The murmuring waters joined in undersong.
The hare disported here and feared no ill,
For never evil thing that glade came nigh;
The sheep were free to wander at their will,
As needing there no earthly shepherd’s eye;
The bird sought no concealment for her nest,
So perfect was the peace wherewith those bowers were blest.
All blending thus with all in one delight,
The soul was soothed and satisfied and filled:
This mingled bliss of sense and sound and sight,
The flow of boisterous mirth might there have stilled,
And sinking in the gentle spirit deep,
Have touched those strings of joy which make us weep.
Even thus in earthly gardens had it been,
If earthly gardens might with these compare;
But more than all such influences, I ween
There was a heavenly virtue in the air,
Which laid all vain perplexing thoughts to rest,
And healed and calmed and purified the breast.
Then said I to that guide divine, My soul
When here we entered, was o’ercharged with grief,
For evil doubts which I could not controul
Beset my troubled spirit. This relief,..
This change,.. whence are they? Almost it might seem
I never lived till now;.. all else had been a dream.
My heavenly teacher answer’d, Say not seem;..
In this place all things are what they appear;
And they who feel the past a feverish dream,
Wake to reality on entering here.
These waters are the Well of Life, and lo!
The Rock of Ages there, from whence they flow.
Saying thus we came upon an inner glade,
The holiest place that human eyes might see;
For all that vale was like a temple made
By Nature’s hand, and this the sanctuary;
Where in its bed of living rock, the Rood
Of Man’s redemption, firmly planted stood.
And at its foot the never-failing Well
Of Life profusely flowed that all might drink.
Most blessed Water! Neither tongue can tell
The blessedness thereof, nor heart can think,
Save only those to whom it hath been given
To taste of that divinest gift of Heaven.
There grew a goodly Tree this Well beside;..
Behold a branch from Eden planted here,
Plucked from the Tree of Knowledge, said my guide.
O Child of Adam, put away thy fear,..
In thy first father’s grave it hath its root;
Taste thou the bitter, but the wholesome fruit.
In awe I heard, and trembled, and obeyed:
The bitterness was even as of death;
I felt a cold and piercing thrill pervade
My loosened limbs, and losing sight and breath,
To earth I should have fallen in my despair,
Had I not clasped the Cross and been supported there.
My heart, I thought, was bursting with the force
Of that most fatal fruit; soul-sick I felt,
And tears ran down in such continuous course,
As if the very eyes themselves should melt.
But then I heard my heavenly teacher say,
Drink, and this mortal stound will pass away.
I stoopt and drank of that divinest Well,
Fresh from the Rock of Ages where it ran;
It had a heavenly quality to quell
My pain:.. I rose a renovated man,
And would not now when that relief was known
For worlds the needful suffering have foregone.
Even as the Eagle (ancient storyers say)
When faint with years she feels her flagging wing,
Soars up toward the mid sun’s piercing ray,
Then filled with fire into some living spring
Plunges, and casting there her aged plumes,
The vigorous strength of primal youth resumes:
Such change in me that blessed Water wrought;
The bitterness which from its fatal root,
The Tree derived with painful healing fraught,
Passed clean away; and in its place the fruit
Produced by virtue of that wondrous wave,
The savour which in Paradise it gave.
Now, said the heavenly Muse, thou mayst advance,
Fitly prepared toward the mountain’s height.
O Child of Man, this necessary trance
Hath purified from flaw thy mortal sight,
That with scope unconfined of vision free,
Thou the beginning and the end mayst see.
She took me by the hand and on we went,
Hope urged me forward and my soul was strong;
With winged speed we scaled the steep ascent,
Nor seemed the labour difficult or long,
Ere on the summit of the sacred hill
Upraised I stood, where I might gaze my fill.
Below me lay, unfolded like a scroll,
The boundless region where I wandered late,
Where I might see realms spread and oceans roll,
And mountains from their cloud-surmounting state
Dwarfed like a map beneath the excursive sight,
So ample was the range from that commanding height.
Eastward with darkness round on every side,
An eye of light was in the farthest sky.
Lo, the beginning!.. said my heavenly Guide;
The steady ray which there thou canst descry,
Comes from lost Eden, from the primal land
Of man “waved over by the fiery brand.”
Look now toward the end! no mists obscure,
Nor clouds will there impede the strengthened sight;
Unblenched thine eye the vision may endure.
I looked,.. surrounded with effulgent light
More glorious than all glorious hues of even,
The Angel Death stood there in the open Gate of Heaven.
IV.
THE HOPES OF MAN.
Now, said my heavenly Teacher, all is clear!..
Bear the Beginning and the End in mind,
The course of human things will then appear
Beneath its proper laws; and thou wilt find,
Through all their seeming labyrinth, the plan
Which “vindicates the ways of God to Man.”
Free choice doth Man possess of good or ill,
All were but mockery else. From Wisdom’s way
Too oft perverted by the tainted will
Is his rebellious nature drawn astray;
Therefore an inward monitor is given,
A voice that answers to the law of Heaven.
Frail as he is, and as an infant weak,
The knowledge of his weakness is his strength;
For succour is vouchsafed to those who seek
In humble faith sincere; and when at length
Death sets the disembodied spirit free,
According to their deeds their lot shall be.
Thus, should the chance of private fortune raise
A transitory doubt, Death answers all.
And in the scale of nations, if the ways
Of Providence mysterious we may call,
Yet rightly viewed, all history doth impart
Comfort and hope and strength to the believing heart.
For through the lapse of ages may the course
Of moral good progressive still be seen,
Though mournful dynasties of Fraud and Force,
Dark Vice and purblind Ignorance intervene;
Empires and Nations rise, decay and fall,
But still the Good survives and perseveres thro’ all.
Yea even in those most lamentable times,
When every-where to w
ars and woes a prey,
Earth seemed but one wide theatre of crimes,
Good unperceived had worked its silent way,
And all those dread convulsions did but clear
The obstructed path to give it free career.
But deem not thou some over-ruling Fate,
Directing all things with benign decree,
Through all the turmoil of this mortal state,
Appoints that what is best shall therefore be;
Even as from man his future doom proceeds,
So nations rise or fall according to their deeds.
Light at the first was given to humankind,
And Law was written in the human heart.
If they forsake the Light, perverse of mind,
And wilfully prefer the evil part,
Then to their own devices are they left,
By their own choice of Heaven’s support bereft.
The individual culprit may sometimes
Unpunished to his after reckoning go:
Not thus collective man,.. for public crimes
Draw on their proper punishment below;
When Nations go astray, from age to age
The effects remain, a fatal heritage.
Bear witness Egypt thy huge monuments
Of priestly fraud and tyranny austere!
Bear witness thou whose only name presents
All holy feelings to religion dear,..
In Earth’s dark circlet once the precious gem
Of living light,.. O fallen Jerusalem!
See barbarous Africa, on every side
To error, wretchedness, and crimes resigned!
Behold the vicious Orient, far and wide
Enthralled in slavery! As the human mind
Corrupts and goes to wreck, Earth sickens there,
And the contagion taints the ambient air.
They had the Light, and from the Light they turned;
What marvel if they grope in darkness lost?
They had the Law;.. God’s natural Law they scorned,
And chusing error, thus they pay the cost!
Wherever Falsehood and Oppression reign,
There degradation follows in their train.
What then in these late days had Europe been,..
This moral, intellectual heart of earth,..
From which the nations who lie dead in sin
Should one day yet receive their second birth,..
To what had she been sunk if brutal Force
Had taken unrestrained its impious course!
The Light had been extinguished,.. this be sure
The first wise aim of conscious Tyranny,
Which knows it may not with the Light endure:
But where Light is not, Freedom cannot be;
“Where Freedom is not, there no Virtue is;”
Where Virtue is not, there no Happiness.
If among hateful Tyrants of all times
For endless execration handed down,
One may be found surpassing all in crimes,
One that for infamy should bear the crown,
Napoleon is that man, in guilt the first,
Pre-eminently bad among the worst.
For not, like Scythian conquerors, did he tread
From his youth up the common path of blood;
Nor like some Eastern Tyrant was he bred
In sensual harems, ignorant of good;..
Their vices from the circumstance have grown,
His by deliberate purpose were his own,
Not led away by circumstance he erred,
But from the wicked heart his error came:
By Fortune to the highest place preferred,
He sought through evil means an evil aim,
And all his ruthless measures were designed
To enslave, degrade, and brutalize mankind.
Some barbarous dream of empire to fulfil,
Those iron ages he would have restored,
When Law was but the ruffian soldier’s will,
Might governed all, the sceptre was the sword,
And Peace, not elsewhere finding where to dwell,
Sought a sad refuge in the convent-cell.
Too far had he succeeded! In his mould
An evil generation had been framed,
By no religion tempered or controlled,
By foul examples of all crimes inflamed,
Of faith, of honour, of compassion void;..
Such were the fitting agents he employed.
Believing as yon lying Spirit taught,
They to that vain philosophy held fast,
And trusted that as they began from nought,
To nothing they should needs return at last;
Hence no restraint of conscience, no remorse,
But every baleful passion took its course.
And had they triumphed, Earth had once again,
To Violence subdued, and impious Pride,
Verged to such state of wickedness, as when
The Giantry of old their God defied,
And Heaven, impatient of a world like this,
Opened its flood-gates, and broke up the abyss.
That danger is gone by. On Waterloo
The Tyrant’s fortune in the scale was weighed,..
His fortune and the World’s,.. and England threw
Her sword into the balance... down it swayed:
And when in battle first he met that foe,
There he received his mortal overthrow.
O my brave Countrymen, with that I said,
For then my heart with transport overflowed,
O Men of England! nobly have ye paid
The debt which to your ancestors ye owed,
And gathered for your children’s heritage
A glory that shall last from age to age!
And we did well when on our Mountain’s height
For Waterloo we raised the festal flame,
And in our triumph taught the startled night
To ring with Wellington’s victorious name,
Making the far-off mariner admire
To see the crest of Skiddaw plumed with fire.
The Moon who had in silence visited
His lonely summit from the birth of time,
That hour an unavailing splendour shed,
Lost in the effulgence of the flame sublime,
In whose broad blaze rejoicingly we stood,
And all below a depth of blackest solitude.
Fit theatre for this great joy we chose;
For never since above the abating Flood
Emerging, first that pinnacle arose,
Had cause been given for deeper gratitude,
For prouder joy to every English heart,
When England had so well performed her arduous part.
The Muse replied with gentle smile benign,..
Well mayst thou praise the land that gave thee birth,
And bless the Fate which made that country thine;
For of all ages and all parts of earth,
To chuse thy time and place did Fate allow,
Wise choice would be this England and this Now.
From bodily and mental bondage, there
Hath Man his full emancipation gained;
The viewless and illimitable air
Is not more free than Thought; all unrestrained,
Nor pined in want, nor sunk in sensual sloth,
There may the immortal Mind attain its growth.
There under Freedom’s tutelary wing,
Deliberate Courage fears no human foe;
There undefiled as in their native spring,
The living waters of Religion flow;
There like a beacon the transmitted Light
Conspicuous to all nations burneth bright.
The virtuous will she hath, which should aspire
To spread the sphere of happiness and light;
She hath the power to answer her desire,
The wisdom to direct her power aright;
The will, the power, the wisdom thus combined,
What glorious prospects open on mankind!
Behold! she cried, and lifting up her hand,
The shaping elements obeyed her will;..
A vapour gathered round our lofty stand,
Rolled in thick volumes o’er the Sacred Hill,
Descending then, its surges far and near
Filled all the wide subjacent atmosphere.
As I have seen from Skiddaw’s stony height
The fleecy clouds scud round me on their way,
Condense beneath, and hide the vale from sight,
Then opening, just disclose where Derwent lay
Burnished with sunshine like a silver shield,
Or old Enchanter’s glass, for magic for magic forms fit field;
So at her will, in that receding sheet
Of mist where with the world was overlaid,
A living picture moved beneath our feet.
A spacious City first was there displayed,
The seat where England from her ancient reign
Doth rule the Ocean as her own domain.
In splendour with those famous cities old,
Whose power it hath surpassed, it now might vie;
Through many a bridge the wealthy river rolled;
Aspiring columns reared their heads on high,
Triumphal arches spanned the roads, and gave
Due guerdon to the memory of the brave.
A landscape followed, such as might compare
With Flemish fields for well-requited toil:
The wonder-working hand had every where
Subdued all circumstance of stubborn soil;
In fen and moor reclaimed rich gardens smiled,
And populous hamlets rose amid the wild.
There the old seaman on his native shore
Enjoyed the competence deserved so well;
The soldier, his dread occupation o’er,
Of well-rewarded service loved to tell;
The grey-haired labourer there whose work was done,
Complete Poetical Works of Robert Southey Page 184