Complete Poetical Works of Robert Southey

by Robert Southey

  In confirmation to point out

  That there the Thumb was missing.

  Keswick, 1829.

  EPILOGUE TO THE YOUNG DRAGON.

  I TOLD my tale of the Holy Thumb

  That split the Dragon asunder,

  And my daughters made great eyes as they heard,

  Which were full of delight and wonder.

  With listening lips and looks intent,

  There sate an eager boy,

  Who shouted sometimes and clapt his hands,

  And could not sit still for joy.

  But when I look’d at my Mistress’s face,

  It was all too grave the while;

  And when I ceased, methought there was more

  Of reproof than of praise in her smile.

  That smile I read aright, for thus

  Reprovingly said she,

  “Such tales are meet for youthful ears,

  But give little content to me.

  “From thee far rather would I hear

  Some sober, sadder lay,

  Such as I oft have heard, well pleased

  Before those locks were grey.”

  “Nay, Mistress mine,” I made reply,

  “The autumn hath its flowers,

  Nor ever is the sky more gay

  Than in its evening hours.

  “Our good old Cat, Earl Tomlemagne,

  Upon a warm spring day,

  Even like a kitten at its sport,

  Is sometimes seen to play.

  “That sense which held me back in youth

  From all intemperate gladness,

  That same good instinct bids me shun

  Unprofitable sadness.

  “Nor marvel you if I prefer

  Of playful themes to sing,

  The October grove hath brighter tints

  Than Summer or than Spring:

  “For o’er the leaves before they fall

  Such hues hath Nature thrown,

  That the woods wear in sunless days

  A sunshine of their own.

  “Why should I seek to call forth tears?

  The source from whence we weep

  Too near the surface lies in youth,

  In age it lies too deep.

  “Enough of foresight sad, too much

  Of retrospect have I;

  And well for me that I sometimes

  Can put those feelings by.;

  “From public ills, and thoughts that else

  Might weigh me down to earth,

  That I can gain some intervals, For healthful, hopeful mirth;

  “That I can sport in tales which suit

  Young auditors like these,

  Yet, if I err not, may content

  The few I seek to please.

  “I know in what responsive minds

  My lightest lay will wake

  A sense of pleasure, for its own,

  And for its author’s sake.

  “I know the eyes in which the light

  Of memory will appear;

  I know the lips which while they read

  Will wear a smile sincere:

  “The hearts to which my sportive song

  The thought of days will bring,

  When they and I, whose Winter now

  Comes on, were in our Spring.

  “And I their well known voices too,

  Though far away, can hear,

  Distinctly, even as when in dreams

  They reach the inward ear.

  “‘There speaks the man we knew of yore,’

  Well pleased I hear them say,

  ‘Such was he in his lighter moods

  Before our heads were grey.

  “‘Buoyant he was in spirit, quick

  Of fancy, blithe of heart,

  And Care and Time and Change have left

  Untouch’d his better part.’

  “Thus say my morning friends who now

  Are in the vale of years,

  And I, save such as thus may rise,

  Would draw no other tears.”

  Keswick, 1829.

  A TALE OF PARAGUAY. DEDICATION TO EDITH MAY SOUTHEY.

  I.

  EDITH! ten years are number’d, since the day,

  Which ushers in the cheerful month of May,

  To us by thy dear birth, my daughter dear,

  Was blest. Thou therefore didst the name partake

  Of that sweet month, the sweetest of the year;

  But fitlier was it given thee for the sake

  Of a good man, thy father’s friend sincere,

  Who at the font made answer in thy name.

  Thy love and reverence rightly may he claim.

  For closely hath he been with me allied

  In friendship’s holy bonds, from that first hour

  When in our youth we met on Tejo’s side;

  Bonds which, defying now all Fortune’s power,

  Time hath not loosen’d, nor will Death divide.

  II.

  A child more welcome, by indulgent Heaven

  Never to parents’ tears and prayers was given!

  For scarcely eight months at thy happy birth

  Had pass’d, since of thy sister we were left, —

  Our first-born and our only babe, bereft.

  Too fair a flower was she for this rude earth!

  The features of her beauteous infancy

  Have faded from me, like a passing cloud,

  Or like the glories of an evening sky:

  And seldom hath my tongue pronounced her name

  Since she was sunnnon’d to a happier sphere.

  But that dear love so deeply wounded then,

  I in my soul with silent faith sincere

  Devoutly cherish till we meet again.

  III.

  I saw thee first with trembling thankfulness,

  O daughter of my hopes and of my fears!

  Press’d on thy senseless cheek a troubled kiss,

  And breathed my blessing over thee with tears.

  But memory did not long our bliss alloy;

  For gentle nature who had given relief

  Wean’d with new love the chasten’d heart from grief;

  And the sweet season minister’d to joy

  IV.

  It was a season when their leaves and flowers

  The trees as to an Arctic summer spread:

  When chilling wintry winds and snowy showers,

  Which had too long usurp’d the vernal hours

  Like spectres from the sight of morning, fled

  Before the presence of that joyous May;

  And groves and gardens all the live-long day

  Rung with the birds’ loud love-songs. Over all,

  One thrush was heard from morn till even-fall:

  Thy Mother well remembers when she lay

  The happy prisoner of the genial bed,

  How from yon lofty poplar’s topmost spray

  At earliest dawn his thrilling pipe was heard;

  And when the light of evening died away,

  That blithe and indefatigable bird

  Still his redundant song of joy and love preferr’d.

  V.

  How I have doted on thine infant smiles

  At morning when thine eyes unclosed on mine;

  How, as the months in swift succession roll’d,

  I mark’d thy human faculties unfold,

  And watch’d the dawning of the light divine;

  And with what artifice of playful guiles

  Won from thy lips with still-repeated wiles

  Kiss after kiss, a reckoning often told, —

  Something I ween thou know’st; for thou hast seen

  Thy sisters in their turn such fondness prove,

  And felt how childhood in its winning years

  The attempered soul to tenderness can move.

  This thou canst tell ; but not the hopes and fears

  With which a parent’s heart doth overflow, —

  The thoughts
and cares inwoven with that love, —

  Its nature and its depth, thou dost not, canst not know.

  VI.

  The years which since thy birth have pass’d away

  May well to thy young retrospect appear

  A measureless extent: — like yesterday

  To me, so soon they fill’d their short career.

  To thee discourse of reason have they brought,

  With sense of time and change; and something too

  Of this precarious state of things have taught,

  Where Man abideth never in one stay;

  And of mortality a mournful thought.

  And I have seen thine eyes suffused in grief.

  When I have said that with autumnal grey

  The touch of eld hath mark’d thy father’s head;

  That even the longest day of life is brief,

  And mine is falling fast into the yellow leaf.

  VII.

  Thy happy nature from the painful thought

  With instinct turns, and scarcely canst thou bear

  To hear me name the Grave: Thou knowest not

  How large a portion of my heart is there!

  The faces which I loved in infancy

  Are gone; and bosom-friends of riper age,

  With whom I fondly talk’d of years to come,

  Summon’d before me to their heritage

  Are in the better world, beyond the tomb.

  And I have brethren there, and sisters dear,

  And dearer babes. I therefore needs must dwell

  Often in thought with those whom still I love so well.

  VIII.

  Thus wilt thou feel in thy maturer mind;

  When grief shall be thy portion, thou wilt find

  Safe consolation in such thoughts as these, —

  A present refuge in affliction’s hour.

  And if indulgent Heaven thy lot should bless

  With all imaginable happiness.

  Here shalt thou have, my child, beyond all power

  Of chance, thy holiest, surest, best delight.

  Take therefore now thy Father’s latest lay, —

  Perhaps his last; — and treasure in thine heart

  The feelings that its musing strains convey.

  A song it is of life’s declining day,

  Yet meet for youth. Vain passions to excite,

  No strains of morbid sentiment I sing,

  Nor tell of idle loves with ill-spent breath;

  A reverent offering to the Grave I bring,

  And twine a garland for the brow of Death.

  A TALE OF PARAGUAY. PROEM.

  That was a memorable day for Spain,

  When on Pamplona’s towers, so basely won,

  The Frenchmen stood, and saw upon the plain

  Their long-expected succours hastening on:

  Exultingly they mark’d the brave array,

  And deem’d their leader should his purpose gain,

  Tho’ Wellington and England barr’d the way.

  Anon the bayonets glitter’d in the sun,

  And frequent cannon flash’d, whose lurid light

  Redden’d thro’ sulphurous smoke: fast vollying round

  Roll’d the war-thunders, and with long rebound

  Backward from many a rock and cloud-capt height

  In answering peals Pyrene sent the sound.

  Impatient for relief, toward the fight

  The hungry garrison their eye-balls strain:

  Vain was the Frenchman’s skill, his valour vain;

  And even then, when eager hope almost

  Had moved their irreligious lips to prayer,

  Averting from the fatal scene their sight,

  They breathed the imprecations of despair.

  For Wellesley’s star hath risen ascendant there;

  Once more he drove the host of France to flight,

  And triumph’d once again for God and for the right.

  That was a day, whose influence far and wide

  The struggling nations felt; it was a joy

  Wherewith all Europe rung from side to side.

  Yet hath Pamplona seen in former time

  A moment big with mightier consequence,

  Affecting many an age and distant clime.

  That day it was which saw in her defence,

  Contending with the French before her wall,

  A noble soldier of Guipuzcoa fall,

  Sore hurt, but not to death. For when long care

  Restored his shatter’d leg and set him free,

  He would not brook a slight deformity,

  As one who being gay and debonnair,

  In courts conspicuous, as in camps must be:

  So he forsooth a shapely boot must wear;

  And the vain man, with peril of his life,

  Laid the recovered limb again beneath the knife.

  Long time upon the bed of pain he lay

  Whiling with books the weary hours away;

  And from that circumstance and this vain man

  A train of long events their course began,

  Whose term it is not given us yet to see.

  Who hath not heard Loyola’s sainted name,

  Before whom Kings and Nations bow’d the knee?

  Thy annals, Ethiopia, might proclaim

  What deeds arose from that prolific day;

  And of dark plots might shuddering Europe tell.

  But Science too her trophies would display;

  Faith give the martyrs of Japan their fame;

  And Charity on works of love would dwell

  In California’s dolorous regions drear;

  And where, amid a pathless world of wood.

  Gathering a thousand rivers on his way,

  Huge Orellana rolls his affluent flood;

  And where the happier sons of Paraguay,

  By gentleness and pious art subdued,

  Bow’d their meek heads beneath the Jesuits’ sway.

  And lived and died in filial servitude.

  I love thus uncontroll’d, as in a dream,

  To muse upon the course of human things;

  Exploring sometimes the remotest springs,

  Far as tradition lends one guiding gleam;

  Or following, upon Thought’s audacious wings,

  Into Futurity, the endless stream.

  But now in quest of no ambitious height,

  I go where truth and nature lead my way,

  And ceasing here from desultory flight,

  In measured strains I tell a Tale of Paraguay.

  A TALE OF PARAGUAY. CANTO I.

  I.

  JENNER! for ever shall thy honour’d name

  Among the children of mankind be blest,

  Who by thy skill hast taught us how to tame

  One dire disease, — the lamentable pest

  Which Africa sent forth to scourge the West,

  As if in vengeance for her sable brood

  So many an age remorselessly opprest.

  For that most fearful malady subdued

  Receive a poet’s praise, a father’s gratitude.

  II.

  Fair promise be this triumph of an age

  When Man, with vain desires no longer blind,

  And wise though late, his only war shall wage

  Against the miseries which afflict mankind.

  Striving with virtuous heart and strenuous mind

  Till evil from the earth shall pass away.

  Lo, this his glorious destiny assign’d!

  For that blest consummation let us pray,

  And trust in fervent faith, and labour as we may.

  III.

  The hideous malady which lost its power

  When Jenner’s art the dire contagion stay’d,

  Among Columbia’s sons, in fatal hour.

  Across the wide Atlantic wave convey’d

  Its fiercest form of pestilence display’d:

  Where’er its deadly course the plague began
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  Vainly the wretched sufferer look’d for aid;

  Parent from child, and child from parent ran.

  For tyrannous fear dissolved all natural bonds of man.

  IV.

  A feeble nation of Guarani race,

  Thinn’d by perpetual wars, but unsubdued,

  Had taken up at length a resting place

  Among those tracts of lake and swamp and wood,

  Where Mondai issuing from its solitude

  Flows with slow stream to Empalado’s bed.

  It was a region desolate and rude;

  But thither had the horde for safety fled.

  And being there conceal’d in peace their lives they led.

  V.

  There had the tribe a safe asylum found

  Amid those marshes wide and woodlands dense,

  With pathless wilds and waters spread around,

  And labyrinthine swamps, a sure defence

  From human foes, — but not from pestilence.

  The spotted plague appear’d, that direst ill, —

  How brought among them none could tell, or whence;

  The mortal seed had lain among them still.

  And quicken’d now to work the Lord’s mysterious will.

  VI.

  Alas, it was no medicable grief

  Which herbs might reach! Nor could the juggler’s power

  With all his antic mummeries bring relief.

  Faith might not aid him in that ruling hour,

  Himself a victim now. The dreadful stour

  None could escape, nor aught its force assuage.

  The marriageable maiden had her dower

  From death; the strong man sunk beneath its rage,

  And death cut short the thread of childhood and of age.

  VII.

  No time for customary mourning now;

  With hand close-clench’d to pluck the rooted hair,

  To beat the bosom, on the swelling brow