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[First published in Fraser’s Magazine, May, 1855.]
WHERE, under Loughrigg, the stream | |
| Of Rotha sparkles, the fields | |
| Are green, in the house of one | |
| Friendly and gentle, now dead, | |
| Wordsworth’s son-in-law, friend— | 5 |
| Four years since, on a mark’d | |
| Evening, a meeting I saw. | |
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| Two friends met there, two fam’d | |
| Gifted women. 1 The one, | |
| Brilliant with recent renown, | 10 |
| Young, unpractis’d, had told | |
| With a Master’s accent her feign’d | |
| Story of passionate life: | |
| The other, maturer in fame, | |
| Earning, she too, her praise | 15 |
| First in Fiction, had since | |
| Widen’d her sweep, and survey’d | |
| History, Politics, Mind. | |
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| They met, held converse: they wrote | |
| In a book which of glorious souls | 20 |
| Held memorial: Bard, | |
| Warrior, Statesman, had left | |
| Their names:—chief treasure of all, | |
| Scott had consign’d there his last | |
| Breathings of song, with a pen | 25 |
| Tottering, a death-stricken hand. | |
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| I beheld; the obscure | |
| Saw the famous. Alas! | |
| Years in number, it seem’d | |
| Lay before both, and a fame | 30 |
| Heighten’d, and multiplied power. | |
| Behold! The elder, to-day, | |
| Lies expecting from Death, | |
| In mortal weakness, a last | |
| Summons: the younger is dead. | 35 |
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| First to the living we pay | |
| Mournful homage: the Muse | |
| Gains not an earth-deafen’d ear. | |
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| Hail to the steadfast soul, | |
| Which, unflinching and keen, | 40 |
| Wrought to erase from its depth | |
| Mist, and illusion, and fear! | |
| Hail to the spirit which dar’d | |
| Trust its own thoughts, before yet | |
| Echoed her back by the crowd! | 45 |
| Hail to the courage which gave | |
| Voice to its creed, ere the creed | |
| Won consecration from Time! | |
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| Turn, O Death, on the vile, | |
| Turn on the foolish the stroke | 50 |
| Hanging now o’er a head | |
| Active, beneficent, pure! | |
| But, if the prayer be in vain— | |
| But, if the stroke must fall— | |
| Her, whom we cannot save, | 55 |
| What might we say to console? | |
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| She will not see her country lose | |
| Its greatness, nor the reign of fools prolong’d. | |
| She will behold no more | |
| This ignominious spectacle, | 60 |
| Power dropping from the hand | |
| of paralytic factions, and no soul | |
| To snatch and wield it: will not see | |
| Her fellow people sit | |
| Helplessly gazing on their own decline. | 65 |
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| Myrtle and rose fit the young, | |
| Laurel and oak the mature. | |
| Private affections, for these, | |
| Have run their circle, and left | |
| Space for things far from themselves, | 70 |
| Thoughts of the general weal, | |
| Country, and public cares: | |
| Public cares, which move | |
| Seldom and faintly the depth | |
| Of younger passionate souls | 75 |
| Plung’d in themselves, who demand | |
| Only to live by the heart, | |
| Only to love and be lov’d. | |
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| How shall we honour the young, | |
| The ardent, the gifted? how mourn? | 80 |
| Console we cannot; her ear | |
| Is deaf. Far northward from here, | |
| In a churchyard high mid the moors | |
| Of Yorkshire, a little earth | |
| Stops it for ever to praise. | 85 |
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| Where, behind Keighley, the road | |
| Up to the heart of the moors | |
| Between heath-clad showery hills | |
| Runs, and colliers’ carts | |
| Poach the deep ways coming down, | 90 |
| And a rough, grim’d race have their homes— | |
| There, on its slope, is built | |
| The moorland town. But the church | |
| Stands on the crest of the hill, | |
| Lonely and bleak; at its side | 95 |
| The parsonage-house and the graves. | |
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| See! in the desolate house | |
| The childless father! Alas— | |
| Age, whom the most of us chide, | |
| Chide, and put back, and delay— | 100 |
| Come, unupbraided for once! | |
| Lay thy benumbing hand, | |
| Gratefully cold, on this brow! | |
| Shut out the grief, the despair! | |
| Weaken the sense of his loss! | 105 |
| Deaden the infinite pain! | |
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| Another grief I see, | |
| Younger: but this the Muse, | |
| In pity and silent awe | |
| Revering what she cannot soothe, | 110 |
| With veil’d face and bow’d head, | |
| Salutes, and passes by. | |
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| Strew with roses the grave | |
| Of the early-dying. Alas! | |
| Early she goes on the path | 115 |
| To the Silent Country, and leaves | |
| Half her laurels unwon, | |
| Dying too soon: yet green | |
| Laurels she had, and a course | |
| Short, but redoubled by Fame. | 120 |
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| For him who must live many years | |
| That life is best which slips away | |
| Out of the light, and mutely; which avoids | |
| Fame, and her less-fair followers, Envy, Strife, | |
| Stupid Detraction, Jealousy, Cabal, | 125 |
| Insincere Praises:—which descends | |
| The mossy quiet track to Age. | |
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| But, when immature Death | |
| Beckons too early the guest | |
| From the half-tried Banquet of Life, | 130 |
| Young, in the bloom of his days; | |
| Leaves no leisure to press, | |
| Slow and surely, the sweet | |
| Of a tranquil life in the shade— | |
| Fuller for him be the hours! | 135 |
| Give him emotion, though pain! | |
| Let him live, let him feel, I have liv’d. | |
| Heap up his moments with life! | |
| Quicken his pulses with Fame! | |
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| And not friendless, nor yet | 140 |
| Only with strangers to meet, | |
| Faces ungreeting and cold, | |
| Thou, O Mourn’d One, to-day | |
| Enterest the House of the Grave. | |
| Those of thy blood, whom thou lov’dst, | 145 |
| Have preceded thee; young, | |
| Loving, a sisterly band: | |
| Some in gift, some in art | |
| Inferior; all in fame. | |
| They, like friends, shall receive | 150 |
| This comer, greet her with joy; | |
| Welcome the Sister, the Friend; | |
| Hear with delight of thy fame. | |
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| Round thee they lie; the grass | |
| Blows from their graves toward thine. | 155 |
| She, 2 whose genius, though not | |
| Puissant like thine, was yet | |
| Sweet and graceful: and She— | |
| (How shall I sing her?)—whose soul | |
| Knew no fellow for might, | 160 |
| Passion, vehemence, grief, | |
| Daring, since Byron died, | |
| That world-fam’d Son of Fire; She, who sank | |
| Baffled, unknown, self-consum’d; | |
| Whose too bold dying song | 165 |
| Shook, like a clarion-blast, my soul. | |
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| Of one too I have heard, | |
| A Brother 3—sleeps he here?— | |
| Of all his gifted race | |
| Not the least gifted; young, | 170 |
| Unhappy, beautiful; the cause | |
| Of many hopes, of many tears. | |
| O Boy, if here thou sleep’st, sleep well! | |
| On thee too did the Muse | |
| Bright in thy cradle smile: | 175 |
| But some dark Shadow came | |
| (I know not what) and interpos’d. | |
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| Sleep, O cluster of friends, | |
| Sleep! or only, when May, | |
| Brought by the West Wind, returns | 180 |
| Back to your native heaths, | |
| And the plover is heard on the moors, | |
| Yearly awake, to behold | |
| The opening summer, the sky, | |
| The shining moorland; to hear | 185 |
| The drowsy bee, as of old, | |
| Hum o’er the thyme, the grouse | |
| Call from the heather in bloom: | |
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| Sleep; or only for this | |
| Break your united repose. | 190 |
