In comfort saw the day of life go down.
Such was the lot of eld; for childhood there
The duties which belong to life was taught:
The good seed early sown and nursed with care,
This bounteous harvest in its season brought;
Thus youth for manhood, manhood for old age
Prepared, and found their weal in every stage.
Enough of knowledge unto all was given
In wisdom’s way to guide their steps on earth,
And make the immortal spirit fit for heaven.
This needful learning was their right of birth;
Further might each who chose it persevere;
No mind was lost for lack of culture here.
And that whole happy region swarmed with life,..
Village and town;.. as busy bees in spring
In sunny days when sweetest flowers are rife,
Fill fields and gardens with their murmuring.
Oh joy to see the State in perfect health!
Her numbers were her pride and power and wealth.
Then saw I, as the magic picture moved,
Her shores enriched with many a port and pier;
No gift of liberal Nature unimproved.
The seas their never-failing harvest here
Supplied, as bounteous as the air which fed
Israel, when manna fell from heaven for bread.
Many a tall vessel in her harbours lay,
About to spread its canvass to the breeze,
Bound upon happy errand to convey
The adventurous colonist beyond the seas,
Toward those distant lands where Britain blest
With her redundant life the East and West.
The landscape changed;.. a region next was seen,
Where sable swans on rivers yet unfound
Glided through broad savannahs ever-green;
Innumerous flocks and herds were feeding round,
And scattered farms appeared and hamlets fair,
And rising towns which made another Britain there.
Then thick as stars which stud the moonless sky,
Green islands in a peaceful sea were seen;
Darkened no more with blind idolatry,
Nor curst with hideous usages obscene,
But healed of leprous crimes, from butchering strife
Delivered, and reclaimed to moral life.
Around the rude Morai, the temple now
Of truth, hosannahs to the Holiest rung:
There from the Christian’s equal marriage-vow,
In natural growth the household virtues sprung;
Children were taught the paths of heavenly peace,
And age in hope looked on to its release.
The light those happy Islanders enjoyed,
Good messengers from Britain had conveyed;
(Where might such bounty wiselier be employed?)
One people with their teachers were they made,
Their arts, their language, and their faith the same,
And blest in all, for all they blest the British name.
Then rose a different land, where loftiest trees
High o’er the grove their fan-like foliage near;
Where spicy bowers upon the passing breeze
Diffuse their precious fragrance far and near;
And yet untaught to bend his massive knee,
Wisest of brutes, the elephant roams free.
Ministrant there to health and public good,
The busy axe was heard on every side,
Opening new channels, that the noxious wood
With wind and sunshine might be purified,
And that wise Government, the general friend,
Might every where its eye and arm extend.
The half-brutal Bedah came from his retreat,
To human life by human kindness won;
The Cingalese beheld that work compleat
Which Holland in her day had well begun;
The Candian, prospering under Britain’s reign,
Blest the redeeming hand which broke his chain.
Colours and castes were heeded there no more;
Laws which depraved, degraded, and opprest,
Were laid aside, for on that happy shore
All men with equal liberty were blest;
And through the land, the breeze upon its swells
Bore the sweet music of the sabbath bells.
Again the picture changed; those Isles I saw
With every crime thro’ three long centuries curst,
While unrelenting Avarice gave the law;
Scene of the injured Indians’ sufferings first,
Then doomed, for Europe’s lasting shame, to see
The wider-wasting guilt of Slavery.
That foulest blot had been at length effaced;
Slavery was gone, and all the power it gave,
Whereby so long our nature was debased,
Baleful alike to master and to slave.
O lovely Isles! ye were indeed a sight
To fill the spirit with intense delight!
For willing industry and chearful toil
Performed their easy task, with Hope to aid;
And the free children of that happy soil
Dwelt each in peace beneath his cocoa’s shade;..
A race, who with the European mind,
The adapted mould of Africa combined.
Anon, methought that in a spacious Square
Of some great town the goodly ornament,
Three statues I beheld, of sculpture fair:
These, said the Muse, are they whom one consent
Shall there deem worthy of the purest fame;..
Knowest thou who best such gratitude may claim?
Clarkson, I answered, first; whom to have seen
And known in social hours may be my pride,
Such friendship being praise; and one, I ween,
Is Wilberforce, placed rightly at his side,
Whose eloquent voice in that great cause was heard
So oft and well. But who shall be the third?
Time, said my Teacher, will reveal the name
Of him who with these worthies shall enjoy
The equal honour of enduring fame;..
He who the root of evil shall destroy,
And from our Laws shall blot the accursed word
Of Slave, shall rightly stand with them preferred.
Enough! the Goddess cried; with that the cloud
Obeyed, and closed upon the magic scene:
Thus much, quoth she, is to thine hopes allowed;
Ills may impede, delays may intervene,
But scenes like these the coming age will bless,
If England but pursue the course of righteousness.
On she must go progressively in good,
In wisdom and in weal,.. or she must wane.
Like Ocean, she may have her ebb and flood,
But stagnates not. And now her path is plain:
Heaven’s first command she may fulfil in peace,
Replenishing the earth with her increase.
Peace she hath won,.. with her victorious hand
Hath won through rightful war auspicious peace;
Nor this alone, but that in every land
The withering rule of violence may cease.
Was ever War with such blest victory crowned!
Did ever Victory with such fruits abound!
Rightly for this shall all good men rejoice,
They most who most abhor all deeds of blood;
Rightly for this with reverential voice
Exalt to Heaven their hymns of gratitude;
For ne’er till now did Heaven thy country bless
With such transcendent cause for joy and thankfulness.
If they in heart all tyranny abhor,
This was the fall of Freedom’s direst foe;
If they detest the impious lust of war,
/> Here hath that passion had its overthrow;..
As the best prospects of mankind are dear,
Their joy should be compleat, their prayers of praise sincere.
And thou to whom in spirit at this hour
The vision of thy Country’s bliss is given,
Who feelest that she holds her trusted power
To do the will and spread the word of Heaven,..
Hold fast the faith which animates thy mind,
And in thy songs proclaim the hopes of humankind.
CARMEN NUPTIALE: THE LAY OF THE LAUREATE
This ode was composed in 120 irregular Spenserian stanzas, written for the occasion of the marriage of Princess Charlotte to Prince Leopold of Saxe-Coburg. The Proem addresses former laureates: “My master dear, divinest Spenser,” Michael Drayton, Ben Jonson, and Samuel Daniel. Though Southey alludes to Spenser’s Epithalamion, he models his allegory on the House of Holiness episode in the first book of the Faerie Queene. Fidessa and Charissa appear before the royal couple and add their exhortations to those of other visionary figures representing politics, history and religion. The high-Tory sentiments about the importance of culture for empire-building are similar to Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s views as expressed in On the Constitution of Church and State.
Reviews were mixed, with The Champion complaining, “It has fallen to the lot of Mr. Southey, as Poet Laureate, to raise a joyous song on the late Royal Marriage; — and lo! we have here nearly a hundred stanzas of the tamest verse which ever feel from a Poet’s lips. There must surely be some quality, in the court wreath which encircles his brow, fatal to a Bard’s imagination....” Francis Jeffrey wrote: “He has allowed himself to write rather worse than any Laureate before him, and has betaken himself to the luckless and vulgar expedient of endeavouring to face out the thing by an air of prodigious confidence and assumption.” However, the British Critic praised the piece, claiming: “The scene becomes as it were a moving pageant, and we will venture to say, that since the days of Spencer, a more gorgeous and lofty one was never imagined, the personages are most sublime, the description of them glowing and characteristic, and the speeches they utter very impressive and affecting. We will not forestall our readers’ gratification by a minute detail of its different parts; if we were called upon to select any part, which pleased us more than the rest, it would be perhaps the introduction of the Angel of the English Church, of the spirits of the spotless Tudor, of Cranmer, Ridley, Latimer, and the noble army of English martyrs. The whole passage is truly and finely conceived as any thing we have ever seen of the kind.”
In Carlton House on 2 May 1816, Leopold I, the first King of the Belgians, married Princess Charlotte of Wales, the only legitimate child of the British Prince Regent (later King George IV) and therefore second in line to the British throne.
CONTENTS
Carmen Nuptiale. Proem.
Carmen Nuptiale. The Dream.
Carmen Nuptiale. Epilogue.
Carmen Nuptiale. L’envoy.
Charlotte Augusta and her husband, Prince Leopold of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfied, by George Dawe
Carmen Nuptiale. Proem.
There was a time when all my youthful thought
Was of the Muse; and of the Poet’s fame,
How fair it flourisheth and fadeth not,..
Alone enduring, when the Monarch’s name
Is but an empty sound, the Conqueror’s bust
Moulders and is forgotten in the dust.
How best to build the imperishable lay
Was then my daily care, my dream by night;
And early in adventurous essay
My spirit imp’d her wings for stronger flight;
Fair regions Fancy open’d to my view,..
“There lies thy path, “she said;” do thou that path pursue!
“For what hast thou to do with wealth or power,
Thou whom rich Nature at thy happy birth
Blest in her bounty with the largest dower
That Heaven indulges to a child of Earth,..
Then when the sacred Sisters for their own
Baptized thee in the springs of Helicon?
“They promised for thee that thou shouldst eschew
All low desires, all empty vanities;
That thou shouldst, still to Truth and Freedom true,
The applause or censure of the herd despise;
And in obedience to their impulse given,
Walk in the light of Nature and of Heaven.
“Along the World’s high-way let others crowd,
Jostling and moiling on through dust and heat;
Far from the vain, the vicious, and the proud,
Take thou content in solitude thy seat;
To noble ends devote thy sacred art,
And nurse for better worlds thine own immortal part!”
Praise to that Power who from my earliest days,
Thus taught me what to seek and what to shun
Who turn’d my footsteps from the crowded ways,
Appointing me my better course to run
In solitude, with studious leisure blest,
The mind unfetter’d, and the heart at rest.
For therefore have my days been days of joy,
And all my paths are paths of pleasantness:
And still my heart, as when I was a boy,
Doth never know an ebb of chearfulness;
Time, which matures the intellectual part,
Hath tinged my hairs with grey, but left untouch’d my heart.
Sometimes I soar where Fancy guides the rein,
Beyond this visible diurnal sphere;
But most with long and self-approving pain,
Patient pursue the historian’s task severe;
Thus in the ages which are past I live,
And those which are to come my sure reward will give.
Yea in this now, while Malice frets her hour,
Is foretaste given me of that meed divine;
Here undisturb’d in this sequester’d bower,
The friendship of the good and wise is mine;
And that green wreath which decks the Bard when dead,
That laureate garland crowns my living head.
That wreath which in Eliza’s golden days
My master dear, divinest Spenser, wore,
That which rewarded Drayton’s learned lays,
Which thoughtful Ben and gentle Daniel bore,..
Grin, Envy, through thy ragged mask of scorn!
In honour it was given, with honour it is worn!
Proudly I raised the high thanksgiving strain
Of victory in a rightful cause achieved;
For which I long had look’d and not in vain,
As one who with firm faith and undeceived,
In history and the heart of man could find
Sure presage of deliverance for mankind.
Proudly I offer’d to the royal ear
My song of joy when War’s dread work was done,
And glorious Britain round her satiate spear
The olive garland twined by Victory won;
Exulting as became me in such cause,
I offer’d to the Prince his People’s just applause.
And when, as if the tales of old Romance
Were but to typify his splendid reign,
Princes and Potentates from conquer’d France,
And chiefs in arms approved, a peerless train,
Assembled at his Court,.. my duteous lays
Preferr’d a welcome of enduring praise.
And when that last and most momentous hour,
Beheld the re-risen cause of evil yield
To the Red Cross and England’s arm of power,
I sung of Waterloo’s unequall’d field,
Paying the tribute of a soul embued
With deepest joy devout and aweful gratitude.
Such strains beseem’d me well. But how shall I
To hymeneal numbers tune the string,
>
Who to the trumpet’s martial symphony,
And to the mountain gales am wont to sing?
How may these unaccustom’d accents suit
To the sweet dulcimer and courtly lute?
Fitter for me the lofty strain severe,
That calls for vengeance for mankind opprest;
Fitter the songs that youth may love to hear,
Which warm and elevate the throbbing breast;
Fitter for me with meed of solemn verse,
In reverence to adorn the hero’s herse.
But then my Master dear arose to mind,
He on whose song while yet I was a boy,
My spirit fed, attracted to its kind,
And still insatiate of the growing joy;..
He on whose tomb these eyes were wont to dwell,
With inward yearnings which I may not tell;
He whose green bays shall bloom for ever young,
And whose dear name whenever I repeat,
Reverence and love are trembling on my tongue;
Sweet Spenser, sweetest Bard; yet not more sweet
Than pure was he, and not more pure than wise,
High Priest of all the Muses’ mysteries.
I call’d to mind that mighty Master’s song,
When he brought home his beautifulest bride,
And Mulla murmur’d her sweet undersong,
And Mole with all his mountain woods replied;
Never to mortal lips a strain was given,
More rich with love, more redolent of Heaven.
His cup of joy was mantling to the brim,
Yet solemn thoughts enhanced his deep delight;
A holy feeling fill’d his marriage-hymn,
And Love aspired with Faith a heavenward flight.
And hast not thou, my Soul, a solemn theme?
I said, and mused until I fell into a dream.
Carmen Nuptiale. The Dream.
Complete Poetical Works of Robert Southey Page 185