Joyous as morning Thou art laughing and scorning; Thou hast a nest for thy love and thy rest, Drunken Lark! thou would'st be loth To be such a traveller as I. Happy, happy Liver, With a soul as strong as a mountain river Alas! my journey, rugged and uneven, I, with my fate contented, will plod on, And hope for higher raptures, when life's day is done.1 Compare this poem with Shelley's Skylark, and with Wordsworth's poem, on the same subject, written in the year 1825. It was placed amongst the "Poems of the Fancy."-ED. [The young man whose death gave occasion to this poem was named Charles Gough, and had come early in the spring to Patterdale for the 1 1827. Joy and jollity be with us both! Hearing thee, or else some other, I on the earth will go plodding on, By myself, cheerfully, till the day is done. What though my course be rugged and uneven, Yet, hearing thee, or others of thy kind, 1807. 1820. sake of angling. While attempting to cross over Helvellyn to Grasmere he slipped from a steep part of the rock where the ice was not thawed, and perished. His body was discovered as described in this poem. Walter Scott heard of the accident, and both he and I, without either of us knowing that the other had taken up the subject, each wrote a poem in admiration of the dog's fidelity. His contains a most beautiful stanza : "How long did'st thou think that his silence was slumber! When the wind waved his garment how oft did'st thou start!" I will add that the sentiment in the last four lines of the last stanza of my verses was uttered by a shepherd with such exactness, that a traveller, who afterwards reported his account in print, was induced to question the man whether he had read them, which he had not.] A BARKING Sound the Shepherd hears, A cry as of a dog or fox; He halts and searches with his eyes And now at distance can discern The Dog is not of mountain breed; Its motions, too, are wild and shy; Nor is there any one in sight All round, in hollow or on height; Nor shout, nor whistle strikes his ear; 1 1820. From which immediately leaps out 1807. 1815. It was a cove, a huge recess, That keeps, till June, December's snow; A silent tarn below! Far in the bosom of Helvellyn, Remote from public road or dwelling, From trace of human foot or hand. There sometimes doth a leaping fish Thither the rainbow comes-the cloud- But that enormous barrier holds it fast.1 Not free from boding thoughts, a while 2 Nor far had gone before he found From those abrupt and perilous rocks He instantly recalled the name, And who he was, and whence he came; On which the Traveller passed this way. But hear a wonder, for whose sake A lasting monument of words This wonder merits well. The Dog, which still was hovering nigh, Repeating the same timid cry, This dog had been through three months' space A dweller in that savage place. Yes, proof was plain that, since the day When this ill-fated Traveller died,2 The Dog had watched about the spot, Or by his master's side: How nourished here through such long time Above all human estimate! Thomas Wilkinson, author of "Tours to the British Mountains, with the Descriptive Poems of Lowther, and Emont Vale”—already referred to in the notes to The Solitary Reaper, and the verses To the Spade of a Friend-alludes to this incident at some length in his poem, Emont Vale. Wilkinson attended the funeral of young Gough, and writes of the incident with feeling, but without inspiration. This poem was classed amongst those of "Sentiment and Reflection."-ED. [This dog I knew well. It belonged to Mrs Wordsworth's brother, Mr Thomas Hutchinson, who then lived at Sockburn-on-the-Tees, a beautiful retired situation, where I used to visit him and his sisters before my marriage. My sister and I spent many months there after my return from Germany in 1799.] ON his morning rounds the Master Four dogs, each pair of different breed, See a hare before him started! Deep the river was, and crusted But the nimble Hare hath trusted To the ice, and safely crost; 1 1836. Hath an instinct what to do. 1807. |