Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB

Invisible, the long procession moves
Luminous or gloomy, welcome to the vale
Which they are entering, welcome to mine eye
That sees them, to my soul that owns in them,
And in the bosom of the firmament

O'er which they move, wherein they are contained,
A type of her capacious self and all

Her restless progeny.

A humble walk

Here is my body doomed to tread, this path,
A little hoary line and faintly traced,*
Work, shall we call it, of the shepherd's foot
Or of his flock?-joint vestige of them both.
I pace it unrepining, for my thoughts
Admit no bondage and my words have wings.
Where is the Orphean lyre, or Druid harp,
To accompany the verse? The mountain blast.
Shall be our hand of music; he shall sweep
The rocks, and quivering trees, and billowy lake,
And search the fibres of the caves, and they
Shall answer, for our song is of the Clouds,
And the wind loves them; and the gentle gales--
Which by their aid re-clothe the naked lawn
With annual verdure, and revive the woods,
And moisten the parched lips of thirsty flowers-
Love them; and every idle breeze of air
Bends to the favourite burthen. Moon and stars
Keep their most solemn vigils when the Clouds
Watch also, shifting peaceably their place
Like bands of ministering Spirits, or when they lie,
As if some Protean art the change had wrought,
In listless quiet o'er the ethereal deep

Compare

"A hoary pathway traced between the trees," in the Poems on the Naming of Places (1805).—ED.

*

Scattered, a Cyclades of various shapes

And all degrees of beauty.

O ye Lightnings!

Ye are their perilous offspring; † and the Sun-
Source inexhaustible of life and joy,

And type of man's far-darting reason, therefore
In old time worshipped as the god of verse,
A blazing intellectual deity-

Loves his own glory in their looks, and showers
Upon that unsubstantial brotherhood

Visions with all but beatific light

Enriched-too transient were they not renewed
From age to age, and did not, while we gaze
In silent rapture, credulous desire

Nourish the hope that memory lacks not power
To keep the treasure unimpaired.
Vain thought!

Yet why repine, created as we are

For joy and rest, albeit to find them only
Lodged in the bosom of eternal things?

[ocr errors]

AIREY-FORCE VALLEY.

Pub. 1842.

NOT a breath of air

Ruffles the bosom of this leafy glen.

From the brook's margin, wide around, the trees
Are stedfast as the rocks; the brook itself,

Old as the hills that feed it from afar,

Doth rather deepen than disturb the calm.

Where all things else are still and motionless.

The fifty-three small islands in the Ægean surrounding Delos, as with a circle (Kúxλos)—hence the name.-ED.

+ Compare

"Ye lightnings,

Ye dread arrows of the clouds."

-Coleridge's Hymn in the Vale of Chamouny.-ED.

Sol Phœbus = Apollo.-ED.

[ocr errors]

134 LYRE! THOUGH SUCH POWER DO IN THY MAGIC LIVE.

And yet, even now, a little breeze, perchance

Escaped from boisterous winds that rage without,
Has entered, by the sturdy oaks unfelt,
But to its gentle touch how sensitive

Is the light ash! that, pendent from the brow

Of

*

yon dim cave, in seeming silence makes

A soft eye-music of slow-waving boughs,

Powerful almost as vocal harmony

To stay the wanderer's steps and soothe his thoughts. The Aira beck rises on the slopes of Great Dodd, passes Dockray, and enters Ullswater between Glencoin Park and Gowbarrow Park, about two miles from the head of the lake. The Force is quite near to Lyulph's Tower, where the stream has a fall of about eighty feet. Compare the reference to it in The Somnambulist (1833), and Wordsworth's account of "Aira-Force,” in his Guide through the District of the Lakes, "Here is a powerful Brook, which dashes among rocks through a deep glen, hung on every side with a rich and happy intermixture of native wood; here are beds of luxuriant fern, aged hawthorns and hollies decked with honeysuckles; and fallow deer glancing and bounding over the lawns and through the thickets."-ED.

[blocks in formation]

LYRE! though such power do in thy magic live

As might from India's farthest plain

Recall the not unwilling Maid,

Assist me to detain

The lovely Fugitive:

Check with thy notes the impulse which, betrayed

By her sweet farewell looks, I longed to aid.

Here let me gaze enrapt upon that eye,

The impregnable and awe-inspiring fort

Of contemplation, the calm port

By reason fenced from winds that sigh
Among the restless sails of vanity.

But if no wish be hers that we should part,
A humbler bliss would satisfy my heart.

* An ash may still be seen at Aira-Force. -ED.

WANSFELL! THIS HOUSEHOLD HAS A FAVOURED LOT. 135

Where all things are so fair,

Enough by her dear side to breathe the air
Of this Elysian weather;

And on, or in, or near the brook, espy

Shade upon the sunshine lying

Faint and somewhat pensively;

And downward Image gaily vying

With its upright living tree

'Mid silver clouds, and openings of blue sky
As soft almost and deep as her cerulean eye.

Nor less the joy with many a glance

Cast up the Stream or down at her beseeching,
To mark its eddying foam-balls prettily distrest
By ever-changing shape and want of rest;

Or watch, with mutual teaching,

The current as it plays

In flashing leaps and stealthy creeps
Adown a rocky maze;

Or note (translucent summer's happiest chance!)
In the slope-channel floored with pebbles bright,
Stones of all hues, gem emulous of gem,

So vivid that they take from keenest sight
The liquid veil that seeks not to hide them.*

WANSFELL!

[blocks in formation]

this Household has a favoured lot,

Living with liberty on thee to gaze,

To watch while Morn first crowns thee with her rays,

Or when along thy breast serenely float

[ocr errors][merged small][merged small][merged small]

+ The hill that rises to the south-east above Ambleside.-W. W., 1842.

Evening's angelic clouds. Yet ne'er a note
Hath sounded (shame upon the Bard!) thy praise
For all that thou, as if from heaven, hast brought
Of glory lavished on our quiet days.

Bountiful Son of Earth! when we are gone
From every object dear to mortal sight,

As soon we shall be, may these words attest
How oft, to elevate our spirits, shone

Thy visionary majesties of light,

How in thy pensive glooms our hearts found rest.
Dec. 24, 1842.

THE EAGLE AND THE DOVE.*

The following poem was contributed to and printed in a volume entitled "La Petite Chouannerie, ou Historie d'un Collége Breton sous l'Empire. Par A. F. Rio. Londres: Moxon, Dover-street, 1842,” pp. 62-63. The Hon. Mrs Norton, Walter Savage Landor, and Monckton Milnes (Lord Houghton), were among the other English contributors to the volume, the bulk of which is in French. It was printed at Paris, and numbered 398 pages, including the title. It was a narrative of "the romantic revolt of the royalist students of the college of Vannes in 1815, and of their battles with the soldiers of the French Empire." (H. REED.)-ED.

SHADE of Caractacus, if spirits love

The cause they fought for in their earthly home

To see the Eagle ruffled by the Dove

May soothe thy memory of the chains of Rome.

These children claim thee for their sire; the breath

Of thy renown, from Cambrian mountains, fans
A flame within them that despises death

And glorifies the truant youth of Vannes.

* In the volume from which the above is copied, the original French lines (commencing at p. 106) are printed side by side with Wordsworth's translation, which ends on p. 111, and closes the volume. -ED.

« AnteriorContinuar »