Till the cup of rage o'erbrim:
They shall seize him and his brood-
They shall tear him limb from limb!
O thankiess beldames and untrue!
And is this all that you can do
For him, who did so much for you?
Ninety months he, by my troth!
Hath richly cater'd for you both;
And in an hour would you repay
An eight years' work?-Away! away!
I alone am faithful! I
Cling to him everlastingly.
1796.
ILLUSTRATED IN THE STORY OF THE MAD OX.
AN Ox, long fed with musty hay,
And work'd with yoke and chain,
Was turn'd out on an April day,
When fields are in their best array,
And growing grasses sparkle gay,
At once with sun and rain.
The grass was fine, the sun was bright,
With truth I may aver it;
The Ox was glad, as well he might,
Thought a green meadow no bad sight,
And frisk'd to show his huge delight,
Much like a beast of spirit.
• Stop, neighbours! stop! why these alarms? The Ox is only glad.
But still they pour from cots and farms-
Halloo! the parish is up in arms
(A hoaxing hunt has always charms),
Halloo! the Ox is mad.
The frighted beast scamper'd about,
Plunge! through the hedge he drove-
The mob pursue with hideous rout,
A bull-dog fastens on his snout,
He gores the dog, his tongue hangs out-
He's mad, he 's mad, by Jove!
<< Stop, neighbours, stop!» aloud did call A sage of sober hue.
But all at once on him they fall,
And women squeak and children squall, << What! would you have him toss us all !
And, damme! who are you?.
Ah, hapless sage! his ears they stun,
And curse him o'er and o'er-
• You bloody-minded dog! (cries one,) << To slit your windpipe were good fun'Od bl- you for an impious son
Of a presbyterian w-re!
• You 'd have him gore the parish-priest,
And run against the altar-
You Fiend!-The sage his warnings ceased,
And North, and South, and West, and East,
Halloo! they follow the poor beast,
Mat, Dick, Tom, Bob, and Walter.
Old Lewis, 't was his evil day,
Stood trembling in his shoes; The Ox was his-what could he say? His legs were stiffen'd with dismay, The Ox ran o'er him 'mid the fray,
And gave him his death's bruise.
The frighted beast ran on-but here,
The Gospel scarce more true is-
My muse stops short in mid-career-
Nay! gentle reader! do not sneer,
I cannot chuse but drop a tear,
A tear for good old Lewis.
The frighted beast ran through the town,
All follow'd, boy and dad,
Bull-dog, Parson, Shopman, Clown,
The Publicans rush'd from the Crown,
• Halloo! hamstring him! cut him down!»
They drove the poor Ox mad.
Should you a rat to madness teaze,
Why even a rat might plague you:
There's no philosopher but sees
That rage and fear are one disease-
Though that may burn and this may freeze,
They 're both alike the ague.
And so this Ox, in frantic mood,
Faced round like any Bull
The mob turn'd tail, and he pursued,
Till they with fright and fear were stew'd,
And not a chick of all this brood
But had his belly-full.
Old Nick 's astride the beast, 't is clear
Old Nicholas to a tittle!
But all agree, he 'd disappear,
Would but the parson venture near,
And through his teeth, right o'er the steer,
Squirt out some fasting-spittle.1
Achilles was a warrior fleet,
The Trojans he could worry-
Our parson too was swift of feet,
But show'd it chiefly in retreat!
The victor Ox scour'd down the street,
The mob fled hurry-skurry.
Through gardens, lanes, and fields new-plough'd,
Through his hedge and through her hedge,
He plunged, and toss'd, and bellow'd loud,
Till in his madness he grew proud
To see this helter-skelter crowd,
That had more wrath than courage.
According to the superstition of the West Countries, if you meet the Devil, you may either cut him in balf with a straw, or you may cause him instantly to disappear by spitting over his horus.
INTRODUCTION TO THE TALE OF THE DARK LADIE.
The following Poem is intended as the introduction to a somewhat longer one. The use of the old Ballad word Ladie for Lady, is the only piece of obsoleteness in it; and as it is professedly a tale of ancient times, I trust that the affectionate lovers of venerable antiquity (as Camden says) will grant me their pardon, and perhaps may be induced to admit a force and propriety in it. A heavier objection may be adduced against the author, that in these times of fear and expectation, when novelties explode around
us in all directions, he should presume to offer to the public a silly tale of old-fashioned love: and five years ago, I own I should have allowed and felt the force of this objection. But, alas! explosion has succeeded explosion so rapidly, that novelty itself čeases to appear new; and it is possible that now even a simple story, wholly uninspired with politics or personality, may find some attention amid the hubbub of revolutions, as to those who have remained a long time by the falls of Niagara, the lowest whispering becomes distinctly audible.
O LEAVE the lily on its stem;
O leave the rose upon the spray; O leave the elder-bloom, fair maids!
And listen to my lay.
A cypress and a myrtle-bough
This morn around my harp you twined,
Because it fashion'd mournfully
Its murmurs in the wind.
And now a Tale of Love and Woe,
A woeful Tale of Love I sing;
Hark, gentle maidens, hark! it sighs
And trembles on the string.
But most, my own dear Genevieve,
It sighs and trembles most for thee! O come, and hear what cruel wrongs Befel the Dark Ladie.
Few sorrows hath she of her own,
My hope, my joy, my Genevieve!
She loves me best, whene'er I sing
The songs that make her grieve.
All thoughts, all passions, all delights,
Whatever stir this mortal frame,
All are but ministers of Love,
And feed his sacred flame.
Oh! ever in my waking dreams,
I dwell upon that happy hour,
When midway on the mount I sate,
Beside the ruin'd tower.
The moonshine, stealing o'er the scene,
Had blended with the lights of eve;
And she was there, my hope, my joy,
My own dear Genevieve!
She lean'd against the armed man,
The statue of the armed knight;
She stood and listen'd to my harp,
Amid the ling'ring light.
I play'd a sad and doleful air,
I sang an old and moving story-
An old rude song, that fitted well
That ruin wild and hoary.
She listen'd with a flitting blush,
With downcast eyes and modest grace;
For well she knew, I could not chuse
But gaze upon her face.
I told her of the Knight that wore
Upon his shield a burning brand;
And how for ten long years he woo'd
The Ladie of the Land:
I told her how he pined: and ah!
The deep, the low, the pleading tone
With which I sung another's love,
Interpreted my own.
She listen'd with a flitting blush;
With downcast eyes, and modest grace;
And she forgave me, that I gazed,
Too fondly on her face!
But when I told the cruel scorn
That crazed this bold and lovely Knight,
And how he roam'd the mountain-woods,
Nor rested day or night.
And how he cross'd the woodman's paths,
Through briars and swampy mosses beat;
How boughs rebounding scourged his limbs,
And low stubs gored his feet;
That sometimes from the savage den,
And sometimes from the darksome shade,
And sometimes starting up at once
In green and sunny glade;
There came and look'd him in the face
An Angel beautiful and bright;
And how he knew it was a Fiend,
This miserable Knight!
And how, unknowing what he did,
He leapt amid a lawless band,
And saved from outrage worse than death
The Ladie of the Land!
And how she wept, and clasp'd his knees; And how she tended him in vain
And meekly strove to expiate
The scorn that crazed his brain:
And how she nursed him in a cave;
And how his madness went away,
When on the yellow forest-leaves
A dying man he lay;
His dying words-but when I reach'd
That tend'rest strain of all the ditty,
My falt'ring voice and pausing harp
Disturb'd her soul with pity!
All impulses of soul and sense
Had thrill'd my guiltless Genevieve;
The music and the doleful tale,
The rich and balmy eve;
And hopes and fears that kindle hope,
An undistinguishable throng,
And gentle wishes long subdued,
Subdued and cherish'd long!
She wept with pity and delight,
She blush'd with love and maiden-shame
And, like the murmurs of a dream,
I heard her breathe my name.
I saw her bosom heave and swell,
Heave and swell with inward sighs
I could not chuse but love to see
Her gentle bosom rise.
Her wet cheek glow'd: she stept aside,
As conscious of my look she stepp'd;
Then suddenly, with tim'rous eye,
She flew to me and wept.
She half enclosed me with her arms,
She press'd me with a meek embrace;
And bending back her head, look'd up,
And gazed upon my face.
'T was partly love, and partly fear,
And partly 't was a bashful art,
That I might rather feel than see
The swelling of her heart.
I calm'd her fears, and she was calm,
And told her love with virgin pride;
And so I won my Genevieve,
My bright and beauteous bride.
And now once more a tale of woe,
A woeful tale of love I sing:
For thee, my Genevieve! it sighs,
And trembles on the string.
When last I sang the cruel scorn
That crazed this bold and lonely Knight, And how he roam'd the mountain-woods, Nor rested day or night;
I promised thee a sister tale
Of man's perfidious cruelty:
Come, then, and hear what cruel wrong
Befel the Dark Ladie.
LEWTI, OR THE CIRCASSIAN LOVE-CHAUNT.
Ат midnight by the stream I roved,
To forget the form I loved.
Image of Lewti! from my mind
Depart; for Lewti is not kind.
The moon was high, the moonlight gleam
And the shadow of a star
Heaved upon Tamaha's stream;
But the rock shone brighter far,
The rock half shelter'd from my view
By pendant boughs of tressy yew-
So shines my Lewti's forehead fair,
Gleaming through her sable hair.
Image of Lewti! from my mind
Depart; for Lewti is not kind.
I saw a cloud of palest hue,
Onward to the moon it pass'd;
Still brighter and more bright it grew,
With floating colours not a few,
Till it reach'd the moon at last:
Then the cloud was wholly bright
With a rich and amber light!
And so with many a hope I seek
And with such joy I find my Lewti:
And even so my pale wan cheek
Drinks in as deep a flush of beauty! Nay, treacherous image! leave my mind, If Lewti never will be kind.
The little cloud-it floats away,
Away it goes; away so soon?
Alas! it has no power to stay:
Its hues are dim, its hues are grey-
Away it passes from the moon!
How mournfully it seems to fly,
Ever fading more and more,
To joyless regions of the sky-
And now 't is whiter than before!
As white as my poor cheek will be,
When, Lewti! on my couch I lie,
A dying man for love of thee.
Nay, treacherous image! leave my mind-
And yet thou didst not look unkind.
I saw a vapour in the sky, Thin, and white, and very high; I ne'er beheld so thin a cloud: Perhaps the breezes that can fly Now below and now above, Have snatch'd aloft the lawny shroud Of Lady fair-that died for love. For maids, as well as youths, have perish'd From fruitless love too fondly cherish'd. Nay, treacherous image! leave my mindFor Lewti never will be kind.
Hush! my heedless feet from under
Slip the crumbling banks for ever:
Like echoes to a distant thunder,
They plunge into the gentle river.
The river-swans have heard my tread,
And startle from their reedy bed.
O beauteous Birds! methinks ye measure
Your movements to some heavenly tune!
O beauteous Birds! 't is such a pleasure
To see you move beneath the moon,
I would it were your true delight
To sleep by day and wake all night.
I know the place where Lewti lies,
When silent night has closed her eyes:
It is a breezy jasmine-bower,
The nightingale sings o'er her head:
Voice of the Night! had I the power
That leafy labyrinth to thread,
And creep, like thee, with soundless tread,
I then might view her bosom white
Heaving lovely to my sight,
As these two swans together heave
On the gently swelling wave.
Oh! that she saw me in a dream,
And dreamt that I had died for care;
All pale and wasted I would seem,
Yet fair withal, as spirits are!
I'd die indeed, if I might see
Her bosom heave, and heave for me!
Soothe, gentle image! soothe my mind!
To-morrow Lewti may be kind.
THE PICTURE, OR THE LOVER'S RESOLUTION.
THROUGH weeds and thorns, and matted underwood
I force my way; now climb, and now descend
O'er rocks, or bare or mossy, with wild foot
Crushing the purple whorts; while oft unseen,
Hurrying along the drifted forest-leaves,
The scared snake rustles. Onward still I toil,
I know not, ask not whither! A new joy,
Lovely as light, sudden as summer gust,
And gladsome as the first-born of the spring,
Beckons me on, or follows from behind,
Playmate, or guide! The master-passion quell'd,
I feel that I am free. With dun-red bark
The fir-trees, and the unfrequent slender oak,
Forth from this tangle wild of bush and brake
Soar up, and form a melancholy vault
High o'er me, murmuring like a distant sea.
Here Wisdom might resort, and here Remorse;
Here too the love-lorn man who, sick in soul,
And of this busy human heart aweary,
Worships the spirit of unconscious life
In tree or wild-flower.-Gentle Lunatic!
If so he might not wholly cease to be,
He would far rather not be that, he is;
But would be something, that he knows not of,
In winds or waters, or among the rocks!
But hence, fond wretch! breathe not contagion here! No myrtle-walks are these: these are no groves Where Love dare loiter! If in sullen mood He should stray hither, the low stumps shall gore His dainty feet, the briar and the thorn Make his plumes haggard. Like a wounded bird Easily caught, ensnare him, O ye Nymphs, Ye Oreads chaste, ye dusky Dryades! And you, ye Earth-winds! you that make at morn The dew-drops quiver on the spiders' webs! You, O ye wingless Airs! that creep between The rigid stems of heath and bitten furze, Within whose scanty shade, at summer-noon, The mother-sheep hath worn a hollow bedYe, that now cool her fleece with dropless damp, Now pant and murmur with her feeding lamb. Chase, chase him, all ye Fays, and elfin Gnomes! With prickles sharper than his darts bemock His little Godship, making him perforce Creep through a thorn-bush on yon hedgehog's back.
This is my hour of triumph! I can now With my own fancies play the merry fool, And laugh away worse folly, being free. Here will I seat myself, beside this old, Hollow, and weedy oak, which ivy-twine Clothes as with net-work: here will I couch my limbs, Close by this river, in this silent shade, As safe and sacred from the step of man As an invisible world-unheard, unseen, And list'ning only to the pebbly brook That murmurs with a dead, yet tinkling sound; Or to the bees, that in the neighbouring trunk Make honey-hoards. The breeze, that visits me, Was never Love's accomplice, never raised The tendril ringlets from the maiden's brow, And the blue, delicate veins above her cheek; Ne'er play'd the wanton-never half disclosed The maiden's snowy bosom, scattering thence Eye-poisons for some love-distemper'd youth, Who ne'er henceforth may see an aspen-grove
Shiver in sunshine, but his feeble heart Shall flow away like a dissolving thing.
Sweet breeze! thou only, if I guess aright, Liftest the feathers of the robin's breast, That swells its little breast, so full of song, Singing above me, on the mountain-ash. And thou too, desert Stream! no pool of thine, Though clear as lake in latest summer-eve, Did e'er reflect the stately virgin's robe, The face, the form divine, the downcast look Contemplative! Behold! her open palm Presses her cheek and brow! her elbow rests On the bare branch of half-uprooted tree, That leans towards its mirror! Who erewhile
Placeless, as spirits, one soft water-sun
Throbbing within them, Heart at once and Eye!
With its soft neighbourhood of filmy clouds,
The stains and shadings of forgotten tears,
Dimness o'erswum with lustre! Such the hour
Of deep enjoyment, following love's brief feuds;
And hark, the noise of a near waterfall!
I pass forth into light-I find myself
Beneath a weeping birch (most beautiful
Of forest-trees, the Lady of the woods),
Hard by the brink of a tall weedy rock
That overbrows the cataract. How bursts
The landscape on my sight! Two crescent hills
Fold in behind each other, and so make
A circular vale, and land-lock'd, as might seem,
Had from her countenance turn'd, or look'd by stealth With brook and bridge, and grey stone cottages,
(For fear is true love's cruel nurse), he now
With steadfast gaze and unoffending eye,
Worships the watery idol, dreaming hopes
Delicious to the soul, but fleeting, vain,
E'en as that phantom-world on which he gazed,
But not unheeded gazed: for see, ah! see,
The sportive tyrant with her left hand plucks
The heads of tall flowers that behind her grow,
Lychnis, and willow-herb, and fox-glove bells:
And suddenly, as one that toys with time,
Scatters them on the pool! Then all the charm
Is broken-all that phantom-world so fair
Vanishes, and a thousand circlets spread,
And each mis-shapes the other. Stay awhile,
Poor youth, who scarcely darest lift up thine eyes!
The stream will soon renew its smoothness, soon
The visions will return! And lo! he stays:
And soon the fragments dim of lovely forms
Come trembling back, unite, and now once more
The pool becomes a mirror; and behold
Each wild-flower on the marge inverted there,
And there the half-uprooted tree-but where,
O where the virgin's snowy arm, that lean'd
On its bare branch? He turns, and she is gone!
Homeward she steals through many a woodland maze
Which he shall seek in vain. Ill-fated youth!
Go, day by day, and waste thy manly prime
In mad love-yearning by the vacant brook,
Till sickly thoughts bewitch thine eyes, and thou
Behold'st her shadow still abiding there,
The Naiad of the Mirror!
O wild and desert Stream! belongs this tale:
Gloomy and dark art thou-the crowded firs
Spire from thy shores, and stretch across thy bed,
Making thee doleful as a cavern-well :
Save when the shy king-fishers build their nest
On thy steep banks, no loves hast thou, wild stream!
This be my chosen haunt-emancipate
From passion's dreams, a freeman, and alone,
I rise and trace its devious course. O lead,
Lead me to deeper shades and lonelier glooms.
Lo! stealing through the canopy of firs,
How fair the sunshine spots that mossy rock,
Isle of the river, whose disparted waves
Dart off asunder with an angry sound,
How soon to re-unite! And see! they meet,
Each in the other lost and found: and see
Half hid by rocks and fruit-trees. At my feet,
The whortle-berries are bedew'd with spray,
Dash'd upwards by the furious waterfall.
How solemnly the pendent ivy mass
Swings in its winnow: All the air is calm.
The smoke from cottage-chimneys, tinged with light,
Rises in columns; from this house alone,
Close by the waterfall, the column slants,
And feels its ceaseless breeze. But what is this?
That cottage, with its slanting chimney-smoke,
And close beside its porch a sleeping child,
His dear head pillow'd on a sleeping dog-
One arm between its fore-legs, and the hand
Holds loosely its small handful of wild-flowers,
Unfilleted, and of unequal lengths.
A curious picture, with a master's haste
Sketch'd on a strip of pinky-silver skin,
Peel'd from the birchen bark! Divinest maid!
Yon bark her canvas, and those purple berries
Her pencil! See, the juice is scarcely dried
On the fine skin! She has been newly here;
And lo! yon patch of heath has been her couch-
The pressure still remains! O blessed couch!
For this mayst thou flower early, and the Sun,
Slanting at eve, rest bright, and linger long
Upon thy purple bells! O Isabel!
Daughter of genius! stateliest of our maids!
More beautiful than whom Alcæus wooed,
The Lesbian woman of immortal song!
O child of genius! stately, beautiful,
And full of love to all, save only me,
And not ungentle e'en to me! My heart,
Why beats it thus? Through yonder coppice-wood
Needs must the pathway turn, that leads straightway
On to her father's house. She is alone!
The night draws on-such ways are hard to hit-
And fit it is I should restore this sketch,
Dropt unawares, no doubt. Why should I yearn
To keep the relique? 't will but idly feed
The passion that consumes me. Let me haste!
The picture in my hand which she has left,
She cannot blame me that I follow'd her;
And I may be her guide the long wood through.
You loved the daughter of Don Manrique?
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