Shades of the Past, oft noticed with a sigh, Shall stand a votive Tablet, haply free, When towers and temples fall, to speak of Thee! If sculptured emblems of our mortal doom Recall not there the wisdom of the Tomb, Green ivy risen from out the cheerful earth Will fringe the lettered stone; and herbs spring forth, Whose fragrance, by soft dews and rain unbound, Shall penetrate the heart without a wound; While truth and love their purposes fulfil, Commemorating genius, talent, skill, 61 That could not lie concealed where Thou wert known; Thy virtues He must judge, and He alone, The God upon whose mercy they are thrown. XV. WRITTEN AFTER THE DEATH OF CHARLES LAMB. [Composed November, 1835.-Published 1837.] To a good Man of most dear memory This Stone is sacred. Here he lies apart From the great city where he first drew breath, verse sweet With books, or while he ranged the crowded streets With a keen eye, and overflowing heart: So genius triumphed over seeming wrong, And poured out truth in works by thoughtful love 16 Inspired-works potent over smiles and tears. And as round mountain-tops the lightning plays, Thus innocently sported, breaking forth As from a cloud of some grave sympathy, Humour and wild instinctive wit, and all The vivid flashes of his spoken words. 22 From the most gentle creature nursed in fields Had been derived the name he borea name, Wherever Christian altars have been raised, 25 Hallowed to meekness and to innocence; And if in him meekness at times gave way, Provoked out of herself by troubles strange, Many and strange, that hung about his life; Still, at the centre of his being, lodged 30 Was reared and taught; and humbly O, he was good, if e'er a good Man lived! To the strict labours of the merchant's From a reflecting mind and sorrowing desk Those simple lines flowed with an earnest Had been no Paradise; and earth were wish, 40 Though but a doubting hope, that they A waste where creatures bearing human Yet, haply, on the printed page received, The imperfect record, there, may stand unblamed As long as verse of mine shall breathe the air Of memory, or see the light of love. now Enriching and adorning. Unto thee, Not so enriched, not so adorned, to thee Was given (say rather thou of later birth Wert given to her) a Sister-'tis a word Timidly uttered, for she lives, the meek, The self-restraining, and the ever-kind; 81 In whom thy reason and intelligent heart And from the mountains, to thy rural Found-for all interests, hopes, and tender Thou wert a scorner of the fields, my 50 But more in show than truth; and from the fields, Transported, my soothed spirit hovers o'er All softening, humanising, hallowing Its green untrodden turf, and blowing flowers; And taking up a voice shall speak (tho' still 55 Awed by the theme's peculiar sanctity Which words less free presumed not even to touch) powers, Whether withheld, or for her sake unsought More than sufficient recompense! 85 Her love (What weakness prompts the voice to tell it here?) Of that fraternal love, whose heaven-lit Was as the love of mothers; and when lamp years, From infancy, through manhood, to the Lifting the boy to man's estate, had called last Of threescore years, and to thy latest hour, 60 Burnt on with ever-strengthening light, enshrined Within thy bosom. "Wonderful" hath been The love established between man and man, "Passing the love of women;" and between Man and his help-mate in fast wedlock joined Such were they-such thro' life they might have been 65 Through God, is raised a spirit and soul of love Without whose blissful influence Paradise Yet, thro' all visitations and all trials, In union, in partition only such; 100 Still they were faithful; like two vessels Along a bare and open valley, On which with thee, O Crabbe! forthLike London with its own black wreath, looking, 31 35 I gazed from Hampstead's breezy heath. 1 See Note, p. 926. 40 The earth, and every common sight, Apparelled in celestial light, Turn wheresoe'er I may, By night or day, II. The Rainbow comes and goes, Ic The Moon doth with delight Look round her when the heavens are The things which I have seen I now can That there hath past away a glory from III. Now, while the birds thus sing a joyous And while the young lambs bound 20 A single Field which I have looked upon, The Pansy at my feet Doth the same tale repeat: 55 To me alone there came a thought of Where is it now, the glory and the dream? grief: A timely utterance gave that thought relief, And I again am strong: The cataracts blow their trumpets from the steep; 25 No more shall grief of mine the season wrong; V. ore 11 stime Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting: I hear the Echoes through the mountains But trailing clouds of glory do we come throng, The Winds come to me from the fields of Heaven lies about us in our infancy! sleep, And all the earth is gay; Give themselves up to jollity, Thou Child of Joy, 30 But He beholds the light, and whence it Shout round me, let me hear thy shouts, thou happy Shepherd-boy! IV. 35 Ye blessed Creatures, I have heard the call Ye to each other make; I see The heavens laugh with you in your Yearnings she hath in her own natural And the Babe leaps up on his Mother's A six years' Darling of a pigmy size! See, where 'mid work of his own hand he lies, arm: I hear, I hear, with joy I hear! 50 |