TH

SONNET

AUTHOR'S VOYAGE DOWN THE RHINE
(THIRTY YEARS AGO)

HE confidence of Youth our only Art,
And Hope gay Pilot of the bold design,
We saw the living Landscapes of the Rhine,
Reach after reach, salute us and depart;
Slow sink the Spires,—and up again they start!
But who shall count the Towers as they recline
O'er the dark steeps, or on the horizon line
Striding, with shattered crests, the eye athwart ?
More touching still, more perfect was the pleasure,
When hurrying forward till the slack'ning stream
Spread like a spacious Mere, we there could measure
A smooth free course along the watery gleam,
Think calmly on the past, and mark at leisure
Features which else had vanished like a dream.

1820 or 1821

CRITICS, RIGHT HONOURABLE BARD...

PROF. KNIGHT (Eversley Wordsworth, vol. vIII. p. 271) writes: "I have found this in a catalogue of Autograph Letters, and have no knowledge of its date, or of the Bard referred to. Solomon Gesner wrote a poem on The Death of Abel, which was translated into English. See footnote to The Prelude, Book vii. 1. 564.' [It is curious that it should have escaped Prof. Knight's notice that the 'right honourable Bard' was Lord Byron, who dedicated his Cain, A Mystery to Sir Walter Scott in 1821.-N. C. S.]

RITICS, right honourable Bard, decree

Laurels to some, a night-shade wreath to thee, Whose muse a sure though late revenge hath ta'en Of harmless Abel's death, by murdering Cain.

ON CAIN, A MYSTERY, Dedicated to SIR WALTER SCOTT:

A GERMAN Haggis from receipt

Of him who cooked the death of Abel,

And sent warm-reeking, rich and sweet,'
From Venice to Sir Walter's table.

COMPOSED WHEN A PROBABILITY EXISTED OF OUR BEING OBLIGED TO QUIT RYDAL MOUNT AS A RESIDENCE

HE doubt to which a wavering hope had clung
Is fled; we must depart, willing or not;
Sky-piercing Hills! must bid farewell to you

And all that ye look down upon with pride,
With tenderness embosom; to your paths;
And pleasant dwellings, to familiar trees
And wild-flowers known as well as if our hands
Had tended them: and O pellucid Spring!
Unheard of, save in one small hamlet, here
Not undistinguished, for of wells that ooze
Or founts that gurgle from yon craggy steep,
Their common sire, thou only bear'st his name.
Insensibly the foretaste of this parting

Hath ruled my steps, and seals me to thy side,
Mindful that thou (ah! wherefore by my Muse
So long unthanked) hast cheered a simple board
With beverage pure as ever fixed the choice
Of hermit, dubious where to scroop his cell;
Which Persian kings might envy; and thy meek
And gentle aspect oft has ministered
To finer uses. They for me must cease;
Days will pass on, the year, if years be given,
Fade, and the moralising mind derive
No lessons from the presence of a Power
By the inconstant nature we inherit
Unmatched in delicate beneficence;
For neither unremitting rains avail

To swell thee into voice; nor longest drought
Thy bounty stints, nor can thy beauty mar,
Beauty not therefore wanting change to stir
The fancy pleased by spectacles unlooked for.

ΙΟ

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Nor yet, perchance, translucent Spring, had tolled The Norman curfew bell when human hands First offered help that the deficient rock Might overarch thee, from pernicious heat Defended, and appropriate to man's need. Such ties will not be severed: but, when we Are gone, what summer loiterer will regard, Inquisitive the countenance, will peruse, Pleased to detect the dimpling stir of life, The breathing faculty with which thou yield'st (Tho' a mere goblet to the careless eye) Boons inexhaustible? Who, hurrying on With a step quickened by November's cold, Shall pause, the skill admiring that can work Upon thy chance-defilements-withered twigs That, lodged within thy crystal depths, seem bright, As if they from a silver tree had fallen

And oaken leaves that, driven by whirling blasts,

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Sunk down, and lay immersed in dead repose
For Time's invisible tooth to prey upon,
Unsightly objects and uncoveted,

Till thou with crystal bead-drops didst encrust
Their skeletons, turned to brilliant ornaments.
But, from thy bosom, should some venturous hand
Abstract those gleaming relics, and uplift them,
However gently, toward the vulgar air,
At once their tender brightness disappears,
Leaving the intermeddler to upbraid
His folly. Thus (I feel it while I speak),
Thus, with the fibres of these thoughts it fares;
And oh! how much, of all that love creates
Or beautifies, like changes undergoes,
Suffers like loss when drawn out of the soul,
Its silent laboratory! Words should say
(Could they depict the marvels of thy cell)
How often I have marked a plumy fern
From the live rock with grace inimitable
Bending its apex toward a paler self
Reflected all in perfect lineaments-
Shadow and substance kissing point to point
In mutual stillness; or, if some faint breeze
Entering the cell gave restlessness to one,
The other, glassed in thy unruffled breast,
Partook of every motion, met, retired,
And met again. Such playful sympathy,
Such delicate caress as in the shape

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Of this green plant had aptly recompensed
For baffled lips and disappointed arms

And hopeless pangs the spirit of that youth,
The fair Narcissus, by some pitying God

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Changed to a crimson flower; when he, whose pride
Provoked a retribution too severe,

!

Had pined; upon his watery duplicate

Wasting that love the nymphs implored in vain.

Thus while my fancy wanders, thou, clear Spring, Moved (shall I say?) like a dear friend who meets A parting moment with her loveliest look,

And seemingly her happiest, look so fair

It frustrates its own purpose, and recalls

The grieved one whom it meant to send away,
Dost tempt me by disclosures exquisite
To linger, bending over thee: for now,

What witchcraft, mild enchantress, may with thee
Compare! thy earthly bed a moment past

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Palpable to sight as the dry ground,
Eludes perception, not by rippling air
Concealed, nor through effect of some impure
Upstirring but, abstracted by a charm
Of my own cunning, earth mysteriously

From under thee hath vanished, and slant beams,
The silent inquest of a western sun,

Assisting, lucid well-spring! thou revealest
Communion without check of herbs and flowers
And the vault's hoary sides to which they cling,
Imaged in downward show; the flower, the herbs,
These not of earthly texture, and the vault
Not there diminutive, but through a scale
Of vision less and less distinct, descending
To gloom imperishable. So (if truths
The highest condescend to be set forth

By processes minute), even so-when thought
Wins help from something greater than herself-
Is the firm basis of habitual sense

Supplanted, not for treacherous vacancy
And blank dissociation from a world
We love, but that the residues of flesh,
Mirrored, yet not too strictly, may refine
To Spirit; for the idealising Soul
Time wears the features of Eternity;
And Nature deepens into Nature's God.

Millions of kneeling Hindoos at this day

Bow to the watery element, adored

In their vast stream, and if an age hath been

(As books and haply votive altars vouch)

When British floods were worshipped, some faint trace
Of that idolatry, through monkish rites
Transmitted far as living memory,

Might wait on thee, a silent monitor,

On thee, bright Spring, a bashful little one,
Yet to the measure of thy promises

True; as the mightiest; upon thee sequestered
For meditation, nor inopportune

For social interest such as I have shared.
Peace to the sober matron who shall dip
Her pitcher here at early dawn, by me
No longer greeted-to the tottering sire,

For whom like service, now and then his choice,
Relieves the tedious holiday of age-

Thoughts raised above the Earth while here he sits
Feeding on sunshine-to the blushing girl

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Who here forgets her errand, nothing loth
To be waylaid by her betrothed, peace
And pleasure sobered down to happiness!

But should these hills be ranged by one whose soul
Scorning love-whispers shrinks from love itself
As Fancy's snare for female vanity,

Here may the aspirant find a trysting-place
For loftier intercourse. The Muses, crowned
With wreaths that have not faded to this hour,
Sprung from high Jove, of sage Mnemosyne
Enamoured, so the fable runs; but they
Certes were self-taught damsels, scattered births
Of many a Grecian vale, who sought not praise, .
And, heedless even of listeners, warbled out
Their own emotions given to mountain air

In notes which mountain echoes would take up
Boldly and bear away to softer life;

Hence deified as sisters they were bound
Together in a never-dying choir;

Who with their Hippocrene and grottoed fount

Of Castaly attest that Woman's heart

Was in the limpid age of this stained world
The most assured seat of [poesy?]

And new-born waters deemed the happiest source
Of inspiration for the conscious lyre.

Lured by the crystal element in times

Stormy and fierce, the Maid of Arc withdrew
From human converse to frequent alone
The Fountain of the Fairies. What to her
Smooth summer dreams, old favours of the place,
Pageant and revels of blithe elves-to her
Whose country groan'd under a foreign scourge?
She pondered murmurs that attuned her ear
For the reception of far other sounds
Than their too happy minstrelsy,—a voice
Reached her with supernatural mandates charged
More awful than the chambers of dark earth
Have virtue to send forth. Upon the marge
Of the benignant fountain, while she stood
Gazing intensely, the translucent lymph
Darkened beneath the shadow of her thoughts
As if swift clouds swept o'er it, or it caught
War's tincture, 'mid the forest green and still,
Turned into blood before her heart-sick eye.
Erelong, forsaking all her natural haunts,

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