NOTES

TO

POEMS OF SENTIMENT AND REFLECTION.

"When to the sessions of sweet silent thought I summon up remembrance of things past. SHAKSPEARE's Sonnets, No. XXX. "Farewell, selfe-pleasing thoughts, which quietness brings foorth."- -SPENSER: Epitaph on Sir Philip Sidney.

Is there not in this concurrence- obviously casualSHAKSPEARE-SPENSER WORDSWORTH, proof of a trait of the temperament of poetic genius?

This simple stanza appears too to have touched a chord in the heart of Coleridge, who in one of his letters thus refers to it: "To have formed the habit of looking at every thing, not for what it is relative to the purposes and associations of men in general, but for the truths which it is suited to represent to contemplate objects as words and pregnant symbols- the advantages of this are so many, and so important, so eminently calculated to excite and evolve the power of sound and connected reasoning, of distinct and clear conception, and of genial feeling, that there are few of Wordsworth's finest passages — and who, of living poets, can lay claim to half the number? — that I repeat so often as that homely quatrain,

"O Reader! had you in your mind

Such stores as silent thought can bring;

O gentle Reader! you would find

A tale in every thing."

Note 2, p. 408.

"Devotional Incitements."

"Alas! the sanctities combined

By art to unsensualize the mind

Decay and languish; or as creeds

H. R.]

And humours change, are spurned like weeds :"

[This subject is finely drawn by Daniel:

"Sacred Religion! mother of form and fear!
How gorgeously sometimes dost thou sit decked!
What pompous vestures do we make thee wear,
What stately piles we prodigal erect!

How sweet perfumed thou art; how shining clear!
How solemnly observed; with what respect!

66

Another time all plain, all quite thread-bare;
Thou must have all within, and nought without;
Sit poorly without light, disrobed: no care
Of outward grace, to amuse the poor devout;
Powerless, unfollowed: scarce men can spare
The necessary rites to set thee out.

Either truth, goodness, virtue are not still
The self-same which they are, and always one,
But alter to the project of our will;

Or we our actions make them wait upon,
Putting them in the livery of our skill,
And cast them off again when we have done."
DANIEL:- Musophilus.'-H. R.]

Note 3, p. 424.

"Lines on a Portrait."

'They are in truth the Substance, we the Shadows." [This incident is thus narrated by the author or authors of that 'rare' book 'The Doctor,' with one of the rich comments, which distinguish the work:

"When Wilkie was in the Escurial, looking at Titian's famous picture of the Last Supper, in the Refectory there, an old Jeronimite said to him, 'I have sate daily in sight of that picture for now nearly three-score years; during that time my companions have dropt off, one after another, all who were my Seniors, all who were my contemporaries, and many, or most of those who were younger than myself; more than one generation has passed away, and there the figures in the picture have remained unchanged! I look at them till I sometimes think that they are the realities, and we but shadows!'

"I wish I could record the name of the Monk by whom that natural feeling was so feelingly and strikingly expressed.

"The shows of things are better than themselves," says the author of the tragedy of Nero, whose name, also, I could wish had been forthcoming; and the clas sical reader will remember the lines of Sophocles: ̔Ορῶ γὰρ ἡμᾶς οὐδὲν ὄντας ἄλλο, πλὴν Ειδωλ, ὅσοιπερ ζῶμεν, ἤ κούφην σκιών. These are reflections which should make us think "Of that same time when no more change shall be, But steadfast rest of all things, firmly stayd

Upon the pillars of Eternity,

That is contraire to mutability;

For all that moveth doth in change delight:

But thenceforth all shall rest eternally
With Him that is the God of Sabaoth hight,

O that great Sabaoth God grant me that Sabbath's sight."

SPENSER.

"The Doctor," Vol. III. p. 235.-H. R

Note 4, p. 368.

"Lines on a Portrait."

gentle and unassuming. She is endeared too by a more than sisterly devotion, which paused only at his grave, to one of the most winning writers in the language,

[The following is one of the poems by Mr. Southey, whose intellectual efforts were probably best encourwhich are referred to:

"ON MY OWN MINIATURE PICTURE

TAKEN AT TWO YEARS OF AGE.

"And I was once like this? that glowing cheek
Was mine, those pleasure-sparkling eyes; that brow
Smooth as the level lake, when not a breeze
Dies o'er the sleeping surface! - Twenty years
Have wrought strange alteration! Of the friends
Who once so dearly prized this miniature,
And loved it for its likeness, some are gone
To their last home; and some estranged in heart,
Beholding me, with quick averted glance
Pass on the other side! But still these hues
Remain unaltered, and these features wear
The look of Infancy and Innocence.

I search myself in vain, and find no trace
Of what I was: those lightly arching lines
Dark and o'erhanging now; and that sweet face
Settled in these strong lineaments!-- There were
Who formed high hopes and flattering ones of thee,
Young Robert! for thine eye was quick to speak
Each opening feeling: should they not have known,
If the rich rainbow on the morning cloud
Reflects its radiant dyes, the husbandman
Beholds the ominous glory, and foresees
Impending storms!-They augured happily,
That thou didst love each wild and wond'rous tale

Of faery fiction, and thine infant tongue
Lisped with delight the godlike deeds of Greece
And rising Rome; therefore they deemed, forsooth,
That thou should'st tread PREFERMENT's pleasant path.
Ill-judging ones! they let thy little feet

Stray in the pleasant paths of POESY,

And when thou shouldst have prest amid the crowd,
There didst thou love to linger out the day,
Loitering beneath the laurel's barren shade.
SPIRIT OF SPENSER! was the wanderer wrong?-1796."
SOUTHEY'S Poetical Works.

friends

aged by her who cheered the loneliness of his hearth.

"LINES

SUGGESTED BY A PICTURE OF TWO FEMALES,
BY LEONARDO DA VINCI.

"The Lady Blanch, regardless of all her lovers' fears,

To the Urs'line Convent hastens, and long the Abbess hears,
"O Blanch, my child, repent ye of the courtly life yo lead."
Blanch looked on a rose-bud and little seemed to heed,
She looked on the rose-bud, she looked round, and thought
On all her heart had whispered, and all the Nun had taught,
"I am worshipped by lovers, and brightly shines my fame,
"All Christendom resoundeth the noble Blanch's name.
"Nor shall I quickly wither like the rose-bud from the tree,
"My queen-like graces shining when my beauty's gone from me.
"But when the sculptured marble is raised o'er my head,
"And the matchless Blanch lies lifeless among the noble dead,
"This saintly lady Abbess hath made me justly fear,
"It nothing will avail me that I were worshipped here."
MARY LAMB: Poetical Works of Charles Lamb.-H. R.]
Note 5, p. 425.

"Ode to Duty."

"The genial sense of Youth :"

["diffidence or veneration. Such virtues are the sacred attributes of Youth: its appropriate calling is not to distinguish in the fear of being deceived or degraded, not to analyze with scrupulous minuteness, but to accumulate in genial confidence; its instinct, its safety, its benefit, its glory, is to love, to admire, to feel, and to labour. " COLERIDGE: 'The Friend,' Vol. III. p. 62. — H. R.]

Note 6, p. 426. "Ode to Duty.

“And in the light of truth thy Bondman let me live!"

I cannot deny myself the gratification of introducing into this group of poems suggested by paintings an["A living Teacher, to be spoken of with gratitude as other, also from the pen of one of Mr. Wordsworth's cal Poet, thought of morality as implying in its esof a benefactor, having, in his character of philosophione, to whom I am confident he would de- sence voluntary obedience, and producing the effect of light in seeing any tribute paid in connection with his order, transfers, in the transport of imagination, the own writings. I have therefore less hesitation in in-law of moral to physical natures, and having contemserting here the following lines by Mary Lamb, inclu- plated, through the medium of that order, all modes ded among the poems of her brother, the late Charles of existence as subservient to one spirit, concludes his Lamb, and at the same time of using these pages to address to the power of Duty in the following words: express a grateful admiration of an individual who has exhibited one of the most beautiful examples of the delicacy of female authorship to be met with in the records of English literature. In a few unambitious poems mingled among her brother's-as indeed her very existence seems to have been blended with his-and in that most graceful children's classic, Mrs. Leicester's School', there are tokens of a spirit as lofty in its purity as it is

3E

To humbler functions, awful Power!
I call thee: I myself commend
Unto thy guidance from this hour;
Oh, let my weakness have an end!
Give unto me, made lowly wise
The spirit of self-sacrifice;
The confidence of reason give!

And in the light of Truth thy Bondman let me live!"-W. W
COLERIDGE: The Friend,' Vol. III. p. 64. H. R.J

MISCELLANEOUS POEMS.

EPISTLE

TO SIR GEORGE HOWLAND BEAUMONT, BART.

FROM THE SOUTH-WEST COAST OF CUMBERLAND.-1811.

FAR from our home by Grasmere's quiet lake,
From the vale's peace which all her fields partake,
Here on the bleakest point of Cumbria's shore
We sojourn stunned by Ocean's ceaseless roar;
While, day by day, grim neighbour! huge Black Comb
Frowns, deepening visibly his native gloom,
Unless, perchance rejecting in despite
What on the plain we have of warmth and light,
In his own storms he hides himself from sight.
Rough is the time; and thoughts, that would be free
From heaviness, oft fly, dear friend, to thee;
Turn from a spot where neither sheltered road
Nor hedge-row screen invites my steps abroad;
Where one poor plane-tree, having as it might
Attained a stature twice a tall man's height,
Hopeless of further growth, and brown and sere
Through half the summer, stands with top cut sheer,
Like an unshifting weathercock which proves
How cold the quarter that the wind best loves,
Or like a centinel that, evermore
Darkening the window, ill defends the door
Of this unfinished house- a fortress bare,
Where strength has been the builder's only care,
Whose rugged walls may still for years demand
The final polish of the plasterer's hand.

Or, pilgrim-like, on forest moss reclined,
Gives plaintive ditties to the heedless wind,
Or listens to its play among the boughs
Above her head and so forgets her vows-
If such a visitant of earth there be
And she would deign this day to smile on me
And aid my verse, content with local bounds
Of natural beauty and life's daily rounds,
Without reserve to those whom we love well-
Thoughts, chances, sights, or doings, which we tell
Then, haply, Beaumont! words in current clear
Will flow, and on a welcome page appear
Duly before thy sight, unless they perish here.

What shall I treat of? News from Mona's Isle
Such have we, but unvaried in its style;
No tales of runagates fresh landed, whence
And wherefore fugitive or on what pretence;
Of feasts, or scandal, eddying like the wind
Most restlessly alive when most confined.
Ask not of me whose tongue can best appease
The mighty tumults of the HOUSE of Keys;
The last year's cup whose ram or heifer gained,
What slopes are planted, or what mosses drained:
An eye of fancy only can I cast

On that proud pageant now at hand or past,
When full five hundred boats in trim array,
With nets and sails outspread and streamers gay,
And chanted hymns and stiller voice of prayer,
For the old Manx-harvest to the deep repair,

This dwelling's inmate more than three weeks' space Soon as the herring-shoals at distance shine

And oft a prisoner in the cheerless place,
I-of whose touch the fiddle would complain,
Whose breath would labour at the flute in vain,

In music all unversed, nor blessed with skill

A bridge to copy, or to paint a mill,
Tired of my books, a scanty company!
And tired of listening to the boisterous sea
Pace between door and window muttering rhyme,
An old resource to cheat a froward time!
Though these dull hours (mine is it, or their shame!)
Would tempt me to renounce that humble aim.
--But if there be a Muse who, free to take
Her scat upon Olympus, doth forsake
Those heights (like Phoebus when his golden locks
He veiled, attendant on Thessalian flocks)
And, in disguise, a milkmaid with her pail
Trips down the pathways of some winding dale;
Or, like a Mermaid, warbles on the shores
To fishers mending nets beside their doors;

Like beds of moonlight shifting on the brine.

Mona from our abode is daily seen,
But with a wilderness of waves between;
And by conjecture only can we speak
Of aught transacted there in bay or creek;
No tidings reach us thence from town or field,
Only faint news her mountain sunbeams yield,
And some we gather from the misty air,
And some the hovering clouds, our
telegraph, declare.
But these poetic mysteries I withhold;
For Fancy hath her fits both hot and cold,
And should the colder fit with you be on
When you might read, my credit would be gone.

Let more substantial themes the pen engage,
And nearer interests culled from the opening st
Of our migration. - Ere the welcome dawn
Had from the east her silver star withdrawn.

The wain stood ready, at our cottage-door,
Thoughtfully freighted with a various store;
And long or ere the uprising of the sun
O'er dew-damped dust our journey was begun,
A needful journey, under favouring skies,
Through peopled vales; yet something in the guise
Of those old patriarchs when from well to well
They roamed through waste where now the tented
Arabs dwell.

Say first, to whom did we the charge confide,
Who promptly undertook the wain to guide
Up many a sharply-twining road and down,
And over many a wide hill's craggy crown,
Through the quick turns of many a hollow nook,
And the rough bed of many an unbridged brook?
A blooming lass who in her better hand
Bore a light switch her sceptre of command
When, yet a slender girl, she often led,
Skilful and bold, the horse and burthened sled*
From the peat-yielding moss on Gowdar's head.
What could go wrong with such a charioteer
For goods and chattels, or those infants dear,
A pair who smilingly sate side by side,
Our hope confirming that the salt-sea tide,
Whose free embraces we were bound to seek,

Would their lost strength restore and freshen the pale
cheek?

Such hope did either parent entertain
Pacing behind along the silent lane.

Blithe hopes and happy musings soon took flight,
For lo! an uncouth melancholy sight-
On a green bank a creature stood forlorn
Just half protruded to the light of morn,
Its hinder part concealed by hedge-row thorn.
The figure called to mind a beast of prey
Stript of its frightful powers by slow decay,
And, though no longer upon rapine bent,
Dim memory keeping of its old intent.

We started, looked again with anxious eyes,
And in that griesly object recognise

The Curate's dog - his long-tried friend, for they,
As well we knew, together had grown grey.
The master died, his drooping servant's grief
Found at the widow's feet some sad relief;
Yet still he lived in pining discontent,
Sadness which no indulgence could prevent;
Hence whole day wanderings, broken nightly sleeps
And lonesome watch that out of doors he keeps;

Not oftentimes, I trust, as we, poor brute!

Espied him on his legs sustained, blank, mute,
And of all visible motion destitute,

So that the very heaving of his breath

Unscared by thronging fancies of strange hue
That haunted us in spite of what we knew.
Even now I sometimes think of him as lost
In second-sight appearances, or crost
By spectral shapes of guilt, or to the ground,
On which he stood, by spells unnatural bound,
Like a gaunt shaggy porter forced to wait
In days of old romance at Archimago's gate.

Advancing summer, Nature's law fulfilled,
The choristers in every grove had stilled;
But we, we lacked not music of our own,
For lightsome Fanny had thus early thrown,
Mid the gay prattle of those infant tongues,
Some notes prelusive, from the round of songs
With which, more zealous than the liveliest bird
That in wild Arden's brakes was ever heard,
Her work and her work's partners she can cheer,
The whole day long, and all days of the year.

Thus gladdened from our own dear vale we pass
And soon approach Diana's looking-glass!

To Loughrigg-tarn, round, clear, and bright as heaven,
Such name Italian fancy would have given,
Ere on its banks the few grey cabins rose
That yet disturb not its concealed repose
More than the feeblest wind that idly blows.

Ah, Beaumont! when an opening in the road.
Stopped me at once by charm of what it showed,
The encircling region vividly exprest
Within the mirror's depth, a world at rest -

Sky streaked with purple, grove and craggy bield,†
And the smooth green of many a pendent field,
And, quieted and soothed, a torrent small,

A little daring would-be waterfall,
One chimney smoking and its azure wreath,
Associate all in the calm pool beneath,
With here and there a faint imperfect gleam
Of water-lilies veiled in misty steam
What wonder at this hour of stillness deep,
A shadowy link 'tween wakefulness and sleep,
When Nature's self, amid such blending seems
To render visible her own soft dreams,

-

If, mixed with what appeared of rock, lawn, wood,
Fondly embosomed in the tranquil flood,
A glimpse I caught of that abode, by thee
Designed to rise in humble privacy,
A lowly dwelling, here to be outspread,
Like a small hamlet, with its bashful head
Half hid in native trees. Alas 'tis not,
Nor ever was; I sighed, and left the spot
Unconscious of its own untoward lot,
And thought in silence, with regret too keen,
Of unexperienced joys that might have been;

Seemed stopt, though by some other power than death. Of neighbourhood and intermingling arts,

Long as we gazed upon the form and face,

A mild domestic pity kept its place,

A local word for Sledge.

And golden summer days uniting cheerful hearts.

† A word common in the country, signifying shelter, as in Scotland.