Delphi Complete Works of William Wordsworth

by William Wordsworth

  Whether he shine on them or not; and some,

  Where’er he moves along the unclouded sky,

  Turn a broad front full on his flattering beams:

  Others do rather from their notice shrink,

  Loving the dewy shade,—a humble band,

  Modest and sweet, a progeny of earth, 20

  Congenial with thy mind and character,

  High-born Augusta!

  Witness, Towers and Groves!

  And Thou, wild Stream, that giv’st the honoured name

  Of Lowther to this ancient Line, bear witness

  From thy most secret haunts; and ye Parterres,

  Which She is pleased and proud to call her own,

  Witness how oft upon my noble Friend

  ‘Mute’ offerings, tribute from an inward sense

  Of admiration and respectful love,

  Have waited—till the affections could no more 30

  Endure that silence, and broke out in song,

  Snatches of music taken up and dropt

  Like those self-solacing, those under, notes

  Trilled by the redbreast, when autumnal leaves

  Are thin upon the bough. Mine, only mine,

  The pleasure was, and no one heard the praise,

  Checked, in the moment of its issue, checked

  And reprehended, by a fancied blush

  From the pure qualities that called it forth.

  Thus Virtue lives debarred from Virtue’s meed; 40

  Thus, Lady, is retiredness a veil

  That, while it only spreads a softening charm

  O’er features looked at by discerning eyes,

  Hides half their beauty from the common gaze;

  And thus, even on the exposed and breezy hill

  Of lofty station, female goodness walks,

  When side by side with lunar gentleness,

  As in a cloister. Yet the grateful Poor

  (Such the immunities of low estate,

  Plain Nature’s enviable privilege, 50

  Her sacred recompence for many wants

  Open their hearts before Thee, pouring out

  All that they think and feel, with tears of joy;

  And benedictions not unheard in heaven:

  And friend in the ear of friend, where speech is free

  To follow truth, is eloquent as they.

  Then let the Book receive in these prompt lines

  A just memorial; and thine eyes consent

  To read that they, who mark thy course, behold

  A life declining with the golden light 60

  Of summer, in the season of sere leaves;

  See cheerfulness undamped by stealing Time;

  See studied kindness flow with easy stream,

  Illustrated with inborn courtesy;

  And an habitual disregard of self

  Balanced by vigilance for others’ weal.

  And shall the Verse not tell of lighter gifts

  With these ennobling attributes conjoined

  And blended, in peculiar harmony,

  By Youth’s surviving spirit? What agile grace! 70

  A nymph-like liberty, in nymph-like form,

  Beheld with wonder; whether floor or path

  Thou tread; or sweep—borne on the managed steed—

  Fleet as the shadows, over down or field,

  Driven by strong winds at play among the clouds.

  Yet one word more—one farewell word—a wish

  Which came, but it has passed into a prayer—

  That, as thy sun in brightness is declining,

  So—at an hour yet distant for ‘their’ sakes

  Whose tender love, here faltering on the way 80

  Of a diviner love, will be forgiven—

  So may it set in peace, to rise again

  For everlasting glory won by faith.

  TO THE MOON

  COMPOSED BY THE SEASIDE,—ON THE COAST OF CUMBERLAND

  WANDERER! that stoop’st so low, and com’st so near

  To human life’s unsettled atmosphere;

  Who lov’st with Night and Silence to partake,

  So might it seem, the cares of them that wake;

  And, through the cottage-lattice softly peeping,

  Dost shield from harm the humblest of the sleeping;

  What pleasure once encompassed those sweet names

  Which yet in thy behalf the Poet claims,

  An idolizing dreamer as of yore!—

  I slight them all; and, on this sea-beat shore 10

  Sole-sitting, only can to thoughts attend

  That bid me hail thee as the SAILOR’S FRIEND;

  So call thee for heaven’s grace through thee made known

  By confidence supplied and mercy shown,

  When not a twinkling star or beacon’s light

  Abates the perils of a stormy night;

  And for less obvious benefits, that find

  Their way, with thy pure help, to heart and mind;

  Both for the adventurer starting in life’s prime;

  And veteran ranging round from clime to clime, 20

  Long-baffled hope’s slow fever in his veins,

  And wounds and weakness oft his labour’s sole remains.

  The aspiring Mountains and the winding Streams,

  Empress of Night! are gladdened by thy beams;

  A look of thine the wilderness pervades,

  And penetrates the forest’s inmost shades;

  Thou, chequering peaceably the minster’s gloom,

  Guid’st the pale Mourner to the lost one’s tomb;

  Canst reach the Prisoner—to his grated cell

  Welcome, though silent and intangible!— 30

  And lives there one, of all that come and go

  On the great waters toiling to and fro,

  One, who has watched thee at some quiet hour

  Enthroned aloft in undisputed power,

  Or crossed by vapoury streaks and clouds that move

  Catching the lustre they in part reprove—

  Nor sometimes felt a fitness in thy sway

  To call up thoughts that shun the glare of day,

  And make the serious happier than the gay?

  Yes, lovely Moon! if thou so mildly bright 40

  Dost rouse, yet surely in thy own despite,

  To fiercer mood the phrenzy-stricken brain,

  Let me a compensating faith maintain;

  That there’s a sensitive, a tender, part

  Which thou canst touch in every human heart,

  For healing and composure.—But, as least

  And mightiest billows ever have confessed

  Thy domination; as the whole vast Sea

  Feels through her lowest depths thy sovereignty;

  So shines that countenance with especial grace 50

  On them who urge the keel her ‘plains’ to trace

  Furrowing its way right onward. The most rude,

  Cut off from home and country, may have stood—

  Even till long gazing hath bedimmed his eye,

  Or the mute rapture ended in a sigh—

  Touched by accordance of thy placid cheer,

  With some internal lights to memory dear,

  Or fancies stealing forth to soothe the breast

  Tired with its daily share of earth’s unrest,—

  Gentle awakenings, visitations meek; 60

  A kindly influence whereof few will speak,

  Though it can wet with tears the hardiest cheek.

  And when thy beauty in the shadowy cave

  Is hidden, buried in its monthly grave;

  Then, while the Sailor, ‘mid an open sea

  Swept by a favouring wind that leaves thought free,

  Paces the deck—no star perhaps in sight,

  And nothing save the moving ship’s own light

  To cheer the long dark hours of vacant night—

  Oft with his musings does thy image blend, 70

  In his mind’s eye thy
crescent horns ascend,

  And thou art still, O Moon, that SAILOR’S FRIEND!

  1835.

  TO THE MOON: RYDAL

  QUEEN of the stars!—so gentle, so benign,

  That ancient Fable did to thee assign,

  When darkness creeping o’er thy silver brow

  Warned thee these upper regions to forego,

  Alternate empire in the shades below—

  A Bard, who, lately near the wide-spread sea

  Traversed by gleaming ships, looked up to thee

  With grateful thoughts, doth now thy rising hail

  From the close confines of a shadowy vale.

  Glory of night, conspicuous yet serene, 10

  Nor less attractive when by glimpses seen

  Through cloudy umbrage, well might that fair face,

  And all those attributes of modest grace,

  In days when Fancy wrought unchecked by fear,

  Down to the green earth fetch thee from thy sphere,

  To sit in leafy woods by fountains clear!

  O still beloved (for thine, meek Power, are charms

  That fascinate the very Babe in arms,

  While he, uplifted towards thee, laughs outright,

  Spreading his little palms in his glad Mother’s sight) 20

  O still beloved, once worshipped! Time, that frowns

  In his destructive flight on earthly crowns,

  Spares thy mild splendour; still those far-shot beams

  Tremble on dancing waves and rippling streams

  With stainless touch, as chaste as when thy praise

  Was sung by Virgin-choirs in festal lays;

  And through dark trials still dost thou explore

  Thy way for increase punctual as of yore,

  When teeming Matrons—yielding to rude faith

  In mysteries of birth and life and death 30

  And painful struggle and deliverance—prayed

  Of thee to visit them with lenient aid.

  What though the rites be swept away, the fanes

  Extinct that echoed to the votive strains;

  Yet thy mild aspect does not, cannot, cease

  Love to promote and purity and peace;

  And Fancy, unreproved, even yet may trace

  Faint types of suffering in thy beamless face.

  Then silent Monitress! let us—not blind

  To worlds unthought of till the searching mind 40

  Of Science laid them open to mankind—

  Told, also, how the voiceless heavens declare

  God’s glory; and acknowledging thy share

  In that blest charge; let us—without offence

  To aught of highest, holiest, influence—

  Receive whatever good ‘tis given thee to dispense.

  May sage and simple, catching with one eye

  The moral intimations of the sky,

  Learn from thy course, where’er their own be taken,

  “To look on tempests, and be never shaken;” 50

  To keep with faithful step the appointed way

  Eclipsing or eclipsed, by night or day,

  And from example of thy monthly range

  Gently to brook decline and fatal change;

  Meek, patient, stedfast, and with loftier scope,

  Than thy revival yields, for gladsome hope!

  1835.

  WRITTEN AFTER THE DEATH OF CHARLES LAMB

  TO a good Man of most dear memory

  This Stone is sacred. Here he lies apart

  From the great city where he first drew breath,

  Was reared and taught; and humbly earned his bread,

  To the strict labours of the merchant’s desk

  By duty chained. Not seldom did those tasks

  Tease, and the thought of time so spent depress,

  His spirit, but the recompence was high;

  Firm Independence, Bounty’s rightful sire;

  Affections, warm as sunshine, free as air; 10

  And when the precious hours of leisure came,

  Knowledge and wisdom, gained from converse sweet

  With books, or while he ranged the crowded streets

  With a keen eye, and overflowing heart:

  So genius triumphed over seeming wrong,

  And poured out truth in works by thoughtful love

  Inspired—works potent over smiles and tears.

  And as round mountain-tops the lightning plays,

  Thus innocently sported, breaking forth

  As from a cloud of some grave sympathy, 20

  Humour and wild instinctive wit, and all

  The vivid flashes of his spoken words.

  From the most gentle creature nursed in fields

  Had been derived the name he bore—a name,

  Wherever Christian altars have been raised,

  Hallowed to meekness and to innocence;

  And if in him meekness at times gave way,

  Provoked out of herself by troubles strange,

  Many and strange, that hung about his life;

  Still, at the centre of his being, lodged 30

  A soul by resignation sanctified:

  And if too often, self-reproached, he felt

  That innocence belongs not to our kind,

  A power that never ceased to abide in him,

  Charity, ‘mid the multitude of sins

  That she can cover, left not his exposed

  To an unforgiving judgment from just Heaven.

  Oh, he was good, if e’er a good Man lived!

  *******

  From a reflecting mind and sorrowing heart

  Those simple lines flowed with an earnest wish, 40

  Though but a doubting hope, that they might serve

  Fitly to guard the precious dust of him

  Whose virtues called them forth. That aim is missed;

  For much that truth most urgently required

  Had from a faltering pen been asked in vain:

  Yet, haply, on the printed page received,

  The imperfect record, there, may stand unblamed

  As long as verse of mine shall breathe the air

  Of memory, or see the light of love.

  Thou wert a scorner of the fields, my Friend, 50

  But more in show than truth; and from the fields,

  And from the mountains, to thy rural grave

  Transported, my soothed spirit hovers o’er

  Its green untrodden turf, and blowing flowers;

  And taking up a voice shall speak (tho’ still

  Awed by the theme’s peculiar sanctity

  Which words less free presumed not even to touch)

  Of that fraternal love, whose heaven-lit lamp

  From infancy, through manhood, to the last

  Of threescore years, and to thy latest hour, 60

  Burnt on with ever-strengthening light, enshrined

  Within thy bosom.

  “Wonderful” hath been

  The love established between man and man,

  “Passing the love of women;” and between

  Man and his help-mate in fast wedlock joined

  Through God, is raised a spirit and soul of love

  Without whose blissful influence Paradise

  Had been no Paradise; and earth were now

  A waste where creatures bearing human form,

  Direst of savage beasts, would roam in fear, 70

  Joyless and comfortless. Our days glide on;

  And let him grieve who cannot choose but grieve

  That he hath been an Elm without his Vine,

  And her bright dower of clustering charities,

  That, round his trunk and branches, might have clung

  Enriching and adorning. Unto thee,

  Not so enriched, not so adorned, to thee

  Was given (say rather, thou of later birth

  Wert given to her) a Sister—’tis a word

  Timidly uttered, for she ‘lives’, the meek, 80

  The self-re
straining, and the ever-kind;

  In whom thy reason and intelligent heart

  Found—for all interests, hopes, and tender cares,

  All softening, humanising, hallowing powers,

  Whether withheld, or for her sake unsought—

  More than sufficient recompence!

  Her love

  (What weakness prompts the voice to tell it here?)

  Was as the love of mothers; and when years,

  Lifting the boy to man’s estate, had called

  The long-protected to assume the part 90

  Of a protector, the first filial tie

  Was undissolved; and, in or out of sight,

  Remained imperishably interwoven

  With life itself. Thus, ‘mid a shifting world,

  Did they together testify of time

  And season’s difference—a double tree

  With two collateral stems sprung from one root;

  Such were they—such thro’ life they ‘might’ have been

  In union, in partition only such;

  Otherwise wrought the will of the Most High; 100

  Yet thro’ all visitations and all trials,

  Still they were faithful; like two vessels launched

  From the same beach one ocean to explore

  With mutual help, and sailing—to their league

  True, as inexorable winds, or bars

  Floating or fixed of polar ice, allow.

  But turn we rather, let my spirit turn

  With thine, O silent and invisible Friend!

  To those dear intervals, nor rare nor brief,

  When reunited, and by choice withdrawn 110

  From miscellaneous converse, ye were taught

  That the remembrance of foregone distress,

  And the worse fear of future ill (which oft

  Doth hang around it, as a sickly child

  Upon its mother) may be both alike

  Disarmed of power to unsettle present good

  So prized, and things inward and outward held

  In such an even balance, that the heart

  Acknowledges God’s grace, his mercy feels,

  And in its depth of gratitude is still. 120

  O gift divine of quiet sequestration!

  The hermit, exercised in prayer and praise,

  And feeding daily on the hope of heaven,

  Is happy in his vow, and fondly cleaves

  To life-long singleness; but happier far

  Was to your souls, and, to the thoughts of others,

  A thousand times more beautiful appeared,

  Your ‘dual’ loneliness. The sacred tie

  Is broken; yet why grieve? for Time but holds

  His moiety in trust, till Joy shall lead 130

  To the blest world where parting is unknown.

  1835.