XXIV 550 Nought of his sire's ungenerous part Polluted Wilfrid's gentle heart, A heart too soft from early life To hold with fortune needful strife. His sire, while yet a hardier race Of numerous sons were Wycliffe's grace, On Wilfrid set contemptuous brand For feeble heart and forceless hand; But a fond mother's care and joy Were centred in her sickly boy. No touch of childhood's frolic mood Showed the elastic spring of blood; Hour after hour he loved to pore On Shakespeare's rich and varied lore, But turned from martial scenes and light, From Falstaff's feast and Percy's fight, To ponder Jaques' moral strain, And muse with Hamlet, wise in vain, And weep himself to soft repose O'er gentle Desdemona's woes. XXV 560 570 In youth he sought not pleasures found By youth in horse and hawk and hound, But loved the quiet joys that wake By lonely stream and silent lake; In Deepdale's solitude to lie, Where all is cliff and copse and sky; To climb Catcastle's dizzy peak, Or lone Pendragon's mound to seek. Such was his wont; and there his dream Soared on some wild fantastic theme Of faithful love or ceaseless spring, Till Contemplation's wearied wing The enthusiast could no more sustain, 580 And sad he sunk to earth again. Wilfrid must love and woo the bright Matilda, heir of Rokeby's knight. To love her was an easy hest, The secret empress of his breast; To woo her was a harder task To one that durst not hope or ask. Yet all Matilda could she gave In pity to her gentle slave; Friendship, esteem, and fair regard, And praise, the poet's best reward! She read the tales his taste approved, And sung the lays he framed or loved; Yet, loath to nurse the fatal flame Of hopeless love in friendship's name, In kind caprice she oft withdrew The favoring glance to friendship due, Then grieved to see her victim's pain, And gave the dangerous smiles again. XXVIII 237 590 600 610 Three banners, floating o'er the Tees, 620 630 640 650 The lovely heir of Rokeby's Knight may XXX Thus wore his life, though reason strove 660 680 Gentle, indifferent, and subdued, Her day-dreams truth, and truth a dream. XXXI Woe to the youth whom Fancy gains, Winning from Reason's hand the reins, Pity and woe! for such a mind Is soft, contemplative, and kind; And woe to those who train such youth, And spare to press the rights of truth, The mind to strengthen and anneal While on the stithy glows the steel! O teach him while your lessons last To judge the present by the past; Remind him of each wish pursued, How rich it glowed with promised good; Remind him of each wish enjoyed, How soon his hopes possession cloyed! Tell him we play unequal game Whene'er we shoot by Fancy's aim; And, ere he strip him for her race, Show the conditions of the chase: Two sisters by the goal are set, Cold Disappointment and Regret; One disenchants the winner's eyes, And strips of all its worth the prize. While one augments its gaudy show, More to enhance the loser's woe. The victor sees his fairy gold Transformed when won to drossy mould, But still the vanquished mourns his loss, And rues as gold that glittering dross. XXXII More wouldst thou know vey, -yon tower sur Yon couch unpressed since parting day, Yon untrimmed lamp, whose yellow gleam Is mingling with the cold moonbeam, And yon thin form! the hectic red Fair Queen! I will not blame thee now, 770 Then did I swear thy ray serene 239 780 With haggard look and troubled sense, CANTO SECOND 790 FAR in the chambers of the west, Emerge proud Barnard's bannered walls. II 10 20 What prospects from his watch-tower high 30 240 Wears with his rage no common foe; III Nor Tees alone in dawning bright Shall rush upon the ravished sight; But many a tributary stream 40 Each from its own dark cell shall gleam : Even for that vale so stern and strange Yet, Albin, yet the praise be thine, 60 Mid Cartland's crags thou show'st the 80 Each on his own deep visions bent, V Stern Bertram shunned the nearer way Through Rokeby's park and chase that lay, And, skirting high the valley's ridge, They crossed by Greta's ancient bridge, Descending where her waters wind Free for a space and unconfined As, 'scaped from Brignall's dark-wood glen, She seeks wild Mortham's deeper den. There, as his eye glanced o'er the mound Raised by that Legion long renowned Whose votive shrine asserts their claim Of pious, faithful, conquering fame, 'Stern sons of war!' sad Wilfrid sighed, 'Behold the boast of Roman pride! What now of all your toils are known? A grassy trench, a broken stone !'This to himself; for moral strain To Bertram were addressed in vain. VI 100 Of different mood a deeper sigh Awoke when Rokeby's turrets high Were northward in the dawning seen To rear them o'er the thicket green. O then, though Spenser's self had strayed Beside him through the lovely glade, Lending his rich luxuriant glow Of fancy all its charms to show, Pointing the stream rejoicing free As captive set at liberty, Flashing her sparkling waves abroad, And clamoring joyful on her road; Pointing where, up the sunny banks, The trees retire in scattered ranks, Save where, advanced before the rest, On knoll or hillock rears his crest, Lonely and huge, the giant Oak, As champions when their band is broke Stand forth to guard the rearward post, The bulwark of the scattered hostAll this and more might Spenser say, Yet waste in vain his magic lay, While Wilfrid eyed the distant tower Whose lattice lights Matilda's bower. open VII The vale is soon passed o'er, Rokeby, though nigh, is seen no more; Sinking mid Greta's thickets deep, A wild and darker course they keep, A stern and lone yet lovely road As e'er the foot of minstrel trode ! Broad shadows o'er their passage fell, Deeper and narrower grew the dell; It seemed some mountain, rent and riven, A channel for the stream had given, So high the cliffs of limestone gray Hung beetling o'er the torrent's way, Yielding along their rugged base A flinty footpath's niggard space, 140 Where he who winds 'twixt rock and wave May hear the headlong torrent rave, And like a steed in frantic fit, That flings the froth from curb and bit, May view her chafe her waves to spray O'er every rock that bars her way, Till foam-globes on her eddies ride, Thick as the schemes of human pride That down life's current drive amain, As frail, as frothy, and as vain! VIII 150 The cliffs that rear their haughty head High o'er the river's darksome bed Were now all naked, wild, and gray, Now waving all with greenwood spray; Here trees to every crevice clung And o'er the dell their branches hung; 160 And there, all splintered and uneven, The shivered rocks ascend to heaven; Oft, too, the ivy swathed their breast And wreathed its garland round their crest, Or from the spires bade loosely flare Its tendrils in the middle air. As pennons wont to wave of old O'er the high feast of baron bold, When revelled loud the feudal rout 169 And the arched halls returned their shout, Such and more wild is Greta's roar, And such the echoes from her shore, And so the ivied banners gleam, Waved wildly o'er the brawling stream. 241 180 Forming such warm and dry retreat And wild and savage contrast made 190 200 Which, glimmering through the ivy spray, On the opposing summit lay. |