FILIAL PIETY.

The last of their humanity, and scoffed
At providential judgments,1 undismayed

By their own daring. But the People prayed
As with once voice; their flinty heart grew soft
With penitential sorrow, and aloft

Their spirit mounted, crying, "God us aid!
Oh that with aspirations more intense,
Chastised by self-abasement more profound,
This People, once so happy, so renowned
For liberty, would seek from God defence
Against far heavier ill, the pestilence*
Of revolution, impiously unbound!

311

FILIAL PIETY.

(ON THE WAYSIDE BETWEEN PRESTON AND LIVERPOOL.)

[This was also communicated to me by a coachman in the same way In the course of my many coach rambles and journeys, which, during the day-time always, and often in the night, were taken on the outside of the coach, I had good and frequent opportunities of learning the characteristics of this class of men. One remark I made that is worth recording; that whenever I had occasion especially to notice their well-ordered, respectful and kind behaviour to women, of whatever age, I found them, I may say almost always, to be married men.]

UNTOUCHED through all severity of cold;
Inviolate, whate'er the cottage hearth
Might need for comfort, or for festal mirth;
That Pile of Turf is half a century old:

*The fast was appointed because of an outbreak of cholera in England.

-ED.

312

TO B. R. HAYDON.

Yes, Traveller! fifty winters have been told

Since suddenly the dart of death went forth

'Gainst him who raised it,-his last work on earth:
Thence has it, with the Son, so strong a hold
Upon his Father's memory, that his hands,
Through reverence, touch it only to repair1

Its waste. Though crumbling with each breath of air,
In annual renovation thus it stands-

Rude Mausoleum! but wrens nestle there,

And red-breasts warble when sweet sounds are rare.

PICTURE

OF

TO B. R. HAYDON, ON SEEING HIS
NAPOLEON BUONAPARTE ON THE ISLAND OF
ST HELENA.

[This Sonnet, though said to be written on seeing the Portrait of Napoleon, was, in fact, composed some time after, extempore, in the wood at Rydal Mount.]

HAYDON! let worthier judges praise the skill
Here by thy pencil shown in truth of lines
And charm of colours; I applaud those signs
Of thought, that give the true poetic thrill;
That unencumbered whole of blank and still
Sky without cloud-ocean without a wave;
And the one Man that laboured to enslave
The World, sole-standing high on the bare hill-
Back turned, arms folded, the unapparent face
Tinged, we may fancy, in this dreary place
With light reflected from the invisible sun

Set, like his fortunes; but not set for aye

Thence by his Son more prized than aught which gold
Could purchase-watched, preserved by his own hands,
That, faithful to the structure, still repair,

1832.

IF THOU INDEED DERIVE THY LIGHT FROM HEAVEN. 313

Like them. The unguilty Power pursues his way,
And before him doth dawn perpetual run.*

[These verses were written some time after we had become residents at Rydal Mount, and I will take occasion from them to observe upon the beauty of that situation, as being backed and flanked by lofty fells, which bring the heavenly bodies to touch, as it were, the earth upon the mountain-tops, while the prospect in front lies open to a length of level valley, the extended lake, and a terminating ridge of low hills; so that it gives an opportunity to the inhabitants of the place of noticing the stars in both the positions here alluded to, namely, on the tops of the mountains, and as winter-lamps at a distance among the leafless trees.]

IF thou indeed derive thy light from Heaven,

Then, to the measure of that heaven-born light,

Haydon, as he tells us in his Autobiography, received a commission from Sir Robert Peel, in Dec. 1830, “to paint Napoleon musing, the size of life." He finished it in June 1831, and thus described it himself :

"Napoleon was peculiarly alive to poetical association as produced by scenery or sound; village bells with their echoing ding, dong, dang, now bursting full on the ear, now dying in the wind, affected him as they affect everybody alive to natural impressions, and on the eve of all his great battles you find him stealing away in the dead of the night, between the two hosts, and indulging in every species of poetical reverie. It was impossible to think of such a genius in captivity, without mysterious associations of the sky, the sea, the rock, and the solitude with which he was enveloped. I never imagined him but as if musing at dawn, or melancholy at sunset, listening at midnight to the beating and roaring of the Atlantic, or meditating as the stars gazed and the moon shone on him; in short Napoleon never appeared to me but at those seasons of silence and twilight, when nature seems to sympathise with the fallen, and when if there be moments in this turbulent earth fit for celestial intercourse, one must imagine these would be the times immortal spirits might select to descend within the sphere of mortality, to soothe and comfort, to inspire and support the afflicted. Under such impressions the present picture was produced. imagined him standing on the brow of an impending cliff, and musing on his past fortunes, sea-birds screaming at his feet, just down,

I

the sun

the sails of his guard ship glittering on the horizon, and

the Atlantic, calm, silent, awfully deep, and endlessly extensive.”—Life of Benjamin Robert Haydon, Vol. II., pp. 301-2.—Ed.

314 IF THOU INDEED DERIVE THY LIGHT FROM HEAVEN.

Shine, Poet!1 in thy place, and be content:

The stars pre-eminent in magnitude,

And they that from the zenith dart their beams,2

(Visible though they be to half the earth,

Though half a sphere be conscious of their brightness) Are yet of no diviner origin,

No purer essence, than the one that burns,

Like an untended watch-fire on the ridge

Of some dark mountain; or than those which seem
Humbly to hang, like twinkling winter lamps,
Among the branches of the leafless trees.
All are the undying offspring of one Sire:
Then, to the measure of the light vouchsafed,
Shine, Poet in thy place, and be content.*

These lines were first published in 1832; and they found a place in the edition of that year, amongst the "Poems of Sentiment and Reflection." In the edition of 1845 they appeared as a Preface to the entire volume of Poems.-Ed.

1 1837.

Shine, Poet,

from Heaven,

1832.

2 1537.

The Star that from the zenith darts its beams,

1832.

A WREN'S NEST.

315

1833.

The most important of the poems written in 1833 were the Memorials of the Tour undertaken during the summer of that year. They refer to several Cumbrian localities, to the Isle of Man, to the Clyde, the Western Isles of Scotland, and again to Cumberland.

[Written at Rydal Mount. This nest was built, as described, in a tree that grows near the pool in Dora's field, next the Rydal Mount garden.*]

AMONG the dwellings framed by birds

In field or forest with nice care,
Is none that with the little Wren's
In snugness may compare.

No door the tenement requires,

And seldom needs a laboured roof;

Yet is it to the fiercest sun

Impervious, and storm-proof.

So warm, so beautiful withal,

In perfect fitness for its aim,
That to the Kind by special grace
Their instinct surely came.

And when for their abodes they seek

An opportune recess,

The hermit has no finer eye

For shadowy quietness.

* Wrens still build (1884) in the same pollard oak tree, which survives

in "Dora's Field ;" and primroses grow beneath it.—ED.