doon his pilgrimage.
With him ther was his sone, a yong SQUYER,
A lovyere, and a lusty bacheler,{19}
With lokkës crulle as they were leyd in presse.
Of twenty yeer of age he was, I gesse.
Of his stature he was of even lengthe,
And wonderly delyver, and gret of strengthe.
And he hadde ben somtyme in chivachye,
And born him wel, as of so litel space,
In hope to stonden in his lady grace.
Embrowded was he, as it were a mede
Al ful of fresshë floures, white and reede.
Syngynge he was, or floytynge,{20} al the day;
He was as fressh as is the moneth of May.
Schort was his goune, with sleevës longe and wyde.
Wel cowde he sitte on hors, and fairë ryde.
He cowdë songës make and wel endite,
Juste and eek daunce, and wel purtreye and write.
So hote he lovedë, that by nightertale
He sleep nomore than doth a nightyngale.
Curteys he was, lowly, and servysable,
And carf byforn his fader at the table.
A YEMAN hadde he,{21} and servaunts nomoo
At that tyme, for him lustë rydë soo;
And he was clad in coote and hood of grene.
A shef of pocok arwës{22} brighte and kene
Under his belte he bar ful thriftily.
Wel cowde he dresse his takel yemanly;
His arwes drowpede nought with fetheres lowe.
And in his hond he bar a mighty bowe
A not-heed hadde he with broun visage.
Of woodë-craft wel cowde he al the usage.
Upon his arm he bar a gay bracer{23}
And by his side a swerd and a bokeler,
And on that other side a gay daggere,
Harneysed wel, and scharp as poynt of spere;
A Cristofre{24} on his brest of silver schene.
An horn he bar, the bawdrik was of grene;
A forster was he sothly, as I gesse.
Ther was also a Nonne, a PRIORESSE,
That of hire smylyng was ful symple and coy;
Hire grettest ooth ne was but by seynt Loy{25};
And sche was cleped madame Eglentyne.
Ful wel sche sang the servisë divyne,
Entuned in hire nose ful semëly;
And Frensch sche spak ful faire and fetysly,
After the scole of Stratford attë Bowe,
For Frensch of Parys was to hire unknowe.
At metë wel i-taught was sche withalle;
Sche leet no morsel from hire lippës falle,
Ne wette hire fyngres in hire saucë deepe.
Wel cowde sche carie a morsel, and wel keepe,
That no dropë ne fille upon hire breste.
In curteisie was set ful moche hire leste.
Hire overlippë wypede sche so clene,
That in hire cuppë was no ferthing sene
Of grecë, whan sche dronken hadde hire draughte.
Ful semëly after hir mete sche raughte,
And sikerly sche was of gret disport,{26}
And ful plesaunt, and amyable of port,
And peynede hir to countrefetë cheere
Of court, and ben estatlich of manere,
And to ben holden digne of reverence.
But for to speken of hir conscience,
Sche was so charitable and so pitous,
Sche woldë weepe if that sche saw a mous
Caught in a trappe, if it were deed or bledde.
Of smalë houndës hadde sche, that sche fedde
With rosted flessh, or mylk and wastel breed.
But sore weep sche if oon of hem were deed,
Or if men{27} smot it with a yerdë smerte:
And al was conscience and tendre herte.
Ful semëly hire wympel i-pynched was;
Hir nose tretys; hir eyën greye as glas;
Hir mouth ful smal, and therto softe and reed
But sikerly sche hadde a fair forheed.
It was almost a spannë brood, I trowe;
For hardily sche was not undergrowe.
Ful fetys was hir cloke, as I was war.
Of smal coral aboute hir arm sche bar
A peire of bedës gauded al with grene;
And theron heng a broch of gold ful schene,
On which was first i-write a crownëd A,
And after, _Amor vincit omnia._{28}
Another NONNE with hir haddë sche,
That was hir chapeleyne,{29} and PRESTES thre.
A MONK ther was, a fair for the maistryë,{30}
An out-rydere, that lovedë veneryë;
A manly man, to ben an abbot able.
Ful many a deynté hors hadde he in stable:
And whan he rood, men mighte his bridel heere
Gynglen in a whistlyng wynd as cleere,
And eek as lowde as doth the chapel belle.
Ther as this lord was kepere of the celle,
The reule of seynt Maure or of seint Beneyt,
Bycause that it was old and somdel streyt,
This ilkë monk leet oldë thingës pace,
And held after the newë world the space.
He yaf nat of that text a pullëd hen,{31}
That seith, that hunters been noon holy men;
Ne that a monk, whan he is recchëles
Is likned to a fissch that is waterles{32};
This is to seyn, a monk out of his cloystre.
But thilkë text held he not worth an oystre.
And I seide his opinioun was good.
What{33} schulde he studie, and make himselven wood,{34}
Upon a book in cloystre alway to powre.
Or swynkë with his handës, and laboure,
As Austyn bit? How schal the world be servëd?
Lat Austyn have his swynk to him reservëd.
Therfor he was a pricasour aright;
Greyhoundes he hadde as swifte as fowel in flight;
Of prikyng and of huntyng for the hare
Was al his lust, for no cost wolde he spare.{35}
I saugh his slevës purfiled attë honde
With grys, and that the fyneste of a londe.
And for to festne his hood under his chynne
He hadde of gold y-wrought a curious pynne:
A love-knot in the grettere ende ther was.
His heed was balled, that schon as eny glas,
And eek his face, as he hadde ben anoynt.
He was a lord ful fat and in good poynt;
His eyën steepe, and rollyng in his heede,
That stemëde as a forneys of a leede;{36}
His bootës souple, his hors in gret estat.
Now certeinly he was a fair prelat;
He was not pale as a for-pyned goost.
A fat swan lovede he best of eny roost.
His palfrey was as broun as is a berye.
A FRERE there was, a wantown and a merye,
A lymytour,{37} a ful solempnë man.
In alle the ordres foure{38} is noon that can
So moche of daliaunce and fair langage.
He hadde i-mad ful many a mariage
Of yongë wymmen, at his owën cost.
Unto his ordre he was a noble post.{39}
Ful wel biloved and famulier was he
And eek with worthy wommen of the toun:
For he hadde power of confessioun,
As seyde himself, morë than a curat,
For of his ordre he was licentiat.{41}
Ful swetëly herde he confessioun,
And plesaunt was his absolucioun;
He was an esy man to yeve penaunce
Ther as he wistë han{42} a good pitaunce;
For unto a poure ordre for to yive
Is signë that a man is wel i-schrive.
For if he yaf, he dorstë make avaunt,
He wistë that a man was repentaunt.
For many a man so hard is of his herte,
He may not wepe although him sorë smerte.
Therfore in stede of wepyng and preyeres,
Men{43} moot yive silver to the pourë freres.
His typet was ay farsëd ful of knyfes
And pynnës, for to yivë fairë wyfes.
And certeynly he hadde a mery note;
Wel couthe he synge and pleyen on a rote.
Of yeddynges he bar utterly the prys.
His nekkë whit was as the flour-de-lys.
Therto he strong was as a champioun.
He knew the tavernes wel in every toun,
And everych hostiler and tappestere,
Bet then a lazer, or a beggestere,
For unto such a worthy man as he
Acorded not, as by his faculté,
To han with sikë lazars aqueyntaunce.
It is not honest, it may not avaunce,
For to delen with no such poraille,
But al with riche, and sellers of vitaille.{44}
And overal, ther as profyt schulde arise,
Curteys he was, and lowly of servyse.
Ther nas no man nowher so vertuous.
He was the bestë beggere in his hous,
For though a widewe haddë noght oo schoo,
So plesaunt was his _In principio_,{45}
Yet wolde he have a ferthing or he wente.
His purchas{46} was wel better than his rente.
And rage he couthe as it were right a whelpe,
In lovë-dayës{47} couthe he mochel helpe.
For ther he was not lik a cloysterer,
With a thredbare cope as is a poure scoler,
But he was lik a maister or a pope.
Of double worsted was his semy-cope,
That rounded as a belle out of the presse.
Somwhat he lipsede, for his wantownesse,
To make his Englissch swete upon his tunge;
And in his harpyng, whan that he hadde sunge
His eyën twynkled in his heed aright,
As don the sterrës in the frosty night.
This worthy lymytour was cleped Huberd.
A MARCHAUNT was ther with a forkëd berd,
In mottëleye, and hign on hors he sat,
Upon his heed a Flaundrisch bevere hat;
His botës clapsed faire and fetysly.
His resons he spak ful solempnëly,
Sownynge alway the encres of his wynnynge.
He wolde the see were kept for{48} eny thinge
Wel couthe he in eschaungë scheeldës{49} selle.
This worthi man ful wel his wit bisette;
Ther wistë no wight that he was in dette,
So estatly was he of governaunce,
With his bargayns, and with his chevysaunce
For sothe he was a worthy man withalle,
But soth to sayn, I not how men him calle.
A CLERK ther was of Oxenford{50} also,
That unto logik haddë longe i-go.
As lenë was his hors as is a rake,
And he was not right{51} fat, I undertake;
But lokëde holwe, and therto soberly.
Ful thredbar was his overest courtepy.
For he hadde geten him yit no benefice,
Ne was so worldly for to have office.
For him was levere have at his beddës heede
Twenty bookës, clad in blak or reede,
Of Aristotle and his philosophyë,
Then robës riche, or fithel, or gay sawtryë.{52}
But al be that he was a philosophre,
Yet haddë he but litel gold in cofre;
But al that he mighte of his frendës hente,
On bookës and on lernyng he it spente,
And busily gan for the soulës preye
Of hem that yaf him wherwith to scoleye;
Of studie took he most cure and most heede.
Not oo word spak he morë than was neede,
And that was seid in forme and reverence
And schort and quyk, and ful of high sentence.
Sownynge{53} in moral vertu was his speche,
And gladly wolde he lerne, and gladly teche.
=ageyn=, against.
=arive=, disembarkment.
=aventure=, chance.
=bawdrick=, baldric.
=byfel=, it happened.
=bysmotered=, smutted.
=cheere=, manner.
=chevysaunce=, loans, bargains.
=chivachye=, military expedition.
=clapsed=, clasped.
=cleped=, called.
=clerk=, a scholar.
=courtepy=, cloak.
=crulle=, curled.
=delyver=, active.
=devyse=, speak of.
=embrowded=, embroidered.
=encres=, increase.
=everychon=, every one, all.
=farsed=, stuffed.
=ferne=, distant, foreign.
=ferre=, farther.
=ferthing=, small portion.
=fetysly=, neatly, well.
=fithel=, fiddle.
=flotynge=, fluting, playing.
=for-pyned=, much wasted.
=forster=, forester.
=gawded=, having gawds.
=gepoun=, short cassock.
=gynglen=, jingling.
=habergeoun=, hawberk.
=halwes=, shrines (holies).
=heethe=, heath, meadow.
=holpen=, helped.
=leede=, cauldron.
=leste=, pleasure.
=levere=, rather.
=lipsede=, lisped.
=luste=, pleased.
=maistrye=, mastery.
=mete=, meals, eating.
=motteleye=, mixed colors.
=nightertale=, night-time.
=noon=, not one, not at all.
=peyned=, took pains.
=pitous=, full of pity.
=pocok=, peacock.
=poraille=, poor folks.
=pricasour=, hard rider.
=priketh=, incites, spurs.
=prys=, reputation, worth.
=purfiled=, embroidered.
=purtreye=, paint.
=raughte=, reached.
=reccheles=, reckless.
=reysed=, ridden.
=rote=, a musical instrument.
=sawtreye=, psaltery.
=schene=, bright.
=scoleye=, attend school.
=semely=, becomingly.
=sikerly=, surely.
=somdel=, somewhat.
=sondry=, different kinds.
=souple=, pliant.
=sovereyn=, excellent.
=sowning=, boasting.
=steepe=, bright.
=streit=, strict.
=tretys=, slender.
=venerye=, hunting.
=viage=, journey.
=wastel breed=, cake bread.
=wood=, mad, foolish.
=wympel=, wimple.
=yeddynges=, gleemen's songs.
=yemanly=, yeoman-like.
"And many a floyte and litlyng horne,
And pipes made of grene corne."
"An' just as wud as wud can be."--_Burns._
differences, without recourse to law.
"'How few there are who can read Chaucer so as to understand him
Chaucer_; Hazlitt's _English Poets_.