The petty pleasures of the garish day,
Meek eve shuts up the whole usurping host
(Unbashful dwarfs each glittering at his post)
And leaves the disencumbered spirit free
To reassume a staid simplicity.
‘Tis well—but what are helps of time and place, 20
When wisdom stands in need of nature’s grace;
Why do good thoughts, invoked or not, descend,
Like Angels from their bowers, our virtues to befriend;
If yet To-morrow, unbelied, may say,
“I come to open out, for fresh display,
The elastic vanities of yesterday”?
1834.
THE LEAVES THAT RUSTLED ON THIS OAK-CROWNED HILL
THE leaves that rustled on this oak-crowned hill,
And sky that danced among those leaves, are still;
Rest smooths the way for sleep; in field and bower
Soft shades and dews have shed their blended power
On drooping eyelid and the closing flower;
Sound is there none at which the faintest heart
Might leap, the weakest nerve of superstition start;
Save when the Owlet’s unexpected scream
Pierces the ethereal vault; and (‘mid the gleam
Of unsubstantial imagery, the dream, 10
From the hushed vale’s realities, transferred
To the still lake) the imaginative Bird
Seems, ‘mid inverted mountains, not unheard.
Grave Creature!—whether, while the moon shines bright
On thy wings opened wide for smoothest flight,
Thou art discovered in a roofless tower,
Rising from what may once have been a lady’s bower;
Or spied where thou sitt’st moping in thy mew
At the dim centre of a churchyard yew;
Or, from a rifted crag or ivy tod 20
Deep in a forest, thy secure abode,
Thou giv’st, for pastime’s sake, by shriek or shout,
A puzzling notice of thy whereabout—
May the night never come, nor day be seen,
When I shall scorn thy voice or mock thy mien!
In classic ages men perceived a soul
Of sapience in thy aspect, headless Owl!
Thee Athens reverenced in the studious grove;
And, near the golden sceptre grasped by Jove,
His Eagle’s favourite perch, while round him sate 30
The Gods revolving the decrees of Fate,
Thou, too, wert present at Minerva’s side:—
Hark to that second larum!—far and wide
The elements have heard, and rock and cave replied.
1834.
THE LABOURER’S NOON-DAY HYMN
UP to the throne of God is borne
The voice of praise at early morn,
And he accepts the punctual hymn
Sung as the light of day grows dim:
Nor will he turn his ear aside
From holy offerings at noontide:
Then here reposing let us raise
A song of gratitude and praise.
What though our burthen be not light,
We need not toil from morn to night; 10
The respite of the mid-day hour
Is in the thankful Creature’s power.
Blest are the moments, doubly blest,
That, drawn from this one hour of rest,
Are with a ready heart bestowed
Upon the service of our God!
Each field is then a hallowed spot,
An altar is in each man’s cot,
A church in every grove that spreads
Its living roof above our heads. 20
Look up to Heaven! the industrious Sun
Already half his race hath run;
‘He’ cannot halt nor go astray,
But our immortal Spirits may.
Lord! since his rising in the East,
If we have faltered or transgressed,
Guide, from thy love’s abundant source,
What yet remains of this day’s course:
Help with thy grace, through life’s short day,
Our upward and our downward way; 30
And glorify for us the west,
When we shall sink to final rest.
1834.
THE REDBREAST
SUGGESTED IN A WESTMORELAND COTTAGE
DRIVEN in by Autumn’s sharpening air
From half-stripped woods and pastures bare,
Brisk Robin seeks a kindlier home:
Not like a beggar is he come,
But enters as a looked-for guest,
Confiding in his ruddy breast,
As if it were a natural shield
Charged with a blazon on the field,
Due to that good and pious deed
Of which we in the Ballad read. 10
But pensive fancies putting by,
And wild-wood sorrows, speedily
He plays the expert ventriloquist;
And, caught by glimpses now—now missed,
Puzzles the listener with a doubt
If the soft voice he throws about
Comes from within doors or without!
Was ever such a sweet confusion,
Sustained by delicate illusion?
He’s at your elbow—to your feeling 20
The notes are from the floor or ceiling;
And there’s a riddle to be guessed,
‘Till you have marked his heaving chest,
And busy throat whose sink and swell,
Betray the Elf that loves to dwell
In Robin’s bosom, as a chosen cell.
Heart-pleased we smile upon the Bird
If seen, and with like pleasure stirred
Commend him, when he’s only heard.
But small and fugitive our gain 30
Compared with ‘hers’ who long hath lain,
With languid limbs and patient head
Reposing on a lone sick-bed;
Where now, she daily hears a strain
That cheats her of too busy cares,
Eases her pain, and helps her prayers.
And who but this dear Bird beguiled
The fever of that pale-faced Child;
Now cooling, with his passing wing,
Her forehead, like a breeze of Spring: 40
Recalling now, with descant soft
Shed round her pillow from aloft,
Sweet thoughts of angels hovering nigh,
And the invisible sympathy
Of “Matthew, Mark, and Luke, and John,
Blessing the bed she lies upon”?
And sometimes, just as listening ends
In slumber, with the cadence blends
A dream of that low-warbled hymn
Which old folk, fondly pleased to trim 50
Lamps of faith, now burning dim,
Say that the Cherubs carved in stone,
When clouds gave way at dead of night
And the ancient church was filled with light,
Used to sing in heavenly tone,
Above and round the sacred places
They guard, with winged baby-faces.
Thrice happy Creature! in all lands
Nurtured by hospitable hands:
Free entrance to this cot has he, 60
Entrance and exit both ‘yet’ free;
And, when the keen unruffled weather
That thus brings man and bird together,
Shall with its pleasantness be past,
And casement closed and door made fast,
To keep at bay the howling blast,
‘He’ needs not fear the season’s rage,
For the whole house is Robin’s cage.
Whether the bird flit here or there,
O’er table ‘lilt’, or perch on chair, 70
Though some may frown and make a stir,
To scare him as a trespasser,
And he belike will flinch or start,
Good friends he has to take his part;
One chiefly, who with voice and look
Pleads for him from the chimney-nook,
Where sits the Dame, and wears away
Her long and vacant holiday;
With images about her heart,
Reflected from the years gone by, 80
On human nature’s second infancy.
1834.
LINES SUGGESTED BY A PORTRAIT FROM THE PENCIL OF F. STONE
BEGUILED into forgetfulness of care
Due to the day’s unfinished task; of pen
Or book regardless, and of that fair scene
In Nature’s prodigality displayed
Before my window, oftentimes and long
I gaze upon a Portrait whose mild gleam
Of beauty never ceases to enrich
The common light; whose stillness charms the air,
Or seems to charm it, into like repose;
Whose silence, for the pleasure of the ear, 10
Surpasses sweetest music. There she sits
With emblematic purity attired
In a white vest, white as her marble neck
Is, and the pillar of the throat would be
But for the shadow by the drooping chin
Cast into that recess—the tender shade,
The shade and light, both there and everywhere,
And through the very atmosphere she breathes,
Broad, clear, and toned harmoniously, with skill
That might from nature have been learnt in the hour 20
When the lone shepherd sees the morning spread
Upon the mountains. Look at her, whoe’er
Thou be that, kindling with a poet’s soul,
Hast loved the painter’s true Promethean craft
Intensely—from Imagination take
The treasure,—what mine eyes behold, see thou,
Even though the Atlantic ocean roll between.
A silver line, that runs from brow to crown
And in the middle parts the braided hair,
Just serves to show how delicate a soil 30
The golden harvest grows in; and those eyes,
Soft and capacious as a cloudless sky
Whose azure depth their colour emulates,
Must needs be conversant with upward looks,
Prayer’s voiceless service; but now, seeking nought
And shunning nought, their own peculiar life
Of motion they renounce, and with the head
Partake its inclination towards earth
In humble grace, and quiet pensiveness
Caught at the point where it stops short of sadness. 40
Offspring of soul-bewitching Art, make me
Thy confidant! say, whence derived that air
Of calm abstraction? Can the ruling thought
Be with some lover far away, or one
Crossed by misfortune, or of doubted faith?
Inapt conjecture! Childhood here, a moon
Crescent in simple loveliness serene,
Has but approached the gates of womanhood,
Not entered them; her heart is yet unpierced
By the blind Archer-god; her fancy free: 50
The fount of feeling if unsought elsewhere,
Will not be found.
Her right hand, as it lies
Across the slender wrist of the left arm
Upon her lap reposing, holds—but mark
How slackly, for the absent mind permits
No firmer grasp—a little wild-flower, joined
As in a posy, with a few pale ears
Of yellowing corn, the same that overtopped
And in their common birthplace sheltered it
‘Till they were plucked together; a blue flower 60
Called by the thrifty husbandman a weed;
But Ceres, in her garland, might have worn
That ornament, unblamed. The floweret, held
In scarcely conscious fingers, was, she knows,
(Her Father told her so) in youth’s gay dawn
Her Mother’s favourite; and the orphan Girl,
In her own dawn—a dawn less gay and bright,
Loves it, while there in solitary peace
She sits, for that departed Mother’s sake.
—Not from a source less sacred is derived 70
(Surely I do not err) that pensive air
Of calm abstraction through the face diffused
And the whole person.
Words have something told
More than the pencil can, and verily
More than is needed, but the precious Art
Forgives their interference—Art divine,
That both creates and fixes, in despite
Of Death and Time, the marvels it hath wrought.
Strange contrasts have we in this world of ours!
That posture, and the look of filial love 80
Thinking of past and gone, with what is left
Dearly united, might be swept away
From this fair Portrait’s fleshly Archetype,
Even by an innocent fancy’s slightest freak
Banished, nor ever, haply, be restored
To their lost place, or meet in harmony
So exquisite; but ‘here’ do they abide,
Enshrined for ages. Is not then the Art
Godlike, a humble branch of the divine,
In visible quest of immortality, 90
Stretched forth with trembling hope?—In every realm,
From high Gibraltar to Siberian plains,
Thousands, in each variety of tongue
That Europe knows, would echo this appeal;
One above all, a Monk who waits on God
In the magnific Convent built of yore
To sanctify the Escurial palace. He—
Guiding, from cell to cell and room to room,
A British Painter (eminent for truth
In character, and depth of feeling, shown 100
By labours that have touched the hearts of kings,
And are endeared to simple cottagers)—
Came, in that service, to a glorious work,
Our Lord’s Last Supper, beautiful as when first
The appropriate Picture, fresh from Titian’s hand,
Graced the Refectory: and there, while both
Stood with eyes fixed upon that masterpiece,
The hoary Father in the Stranger’s ear
Breathed out these words:—”Here daily do we sit,
Thanks given to God for daily bread, and here 110
Pondering the mischiefs of these restless times,
And thinking of my Brethren, dead, dispersed,
Or changed and changing, I not seldom gaze
Upon this solemn Company unmoved
By shock of circumstance, or lapse of years,
Until I cannot but believe that they—
They are in truth the Substance, we the Shadows.”
So spake the mild Jeronymite, his griefs
Melting away within him like a dream
Ere he had ceased to gaze, perhaps to speak: 120
And I, grown old, but in a happier land,
Domestic Portrait! have to verse consigned
In thy calm presence those heart-moving words:
Words that can soothe, more than they agitate;
Whose spirit, like the angel that went down
Into Bethesda’s pool, with healing virtue
Informs the fountain in the human breast
Which by the visitation was disturbed.
—But why this stealing tear? Companion mute,
On thee I look, not sorrowing; fare thee well, 130
My Song’s Inspirer, once again farewell!
1834.
THE FOREGOING SUBJECT RESUMED
AMONG a grave fraternity of Monks,
For One, but surely not for One alone,
Tr
iumphs, in that great work, the Painter’s skill,
Humbling the body, to exalt the soul;
Yet representing, amid wreck and wrong
And dissolution and decay, the warm
And breathing life of flesh, as if already
Clothed with impassive majesty, and graced
With no mean earnest of a heritage
Assigned to it in future worlds. Thou, too, 10
With thy memorial flower, meek Portraiture!
From whose serene companionship I passed
Pursued by thoughts that haunt me still; thou also—
Though but a simple object, into light
Called forth by those affections that endear
The private hearth; though keeping thy sole seat
In singleness, and little tried by time,
Creation, as it were, of yesterday—
With a congenial function art endued
For each and all of us, together joined 20
In course of nature under a low roof
By charities and duties that proceed
Out of the bosom of a wiser vow.
To a like salutary sense of awe
Or sacred wonder, growing with the power
Of meditation that attempts to weigh,
In faithful scales, things and their opposites,
Can thy enduring quiet gently raise
A household small and sensitive,—whose love,
Dependent as in part its blessings are 30
Upon frail ties dissolving or dissolved
On earth, will be revived, we trust, in heaven.
1834.
TO A CHILD WRITTEN IN HER ALBUM
SMALL service is true service while it lasts:
Of humblest Friends, bright Creature! scorn not one:
The Daisy, by the shadow that it casts,
Protects the lingering dew-drop from the Sun.
1834.
LINES WRITTEN IN THE ALBUM OF THE COUNTESS OF LONSDALE. NOV. 5, 1834
LADY! a Pen (perhaps with thy regard,
Among the Favoured, favoured not the least)
Left, ‘mid the Records of this Book inscribed,
Deliberate traces, registers of thought
And feeling, suited to the place and time
That gave them birth:—months passed, and still this hand,
That had not been too timid to imprint
Words which the virtues of thy Lord inspired,
Was yet not bold enough to write of Thee.
And why that scrupulous reserve? In sooth 10
The blameless cause lay in the Theme itself.
Flowers are there many that delight to strive
With the sharp wind, and seem to court the shower,
Yet are by nature careless of the sun
Delphi Complete Works of William Wordsworth Page 293