The Penguin Book of English Verse

by Paul Keegan

  I hear the Echoes through the mountains throng,

  The Winds come to me from the fields of sleep,

  And all the earth is gay,

  Land and sea

  Give themselves up to jollity,

  And with the heart of May

  Doth every Beast keep holiday,

  Thou Child of Joy,

  Shout round me, let me hear thy shouts, thou happy Shepherd Boy!

  Ye blessed Creatures, I have heard the call

  Ye to each other make; I see

  The heavens laugh with you in your jubilee;

  My heart is at your festival,

  My head hath its coronal,

  The fullness of your bliss, I feel – I feel it all.

  Oh evil day! if I were sullen

  While the Earth herself is adorning,

  This sweet May-morning,

  And the Children are pulling,

  On every side,

  In a thousand vallies far and wide,

  Fresh flowers; while the sun shines warm,

  And the Babe leaps up on his mother’s arm: –

  I hear, I hear, with joy I hear!

  – But there’s a Tree, of many one,

  A single Field which I have looked upon,

  Both of them speak of something that is gone:

  The Pansy at my feet

  Doth the same tale repeat:

  Whither is fled the visionary gleam?

  Where is it now, the glory and the dream?

  Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting:

  The Soul that rises with us, our life’s Star,

  Hath had elsewhere its setting,

  And cometh from afar:

  Not in entire forgetfulness,

  And not in utter nakedness,

  But trailing clouds of glory do we come

  From God, who is our home:

  Heaven lies about us in our infancy!

  Shades of the prison-house begin to close

  Upon the growing Boy,

  But He beholds the light, and whence it flows,

  He sees it in his joy;

  The Youth, who daily farther from the East

  Must travel, still is Nature’s Priest,

  And by the vision splendid

  Is on his way attended;

  At length the Man perceives it die away,

  And fade into the light of common day.

  Earth fills her lap with pleasures of her own;

  Yearnings she hath in her own natural kind,

  And, even with something of a Mother’s mind,

  And no unworthy aim,

  The homely Nurse doth all she can

  To make her Foster-child, her Inmate Man,

  Forget the glories he hath known,

  And that imperial palace whence he came.

  Behold the Child among his new-born blisses,

  A four year’s Darling of a pigmy size!

  See, where mid work of his own hand he lies,

  Fretted by sallies of his Mother’s kisses,

  With light upon him from his Father’s eyes!

  See, at his feet, some little plan or chart,

  Some fragment from his dream of human life,

  Shaped by himself with newly-learned art;

  A wedding or a festival,

  A mourning or a funeral;

  And this hath now his heart,

  And unto this he frames his song:

  Then will he fit his tongue

  To dialogues of business, love, or strife;

  But it will not be long

  Ere this be thrown aside,

  And with new joy and pride

  The little Actor cons another part,

  Filling from time to time his ‘humorous stage’

  With all the Persons, down to palsied Age,

  That Life brings with her in her Equipage;

  As if his whole vocation

  Were endless imitation.

  Thou, whose exterior semblance doth belie

  Thy Soul’s immensity;

  Thou best Philosopher, who yet dost keep

  Thy heritage, thou Eye among the blind,

  That, deaf and silent, read’st the eternal deep,

  Haunted for ever by the eternal mind, –

  Mighty Prophet! Seer blest!

  On whom those truths do rest,

  Which we are toiling all our lives to find;

  Thou, over whom thy Immortality

  Broods like the Day, a Master o’er a Slave,

  A Presence which is not to be put by;

  To whom the grave

  Is but a lonely bed without the sense or sight

  Of day or the warm light,

  A place of thought where we in waiting lie;

  Thou little Child, yet glorious in the might

  Of untamed pleasures, on thy Being’s height,

  Why with such earnest pains dost thou provoke

  The Years to bring the inevitable yoke,

  Thus blindly with thy blessedness at strife?

  Full soon thy Soul shall have her earthly freight,

  And custom lie upon thee with a weight,

  Heavy as frost, and deep almost as life!

  O joy! that in our embers

  Is something that doth live,

  That nature yet remembers

  What was so fugitive!

  The thought of our past years in me doth breed

  Perpetual benedictions: not indeed

  For that which is most worthy to be blest;

  Delight and liberty, the simple creed

  Of Childhood, whether fluttering or at rest,

  With new-born hope for ever in his breast: –

  Not for these I raise

  The song of thanks and praise;

  But for those obstinate questionings

  Of sense and outward things,

  Fallings from us, vanishings;

  Blank misgivings of a Creature

  Moving about in worlds not realized,

  High instincts, before which our mortal Nature

  Did tremble like a guilty Thing surprized:

  But for those first affections,

  Those shadowy recollections,

  Which, be they what they may,

  Are yet the fountain light of all our day,

  Are yet a master light of all our seeing;

  Uphold us, cherish us, and make

  Our noisy years seem moments in the being

  Of the eternal Silence: truths that wake,

  To perish never;

  Which neither listlessness, nor mad endeavour,

  Nor Man nor Boy,

  Nor all that is at enmity with joy,

  Can utterly abolish or destroy!

  Hence, in a season of calm weather,

  Though inland far we be,

  Our Souls have sight of that immortal sea

  Which brought us hither,

  Can in a moment travel thither,

  And see the Children sport upon the shore,

  And hear the mighty waters rolling evermore.

  Then, sing ye Birds, sing, sing a joyous song!

  And let the young Lambs bound

  As to the tabor’s sound!

  We in thought will join your throng,

  Ye that pipe and ye that play,

  Ye that through your hearts to day

  Feel the gladness of the May!

  What though the radiance which was once so bright

  Be now for ever taken from my sight,

  Though nothing can bring back the hour

  Of splendour in the grass, of glory in the flower;

  We will grieve not, rather find

  Strength in what remains behind,

  In the primal sympathy

  Which having been must ever be,

  In the soothing thoughts that spring

  Out of human suffering,

  In the faith that looks through death,

  In years that bring the philosophic mind.

  And oh ye Fountains, M
eadows, Hills, and Groves,

  Think not of any severing of our loves!

  Yet in my heart of hearts I feel your might;

  I only have relinquished one delight

  To live beneath your more habitual sway.

  I love the Brooks which down their channels fret,

  Even more than when I tripped lightly as they;

  The innocent brightness of a new-born Day

  Is lovely yet;

  The Clouds that gather round the setting sun

  Do take a sober colouring from an eye

  That hath kept watch o’er man’s mortality;

  Another race hath been, and other palms are won.

  Thanks to the human heart by which we live,

  Thanks to its tenderness, its joys, and fears,

  To me the meanest flower that blows can give

  Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.

  THOMAS MOORE 1808

  Oh! blame not the bard, if he fly to the bowers,

  Where pleasure lies carelessly smiling at fame;

  He was born for much more, and in happier hours,

  His soul might have burn’d with a holier flame.

  The string that now languishes loose on the lyre,

  Might have bent a proud bow to the warrior’s dart;

  And the lip which now breathes but the song of desire,

  Might have pour’d the full tide of the patriot’s heart!

  But alas! for his country – her pride is gone by,

  And that spirit is broken which never would bend;

  O’er the ruin her children in secret must sigh,

  For ’tis treason to love her, and death to defend.

  Unpriz’d are her sons, till they’ve learn’d to betray;

  Undistinguish’d they live, if they shame not their sires;

  And the torch that would light them through dignity’s way,

  Must be caught from the pile where their country expires.

  Then blame not the bard, if in pleasure’s soft dream

  He should try to forget what he never can heal;

  Oh! give but a hope – let a vista but gleam

  Through the gloom of his country, and mark how he’ll feel!

  That instant, his heart at her shrine would lay down

  Every passion it nurs’d, every bliss it ador’d;

  While the myrtle, now idly entwin’d with his crown,

  Like the wreath of Harmodius, should cover his sword.

  But though glory be gone, and though hope fade away,

  Thy name, lov’d Erin! shall live in his songs:

  Not even in the hour when his heart is most gay,

  Will he lose the remembrance of thee and thy wrongs.

  The stranger shall hear thy lament on his plains,

  The sigh of thy harp shall be sent o’er the deep,

  Till thy masters themselves, as they rivet thy chains,

  Shall pause at the song of their captive and weep!

  1810 GEORGE CRABBE from The Borough

  from Prisons [The Condemned Man]

  Yes! e’en in Sleep th’impressions all remain,

  He hears the Sentence and he feels the Chain;

  He sees the Judge and Jury, when he shakes,

  And loudly cries, ‘Not guilty,’ and awakes:

  Then chilling Tremblings o’er his Body creep,

  Till worn-out Nature is compell’d to sleep.

  Now comes the Dream again: it shows each Scene,

  With each small Circumstance that comes between –

  The Call to Suffering and the very Deed –

  There Crowds go with him, follow and precede;

  Some heartless shout, some pity, all condemn,

  While he in fancied Envy looks at them:

  He seems the Place for that sad Act to see,

  And dreams the very Thirst which then will be:

  A Priest attends – it seems the one he knew

  In his best days, beneath whose care he grew.

  At this his Terrors take a sudden flight,

  He sees his native Village with delight;

  The House, the Chamber, where he once array’d

  His youthful Person; where he knelt and pray’d:

  Then too the Comforts he enjoy’d at home,

  The Days of Joy; the Joys themselves are come; –

  The Hours of Innocence; – the timid Look

  Of his lov’d Maid, when first her hand he took

  And told his hope; her trembling Joy appears, –

  Her forc’d Reserve and his retreating Fears.

  All now is present; – ’tis a moment’s gleam

  Of former Sunshine – stay, delightful Dream!

  Let him within his pleasant Garden walk,

  Give him her Arm, of Blessings let them talk.

  Yes! all are with him now, and all the while

  Life’s early Prospects and his Fanny’s Smile:

  Then come his Sister and his Village Friend,

  And he will now the sweetest Moments spend

  Life has to yield: – No! never will he find

  Again on Earth such Pleasure in his Mind:

  He goes through shrubby Walks these Friends among,

  Love in their Looks and Honour on the Tongue;

  Nay, there’s a Charm beyond what Nature shows,

  The Bloom is softer and more sweetly glows; –

  Pierc’d by no Crime, and urg’d by no desire

  For more than true and honest Hearts require,

  They feel the calm Delight, and thus proceed

  Through the green Lane, – then linger in the Mead, –

  Stray o’er the Heath in all its purple bloom, –

  And pluck the Blossom where the Wild-bees hum;

  Then through the broomy Bound with ease they pass,

  And press the sandy Sheep-walk’s slender Grass,

  Where dwarfish Flowers among the Gorse are spread,

  And the Lamb brouzes by the Linnet’s Bed;

  Then ’cross the bounding Brook they make their way

  O’er its rough Bridge – and there behold the Bay! –

  The Ocean smiling to the fervid Sun –

  The Waves that faintly fall and slowly run –

  The Ships at distance and the Boats at hand:

  And now they walk upon the Sea-side Sand,

  Counting the number and what kind they be,

  Ships softly sinking in the sleepy Sea:

  Now arm in arm, now parted, they behold