Complete Works of Thomas Love Peacock
Page 126
The whirlwind’s eddying rage assails,
The gentlest zephyrs softly sweep
The verdure of thy sheltered vales:
While o’er the wild and whitening seas
The unbridled north triumphant roars,
Thy stream scarce ripples in the breeze,
That bends the willow on thy shores:
And thus, while war o’er Europe flings
Destruction from his crimson wings,
While Danube’s wasted banks around
The steps of mingling foes resound,
Thy pure waves wash a stainless soil,
To crown a patriot people’s toil.
Yet on these shores, in elder days,
Arose the battle’s maddening blaze:
Even here, where now so softly swells
The music of the village-bells,
The painted savage rolled to war
The terrors of the scythed car,
And wide around, with fire and sword,
The devastating Roman poured:
Here shouted o’er the battle-plain
The Pict, the Saxon, and the Dane:
And many a long succeeding year
Saw the fierce Norman’s proud career,
The deadly hate of feudal foes,
The stain that dyed the pallid rose,
And all the sanguinary spoil
Of foreign and intestine broil.
But now, through banks from strife remote,
Thy crystal waters wind along,
Responsive to the wild bird’s note,
Or lonely boatman’s careless song.
Oh ne’er may thy sweet echoes swell
Again with war’s demoniac yell!
Oh! ne’er again may civil strife
Here aim the steel at kindred life!
Ne’er may those deeds of night and crime,
That stain the rolls of feudal time,
Again pollute these meads and groves,
Where science dwells, and beauty roves!
And should some foreign tyrant’s band
Descend to waste the beauteous land,
Thy swelling current, eddying red,
Shall roll away the impious dead.
Let fancy lead, from Trewsbury Mead,
With hazel fringed, and copsewood deep,
Where scarcely seen, through brilliant green,
Thy infant waters softly creep,
To where the wide-expanding Nore
Beholds thee, with tumultuous roar,
Conclude thy devious race,
And rush, with Medway’s confluent wave,
To seek, where mightier billows rave,
Thy giant-sire’s embrace.
Where Kemble’s wood-embosomed spire
Adorns the solitary glade,
And ancient trees, in green attire,
Diffuse a deep and pleasant shade,
Thy bounteous urn, light-murmuring, flings
The treasures of its infant springs,
And fast, beneath its native hill,
Impels the silver-sparkling rill,
With flag-flowers fringed and whispering reeds,
Along the many-colored meads.
Thames! when, beside thy secret source
Remembrance points the mighty course
Thy defluent waters keep;
Advancing, with perpetual flow,
Through banks still widening as they go,
To mingle with the deep;
Emblemed in thee, my thoughts survey
Unruffled childhood’s peaceful hours,
And blooming youth’s delightful way
Through sunny fields and roseate bowers;
And thus the scenes of life expand
Till death draws forth, with steady hand,
Our names from his capacious urn;
And dooms alike the base and good,
To pass that all-absorbing flood,
O’er which is no return.
Whence is the ample stream of time?
Can fancy’s mightiest spell display,
Where first began its flow sublime,
Or where its onward waves shall stray?
What gifted hand shall pierce the clouds
Oblivion’s fatal magic rears,
And lift the sable veil, that shrouds
The current of the distant years ?
The sage with doubt the past surveys,
Through mists which memory half dispels:
And on the course of future days
Impenetrable darkness dwells.
The present rolls in light: awhile
We hail its evanescent smile,
Rejoicing as it flies:
Ephemera on the summer-stream,
Heedless of the descending beam,
And distant lowering skies.
False joys, with fading flowerets crowned,
And hope, too late delusive found,
And fancy’s meteor-ray,
And all the passions, light and vain,
That fill ambition’s fatal train,
Attend our downward way.
Some struggle on, by tempests driven:
To some a gentler course is given:
All down the self-same stream are rolled:
Their day is passed — their tale is told.
Youth flies, as bloom forsakes the grove,
When icy winter blows:
And transient are the smiles of love,
As dew-drops on the rose.
Nor may we call those things our own,
Which, ere the new-born day be flown,
By chance, or fraud, or lawless might,
Or sterner death’s supreme award,
Will change their momentary lord,
And own another’s right.
As oceans now o’er quicksands roar,
Where fields and hamlets smiled of yore;
As now the purple heather blows,
Where once impervious forests rose;
So perish from the burthened ground
The monuments of human toil:
Where cities shone, where castles frowned,
The careless ploughman turns the soil.
How many a chief, whose kindling mind
Convulsed this earthly scene,
Has sunk, forgotten by mankind,
As though he ne’er had been!
Even so the chiefs of modern days,
On whom admiring nations gaze,
Shall sink, by common fate oppressed:
Their name, their place remembered not
Not one grey stone to point the spot
Of their eternal rest.
Flow proudly, Thames! the emblem bright
And witness of succeeding years!
Flow on, in freedom’s sacred light,
Nor stained with blood, nor swelled with tears.
Sweet is thy course, and clear, and still,
By Ewan’s old neglected mill:
Green shores thy narrow stream confine,
Where blooms the modest eglantine,
And hawthorn-boughs o’ershadowing spread,
To canopy thy infant bed.
Now peaceful hamlets wandering through,
And fields in beauty ever new,
Where Lechlade sees thy current strong
First waft the unlaboring bark along;
Thy copious waters hold their way
Tow’rds Radcote’s arches, old and grey,
Where triumphed erst the rebel host,
When hapless Richard’s hopes were lost,
And Oxford sought, with humbled pride,
Existence from thy guardian tide.
The wild-flower waves, in lonely bloom,
On Godstow’s desolated wall:
There thin shades flit through twilight gloom,
And murmured accents feebly fall.
The aged hazel nurtures there
Its hollow fruit, so seeming fair,
And lightly throws its humble shade
,
Where Rosamonda’s form is laid.
The rose of earth, the sweetest flower
That ever graced a monarch’s breast,
In vernal beauty’s loveliest hour,
Beneath that sod was laid to rest.
In vain, the bower of love around,
The Dædalëan path was wound:
Alas! that jealous hate should find
The clue for love alone designed!
The venomed bowl, — the mandate dire, —
The menaced steel’s uplifted glare, —
The tear, that quenched the blue eye’s fire, —
The humble, ineffectual prayer: —
All these shall live, recorded long
In tragic and romantic song,
And long a moral charm impart,
To melt and purify the heart.
A nation’s gem, a monarch’s pride,
In youth, in loveliness, she died:
The morning sun’s ascending ray
Saw none so fair, so blest, so gay:
Ere evening came, her funeral knell
Was tolled by Godstow’s convent bell.
The marble tomb, the illumined shrine.
Their unavailing splendor gave:
Where slept in earth the maid divine,
The votive silk was seen to wave.
To her, as to a martyred saint,
His vows the weeping pilgrim poured
The drooping traveller, sad and faint,
Knelt there, and found his strength restored
To that fair shrine, in solemn hour,
Fond youths and blushing maidens came,
And gathered from its mystic power
A brighter, purer, holier flame:
The lightest heart with awe could feel
The charm her hovering spirit shed:
But superstition’s impious zeal
Distilled its venom on the dead!
The illumined shrine has passed away:
The sculptured stone in dust is laid:
But when the midnight breezes play
Amid the barren hazel’s shade,
The lone enthusiast, lingering near,
The youth whom slighted passion grieves,
Through fancy’s magic spell may hear
A spirit in the whispering leaves;
And dimly see, while mortals sleep,
Sad forms of cloistered maidens move,
The transient dreams of life to weep,
The fading flowers of youth and love!
Now, rising o’er the level plain,
Mid academic groves enshrined,
The Gothic tower, the Grecian fane,
Ascend, in solemn state combined.
Science, beneath those classic spires,
Illumes her watch-lamp’s orient fires,
And pours its everlasting rays
On archives of primeval days.
To her capacious view unfurled,
The mental and material world
Their secrets deep display:
She measures nature’s ample plan,
To hold the light of truth to man,
And guide his erring way.
Oh sun-crowned science! child of heaven!
To wandering man by angels given!
Still, nymph divine! on mortal sight
Diffuse thy intellectual light,
Till all the nations own thy sway,
And drink with joy the streams of day!
Yet lovest thou, maid! alone to rove
In cloister dim, or polished grove,
Where academic domes are seen
Emerging grey through foliage green ?
Oh! hast thou not thy hermit seat,
Embosomed deep in mountains vast,
Where some fair valley’s still retreat
Repels the north’s impetuous blast ?
The falling stream there murmurs by:
The tufted pine waves broad and high:
And musing silence sits beneath,
Where scarce a zephyr bends the heath,
And hears the breezes, loud and strong,
Resound the topmost boughs among.
There peace her vestal lamp displays,
Undimmed by mad ambition’s blaze,
And shuns, in the sequestered glen,
The storms that shake the haunts of men,
Where mean intrigue, and sordid gain,
And phrensied war’s ensanguined reign,
And narrow cares and wrathful strife,
Dry up the sweetest springs of life.
Oh! might my steps, that darkly roam,
Attain at last thy mountain home,
And rest, from earthly trammels free,
With peace, and liberty, and thee!
Around while faction’s tempests sweep,
Like whirlwinds o’er the wintry deep,
And, down the headlong vortex torn,
The vain, misjudging crowd is borne;
‘Twere sweet to mark, re-echoing far,
The rage of the eternal war,
That dimly heard, at distance swelling,
Endears, but not disturbs, thy dwelling.
But sweeter yet, oh trebly sweet!
Were those blest paths of calm retreat,
Might mutual love’s endearing smile
The lonely hours of life beguile!
Love, whose celestial breath exhales
Fresh fragrance on the vernal gales:
Whose starry torch and kindling eye
Add lustre to the summer sky:
Whose voice of music cheers the day,
When autumn’s wasting breezes sway;
Whose magic flame the bosom warms,
When freezing winter wakes in storms!
Not in the glittering halls of pride,
Where spleen and sullen pomp reside,
Around though Paphian odors breathe,
And fashion twines her fading wreath,
Young fancy wakes her native grace,
Nor love elects his dwelling-place.
But in the lone, romantic dell,
Where the rural virtues dwell,
Where the sylvan genii roam,
Mutual love may find a home.
Hope, with raptured eye, is there,
Weaving wreaths of pictured air:
Smiling fancy there is found,
Tripping light on fairy ground,
Listening oft, in pine-walks dim,
To the wood-nymph’s evening hymn.
But whither roams the devious song,
While Thames, unheeded, flows along,
And, sinking o’er the level mead,
The classic domes and spires recede ?
The dashing oar the wave divides:
The light bark down the current glides:
The furrowed stream, that round it curls,
In many a murmuring eddy whirls.
Succeeding each as each retires,
Wood-mantled hills, and tufted spires,
Groves, villas, islets, cultured plains,
Towers, cities, palaces, and fanes,
As holds the stream its swift career,
Arise, and pass, and disappear.
O’er Nuneham Courtnay’s flowery glades
Soft breezes wave their fragrant wings,
And still, amid the haunted shades,
The tragic harp of Mason rings.
Yon votive urn, yon drooping flowers,
Disclose the minstrel’s favorite bowers,
Where first he tuned, in sylvan peace,
To British themes the lyre of Greece.
Delight shall check the expanded sail
In woody Marlow’s winding vale:
And fond regret for scenes so fair
With backward gaze shall linger there,
Till rise romantic Hedsor’s hills,
And Cliefdens’s groves, and springs, and rills,
Where hapless Villars, doomed to prove
The ills that
wait on lawless love,
In festal mirth, and choral song,
Impelled the summer-hours along,
Nor marked, where scowled expectant by
Despair, and shame, and poverty.
The Norman king’s embattled towers
Look proudly o’er the subject plain,
Where, deep in Windsor’s regal bowers,
The sylvan muses hold their reign.
From groves of oak, whose branches hoar
Have heard primeval tempests roar,
Beneath the moon’s pale ray they pass
Along the shore’s unbending grass,
And songs of gratulation raise,
To speak a patriot monarch’s praise.
Sweetly, on yon poetic hill,
Strains of unearthly music breathe,
Where Denham’s spirit, hovering still,
Weaves his wild harp’s aërial wreath.
And sweetly, on the mead below,
The fragrant gales of summer blow:
While flowers shall spring, while Thames shall flow,
That mead shall live in memory,
Where valor, on the tented field,
Triumphant raised his patriot shield,
The voice of truth to kings revealed,
And broke the chains of tyranny.
The stream expands: the meadows fly:
The stately swan sails proudly by:
Full, clear, and bright, with devious flow,
The rapid waters murmuring go.
Now open Twitnam’s classic shores,
Where yet the moral muse deplores
Her Pope’s unrivalled lay:
Unmoved by wealth, unawed by state,
He held to scorn the little great,
And taught life’s better way.
Though tasteless folly’s impious hand
Has wrecked the scenes his genius planned; —
Though low his fairy grot is laid,
And lost his willow’s pensive shade; —
Yet shall the ever-murmuring stream,
That lapt his soul in fancy’s dream,
Its vales with verdure cease to crown,
Ere fade one ray of his renown.
Fair groves, and villas glittering bright,
Arise on Richmond’s beauteous height;
Where yet fond echo warbles o’er
The heaven-taught songs she learned of yore.
From mortals veiled, mid waving reeds,
The airy lyre of Thomson sighs,
And whispers to the hills and meads:
In yonder grave a Druid lies!
The seasons there, in fixed return,
Around their minstrel’s holy urn
Perennial chaplets twine:
Oh I never shall their changes greet,
Immortal bard! a song more sweet,
A soul more pure than thine!
Oh Thames in conscious glory glide
By those fair piles that crown thy tide,
Where, worn with toil, from tumult far,
The veteran hero rests from war.
Here, marked by many a well-fought field,