We did not look along the white line of the road to Solway Moss without some melancholy emotion, though we had the fair prospect of the Cumberland mountains full in view, with the certainty, barring accidents, of reaching our own dear home the next day. Breakfasted at the Graham’s Arms. The weather had been very fine from the time of our arrival at Jedburgh, and this was a very pleasant day. The sun ‘shone fair on Carlisle walls’ when we first saw them from the top of the opposite hill. Stopped to look at the place on the sand near the bridge where Hatfield had been executed. Put up at the same inn as before, and were recognised by the woman who had waited on us. Everybody spoke of Hatfield as an injured man. After dinner went to a village six miles further, where we slept.
Sunday, September 25th, 1803. — A beautiful autumnal day. Breakfasted at a public-house by the road-side; dined at Threlkeld; arrived at home between eight and nine o’clock, where we found Mary in perfect health, Joanna Hutchinson with her, and little John asleep in the clothes-basket by the fire.
SONNET
COMPOSED BETWEEN DALSTON AND GRASMERE,
SEPTEMBER 25th, 1803.
Fly, some kind spirit, fly to Grasmere Vale!
Say that we come, and come by this day’s light
Glad tidings! — spread them over field and height,
But, chiefly, let one Cottage hear the tale!
There let a mystery of joy prevail,
The kitten frolic with unruly might,
And Rover whine as at a second sight
Of near-approaching good, that will not fail:
And from that Infant’s face let joy appear;
Yea, let our Mary’s one companion child,
That hath her six weeks’ solitude beguiled
With intimations manifold and dear,
While we have wander’d over wood and wild —
Smile on its Mother now with bolder cheer!
APPENDIX A.
‘And think and fear.’ — Page 11.
The entire Poem as given in the works of the Poet stands thus: —
TO THE SONS OF BURNS,
after visiting the grave of their father.
‘The Poet’s grave is in a corner of the churchyard. We looked at it with melancholy and painful reflections, repeating to each other his own verses —
“Is there a man whose judgment clear,” etc.’
Extract from the Journal of my Fellow-Traveller.
‘Mid crowded obelisks and urns
I sought the untimely grave of Burns;
Sons of the Bard, my heart still mourns
With sorrow true;
And more would grieve, but that it turns
Trembling to you!
Through twilight shades of good and ill
Ye now are panting up life’s hill,
And more than common strength and skill
Must ye display;
If ye would give the better will
Its lawful sway.
Hath Nature strung your nerves to bear
Intemperance with less harm, beware!
But if the Poet’s wit ye share,
Like him can speed
The social hour — of tenfold care
There will be need;
For honest men delight will take
To spare your failings for his sake,
Will flatter you, — and fool and rake
Your steps pursue;
And of your Father’s name will make
A snare for you.
Far from their noisy haunts retire,
And add your voices to the quire
That sanctify the cottage fire
With service meet;
There seek the genius of your Sire,
His spirit greet;
Or where, ‘mid ‘lonely heights and hows,’
He paid to Nature tuneful vows;
Or wiped his honourable brows
Bedewed with toil,
While reapers strove, or busy ploughs
Upturned the soil;
His judgment with benignant ray
Shall guide, his fancy cheer, your way;
But ne’er to a seductive lay
Let faith be given;
Nor deem that ‘light which leads astray,
Is light from Heaven.’
Let no mean hope your souls enslave;
Be independent, generous, brave;
Your Father such example gave,
And such revere;
But be admonished by his grave,
And think, and fear!
Two other Poems on the same subject may fitly be inserted in this place, though, as appears from the Poet’s notes, one of them at least belongs to a later date.
AT THE GRAVE OF BURNS. 1803
Seven years after his death.
I shiver, Spirit fierce and bold,
At thoughts of what I now behold:
As vapours breathed from dungeons cold
Strike pleasure dead,
So sadness comes from out the mould
Where Burns is laid.
And have I then thy bones so near,
And thou forbidden to appear?
As if it were thyself that’s here,
I shrink with pain;
And both my wishes and my fear
Alike are vain.
Off weight — nor press on weight! — away
Dark thoughts! — they came, but not to stay;
With chastened feelings would I pay
The tribute due
To him, and aught that hides his clay
From mortal view.
Fresh as the flower, whose modest worth
He sang, his genius ‘glinted’ forth,
Rose like a star that touching earth,
For so it seems,
Doth glorify its humble birth
With matchless beams.
The piercing eye, the thoughtful brow,
The struggling heart, where be they now? —
Full soon the Aspirant of the plough,
The prompt, the brave,
Slept, with the obscurest, in the low
And silent grave.
I mourned with thousands, but as one
More deeply grieved, for He was gone
Whose light I hailed when first it shone,
And showed my youth
How Verse may build a princely throne
On humble truth.
Alas! where’er the current tends,
Regret pursues and with it blends, —
Huge Criffel’s hoary top ascends
By Skiddaw seen,
Neighbours we were, and loving friends
We might have been;
True friends though diversely inclined;
But heart with heart and mind with mind,
Where the main fibres are entwined,
Through Nature’s skill,
May even by contraries be joined
More closely still.
The tear will start, and let it flow;
Thou ‘poor Inhabitant below,’
At this dread moment — even so —
Might we together
Have sate and talked where gowans blow,
Or on wild heather.
What treasures would have then been placed
Within my reach; of knowledge graced
By fancy what a rich repast!
But why go on? —
Oh! spare to sweep, thou mournful blast,
His grave grass-grown.
There, too, a Son, his joy and pride,
(Not three weeks past the Stripling died,)
Lies gathered to his Father’s side,
Soul-moving sight!
Yet one to which is not denied
Some sad delight.
For he is safe, a quiet bed
Hath early found among the dead,
Harboured where none can be misled,
Wronged, or distrest;
And surely here it may be said
That such are blest.
>
And oh for Thee, by pitying grace
Checked oft-times in a devious race.
May He who halloweth the place
Where Man is laid,
Receive thy Spirit in the embrace
For which it prayed!
Sighing I turned away; but ere
Night fell I heard, or seemed to hear,
Music that sorrow comes not near,
A ritual hymn,
Chanted in love that casts out fear
By Seraphim.
From the notes appended to the latest editions of Wordsworth’s works, it appears that the preceding poem, ‘though felt at the time, was not composed till many years afterwards.’
THOUGHTS SUGGESTED THE DAY FOLLOWING, ON THE BANKS OF NITH, NEAR THE POET’S RESIDENCE.
Too frail to keep the lofty vow
That must have followed when his brow
Was wreathed — ’The Vision’ tells us how —
With holly spray,
He faultered, drifted to and fro,
And passed away.
Well might such thoughts, dear Sister, throng
Our minds when, lingering all too long,
Over the grave of Burns we hung
In social grief —
Indulged as if it were a wrong
To seek relief.
But, leaving each unquiet theme
Where gentlest judgments may misdeem,
And prompt to welcome every gleam
Of good and fair,
Let us beside this limpid Stream
Breathe hopeful air.
Enough of sorrow, wreck, and blight;
Think rather of those moments bright
When to the consciousness of right
His course was true,
When Wisdom prospered in his sight,
And Virtue grew.
Yes, freely let our hearts expand,
Freely as in youth’s season bland,
When side by side, his Book in hand,
We wont to stray,
Our pleasure varying at command
Of each sweet Lay.
How oft inspired must he have trod
These pathways, yon far-stretching road!
There lurks his home; in that Abode,
With mirth elate,
Or in his nobly-pensive mood,
The Rustic sate.
Proud thoughts that Image overawes,
Before it humbly let us pause,
And ask of Nature, from what cause,
And by what rules
She trained her Burns to win applause
That shames the Schools.
Through busiest street and loneliest glen
Are felt the flashes of his pen;
He rules ‘mid winter snows, and when
Bees fill their hives;
Deep in the general heart of men
His power survives.
What need of fields in some far clime
Where Heroes, Sages, Bards sublime,
And all that fetched the flowing rhyme
From genuine springs,
Shall dwell together till old Time
Folds up his wings?
Sweet Mercy! to the gates of Heaven
This Minstrel lead, his sins forgiven;
The rueful conflict, the heart riven
With vain endeavour,
And memory of Earth’s bitter leaven,
Effaced for ever.
But why to Him confine the prayer,
When kindred thoughts and yearnings bear
On the frail heart the purest share
With all that live? —
The best of what we do and are,
Just God, forgive!
APPENDIX B.
‘The Waterfall, Cora Linn.’ — Page 36.
The following poem belongs to the series entitled Memorials of a Tour in Scotland, 1814. It is in a later, not better, manner than those of 1803. Prefixed to it in the later editions of the Poet’s works are these words: ‘I had seen this celebrated waterfall twice before. But the feelings to which it had given birth were not expressed till they recurred in presence of the object on this occasion.’
COMPOSED AT CORA LINN,
in sight of wallace’s tower.
‘ — How Wallace fought for Scotland, left the name
Of Wallace to be found, like a wild flower,
All over his dear Country; left the deeds
Of Wallace, like a family of ghosts,
To people the steep rocks and river banks,
Her natural sanctuaries, with a local soul
Of independence and stern liberty.’ — MS.
Lord of the vale! astounding Flood;
The dullest leaf in this thick wood
Quakes — conscious of thy power;
The caves reply with hollow moan;
And vibrates to its central stone,
Yon time-cemented Tower!
And yet how fair the rural scene!
For thou, O Clyde, hast ever been
Beneficent as strong;
Pleased in refreshing dews to steep
The little trembling flowers that peep
Thy shelving rocks among.
Hence all who love their country, love
To look on thee — delight to rove
Where they thy voice can hear;
And, to the patriot-warrior’s Shade,
Lord of the vale! to Heroes laid
In dust, that voice is dear!
Along thy banks, at dead of night,
Sweeps visibly the Wallace Wight;
Or stands, in warlike vest,
Aloft, beneath the moon’s pale beam,
A Champion worthy of the stream,
Yon grey tower’s living crest!
But clouds and envious darkness hide
A Form not doubtfully descried: —
Their transient mission o’er,
O say to what blind region flee
These Shapes of awful phantasy?
To what untrodden shore?
Less than divine command they spurn;
But this we from the mountains learn,
And this the valleys show;
That never will they deign to hold
Communion where the heart is cold
To human weal and woe.
The man of abject soul in vain
Shall walk the Marathonian plain;
Or thrill the shadowy gloom,
That still invests the guardian Pass,
Where stood, sublime, Leonidas
Devoted to the tomb.
Nor deem that it can aught avail
For such to glide with oar or sail
Beneath the piny wood,
Where Tell once drew, by Uri’s lake,
His vengeful shafts — prepared to slake
Their thirst in Tyrants’ blood.
APPENDIX C.
‘Poured out these verses.’ — Page 139.
ADDRESS TO KILCHURN CASTLE.
Child of loud-throated War! the mountain Stream
Roars in thy hearing; but thy hour of rest
Is come, and thou art silent in thy age;
Save when the wind sweeps by and sounds are caught
Ambiguous, neither wholly thine nor theirs.
Oh! there is life that breathes not; Powers there are
That touch each other to the quick in modes
Which the gross world no sense hath to perceive,
No soul to dream of. What art Thou, from care
Cast off — abandoned by thy rugged Sire,
Nor by soft Peace adopted; though, in place
And in dimension, such that thou might’st seem
But a mere footstool to yon sovereign Lord,
Huge Cruachan, (a thing that meaner hills
Might crush, nor know that it had suffered harm;)
Yet he, not loth, in favour of thy claims
To reverence, suspends his own; submitting
All that the God of Nature ha
th conferred,
All that he holds in common with the stars,
To the memorial majesty of Time
Impersonated in thy calm decay!
Take, then, thy seat, Vicegerent unreproved!
Now, while a farewell gleam of evening light
Is fondly lingering on thy shattered front,
Do thou, in turn, be paramount; and rule
Over the pomp and beauty of a scene
Whose mountains, torrents, lake, and woods, unite
To pay thee homage; and with these are joined,
In willing admiration and respect,
Two Hearts, which in thy presence might be called
Youthful as Spring. — Shade of departed Power,
Skeleton of unfleshed humanity,
The chronicle were welcome that should call
Into the compass of distinct regard
The toils and struggles of thy infant years!
Yon foaming flood seems motionless as ice;
Its dizzy turbulence eludes the eye,
Frozen by distance; so, majestic Pile,
To the perception of this Age, appear
Thy fierce beginnings, softened and subdued
And quieted in character — the strife,
The pride, the fury uncontrollable,
Lost on the aërial heights of the Crusades!
‘The first three lines were thrown off at the moment I first caught sight of the ruin from a small eminence by the wayside; the rest was added many years after.’ — Wordsworth’s Life.
APPENDIX D.
‘Loch Leven.’ — Page 165.
THE BLIND HIGHLAND BOY.
a tale told by the fireside, after returning to the vale
of grasmere.
‘The story was told me by George Mackreth, for many years parish-clerk of Grasmere. He had been an eye-witness of the occurrence. The vessel in reality was a washing-tub, which the little fellow had met with on the shore of the loch.’
Now we are tired of boisterous joy,
Have romped enough, my little Boy!
Jane hangs her head upon my breast,
And you shall bring your stool and rest
This corner is your own.
There! take your seat, and let me see
That you can listen quietly:
And, as I promised, I will tell
That strange adventure which befel
A poor blind Highland Boy.
A Highland Boy! — why call him so?
Because, my Darlings, ye must know
That, under hills which rise like towers,
Far higher hills than these of ours!
He from his birth had lived.
He ne’er had seen one earthly sight,
The sun, the day; the stars, the night;
Or tree, or butterfly, or flower,
Or fish in stream, or bird in bower,
Or woman, man, or child.
And yet he neither drooped nor pined,
Nor had a melancholy mind;
For God took pity on the Boy,
Delphi Complete Works of William Wordsworth Page 467