Delphi Complete Works of William Wordsworth

by William Wordsworth

  And when his breath was fled,

  I raised, while kneeling by his side,

  His hand:—it dropped like lead.

  Your hands, dear Little-ones, do all

  That can be done, will never fall 10

  Like his till they are dead.

  By night or day blow foul or fair,

  Ne’er will the best of all your train

  Play with the locks of his white hair,

  Or stand between his knees again.

  Here did he sit confined for hours;

  But he could see the woods and plains,

  Could hear the wind and mark the showers

  Come streaming down the streaming panes.

  Now stretched beneath his grass-green mound 20

  He rests a prisoner of the ground.

  He loved the breathing air,

  He loved the sun, but if it rise

  Or set, to him where now he lies,

  Brings not a moment’s care.

  Alas! what idle words; but take

  The Dirge which for our Master’s sake

  And yours, love prompted me to make.

  The rhymes so homely in attire

  With learned ears may ill agree, 30

  But chanted by your Orphan Quire

  Will make a touching melody.

  DIRGE

  Mourn, Shepherd, near thy old grey stone;

  Thou Angler, by the silent flood;

  And mourn when thou art all alone,

  Thou Woodman, in the distant wood!

  Thou one blind Sailor, rich in joy

  Though blind, thy tunes in sadness hum;

  And mourn, thou poor half-witted Boy!

  Born deaf, and living deaf and dumb. 40

  Thou drooping sick Man, bless the Guide

  Who checked or turned thy headstrong youth,

  As he before had sanctified

  Thy infancy with heavenly truth.

  Ye Striplings, light of heart and gay,

  Bold settlers on some foreign shore,

  Give, when your thoughts are turned this way,

  A sigh to him whom we deplore.

  For us who here in funeral strain

  With one accord our voices raise, 50

  Let sorrow overcharged with pain

  Be lost in thankfulness and praise.

  And when our hearts shall feel a sting

  From ill we meet or good we miss,

  May touches of his memory bring

  Fond healing, like a mother’s kiss.

  BY THE SIDE OF THE GRAVE SOME YEARS AFTER

  LONG time his pulse hath ceased to beat

  But benefits, his gift, we trace—

  Expressed in every eye we meet

  Round this dear Vale, his native place. 60

  To stately Hall and Cottage rude

  Flowed from his life what still they hold,

  Light pleasures, every day, renewed;

  And blessings half a century old.

  Oh true of heart, of spirit gay,

  Thy faults, where not already gone

  From memory, prolong their stay

  For charity’s sweet sake alone.

  Such solace find we for our loss;

  And what beyond this thought we crave 70

  Comes in the promise from the Cross,

  Shining upon thy happy grave.

  1798.

  MATTHEW

  IF Nature, for a favourite child,

  In thee hath tempered so her clay,

  That every hour thy heart runs wild,

  Yet never once doth go astray,

  Read o’er these lines; and then review

  This tablet, that thus humbly rears

  In such diversity of hue

  Its history of two hundred years.

  —When through this little wreck of fame,

  Cipher and syllable! thine eye 10

  Has travelled down to Matthew’s name,

  Pause with no common sympathy.

  And, if a sleeping tear should wake,

  Then be it neither checked nor stayed:

  For Matthew a request I make

  Which for himself he had not made.

  Poor Matthew, all his frolics o’er,

  Is silent as a standing pool;

  Far from the chimney’s merry roar,

  And murmur of the village school. 20

  The sighs which Matthew heaved were sighs

  Of one tired out with fun and madness;

  The tears which came to Matthew’s eyes

  Were tears of light, the dew of gladness.

  Yet, sometimes, when the secret cup

  Of still and serious thought went round,

  It seemed as if he drank it up—

  He felt with spirit so profound.

  —Thou soul of God’s best earthly mould!

  Thou happy Soul! and can it be 30

  That these two words of glittering gold

  Are all that must remain of thee?

  1799.

  THE TWO APRIL MORNINGS

  WE walked along, while bright and red

  Uprose the morning sun;

  And Matthew stopped, he looked, and said,

  “The will of God be done!”

  A village schoolmaster was he,

  With hair of glittering grey;

  As blithe a man as yon could see

  On a spring holiday.

  And on that morning, through the grass,

  And by the steaming rills, 10

  We travelled merrily, to pass

  A day among the hills.

  “Our work,” said I, “was well begun,

  Then, from thy breast what thought,

  Beneath so beautiful a sun,

  So sad a sigh has brought?”

  A second time did Matthew stop;

  And fixing still his eye

  Upon the eastern mountain-top,

  To me he made reply:20

  “Yon cloud with that long purple cleft

  Brings fresh into my mind

  A day like this which I have left

  Full thirty years behind.

  “And just above yon slope of corn

  Such colours, and no other,

  Were in the sky, that April morn,

  Of this the very brother.

  “With rod and line I sued the sport

  Which that sweet season gave, 30

  And, to the church-yard come, stopped short

  Beside my daughter’s grave.

  “Nine summers had she scarcely seen,

  The pride of all the vale;

  And then she sang;—she would have been

  A very nightingale.

  “Six feet in earth my Emma lay;

  And yet I loved her more,

  For so it seemed, than till that day

  I e’er had loved before. 40

  “And, turning from her grave, I met,

  Beside the church-yard yew,

  A blooming Girl, whose hair was wet

  With points of morning dew.

  “A basket on her head she bare;

  Her brow was smooth and white:

  To see a child so very fair,

  It was a pure delight!

  “No fountain from its rocky cave

  E’er tripped with foot so free; 50

  She seemed as happy as a wave

  That dances on the sea.

  “There came from me a sigh of pain

  Which I could ill confine;

  I looked at her, and looked again:

  And did not wish her mine!”

  Matthew is in his grave, yet now,

  Methinks, I see him stand,

  As at that moment, with a bough

  Of wilding in his hand. 60

  1799.

  THE FOUNTAIN

  A CONVERSATION

  WE talked with open heart, and tongue

  Affectionate and true,

  A pair of friends, though I was young,

  And Matthew seventy-two.

&nbs
p; We lay beneath a spreading oak,

  Beside a mossy seat;

  And from the turf a fountain broke,

  And gurgled at our feet.

  “Now, Matthew!” said I, “let us match

  This water’s pleasant tune 10

  With some old border-song, or catch

  That suits a summer’s noon;

  “Or of the church-clock and the chimes

  Sing here beneath the shade,

  That half-mad thing of witty rhymes

  Which you last April made!”

  In silence Matthew lay, and eyed

  The spring beneath the tree;

  And thus the dear old Man replied,

  The grey-haired man of glee:20

  “No check, no stay, this Streamlet fears;

  How merrily it goes!

  ‘Twill murmur on a thousand years,

  And flow as now it flows.

  “And here, on this delightful day,

  I cannot choose but think

  How oft, a vigorous man, I lay

  Beside this fountain’s brink.

  “My eyes are dim with childish tears,

  My heart is idly stirred, 30

  For the same sound is in my ears

  Which in those days I heard.

  “Thus fares it still in our decay:

  And yet the wiser mind

  Mourns less for what age takes away

  Than what it leaves behind.

  “The blackbird amid leafy trees,

  The lark above the hill,

  Let loose their carols when they please

  Are quiet when they will. 40

  “With Nature never do ‘they’ wage

  A foolish strife; they see

  A happy youth, and their old age

  Is beautiful and free:

  “But we are pressed by heavy laws;

  And often, glad no more,

  We wear a face of joy, because

  We have been glad of yore.

  “If there be one who need bemoan

  His kindred laid in earth, 50

  The household hearts that were his own;

  It is the man of mirth.

  “My days, my Friend, are almost gone,

  My life has been approved,

  And many love me; but by none

  Am I enough beloved.”

  “Now both himself and me he wrongs,

  The man who thus complains;

  I live and sing my idle songs

  Upon these happy plains; 60

  “And, Matthew, for thy children dead

  I’ll be a son to thee!”

  At this he grasped my hand, and said,

  “Alas! that cannot be.”

  We rose up from the fountain-side;

  And down the smooth descent

  Of the green sheep-track did we glide;

  And through the wood we went;

  And, ere we came to Leonard’s rock,

  He sang those witty rhymes 70

  About the crazy old church-clock,

  And the bewildered chimes.

  1799.

  TO A SEXTON

  LET thy wheel-barrow alone—

  Wherefore, Sexton, piling still

  In thy bone-house bone on bone?

  ‘Tis already like a hill

  In a field of battle made,

  Where three thousand skulls are laid;

  These died in peace each with the other,—

  Father, sister, friend, and brother.

  Mark the spot to which I point!

  From this platform, eight feet square, 10

  Take not even a finger-joint:

  Andrew’s whole fire-side is there.

  Here, alone, before thine eyes,

  Simon’s sickly daughter lies,

  From weakness now, and pain defended,

  Whom he twenty winters tended.

  Look but at the gardener’s pride—

  How he glories, when he sees

  Roses, lilies, side by side,

  Violets in families! 20

  By the heart of Man, his tears,

  By his hopes and by his fears,

  Thou, too heedless, art the Warden

  Of a far superior garden.

  Thus then, each to other dear,

  Let them all in quiet lie,

  Andrew there, and Susan here,

  Neighbours in mortality.

  And, should I live through sun and rain

  Seven widowed years without my Jane, 30

  O Sexton, do not then remove her,

  Let one grave hold the Loved and Lover!

  1799.

  THE DANISH BOY

  A FRAGMENT

  I

  BETWEEN two sister moorland rills

  There is a spot that seems to lie

  Sacred to flowerets of the hills,

  And sacred to the sky.

  And in this smooth and open dell

  There is a tempest-stricken tree;

  A corner-stone by lightning cut,

  The last stone of a lonely hut;

  And in this dell you see

  A thing no storm can e’er destroy,

  The shadow of a Danish Boy.

  II

  In clouds above, the lark is heard,

  But drops not here to earth for rest;

  Within this lonesome nook the bird

  Did never build her nest.

  No beast, no bird hath here his home;

  Bees, wafted on the breezy air,

  Pass high above those fragrant bells

  To other flowers:—to other dells

  Their burthens do they bear;

  The Danish Boy walks here alone:

  The lovely dell is all his own.

  III

  A Spirit of noon-day is he;

  Yet seems a form of flesh and blood;

  Nor piping shepherd shall he be,

  Nor herd-boy of the wood.

  A regal vest of fur he wears,

  In colour like a raven’s wing;

  It fears not rain, nor wind, nor dew;

  But in the storm ‘tis fresh and blue

  As budding pines in spring;

  His helmet has a vernal grace,

  Fresh as the bloom upon his face.

  IV

  A harp is from his shoulder slung;

  Resting the harp upon his knee,

  To words of a forgotten tongue

  He suits its melody.

  Of flocks upon the neighbouring hill

  He is the darling and the joy;

  And often, when no cause appears,

  The mountain-ponies prick their ears,

  —They hear the Danish Boy,

  While in the dell he sings alone

  Beside the tree and corner-stone.

  V

  There sits he; in his face you spy

  No trace of a ferocious air,

  Nor ever was a cloudless sky

  So steady or so fair.

  The lovely Danish Boy is blest

  And happy in his flowery cove:

  From bloody deeds his thoughts are far;

  And yet he warbles songs of war,

  That seem like songs of love,

  For calm and gentle is his mien;

  Like a dead Boy he is serene.

  1799.

  LUCY GRAY

  OR, SOLITUDE

  OFT I had heard of Lucy Gray:

  And, when I crossed the wild,

  I chanced to see at break of day

  The solitary child.

  No mate, no comrade Lucy knew;

  She dwelt on a wide moor,

  —The sweetest thing that ever grew

  Beside a human door!

  You yet may spy the fawn at play,

  The hare upon the green; 10

  But the sweet face of Lucy Gray

  Will never more be seen.

  “To-night will be a stormy night—

  You to the town must go;

  And take a lantern, Child, to light
<
br />   Your mother through the snow.”

  “That, Father! will I gladly do:

  ‘Tis scarcely afternoon—

  The minster-clock has just struck two,

  And yonder is the moon!” 20

  At this the Father raised his hook,

  And snapped a faggot-band;

  He plied his work;—and Lucy took

  The lantern in her hand.

  Not blither is the mountain roe:

  With many a wanton stroke

  Her feet disperse the powdery snow,

  That rises up like smoke.

  The storm came on before its time:

  She wandered up and down; 30

  And many a hill did Lucy climb:

  But never reached the town.

  The wretched parents all that night

  Went shouting far and wide;

  But there was neither sound nor sight

  To serve them for a guide.

  At day-break on a hill they stood

  That overlooked the moor;

  And thence they saw the bridge of wood,

  A furlong from their door. 40

  They wept—and, turning homeward, cried,

  “In heaven we all shall meet;”

  —When in the snow the mother spied

  The print of Lucy’s feet.

  Then downwards from the steep hill’s edge

  They tracked the footmarks small;

  And through the broken hawthorn hedge,

  And by the long stone-wall;

  And then an open field they crossed:

  The marks were still the same; 50

  They tracked them on, nor ever lost;

  And to the bridge they came.

  They followed from the snowy bank

  Those footmarks, one by one,

  Into the middle of the plank;

  And further there were none!

  —Yet some maintain that to this day

  She is a living child;

  That you may see sweet Lucy Gray

  Upon the lonesome wild. 60

  O’er rough and smooth she trips along,

  And never looks behind;

  And sings a solitary song

  That whistles in the wind.

  1799.

  RUTH

  WHEN Ruth was left half desolate,

  Her Father took another Mate;

  And Ruth, not seven years old,

  A slighted child, at her own will

  Went wandering over dale and hill,

  In thoughtless freedom, bold.

  And she had made a pipe of straw,

  And music from that pipe could draw

  Like sounds of winds and floods;

  Had built a bower upon the green, 10

  As if she from her birth had been

  An infant of the woods.

  Beneath her father’s roof, alone

  She seemed to live; her thoughts her own;

  Herself her own delight;