Shame that our laws at distance still protect1
Enormities, which they at home reject!

'Slaves cannot breathe in England'-yet that boast
Is but a mockery! when 2 from coast to coast,
Though fettered slave be none, her floors and soil
Groan underneath a weight of slavish toil,

For the poor Many, measured out by rules
Fetched with cupidity from heartless schools,
That to an Idol, falsely called 'the Wealth
Of Nations,' * sacrifice a People's health,
Body and mind and soul; a thirst so keen
Is ever urging on the vast machine

Of sleepless Labour, 'mid whose dizzy wheels

The Power least prized is that which thinks and feels.

Then, for the pastimes of this delicate age,
And all the heavy or light vassalage
Which for their sakes we fasten, as may suit
Our varying moods, on human kind or brute,
"Twere well in little, as in great, to pause,
Lest Fancy trifle with eternal laws.
Not from his fellows only man may learn
Rights to compare and duties to discern !
All creatures and all objects, in degree,
Are friends and patrons of humanity.

#

Compare The Prelude, Book XIII. (Vol. III., p. 378)—

HUMANITY.

There are to whom the1 garden, grove, and field,
Perpetual lessons of forbearance yield;
Who would not lightly violate the grace
The lowliest flower possesses in its place;
Nor shorten the sweet life, too fugitive,

Which nothing less than Infinite Power could give.

*

217

[This Lawn is the

sloping one approaching the kitchen-garden, and was made out of it. Hundreds of times have I watched the dancing of shadows amid a press of sunshine, and other beautiful appearances of light and shade, flowers and shrubs. What a contrast between this and the cabbages and onions and carrots that used to grow there on a piece of ugly-shaped unsightly ground! No reflection, however, either upon cabbages or onions; the latter we know were worshipped by the Egyptians, and he must have a poor eye for beauty who has not observed how much of it there is in the form and colour which cabbages and plants of that genus exhibit through the various stages of their growth and decay. A richer display of colour in vegetable nature can scarcely be conceived than Coleridge, my sister, and I saw in a bed of potato-plants in blossom near a hut upon the moor between Inversneyd and Loch Katrine.* These blossoms were of such extraordinary beauty and richness that no one could have passed them without notice. But the sense must be cultivated through the mind

1 1837.

*

There are to whom even

eternal laws.

1835.

-ED.

* Compare the closing lines of the Ode on Immortality— "To me the meanest flower that blows can give Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears. * In 1803, Miss Wordsworth thus records it :- "We passed by one patch of potatoes that a florist might have been proud of; no carnation-bed ever looked more gay than this square plot of ground on the waste common. The flowers were in very large bunches, and of an extraordinary size, and of every conceivable shade of colouring from snow-white to deep purple. It was pleasing in that place, where perhaps was never yet a flower cultivated by man for his own pleasure, to see these blossoms grow more gladly than elsewhere, making a summer garden near the mountain dwellings."-(Recollections of a Tour made in Scotland in 1803, p. 84).— Ed.

218

THIS LAWN, A CARPET ALL ALIVE.

before we can perceive these inexhaustible treasures of Nature, for such they really are, without the least necessary reference to the utility of her productions, or even to the land, whereupon, as we learn by research, they are dependent. Some are of opinion that the habit of analysing, decomposing, and anatomising, is inevitably unfavourable to the perception of beauty. People are led into this mistake by overlooking the fact that such processes being to a certain extent within the reach of a limited intellect, we are apt to ascribe to them that insensibility of which they are in truth the effect and not the cause. Admiration and love, to which all knowledge truly vital must tend, are felt by men of real genius in proportion as their discoveries in natural Philosophy are enlarged; and the beauty in form of a plant or an animal is not made less but more apparent as a whole by more accurate insight into its constituent properties and powers. A Savant who is not also a poet in soul and a religionist in heart is a feeble and unhappy creature.]

THIS Lawn, a carpet all alive

With shadows flung from leaves-to strive
In dance, amid a press

Of sunshine, an apt emblem yields

Of Worldlings revelling in the fields.
Of strenuous idleness;

Less quick the stir when tide and breeze
Encounter, and to narrow seas

Forbid a moment's rest;

The medley less when boreal Lights
Glance to and fro, like aery Sprites
To feats of arms addrest!

Yet, spite of all this eager strife,
This ceaseless play, the genuine life
That serves the stedfast hours
Is in the grass beneath, that grows
Unheeded, and the mute repose

Of sweetly-breathing flowers.

FLATTERED with promise of escape

From every hurtful blast,

Spring takes, O sprightly May! thy shape;
Her loveliest and her last.*

Less fair is summer riding high
In fierce solstitial power,
Less fair than when a lenient sky
Brings on her parting hour.

When earth repays with golden sheaves
The labours of the plough,

And ripening fruits and forest leaves
All brighten on the bough;

What pensive beauty autumn shows,
Before she hears the sound

Of winter rushing in, to close

The emblematic round!

Such be our Spring, our Summer such;

So may our Autumn blend

With hoary Winter, and Life touch,

Through heaven-born hope, her end!

Compare Ode, composed on May morning, 1826 (p. 141); also To May, 1826 (p. 143).-Ed.

220

A GRAVESTONE IN WORCESTER CATHEDRAL.

A GRAVE-STONE UPON THE FLOOR IN THE CLOISTERS OF WORCESTER CATHEDRAL.

["Miserrimus." Many conjectures have been formed as to the person who lies under this stone. Nothing appears to be known for a certainty. Query-The Rev. Mr Morris, a non-conformist, a sufferer for conscience-sake; a worthy man who, having been deprived of his benefice after the accession of William III., lived to an old age in extreme destitution, on the alms of charitable Jacobites.]

"MISERRIMUS!" and neither name nor date,

Prayer, text, or symbol, graven upon the stone; †
Nought but that word assigned to the unknown,
That solitary word-to separate

From all, and cast a cloud around the fate

Of him who lies beneath. Most wretched one,

Who chose his epitaph ?-Himself alone
Could thus have dared the grave to agitate,
And claim, among the dead, this awful crown;
Nor doubt that He marked also for his own
Close to these cloistral steps a burial-place,
That every foot might fall with heavier tread,
Trampling upon his vileness. Stranger, pass
Softly!-To save the contrite, Jesus bled.

This, and the following sonnet on the tradition of Oker Hill, were first published in The Keepsake in 1829.-ED.

+ This stone is in the cloisters of Worcester Cathedral, at the northwest corner of the quadrangle, just below the doorway leading into the nave of the cathedral. It is a small stone, two feet, by one and a half. The Reverend Thomas Maurice (or Morris), refused to take the oath of allegiance at the Revolution Settlement, and was accordingly deprived of his benefice. He was a canon of Claims.-ED.