Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB

326

THE WARNING.

-O for a bridle bitted with remorse

To stop your Leaders in their headstrong course!*
Oh may the Almighty scatter with his grace
These mists, and lead you to a safer place,
By paths no human wisdom can foretrace!
May He pour round you, from worlds far above
Man's feverish passions, his pure light of love,
That quietly restores the natural mien

To hope, and makes truth willing to be seen!
Else shall your blood-stained hands in frenzy reap
Fields gaily sown when promises were cheap.―
Why is the Past belied with wicked art,
The Future made to play so false a part,
Among a people famed for strength of mind,
Foremost in freedom, noblest of mankind?
We act as if we joyed in the sad tune
Storms make in rising, valued in the moon

Nought but her changes. Thus, ungrateful Nation:
If thou persist, and, scorning moderation,

Spread for thyself the snares of tribulation,
Whom, then, shall meekness guard?

What saving skill

Lie in forbearance, strength in standing still?

-Soon shall the widow (for the speed of Time

Nought equals when the hours are winged with crime)

Widow, or wife, implore on tremulous knee,

From him who judged her lord, a like decree;

The skies will weep o'er old men desolate :

Ye little-ones! Earth shudders at your fate,
Outcasts and homeless orphans-

But turn, my Soul, and from the sleeping pair
Learn thou the beauty of omniscient care!

* See the Fenwick note prefixed to the poem.-ED.

ON A HIGH PART OF THE COAST OF CUMBERLAND. 327

Be strong in faith, bid anxious thoughts lie still;
Seek for the good and cherish it-the ill

Oppose, or bear with a submissive will.

[blocks in formation]

ON A HIGH PART OF THE COAST OF
CUMBERLAND.

[blocks in formation]

[The lines were composed on the road between Moresby and Whitehaven while I was on a visit to my son, then rector of the former place. This succession of Voluntaries, with the exception of the 8th and 9th, originated in the concluding lines of the last paragraph of this poem. With this coast I have been familiar from my earliest childhood, and remember being struck for the first time by the town and port of Whitehaven and the white waves breaking against its quays and piers, as the whole came into view from the top of the high ground down which the road (it has since been altered) then descended abruptly. My sister, when she first heard the voice of the sea from this point, and beheld the scene before her, burst into tears. Our family then lived at Cockermouth, and this fact was often mentioned among us as indicating the sensibility for which she was so remarkable.]

THE Sun, that seemed so mildly to retire,

Flung back from distant climes a streaming fire,
Whose blaze is now subdued to tender gleams,

328

BY THE SEA-SIDE.

Prelude of night's approach with soothing dreams.
Look round; of all the clouds not one is moving;
'Tis the still hour of thinking, feeling, loving.
Silent, and stedfast as the vaulted sky

The boundless plain of waters seems to lie :-
Comes that low sound from breezes rustling o'er
The grass-crowned headland that conceals the shore?
No; 'tis the earth-voice of the mighty sea,
Whispering how meek and gentle he can be!*

Thou Power supreme! who, arming to rebuke
Offenders, dost put off the gracious look,
And clothe thyself with terrors like the flood
Of ocean roused into his fiercest mood,
Whatever discipline thy Will ordain

For the brief course that must for me remain;
Teach me with quick-eared spirit to rejoice
In admonitions of thy softest voice!

Whate'er the path these mortal feet may trace,

Breathe through my soul the blessing of thy grace,

Glad, through a perfect love, a faith sincere

Drawn from the wisdom that begins with fear,

Glad to expand; and, for a season, free

From finite cares, to rest absorbed in Thee!

[blocks in formation]

THE sun is couched, the sea-fowl gone to rest,

And the wild storm hath somewhere found a nest;

Compare the Elegiac Stanzas, suggested by a Picture of Peele Castle in a Storm (1805), Vol. III., p. 45; also the sonnet (written in 1807), "Two voices are there, one is of the sea," Vol. IV., p. 64; and the second sonnet on the Cave of Staffa, in the poems descriptive of the tour in Scotland in 1833.-ED.

BY THE SEA-SIDE.

Air slumbers-wave with wave no longer strives,
Only a heaving of the deep survives,*
A tell-tale motion! soon will it be laid,
And by the tide alone the water swayed.
Stealthy withdrawings, interminglings mild
Of light with shade in beauty reconciled-
Such is the prospect far as sight can range,
The soothing recompence, the welcome change.
Where now the ships that drove before the blast,
Threatened by angry breakers as they passed;
And by a train of flying clouds bemocked;
Or, in the hollow surge, at anchor rocked
As on a bed of death? Some lodge in peace,
Saved by His care who bade the tempest cease;
And some, too heedless of past danger, court
Fresh gales to waft them to the far-off port;
But near, or hanging sea and sky between,
Not one of all those wingèd powers is seen,
Seen in her course, nor 'mid this quiet heard;
Yet oh! how gladly would the air be stirred
By some acknowledgment of thanks and praise,
Soft in its temper as those vesper lays
Sung to the Virgin while accordant oars
Urge the slow bark along Calabrian shores;
A sea-born service through the mountains felt
Till into one loved vision all things melt:

Or like those hymns that soothe with graver sound
The gulfy coast of Norway iron-bound;
And, from the wide and open Baltic, rise
With punctual care, Lutherian harmonies.
Hush, not a voice is here! but why repine,

[ocr errors][merged small]

329

330

COMPOSED BY THE SEA-SHORE.

Now when the star of eve comes forth to shine
On British waters with that look benign? *
Ye mariners, that plough your onward way,
Or in the haven rest, or sheltering bay,

May silent thanks at least to God be given

With a full heart; our thoughts are heard in heaven!'

COMPOSED BY THE SEA-SHORE.

Comp. 1834.

Pub. 1845.

[These lines were suggested during my residence under my Son's roof at Moresby, on the coast near Whitehaven, at the time when I was composing those verses among the "Evening Voluntaries" that have reference to the sea. It was in that neighbourhood I first became acquainted with the ocean and its appearances and movements. My infancy and early childhood were passed at Cockermouth, about eight miles from the coast, and I well remember that mysterious awe with which I used to listen to anything said about storms and shipwrecks. Sea-shells of many descriptions were common in the town; and I was not a little surprised when I heard that Mr Landort had denounced me as a plagiarist from himself for having described a boy applying a sea-shell to his ear and listening to it for intimations of what was going on in its native element. This I had done myself scores of times, and it was a belief among us that we could know from the sound whether the tide was ebbing or flowing.]

WHAT mischief cleaves to unsubdued regret,
How fancy sickens by vague hopes beset;
How baffled projects on the spirit prey,
And fruitless wishes eat the heart away,
The Sailor knows; he best, whose lot is cast
On the relentless sea that holds him fast
On chance dependent, and the fickle star
Of power, through long and melancholy war.

Compare Robert Browning's Home-thoughts from the Sea-
"While Jove's planet rises yonder, silent over Africa.”

-ED.

+ The passage in Landor's Gebir, Book I., is quoted in a note to fourth book of The Excursion, (see Vol. V., p. 191).-Ed.

« AnteriorContinuar »