And wilt thou still remember me?
Alas! I hoped from Britain’s shore
My wayward feet would never rove:
I hoped to share my little store,
With thee, my first, my only love!
No more those hopes my breast elate:
No more thy lovely form I see:
But thou wilt mourn thy wanderer’s fate,
And thou wilt still remember me.
When twilight shades the world o’erhung,
Oft has thou loved with me to stray,
While Philomela sweetly sung
The dirge of the departing day.
But when our cherished meads and bowers
Thy solitary haunts shall be,
Oh! then recall those blissful hours;
Oh! then, my love, remember me.
When Spring shall bid the forest live,
And clothe the hills and vales with green;
Or summer’s ripening hand shall give
New beauties to the sylvan scene;
Reflect that thus my prospects smiled
Till changed by Fortune’s stem decree:’
And wintry storms severe and wild,
Shall bid thee still remember me.
For wintry storms have overcast
And blighted all my hopes of joy:
Vain joys of life, so quickly past!
Vain hope that clouds so soon destroy!
Around us cares and dangers grow:
Between us rolls the restless sea:
Yet this one thought shall soothe my woe,
That thou wilt still remember me.
And when, thy natal shades among,
While noontide rays their fervours shower,
The poet’s sadly-pleasing song
Shall charm thy melancholy hour;
When Zephyr, rustling in the grove,
Sighs feebly through the spreading tree,
Think ’tis the whispering voice of love,
And pity, and remember me!
Remember me, when morning’s call
Shall bid thee leave thy lonely bed:
Remember me, when evening fall
Shall tinge the skies with blushing red:
Remember me, when midnight sleep
Shall set excursive fancy free;
And should’st thou wake, and wake to weep,
Still, in thy tears, remember me.
Farewell, my love! the paths of truth,
The paths of happiness pursue:
But ever mindful of the youth,
Who loved thee with a flame so true.
And though to thy transcendent form
Admiring courts should bow the knee,
Still be thy breast with pity warm,
Still, still, my love, remember me.
ROMANCE.
[Published in 1806.]
DEATH! the mourner’s surest aid!
Mark my sad devotion:
Hear a lost, forsaken maid,
Mourn with wild emotion.
I my griefs unpitied pour
To the winds that round me roar,
On the billow-beaten shore
Of the lonely ocean.
Where the sea’s extremest line
Seems with ether blended,
Still I see the white sails shine
To the breeze extended.
False one! still I mark thy sail
Spread to catch the favouring gale.
Soon shall storms thy bark assail,
And thy crimes be ended!
By the mighty tempests tost,
Death-flames round thee burning,
On a bleak and desert coast,
Whence is no returning; —
Thou o’er all thy friends shall weep,
Buried in th’ unpitying deep;
Thou thy watch of woe shalt keep,
Vainly, deeply, mourning.
Unattended shalt thou rove,
O’er the mountain dreary,
Through the haunted, pathless grove,
Through the desert eerie:
Unassuaged thy tears shall flow;
None shall sooth or share thy woe,
When thy blood runs cold and slow,
And thy limbs are weary!
Far from haunts of human kind,
Vengeful heaven impelling,
Thou thy dying bed shall find, —
Where cold blasts are yelling.
None shall hear thee, none shall save,
In thy monumental cave,
None shall weep, where tempests rave
Bound thy narrow dwelling!
THE GENIUS OF THE THAMES.
[Second edition, published in 1812.]
PART I.
[The variations between this, the second edition, and the first edition, published in 1810, are recorded in foot-notes.]
Non è questo ‘l terren, ch’ i’ toccai pria?
Non è questo ‘l mio nido, ‘
Ove nudrito fui si dolcemente?
Non è questa la patria in ch’ io mi fido
Madre benigna e pia,
Che copre l’uno e l’altro mio parente? — PETRARCA.
ANALYSIS OF THE FIRST PART.
As Autumnal night on the banks of the Thames. Eulogium of the Thames. Characters of several rivers of Great Britain. Acknowledged superiority of the Thames. Address to the Genius of the Thames. View of some of the principal rivers of Europe, Asia, Africa, and America. Pre-eminence of the Thames. General character of the river. The port of London. The naval dominion of Britain and extent of her commerce and navigation. Tradition that an immense forest occupied the site of the metropolis. Episode of a Druid, supposed to have taken refuge in that forest, after the expulsion of Mona.
* * * * * *
THE GENIUS OF THE THAMES. PART I
THE moonlight rests, with solemn smile,
On sylvan shore and willowy isle:
While Thames, beneath the imaged beam,
Rolls on his deep and silent stream.
The wasting wind of autumn sighs:
The oak’s discolored foliage flies
The grove, in deeper shadow cast,
Waves darkly in the eddying blast.
All hail, ye breezes, loud and drear,
That peal the death-song of the year!
Your rustling pinions waft around
A voice, that breathes no mortal sound,
And in mysterious accents sings
The flight of time, the change of things.
The seasons pass, in swift career:
Storms close, and zephyrs wake, the year:
The streams roll on, nor e’er return
To fill again their parent urn;
But bounteous nature, kindly-wise,
Their everlasting flow supplies.
Like planets round the central sun,
The rapid wheels of being run,
By laws, from earliest time pursued,
Still changed, still wasted, still renewed.
Reflected in the present scene,
Return the forms that once have been
The present’s varying tints display
The colors of the future day.
By laws, from earliest time pursued,
Still changed, still wasted, still renewed.
Reflected in the present scene,
Return the forms that once have been:
The present’s varying tints display
The colors of the future day.
Ye bards, that, in these secret shades,
These tufted woods, and sloping glades,
Awoke, to charm the sylvan maids,
Your soul-entrancing minstrelsy!
Say, do your spirits yet delight
To rove, beneath the starry night,
Along this water’s margin bright,
Or mid the woodland scenery;
And strike, to notes of tender fire,
With viewless hands, the shadowy lyre,
Till all the wandering wi
nds respire
A wildly-awful symphony?
Hark! from beneath the aged spray,
Where hangs my humbler lyre on high,
Soft music fills the woodlands grey,
And notes aerial warble by!
What flying touch, with elfin spell,
Bids its responsive numbers swell?
Whence is the deep Æolian strain,
That on the wind its changes flings ?
Returns some ancient hard again,
To wake to life the slumbering strings ?
Or breathed the spirit of the scene
The lightly-trembling chords between,
Diffusing his benignant power
On twilight’s consecrated hour
Even now, methinks, in solemn guise,
By yonder willowy islet grey,
I see thee, sedge-crowned Genius! rise,
And point the glories of thy way.
Tall reeds around thy temples play
Thy hair the liquid crystal gems:
To thee I pour the votive lay,
Oh Genius of the silver Thames!
The shepherd-youth, on Yarrow braes,
Of Yarrow stream has sung the praise,
To love and beauty dear:
And long shall Yarrow roll in fame,
Charm with the magic of a name,
And claim the tender tear.
Who has not wept, in pastoral lay
To hear the maiden’s song of woe,
Who mourned her lover snatched away,
And plunged the sounding surge below ?
The maid, who never ceased to weep,
And tell the winds her tale of sorrow,
Till on his breast she sunk to sleep,
Beneath the lonely waves of Yarrow.
The minstrel oft, at evening-fall,
Has leaned on Roxburgh’s ruined wall,
Where, on the wreck of grandeur past,
The wild wood braves the sweeping blast:
And while, beneath the embowering shade,
Swelled, loud and deep, his notes of flame,
Has called the spirits of the glade,
To hear the voice of Teviot’s fame.
While artless love, and spotless truth,
Delight the waking dreams of youth;
While nature’s beauties, softly-wild,
Are dear to nature’s wandering child;
The lyre shall ring, where sparkling Tweed,
By red-stone cliff, and broom-flowered mead,
And ivied walls in fair decay,
Resounds along his rock-strown way.
There oft the bard, at midnight still,
When rove his eerie steps alone,
Shall start to hear, from haunted hill,
The bugle-blast at distance blown:
And oft his raptured eye shall trace,
Amid the visionary gloom,
The foaming courser’s eager pace,
The mail-clad warrior’s crimson plume,
The beacons, blazing broad and far,
The lawless marchmen ranging free,
And all the pride of feudal war,
And pomp of border chivalry.
And Avon too has claimed the lay,
Whose listening wave forgot to stray,
By Shakespeare’s infant reed restrained:
And Severn, whose suspended swell
Felt the dread weight of Merlin’s spell,
When the lone spirits of the dell
Of Arthur’s fall complained.
And sweetly winds romantic Dee,
And Wye’s fair banks all lovely smiles:
But all, oh Thames! submit to thee,
The monarch-stream of Albion’s isle.
From some ethereal throne on high,
Where clouds in nectar-dews dissolve,
The muse shall mark, with eagle-eye,
The world’s diminished orb revolve.
At once her ardent glance shall roll,
From clime to clime, from pole to pole,
O’er waters, curled by zephyr’s wing,
O’er shoreless seas, by whirlwinds tost;
O’er vallies of perennial spring,
And wastes of everlasting frost;
O’er deserts, where the Siroc raves,
And heaves the sand in fiery waves;
O’er caverns of mysterious gloom;
O’er lakes, where peaceful islets bloom,
Like emerald spots, serenely-bright,
Amid a sapphire field of light;
O’er mountain-summits, thunder-riven,
That rear eternal snows to heaven;
O’er rocks, in wild confusion hurled,
And woods, coeval with the world.
Her eye shall thence the course explore
Of every river wandering wide,
From tardy Lena’s frozen shore
To vast La Plata’s sea-like tide.
Where Oby’s barrier-billows freeze,
And Dwina’s waves in snow-chains rest:
Where the rough blast from Arctic seas
Congeals on Volga’s ice-cold breast:
Where Rhine impels his confluent springs
Tumultuous down the Rhætian steep:
Where Danube’s world of waters brings
Its tribute to the Euxine deep:
Where Seine, beneath Lutetian towers,
Leads humbly his polluted stream,
Recalling still the blood-red hours
Of frantic freedom’s transient dream:
Where crowns sweet Loire his fertile soil:
Where Rhone’s impetuous eddies boil:
Where Garonne’s pastoral waves advance,
Responsive to the song and dance,
When the full vintage calls from toil
The youths and maids of southern France:
Where horned Po’s once-raging flood
Now moves with slackened force along,
By hermit-isle and magic wood,
The theme of old chivalric song:
Where yellow Tiber’s turbid tide
In mystic murmurings seems to breathe
Of ancient Rome’s imperial pride,
That passed away, as blasts divide
November’s vapory wreath:
Where proud Tajo’s golden river
Rolls through fruitful realms afar:
Where romantic Guadalquiver
Wakes the thought of Moorish war:
Where Penëus, smoothly-flowing,
Or Mæander’s winding shore,
Charm the pensive wanderer, glowing
With the love of Grecian lore:
Where Alphëus, wildly-falling,
Dashes far the sparkling spray;
In the eternal sound recalling
Lost Arcadia’s heaven-taught lay;
Following dark, in strong commotion,
Through the night of central caves,
Deep beneath the unmingling ocean,
Arethusa’s flying waves:
Where Tigris runs, in rapid maze:
Where swift Euphrates brightly strays;
To whose lone wave the night-breeze sings
A song of half-forgotten days
And old Assyrian kings:
Where, Gangà’s fertile course beside,
The Hindu roves, alone to mourn,
And gaze on heaven’s resplendent pride,
And watch for Veeshnu’s tenth return;
When fraud shall cease, and tyrant power
Torment no more, to ruin hurled,
And peace and love their blessings shower,
O’er all the renovated world:
Where Nile’s mysterious sources sleep:
Where Niger sinks, in sands unknown:
Where Gambia hears, at midnight deep,
Afflicted ghosts for vengeance groan:
Where Mississippi’s giant-stream
Through savage realms impetuous pours:
Where proud Potomac’s catarac
ts gleam,
Or vast Saint Lawrence darkly roars:
Where Amazon her pomp unfolds
Beneath the equinoctial ray,
And through her drear savannahs holds
Her long immeasurable way:
Where’er in youthful strength they flow,
Or seek old ocean’s wide embrace,
Her eagle-glance the muse shall throw,
And all their pride and power retrace:
Yet, wheresoe’er, from copious urn,
Their bursting torrents flash and shine,
Her eye shall not a stream discern
To vie, oh sacred Thames! with thine.
Along thy course no pine-clad steep,
No alpine summits, proudly tower:
No woods, impenetrably deep,
O’er thy pure mirror darkly lower:
The orange-grove, the myrtle-bower,
The vine, in rich luxuriance spread;
The charms Italian meadows shower;
The sweets Arabian vallies shed;
The roaring cataract, wild and white;
The lotos-flower, of azure light;
The fields, where ceaseless summer smiles;
The bloom, that decks the Ægëan isles;
The hills, that touch the empyreal plain,
Olympian Jove’s sublime domain;
To other streams all these resign
Still none, oh Thames! shall vie with thine.
For what avails the myrtle-bower,
Where beauty rests at noon-tide hour;
The orange-grove, whose blooms exhale
Rich perfume on the ambient gale;
And all the charms in bright array,
Which happier climes than thine display ?
Ah! what avails, that heaven has rolled
A silver stream o’er sands of gold,
And decked the plain, and reared the grove,
Fit dwelling for primeval love;
If man defile the beauteous scene,
And stain with blood the smiling green;
If man’s worst passions there arise,
To counteract the favoring skies;
If rapine there, and murder reign,
And human tigers prowl for gain,
And tyrants foul, and trembling slaves,
Pollute their shores, and curse their waves ?
Far other charms than these possess,
Oh Thames! thy verdant margin bless:
Where peace, with freedom hand-in-hand,
Walks forth along the sparkling strand,
And cheerful toil, and glowing health,
Proclaim a patriot nation’s wealth.
The blood-stained scourge no tyrants wield:
No groaning slaves invert the field:
But willing labor’s careful train
Crowns all thy banks with waving grain,
With beauty decks thy sylvan shades,
With livelier green invests thy glades,
And grace, and bloom, and plenty, pours
Complete Works of Thomas Love Peacock Page 124