תמונות בעמוד
PDF
ePub

XXXIX.-INside of King's COLLEGE Chapel,
CAMBRIDGE.

TAX not the royal Saint with vain expense,
With ill-matched aims the Architect who planned,
Albeit labouring for a scanty band

Of white robed Scholars only, this immense

And glorious work of fine intelligence!

Give all thou canst; high Heaven rejects the lore
Of nicely-calculated less or more;

So deemed the Man who fashioned for the sense
These lofty pillars, spread that branching roof
Self-poised, and scooped into ten thousand cells,
Where light and shade repose, where music dwells
Lingering and wandering on as loth to die;
Like thoughts whose very sweetness yieldeth proof
That they were born for immortality.

XL.-TO THE AUTHOR'S PORTRAIT.

[Painted at Rydal Mount, by W. Pickersgill, Esq., for St. John's College, Cambridge.]

Go, faithful portrait ! and where long hath knelt
Margaret, the saintly Foundress, take thy place!
And, if Time spare the colours for the grace
Which to the work surpassing skill hath dealt,
Thou, on thy rock reclined, though kingdoms melt
And states be torn up by the roots, wilt seem
To breathe in rural peace, to hear the stream,
And think and feel as once the Poet felt.
Whate'er thy fate, those features have not grown
Unrecognised through many a household tear
More prompt, more glad to fall than drops of dew
By morning shed around a flower half-blown ;
Tears of delight, that testified how true
To life thou art, and, in thy truth, how dear!

XLI.-MARY, QUEEN OF SCOTS, LANDING AT THE
MOUTH OF THE DERWENT, WORKINGTON.

DEAR to the Loves, and to the Graces vowed,
The Queen drew back the wimple that she wore;
And to the throng, that on the Cumbrian shore
Her landing hailed, how touchingly she bowed!
And like a Star (that, from a heavy cloud
Of pine-tree foliage poised in air, forth darts
When a soft summer gale at evening parts
The gloom that did its loveliness enshroud)
She smiled but Time, the old Saturnian seer,
Sighed on the wing as her foot pressed the strand,
With step prelusive to a long array

Of woes and degradations hand in hand-
Weeping captivity, and shuddering fear

Stilled by the ensanguined block of Fotheringay!

XLII.

MOST sweet is it with un-uplifted eyes

To pace the ground, if path be there or none,
While a fair region round the traveller lies
Which he forbears again to look upon;
Pleased rather with some soft ideal scene,
The work of Fancy, or some happy tone
Of meditation, slipping in between
The beauty coming and the beauty gone.

If thought and Love desert us, from that day
Let us break off all commerce with the Muse:
With Thought and Love companions of our way,
Whate'er the senses take or may refuse,

The Mind's internal heaven shall shed her dews
Of inspiration on the humblest lay.

XLIII. ON THE DEPARTURE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT FROM ABBOTSFORD, FOR NAPLES.

A TROUBLE, not of clouds, or weeping rain,
Nor of the setting sun's pathetic light
Engendered, hangs o'er Eildon's triple height :
Spirits of Power, assembled there, complain
For kindred Power departing from their sight;
While Tweed, best pleased in chanting a blithe strain,
Saddens his voice again and yet again.

Lift up your hearts, ye Mourners! for the might
Of the whole world's good wishes with him goes;
Blessings and prayers, in nobler retinue

Than sceptred king or laurelled conqueror knows,
Follow this wondrous Potentate. Be true,

Ye winds of ocean, and the midland sea,
Wafting your Charge to soft Parthenope!

XLIV. TO R. B. HAYDON, ESQ.

HIGH is our calling, Friend !-Creative Art
(Whether the instrument of words she use,
Or pencil pregnant with ethereal hues)
Demands the service of a mind and heart,
Though sensitive, yet, in their weakest part
Heroically fashioned-to infuse

Faith in the whispers of the lonely Muse,
While the whole world seems adverse to desert.
And, oh! when Nature sinks, as oft she may,
Through long-lived pressure of obscure distress,
Still to be strenuous for the bright reward,
And in the soul admit of no decay,
Brook no continuance of weak-mindedness-
Great is the glory, for the strife is hard!

XLV.

THEY called Thee MERRY ENGLAND, in old time;
A happy people won for thee that name

With envy heard in many a distant clime;

And, spite of change, for me thou keep'st the same
Endearing title, a responsive chime.

To the heart's fond belief; though some there are
Whose sterner judgments deem that word a snare
For inattentive fancy, like the lime

Which foolish birds are caught with. Can, I ask,
This face of rural beauty be a mask

For discontent, and poverty, and crime;

These spreading towns a cloak for lawless will?
Forbid it, Heaven !—and MERRY ENGLAND still
Shall be thy rightful name, in prose and rhyme !

XLVI.

THE pibroch's note, discountenanced or mute;
The Roman kilt, degraded to a toy
Of quaint apparel for a half-spoilt boy;
The target mouldering like ungathered fruit ;
The smoking steam-boat eager in pursuit,
As eagerly pursued; the umbrella spread
To weather-fend the Celtic herdsman's head-
All speak of manners withering to the root,
And of old honours, too, and passions high :

Then may we ask, though pleased that thought should

range

Among the conquests of civility,

Survives imagination-to the change

Superior? Help to virtue does she give?

If not, O Mortals, better cease to live!

XLVII.

A POET-He hath put his heart to school,
Nor dares to move unpropped upon the staff
Which Art hath lodged within his hand—must laugh
By precept only, and shed tears by rule.
Thy Art be Nature; the live current quaff,
And let the groveller sip his stagnant pool,
In fear that else, when Critics grave and cool
Have killed him, Scorn should write his epitaph.
How does the Meadow-flower its bloom unfold?
Because the lovely little flower is free

Down to its root, and, in that freedom, bold;

And so the grandeur of the Forest-tree

Comes not by casting in a formal mould

But from its own divine vitality.

XLVIII.-THE PINE OF MONTE MARIO AT ROME.

I SAW far off the dark top of a Pine

Look like a cloud-a slender stem the tie

That bound it to its native earth-poised high
'Mid evening hues, along the horizon line,
Striving in peace each other to outshine.
But when I learned the Tree was living there
Saved from the sordid axe by Beaumont's care,
Oh, what a gush of tenderness was mine!
The rescued Pine-tree, with its sky so bright
And cloud-like beauty, rich in thoughts of home,
Death-parted friends, and days too swift in flight,
Supplanted the whole majesty of Rome

(Then first apparent from the Pincian Height)
Crowned with St. Peter's everlasting Dome.

« הקודםהמשך »