Complete Poetical Works of Robert Southey
Page 192
CAPTAIN.
Sits the wind there!
RANDOLPH.
Returning him the book,
I told him I was sorry he could find
None who deserved his veneration more
Than one who, in the blackest deed of guilt
That blots our annals, stands participant,
A volunteer in that worst infamy,
Stain’d to the core with blessed Charles his blood,
Although by some capricious mercy spared,
Strangely, as if by miracle, he still
Lived to disparage justice.
CAPTAIN.
And how brook’d he
Your reprehension?
RANDOLPH.
With his wonted air
Of self-possession, and a mind subdued:
And yet it moved him; for, though looks and words
By the strong mastery of his practised will
Were overruled, the mounting blood betray’d
An impulse in its secret spring too deep
For his control. But taking up my speech,
He answer’d with a simulated smile:
“Sir, you say well; by miracle indeed
The life so fairly forfeited seems spared;
And it was worth the special care of Heaven;
Else had the hangman and the insensate axe
Cut off this toil divine.” With that his eyes
Flash’d, and a warmer feeling flush’d his cheek:
“Time will bring down the pyramids,” he cried,
“Eldest of human works, and wear away
The dreadful Alps, coeval with himself:
But while yon sun shall hold his place assign’d,
This ocean ebb and flow, and the round earth,
Obedient to the Almighty Mover, fill
Her silent revolutions, Milton’s mind
Shall dwell with us, an influence and a power;
And this great monument, which he hath built,
Outliving empires, pyramids, and Alps,
Endure, the lasting wonder of mankind.”
CAPTAIN.
This is stark madness.
RANDOLPH.
Or stark poetry,
Two things as near as Grub Street and Moorfields
But he came bravely off; for, softening soon
To his habitual suavity, he said,
Far was it from his thought to vindicate
Ill deeds of treason and of blood. The wise
Had sometimes err’d, the virtuous gone astray:
Too surely in ourselves we felt the seed
“Of that forbidden tree, whose mortal taste
Brought death into the world and all our woe
His friend, like other men, had drawn a part
Of that sad heritage; he loved in him
His wisdom and his virtue, not his faults.
CAPTAIN.
Well said, and manfully, like one who speaks
The honest truth.
RANDOLPH.
Why, so it sounds, and seems.
CAPTAIN.
And we must needs admit, he hath not left
His native country in that piggish mood
Which neither will be led nor driven, but grunts
And strives with stubborn neck and groundling snout,
Struggling through mire and brake, to right and left,
No matter where, so it can only take
The way it should not go. One of that herd,
Rather than read the service, would have seen
The dead thrown overboard without a prayer.
RANDOLPH.
Yet he hath freaks and follies of opinion;
The bubbles of a yeasty mind, that works
As it would crack its vessel.
CAPTAIN.
They are ever
The sweetest nuts in which the maggot breeds.
RANDOLPH.
But, once fly-stricken, what avails their sweetness:
Only to feed a pamper’d grub, that leaves
Nothing but dirt and hollowness behind it.
Tainted the young man is, and deeply too,
I fear, by birth and breeding: I perceive it
With sorrow, seeing on how fair a stock
The unlucky graft is set.
CAPTAIN.
Why then, alas
For that poor Annabel! if she must have
This farther cause to rue our baneful factions.
The wretched strife already hath entail’d
Upon her luckless family the loss
Of fair possessions, friends, and native land!
And now a chance hath offered, which to her,
I trow, might largely make amends for all:
It would be hard indeed, when all things seem
To square so well — youth, opportunity,
Their fortunes one, the natural dower of each
So equal, and so bountifully given,
A dying mother’s blessing to crown all —
It would be hard indeed, should loyalty
Forbid the banns.
RANDOLPH.
I know her father’s temper.
True as his own Toledo to the cause
Wherein they both were tried. Nor will neglect,
Ingratitude of courts, and banishment,
(For a grant in the American wilderness
Only calls exile by a fairer name,)
Subdue his high-wrought virtue. Satisfied
At last, by years of painful proof,
That loyalty must find in its own proud sense
Its own reward, that pride he will bequeath
His children as their best inheritance,
A single heir-loom rescued from the wreck,
And worth whate’er was lost.
CAPTAIN.
’Tis well the youth
Thinks less of earth than heaven, and hath his heart
More with the angels than on human love:
But if such thoughts and hopes have enter’d it,
As would some forty years ago have found
Quick entrance, and warm welcome too, in mine,
His ugly baptism may mar all, and make him
Breathe maledictions on his godfathers,
Though old Nol himself were one.
RANDOLPH.
Howbeit ‘t will win him
Worship and friends in the city of the saints;
And, to the ears of sober Boston men,
Oliver will be a name more savoury
Than Tribulation, or Stand-fast-in-the-Lord,
Increase or Nathan, Gershom, Ichabod,
Praise-God, or any of the Barebones breed.
They rise upon the oak-holyday with faces
A full inch longer than they took to bed:
Experienced nurses feed their babes that day
With spoons, because the mother’s milk is sour;
And when they mourn upon the Martyrdom,
’Tis for the expiation, not the crime.
Oh they love dearly one of the precious seed!
Tyburn, since Sixty, in their secret hearts
Holds place of Calvary. For saints and martyrs,
None like their own Hugh Peters, and the heads
On the Hall your only relics! Fifteen years
They have hid among them the two regicides,
Shifting from den to cover, as we found
Where the scent lay. But earth them as they will,
I shall unkennel them, and from their holes
Drag them to light and justice.
CAPTAIN.
There hath been
Much wholesome sickness thrown away, Sir Randolph
On your strong stomach! Two sea voyages
Have not sufficed to dear the bile wherewith
You left New England!
RANDOLPH.
Nay, it rises in me
As I draw near their shores.
CAPTAIN.
Why then, look
shortly
For a sharp fit; for, if the sky tell true,
Anon we shall have wind, and to our wish.
So spake the Captain, for his eye,
Versed in all signs and weathers,
Discerned faint traces in the eastern sky,
Such as a lion’s paw might leave
Upon the desert, when the sands are dry.
The dog-vane now blows out with its light feathers;
And lo! the ship, which like a log hath lain,
Heavily rolling on the long slow swell,
Stirs with her proper impulse now, and gathers
A power like life beneath the helmsman’s will.
Her head lies right; the rising breeze
Astern comes rippling o’er the seas;
A tramp of feet! a sound of busy voices!
The cordage rattles, and the topsails fill;
All hands are active, every heart rejoices.
Blest with fair seas, and favourable skies,
Bight for her promised land
The gallant vessel flies;
Far, far behind her now
The foamy furrow lies;
Like dust around her prow
The ocean spray is driven.
O thou fair creature of the human hand!
Thou, who wert palsied late,
When the dead calm lay heavy on the deep,
Again hast thou received the breath of heaven,
And, waking from thy sleep,
As strength again to those broad wings is given,
Thou puttest forth thy beauty and thy state!
Hold on with happy winds thy prosperous way,
And may no storm that goodly pride abate,
Nor baffling airs thy destined course delay,
Nor the sea-rover seize thee for his prey;
But minist’ring angels wait
To watch for thee, against all ill event,
From man, or from the reckless element.
Thou hast a richer freight
Than ever vessel bore from Ophir old,
Or spicey India sent,
Or Lisbon welcomed to her joyful quay
From her Brazilian land of gems and gold:
Thou carriest pious hope, and pure desires,
Such as approving angels might behold;
A heart of finest mould,
A spirit that aspires
To heaven, and draws its flame from heavenly fires;
Genius, Devotion, Faith,
Stronger than Time or Death,
A temper of the high heroic mood,
By that strong faith exalted, and subdued
To a magnanimous fortitude.
The blossom of all virtues dost thou bear,
The seed of noble actions! Go thy way
Rejoicingly, from fear and evil free:
These shall be thy defence,
Beneath the all-present arm of Providence,
Against all perils of the treacherous sea.
III. CAPE COD.
Days pass, winds veer, and favouring skies
Change like the face of fortune; storms arise;
Safely, but not within her port desired,
The good ship lies.
Where the long sandy Cape
Bends and embraces round,
As with a lover’s arm, the shelter’d sea,
A haven she hath found
From adverse gales and boisterous billows free.
Now strike your sails,
Ye toilworn mariners, and take your rest
Long as the fierce north-west
In that wild fit prevails,
Tossing the waves uptorn with frantic sway.
Keep ye within the bay,
Contented to delay
Your course till the elemental madness cease,
And heaven and ocean are again at peace.
How gladly there,
Sick of the uncomfortable ocean,
The impatient passengers approach the shore;
Escaping from the sense of endless motion,
To feel firm earth beneath their feet once more,
To breathe again the air
With taint of bilge and cordage undefiled,
And drink of living springs, if there they may,
And with fresh fruits and wholesome food repair
Their spirits, weary of the watery way.
And oh! how beautiful
The things of earth appear
To eyes that far and near
For many a week have seen
Only the circle of the restless sea!
With what a fresh delight
They gaze again on fields and forests green,
Hovel, or whatsoe’er
May bear the trace of man’s industrious hand;
How grateful to their sight
The shore of shelving sand,
As the light boat moves joyfully to land!
Woods they beheld, and huts, and piles of wood,
And many a trace of toil,
But not green fields or pastures. ‘T was a land
Of pines and sand;
Dark pines, that from the loose and sparkling soil
Rose in their strength aspiring: far and wide
They sent their searching roots on every side,
And thus, by depth and long extension, found
Firm hold and grasp within that treacherous ground:
So had they risen and flourish’d; till the earth,
Unstable as its neighbouring ocean there,
Like an unnatural mother, heap’d around
Their trunks its wavy furrows white and high;
And stifled thus the living things it bore.
Half buried thus they stand,
Their summits sere and dry, —
Marking, like monuments, the funeral mound;
As when the masts of some tall vessel show
Where, on the fatal shoals, the wreck lies whelm’d below.
Such was the ungenial earth; nor was the air
Fresh and delightful there:
A noisome taint upon the breath it bore;
For they who dwelt upon that sandy shore,
Of meadows and of gardens took no care;
They sowed not, neither did they reap:
The ocean was their field, their flocks and herds
The myriad-moving armies of the deep;
The whale their mighty chase, whose bones bestrew’d
The sandy margin of that ample bay,
And all about, in many a loathly heap,
The offal and the reeking refuse lay,
Left there for dogs obscene and carrion birds a prey.
Oliver, as they approach’d, said thoughtfully;
“It was within this bay
That they, into the wilderness who bore
The seeds of English faith and liberty,
First set their feet upon the shore.
Here they put in, escaping from the rage
Of tempests, and by treacherous pilotage
Led, as it seem’d to fallible men, astray:
But God was with them; and the Providence
“Which errs not, had design’d his people’s way.”
“A blessed day for England had it been,”
Randolph exclaim’d, “had Providence thought good,
If the whole stern round-headed brotherhood
Had follow’d, man and woman, great and small;
New England might have prosper’d with the brood,
Or seas and sharks been welcome to them all.”
“Alas, how many a broken family
Hath felt that bitter wish!” the youth replied;
And, as he spake, he breathed a silent sigh.
“The wounded heart is prone to entertain
Presumptuous thoughts and feelings, which arraign
The appointed course of things. But what are we,
Short-sighted creatures of an hour,
That we should judge? In part a
lone we see,
And this but dimly. He, who ordereth all,
Beholdeth all, at once, and to the end:
Upon His wisdom and His power,
His mercy and His boundless love, we rest;
And resting thus in humble faith, we know,
“Whether the present be for weal or woe,
For us whatever is must needs be best.”
Thus, while he spake, the boat had reach’d the land;
And, grating gently, rested on the sand.
They step ashore; the dwellers gather nigh:
“Whence comes the vessel? whither is she bound?”
Then for Old England’s welfare they inquire;
Eager alike for question and reply.
With open lips and ears attending round;
What news of war, and plague, and plots, and fire?
Till satisfied of these, with cheerful care
The board and bowl they hasten to prepare;
Each active in his way,
Glad of some lawful business, that may break
The tedium of an idle Sabbath-day.
But, from the stir of that loquacious crew,
Oliver meantime apart from all withdrew.
Beyond the bare and sapless pines, which stood
Half-overwhelm’d with sand,
He pass’d, and entering in the wood,
Indulged his burthen’d heart in solitude.
“Thou Earth! receive me, from my native land
An unoffending exile! Hear my claim!
In search of wealth I have not sought thy shore,
Nor covetous of fame,
Nor treading in the ambitious steps of power;
But hiding from the world a hapless name,
And sacrificing all
At holiest duty’s call,
Thou barbarous Land, of thee I only crave —
For those I love — concealment and a grave.”
Thus he relieved his breast; yet did not dare
Allow himself full utterance, even there:
To part he gave a voice; and then, in fear,
Shaped with his lips, inaudibly, the rest:
With that the very air
Might not be trusted; and he look’d around,
Alarm’d, lest human ear
Had caught the unfinish’d sound.
Some tears stole down his cheek, now not repress’d,
And, kneeling on the earth, he kiss’d the ground.
Unbidden thoughts then took their course, and drew
The future and the past before his view: