Chapter 1

THE

POETICAL WORKS

OF

WILLIAM LISLE BOWLES,

CANON OF ST PAUL'S CATHEDRAL, AND RECTOR OF BREMHILL.

With Memoir, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes,

BY THE

REV. GEORGE GILFILLAN.

VOL. I.

EDINBURGH: JAMES NICHOL, 9 NORTH BANK STREET. LONDON: JAMES NISBET AND CO. DUBLIN: W. ROBERTSON.

M.DCCC.LV.

EDINBURGH: PRINTED BY BALLANTYNE AND COMPANY, PAUL'S WORK.

CONTENTS.

SONNETS AND MISCELLANEOUS POEMS.

PAGE

SONNETS:--

At Tynemouth Priory, after a Tempestuous Voyage 7 Bamborough Castle 8 The River Wainsbeck 8 The Tweed Visited 9 On leaving a Village in Scotland 9 Evening 10 To the River Itchin 11 On Resigning a Scholarship of Trinity College, Oxford, and Retiring to a Country Curacy 11 Dover Cliffs 12 On Landing at Ostend 12 The Bells of Ostend 13 The Rhine 13 Influence of Time on Grief 14 The Convent 14 The River Cherwell 15 On Entering Switzerland 15 Distant View of England from the Sea 16 Hope 16 To a Friend 17 Absence 17 Bereavement 18 Oxford Revisited 19 In Memoriam 19 On the Death of the Rev. William Benwell, M.A. 20 At Malvern 20 Netley Abbey 21 Associations 21 Music 22 Approach of Summer 22 At Oxford, 1786 23 At Dover, 1786 23 Retrospection 24 On Accidentally Meeting a Lady, now no more 24 On hearing "The Messiah" performed in Gloucester Cathedral, Sept. 18, 1835 25 Woodspring Abbey, 1836 26 Lacock Nunnery, 1837 26 On a Beautiful Landscape 27 Art and Nature: the Bridge between Clifton and Leigh Woods 27 Picture of an Old Man 28 Picture of a Young Lady 29 Hour-glass and Bible 29 Milton. Two Sonnets on the bust of Milton, in Youth and Age, at Stourhead 30 To Sir Walter Scott 31

MISCELLANEOUS POEMS:--

Elegy written at the Hotwells, Bristol 32 Monody on Henry Headley 36 Howard's Account of Lazarettos 37 The Grave of Howard 42 Shakspeare 46 Abbe Thule's Lament for his Son Prince Le Boo 49 Southampton Water 51 The Philanthropic Society 52 The Dying Slave 58 Song of the American Indian 60 Monody, written at Matlock 61 The Right Honourable Edmund Burke 67 On Leaving a Place of Residence 72 Elegiac Stanzas written during Sickness at Bath 73 On leaving Winchester School 77 Hope: an Allegorical Sketch 77 The Battle of the Nile 88 A Garden-Seat at Home 94 In Horto Rev. J. Still 95 Greenwich Hospital 95 A Rustic Seat near the Sea 96 Wardour Castle 96 Pole-vellum, Cornwall 97 On a Beautiful Spring 98 On a Cenotaph to the Memory of Lieut-Col. Isaac 99 Translation of a Latin Poem, by Rev. Newton Ogle 100 St Michael's Mount 101 On an Unfortunate and Beautiful Woman 111 Hymn to Woden 113 Coombe-Ellen 115 Summer Evening at Home 125 Winter Evening at Home 126 The Spirit of Navigation 127 Water-party on Beaulieu River, in the New Forest 134 Monody on the Death of Dr Warton 135 Epitaph on H. Walmsley, Esq., in Alverstoke{a} Church, Hants 141 Age 142 On a Landscape by Rubens 142 The Harp, and Despair, of Cowper 151 Stanzas for Music 152 Music 152 Absence 153 Fairy Sketch 154 Inscription 155 Pictures from Theocritus 156 Sketches in the Exhibition, 1805 161 Do. in the Exhibition, 1807 162 Southampton Castle 164 The Winds 166 On William Sommers of Bremhill 169 The Visionary Boy 170 Cadland, Southampton River 180 The Last Song of Camoens 182 The Sylph of Summer 184 The Harp of Hoel 201 Avenue in Savernake Forest 215 Dirge of Nelson 216 Death of Captain Cooke, of "The Bellerophon" 217 Battle of Corruna 218 Sketch from Bowden Hill after Sickness 219 Sun-Dial in the Churchyard of Bremhill 223

THE SPIRIT OF DISCOVERY:

A Descriptive and Historical Poem 225 Book the First 231 Book the Second 245 Book the Third 258 Book the Fourth 266 Book the Fifth 285

THE MISSIONARY 295 Introduction 297 Canto First 298 Canto Second 309 Canto Third 318 Canto Fourth 330 Canto Fifth 339 Canto Sixth 344 Canto Seventh 350 Canton Eighth 359

_The Memoir and Critical Dissertation being unavoidably delayed, will be prefixed to Vol. II._

PREFACE.

A Ninth Edition of the following Poems having been called for by the public, the author is induced to say a few words, particularly concerning those which, under the name of Sonnets, describe his personal feelings.

They can be considered in no other light than as exhibiting occasional reflections which naturally arose in his mind, chiefly during various excursions, undertaken to relieve, at the time, depression of spirits. They were, therefore, in general, suggested by the scenes before them; and wherever such scenes appeared to harmonise with his disposition at the moment, the sentiments were involuntarily prompted.

Numberless poetical trifles of the same kind have occurred to him, when perhaps, in his solitary rambles, he has been "chewing the cud of sweet and bitter fancy;" but they have been forgotten as he left the places which gave rise to them; and the greater part of those originally committed to the press were written down, for the first time, from memory.

This is nothing to the public; but it may serve in some measure to obviate the common remark on melancholy poetry, that it has been very often gravely composed, when possibly the heart of the writer had very little share in the distress he chose to describe.

But there is a great difference between _natural_ and _fabricated_ feelings, even in poetry. To which of these two characters the poems before the reader belong, the author leaves those who have felt sensations of sorrow to judge.

They who know him, know the occasions of them to have been real; to the public he might only mention the sudden death of a deserving young woman, with whom,

... _Sperabat longos heu! ducere soles, Et fido acclinis consenuisse sinu._[1]

DONHEAD, _April 1805._

[1] The early editions of these Sonnets, 1791, were dedicated to the Reverend Newton Ogle, D.D., Dean of Winchester.

INTRODUCTION TO THE EDITION OF 1837.

To account for the variations which may be remarked in this last edition of my Sonnets, from that which was first published fifty years ago, it may be proper to state, that to the best of my recollection, they now appear nearly as they were originally composed in my solitary hours; when, in youth a wanderer among distant scenes, I sought forgetfulness of the first disappointment in early affections.

Delicacy even now, though the grave has long closed over the beloved object, would forbid entering on a detail of the peculiar circumstances in early life, and the anguish which occasioned these poetical meditations. In fact, I never thought of writing them down at the time, and many had escaped my recollection;[2] but three years after my return to England, on my way to the banks of Cherwell, where

"I bade the pipe farewell, and that sad lay Whose music, on my melancholy way, I wooed,"

passing through Bath, I wrote down all I could recollect of these effusions, most elaborately _mending_ the versification from the natural flow of music in which they occurred to me, and having thus _corrected_ and written them out, took them myself to the late Mr Cruttwell, with the name of "Fourteen Sonnets, written chiefly on Picturesque Spots during a Journey."

I had three times knocked at this amiable printer's door, whose kind smile I still recollect; and at last, with much hesitation, ventured to unfold my message; it was to inquire whether he would give any thing for "Fourteen Sonnets," to be published with or without the name.[3] He at once declined the purchase, and informed me he doubted very much whether the publication would repay the expense of printing, which would come to about five pounds. It was at last determined one hundred copies, in quarto, should be published as a kind of "forlorn hope;" and these "Fourteen Sonnets" I left to their fate and thought no more of getting rich by poetry! In fact, I owed the most I ever owed at Oxford, at this time, namely, seventy pounds;[4] and knowing my father's large family and trying circumstances, and those of my poor mother, I shrunk from asking more money when I left home, and went back with a heavy heart to Oxford, under the conscious weight, that my poetic scheme failing, I had no means of paying Parsons, the mercer's, bill! This was the origin of the publication.

As this plain account is so connected with whatever may be my name in criticism and poetry, it is hoped it will be pardoned.

All thoughts of succeeding as a poet were now abandoned; but, half a year afterwards, I received a letter from the printer informing me that the hundred copies were all sold, adding, that if I had published FIVE HUNDRED copies, he had no doubt they would have been sold also.

This, in my then situation, my father now dead, and my mother a widow with seven children, and with a materially reduced income (from the loss of the rectories of Uphill and Brean in Somerset), was gratifying indeed; all my golden dreams of poetical success were renewed;--the number of the sonnets first published was increased, and five hundred copies, by the congratulating printer, with whose family I have lived in kindest amity from that hour, were recommended to issue from the press of the editor of the _Bath Chronicle_.

But this was not all, the five hundred copies were sold to great advantage, for it was against my will that _five hundred_ copies should be printed, till the printer told me he would take the risk on himself, on the usual terms, at that time, of bookseller and author.

Soon afterwards, it was agreed that _seven hundred and fifty_ copies should be printed, in a smaller and elegant size. I had received Coleridge's warm testimony; but soon after this third edition came out, my friend, Mr Cruttwell, the printer, wrote a letter saying that two young gentlemen, strangers, one a particularly handsome and pleasing youth, lately from Westminster School, and both literary and intelligent, spoke in high commendation of my volume, and if I recollect right, expressed a desire to have some poems printed in the same type and form. Who these young men were I knew not at the time, but the communication of the circumstance was to me most gratifying; and how much more gratifying, when, from one of them, after he himself had achieved the fame of one of the most virtuous and eloquent of the writers in his generation, I received a first visit at my parsonage in Wiltshire upwards of forty years afterwards! It was ROBERT SOUTHEY. We parted in my garden last year, when stealing time and sorrow had marked his still manly, but most interesting countenance.[5]--Therefore,

TO

ROBERT SOUTHEY,

WHO HAS EXHIBITED IN HIS PROSE WORKS, AS IN HIS LIFE,

THE PURITY AND VIRTUES OF ADDISON AND LOCKE,

AND IN HIS POETRY THE IMAGINATION

AND SOUL OF SPENSER,

THESE POEMS,

WITH EVERY AFFECTIONATE PRAYER, ARE INSCRIBED

BY

HIS SINCERE FRIEND,

WILLIAM LISLE BOWLES.

[2] I confined myself to fourteen lines, because fourteen lines seemed best adapted to unity of sentiment. I thought nothing about the strict Italian model; the verses naturally flowed in unpremeditated harmony, as my ear directed, but the slightest inspection will prove they were far from being mere elegiac couplets. The subjects were chiefly from river scenery, and the reader will recollect what Sir Humphrey Davy has said on this subject so beautifully; it will be recollected, also, that they were published ten years before those of Mr Wordsworth on the river Duddon, Yarrow, _et cet._ There have been many claimants, among modern poets, for the laurel of the sonnet, but, in picturesque description, sentiment, and harmony, I know none superior to those of my friend the Rev. Charles Hoyle, on scenery in Scotland, the mountains of Ben Nevis, Loch Lomond, _et cet._

[3] To account for the present variations, some remained as originally with their natural pauses, others for the press I thought it best to correct into verse less broken, and now, after fifty years, they are recorrected, and restored, I believe, more nearly to the original shape in which they were first meditated.

[4] I hoped by my Sonnets to pay this vast debt.

[5] His companion, Mr Lovel, died in youth.

SONNETS, ETC.

AT TYNEMOUTH PRIORY,[6]

AFTER A TEMPESTUOUS VOYAGE.

As slow I climb the cliff's ascending side, Much musing on the track of terror past, When o'er the dark wave rode the howling blast, Pleased I look back, and view the tranquil tide That laves the pebbled shore: and now the beam Of evening smiles on the gray battlement, And yon forsaken tower that time has rent:-- The lifted oar far off with transient gleam Is touched, and hushed is all the billowy deep! Soothed by the scene, thus on tired Nature's breast A stillness slowly steals, and kindred rest; While sea-sounds lull her, as she sinks to sleep, Like melodies that mourn upon the lyre, Waked by the breeze, and, as they mourn, expire!

[6] The remains of this monastery are situated on a lofty point, on the north side of the entrance into the river Tyne, about a mile and a half below North Shields. The rock on which the monastery stood rendered it visible at sea a long way off, in every direction, whence it presented itself as if exhorting the seamen in danger to make their vows, and promise masses and presents to the Virgin Mary and St Oswin for their deliverance.

BAMBOROUGH CASTLE.[7]

Ye holy Towers that shade the wave-worn steep, Long may ye rear your aged brows sublime, Though, hurrying silent by, relentless Time Assail you, and the winds of winter sweep Round your dark battlements; for far from halls Of Pride, here Charity hath fixed her seat, Oft listening, tearful, when the tempests beat With hollow bodings round your ancient walls; And Pity, at the dark and stormy hour Of midnight, when the moon is hid on high, Keeps her lone watch upon the topmost tower, And turns her ear to each expiring cry; Blessed if her aid some fainting wretch may save, And snatch him cold and speechless from the wave.

[7] This ancient castle, with its extensive domains, heretofore the property of the family of Forster, whose heiress married Lord Crewe, Bishop of Durham, is appropriated by the will of that pious prelate to many benevolent purposes; particularly to that of administering instant relief to such shipwrecked mariners as may happen to be cast upon this dangerous coast; for whose preservation and that of their vessels every possible assistance is contrived, and is at all times ready. The estate is in the hands of trustees appointed under the Bishop's will.

THE RIVER WAINSBECK.[8]

While slowly wanders thy sequestered stream, WAINSBECK, the mossy-scattered rocks among, In fancy's ear making a plaintive song To the dark woods above, that waving seem To bend o'er some enchanted spot, removed From life's vain coil; I listen to the wind, And think I hear meek Sorrow's plaint, reclined O'er the forsaken tomb of him she loved!-- Fair scenes, ye lend a pleasure, long unknown, To him who passes weary on his way;-- Yet recreated here he may delay A while to thank you; and when years have flown, And haunts that charmed his youth he would renew, In the world's crowd he will remember you.

[8] The Wainsbeck is a sequestered river in Northumberland, having on its banks "Our Lady's Chapel," three-quarters of a mile west of Bothal. It has been commemorated by Akenside.

THE TWEED VISITED.

O Tweed! a stranger, that with wandering feet O'er hill and dale has journeyed many a mile, (If so his weary thoughts he might beguile), Delighted turns thy stranger-stream to greet. The waving branches that romantic bend O'er thy tall banks a soothing charm bestow; The murmurs of thy wandering wave below Seem like the converse of some long-lost friend. Delightful stream! though now along thy shore, When spring returns in all her wonted pride, The distant pastoral pipe is heard no more;[9] Yet here while laverocks sing could I abide, Far from the stormy world's contentious roar, To muse upon thy banks at eventide.

[9] Alluding to the simple and affecting pastoral strains for which Scotland has been so long celebrated. I need not mention Lochaber, the Braes of Bellendine, Tweedside, _et cet._

ON LEAVING A VILLAGE IN SCOTLAND.

Clysdale! as thy romantic vales I leave, And bid farewell to each retiring hill, Where musing memory seems to linger still, Tracing the broad bright landscape; much I grieve That, mingled with the toiling crowd, no more I may return your varied views to mark, Of rocks amid the sunshine towering dark, Of rivers winding wild,[10] or mountains hoar, Or castle gleaming on the distant steep!-- Yet many a look back on thy hills I cast, And many a softened image of the past Sadly combine, and bid remembrance keep, To soothe me with fair scenes, and fancies rude, When I pursue my path in solitude.

[10] There is a wildness almost fantastic in the view of the river from Stirling Castle, the course of which is seen for many miles, making a thousand turnings.

EVENING.

Evening! as slow thy placid shades descend, Veiling with gentlest hush the landscape still, The lonely, battlement, the farthest hill And wood, I think of those who have no friend; Who now, perhaps, by melancholy led, From the broad blaze of day, where pleasure flaunts, Retiring, wander to the ring-dove's haunts Unseen; and watch the tints that o'er thy bed Hang lovely; oft to musing Fancy's eye Presenting fairy vales, where the tired mind Might rest beyond the murmurs of mankind, Nor hear the hourly moans of misery! Alas for man! that Hope's fair views the while Should smile like you, and perish as they smile!

TO THE RIVER ITCHIN.[11]