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[First published 1852. Reprinted 1855.]
RAIS’D are the dripping oars— | |
| Silent the boat: the lake, | |
| Lovely and soft as a dream, | |
| Swims in the sheen of the moon. | |
| The mountains stand at its head | 5 |
| Clear in the pure June night, | |
| But the valleys are flooded with haze. | |
| Rydal and Fairfield are there; | |
| In the shadow Wordsworth lies dead. | |
| So it is, so it will be for aye. | 10 |
| Nature is fresh as of old, | |
| Is lovely: a mortal is dead. | |
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| The spots which recall him survive, | |
| For he lent a new life to these hills. | |
| The Pillar still broods o’er the fields | 15 |
| Which 1 border Ennerdale Lake, | |
| And Egremont sleeps by the sea. | |
| The gleam of The Evening Star 2 | |
| Twinkles on Grasmere no more, | |
| But ruin’d and solemn and grey | 20 |
| The sheepfold of Michael survives, | |
| And far to the south, the heath | |
| Still blows in the Quantock coombs, | |
| By the favourite waters of Ruth. | |
| These survive: yet not without pain, | 25 |
| Pain and dejection to-night, | |
| Can I feel that their Poet is gone. | |
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| He grew old in an age he condemn’d. | |
| He look’d on the rushing decay | |
| Of the times which had shelter’d his youth. | 30 |
| Felt the dissolving throes | |
| Of a social order he lov’d. | |
| Outliv’d his brethren, his peers. | |
| And, like the Theban seer, | |
| Died in his enemies’ day. | 35 |
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| Cold bubbled the spring of Tilphusa, | |
| Copais lay bright in the moon; | |
| Helicon glass’d in the lake | |
| Its firs, and afar, rose the peaks | |
| Of Parnassus, snowily clear: | 40 |
| Thebes was behind him in flames, | |
| And the clang of arms in his ear, | |
| When his awe-struck captors led | |
| The Theban seer to the spring. | |
| Tiresias drank and died. | 45 |
| Nor did reviving Thebes | |
| See such a prophet again. | |
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| Well may we mourn, when the head | |
| Of a sacred poet lies low | |
| In an age which can rear them no more. | 50 |
| The complaining millions of men | |
| Darken in labour and pain; | |
| But he was a priest to us all | |
| Of the wonder and bloom of the world, | |
| Which we saw with his eyes, and were glad. | 55 |
| He is dead, and the fruit-bearing day | |
| Of his race is past on the earth; | |
| And darkness returns to our eyes. | |
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| For oh, is it you, is it you, | |
| Moonlight, and shadow, and lake, | 60 |
| And mountains, that fill us with joy, | |
| Or the Poet who sings you so well? | |
| Is it you, O Beauty, O Grace, | |
| O Charm, O Romance, that we feel, | |
| Or the voice which reveals what you are? | 65 |
| Are ye, like daylight and sun, | |
| Shar’d and rejoic’d in by all? | |
| Or are ye immers’d in the mass | |
| Of matter, and hard to extract, | |
| Or sunk at the core of the world | 70 |
| Too deep for the most to discern? | |
| Like stars in deep of the sky, | |
| Which arise on the glass of the sage, | |
| But are lost when their watcher is gone. | |
| |
| ‘They are here’—I heard, as men heard | 75 |
| In Mysian Ida the voice | |
| Of the Mighty Mother, 3 or Crete, | |
| The murmur of Nature reply— | |
| ‘Loveliness, Magic, and Grace, | |
| They are here—they are set in the world— | 80 |
| They abide—and the finest of souls | |
| Has not been thrill’d by them all, | |
| Nor the dullest been dead to them quite. | |
| The poet who sings them may die, | |
| But they are immortal, and live, | 85 |
| For they are the life of the world. | |
| Will ye not learn it, and know, | |
| When ye mourn that a poet is dead, | |
| That the singer was less than his themes, | |
| Life, and Emotion, and I? | 90 |
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| ‘More than the singer are these. | |
| Weak is the tremor of pain | |
| That thrills in his mournfullest chord | |
| To that which once ran through his soul. | |
| Cold the elation of joy | 95 |
| In his gladdest, airiest song, | |
| To that which of old in his youth | |
| Fill’d him and made him divine. | |
| Hardly his voice at its best | |
| Gives us a sense of the awe, | 100 |
| The vastness, the grandeur, the gloom | |
| Of the unlit gulph of himself. | |
| |
| ‘Ye know not yourselves—and your bards, | |
| The clearest, the best, who have read | |
| Most in themselves, have beheld | 105 |
| Less than they left unreveal’d. | |
| Ye express not yourselves—can ye make | |
| With marble, with colour, with word, | |
| What charm’d you in others re-live? | |
| Can thy pencil, O Artist, restore | 110 |
| The figure, the bloom of thy love, | |
| As she was in her morning of spring? | |
| Canst thou paint the ineffable smile | |
| Of her eyes as they rested on thine? | |
| Can the image of life have the glow, | 115 |
| The motion of life itself? | |
| |
| ‘Yourselves and your fellows ye know not—and me | |
| The Mateless, the One, will ye know? | |
| Will ye scan me, and read me, and tell | |
| Of the thoughts that ferment in my breast, | 120 |
| My longing, my sadness, my joy? | |
| Will ye claim for your great ones the gift | |
| To have render’d the gleam of my skies, | |
| To have echoed the moan of my seas, | |
| Utter’d the voice of my hills? | 125 |
| When your great ones depart, will ye say— | |
| All things have suffer’d a loss— | |
| Nature is hid in their grave? | |
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| ’Race after race, man after man, | |
| Have dream’d that my secret was theirs, | 130 |
| Have thought that I liv’d but for them, | |
| That they were my glory and joy.— | |
| They are dust, they are chang’d, they are gone.— | |
| I remain.’ | |
