The dim, decaying light,
Like the fair day-dreams of Benevolence;
Fatigued, and sad, and slow
Along my lonely way I go,
And muse upon the distant day,
And sigh, remembering Edith far away.
4.
When late arriving at our inn of rest,
Whose roof, exposed to many a winter’s sky,
Half shelters from the wind the shivering guest;
By the lamp’s melancholy gloom,
I see the miserable room,
And musing on the evils that arise
From disproportion’d inequalities,
Pray that my lot may be
Neither with Riches, nor with Poverty,
But in that happy mean,
Which for the soul is best,
And with contentment blest,
In some secluded glen
To dwell with Peace and Edith far from men.
TO RECOVERY.
RECOVERY, where art thou?
Daughter of Heaven, where shall we seek thy help?
Upon what hallow’d fountain hast thou laid,
O Nymph adored, thy spell?
By the gray ocean’s verge,
Daughter of Heaven, we seek thee, but in vain;
We find no healing in the breeze that sweeps
The thymy mountain’s brow.
Where are the happy hours,
The sunshine where, that cheer’d the morn of life?
For Health is fled, and with her fled the joys
Which made existence dear.
I saw the distant lulls
Smile in the radiance of the orient beam,
And gazed delighted that anon our feet
Should visit scenes so fair
I look’d abroad at noon,
The shadow and the storm were on the hills,
The crags which like a faery fabric shone
Darkness had overcast.
On you, ye coming years,
So fairly shone the April gleam of hope;
So darkly o’er the distance, late so bright,
Now settle the black clouds.
Come thou, and chase away
Sorrow and Pain, the persecuting Powers
Who make the melancholy day so long,
So long the restless night.
Shall we not find thee here,
Recovery, on the salt sea’s breezy strand?
Is there no healing in the gales that sweep
The thymy mountain’s brow?
I look for thy approach,
O life-preserving Power! as one who strays
Alone in darkness o’er the pathless marsh,
Watches the dawn of day.
Minehead, July, 1799.
YOUTH AND AGE.
WITH cheerful step the traveller
Pursues his early way,
When first the dimly-dawning east
Reveals the rising day.
He bounds along his craggy road,
He hastens up the height,
And all he sees and all he hears
Administer delight.
And if the mist, retiring slow,
Roll round its wavy white,
He thinks the morning vapors hide
Some beauty from his sight.
But when behind the western clouds
Departs the fading day,
How wearily the traveller
Pursues his evening way!
Sorely along the craggy road
His painful footsteps creep,
And slow, with many a feeble pause,
He labors up the steep.
And if the mists of night close round,
They fill his soul with fear;
He dreads some unseen precipice,
Some hidden danger near.
So cheerfully does youth begin
Life’s pleasant morning stage;
Alas! the evening traveller feels
The fears of wary age!
Westbury, 1798.
THE OAK OF OUR FATHERS.
ALAS For the Oak of our Fathers, that stood
In its beauty, the glory and pride of the wood!
It grew and it flourish’d tor many an age,
And many a tempest wreak’d on it its rage;
But when its strong branches were bent with the blast,
It struck its root deeper, and flourish d more fast.
Its head tower’d on high, and its branches spread round:
For its roots had struck deep, and its heart was sound;
The bees o’er its honey-dew’d foliage play’d,
And the beasts of the forest fed under its shade.
The Oak of our Fathers to Freedom was dear;
Its leaves were her crown, and its wood was her spear.
Alas for the Oak of our Fathers, that stood
In its beauty, the glory and pride of the wood!
There crept up an ivy and clung round the trunk;
It struck in its mouths and the juices it drunk;
The branches grew sickly, deprived of their food.
And the Oak was no longer the pride of the wood.
The foresters saw and they gather’d around;
The roots still were fast, and the heart still was sound;
They lopp’d off the boughs that so beautiful spread,
But the ivy they spared on its vitals that fed.
No longer the bees o’er its honey-dews play’d,
Nor the beasts of the forest fed under its shade;
Lopp’d and mangled the trunk in its ruin is seen,
A monument now what its beauty has been.
The Oak has received its incurable wound;
They have loosen’d the roots, though the heart may be sound;
What the travellers at distance green-flourishing see;
Are the leaves of the ivy that poison’d the tree.
Alas for the Oak of our Fathers, that stood
In its beauty, the glory and pride of the wood!
Westbury, 1798.
THE BATTLE OF PULTOWA.
ON Vorska’s glittering waves
The morning sunbeams play;
Pultowa’s walls are throng’d
With eager multitudes;
Athwart the dusty vale
They strain their aching eyes,
Where to the fight moves on
The Conqueror Charles, the iron-hearted Swede.
Him Famine hath not tamed,
The tamer of the brave;
Him Winter hath not quell’d;
When man by man his veteran troops sunk down,
Frozen to their endless sleep,
He held undaunted on
Him Pain hath not subdued;
What though he mounts not now
The fiery steed of war?
Borne on a litter to the field he goes.
Go, iron-hearted King!
Full of thy former fame —
Think how the humbled Dane
Crouch’d underneath thy sword;
Think how the wretched Pole
Resign’d his conquer’d crown;
Go, iron-hearted King!
Let Narva’s glory swell thy haughty breast, —
The death-day of thy glory, Charles, hath dawn’d!
Proud Swede, the Sun hath risen
That on thy shame shall set!
Now, Patkul, may thine injured spirit rest!
For over that relentless Swede
Ruin hath raised his unrelenting arm;
For ere the night descends,
His veteran host destroyed,
His laurels blasted to revive no more,
he flies before the Moscovite.
Impatiently that haughty heart must bear
Long years of hope deceived;
Long years of idleness
That sleepless soul must brook.
Now, Patkul, may thine injured spirit rest
To him who suffers in an honest caus
e
No death is ignominious; not on thee,
But upon Charles, the cruel, the unjust,
Not upon thee, — on him
The ineffaceable reproach is fix’d,
The infamy abides.
Now, Patkul, may thine injured spirit rest.
Westbury 1798.
THE TRAVELLER’S RETURN.
SWEET to the morning traveller
The song amid the sky,
Where, twinkling in the dewy light,
The skylark soars on high.
And cheering to the traveller
The gales that round him play,
When faint and heavily he drags
Along his noon-tide way.
And when beneath the unclouded sun
Full wearily toils he,
The flowing water makes to him
A soothing melody.
And when the evening light decays,
And all is calm around,
There is sweet music to his ear
In the distant sheep-bell’s sound.
But oh! of all delightful sounds
Of evening or of morn,
The sweetest is the voice of Love,
That welcomes his return.
Westbury, 1798.
THE OLD MAN’S COMFORTS AND HOW HE GAINED THEM.
You are old, Father William, the young man cried;
The few locks which are left you are gray;
You are hale, Father William, a hearty old man;
Now tell me the reason, I pray.
In the days of my youth, Father William replied,
I remember’d that youth would fly fast,
And abused not my health and my vigor at first,
That I never might need them at last.
You are old, Father William, the young man cried,
And pleasures with youth pass away;
And yet you lament not the days that are gone;
Now tell me the reason, I pray.
In the days of my youth, Father William replied,
I remember’d that youth could not last;
I thought of the future, whatever I did,
That I never might grieve for the past.
You are old, Father William, the young man cried,
And life must be hastening away;
You are cheerful, and love to converse upon death;
Now tell me the reason, I pray.
I am cheerful, young man, Father William replied;
Let the cause thy attention engage;
In the days of my youth I remember’d my God!
And He hath not forgotten my age.
Westbury, 1799.
TRANSLATION OF A GREEK ODE ON ASTRONOMY WRITTEN BY S. T. COLERIDGE, FOR THE PRIZE AT CAMBRIDGE, 1793.
1.
HAIL, venerable NIGHT!
O first-created, hail!
Thou who art doom’d in thy dark breast to veil
The dying beam of light,
The eldest and the latest thou,
Hail, venerable NIGHT!
Around thine ebon brow,
Glittering plays with lightning rays
A wreath of flowers of fire.
The varying clouds with many a hue attire
Thy many-tinted veil.
Holy are the blue graces of thy zone!
But who is he whose tongue can tell
The dewy lustres which thine eyes adorn?
Lovely to some the blushes of the morn;
To some the glories of the Day,
When, blazing with meridian ray,
The gorgeous Sun ascends his highest throne;
But I with solemn and severe delight
Still watch thy constant ear, immortal NIGHT!
2.
For then to the celestial Palaces
Urania leads, Urania, she
The Goddess who alone
Stands by the blazing throne,
Effulgent with the light of Deity.
Whom Wisdom, the Creatrix, by her side
Placed on the heights of yonder sky,
And smiling with ambrosial love, unlock’d
The depths of Nature to her piercing eye.
Angelic myriads struck their harps around,
And with triumphant song
The host of Stars, a beauteous throng,
Around the ever-living- Mind
In jubilee their mystic dance begun;
When at thy leaping forth, O Sun!
The Morning started in affright,
Astonish’d at thy birth, her Child of Light!
3.
Hail, O Urania, hail!
Queen of the Muses! Mistress of the Song!
For thou didst deign to leave the heavenly throng
As earthward thou thy steps wert bending,
A ray went forth and harbinger’d thy way
All Ether laugh’d with thy descending.
Thou hadst wreath’d thy hair with roses,
The flower that in the immortal bower
Its deathless bloom discloses.
Before thine awful mien, compelled to shrink,
Fled Ignorance, abash’d, with all her brood,
Dragons, and Hags of baleful breath,
Fierce Dreams, that wont to drink
The Sepulchre’s black blood;
Or on the wings of storms
Riding in fury forms,
Shriek to the mariner the shriek of Death.
4.
I boast, O Goddess, to thy name
That I have raised the pile of fame;
Therefore to me be given
To roam the starry path of Heaven,
To charioteer with wings on high,
And to rein-in the Tempests of the sky.
Chariots of happy Gods! Fountains of Light!
Ye Angel-Temples bright!
May I unblamed your flamy thresholds tread?
I leave Earth’s lowly scene;
I leave the Moon serene,
The lovely Queen of Night;
I leave the wide domains,
Beyond where Mars his fiercer light can fling,
And Jupiter’s vast plains,
(The many-belted king;)
Even to the solitude where Saturn reigns,
Like some stern tyrant to just exile driven;
Dim-seen the sullen power appears
In that cold solitude of Heaven,
And slow he drags along
The mighty circle of long-lingering years.
6.
Nor shalt thou escape my sight,
Who at the threshold of the sun-trod domes
Art trembling, — youngest Daughter of the Night!
And you, ye fiery-tressed strangers! you,
Comets who wander wide,
Will I along your pathless way pursue,
Whence bending I may view
The Worlds whom elder Suns have vivified.
7.
For Hope with loveliest visions soothes my mind,
That even in Man, Life’s winged power,
When comes again the natal hour,
Shall on heaven-wandering feet,
In undecaying youth,
Spring to the blessed seat;
Where round the fields of Truth
The fiery Essences forever feed;
And o’er the ambrosial mead,
The breezes of serenity
Silent and soothing glide forever by.
8.
There, Priest of Nature! dost thou shine,
NEWTON! a King among the Kings divine.
Whether with harmony’s mild force,
He guides along its course
The axle of some beauteous star on high,
Or gazing, in the spring
Ebullient with creative energy,
Feels his pure breast with rapturous joy possess’d,
Inebriate in the holy ecstasy.
9.
I may not call thee mortal then, my soul!
Immortal longings
lift thee to the skies:
Love of thy native home inflames thee now,
With pious madness wise.
Know then thyself! expand thy wings divine!
Soon, mingled with thy fathers, thou shalt shine
A star amid the starry throng,
A God the Gods among.
London, 1802.
GOOSEBERRY-PIE.
A PINDARIC ODE.
1.
GOOSEBERRY-PIE is best.
Full of the theme, O Muse, begin the song!
What though the sunbeams of the West
Mature within the Turtle’s breast
Blood glutinous and fat of verdant hue?
What though the Deer bound sportively along
O’er springy turf, the Park’s elastic vest?
Give them their honors due, —
But Gooseberry-Pie is best.
2.
Behind his oxen slow
The patient Ploughman plods,
And as the Sower followed by the clods
Earth’s genial womb received the living seed.
The rains descend, the grains they grow;
Saw ye the vegetable ocean
Roll its green ripple to the April gale?
The golden waves with multitudinous motion
Swell o’er the summer vale?
3.
It flows through Alder banks along
Beneath the copse that hides the hill;
The gentle stream you cannot see,
You only hear its melody,
The stream that turns the Mill.
Pass on a little way, pass on,
And you shall catch its gleam anon;
And hark! the loud and agonizing groan,
That makes its anguish known,
Where tortured by the Tyrant Lord of Meal
The Brook is broken on the Wheel!
Complete Poetical Works of Robert Southey Page 34