_Night like a
drunkard
reels_: Compare Romeo and Juliet, Act II.
Golden Treasury
O, Wind,
If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?
P. B. SHELLEY.
276. NATURE AND THE POET.
_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:
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.
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 illusion of my heart,
Such picture would I at that time have made;
And seen the soul of truth in every part,
A steadfast peace that might not be betray'd.
So once it would have been,--'tis so no more
I have submitted to a new control:
A power is gone, which nothing can restore;
A deep distress hath humanised 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.
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.
O '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,
--Cased in the unfeeling armour of old time--
The lightning, the fierce wind, and trampling waves.
Farewell, farewell the heart that lives alone,
Housed 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 cheer,
And frequent sights of what is to be borne!
Such sights, or worse, as are before me here:
Not without hope we suffer and we mourn.
W. WORDSWORTH.
277. THE POET'S DREAM.
On a Poet's lips I slept
Dreaming like a love-adept
In the sound his breathing kept;
Nor seeks nor finds he mortal blisses,
But feeds on the aerial kisses
Of shapes that haunt Thought's wildernesses.
He will watch from dawn to gloom
The lake-reflected sun illume
The yellow bees in the ivy-bloom,
Nor heed nor see, what things they be--
But from these create he can
Forms more real than living Man,
Nurslings of immortality!
P. B. SHELLEY.
278.
The World is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;
Little we see in Nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!
This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon,
The winds that will be howling at all hours
And are up-gather'd now like sleeping flowers,
For this, for everything, we are out of tune;
It moves us not. --Great God! I'd rather be
A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn,--
So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,
Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;
Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;
Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn.
W. WORDSWORTH.
279. WITHIN KING'S COLLEGE CHAPEL, CAMBRIDGE.
Tax not the royal Saint with vain expense,
With ill-match'd aims the Architect who plann'd
(Albeit labouring for a scanty band
Of white-robed Scholars only) this immense
And glorious work of fine intelligence!
--Give all thou canst; high Heaven rejects the lore
Of nicely-calculated less or more:--
So deem'd the man who fashion'd for the sense
These lofty pillars, spread that branching roof
Self-poised, and scoop'd into ten thousand cells
Where light and shade repose, where music dwells
Lingering and wandering on as loth to die--
Like thoughts whose very sweetness yieldeth proof
That they were born for immortality.
W. WORDSWORTH.
280. YOUTH AND AGE.
Verse, a breeze 'mid blossoms straying,
Where Hope clung feeding, like a bee--
Both were mine! Life went a-maying
With Nature, Hope, and Poesy,
When I was young!
When I was young? --Ah, woeful when!
Ah! for the change 'twixt Now and Then!
This breathing house not built with hands,
This body that does me grievous wrong,
O'er aery cliffs and glittering sands
How lightly then it flash'd along:
Like those trim skiffs, unknown of yore,
On winding lakes and rivers wide,
That ask no aid of sail or oar,
That fear no spite of wind or tide!
Nought cared this body for wind or weather
When Youth and I lived in't together.
Flowers are lovely; Love is flower-like;
Friendship is a sheltering tree;
O! the joys, that came down shower-like,
Of Friendship, Love, and Liberty,
Ere I was old!
Ere I was old? Ah woeful Ere,
Which tells me, Youth's no longer here!
O Youth! for years so many and sweet
'Tis known that Thou and I were one,
I'll think it but a fond conceit--
It cannot be, that Thou art gone!
Thy vesper-bell hath not yet toll'd:--
And thou wert aye a masker bold!
What strange disguise hast now put on
To make believe that thou art gone?
I see these locks in silvery slips,
This drooping gait, this alter'd size:
But Springtide blossoms on thy lips,
And tears take sunshine from thine eyes!
Life is but Thought: so think I will
That Youth and I are housemates still.
Dew-drops are the gems of morning,
But the tears of mournful eve!
Where no hope is, life's a warning
That only serves to make us grieve
When we are old:
--That only serves to make us grieve
With oft and tedious taking-leave,
Like some poor nigh-related guest
That may not rudely be dismist,
Yet hath out-stay'd his welcome while,
And tells the jest without a smile.
S. T. COLERIDGE.
281. THE TWO APRIL MORNINGS.
We walk'd along, while bright and red
Uprose the morning sun;
And Matthew stopp'd, 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 travel'd 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 colours, 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, stopp'd 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 seem'd,--than till that day
I e'er had loved before.
"And, turning from her grave, I met,
Beside the church-yard 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 seem'd 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 in his hand.
W. WORDSWORTH.
282. THE FOUNTAIN.
_A Conversation. _
We talk'd with open heart, and tongue
Affectionate and true,
A pair of friends, though I was young,
And Matthew seventy-two.
We lay beneath a spreading oak,
Beside a mossy seat;
And from the turf a fountain broke
And gurgled at our feet.
"Now, Matthew! " said I "let us match
This water's pleasant tune
With some old border song, or catch
That suits a summer's noon.
"Or of the church-clock and the chimes
Sing here beneath the shade
That half-mad thing of witty rhymes
Which you last April made! "
In silence Matthew lay, and eyed
The spring beneath the tree;
And thus the dear old man replied,
The gray-hair'd man of glee:
"No check, no stay, this Streamlet fears,
How merrily it goes!
'Twill murmur on a thousand years
And flow as now it flows.
"And here, on this delightful day
I cannot choose but think
How oft, a vigorous man, I lay
Beside this fountain's brink.
"My eyes are dim with childish tears,
My heart is idly stirr'd,
For the same sound is in my ears
Which in those days I heard.
"Thus fares it still in our decay:
And yet the wiser mind
Mourns less for what Age takes away,
Than what it leaves behind.
"The blackbird amid leafy trees--
The lark above the hill,
Let loose their carols when they please,
Are quiet when they will.
"With Nature never do they wage
A foolish strife; they see
A happy youth, and their old age
Is beautiful and free:
"But we are press'd by heavy laws;
And often, glad no more,
We wear a face of joy, because
We have been glad of yore.
"If there be one who need bemoan
His kindred laid in earth,
The household hearts that were his own,--
It is the man of mirth.
"My days, my friend, are almost gone,
My life has been approved,
And many love me; but by none
Am I enough beloved. "
"Now both himself and me he wrongs,
The man who thus complains!
I live and sing my idle songs
Upon these happy plains:
"And Matthew, for thy children dead
I'll be a son to thee! "
At this he grasp'd my hand and said,
"Alas! that cannot be. "
We rose up from the fountain-side;
And down the smooth descent
Of the green sheep-track did we glide
And through the wood we went;
And, ere we came to Leonard's Rock,
He sang those witty rhymes
About the crazy old church-clock,
And the bewilder'd chimes.
W. WORDSWORTH.
283. THE RIVER OF LIFE.
The more we live, more brief appear
Our life's succeeding stages:
A day to childhood seems a year,
And years like passing ages.
The gladsome current of our youth
Ere passion yet disorders,
Steals lingering like a river smooth
Along its grassy borders.
But as the careworn cheek grows wan,
And sorrow's shafts fly thicker,
Ye Stars, that measure life to man,
Why seem your courses quicker?
When joys have lost their bloom and breath
And life itself is vapid,
Why, as we reach the Falls of Death,
Feel we its tide more rapid?
It may be strange--yet who would change
Time's course to lower speeding,
When one by one our friends have gone
And left our bosoms bleeding?
Heaven gives our years of fading strength
Indemnifying fleetness;
And those of youth, a seeming length,
Proportion'd to their sweetness.
T. CAMPBELL.
284. THE HUMAN SEASONS.
Four Seasons fill the measure of the year;
There are four seasons in the mind of Man:
He has his lusty Spring, when fancy clear
Takes in all beauty with an easy span:
He has his summer, when luxuriously
Spring's honey'd cud of youthful thought he loves
To ruminate, and by such dreaming high
Is nearest unto heaven: quiet coves
His soul has in its Autumn, when his wings
He furleth close; contented so to look
On mists in idleness--to let fair things
Pass by unheeded as a threshold brook:--
He has his Winter too of pale misfeature,
Or else he would forego his mortal nature.
J. KEATS.
285. A LAMENT.
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--O 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--O never more!
P. B. SHELLEY.
286.
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:
I could wish my days to be
Bound each to each by natural piety.
W. WORDSWORTH.
287. ODE ON INTIMATIONS OF IMMORTALITY FROM RECOLLECTIONS OF
EARLY CHILDHOOD.
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 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 pass'd 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 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
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,
The fulness of your bliss, I feel--I feel it all.
O evil day! if I were sullen
While Earth herself is adorning
This sweet May morning,
And the children are pulling
On every side
In a thousand valleys 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!
--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
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 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"
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!
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,
Blank misgivings of a creature
Moving about in worlds not realised,
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 endeavour
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 for ever taken from my sight,
Though nothing can bring back the hour
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 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 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
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.
W. WORDSWORTH.
288.
Music, when soft voices die,
Vibrates in the memory--
Odours, when sweet violets sicken,
Live within the sense they quicken.
Rose leaves, when the rose is dead,
Are heap'd for the beloved's bed;
And so thy thoughts, when Thou art gone,
Love itself shall slumber on.
P. B. SHELLEY.
PALGRAVE'S NOTES.
Poem 2.
_Rouse Memnon's mother_: Awaken the Dawn from the dark Earth and the
clouds where she is resting. Aurora in the old mythology is mother of
Memnon (the East), and wife of Tithonus (the appearances of Earth and
Sky during the last hours of Night). She leaves him every morning in
renewed youth, to prepare the way for Phoebus (the Sun), whilst Tithonus
remains in perpetual old age and grayness.
_by Peneus' streams_: Phoebus loved the Nymph Daphne whom he met by the
river Peneus in the vale of Tempe. This legend expressed the attachment
of the Laurel (Daphne) to the Sun, under whose heat the tree both fades
and flourishes. It has been thought worth while to explain these
allusions, because they illustrate the character of the Grecian
Mythology, which arose in the Personification of natural phenomena, and
was totally free from those debasing and ludicrous ideas with which,
through Roman and later misunderstanding or perversion, it has been
associated.
_Amphion's lyre_: He was said to have built the walls of Thebes to the
sound of his music.
_Night like a drunkard reels_: Compare Romeo and Juliet, Act II. Scene
3: "The gray-eyed morn smiles," etc. --It should be added that three
lines, which appeared hopelessly misprinted, have been omitted in this
Poem.
Poem 4.
_Time's chest_: in which he is figuratively supposed to lay up past
treasures. So in Troilus, Act III. Scene 3, "Time hath a wallet at his
back," etc.
Poem 5.
A fine example of the high-wrought and conventional Elizabethan
Pastoralism, which it would be ludicrous to criticise on the ground of
the unshepherdlike or unreal character of some images suggested. Stanza
6 was probably inserted by Izaak Walton.
Poem 9.
This Poem, with 25 and 94, is taken from Davison's "Rhapsody," first
published in 1602. One stanza has been here omitted, in accordance with
the principle noticed in the Preface. Similar omissions occur in 45, 87,
100, 128, 160, 165, 227, 235. The more serious abbreviation by which it
has been attempted to bring Crashaw's "Wishes" and Shelley's "Euganean
Hills" within the limits of lyrical unity, is commended with much
diffidence to the judgment of readers acquainted with the original
pieces.
_Presence_ in line 12 is here conjecturally printed for _present_. A
very few similar corrections of (it is presumed) misprints have been
made:--as _thy_ for _my_, 22, line 9: _men_ for _me_, 41, line 3: _viol_
for _idol_, 252, line 43, and _one_ for _our_, line 90: _locks_ for
_looks_, 271, line 5: _dome_ for _doom_, 275, line 25:--with two or
three more less important.
Poem 15.
This charming little poem, truly "old and plain, and dallying with the
innocence of love" like that spoken of in Twelfth Night, is taken with
5, 17, 20, 34, and 40, from the most characteristic collection of
Elizabeth's reign, "England's Helicon," first published in 1600.
Poem 16.
Readers who have visited Italy will be reminded of more than one picture
by this gorgeous Vision of Beauty, equally sublime and pure in its
Paradisaical naturalness. Lodge wrote it on a voyage to "the Islands of
Terceras and the Canaries"; and he seems to have caught, in those
southern seas, no small portion of the qualities which marked the almost
contemporary Art of Venice,--the glory and the glow of Veronese, or
Titian, or Tintoret, when he most resembles Titian, and all but
surpasses him.
_The clear_: is the crystalline or outermost heaven of the old
cosmography. For _resembling_ other copies give _refining_: the correct
reading is perhaps _revealing_.
_For a fair there's fairer none_: If you desire a Beauty, there is none
more beautiful than Rosaline.
Poem 18.
_that fair thou owest_: that beauty thou ownest.
Poem 23.
_the star Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken_:
apparently, Whose stellar influence is uncalculated, although his
angular altitude from the plane of the astrolabe or artificial horizon
used by astrologers has been determined.
Poem 27.
_keel_: skim.
Poem 29.
_expense_: waste.
Poem 30.
_Nativity once in the main of light_: when a star has risen and entered
on the full stream of light;--another of the astrological phrases no
longer familiar.
_Crooked eclipses_: as coming athwart the Sun's apparent course.
Wordsworth, thinking probably of the "Venus" and the "Lucrece," said
finely of Shakespeare "Shakespeare _could_ not have written an Epic; he
would have died of plethora of thought. " This prodigality of nature is
exemplified equally in his Sonnets. The copious selection here given
(which from the wealth of the material, required greater consideration
than any other portion of the Editor's task) contains many that will not
be fully felt and understood without some earnestness of thought on the
reader's part. But he is not likely to regret the labour.
Poem 31.
_upon misprision growing_: either, granted in error, or, on the growth
of contempt.
Poem 32.
With the tone of this Sonnet compare Hamlet's "Give me that man That is
not passion's slave," etc. Shakespeare's writings show the deepest
sensitiveness to passion:--hence the attraction he felt in the
contrasting effects of apathy.
Poem 33.
_grame_: sorrow. It was long before English Poetry returned to the
charming simplicity of this and a few other poems by Wyat.
Poem 34.
Pandion in the ancient fable was father to Philomela.
Poem 38.
_ramage_: confused noise.
Poem 39.
_censures_: judges.
Poem 40.
By its style this beautiful example of old simplicity and feeling may be
referred to the early years of Elizabeth. _Late forgot_: lately.
Poem 41.
_haggards_: the least tameable hawks.
Poem 44.
_cypres_ or cyprus,--used by the old writers for _crape_: whether from
the French _crespe_ or from the Island whence it was imported. Its
accidental similarity in spelling to _cypress_ has, here and in Milton's
Penseroso, probably confused readers.
Poems 46, 47.
"I never saw anything like this funeral dirge," says Charles Lamb,
"except the ditty which reminds Ferdinand of his drowned father in the
Tempest. As that is of the water, watery; so this is of the earth,
earthy. Both have that intenseness of feeling, which seems to resolve
itself into the element which it contemplates. "
Poem 51.
_crystal_: fairness.
Poem 53.
This "Spousal Verse" was written in honour of the Ladies Elizabeth and
Katherine Somerset. Although beautiful, it is inferior to the
"Epithalamion" on Spenser's own marriage,--omitted with great reluctance
as not in harmony with modern manners.
_feateously_: elegantly.
_shend_: put out.
_a noble peer_: Robert Devereux, second Lord Essex, then at the height
of his brief triumph after taking Cadiz: hence the allusion following to
the Pillars of Hercules, placed near Gades by ancient legend.
_Eliza_: Elizabeth; _twins of Jove_: the stars Castor and Pollux;
_baldric_: belt, the zodiac.
Poem 57.
A fine example of a peculiar class of Poetry;--that written by
thoughtful men who practised this Art but little. Wotton's, 72, is
another. Jeremy Taylor, Bishop Berkeley, Dr. Johnson, Lord Macaulay,
have left similar specimens.
Poem 62.
_whist_: hushed; _Pan_: used here for the Lord of all; _Lars and
Lemures_: household Gods and spirits of relations dead; _Flamens_: Roman
priests; _That twice-batter'd god_: Dagon.
_Osiris_, the Egyptian god of Agriculture (here, perhaps by confusion
with Apis, figured as a Bull), was torn to pieces by Typho and embalmed
after death in a sacred chest. This myth, reproduced in Syria and Greece
in the legends of Thammuz, Adonis, and perhaps Absyrtus, represents the
annual death of the Sun or the Year under the influences of the winter
darkness. Horus, the son of Osiris, as the New Year, in his turn
overcomes Typho. --It suited the genius of Milton's time to regard this
primaeval poetry and philosophy of the seasons, which has a further
reference to the contest of Good and Evil in Creation, as a malignant
idolatry. Shelley's Chorus in _Hellas_, "Worlds on worlds," treats the
subject in a larger and sweeter spirit.
_unshower'd grass_: as watered by the Nile only.
Poem 64.
_The Late Massacre_: the Vaudois persecution, carried on in 1655 by the
Duke of Savoy. This "collect in verse," as it has been justly named, is
the most mighty Sonnet in any language known to the Editor. Readers
should observe that, unlike our sonnets of the sixteenth century, it is
constructed , on the original Italian or Provencal model,--unquestionably
far superior to the imperfect form employed by Shakespeare and Drummond.
Poem 65.
Cromwell returned from Ireland in 1650. Hence the prophecies, not
strictly fulfilled, of his deference to the Parliament, in stanzas
21-24.
This Ode, beyond doubt one of the finest in our language, and more in
Milton's style than has been reached by any other poet, is occasionally
obscure from imitation of the condensed Latin syntax. The meaning of st.
5 is "rivalry or hostility are the same to a lofty spirit, and
limitation more hateful than opposition. " The allusion in st. 11 is to
the old physical doctrines of the non-existence of a vacuum and the
impenetrability of matter:--in st. 17 to the omen traditionally
connected with the foundation of the Capitol at Rome. The ancient belief
that certain years in life complete natural periods and are hence
peculiarly exposed to death, is introduced in stanza 26 by the word
_climacteric_.
Poem 66.
_Lycidas_. The person lamented is Milton's college friend Edward King,
drowned in 1637 whilst crossing from Chester to Ireland.
Strict Pastoral Poetry was first written or perfected by the Dorian
Greeks settled in Sicily: but the conventional use of it, exhibited more
magnificently in _Lycidas_ than in any other pastoral, is apparently of
Roman origin. Milton, employing the noble freedom of a great artist, has
here united ancient mythology, with what may be called the modern
mythology of Camus and Saint Peter,--to direct Christian images. --The
metrical structure of this glorious poem is partly derived from Italian
models.
_Sisters of the sacred well_: the Muses, said to frequent the fountain
Helicon on Mount Parnassus.
_Mona_: Anglesea, called by the Welsh Inis Dowil or the Dark Island,
from its dense forests.
_Deva_: the Dee: a river which probably derived its magical character
from Celtic traditions: it was long the boundary of Briton and
Saxon. --These places are introduced, as being near the scene of the
shipwreck.
_Orpheus_ was torn to pieces by Thracian women; _Amaryllis_ and _Neaera_
names used here for the love idols of poets: as _Damoetas_ previously
for a shepherd.
_the blind Fury_: Atropos, fabled to cut the thread of life.
_Arethuse_ and _Mincius_: Sicilian and Italian waters here alluded to as
synonymous with the pastoral poetry of Theocritus and Virgil.
_oat_: pipe, used here like Collins' _oaten stop_, No. 146, for _Song_.
_Hippotades_: Aeolus, god of the Winds. _Panope_ a Nereid. The names of
local deities in the Hellenic mythology express generally some feature
in the natural landscape, which the Greeks studied and analysed with
their usual unequalled insight and feeling. Panope represents the
boundlessness of the ocean-horizon when seen from a height, as compared
with a limited horizon of the land in hilly countries such as Greece or
Asia Minor.
_Camus_: the Cam; put for King's University.
_The sanguine flower_: the Hyacinth of the ancients; probably our Iris.
_The pilot_: Saint Peter, figuratively introduced as the head of the
Church on earth, to foretell "the ruin of our corrupted clergy, then in
their heighth" under Laud's primacy.
_the wolf_: Popery.
_Alpheus_: a stream in Southern Greece, supposed to flow underseas to
meet the Arethuse.
_Swart star_: the Dogstar, called swarthy because its heliacal rising in
ancient times occurred soon after mid-summer.
_moist vows_: either tearful prayers, or prayers for one at sea.
_Bellerus_: a giant, apparently created here by Milton to personify
Bellerium, the ancient title of the Land's End.
_The great Vision_:--The story was that the Archangel Michael had
appeared on the rock by Marazion in Mount's Bay which bears his name.
Milton calls on him to turn his eyes from the south homeward, and to
pity Lycidas, if his body has drifted into the troubled waters of the
Land's End. Finisterre being the land due south of Marazion, two places
in that district (then by our trade with Corunna probably less
unfamiliar to English ears), are named,--_Namancos_ now Mujio in
Galicia, _Bayona_ north of the Minho, or, perhaps a fortified rock (one
of the _Cies_ Islands) not unlike St. Michael's Mount, at the entrance
of Vigo Bay.
_ore_: rays of golden light. _Doric lay_: Sicilian, pastoral.
Poem 70.
_The assault_: was an attack on London expected in 1642, when the troops
of Charles I. reached Brentford. "Written on his door" was in the
original title of this sonnet. Milton was then living in Aldersgate
Street.
_Emathian Conqueror_: When Thebes was destroyed (B. C. 335) and the
citizens massacred by thousands, Alexander ordered the house of Pindar
to be spared. He was as incapable of appreciating the Poet as Lewis XIV.
of appreciating Racine: but even the narrow and barbarian mind of
Alexander could understand the advantage of a showy act of homage to
Poetry.
_the repeated air \Of sad Electra's poet_: Amongst Plutarch's vague
stories, he says that when the Spartan confederacy in 404 B. C. took
Athens, a proposal to demolish it was rejected through the effect
produced on the commanders by hearing part of a chorus from the Electra
of Euripides sung at a feast. There is however no apparent congruity
between the lines quoted (167, 8 Ed. Dindorf) and the result ascribed to
them.
Poem 73.
This high-toned and lovely Madrigal is quite in the style, and worthy
of, the "pure Simonides. "
Poem 75.
Vaughan's beautiful though quaint verses should be compared with
Wordsworth's great Ode, No. 287.
Poem 76.
_Favonius_: the spring wind.
Poem 77.
_Themis_: the goddess of justice. Skinner was grandson by his mother to
Sir E. Coke;--hence, as pointed out by Mr. Keightley, Milton's allusion
to the _bench_.
_what the Swede intends, and what the French_: Sweden was then at war
with Poland, and France with the Spanish Netherlands.
Poem 79.
_Sydneian showers_: either in allusion to the conversations in the
"Arcadia," or to Sidney himself as a model of "gentleness" in spirit and
demeanour.
Poem 84.
_Elizabeth of Bohemia_: Daughter to James I. , and ancestor to Sophia of
Hanover. These lines are a fine specimen of gallant and courtly
compliment.
Poem 85.
Lady M. Ley was daughter to Sir J. Ley, afterwards Earl of Marlborough,
who died March, 1628-9, coincidently with the dissolution of the third
Parliament of Charles's reign. Hence Milton poetically compares his
death to that of the Orator Isocrates of Athens, after Philip's victory
in 328 B. C.
Poems 92, 93.
These are quite a Painter's poems.
Poem 99.
_From Prison_: to which his active support of Charles I. twice brought
the high-spirited writer.
Poem 105.
Inserted in Book II. as written in the character of a Soldier of Fortune
in the Seventeenth Century.
Poem 106.
_Waly waly_: an exclamation of sorrow, the root and the pronunciation of
which are preserved in the word _caterwaul_. _Brae_: hillside; _burn_:
brook; _busk_: adorn. _Saint Anton's Well_: at the foot of Arthur's Seat
by Edinburgh. _Cramasie_: crimson.
Poem 107.
_burd_: maiden.
Poem 108.
_corbies_: crows; _fail_: turf; _hause_: neck; _theek_: thatch.
If not in their origin, in their present form this and the two preceding
poems appear due to the Seventeenth Century, and have therefore been
placed in Book II.
Poem 111.
The remark quoted in the note to No. 47 applies equally to these truly
wonderful verses, which, like "Lycidas," may be regarded as a test of
any reader's insight into the most poetical aspects of Poetry. The
general differences between them are vast: but in imaginative intensity
Marvell and Shelley are closely related. This poem is printed as a
translation in Marvell's works: but the original Latin is obviously his
own. The most striking verses in it, here quoted as the book is rare,
answer more or less to stanzas 2 and 6:
Alma Quies, teneo te! et te, germana Quietis, Simplicitas! vos ergo diu
per templa, per urbes Quaesivi, regum perque alta palatia, frustra: Sed
vos hortorum per opaca silentia, longe Celarunt plantae virides, et
concolor umbra.
If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?
P. B. SHELLEY.
276. NATURE AND THE POET.
_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:
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.
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 illusion of my heart,
Such picture would I at that time have made;
And seen the soul of truth in every part,
A steadfast peace that might not be betray'd.
So once it would have been,--'tis so no more
I have submitted to a new control:
A power is gone, which nothing can restore;
A deep distress hath humanised 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.
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.
O '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,
--Cased in the unfeeling armour of old time--
The lightning, the fierce wind, and trampling waves.
Farewell, farewell the heart that lives alone,
Housed 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 cheer,
And frequent sights of what is to be borne!
Such sights, or worse, as are before me here:
Not without hope we suffer and we mourn.
W. WORDSWORTH.
277. THE POET'S DREAM.
On a Poet's lips I slept
Dreaming like a love-adept
In the sound his breathing kept;
Nor seeks nor finds he mortal blisses,
But feeds on the aerial kisses
Of shapes that haunt Thought's wildernesses.
He will watch from dawn to gloom
The lake-reflected sun illume
The yellow bees in the ivy-bloom,
Nor heed nor see, what things they be--
But from these create he can
Forms more real than living Man,
Nurslings of immortality!
P. B. SHELLEY.
278.
The World is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;
Little we see in Nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!
This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon,
The winds that will be howling at all hours
And are up-gather'd now like sleeping flowers,
For this, for everything, we are out of tune;
It moves us not. --Great God! I'd rather be
A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn,--
So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,
Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;
Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;
Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn.
W. WORDSWORTH.
279. WITHIN KING'S COLLEGE CHAPEL, CAMBRIDGE.
Tax not the royal Saint with vain expense,
With ill-match'd aims the Architect who plann'd
(Albeit labouring for a scanty band
Of white-robed Scholars only) this immense
And glorious work of fine intelligence!
--Give all thou canst; high Heaven rejects the lore
Of nicely-calculated less or more:--
So deem'd the man who fashion'd for the sense
These lofty pillars, spread that branching roof
Self-poised, and scoop'd into ten thousand cells
Where light and shade repose, where music dwells
Lingering and wandering on as loth to die--
Like thoughts whose very sweetness yieldeth proof
That they were born for immortality.
W. WORDSWORTH.
280. YOUTH AND AGE.
Verse, a breeze 'mid blossoms straying,
Where Hope clung feeding, like a bee--
Both were mine! Life went a-maying
With Nature, Hope, and Poesy,
When I was young!
When I was young? --Ah, woeful when!
Ah! for the change 'twixt Now and Then!
This breathing house not built with hands,
This body that does me grievous wrong,
O'er aery cliffs and glittering sands
How lightly then it flash'd along:
Like those trim skiffs, unknown of yore,
On winding lakes and rivers wide,
That ask no aid of sail or oar,
That fear no spite of wind or tide!
Nought cared this body for wind or weather
When Youth and I lived in't together.
Flowers are lovely; Love is flower-like;
Friendship is a sheltering tree;
O! the joys, that came down shower-like,
Of Friendship, Love, and Liberty,
Ere I was old!
Ere I was old? Ah woeful Ere,
Which tells me, Youth's no longer here!
O Youth! for years so many and sweet
'Tis known that Thou and I were one,
I'll think it but a fond conceit--
It cannot be, that Thou art gone!
Thy vesper-bell hath not yet toll'd:--
And thou wert aye a masker bold!
What strange disguise hast now put on
To make believe that thou art gone?
I see these locks in silvery slips,
This drooping gait, this alter'd size:
But Springtide blossoms on thy lips,
And tears take sunshine from thine eyes!
Life is but Thought: so think I will
That Youth and I are housemates still.
Dew-drops are the gems of morning,
But the tears of mournful eve!
Where no hope is, life's a warning
That only serves to make us grieve
When we are old:
--That only serves to make us grieve
With oft and tedious taking-leave,
Like some poor nigh-related guest
That may not rudely be dismist,
Yet hath out-stay'd his welcome while,
And tells the jest without a smile.
S. T. COLERIDGE.
281. THE TWO APRIL MORNINGS.
We walk'd along, while bright and red
Uprose the morning sun;
And Matthew stopp'd, 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 travel'd 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 colours, 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, stopp'd 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 seem'd,--than till that day
I e'er had loved before.
"And, turning from her grave, I met,
Beside the church-yard 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 seem'd 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 in his hand.
W. WORDSWORTH.
282. THE FOUNTAIN.
_A Conversation. _
We talk'd with open heart, and tongue
Affectionate and true,
A pair of friends, though I was young,
And Matthew seventy-two.
We lay beneath a spreading oak,
Beside a mossy seat;
And from the turf a fountain broke
And gurgled at our feet.
"Now, Matthew! " said I "let us match
This water's pleasant tune
With some old border song, or catch
That suits a summer's noon.
"Or of the church-clock and the chimes
Sing here beneath the shade
That half-mad thing of witty rhymes
Which you last April made! "
In silence Matthew lay, and eyed
The spring beneath the tree;
And thus the dear old man replied,
The gray-hair'd man of glee:
"No check, no stay, this Streamlet fears,
How merrily it goes!
'Twill murmur on a thousand years
And flow as now it flows.
"And here, on this delightful day
I cannot choose but think
How oft, a vigorous man, I lay
Beside this fountain's brink.
"My eyes are dim with childish tears,
My heart is idly stirr'd,
For the same sound is in my ears
Which in those days I heard.
"Thus fares it still in our decay:
And yet the wiser mind
Mourns less for what Age takes away,
Than what it leaves behind.
"The blackbird amid leafy trees--
The lark above the hill,
Let loose their carols when they please,
Are quiet when they will.
"With Nature never do they wage
A foolish strife; they see
A happy youth, and their old age
Is beautiful and free:
"But we are press'd by heavy laws;
And often, glad no more,
We wear a face of joy, because
We have been glad of yore.
"If there be one who need bemoan
His kindred laid in earth,
The household hearts that were his own,--
It is the man of mirth.
"My days, my friend, are almost gone,
My life has been approved,
And many love me; but by none
Am I enough beloved. "
"Now both himself and me he wrongs,
The man who thus complains!
I live and sing my idle songs
Upon these happy plains:
"And Matthew, for thy children dead
I'll be a son to thee! "
At this he grasp'd my hand and said,
"Alas! that cannot be. "
We rose up from the fountain-side;
And down the smooth descent
Of the green sheep-track did we glide
And through the wood we went;
And, ere we came to Leonard's Rock,
He sang those witty rhymes
About the crazy old church-clock,
And the bewilder'd chimes.
W. WORDSWORTH.
283. THE RIVER OF LIFE.
The more we live, more brief appear
Our life's succeeding stages:
A day to childhood seems a year,
And years like passing ages.
The gladsome current of our youth
Ere passion yet disorders,
Steals lingering like a river smooth
Along its grassy borders.
But as the careworn cheek grows wan,
And sorrow's shafts fly thicker,
Ye Stars, that measure life to man,
Why seem your courses quicker?
When joys have lost their bloom and breath
And life itself is vapid,
Why, as we reach the Falls of Death,
Feel we its tide more rapid?
It may be strange--yet who would change
Time's course to lower speeding,
When one by one our friends have gone
And left our bosoms bleeding?
Heaven gives our years of fading strength
Indemnifying fleetness;
And those of youth, a seeming length,
Proportion'd to their sweetness.
T. CAMPBELL.
284. THE HUMAN SEASONS.
Four Seasons fill the measure of the year;
There are four seasons in the mind of Man:
He has his lusty Spring, when fancy clear
Takes in all beauty with an easy span:
He has his summer, when luxuriously
Spring's honey'd cud of youthful thought he loves
To ruminate, and by such dreaming high
Is nearest unto heaven: quiet coves
His soul has in its Autumn, when his wings
He furleth close; contented so to look
On mists in idleness--to let fair things
Pass by unheeded as a threshold brook:--
He has his Winter too of pale misfeature,
Or else he would forego his mortal nature.
J. KEATS.
285. A LAMENT.
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--O 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--O never more!
P. B. SHELLEY.
286.
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:
I could wish my days to be
Bound each to each by natural piety.
W. WORDSWORTH.
287. ODE ON INTIMATIONS OF IMMORTALITY FROM RECOLLECTIONS OF
EARLY CHILDHOOD.
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 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 pass'd 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 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
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,
The fulness of your bliss, I feel--I feel it all.
O evil day! if I were sullen
While Earth herself is adorning
This sweet May morning,
And the children are pulling
On every side
In a thousand valleys 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!
--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
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 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"
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!
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,
Blank misgivings of a creature
Moving about in worlds not realised,
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 endeavour
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 for ever taken from my sight,
Though nothing can bring back the hour
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 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 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
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.
W. WORDSWORTH.
288.
Music, when soft voices die,
Vibrates in the memory--
Odours, when sweet violets sicken,
Live within the sense they quicken.
Rose leaves, when the rose is dead,
Are heap'd for the beloved's bed;
And so thy thoughts, when Thou art gone,
Love itself shall slumber on.
P. B. SHELLEY.
PALGRAVE'S NOTES.
Poem 2.
_Rouse Memnon's mother_: Awaken the Dawn from the dark Earth and the
clouds where she is resting. Aurora in the old mythology is mother of
Memnon (the East), and wife of Tithonus (the appearances of Earth and
Sky during the last hours of Night). She leaves him every morning in
renewed youth, to prepare the way for Phoebus (the Sun), whilst Tithonus
remains in perpetual old age and grayness.
_by Peneus' streams_: Phoebus loved the Nymph Daphne whom he met by the
river Peneus in the vale of Tempe. This legend expressed the attachment
of the Laurel (Daphne) to the Sun, under whose heat the tree both fades
and flourishes. It has been thought worth while to explain these
allusions, because they illustrate the character of the Grecian
Mythology, which arose in the Personification of natural phenomena, and
was totally free from those debasing and ludicrous ideas with which,
through Roman and later misunderstanding or perversion, it has been
associated.
_Amphion's lyre_: He was said to have built the walls of Thebes to the
sound of his music.
_Night like a drunkard reels_: Compare Romeo and Juliet, Act II. Scene
3: "The gray-eyed morn smiles," etc. --It should be added that three
lines, which appeared hopelessly misprinted, have been omitted in this
Poem.
Poem 4.
_Time's chest_: in which he is figuratively supposed to lay up past
treasures. So in Troilus, Act III. Scene 3, "Time hath a wallet at his
back," etc.
Poem 5.
A fine example of the high-wrought and conventional Elizabethan
Pastoralism, which it would be ludicrous to criticise on the ground of
the unshepherdlike or unreal character of some images suggested. Stanza
6 was probably inserted by Izaak Walton.
Poem 9.
This Poem, with 25 and 94, is taken from Davison's "Rhapsody," first
published in 1602. One stanza has been here omitted, in accordance with
the principle noticed in the Preface. Similar omissions occur in 45, 87,
100, 128, 160, 165, 227, 235. The more serious abbreviation by which it
has been attempted to bring Crashaw's "Wishes" and Shelley's "Euganean
Hills" within the limits of lyrical unity, is commended with much
diffidence to the judgment of readers acquainted with the original
pieces.
_Presence_ in line 12 is here conjecturally printed for _present_. A
very few similar corrections of (it is presumed) misprints have been
made:--as _thy_ for _my_, 22, line 9: _men_ for _me_, 41, line 3: _viol_
for _idol_, 252, line 43, and _one_ for _our_, line 90: _locks_ for
_looks_, 271, line 5: _dome_ for _doom_, 275, line 25:--with two or
three more less important.
Poem 15.
This charming little poem, truly "old and plain, and dallying with the
innocence of love" like that spoken of in Twelfth Night, is taken with
5, 17, 20, 34, and 40, from the most characteristic collection of
Elizabeth's reign, "England's Helicon," first published in 1600.
Poem 16.
Readers who have visited Italy will be reminded of more than one picture
by this gorgeous Vision of Beauty, equally sublime and pure in its
Paradisaical naturalness. Lodge wrote it on a voyage to "the Islands of
Terceras and the Canaries"; and he seems to have caught, in those
southern seas, no small portion of the qualities which marked the almost
contemporary Art of Venice,--the glory and the glow of Veronese, or
Titian, or Tintoret, when he most resembles Titian, and all but
surpasses him.
_The clear_: is the crystalline or outermost heaven of the old
cosmography. For _resembling_ other copies give _refining_: the correct
reading is perhaps _revealing_.
_For a fair there's fairer none_: If you desire a Beauty, there is none
more beautiful than Rosaline.
Poem 18.
_that fair thou owest_: that beauty thou ownest.
Poem 23.
_the star Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken_:
apparently, Whose stellar influence is uncalculated, although his
angular altitude from the plane of the astrolabe or artificial horizon
used by astrologers has been determined.
Poem 27.
_keel_: skim.
Poem 29.
_expense_: waste.
Poem 30.
_Nativity once in the main of light_: when a star has risen and entered
on the full stream of light;--another of the astrological phrases no
longer familiar.
_Crooked eclipses_: as coming athwart the Sun's apparent course.
Wordsworth, thinking probably of the "Venus" and the "Lucrece," said
finely of Shakespeare "Shakespeare _could_ not have written an Epic; he
would have died of plethora of thought. " This prodigality of nature is
exemplified equally in his Sonnets. The copious selection here given
(which from the wealth of the material, required greater consideration
than any other portion of the Editor's task) contains many that will not
be fully felt and understood without some earnestness of thought on the
reader's part. But he is not likely to regret the labour.
Poem 31.
_upon misprision growing_: either, granted in error, or, on the growth
of contempt.
Poem 32.
With the tone of this Sonnet compare Hamlet's "Give me that man That is
not passion's slave," etc. Shakespeare's writings show the deepest
sensitiveness to passion:--hence the attraction he felt in the
contrasting effects of apathy.
Poem 33.
_grame_: sorrow. It was long before English Poetry returned to the
charming simplicity of this and a few other poems by Wyat.
Poem 34.
Pandion in the ancient fable was father to Philomela.
Poem 38.
_ramage_: confused noise.
Poem 39.
_censures_: judges.
Poem 40.
By its style this beautiful example of old simplicity and feeling may be
referred to the early years of Elizabeth. _Late forgot_: lately.
Poem 41.
_haggards_: the least tameable hawks.
Poem 44.
_cypres_ or cyprus,--used by the old writers for _crape_: whether from
the French _crespe_ or from the Island whence it was imported. Its
accidental similarity in spelling to _cypress_ has, here and in Milton's
Penseroso, probably confused readers.
Poems 46, 47.
"I never saw anything like this funeral dirge," says Charles Lamb,
"except the ditty which reminds Ferdinand of his drowned father in the
Tempest. As that is of the water, watery; so this is of the earth,
earthy. Both have that intenseness of feeling, which seems to resolve
itself into the element which it contemplates. "
Poem 51.
_crystal_: fairness.
Poem 53.
This "Spousal Verse" was written in honour of the Ladies Elizabeth and
Katherine Somerset. Although beautiful, it is inferior to the
"Epithalamion" on Spenser's own marriage,--omitted with great reluctance
as not in harmony with modern manners.
_feateously_: elegantly.
_shend_: put out.
_a noble peer_: Robert Devereux, second Lord Essex, then at the height
of his brief triumph after taking Cadiz: hence the allusion following to
the Pillars of Hercules, placed near Gades by ancient legend.
_Eliza_: Elizabeth; _twins of Jove_: the stars Castor and Pollux;
_baldric_: belt, the zodiac.
Poem 57.
A fine example of a peculiar class of Poetry;--that written by
thoughtful men who practised this Art but little. Wotton's, 72, is
another. Jeremy Taylor, Bishop Berkeley, Dr. Johnson, Lord Macaulay,
have left similar specimens.
Poem 62.
_whist_: hushed; _Pan_: used here for the Lord of all; _Lars and
Lemures_: household Gods and spirits of relations dead; _Flamens_: Roman
priests; _That twice-batter'd god_: Dagon.
_Osiris_, the Egyptian god of Agriculture (here, perhaps by confusion
with Apis, figured as a Bull), was torn to pieces by Typho and embalmed
after death in a sacred chest. This myth, reproduced in Syria and Greece
in the legends of Thammuz, Adonis, and perhaps Absyrtus, represents the
annual death of the Sun or the Year under the influences of the winter
darkness. Horus, the son of Osiris, as the New Year, in his turn
overcomes Typho. --It suited the genius of Milton's time to regard this
primaeval poetry and philosophy of the seasons, which has a further
reference to the contest of Good and Evil in Creation, as a malignant
idolatry. Shelley's Chorus in _Hellas_, "Worlds on worlds," treats the
subject in a larger and sweeter spirit.
_unshower'd grass_: as watered by the Nile only.
Poem 64.
_The Late Massacre_: the Vaudois persecution, carried on in 1655 by the
Duke of Savoy. This "collect in verse," as it has been justly named, is
the most mighty Sonnet in any language known to the Editor. Readers
should observe that, unlike our sonnets of the sixteenth century, it is
constructed , on the original Italian or Provencal model,--unquestionably
far superior to the imperfect form employed by Shakespeare and Drummond.
Poem 65.
Cromwell returned from Ireland in 1650. Hence the prophecies, not
strictly fulfilled, of his deference to the Parliament, in stanzas
21-24.
This Ode, beyond doubt one of the finest in our language, and more in
Milton's style than has been reached by any other poet, is occasionally
obscure from imitation of the condensed Latin syntax. The meaning of st.
5 is "rivalry or hostility are the same to a lofty spirit, and
limitation more hateful than opposition. " The allusion in st. 11 is to
the old physical doctrines of the non-existence of a vacuum and the
impenetrability of matter:--in st. 17 to the omen traditionally
connected with the foundation of the Capitol at Rome. The ancient belief
that certain years in life complete natural periods and are hence
peculiarly exposed to death, is introduced in stanza 26 by the word
_climacteric_.
Poem 66.
_Lycidas_. The person lamented is Milton's college friend Edward King,
drowned in 1637 whilst crossing from Chester to Ireland.
Strict Pastoral Poetry was first written or perfected by the Dorian
Greeks settled in Sicily: but the conventional use of it, exhibited more
magnificently in _Lycidas_ than in any other pastoral, is apparently of
Roman origin. Milton, employing the noble freedom of a great artist, has
here united ancient mythology, with what may be called the modern
mythology of Camus and Saint Peter,--to direct Christian images. --The
metrical structure of this glorious poem is partly derived from Italian
models.
_Sisters of the sacred well_: the Muses, said to frequent the fountain
Helicon on Mount Parnassus.
_Mona_: Anglesea, called by the Welsh Inis Dowil or the Dark Island,
from its dense forests.
_Deva_: the Dee: a river which probably derived its magical character
from Celtic traditions: it was long the boundary of Briton and
Saxon. --These places are introduced, as being near the scene of the
shipwreck.
_Orpheus_ was torn to pieces by Thracian women; _Amaryllis_ and _Neaera_
names used here for the love idols of poets: as _Damoetas_ previously
for a shepherd.
_the blind Fury_: Atropos, fabled to cut the thread of life.
_Arethuse_ and _Mincius_: Sicilian and Italian waters here alluded to as
synonymous with the pastoral poetry of Theocritus and Virgil.
_oat_: pipe, used here like Collins' _oaten stop_, No. 146, for _Song_.
_Hippotades_: Aeolus, god of the Winds. _Panope_ a Nereid. The names of
local deities in the Hellenic mythology express generally some feature
in the natural landscape, which the Greeks studied and analysed with
their usual unequalled insight and feeling. Panope represents the
boundlessness of the ocean-horizon when seen from a height, as compared
with a limited horizon of the land in hilly countries such as Greece or
Asia Minor.
_Camus_: the Cam; put for King's University.
_The sanguine flower_: the Hyacinth of the ancients; probably our Iris.
_The pilot_: Saint Peter, figuratively introduced as the head of the
Church on earth, to foretell "the ruin of our corrupted clergy, then in
their heighth" under Laud's primacy.
_the wolf_: Popery.
_Alpheus_: a stream in Southern Greece, supposed to flow underseas to
meet the Arethuse.
_Swart star_: the Dogstar, called swarthy because its heliacal rising in
ancient times occurred soon after mid-summer.
_moist vows_: either tearful prayers, or prayers for one at sea.
_Bellerus_: a giant, apparently created here by Milton to personify
Bellerium, the ancient title of the Land's End.
_The great Vision_:--The story was that the Archangel Michael had
appeared on the rock by Marazion in Mount's Bay which bears his name.
Milton calls on him to turn his eyes from the south homeward, and to
pity Lycidas, if his body has drifted into the troubled waters of the
Land's End. Finisterre being the land due south of Marazion, two places
in that district (then by our trade with Corunna probably less
unfamiliar to English ears), are named,--_Namancos_ now Mujio in
Galicia, _Bayona_ north of the Minho, or, perhaps a fortified rock (one
of the _Cies_ Islands) not unlike St. Michael's Mount, at the entrance
of Vigo Bay.
_ore_: rays of golden light. _Doric lay_: Sicilian, pastoral.
Poem 70.
_The assault_: was an attack on London expected in 1642, when the troops
of Charles I. reached Brentford. "Written on his door" was in the
original title of this sonnet. Milton was then living in Aldersgate
Street.
_Emathian Conqueror_: When Thebes was destroyed (B. C. 335) and the
citizens massacred by thousands, Alexander ordered the house of Pindar
to be spared. He was as incapable of appreciating the Poet as Lewis XIV.
of appreciating Racine: but even the narrow and barbarian mind of
Alexander could understand the advantage of a showy act of homage to
Poetry.
_the repeated air \Of sad Electra's poet_: Amongst Plutarch's vague
stories, he says that when the Spartan confederacy in 404 B. C. took
Athens, a proposal to demolish it was rejected through the effect
produced on the commanders by hearing part of a chorus from the Electra
of Euripides sung at a feast. There is however no apparent congruity
between the lines quoted (167, 8 Ed. Dindorf) and the result ascribed to
them.
Poem 73.
This high-toned and lovely Madrigal is quite in the style, and worthy
of, the "pure Simonides. "
Poem 75.
Vaughan's beautiful though quaint verses should be compared with
Wordsworth's great Ode, No. 287.
Poem 76.
_Favonius_: the spring wind.
Poem 77.
_Themis_: the goddess of justice. Skinner was grandson by his mother to
Sir E. Coke;--hence, as pointed out by Mr. Keightley, Milton's allusion
to the _bench_.
_what the Swede intends, and what the French_: Sweden was then at war
with Poland, and France with the Spanish Netherlands.
Poem 79.
_Sydneian showers_: either in allusion to the conversations in the
"Arcadia," or to Sidney himself as a model of "gentleness" in spirit and
demeanour.
Poem 84.
_Elizabeth of Bohemia_: Daughter to James I. , and ancestor to Sophia of
Hanover. These lines are a fine specimen of gallant and courtly
compliment.
Poem 85.
Lady M. Ley was daughter to Sir J. Ley, afterwards Earl of Marlborough,
who died March, 1628-9, coincidently with the dissolution of the third
Parliament of Charles's reign. Hence Milton poetically compares his
death to that of the Orator Isocrates of Athens, after Philip's victory
in 328 B. C.
Poems 92, 93.
These are quite a Painter's poems.
Poem 99.
_From Prison_: to which his active support of Charles I. twice brought
the high-spirited writer.
Poem 105.
Inserted in Book II. as written in the character of a Soldier of Fortune
in the Seventeenth Century.
Poem 106.
_Waly waly_: an exclamation of sorrow, the root and the pronunciation of
which are preserved in the word _caterwaul_. _Brae_: hillside; _burn_:
brook; _busk_: adorn. _Saint Anton's Well_: at the foot of Arthur's Seat
by Edinburgh. _Cramasie_: crimson.
Poem 107.
_burd_: maiden.
Poem 108.
_corbies_: crows; _fail_: turf; _hause_: neck; _theek_: thatch.
If not in their origin, in their present form this and the two preceding
poems appear due to the Seventeenth Century, and have therefore been
placed in Book II.
Poem 111.
The remark quoted in the note to No. 47 applies equally to these truly
wonderful verses, which, like "Lycidas," may be regarded as a test of
any reader's insight into the most poetical aspects of Poetry. The
general differences between them are vast: but in imaginative intensity
Marvell and Shelley are closely related. This poem is printed as a
translation in Marvell's works: but the original Latin is obviously his
own. The most striking verses in it, here quoted as the book is rare,
answer more or less to stanzas 2 and 6:
Alma Quies, teneo te! et te, germana Quietis, Simplicitas! vos ergo diu
per templa, per urbes Quaesivi, regum perque alta palatia, frustra: Sed
vos hortorum per opaca silentia, longe Celarunt plantae virides, et
concolor umbra.
