Ancestral crimes were visited:
He, in spirit like a child,
Meek of heart and undefiled,
Patiently his crown resign’d,
And fix’d on heaven his heavenly mind,
Blessing, while he kiss’d the rod,
His Redeemer and his God.
Now may he in realms of bliss
Greet a soul as pure as his.
Passive as that humble spirit,
Lies his bold dethroner too;
A dreadful debt did he inherit
To his injured lineage due;
Ill-starr’d prince, whose martial merit
His own England long might rue!
Mournful was that Edward’s fame,
Won in fields contested well,
While he sought his rightful claim:
Witness Aire’s unhappy water,
Where the ruthless Clifford fell;
And when Wharfe ran red with slaughter,
On the day of Towton’s field,
Gathering, in its guilty flood,
The carnage and the ill-spilt blood
That forty thousand lives could yield.
Cressy was to this but sport, —
Poictiers but a pageant vain;
And the victory of Spain
Seem’d a strife for pastime meant,
And the work of Agincourt
Only like a tournament;
Half the blood which there was spent
Had sufficed again to gain
Anjou and ill-yielded Maine,
Normandy and Aquitaine;
And Our Lady’s Ancient towers,
Maugre all the Valois’ powers,
Had a second time been ours. —
A gentle daughter of thy line,
Edward, lays her dust with thine.
Thou, Elizabeth, art here;
Thou to whom all griefs were known;
Who wert placed upon the bier
In happier hour than on the throne.
Fatal daughter, fatal mother,
Raised to that ill-omen’d station,
Father, uncle, sons, and brother,
Mourn’d in blood her elevation!
Woodville, in the realms of bliss,
To thine offspring thou may’st say,
Early death is happiness;
And favour’d in their lot are they
Who are not left to learn below
That length of life is length of woe.
Lightly let this ground be prest;
A broken heart is here at rest.
But thou, Seymour, with a greeting,
Such as sisters use at meeting,
Joy, and sympathy, and love,
Wilt hail her in the seats above.
Like in loveliness were ye,
By a like lamented doom,
Hurried to an early tomb.
While together, spirits blest,
Here your earthly relics rest,
Fellow angels shall ye be
In the angelic company.
Henry, too, hath here his part;
At the gentle Seymour’s side,
With his best beloved bride,
Cold and quiet, here are laid
The ashes of that fiery heart.
Not with his tyrannic spirit
Shall our Charlotte’s soul inherit;
No, by Fisher’s hoary head, —
By More, the learned and the good, —
By Katharine’s wrongs and Boleyn’s blood, —
By the life so basely shed
Of the pride of Norfolk’s line,
By the axe so often red,
By the fire with martyrs fed,
Hateful Henry, not with thee
May her happy spirit be!
And here lies one whose tragic name
A reverential thought may claim;
That murder’d Monarch, whom the grave,
Revealing its long secret, gave
Again to sight, that we might spy
His comely face and waking eye!
There, thrice fifty years, it lay,
Exempt from natural decay,
Unclosed and bright, as if to say,
A plague, of bloodier, baser birth,
Than that beneath whose rage he bled,
Was loose upon our guilty earth; —
Such aweful warning from the dead,
Was given by that portentous eye;
Then it closed eternally.
Ye whose relics rest around,
Tenants of this funeral ground;
Even in your immortal spheres,
What fresh yearnings will ye feel,
When this earthly guest appears!
Us she leaves in grief and tears;
But to you will she reveal
Tidings of old England’s weal;
Of a righteous war pursued,
Long, through evil and through good,
With unshaken fortitude;
Of peace, in battle twice achieved;
Of her fiercest foe subdued,
And Europe from the yoke reliev’d,
Upon that Brabantine plain!
Such the proud, the virtuous story,
Such the great, the endless glory
Of her father’s splendid reign!
He who wore the sable mail,
Might at this heroic tale,
Wish himself on earth again.
One who reverently, for thee,
Raised the strain of bridal verse,
Flower of Brunswick! mournfully
Lays a garland on thy herse.
A VISION OF JUDGMENT
Composed in hexameters in a Spenserian tradition, A Vision of Judgment (1821) imagines the departing soul of King George triumphantly entering Heaven to receive his due. However, the poem is now remembered chiefly for the satirical poem in ottava rima that Lord Byron wrote in response, depicting a dispute in Heaven over the fate of George III’s soul. Byron was provoked by Southey’s High Tory point of view, and he took personally the other poet’s preface, which attacked those “Men of diseased hearts and depraved imaginations” that had set up a “Satanic school” of poetry, “characterized by a Satanic spirit of pride and audacious impiety”. Byron responded in the preface to his own The Vision of Judgment with an attack on “The gross flattery, the dull impudence, the renegado intolerance, and impious cant, of the poem”, and mischievously referred to Southey as “the author of Wat Tyler”, the anti-royalist drama from Southey’s revolutionary youth. Byron’s parody was so lastingly successful that, as the critic Geoffrey Carnall wrote, “Southey’s reputation has never recovered from Byron’s ridicule.”
Nevertheless, A Vision of Judgment is a far better poem than its reputation would suggest, handling the very difficult subject of the King’s infirmities with great tact. With deft grace, Southey depicts the reign of George III as the court wanted it to be perceived, with an engaging range of modes from gothic, baroque, Christian and sentimentally domestic. Southey was well aware of the furore his work would cause, as shown in the letter he wrote to Grosvenor C. Bedford shortly before publication: “What a bespattering of abuse I shall have when the Vision appears! Pelt away my boys, pelt away! if you were not busy at that work you would be about something more mischievous. Abusing me is like flogging a whipping-post. Harry says I have had so much of it that he really thinks I begin to like it.”
The Anti-Jacobin Review was positive, writing: “Perhaps Mr. Southey is the only poet of the present age who ought to have attempted such a subject, if, indeed, it ought to be attempted at all; and he certainly has, by the splendour of his descriptions, and the grandeur of his conceptions, advanced his fame, as a poet and a Christian, to a still higher pinnacle than it had before attained”. But the Literary Chronicle complained: “How are the mighty fallen? how is the fine gold changed? must be the exclamation of every admirer of Mr. Southey, when he reads this abortion of his genius, the Vision of Judgment. Is this the man who sung the Maid of Orleans, Wat Tyler, a
nd of Thalaba the wild and wondrous song. To what extent the debasement of talents, and the prostitution of principle may be carried, Mr. Southey furnishes a memorable instance. We know not which to condemn most, the prosing absurdity of this poem, its wanton political profligacy, or its blasphemy” The Monthly Review declared: “We could multiply most abundantly the instances of absurd sentiment, and extravagant versification, which are supplied in this tame though odd effort. Our poetical readers will have observed (as we requested) the vile work which Mr. Southey makes with his own ludicrous hexameters”.
But, of course the last word in this literary fracas must be given to Lord Byron: “He might have written hexameters, as he has written everything else, for aught that the writer cared — had they been upon another subject. But to attempt to canonise a monarch, who, whatever were his household virtues, was neither a successful nor a patriot king, — inasmuch as several years of his reign passed in war with America and Ireland, to say nothing of the aggression upon France — like all other exaggeration, may be spoken of in this new Vision, his public career will not be more favourably transmitted by history.”
George III (1738-1820) was King of Great Britain and King of Ireland from 25 October 1760 until the union of these two countries on 1 January 1801, after which he was King of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland until his death.
CONTENTS
I. THE TRANCE.
II. THE VAULT.
III. THE AWAKENING.
IV. THE GATE OF HEAVEN.
V. THE ACCUSERS.
VI. THE ABSOLVERS.
VII. THE BEATIFICATION.
VIII. THE SOVEREIGNS.
IX. THE ELDER WORTHIES.
X. THE WORTHIES OF THE GEORGIAN AGE.
XI. THE YOUNG SPIRITS.
XII. THE MEETING.
Lord Byron by Richard Westall, date unknown
A Vision of Judgment
I. THE TRANCE.
’Twas at that sober hour when the light of day is receding,
And from surrounding things the hues where with day has adorn’d them
Fade, like the hopes of youth, till the beauty of earth is departed:
Pensive, though not in thought, I stood at the window, beholding
Mountain and lake and vale; the valley disrobed of its verdure;
Derwent retaining yet from eve a glassy reflection
Where his expanded breast, then still and smooth as a mirror,
Under the woods reposed; the hills that, calm and majestic,
Lifted their heads in the silent sky, from far Glaramar
Bleacrag, and Maidenmawr, to Grizedal and westermost Withop.
Dark and distinct they rose. The clouds had gather’d above them
High in the middle air, huge, purple, pillowy masses,
While in the west beyond was the last pale tint of the twilight;
Green as a stream in the glen whose pure and chrysolite waters
Flow o’er a schistous bed, and serene as the age of the righteous.
Earth was hush’d and still; all motion and sound were suspended:
Neither man was heard, bird, beast, nor humming of insect,
Only the voice of the Greta, heard only when all is in stillness.
Pensive I stood and alone, the hour and the scene had subdued me,
And as I gazed in the west, where Infinity seem’d to be open,
Yearn’d to be free from time, and felt that this life is a thraldom.
Thus as I stood, the bell which awhile from its warning had rested,
Sent forth its note again, toll, toll, thro’ the silence of evening.
’Tis a deep dull sound that is heavy and mournful at all times,
For it tells of mortality always. But heavier this day
Fell on the conscious ear its deeper and mournfuller import,
Yea, in the heart it sunk; for this was the day when the herald
Breaking his wand should proclaim, that George our King was departed.
Thou art released! I cried: thy soul is deliver’d from bondage!
Thou who hast lain so long in mental and visual darkness,
Thou art in yonder heaven! thy place is in light and in glory.
Come, and behold!... methought a startling Voice from the twilight
Answered; and therewithal I felt a stroke as of lightning,
With a sound like the rushing of winds, or the roaring of waters.
If from without it came, I knew not, so sudden the seizure;
Or if the brain itself in that strong flash had expended
All its electric stores. Of strength and of thought it bereft me;
Hearing, and sight, and sense were gone; and when I awaken’d
’Twas from a dream of death, in silence and uttermost darkness;
Knowing not where or how, nor if I was rapt in the body,
Nor if entranced, or dead. But all around me was blackness,
Utterly blank and void, as if this ample creation
Had been blotted out, and I were alone in the chaos.
Yet had I even then a living hope to sustain me
Under that aweful thought, and I strengthen’d my spirit with prayer.
Comfort I sought and support, and both were found in retiring
Into that inner world, the soul’s strong hold and her kingdom.
Then came again the Voice, but then no longer appalling,
Like the voice of a friend it came: O son of the Muses!
Be of good heart, it said, and think not that thou art abandon’d;
For to thy mortal sight shall the Grave unshadow its secrets;
Such as of yore the Florentine saw, Hell’s perilous chambers
He who trod in his strength; and the arduous Mountain of Penance,
And the regions of Paradise, sphere within sphere intercircled.
Child of Earth, look up! and behold what passes before thee.
II. THE VAULT.
So by the unseen comforted, raised I my head in obedience,
And in a vault I found myself placed, arch’d over on all sides.
Narrow and low was that house of the dead. Around it were coffins,
Each in its niche, and palls, and urns, and funeral hatchments;
Velvets of Tyrian dye, retaining their hues unfaded;
Blazonry vivid still, as if fresh from the touch of the limner;
Nor was the golden fringe, nor the golden broidery tarnish’d.
Whence came the light whereby that place of death was discover’d?
For there was there no lamp, whose wonderous flame inextinguish’d,
As with a vital power endued, renewing its substance,
Age after age unchanged, endureth in self-subsistence:
Nor did the cheerful beam of day, direct or reflected,
Penetrate there. That low and subterranean chamber
Saw not the living ray, nor felt the breeze; but for ever
Closely immured, was seal’d in perpetual silence and darkness.
Whence then this lovely light, calm, pure, and soft, and cerulean,
Such as the sapphire sheds? And whence this air that infuses
Strength while I breathe it in, and a sense of life, and a stillness,
Filling the heart with peace, and giving a joy that contents it?
Not of the Earth that light; and these paradisiacal breathings,
Not of the Earth are they!
These thoughts were passing within me,
When there arose around a strain of heavenly music,
Such as the hermit hears when Angels visit his slumbers.
Faintly it first began, scarce heard; and gentle its rising,
Low as the softest breath that passes in summer at evening
O’er the Eolian strings, felt there when nothing is moving,
Save the thistle-down, lighter than air, and the leaf of the aspin.
Then as it swell’d and rose, the thrilling melody deepen’d,
Such, methoug
ht, should the music be, which is heard in the cloister,
By the sisterhood standing around the beatified Virgin,
When with her dying eyes she sees the firmament open,
Lifts from the bed of dust her arms towards her beloved,
Utters the adorable name, and breathes out her soul in a rapture.
Well could I then believe such legends, and well could I credit
All that the poets old relate of Amphion and Orpheus;
How to melodious sounds wild beasts their strength have surrender’d,
Men were reclaim’d from the woods, and stones in harmonious order
Moved, as their atoms obey’d the mysterious attraction of concord.
This was a higher strain; a mightier, holier virtue
Came with its powerful tones. O’ercome by the piercing emotion,
Dizzy I grew, and it seem’d as though my soul were dissolving.
How might I bear unmoved such sounds? For, like as the vapours
Melt on the mountain side, when the sun comes forth in his splendour,
Even so the vaulted roof and whatever was earthly
Faded away; the Grave was gone, and the Dead was awaken’d.
III. THE AWAKENING.
Then I beheld the King. From a cloud which cover’d the pavement
His reverend form uprose: heavenward his face was directed,
Heavenward his eyes were raised, and heavenward his arms were extended.
Lord, it is past! he cried; the mist, and the weight, and the darkness;..
That long and weary night, that long drear dream of desertion.
Father, to Thee I come! My days have been many and evil;
Heavy my burthen of care, and grievous hath been my affliction.
Thou hast releas’d me at length. O Lord, in Thee have I trusted;
Thou art my hope and my strength!... And then in profound adoration,
Crossing his arms on his breast, he bent and worshipp’d in silence.
Presently one approach’d to greet him with joyful obeisance;
He of whom in an hour of woe, the assassin bereav’d us
When his counsels most, and his resolute virtue were needed.
Complete Poetical Works of Robert Southey Page 188