Complete Poetical Works of Robert Southey
Page 48
Having ordered some soles for his dinner.
Because he was fond of flat fish.
45.
They are much to my palate, thought he,
And now guess the reason who can,
Why no bait should be better than place,
When I fish for a Parliament-man.
46.
But the soles in the bill were ten shillings,
Tell your master, quoth he, what I say;
If he charges at this rate for all things,
He must be in a pretty good way.
47.
But mark ye, said he to the waiter,
I’m a dealer myself in this line,
And his business, between you and me,
Nothing like so extensive as mine.
48.
Now soles are exceedingly cheap;
Which he will not attempt to deny,
When I see him at my fish-market,
I warrant him, by and by.
INSCRIPTIONS
CONTENTS
INSCRIPTIONS
FOR A TABLET AT GODSTOW NUNNERY.
FOR A COLUMN AT NEWBURY.
FOR A CAVERN THAT OVERLOOKS THE RIVER AVON.
FOR THE APARTMENT IN CHEPSTOW-CASTLE WHERE HENRY MARTEN THE REGICIDE WAS IMPRISONED THIRTY YEARS.
FOR A MONUMENT AT SILBURY-HILL.
FOR A MONUMENT IN THE NEW FOREST.
FOR A TABLET ON THE BANKS OF A STREAM.
FOR THE CENOTAPH AT ERMENONVILLE.
INSCRIPTIONS FOR THE CALEDONIAN CANAL
EPITAPH IN BUTLEIGH CHURCH.
EPITAPH.
DEDICATIOM OF THE AUTHOR’S COLLOQUIES ON THE PROGRESS AND PROSPECTS OF SOCIETY.
INSCRIPTIONS
The three Utilitise of Poetry: the praise of Virtue and Goodness, the
Memory of things remarkable, and to invigorate the affections.
Welsh Triad.
FOR A TABLET AT GODSTOW NUNNERY.
Here Stranger rest thee! from the neighbouring towers
Of Oxford, haply thou hast forced thy bark
Up this strong stream, whose broken waters here
Send pleasant murmurs to the listening sense:
Rest thee beneath this hazel; its green boughs
Afford a grateful shade, and to the eye
Fair is its fruit: Stranger! the seemly fruit
Is worthless, all is hollowness within,
For on the grave of ROSAMUND it grows!
Young lovely and beloved she fell seduced,
And here retir’d to wear her wretched age
In earnest prayer and bitter penitence,
Despis’d and self-despising: think of her
Young Man! and learn to reverence Womankind!
FOR A COLUMN AT NEWBURY.
Art thou a Patriot Traveller? on this field
Did FALKLAND fall the blameless and the brave
Beneath a Tyrant’s banners: dost thou boast
Of loyal ardor? HAMBDEN perish’d here,
The rebel HAMBDEN, at whose glorious name
The heart of every honest Englishman
Beats high with conscious pride. Both uncorrupt,
Friends to their common country both, they fought,
They died in adverse armies. Traveller!
If with thy neighbour thou should’st not accord,
In charity remember these good men,
And quell each angry and injurious thought.
FOR A CAVERN THAT OVERLOOKS THE RIVER AVON.
Enter this cavern Stranger! the ascent
Is long and steep and toilsome; here awhile
Thou mayest repose thee, from the noontide heat
O’ercanopied by this arch’d rock that strikes
A grateful coolness: clasping its rough arms
Round the rude portal, the old ivy hangs
Its dark green branches down, and the wild Bees,
O’er its grey blossoms murmuring ceaseless, make
Most pleasant melody. No common spot
Receives thee, for the Power who prompts the song,
Loves this secluded haunt. The tide below
Scarce sends the sound of waters to thine ear;
And this high-hanging forest to the wind
Varies its many hues. Gaze Stranger here!
And let thy soften’d heart intensely feel
How good, how lovely, Nature! When from hence
Departing to the City’s crouded streets,
Thy sickening eye at every step revolts
From scenes of vice and wretchedness; reflect
That Man creates the evil he endures.
FOR THE APARTMENT IN CHEPSTOW-CASTLE WHERE HENRY MARTEN THE REGICIDE WAS IMPRISONED THIRTY YEARS.
For thirty years secluded from mankind,
Here Marten linger’d. Often have these walls
Echoed his footsteps, as with even tread
He paced around his prison: not to him
Did Nature’s fair varieties exist;
He never saw the Sun’s delightful beams,
Save when thro’ yon high bars it pour’d a sad
And broken splendor. Dost thou ask his crime?
He had rebell’d against the King, and sat
In judgment on him; for his ardent mind
Shaped goodliest plans of happiness on earth,
And peace and liberty. Wild dreams! But such
As PLATO lov’d; such as with holy zeal
Our MILTON worshipp’d. Blessed hopes! awhile
From man withheld, even to the latter days,
When CHRIST shall come and all things be fulfill’d.
FOR A MONUMENT AT SILBURY-HILL.
This mound in some remote and dateless day
Rear’d o’er a Chieftain of the Age of Hills,
May here detain thee Traveller! from thy road
Not idly lingering. In his narrow house
Some Warrior sleeps below: his gallant deeds
Haply at many a solemn festival
The Bard has harp’d, but perish’d is the song
Of praise, as o’er these bleak and barren downs
The wind that passes and is heard no more.
Go Traveller on thy way, and contemplate
Glory’s brief pageant, and remember then
That one good deed was never wrought in vain.
FOR A MONUMENT IN THE NEW FOREST.
This is the place where William’s kingly power
Did from their poor and peaceful homes expel,
Unfriended, desolate, and shelterless,
The habitants of all the fertile track
Far as these wilds extend. He levell’d down
Their little cottages, he bade their fields
Lie barren, so that o’er the forest waste
He might most royally pursue his sports!
If that thine heart be human, Passenger!
Sure it will swell within thee, and thy lips
Will mutter curses on him. Think thou then
What cities flame, what hosts unsepulchred
Pollute the passing wind, when raging Power
Drives on his blood-hounds to the chase of Man;
And as thy thoughts anticipate that day
When God shall judge aright, in charity
Pray for the wicked rulers of mankind.
FOR A TABLET ON THE BANKS OF A STREAM.
Stranger! awhile upon this mossy bank
Recline thee. If the Sun rides high, the breeze,
That loves to ripple o’er the rivulet,
Will play around thy brow, and the cool sound
Of running waters soothe thee. Mark how clear
It sparkles o’er the shallows, and behold
Where o’er its surface wheels with restless speed
Yon glossy insect, on the sand below
How the swift shadow flies. The stream is pure
In solitude, and many a healthful herb
Bends o’er its course and drinks the vital w
ave:
But passing on amid the haunts of man,
It finds pollution there, and rolls from thence
A tainted tide. Seek’st thou for HAPPINESS?
Go Stranger, sojourn in the woodland cot
Of INNOCENCE, and thou shalt find her there.
FOR THE CENOTAPH AT ERMENONVILLE.
STRANGER! the MAN OF NATURE lies not here:
Enshrin’d far distant by his rival’s side
His relics rest, there by the giddy throng
With blind idolatry alike revered!
Wiselier directed have thy pilgrim feet
Explor’d the scenes of Ermenonville. ROUSSEAU
Loved these calm haunts of Solitude and Peace;
Here he has heard the murmurs of the stream,
And the soft rustling of the poplar grove,
When o’er their bending boughs the passing wind
Swept a grey shade. Here if thy breast be full,
If in thine eye the tear devout should gush,
His SPIRIT shall behold thee, to thine home
From hence returning, purified of heart.
INSCRIPTIONS FOR THE CALEDONIAN CANAL
1. AT CLACHNACHARRY
Athwart the island here, from sea to sea,
Between these mountain barriers, the Great Glen
Of Scotland offers to the traveller,
Through wilds impervious else, an easy path,
Along the shore of rivers and of lakes,
In line continuous, whence the waters flow
Dividing east and west. Thus had they held
For untold centuries their perpetual course
Unprofited, till in the Georgian age
This mighty work was planned, which should unite
The lakes, control the innavigable streams,
And through the bowels of the land deduce
A way, where vessels which must else have braved
The formidable Cape, and have essayed
The perils of the Hyperborean Sea,
Might from the Baltic to the Atlantic deep
Pass and repass at will. So when the storm
Careers abroad, may they securely here,
Through birchen groves, green fields, and pastoral hills,
Pursue their voyage home. Humanity
May boast this proud expenditure, begun
By Britain in a time of arduous war;
Through all the efforts and emergencies
Of that long strife continued, and achieved
After her triumph, even at the time
When national burdens bearing on the State
Were felt with heaviest pressure. Such expense
Is best economy. In growing wealth,
Comfort and spreading industry, behold
The fruits immediate! And in days to come,
Fitly shall this great British work be named
With whatsoe’er of most magnificence,
For public use Rome in her plenitude
Of power effected, or all-glorious Greece,
Or Egypt, mother-land of all the arts.
2. AT FORT AUGUSTUS
Thou who hast reached this level, where the glede,
Wheeling between the mountains in mid-air,
Eastward or westward as his gyre inclines,
Descries the German or the Atlantic Sea,
Pause here; and, as thou seest the ship pursue
Her easy way serene, call thou to mind
By what exertions of victorious art
The way was opened. Fourteen times upheaved,
The vessel hath ascended, since she changed
The salt sea water for the highland lymph;
As oft in imperceptible descent
Must, step by step, be lowered, before she woo
The ocean breeze again. Thou hast beheld
What basins, most capacious of their kind,
Enclose her, while the obedient element
Lifts or depones its burthen. Thou hast seen
The torrent hurrying from its native hills
Pass underneath the broad canal inhumed,
Then issue harmless thence; the rivulet
Admitted by its intake peaceably,
Forthwith by gentle overfall discharged:
And haply too thou hast observed the herds
Frequent their vaulted path, unconscious they
That the wide waters on the long low arch
Above them, lie sustained. What other works
Science, audacious in emprize, hath wrought,
Meet not the eye, but well may fill the mind.
Not from the bowels of the land alone,
From lake and stream hath their diluvial wreck
Been scooped to form this navigable way;
Huge rivers were controlled, or from their course
Shouldered aside; and at the eastern mouth,
Where the salt ooze denied a resting place,
There were the deep foundations laid, by weight
On weight immersed, and pile on pile down-driven,
Till steadfast as the everlasting rocks
The massive outwork stands. Contemplate now
What days and nights of thought, what years of toil,
What inexhaustive springs of public wealth
The vast design required; the immediate good,
The future benefit progressive still;
And thou wilt pay the tribute of due praise
To those whose counsels, whose decrees, whose care,
For after ages formed the generous work.
3. AT BANAVIE
Where these capacious basins, by the laws
Of the subjacent element receive
The ship, descending or upraised, eight times,
From stage to stage with unfelt agency
Translated; fitliest may the marble here
Record the Architect’s immortal name.
Telford it was, by whose presiding mind
The whole great work was planned and perfected;
Telford, who o’er the vale of Cambrian Dee,
Aloft in air, at giddy height upborne,
Carried his navigable road, and hung
High o’er Menaï’s straits the bending bridge;
Structures of more ambitious enterprise
Than minstrels in the age of old romance
To their own Merlin’s magic lore ascribed.
Nor hath he for his native land performed
Less in his proud design; and where his piers
Around her coast from many a fisher’s creek
Unsheltered else, and many an ample port
Repel the assailing storm; and where his roads
In beautiful and sinuous line far seen,
Wind with the vale, and win the long ascent,
Now o’er the deep morass sustained, and now
Across ravine, or glen, or estuary,
Opening a passage through the wilds subdued.
EPITAPH IN BUTLEIGH CHURCH.
Divided far by death were they, whose names,
In honour here united, as in birth,
This monumental verse records. They drew
In Dorset’s healthy vales their natal breath,
And from these shores beheld the ocean first,
Whereon, in early youth, with one accord
They chose their way of fortune; to that course
By Hood and Bridport’s bright example drawn,
Their kinsmen, children of this place, and sons
Of one, who in his faithful ministry
Inculcated, within these hallowed walls,
The truths, in mercy to mankind revealed.
Worthy were these three brethren each to add
New honours to the already honour’d name;
But Arthur, in the morning of his day,
Perished amid the Caribbean sea,
When the Pomona, by a hurricane
Whirl’d, riven and overwhelmed, with all her crew
> Into the deep went down. A longer date
To Alexander was assign’d, for hope
For fair ambition, and for fond regret,
Alas, how short! for duty, for desert,
Sufficing; and, while Time preserves the roll
Of Britain’s naval feats, for good report.
A boy, with Cook he rounded the great globe;
A youth, in many a celebrated fight
With Rodney had his part; and having reach’d
Life’s middle stage, engaging ship to ship,
When the French Hercules, a gallant foe,
Struck to the British Mars his three-striped flag,
He fell, in the moment of his victory.
Here his remains in sure and certain hope
Are laid, until the hour when earth and sea
Shall render up their dead. One brother yet
Survived, with Keppel and with Rodney train’d
In battles, with the Lord of Nile approved,
Ere in command he worthily upheld
Old England’s high prerogative. In the east,
The west, the Baltic, and the midland seas,
Yea, wheresoever hostile fleets have plough’d
The ensanguined deep, his thunders have been heard,
His flag in brave defiance hath been seen,
And bravest enemies at Sir Samuel’s name
Felt fatal presage in their inmost heart,
Of unavertable defeat foredoom’d.
Thus in the path of glory he rode on,
Victorious alway, adding praise to praise;
Till full of honours, not of years, beneath
The venom of the infected clime he sunk,
On Coromandel’s coast, completing there
His service, only when his life was spent.
To the three brethren, Alexander’s son
(Sole scion he in whom their line survived,)
With English feeling, and the deeper sense
Of filial duty, consecrates this tomb.
EPITAPH.
To Butler’s venerable memory.