Over her vine-clad hills and regions gay,
Fair even as Phosphor who foreruns the day.
Such and so beautiful that Star’s uprise;
But soon the glorious dawn was overcast:
A baleful track it held across the skies,
Till now through all its fatal changes past,
Its course fulfilled, its aspects understood,
On Waterloo it hath gone down in blood.
Where now the hopes with which thine ardent youth
Rejoicingly to run its race began?
Where now the reign of Liberty and Truth,
The Rights Omnipotent of Equal Man,
The principles should make all discord cease,
And bid poor humankind repose at length in peace?
Behold the Bourbon to that throne by force
Restored, from whence by fury he was cast:
Thus to the point where it began its course,
The melancholy cycle comes at last;
And what are all the intermediate years?..
What, but a bootless waste of blood and tears!
The peace which thus at Waterloo ye won,
Shall it endure with this exasperate foe?
In gratitude for all that ye have done,
Will France her ancient enmity forego?
Her wounded spirit, her envenomed will
Ye know,.. and ample means are left her still.
What tho’ the tresses of her strength be shorn,
The roots remain untouched; and as of old
The bondsman Samson felt his power return
To his knit sinews, so shall ye behold
France, like a giant fresh from sleep, arise
And rush upon her slumbering enemies.
Woe then for Belgium! for this ill-doomed land,
The theatre of strife through every age!
Look from this eminence whereon we stand,..
What is the region round us but a stage
For the mad pastime of Ambition made,
Whereon War’s dreadful drama may be played?
Thus hath it been from history’s earliest light,
When yonder by the Sabis Caesar stood,
And saw his legions, raging from the fight,
Root out the noble nation they subdued;
Even at this day the peasant findeth there
The relics of that ruthless massacre.
Need I recall the long religious strife?
Or William’s hard-fought fields? or Marlborough’s fame
Here purchased at such lavish price of life,..
Or Fontenoy, or Fleurus’ later name?
Wherever here the foot of man may tread,
The blood of man hath on that spot been shed.
Shall then Futurity a happier train
Unfold, than this dark picture of the past?
Dreamest thou again of some Saturnian reign,
Or that this ill-compacted realm should last?
Its wealth and weakness to the foe are known,
And the first shock subverts its baseless throne.
O wretched country, better should thy soil
Be laid again beneath the invading seas,
Thou goodliest masterpiece of human toil,
If still thou must be doomed to scenes like these!
O Destiny inexorable and blind!
O miserable lot of poor mankind!
Saying thus, he fixed on me a searching eye
Of stern regard, as if my heart to reach:
Yet gave he now no leisure to reply;
For ere I might dispose my thoughts for speech,
The Old Man, as one who felt and understood
His strength, the theme of his discourse pursued.
If we look farther, what shall we behold
But every where the swelling seeds of ill,
Half-smothered fires, and causes manifold
Of strife to come; the powerful watching still
For fresh occasion to enlarge his power,
The weak and injured waiting for their hour!
Will the rude Cossack with his spoils bear back
The love of peace and humanizing art?
Think ye the mighty Moscovite shall lack
Some specious business for the ambitious heart;
Or the black Eagle, when she moults her plume,
The form and temper of the Dove assume?
From the old Germanic chaos hath there risen
A happier order of established things?
And is the Italian Mind from papal prison
Set free to soar upon its native wings?
Or look to Spain, and let her Despot tell
If there thy high-raised hopes are answered well!
At that appeal my spirit breathed a groan,
But he triumphantly pursued his speech:
O Child of Earth, he cried with loftier tone,
The present and the past one lesson teach;
Look where thou wilt, the history of man
Is but a thorny maze, without a plan!
The winds which have in viewless heaven their birth,
The waves which in their fury meet the clouds,
The central storms which shake the solid earth,
And from volcanoes burst in fiery floods,
Are not more vague and purportless and blind,
Than is the course of things among mankind!
Rash hands unravel what the wise have spun;
Realms which in story fill so large a part,
Reared by the strong are by the weak undone;
Barbarians overthrow the works of art,
And what force spares is sapt by sure decay,..
So earthly things are changed and pass away.
And think not thou thy England hath a spell,
That she this general fortune should elude;
Easier to crush the foreign foe, than quell
The malice which misleads the multitude,
And that dread malady of erring zeal,
Which like a cancer eats into the commonweal.
The fabric of her power is undermined;
The earthquake underneath it will have way,
And all that glorious structure, as the wind
Scatters a summer cloud, be swept away:
For Destiny on this terrestrial ball
Drives on her iron car, and crushes all.
Thus as he ended, his mysterious form
Enlarged, grew dim, and vanished from my view.
At once on all sides rushed the gathered storm,
The thunders rolled around, the wild winds blew,
And as the tempest round the summit beat,
The whole frail fabric shook beneath my feet.
III.
THE SACRED MOUNTAIN.
But then methought I heard a voice exclaim,
Hither, my Son, Oh, hither take thy flight!
A heavenly voice which called me by my name,
And bade me hasten from that treacherous height:
The voice it was which I was wont to hear,
Sweet as a Mother’s to her infant’s ear.
I hesitated not, but at the call
Sprung from the summit of that tottering tower.
There is a motion known in dreams to all,
When buoyant by some self-sustaining power,
Through air we seem to glide, as if set free
From all encumbrance of mortality.
Thus borne aloft I reached the Sacred Hill,
And left the scene of tempests far behind:
But that old tempter’s parting language still
Prest like a painful burthen on my mind;
The troubled soul had lost her inward light,
And all within was black as Erebus and Night.
The Thoughts which I had known in youth returned,
But, oh, how changed! a sad and spectral train:
And while for all the miseries past I mourned,
And for the lives which had been given in vain,
In sorrow and in fear I turned mine eye
From the dark aspects of futurity.
I sought the thickest woodland’s shade profound,
As suited best my melancholy mood,
And cast myself upon the gloomy ground.
When lo! a gradual radiance filled the wood;
A heavenly presence rose upon my view,
And in that form divine the aweful Muse I knew.
Hath then that Spirit false perplexed thy heart,
O thou of little faith! severe she cried.
Bear with me, Goddess, heavenly as thou art,
Bear with my earthly nature! I replied,
And let me pour into thine ear my grief:
Thou canst enlighten, thou canst give relief.
The ploughshare had gone deep, the sower’s hand
Had scattered in the open soil the grain;
The harrow too had well prepared the land;
I looked to see the fruit of all this pain!..
Alas! the thorns and old inveterate weed
Have sprung again, and stifled the good seed.
I hoped that Italy should break her chains,
Foreign and papal, with the world’s applause,
Knit in firm union her divided reigns,
And rear a well-built pile of equal laws:
Then might the wrongs of Venice be forgiven,
And joy should reach Petrarca’s soul in Heaven.
I hoped that that abhorred Idolatry
Had in the strife received its mortal wound:
The Souls which from beneath the Altar cry,
At length, I thought, had their just vengeance found;..
In purple and in scarlet clad, behold
The Harlot sits, adorned with gems and gold!
The golden cup she bears full to the brim
Of her abominations as of yore!
Her eyeballs with inebriate triumph swim;
Tho’ drunk with righteous blood she thirsts for more,
Eager to reassert her influence fell,
And once again let loose the Dogs of Hell.
Woe for that people too who by their path
For these late triumphs first made plain the way;
Whom in the Valley of the Shade of Death
No fears nor fiery sufferings could dismay:
Art could not tempt, nor violence enthrall
Their firm devotion, faithful found through all.
Strange race of haughty heart and stubborn will,
Slavery they love and chains with pride they wear;
Inflexible alike in good or ill,
The inveterate stamp of servitude they bear.
Oh fate perverse, to see all change withstood,
There only where all change must needs be good!
But them no foe can force, nor friend persuade;
Impassive souls in iron forms inclosed,
As though of human mould they were not made,
But of some sterner elements composed,
Against offending nations to be sent,
The ruthless ministers of punishment.
Where are those Minas after that career
Wherewith all Europe rang from side to side?
In exile wandering! Where the Mountaineer,..
Late, like Pelayo, the Asturian’s pride?
Had Ferdinand no mercy for that life,
Exposed so long for him in daily,.. hourly strife!
From her Athenian orator of old
Greece never listen’d to sublimer strain
Than that with which, for truth and freedom bold,
Quintana moved the inmost soul of Spain.
What meed is his let Ferdinand declare...
Chains, and the silent dungeon, and despair!
For this hath England borne so brave a part!
Spent with endurance, or in battle slain,
Is it for this so many an English heart
Lies mingled with the insensate soil of Spain!
Is this the issue, this the happy birth
In those long throes and that strong agony brought forth!
And oh! if England’s fatal hour draw nigh,..
If that most glorious edifice should fall
By the wild hands of bestial Anarchy,..
Then might it seem that He who ordereth all
Doth take for sublunary things no care:..
The burthen of that thought is more than I can bear.
Even as a mother listens to her child
My plaint the Muse divine benignant heard,
Then answered in reproving accents mild,
What if thou seest the fruit of hope deferred,
Dost thou for this in faltering faith repine?
A manlier, wiser virtue should be thine!
Ere the good seed can give its fruit in Spain,
The light must shine on that bedarkened land,
And Italy must break her papal chain,
Ere the soil answer to the sower’s hand;
For till the sons their fathers’ fault repent,
The old error brings its direful punishment.
Hath not experience bade the wise man see
Poor hope from innovations premature?
All sudden change is ill: slow grows the tree
Which in its strength through ages shall endure.
In that ungrateful earth it long may lie
Dormant, but fear not that the seed should die.
Falsely that Tempter taught thee that the past
Was but a blind inextricable maze;
Falsely he taught that evil overcast
With gathering tempests these propitious days,
That he in subtle snares thy soul might bind,
And rob thee of thy hopes for humankind.
He told thee the beginning and the end
Were indistinguishable all, and dark;
And when from his vain Tower he bade thee bend
Thy curious eye, well knew he that no spark
Of heavenly light would reach the baffled sense,
The mists of earth lay round him all too dense.
Must I, as thou hadst chosen the evil part,
Tell thee that Man is free and God is good?
These primal truths are rooted in thy heart:
But these being rightly felt and understood,
Should bring with them a hope, calm, constant, sure,
Patient, and on the rock of faith secure.
The Monitress Divine, as thus she spake,
Induced me gently on, ascending still,
And thus emerging from that mournful brake
We drew toward the summit of the hill,
And reached a green and sunny place, so fair
As well with long-lost Eden might compare.
Broad cedars grew around that lovely glade,
Exempted from decay, and never sere,
Their wide-spread boughs diffused a fragrant shade;
The cypress incorruptible was here,
With fluted stem and head aspiring high,
Nature’s proud column, pointing to the sky.
There too the vigorous olive in its pride,
As in its own Apulian soil uncheck’d,
Towered high, and spread its glaucous foliage wide:
With liveliest hues the mead beneath was decked,
Gift of that grateful tree that with its root
Repays the earth from whence it feeds its fruit.
There too the sacred bay of brighter green,
Exalted its rejoicing head on high;
And there the martyrs’ holier palm was seen
Waving its plumage as the breeze went by.
All fruits which ripen under genial skies
Grew there as in another Paradise.
And over all that lovely glade there grew
All wholesome roots and plants of healing power;
The herb of grace, the medicinal rue,
The poppy rich in worth as gay in flower;
The heart’s-ease that delighteth every eye,
And sage divine and virtuous euphrasy.
Unwounded here Judaea’s balm distilled
Its precious juice; the snowy jasmine here
Spread its luxuriant tresses wide, and filled
With fragrance the delicious atmosphere;
More piercing still did orange-flowers dispense
From golden groves the purest joy of sense.
As low it lurked the tufted moss between,
The violet there its modest perfume shed,
Like humble virtue, rather felt than seen:
And here the Rose of Sharon reared its head,
The glory of all flowers, to sense and sight
Yielding their full contentment of delight.
A gentle river wound its quiet way
Through this sequestered glade, meandering wide;
Smooth as a mirror here the surface lay,
Where the pure lotus floating in its pride,
Enjoyed the breath of heaven, the sun’s warm beam,
And the cool freshness of its native stream.
Here o’er green weeds whose tresses waved outspread,
With silent lapse the glassy waters run;
Here in fleet motion o’er a pebbly bed
Gliding they glance and ripple to the sun;
The stirring breeze that swept them in its flight,
Raised on the stream a shower of sparkling light.
And all sweet birds sung there their lays of love;
The mellow thrush, the black-bird loud and shrill,
The rapturous nightingale that shook the grove,
Made the ears vibrate and the heart-strings thrill;
The ambitious lark, that soaring in the sky,
Poured forth her lyric strain of ecstacy.
Sometimes when that wild chorus intermits,
The linnet’s song was heard amid the trees,
A low sweet voice; and sweeter still, at fits
The ring-dove’s wooing came upon the breeze;
While with the wind which moved the leaves among,
Complete Poetical Works of Robert Southey Page 183