Chapter 4

Alas! when evil men are strong No life is good, no pleasure long. 90 The Boy must part from Mosedale's Groves, And leave Blencathara's rugged Coves, And quit the Flowers that Summer brings To Glenderamakin's lofty springs; Must vanish, and his careless cheer Be turned to heaviness and fear. --Give Sir Lancelot Threlkeld praise! Hear it, good Man, old in days! Thou Tree of covert and of rest For this young Bird that is distrest, 100 Among thy branches safe he lay, And he was free to sport and play, When Falcons were abroad for prey.

A recreant Harp, that sings of fear And heaviness in Clifford's ear! I said, when evil Men are strong, No life is good, no pleasure long, A weak and cowardly untruth! Our Clifford was a happy Youth, And thankful through a weary time, 110 That brought him up to manhood's prime. --Again he wanders forth at will, And tends a Flock from hill to hill: His garb is humble; ne'er was seen Such garb with such a noble mien; Among the Shepherd-grooms no Mate Hath he, a Child of strength and state! Yet lacks not friends for solemn glee, And a chearful company, That learn'd of him submissive ways; 120 And comforted his private days. To his side the Fallow-deer Came, and rested without fear; The Eagle, Lord of land and sea, Stoop'd down to pay him fealty; And both the undying Fish that swim Through Bowscale-Tarn did wait on him, The pair were Servants of his eye In their immortality, They moved about in open sight, 130 To and fro, for his delight. He knew the Rocks which Angels haunt On the Mountains visitant; He hath kenn'd them taking wing: And the Caves where Faeries sing He hath entered; and been told By Voices how Men liv'd of old. Among the Heavens his eye can see Face of thing that is to be; And, if Men report him right, 140 He can whisper words of might. --Now another day is come, Fitter hope, and nobler doom: He hath thrown aside his Crook, And hath buried deep his Book; Armour rusting in his Halls On the blood of Clifford calls;--

"Quell the Scot," exclaims the Lance, "Bear me to the heart of France, Is the longing of the Shield-- 150 Tell thy name, thou trembling Field; Field of death, where'er thou be, Groan thou with our victory! Happy day, and mighty hour, When our Shepherd, in his power, Mail'd and hors'd, with lance and sword, To his Ancestors restored, Like a reappearing Star, Like a glory from afar, First shall head the Flock of War!" 160

Alas! the fervent Harper did not know That for a tranquil Soul the Lay was framed, Who, long compell'd in humble walks to go, Was softened into feeling, sooth'd, and tamed. Love had he found in huts where poor Men lie, His daily Teachers had been Woods and Rills, The silence that is in the starry sky, The sleep that is among the lonely hills.

In him the savage Virtue of the Race, Revenge, and all ferocious thoughts were dead: 170 Nor did he change; but kept in lofty place The wisdom which adversity had bred.

Glad were the Vales, and every cottage hearth; The Shepherd Lord was honour'd more and more: And, ages after he was laid in earth, "The Good Lord Clifford" was the name he bore.

_LINES_, Composed at GRASMERE, during a walk, one Evening, after a stormy day, the Author having just read in a Newspaper that the dissolution of MR. FOX was hourly expected.

Loud is the Vale! the Voice is up With which she speaks when storms are gone, A mighty Unison of streams! Of all her Voices, One!

Loud is the Vale;--this inland Depth In peace is roaring like the Sea; Yon Star upon the mountain-top Is listening quietly.

Sad was I, ev'n to pain depress'd, Importunate and heavy load! 10 The Comforter hath found me here, Upon this lonely road;

And many thousands now are sad, Wait the fulfilment of their fear; For He must die who is their Stay, Their Glory disappear.

A Power is passing from the earth To breathless Nature's dark abyss; But when the Mighty pass away What is it more than this, 20

That Man, who is from God sent forth, Doth yet again to God return?-- Such ebb and flow must ever be, Then wherefore should we mourn?

_ELEGIAC STANZAS_, Suggested by a Picture of PEELE CASTLE, in a Storm, _painted_ BY SIR GEORGE BEAUMONT.

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

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

How perfect was the calm! it seem'd no sleep; No mood, which season takes away, or brings: 10 I could have fancied that the mighty Deep Was even the gentlest of all gentle Things.

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

I would have planted thee, thou hoary Pile! Amid a world how different from this! Beside a sea that could not cease to smile; On tranquil land, beneath a sky of bliss: 20

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

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

Such, in the fond delusion of my heart, Such Picture would I at that time have made: 30 And seen the soul of truth in every part; A faith, a trust, that could not be betray'd.

So once it would have been,--'tis so no more; I have submitted to a new controul: A power is gone, which nothing can restore; A deep distress hath humaniz'd my Soul.

Not for a moment could I now behold A smiling sea and be what I have been: The feeling of my loss will ne'er be old; This, which I know, I speak with mind serene. 40

Then, Beaumont, Friend! who would have been the Friend, If he had lived, of Him whom I deplore, This Work of thine I blame not, but commend; This sea in anger, and that dismal shore.

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

And this huge Castle, standing here sublime, I love to see the look with which it braves, 50 Cased in the unfeeling armour of old time, The light'ning, the fierce wind, and trampling waves.

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

But welcome fortitude, and patient chear, And frequent sights of what is to be born! Such sights, or worse, as are before me here.-- Not without hope we suffer and we mourn. 60

ODE.

_Paulo majora canamus_.

_ODE_.

There was a time when meadow, grove, and stream, The earth, and every common sight, To me did seem Apparell'd in celestial light, The glory and the freshness of a dream. It is not now as it has 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, 10 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 pass'd away a glory from the earth.

Now, while the Birds thus sing a joyous song, And while the young Lambs bound 20 As to the tabor's sound, To me alone there came a thought of grief: A timely utterance gave that thought relief, And I again am strong. The Cataracts blow their trumpets from the steep, No more shall grief of mine the season wrong; I hear the Echoes through the mountains throng, The Winds come to me from the fields of sleep,

And all the earth is gay, Land and sea 30 Give themselves up to jollity, And with the heart of May 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, 40 The fullness of your bliss, I feel--I feel it all. Oh evil day! if I were sullen While the Earth herself is adorning, This sweet May-morning, And the Children are pulling, On every side, In a thousand vallies far and wide, Fresh flowers; while the sun shines warm, And the Babe leaps up on his mother's arm:-- I hear, I hear, with joy I hear! 50 --But there's a Tree, of many one, A single Field which I have look'd upon, Both of them speak of something that is gone: The Pansy 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 and a forgetting: The Soul that rises with us, our life's Star, Hath had elsewhere its setting, 60 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; 70 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, 80 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 among his new-born blisses, A four year's 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, 90 Some fragment from his dream of human life, Shap'd 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, 100 And with new joy and pride The little Actor cons another part, Filling from time to time his "humourous stage" 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 110 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! On whom those truths do rest, Which we are toiling all our lives to find; Thou, over whom thy Immortality

Broods like the Day, a Master o'er a Slave, A Presence which is not to be put by; To whom the grave 120 Is but a lonely bed without the sense or sight Of day or the warm light, A place of thought where we in waiting lie; Thou little Child, yet glorious in the might Of untam'd pleasures, 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, 130 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 benedictions: not indeed For that which is most worthy to be blest; Delight and liberty, the simple creed Of Childhood, whether fluttering or at rest, 140 With new-born hope for ever 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; Blank misgivings of a Creature Moving about in worlds not realiz'd, High instincts, before which our mortal Nature Did tremble like a guilty Thing surpriz'd: 150 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 us, and make Our noisy years seem moments in the being Of the eternal Silence: truths that wake, To perish never; Which neither listlessness, nor mad endeavour, 160 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. 170

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 for ever taken from my sight, Though nothing can bring back the hour 180 Of splendour 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 oh ye Fountains, Meadows, Hills, and Groves, 190 Think not of any severing of our loves! Yet in my heart of hearts I feel your might; I only have relinquish'd one delight To live beneath your more habitual sway. I love the Brooks which down their channels fret, Even more than when I tripp'd lightly as they; The innocent brightness of a new-born Day Is lovely yet; The Clouds that gather round the setting sun Do take a sober colouring from an eye 200 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.

_NOTES to the SECOND VOLUME_.

_NOTES_.

NOTE I.

PAGE 4 (177); line 2.--"And wondrous length and strength of arm." The people of the neighbourhood of Loch Ketterine, in order to prove the extraordinary length of their Hero's arm, tell you that "he could garter his Tartan Stockings below the knee when standing upright." According to their account he was a tremendous Swordsman; after having sought all occasions of proving his prowess, he was never conquered but once, and this not till he was an Old Man.

NOTE II.

PAGE 11 (185).--_The solitary Reaper_. This Poem was suggested by a beautiful sentence in a MS Tour in Scotland written by a Friend, the last line being taken from it _verbatim_.

NOTE III.

PAGE 65 (239).--THE BLIND HIGHLAND BOY. The incident upon which this Poem is founded was related to me by an eye witness.

NOTE IV.

PAGE 106 (280); line 10.--"Seen the Seven Whistlers, &c." Both these superstitions are prevalent in the midland Counties of England: that of "Gabriel's Hounds" appears to be very general over Europe; being the same as the one upon which the German Poet, Burger, has founded his Ballad of the Wild Huntsman.

NOTE V.

PAGE 128 (302).--_Song, at the Feast of Brougham Castle_. Henry Lord Clifford, &c. &c., who is the subject of this Poem, was the son of John, Lord Clifford, who was slain at Towton Field, which John, Lord Clifford, as is known to the Reader of English History, was the person who after the battle of Wakefield slew, in the pursuit, the young Earl of Rutland, Son of the Duke of York who had fallen in the battle, "in part of revenge" (say the Authors of the History of Cumberland and Westmorland); "for the Earl's Father had slain his." A deed which worthily blemished the author (saith Speed); But who, as he adds, "dare promise any thing temperate of himself in the heat of martial fury? chiefly, when it was resolved not to leave any branch of the York line standing; for so one maketh this Lord to speak." This, no doubt, I would observe by the bye, was an action sufficiently in the vindictive spirit of the times, and yet not altogether so bad as represented; for the Earl was no child, as some writers would have him, but able to bear arms, being sixteen or seventeen years of age, as is evident from this (say the Memoirs of the Countess of Pembroke, who was laudably anxious to wipe away, as far as could be, this stigma from the illustrious name to which she was born); that he was the next Child to King Edward the Fourth, which his mother had by Richard Duke of York, and that King was then eighteen years of age: and for the small distance betwixt her Children, see Austin Vincent in his book of Nobility, page 622, where he writes of them all. It may further be observed, that Lord Clifford, who was then himself only twenty-five years of age, had been a leading Man and Commander, two or three years together in the Army of Lancaster, before this time; and, therefore, would be less likely to think that the Earl of Rutland might be entitled to mercy from his youth.--But, independent of this act, at best a cruel and savage one, the Family of Clifford had done enough to draw upon them the vehement hatred of the House of York: so that after the Battle of Towton there was no hope for them but in flight and concealment. Henry, the subject of the Poem, was deprived of his estate and honours during the space of twenty-four years; all which time he lived as a shepherd in Yorkshire, or in Cumberland, where the estate of his Father-in-law (Sir Lancelot Threlkeld) lay. He was restored to his estate and honours in the first year of Henry the Seventh. It is recorded that, "when called to parliament, he behaved nobly and wisely; but otherwise came seldom to London or the Court; and rather delighted to live in the country, where he repaired several of his Castles, which had gone to decay during the late troubles." Thus far is chiefly collected from Nicholson and Burn; and I can add, from my own knowledge, that there is a tradition current in the village of Threlkeld and its neighbourhood, his principal retreat, that, in the course of his shepherd life, he had acquired great astronomical knowledge. I cannot conclude this note without adding a word upon the subject of those numerous and noble feudal Edifices, spoken of in the Poem, the ruins of some of which are, at this day, so great an ornament to that interesting country. The Cliffords had always been distinguished for an honorable pride in these Castles; and we have seen that after the wars of York and Lancaster they were rebuilt; in the civil Wars of Charles the First, they were again laid waste, and again restored almost to their former magnificence by the celebrated Lady Anne Clifford, Countess of Pembroke, &c. &c. Not more than 25 years after this was done, when the Estates of Clifford had passed into the family of Tufton, three of these Castles, namely Brough, Brougham, and Pendragon, were demolished, and the timber and other materials sold by Thomas Earl of Thanet. We will hope that, when this order was issued, the Earl had not consulted the text of Isaiah, 58th Chap. 12th Verse, to which the inscription placed over the gate of Pendragon Castle, by the Countess of Pembroke (I believe his Grandmother) at the time she repaired that structure, refers the reader. "_And they that shall be of thee shall build the old waste places; thou shalt raise up the foundations of many generations, and thou shalt be called the repairer of the breach_, _the restorer of paths to dwell in_." The Earl of Thanet, the present possessor of the Estates, with a due respect for the memory of his ancestors, and a proper sense of the value and beauty of these remains of antiquity, has (I am told) given orders that they shall be preserved from all depredations.

NOTE VI.

PAGE 130 (304); line 2.--"Earth helped him with the cry of blood." This line is from The Battle of Bosworth Field by Sir John Beaumont (Brother to the Dramatist), whose poems are written with so much spirit, elegance, and harmony, that it is supposed, as the Book is very scarce, a new edition of it would be acceptable to Scholars and Men of taste, and, accordingly, it is in contemplation to give one.

NOTE VII.

PAGE 135 (309); line 15.--

"And both the undying Fish that swim Through Bowscale-Tarn," &c.

It is imagined by the people of the Country that there are two immortal Fish, Inhabitants of this Tarn, which lies in the mountains not far from Threlkeld.--Blencathara, mentioned before, is the old and proper name of the mountain vulgarly called Saddle-back.

NOTE VIII.

PAGE 136 (310); lines 17 and 18.--

"Armour rusting in his Halls On the blood of Clifford calls."

The martial character of the Cliffords is well known to the readers of English History; but it may not be improper here to say, by way of comment on these lines and what follows, that, besides several others who perished in the same manner, the four immediate Progenitors of the person in whose hearing this is supposed to be spoken, all died in the Field.

NOTE IX.

PAGE 140 (314).--

"Importunate and heavy load!"

* * * * *

_'Importuna e grave salma_.' --MICHAEL ANGELO.

END OF THE SECOND VOLUME.