Complete Poetical Works of Robert Southey
Page 55
9.
But from that City then, behold,
A gracious form arose;
Her snow-white wings upon the dusky air
Shone like the waves that glow
Around a midnight keel in liquid light.
Upward her supplicating arms were spread
And as her face to heaven
In eloquent grief she raised,
Loose, like a Comet’s refluent tresses, hung
Her heavenly hair dispersed.
10.
“Not yet, O Lord! not yet,
O merciful as just!
Not yet!”.. the Tutelary Angel cried;
“For I must plead with thee for this poor land,
Guilty,.. but still the seat
Of genuine piety,..
The mother still of noble minds,..
The nurse of high desires!
Not yet, O Lord, not yet,
Give thou thine anger way!
Thou who hast set thy Bow
Of Mercy in the clouds
Not yet, O Lord, pour out
The Vials of thy wrath!
11.
“Oh, for the sake
Of that religion pure and undefiled
Here purchased by thy Martyrs’ precious blood,..
Mercy, Oh mercy, Lord!
For that well-order’d frame of equal laws,
Time’s goodliest monument,
O’er which thy guardian shield
So oft hath been extended heretofore,..
Mercy, Oh mercy, Lord!
For the dear charities
The household virtues, that in secret there,
Like sweetest violets, send their fragrance forth,
Mercy, Oh mercy, Lord!
12.
“Oh wilt thou quench the light,
That should illuminate
The nations who in darkness sit,
And in the shadow of death?..
Oh wilt thou stop the heart
Of intellectual life?..
Wilt thou seek the eye of the world?..
Mercy, Oh mercy, Lord!
13.
“Not for the guilty few;
Nor for the erring multitude,
The ignorant many, wickedly misled,..
Send thou thy vengeance down
Upon a land so long the dear abode
Of Freedom, Knowledge, Virtue, Faith, approved,.
Thine own beloved land!
Oh let not Hell prevail
Against her past deserts,..
Against her actual worth..
Against her living hopes...
Against the Prayers that rise
From righteous hearts this hour!
14.
“Plead with me, O ye Dead! whose sacred dust
Is laid in hope within her hallow’d soil,
Plead with me for your Country, suffering now
Beneath such loathsome plagues,
As ancient Egypt in her slime
And hot corruption bred.
Plead with me at this hour
All wise and upright Minds,
All honourable Hearts,..
For ye abhor the sins
Which, o’er the guilty land,
Have drawn this gather’d storm!
Plead with me Souls unborn,
Ye who are doomed upon this fateful spot,
To pass your pilgrimage,
Earth’s noblest heritors,
Or children of a ruin’d realm, to shame
And degradation born...
(For this is on the issue of the hour ‘.)
Plead with me, unborn Spirits! that the wrath
Deserved, may pass away!
15.
Join in my supplication, Seas and Lands...
I call upon you all!
Thou, Europe, in whose cause,
Alone and undismay’d,
The generous nation strove;
For whose deliverance in the Spanish Helds
Her noblest blood was pour’d
Profusely; and on that Brabantine plain,
(The proudest fight that e’er
By virtuous victory
Was hallowed to all time.)
Join, with me, Africa!
For here hath thy redemption had its birth;..
Thou, India, who art blest
With peace and equity
Beneath her easy sway;..
And thou, America, who owest
The large and inextinguishable debt
Of filial love!.. And ye,
Remote Antarctic Isles and Continent,
Where the glad tidings of the Gospel truth.
Her children arc proclaiming faithfully;
Join with me now to wrest
The thunderbolt from that relenting arm!..
Plead with me, Earth and Ocean, at this hour,
Thou, Ocean, for thy Queen,
And for thy benefactress, thou, O Earth!”
16.
The Angel ceased;
The vision fled;
The wind arose,
The clouds were rent,
They were drifted and scatter’d abroad;
And as I look’d, and saw
Where through the clear blue sky the silver Moon
Moved in her light serene,
A healing influence reach’d my heart,
And I felt in my soul
That the voice of the Angel was heard.
Keswick, 1820.
ODE ON THE PORTRAIT OF BISHOP HEBER.
1.
YES,.. such as these were Heber’s lineaments;
Such his capacious front,
His comprehensive eye,
His open brow serene.
Such was the gentle countenance which bore
Of generous feeling, and of golden truth,
Sure Nature’s sterling impress; never there
Unruly passion left
Its ominous marks infix’d,
Nor the worse die of evil habit set
An inward stain ingrain’d.
Such were the lips whose salient playfulness
Enliven’d peaceful hours of private life;
Whose eloquence
Held congregations open-ear’d,
As from the heart it flow’d, a living stream
Of Christian wisdom, pure and undefiled.
2.
And what if there be those
Who in the cabinet
Of memory hold enshrined
A livelier portraiture,
And see in thought, as in their dreams,
His actual image, verily produced;
Yet shall this counterfeit convey
To strangers, and preserve for after-time,
All that could perish of him,.. all that else
Even now had past away:
For he hath taken with the Living Dead
His honourable place,..
Yea, with the Saints of God
His holy habitation. Hearts, to which
Thro’ ages he shall speak,
Will yearn towards him; and they too, (for such
Will be,) who gird their loins
With truth to follow him,
Having the breast-plate on of righteousness,
The helmet of salvation, and the shield
Of faith,.. they too will gaze
Upon his effigy
With reverential love,
‘Till they shall grow familiar with its lines,
And know him when they see his face in Heaven.
3.
Ten years have held their course
Since last I look’d upon
That living countenance,
When on Llangedwin’s terraces we paced
Together, to and fro.
Partaking there its hospitality,
We with its honoured master spent,
Well-pleased, the social hours;
His friend and mine,.. my earliest friend, whom I
Have ever- t
hro’ all changes, found the same,
From boyhood to grey hairs,
In goodness, and in worth and warmth of heart.
Together then we traced
The grass-grown site, where armed feet once trod
The threshold of Glendower’s embattled hall;
Together sought Melangel s lonely Church,
Saw the dark yews, majestic in decay,
Which in their flourishing strength
Cyveilioc might have seen;
Letter by letter traced the lines
On Yorwerth’s fabled tomb;
And curiously observed what vestiges.
Mouldering and mutilate,
Of Monacella’s legend there are left,
A tale humane, itself
Well-nigh forgotten now:
Together visited the ancient house
Which from the hill-slope takes
Its Cymric name euphonious; there to view,
Tho’ drawn by some rude limner inexpert,
The faded portrait of that lady fair,
Beside whose corpse her husband watch’d.
And with perverted faith,
Preposterously placed,
Thought, obstinate in hopeless hope, to see
The beautiful dead, by miracle, revive.
4.
The sunny recollections of those days
Full soon were overcast, when Heber went
Where half this wide world’s circle lay
Between us interposed.
A messenger of love he went,
A true Evangelist;
Not for ambition, nor for gain,
Nor of constraint, save such as duty lays
Upon the disciplin’d heart,
Took he the overseeing on himself,
Of that wide flock dispers’d,
Which, till these latter times,
Had there been left to stray
Neglected all too long.
For this great end devotedly he went,
Forsaking friends and kin,
His own loved paths of pleasantness and peace,
Books, leisure, privacy,
Prospects (and not remote), of all wherewith
Authority could dignify desert;
And, dearer far to him,
Pursuits that with the learned and the wise
Should have assured his name its lasting place.
5.
Large, England, is the debt
Thou owest to Heathendom
To India most of all, where Providence,
Giving thee thy dominion there in trust,
Upholds its baseless strength.
All seas have seen thy red-cross flag
In war triumphantly display’d;
Late only has thou set that standard up
On pagan shores in peace!
Yea, at this hour the cry of blood
Riseth against thee from beneath the wheels
Of that seven-headed Idol’s ear accurst;
Against thee, from the widow’s funeral pile
The smoke of human sacrifice
Ascends, even now, to Heaven
6.
The debt shall be discharged; the crying sin
Silenced; the foul offence
For ever done away.
Thither our saintly Heber went,
In promise and in pledge
That England, from her guilty torpor roused.
Should zealously and wisely undertake
Her aweful task assign’d:
Thither, devoted to the work, he went,
There spent his precious life,
There left his holy dust.
7.
How beautiful are the feet of him
That bringeth good tidings,
That publisheth peace,
That bringeth good tidings of good,
That proclaimeth salvation for men
Where’er the Christian Patriarch went.
Honour and reverence heralded his way.
And blessings followed him.
The Malabar, the Moor, the Cingalese,
Tho’ unillumed by faith,
Yet not the less admin d
The virtue that they saw.
The European soldier, there so long
Of needful and consolatory rites
Injuriously deprived,
Felt, at his presence, the neglected seed
Of early piety
Refresh’d, as with a quickening dew from Heaven.
Native believers wept for thankfulness,
When on their heads he laid his hallowing hands;
And, if the Saints in bliss
Be cognizant of aught that passeth here,
It was a joy for Schwartz
To look from Paradise that hour
Upon his earthly flock.
8
Ram boweth down,
Creeshna and Seeva stoop;
The Arabian Moon must wane to wax no more:
And Ishmael’s seed redeem’d,
And Esau’s.. to their brotherhood,
And to their better birthright then restored,
Shall within Israel’s covenant be brought.
Drop down, ye Heavens, from above!
Ye Skies, pour righteousness!
Open, thou Earth, and let
Salvation be brought forth!
And sing ye, O ye Heavens, and shout, O Earth,
With all thy hills and vales,
Thy mountains and thy woods,
Break forth into a song, a jubilant song,
For by Himself the Lord hath sworn
That every tongue to Him shall swear,
To Him that every knee shall bow.
9.
Take comfort, then, my soul!
Thy latter clays on earth,
Tho’ few shall not he evil, by this hope
Supported, and enlighten’d on the way.
O Reginald, one course,
Our studies, and our thoughts,
Our aspirations held,
Wherein, but mostly in this blessed hope,
We had a bond of union, closely knit
In spirit, though in this world’s wilderness
Apart our lots were cast.
Seldom we met; but I knew well
That whatsoe’er this never-idle hand
Sent forth would find with thee
Benign acceptance, to its full desert.
For thou wert of that audience,.. fit, though few.
For whom I am content
To live laborious days,
Assured that after years will ratify
Their honourable award.
10.
Hadst thou revisited thy native land,
Mortality and Time,
And Change, must needs have made
Our meeting mournful. Happy he
Who to his rest is borne
In sure and certain hope.
Before the hand of age
Hath chill’d his faculties,
Or sorrow reach’d him in his heart of hearts!
Most happy if he leave in his good name
A light for those who follow him,
And in his works a living seed
Of good, prolific still.
11.
Yes, to the Christian, to the Heathen world,
Heber, thou art not dead,.. thou canst not die!
Nor can I think of thee as lost.
A little portion of this little isle
At first divided us; then half the globe:
The same earth held us still; but when,
O Reginald, wert thou so near as now!
‘T is but the falling of a withered leaf,..
The breaking of a shell,..
The rending of a veil I
Oh when that leaf shall fall,..
That shell be burst,.. that veil be rent,.. may then
My spirit be with thine!
Keswick, 1820.
EPISTLE TO ALLAN CUNNINGHAM.
Once more to that dear dwelling place return’d,
Where I have past the whole mid stage of life,
Not idly, certes; not unworthily,,.
So let me hope: where Time upon my head
Hath laid his frore and monitory hand;
And when this poor frail earthly tabernacle
Shall be dissolved,.. it matters not how soon
Or late, in God’s good time,. where I would lain
Be gathered to my children, earth to earth.
Needless it were to say how willingly
I bade the huge metropolis farewell,
Its din, and dust, and dirt, and smoke, and smut,
Thames’ water, paviours’ ground, and London sky;
Weary of hurried days and restless nights,
Watchmen, whose office is to murder sleep
When sleep might else have weigh’d ones eyelids down.
Rattle of carriages, and roll of carts,
And tramp of iron hoofs; and worse then all,..
Confusion being worse confounded then.
With coachmen’s quarrels and with footmen’s shouts.
My next-door neighbours, in a street not yet
Macadamized, (me miserable!) at home;
For then had we from midnight until morn
House-quakes, street-thunders, and door-batteries.
O Government! in thy wisdom and thy want,
Tax knockers;in compassion to the sick,
And those whose sober habits are not yet
Inverted, topsy-turvying night and day,
Tax them more heavily than thon hast charged
Armorial bearings and bepowder’d pates.
And thou, O Michael, ever to be praised,
Angelic among Taylors! for thy laws
Antifuliginous, extend those laws
Till every chimney its own smoke consume,
And give thenceforth thy dinners unlampoon’d.
Escaping from all this, the very whirl
Of mail-coach wheels bound outward from Lad-lane,
Was peace and quietness. Three hundred miles
Of homeward way seem’d to the body rest.
And to the mind repose.
Donne did not hate
More perfectly that city. Not for all
Its social, all its intellectual joys,.,
Which having touch’d, I may not condescend
To name aught else the Demon of the place
Might for his lure hold forth;.. not even for these