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POEMS OF ENGLISH
COUNIRY LIFE
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SELECTED AND EDITED
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WITH INTRODUCTION jg^_
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AND NOTES BY ^m^^
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HEREFORD B. GEORGE ^^^^H|
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AND W. H. HADOW ^^^B
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OXFORD; AT THE CLARENDON PRESS
THE LIBRARY
OF
THE UNIVERSITY
OF CALIFORNIA
LOS ANGELES
POEMS OF
ENGLISH COUNTRY LIFE
SELECTED AND EDITED WITH
INTRODUCTION AND NOTES BY
HEREFORD B. GEORGE, M.A.
FELLOW OF NEW COLLEGE, OXFORD
AND
W. H. HADOW, M.A.
FELLOW OF WORCESTER COLLEGE, OXFORX*
OXFORD
AT THE CLARENDON PRESS
] 902
HENRY FROWDE, M.A.
PUBLISHER TO THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD
LONDON, EDINBURGH
NEW YORK
> I '■-.'
C263
PREFACE
The purpose of this little collection is to supply one
more book of English poetry, which may be studied as
an alternative to Shakespeare. It is well that boys and
girls should make acquaintance in the way of school
work with other English literature besides the works
of the great dramatist, which are moreover too hard
for many classes. Nature-poetry is a plant specially
of English growth, and therefore specially worthy of
attention in English education ; and the study of it
has the further advantage that it should quicken
observation of nature itself.
We have limited our choice to poetry dealing with
nature as it may be seen ^ in England, because, a selec-
tion having to be made somehow, it seemed good to
direct attention in the first place to things which are
to be seen at home. And we have included poetry
dealing with country pursuits, as likely to be specially
interesting to the young. It may seem strange that
there is no poetry about the sea in this volume ; but,
except for short isolated passages, the sea has been
almost entirely neglected by the great English poets
down to the present generation. In this country, where
' Shelley's Question (No. ir) and Invitation (No. vi) were both
written in Italy : but the former is essentially English in
character, and the latter (except that the season would be later)
wholly applicable to England.
8629C8
iv PREFACE
most of those who will use the book know the sea,
and all are familiar with the thought of it, we have
deemed it better to leave out the sea altogether, if it
could not be Avorthily represented.
The poems selected have been arranged according to
their subject-matter, not by the dates of the authors.
First come those on the seasons, and the pursuits
appropriate to each ; then some few descrij^tive of
particular localities ; then some about birds and flowers,
the most beautiful of the specific objects to be seen in
the country ; then some poems mainly reflective. Such
a method of arrangement, like every other, is open to
criticism. Some of the passages placed as descriptive
contain a large share of reflection ; and one at least.
The Deserted Village, had for its main object to set
forth the poet's social views ; but the descriptions even
in that are the portions which have won universal
admiration. Against a merely chronological arrange-
ment we have the distinguished authority of the Golden
Treasury, and our own belief that the plan which we
have adopted is more suitable for i*eading in class, the
special object for which this compilation has been
made.
The Introduction and Notes have been written with
the view of furnishing to teachers such information as
they may need for the explanation of the poems.
The author's own title is given to eveiy complete
poem. Quotation marks are appended to the titles
which we have given to extracts from long poems, such
as Thomson's Seasons. H. B. G.
W. H. H.
Oxford,
January i, T902.
CONTENTS
PAGE
Introduction vii
I. L'AUegio. J. Milton i
II. The Question. P. B. Shelley ... 5
III. The First Sight of Spring. J. Clare . . 6
IV. ' Early Spring.' From Tennyson's In Me-
inoriam 7
V. Home Thoughts from Abroad. R. Browning 7
VI. The Invitation. P. B. Shelley ... 8
VII. ' Trout Fishing.' From Thomson's S'ertso/is . 10
VIII. ' The Coming of Summer.' J. Keats . .12
IX. Hunting Song. Sir W. ScoTT . . .15
X. ' Haymaking and Sheepwashing.' From Thom-
son's 6'easo;(s 16
XI. Ode to Autumn. J. Keats . . . .18
XII. Autumn. T. Hood 19
XIII. 'Nutting.' From Wordsworth's Pre^Mrfe . 21
XIV. ' Autumn changing to Winter.' From Scott's
Manuion ....... 22
XV. ' A Winter Walk.' From Cowper's Task . 24
XVI. 'Skating.' From Wordsworth's Pre?M(7e . 25
XVII. ' Christmas-tide.' From Scott's Manx ion . 27
XVIII. 'English Rivers.' From Milton's Vacation
Exercise 30
XIX. The Brook. Lord Tennyson . . . .31
XX. The Ebb Tide. R. Southey .... 32
XXI. ' A Green and Silent Spot.' S. T. Coleridge . s^
VI
CONTENTS
PAGE
XXII, ' A Lonely Cottcage.' From Cowper's r«sA; 34
XXIII. ' Leaving a Country Home.' From Tenny-
son's In Memoriam . . . • 35
XXIV. Fountains Abbey. Ebenezer Elliott . 37
XXV. 'Sceneiy about Oxford.' From M.Arnolds
Scholar Gipsy 38
XXVI. The Deserted Village. 0. Goldsmith . 42
XXVII. Ode to a Skylark. P. B. Shelley . . 54
XXVIII. The Cuckoo. J. Logan .... 58
XXIX. The Green Linnet. W. Wordsworth . 59
XXX. The Thrush's Nest. J.Clare ... 60
XXXI. The Wren's Nest. W.Wordsworth . 61
XXXII. The Nightingale. S. T. Coleridge . . 63
XXXIII. The Redbreast and the ButterOy. W.
Wordsworth 64
XXXIV. Blossoms. R. Herrick . . . .65
XXXV. Daffodils. R. Herrick .... 66
XXXVI. 'Spring Flowers.' From Thomson's S'easo?!s 67
XXXVII. The Daisy. W. Wordsworth ... 68
XXXVIII. The Lesser Celandine. W. Wordsworth 70
XXXIX. The Holly Tree. R. Southey . . .71
XL. Ode on the Intimations of Immortality.
W. Wordsworth . . . . 72
XLI. Song from Shakespeare's As You Like It . 78
XLII. The Useful Plough 79
XLIII. The Shepherd. W. Blake ... 80
XLIV. Elegy in a Country Churchyard. T. Gray 80
Notes 85
List of Poets 108
INTRODUCTION
The beauties of nature mean so much to us that we
can hardly realize how many centuries had to pass, before
even civilized man paid them any serious attention, or
thought them in themselves fit subjects for poetic treat-
ment. The earliest poetry, apart from hymns and other
writings of dii-ectly religious character, consisted in the
main of stories. These took the form of ballad or saga
or epic, and dealt with wars and adventures, hair-breadth
escapes and deeds of daring, such as could be sung to
the warriors round the evening camp-fire, or could hand
down their memories to the citizens of more peaceful
times. Then in due course followed other forms of
poetry— lyric, elegiac, dramatic — each reflecting the
temper of its age, but all treating mainly of human
actions and feelings, and using the world of nature only
as a common background or as an occasional illustration.
To the Greek and Koman poets, through what wo call
the Classical period, ' the proper study of mankind was
man ' ; and other topics were only considered in so far
as they could be made to bear on the one gi*eat centre of
interest, the story of human life. It is ti-ue that in both
Greek and Roman poets we find occasional glimpses of
landscape, of country scenes and country pursuits ; but
they are for the most part brief and transitory, seldom
more than a few lines in length, and either treated as
episodes or pressed into the poet's service as similes.
It is a curious fact that the first Greek poet who de-
liberately set himself to describe the country was the
Sicilian Theocritus, that the first Latin poet who did so
viii INTRODUCTION
was the Gaul Ausonius \ and that these two stood at the
extreme end and verge of their respective literatures.
Allowing for differences of condition, the same law
may be observed in the poetry of the Middle Ages. In
our Anglo-Saxon poems, and still more in the old French
romances, we get occasional touches of nature as distinct
from man, but they are never the main purpose of the
poem ; they are always subservient or accessory. So it
is, in a still higher degree, with Dante, where the ob-
servation is far more precise, and the subservience far
more obvious : so it is again in Chaucer. See, for in-
stance, the charming little description of spring which
opens the Canterhw'y Tales. It is one of the most
delightful passages in English poetry, full of music and
colour, but its whole office is to set the pilgrims on their
way ; it stands outside the poem as an illuminated
initial letter would, in Chaucer's time, have stood out-
side the sentence which it introduced. It is not a part
of the picture, but a jewel set in the frame.
Shakespeare knew everj'thing because he loved every-
thing, and his ' native wood-notes ' are as fresh and sweet
as the songs of the birds in Arden Forest ; but Shake-
si">eare had no rival and has left no successor. Marlowe's
' Come, live with me,' for all its charm is, in comparison,
fantastic and artificial. Herrick never strays beyond
his parsonage garden, unless it be to watch with an in-
dulgent smile the merrymaking on the village green ;
and his exquisite lyrics are not really studies of nature,
but studies of his own mind amid natxu'al sights and
sounds. Milton, in L' Allegro, plays for a moment round
country life, as you may hear a pastoral tune played
upon a gi-eat cathedral organ ; but the melody, though
it has gained in fullness and resonance, has not the open-
air simplicity of the shepherd's pipe among the hills.
' This, of course, excludes the Bucolics of Virgil. But they
are not really descriptions of countiy life at all ; they are arti-
ficial adaptations of Theocritus to suit the taste of Augustus'
coui't ; and the Gcorgks are too didactic to count as exceptions.
INTRODUCTION ix
And after Milton's death, English poetry went back to
the city life, to the streets, the theatre, and the court,
and for nearly a hundred years affected to look upon the
country as a wilderness, and on its inhabitants as boors
and savages. In our literatui'e of the Restoration, and
of the reigns of William III, Anne, and the early
Georges, London is the centre of all things, and to leave
Town is to go into banishment.
Until the latter half of the eighteenth century, then,
we can hardly be said to have any ostensible poetiy of
nature at all— only occasional episodes and interludes
from poets who, in the main course and current of their
art, were otherwise preoccupied. It is true that many
of these are of supreme beauty, 'gems of purest ray
serene,' which we can never tire of contemplating ; but
for the most part they are gems, not flowers : they
shine, but do not grow. And from this comparative
lack of dii"ect interest in nature and nature's designs we
may note two remarkable consequences. First, such
nature-poetry as we have yet found is nearly always
fine-weather poetry. It is all smiling and friendly, full
of sunshine and green meadows and prattling streams.
There is never that thrill of delight and wonder with
which in later days we have come to watch a storm at
sea or among the mountains ; indeed, the sea and the
mountains are rarely mentioned, and when they appear
are treated more with terror or defiance, as enemies to be
avoided or overcome, than as the two noblest and most
inspiring of man's surroundings. It is quite intelligible
tliat this should be so. Man must penetrate deep into
nature before he can learn to love her sterner aspects^
and the earlier poets, who knew so much of their fellow
men, had not yet mastered the moi-e recondite lesson.
Secondly, there is a curious conventionality in the treat-
ment even of those topics which they chose by preference.
Except with the two or three greatest men, we find tlio
same epithets, the same figures, even the same points of
X INTRODUCTION
view, handed on traditionally almost as matters of form :
it would seem as though the poets had no care to observe
nature directly, and were content to take her at second-
hand from their predecessors. Of this one remarkable
instance can be quoted. No one who has heard the
nightingale with an unprejudiced ear can doubt that
the main note of his song is an intense, overpowering
rapture of delight— the fullest expression of unalloyed
happiness that the whole world of nature contains. Yet
through all this conventional period the poets not only
attributed the song to the hen-bird, but, in consequence
of a Greek legend, declared it to be plaintive and melan-
choly \ Their nightingale, in short, is as purely mytho-
logical a creature as the swan that sings before it dies,
or the mandrake that cries aloud when you pull it up by
the roots.
In the latter part of the eighteenth century came the
reaction. All over Europe there was a summons to
' return to nature ' : it echoed through social life with
Rousseau; it created a new music with Haydn; it
broke down conventions of painting with Gainsborough
and Constable ; it opened an entirely new chajiter in
the history of English literature. Among our poets
this was especially noticeable. Thomson and Cowper
began to observe nature, Wordsworth and Coleridge
to understand her more fully and more deeply ; Scott
told us in simple, stirring language the beauties of his
native streams and mountains ; Crabbe, ' Nature's
sternest painter,' made us sympathize with the com-
mon joys and sorrows of common people. At first, no
doubt, these pioneers were met with stupid and un-
reasoning opposition. The name ' Lake School,' now
one of the most glorious in our literature, was first
applied as a term of satire and reproach : defects were
' Coleridge's poem (No. xxxii in this volume) is probably the
first in which the song of the nightingale has been accurately
characterized.
INTRODUCTION xi
magnified, beauties ignored, accidents mistaken for
essentials, and the result remains as one of the most
discreditable blunders of English criticism. But a true
idea can never be killed. The splenetic wit of Byron
has recoiled upon himself, the critics who barked in the
reviews have long since been silenced, and the course, of
English poetry has gone on its way towards a truth, of
the very existence of which, before the time of this
revolution, it had scarcely dreamed. Not, of course, that
the poetry of nature stands alone ; still less that it
should oust or supersede the poetry of human life and
human passion. But, indeed, the two are ideally in-
separable, they affect and interpenetrate each other.
We know man more fully. by knowing his place in
nature ; we can observe nature to more purpose when—
The meanest flower that blows can give
Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.
With the school of which Wordsworth is the gi'catest
representative the poetry of nature may bo said to reach
its climax. Even in Shakespeare and Milton the land-
scape is usually but a background to the human interest ;
and in the poets who dii-ectly followed them country life
is artificially treated when it is not ignored. When
the change came, in the generation from Thomson to
Southey, it made its mark not only on England but on
Europe at large, and since that timo the tradition has
been in some measure carried on. Keats and Shelley,
to speak only of our own poets, show an intense love and
appreciation of nature ; less dignified and £0 less noble
than that of Wordsworth, but most vivid in feeling and
most musical in language. With Tennyson it may
perhaps be said that the balance swings back again.
A most delicate and careful observer of nature, he has
filled his poems with a thousand touches of description,
so striking that we have sometimes to think twice before
we realize that they are true, so exact that we learn from
them more than we could leam from a scientific descrip-
xii INTRODUCTION
tion, so happily expressed that once realized they can
never be forgotten. Yet, as Mr. Stopford Brooke says,
' when we do not meet with humanity in his landscape,
the landscape by itself is cold. It rarely has any senti-
ment of its own.' And again, ' His descriptions of what
he sees of the outside of the world are luminous and true,
but he does not pierce below the surface to a living soul in
the universe.' And again, ' When he mingles up human
life with nature, then his descriptions of her seem warm.
But it is the human sentiment transferred to nature
which warms her\' This is specially noticeable in the
passages from In Mcmoriam quoted in the present
volume. Tennyson there sees nature with an extra-
ordinarily true and appreciative eye : he feels her be-
cause she reminds him of his lost friend.
It is needless to discuss which of these two stand-
points is the higher. Enough that poetry has room for
both— for the contemplation that finds its fullest object
in nature herself, and for the human sympathy which
rests dissatisfied until it is in touch with man. In any
case, the teaching of our nature-poetry can never be lost,
for it has at the same time opened our eyes to the world
in which we live, and enlarged our knowledge of man
by widening our view of his surroundings.
' See the admirable chapter on ' The Nature-Poetry ' in
Mr. Stopford Brooke's Tennyson.
-I
P0E31S OF
ENGLISH COUNTRY LIFE
L'ALLEGRO
Haste thee, Nymph, and bring with thee
Jest, and youthful jollity,
Quips, and cranks, and wanton wiles.
Nods, and becks, and wreathed smiles
Such as hang on Hebe's cheek,
And love to live in dimple sleek ;
Sport that wrinkled Caie derides,
And Laughter holding both his fcides :—
Come, and trip it as you go
On the light fantastic toe ; 10
And in thy right hand lead with thca
The mountain-nymph, sweet Liberty ;
And if I give thee honour due,
Mirth, admit me of thy crew.
To live with her, and live with tlico
In unreproved pleasures free ;
To hear the lark begin his flight,
And singing startle the dull niglit
From his watch-tower in the skies,
Till the dappled dawn doth rise ; 20
Then to come, in spite of sorrow,
And at my window bid good-morruw
B
POEMS OF ENGLISH
Through the sweetbriar, or the vine,
Or the twisted egl.intine :
While the cock with lively din
Scatters the rear of dai-kness tliin.
And to the stack, or the barn-door.
Stoutly struts his dames before :
Oft listening how the hounds and horn
Cheerly rouse the slumbering morn, 30
From the side of some hoar hill,
Through the high wood echoing shrill :
Sometime walking, not unseen,
By hedge-row elms, on hillocks green,
Right against the eastern gate
Where the great sun begins his state
Robed in flames and amber light.
The clouds in thousand liveries dight ;
While the ploughman, near at hand.
Whistles o'er the furrowed land, 40
And the milkmaid singeth blithe,
And the mower -whets his scythe,
And every shepherd tells his tale
Under the hawthorn in the dale.
Straight mine eye hath caught new pleasures
"SVliilst the landscape round it measures ;
Russet lawns, and fallows graj^.
Where the nibbling flocks do stray ;
jMountains, on whose barren l>reast
The labouring clouds do often rest ; 50
Meadows trim with daisies pied.
Shallow brooks, and rivers wide;
Towers and battlements it sees
Bosomed high in tufted trees,
Where perhaps some beauty lies,
The cynosure of neighbouring eye^.
Hard by, a cottage chimney smokes
From betwixt two aged oaks.
COUNTKY LIFE 3
Wlieio Corydon and Tliyrsis, met,
Are at their savoiiry dinner set 60
Of herbs, and other country messes
Which the neat-handed PhilHs dresses ;
And then in haste her Ijower she leaves
With Thestylis to bind the sheaves;
Or, if the earlier season lead,
To the tanned haj^cock in the mead.
Sometimes with secure delight
The ujiland hamlets will invite,
When the merry bells ring round,
And the jocund rebecks sound 70
To many a youth and many a maid.
Dancing in the chequered shade ;
And young and old come forth to play
On a sun-shine holyday.
Till the live-long daylight fail :
Then to the spicy nut-brown ale.
With stories told of many a feat,
How Faery Mab the junkets eat :—
She was pinched, and pulled, she said ;
And he, by Friar's lantern led ; 80
Tells how the drudging goblin sweat
To eai'n his cream-bowl duly set,
When in one night, ere glimpse of morn,
His shadowy flail hath threshed the corn
That ten day-labourers could not end ;
Then lies him down the lubber fiend,
And, stretched out all the chimney's lengtli,
Basks at the fire his hairy strength ;
And crop-full out of doors he flings,
Ere the flrst cock his matin rings. 90
Thus done the tales, to bed they creep,
By whispering winds soon lulled asleep.
Towered cities please us then
And the busy hum of men,
B 2
POEMS OF ENGLISH
Where throngs of knights and barons bold,
In weeds of peace, high triumphs hold,
With store of ladies, whose bright eyes
Rain influence, and judge the prize
Of wit or arms, while both contend
To win her grace, whom all commend. 100
There let Hymen oft appear
In saffron robe, with taper clear,
And pomp, and feast, and revelry,
With mask, and antique pageantry ;
Such sights as youthful poets dream
On summer eves by haunted stream.
Then to the well-trod stage anon,
If Jonson's learned sock be on,
Or sweetest Shakesj^eare, Fancy's child.
Warble his native wood-notes wild. 110
And ever against eating cares
Lap me in soft Lydian airs
Married to immortal verse.
Such as the meeting soul may pierce
In notes, with manj' a winding bout
Of linked sweetness long drawn out.
With wanton heed and giddy cunning.
The melting voice through mazes running,
Untwisting all the chains that tie
The hidden soul of harmony ; 120
That Orpheus' self may heave his head
From golden slumber, on a bed
Of heaped Elysian flowers, and hear
Such strains as would have won the car
Of Pluto, to have quite set free
His half-regained Eurydice,
These delights if thou canst give,
Mirth, with thee I mean to live.
J. MILTON.
*
COUNTRY LIFE 6
II
THE QUESTION
I DREAMED that as I wandered by the way
Bare winter suddenly was changed to spring.
And gentle odours led my steps astray,
Mixed with a sound of waters murmuring
Along a shelving bank of turf, which lay
Under a copse, and hardly dared to fling
Its green arms round the bosom of the stream,
But kissed it and then fled, as thou mightest in dream.
There grew i)ied wind-flowers and violets,
Daisies, those pearled Arcturi of the earth, 10
The constellated flower that never sets ;
Faint oxlips ; tender blue-bells, at whose birth
The sod scarce heaved ; and that tall flower that wets —
Like a child, half in tenderness and mirth—
Its mother's face with heaven-colleetod tears.
When the low wind, its plajunate's voice, it hears.
And in the warm hedge grow lush eglantine.
Green cow-bind and the moonlight-coloured May,
And cherry-blossoms, and white cups, whose wine
Was the bright dew yet drained not by the day ;
And wild roses, and ivy serpentine '21
With its dark buds and leaves, wandering astray ;
And flowers azure, black, and streaked with gold,
Fairer than any wakened eyes behold.
And nearer to the river's trembling edge
There grew broad flag-flowers, purple pranked witli
white,
And starry river-buds among the sedge.
And floating water-lilies, broad and bright,
6 POEJIS OF ENGLISH
Which lit the oak that overhung the hedge
With moonhght beams of their own watery light ;
And bulrushes, and reeds of such deep green 31
As soothed the dazzled eye with sober sheen.
Methought that of these visionaiy flowers
I made a nosegay, bound in such a way
That the same hues, which in their natural bowers
Were mingled or opposed, the like array
Kept these imprisoned children of the hours
Within my hand,— and then, elate and gay,
I hastened to the spot whence I had come
That I might there present it— oli, to Whom? 40
p. E. SHELLEY.
Ill
THE FIRST SIGHT OF SPRING
The hazel-blooms, in threads of crimson hue,
Peep through the swelling buds, foretelling Spring,
Ere yet a white-thorn leaf appears in view,
Or March finds throstles pleased enough to sing.
To the old touchwood-tree woodpeckers cling
A moment, and their harsh-toned notes renew ;
In happier mood, the stockdove claps his Aving ;
The squirrel sputters up the powdered oak,
With tail cocked o'er his head, and ears erect,
Startled to hear the woodman's imderstroke ; 10
And with the courage which his fears collect.
He hisses fierce, half malice and half glee.
Leaping from branch to branch a])out the tree,
In winter's foliage, moss and lichens, deckt.
J. CLAIIE.
COUNTRY LIFE 7
IV
'EARLY SPRING'
Now fades the last long streak of snow,
Now burgeons every maze of quick
About the flowering squares, and thick
By ashen roots the violets blow.
Now rings the woodland loud and long,
The distance takes a lovelier hue,
And drowned in yonder living blue
The lark becomes a sightless song.
Now dance the lights on lawn and lea.
The flocks are whiter down the vale, 10
And milkier every milky sail
On winding stream or distant sea ;
Where now the seamew pipes, or dives
In yonder greening gleam, and fly
The happy birds, that change their sky
To build and brood, that live their livts
From land to land ; and in my breast
Spring wakens too ; and my regret
Becomes an April violet.
And })uds and Ijlossoms like the rest. 20
I.OHD TENNVSOX.
V
HO:\IE THOUGHTS FROM ABROAD
Oh, to be in England
Now that April 's there,
And whoever wakes in England
Sees, some morning, unaware,
8 POEMS OF ENGLISH
That the lowest boughs and the bruslnvood sheaf
Round the ehn-tree bole are in tiny leaf,
While the chaffinch sings on the orchard bough
In England— now.
And after April, when May follows,
And the white-throat builds, and all the swallows— 10
Hark, where my blossomed pear-tree in the hedge
Leans to the field and scatters on the clover
Blossoms and dewdrops— at the bent spray's edge-
That 's the Avise thrush ; he sings each song twice over,
Lest you should think he never could recapture
The first fine careless rapture.
And though the fields look rough with hoary dew,
AH will be gay when noontide wakes anew
The buttercups, the little children's dower,
— Far brighter than this gaudy melon-flower. 20
K. BROWNING.
VI
THE INVITATION
Best and brightest, come away, —
Fairer far than this fair day.
Which, like thee, to those in sorrow
Comes to bid a sweet good-morrow
To the rough year just awake
In its cradle on the brake.
The brightest hour of unborn spring
Through the winter wandering,
Found, it seems, the halcyon morn
To hoar February born ; 10
Bending from heaven, in azure mirth.
It kissed the forehead of tlie eartii,
COUNTRY LIFE 9
And smiled upon the silent sea,
And bade the frozen streams be free,
And waked to music all their fountains,
And breathed upon the frozen mountains,
And like a prophetess of May
Strewed flowers upon the barren way.
Making the wintry world appear
Like one on whom thou smilest, dear. 20
Away, away, from men and towns.
To the A\dld wood and the downs—
To the silent wilderness
Where the soul need not repress
Its music, lest it should not find
An echo in another's mind,
While the touch of nature's art
Harmonizes heart to heart.
Eadiant sister of the day.
Awake, arise, and come away ; 30
To the wild woods and the plains.
To the pools where winter rains
Image all their roof of leaves,
Where the pine its garlancj weaves
Of sapless green, and ivy dun,
Round stems that never kiss the sun ;
Where the lawjis and pastures be
And the sandhills of the sea ;
Where the melting hoar-frost wets
The daisy-star that never sets, 40
And wind-flowers and violets
Which yet join not scent to hue
Crown the pale year weak and new ;
When the night is left behind
In the deep east, dim and blind,
10 POEMS OF ENGLISH
And the blue noon is over us,
And the multitudinous
Billows murmur at our feet,
Where the earth and ocean meet,
And all things seem only one ^0
In the universal sun.
p. E. SHELLEY.
VII
'TROUT FISHING'
Now when the first foul torrent of the brooks,
Swelled with the vernal rains, is ebbed away ;
And, whitening, down their mossy -tinctured stream
Descends the billowy foam : now is the time,
While yet the dark-bruwn water aids the guile,
To tempt the trout. The well-dissembled fly,
The rod fine-tapering with elastic spring.
Snatched from the hoary steed the floating line.
And all thy slender watery stores prepare.
But let not on thy hook the tortured Avorm, 10
Convulsive, twist in agonizing folds ;
Which, by rapacious hunger swallowed deep.
Gives, as you tear it from the bleeding ))reast
Of the weak helpless uncomplaining wretch,
Harsh pain and horror to the tender hand.
When with his lively ray the potent sun
Has pierced the streams, and roused the finny race.
Then, issuing cheerful, to thy sport repair ;
Chief should the western breezes curling play.
And light o'er ether bear the shadowy clouds. 20
High to their fount, this day, amid the hills,
And Avoodlands warbling round, trace up the brooks ;
The next, pursue their rocky-channelled maze,
Down to the river, in whose ample wave
^ COUNTRY LIFE 11
Their little Naiads lovo to sport at large.
Just in the dubious point, wliere with the pool
Is mixed the trembling stream, or where it boils
Around the stone, or from the hollowed bank
Reverted plays in undulating flow,
There throw, nice-judging, the delusive fly ; 30
And as you lead it round in artful curve.
With eye attentive mark the springing game.
Straight as above the surface of the flood
They wanton rise, or urged by hunger leajj.
Then fix, with gentle twitch, the barbed hook :
Some lightly tossing to the grassy bank,
And to the shelving shore slow-dragging some.
With various hand proportioned to tlieir force.
If yet too young, and easily deceived,
A Worthless prey scarce bends your pliant rod, 40
Him, piteous of his youth and the short space
He has enjoyed the vital light of heaven,
Soft disengage, and back into the stream
The speckled captive throw. But should you lure
From his dark haunt, beneath the tangled roots
Of pendent trees, the monarch of the brook,
Behoves you then to ply your finest art.
Long time lie, following cautious, scans the fly ;
And oft attempts to seize it, but as oft
The dimjjled water sj^eaks his jealous fear. 50
At last, while haply o'er the shaded sun
Passes a cloud, he desperate takes the death,
Witli sullen plunge. At once he darts along,
Deep struck, and runs out all the lengthened line ;
Then seeks the farthest ooze, the sheltering weed,
The caverned bank, his old secure abode ;
And flies aloft, and flounces round the pool.
Indignant of the guile. With yielding hand.
That feels him still, yet to his furious course
Gives way, you, now retiring, following nuvr CO
12 POEMS OF ENGLISH
Across the stream, exhaust his idle rage:
Till floating broad upon his breathless side,
And to his fate abandoned, to the shore
You gaily drag your unresisting prize.
J. THOMSON.
VIII
'THE COMING OF SUMMER'
I STOOD tiptoe upon a little hill,
The air was cooling, and so very still.
That the sweet buds which with a modest pride
Pull droopingly, in slanting curve aside.
Their scanty-leaved, and finely-taj)ering stems.
Had not yet lost their starry diadems
Caught from the early sobbing of the morn.
The clouds were pure and white as flocks new-shorn,
And fresh from the clear brook ; sweetly they slept
On the blue fields of heaven, and then there crept 10
A little noiseless noise among the leaves.
Born of the very sigh that silence heaves ;
For not the faintest motion could be seen
Of all the shades that slanted o'er the green.
There was wide wandering for the greediest eye.
To peer about upon vai'iety ;
Far round the horizon's crystal air to skim,
And trace the dwindled edgings of its brim ;
To picture out the quaint and curious bending
Of a fresh woodland alley never-ending : 20
Or by the bowery clefts, and leafy shelves.
Guess where the jaunty streams refresh themselves.
I gazed awhile, and felt as light and free
As though the fanning wings of Mercury
Had played upon my heels : I was light-hearted,
And many pleasures to my virion started ;
I
COUNTRY LIFE 13
So I straightway began to pluck a posy
Of luxuries bright, milky, soft and rosy ;
A bush of May-flowers vnih the bees about them,
Ah, sure no tasteful nook could be withoiit them : 30
And let a lush laburnum oversweep them,
And let long grass grow round the roots, to keep them
Moist, cool and green ; and shade the violets,
That they may bind the moss in leafy nets.
A filbert-hedge with wild-briar overtwined.
And clumps of woodbine taking the soft wind
Upon their summer thrones ; there too should be
The frequent chequer of a youngling tree,
That with a score of light green brethren shoots
From the quaint mossiness of aged roots : 40
Round which is heard a spring-head of clear waters,
Babbling so wildly of its lovely daughters,
The spreading blue-bells : it may haply mourn
That such fair clusters should be rudely torn
From their fresh beds, and scattered thoughtlessly
By infant hands, left on the path to die.
Open afresh your round of starry folds.
Ye ardent marigolds ;
Dry up the moisture from your golden lids,
For gi-eat Apollo bids 50
That in these days your praises should be sung
On many harps, which he has lately strung ;
And W'hen again your dewiness he kisses,
Tell him, I have you in my world of blisses:
So haply when I rove in some far vale,
His mighty voice may come upon the vale.
Here are sw^et peas, on tiptoe for a flight :
With wings of gentle flush o'er delicate white,
14 rOEMS OF ENGLISH
And taper fingers catching at all things,
To bind them all about with tinj^ rings. ' CO
Linger aAvhile upon some bending planks
That lean against a streamlet's rushy banks.
And watch intently nature's gentle doings :
They will be found softer than ringdoves' cooing3.
How silent comes the water round that bend !
Not the minutest whisper does it send
To the o'erhanging sallows : blades of grass
Slowly across the chequered shadows pass.
Why you might read two sonnets, ere they reach
To where the hurrying freshnesses aye preach 70
A natural sermon o'er their pebbly beds ;
Where swarms of minnows show their little heads,
Staying their wavy bodies 'gainst the streams,
To taste the luxury of sunny beams
Tempered with coolness. How they ever wrestle
With their own sweet delight, and ever nestle
Their silver bellies on the pebbly sand ;
If you but scantily hold out the hand,
That very instant not one will remain ;
But turn your eye, and they are there again. SO
The ripples seem right glad to reach those cresses,
And cool themselves among the emerald tresses ;
The while they cool themselves, they freshness give, ■
And moistui'e, that the bowery green may live :
So keeping up an interchange of favours,
Like good men in the truth of their behaviours.
Sometimes goldfinches one by one will drop
From low-hung branches : little space they stop ;
But sip, and twitter, and their feathers sleek ;
Then off at once, as in a wanton freak : PO
Or perhaps, to show their l)lack and wanton wings.
Pausing uj^on their yellow flutterings.
J. KEATS.
I
COUNTRY LIFE 15
IX
HUNTING SONG
Wakex, lords and ladies gay,
On the mountain dawns the day ;
All the jolly chase is here
With hawk and horse and hunting-spear;
Hounds are in their coui^les yelling.
Hawks are whistling, horns are knelling,
Meriily, merrily, mingle they,
' Waken, lords and ladies gay.'
Waken, lords and ladies gay,
The mist has left the mountain gray. lo
Spi-inglets in the dawn are steaming.
Diamonds on the hriike are gleaming;
And foresters have busy lieen
To track the Inick in thicket green ;
Now we come to chant our laj',
'Waken, lords and ladies gay.'
Waken, lords and ladies ga)'.
To the greenwood haste away;
We can show you Avhere he lies.
Fleet of foot and tall of size ; 20
We can shoAv the marks he made
When 'gainst the oak his antlers frayed ;
You shall see him brought to bay;
'Waken, lords and ladies gay.'
Louder, louder chant the lay,
AVaken. lords and ladies gay ;
Tell them youth and mirth and glee
Eun a course as well as we ;
16 POEiMS OF ENGLISH
Time, stern huntsman, who Ccin baulk,
Stanch as hound and fleet as hawk ; 30
Think of this, and rise with day,
Gentle lords and ladies gay.
SIR W. SCOTT,
X
'HAYMAKING AND SHEEPWASHING'
Now swarms the village o'er the jovial mead :
The rustic youth, brown with meridian toil,
Healthful and strong; full as the summer rose
Blown by prevailing suns, the ruddy maid,
Half naked, swelling on the sight, and all
Her kindled graces burning o'er her cheek.
Even stooping age is here ; and infant hands
Trail the long rake, or, with the fragrant load
O'ercharged, amid the kind oppression roll.
Wide flies the tedded grain ; all in a roAV 10
Advancing broad, or wheeling round the field,
They spread the breathing harvest to the sun,
That throws refresliful round a rural smell :
Or, as they rake the green-appearing ground,
And drive the dusky wave along the mead.
The russet hay-cock rises thick behind,
In order gay. While heard from dale to dale.
Waking the breeze, resounds the blended voice
Of happy labour, love, and social glee.
Or rushing thence, in one diffusive band, 20
They drive the troubled flocks, by many a dog
Compelled, to where the mazy-running brook
Forms a deep pool ; this bank abrupt and high,
And that fair-spreading in a pebbled shore.
Urged to the giddy brink, much is the toil.
The clamour much, of men, and boys, and dogs,
COUNTRY LIFE 17
Ere the soft fearful people to the flood
Commit their woolly sides. And oft the swain,
On some impatient seizing, hurls them in :
Emboldened then, nor hesitating more, 30
Fast, fast, they plunge amid the flashing wave.
And, panting, labour to the farthest shore.
Repeated this, till deep the well-washed fleece
Has drunk the flood, and from his lively haunt
The trout is banished by the sordid stream ;
Heavy, and dripping, to the breezy brow
Slow move the harmless race : where, as they spread
Their swelling treasures to the sunny ray.
Inly disturbed, and wondering what this wild
Outrageous tumult means, their loud complaints 40
The country fill ; and, tossed from rock to rock.
Incessant bleatings run around the hills.
At last, of snowy wliite, the gathered flocks
Ai"e in the wattled pen innumerous j^ressed,
Head above head ; and ranged in lusty rows
The shepherds sit, and whet the sounding shears.
The housewife waits to roll her fleecy stores.
With all her gay-drest maids attending round.
One, chief, in gracious dignity enthroned,
tShines o'er the rest, the pastoral queen, and rays ."JO
Her smiles, sweet-beaming, on her shepherd-king ;
While the glad circle round them yield their souls
To festive mirth, and wit that knows no gall.
Meantime, their joyous task goes on apace :
Some mingling, stir the melted tar, and some,
Deep on the new-shorn vagrant's heaving side.
To stamp the master's cipher ready stand :
Others the unwilling wether drag along;
And, glorying in his might, the sturdy boy
Holds by the twisted horns the indignant ram. CO
Behold where bound, and of its robe bereft,
By needy man, that all-depending lord,
18 POEMS OF ENGLISH
How meek, how patient, the mild creature lies !
Wliat softness in its melancholy face,
What dumb complaining innocence appears !
Fear not, ye gentle tribes, 'tis not the knife
Of horrid slaughter that is o'er you waved ;
No, 'tis the tender swain's well-guided shears,
Who having now, to pay his annual care,
Borrowed your fleece— to you a cumbrous load— 70
Will send you bounding to your hills again.
J. THOMSON.
XI
ODE TO AUTUMN
Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness.
Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun ;
Conspiring with him how to load and bless
With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eaves run ;
To bend with apples the mossed cottage-trees,
And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core ;
To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells
With a sAveet kernel ; to set budding more.
And still more, later flowers for the bees.
Until they think warm days will never cease, 10
For summer has o'erbrimmed their clammy cells.
Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?
Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find
Thee sitting careless on a granary floor.
Thy hair soft-Ufted by the wiiuiowing Avind ;
Or on a half-reaped furrow sound asleep,
Drowsed with the fume of poppies, while thy hook
Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers :
And sometime like a gleaner thou dost keep
Steady thy laden head across a brook ; 20
Or by a cyder-press, with patient look,
Thou wat chest the last oozings, hours by hours.
COUNTRY LIFE 19
Where are the songs of spring? Ay, where are they?
Think not of them, thou hast thy music too, —
While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day,
And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue ;
Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn
Among the river-sallows, borne aloft
Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies ;
And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn ; 30
Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft
The redbreast whistles from a garden-croft,
And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.
J. KEATS.
XII
AUTUMN
I SAW old Autumn in the misty morn
Stand shadowless like silence, listening
To silence, for no lonely bird would sing
Into his hollow ear from woods forlorn,
Nor lowly hedge nor solitary thorn ;—
Shaking his languid locks all dewy briglit
With tangled gossamer that fell by night.
Pearling his coronet of golden corn.
Where are the songs of summer?— With the sun,
Oping the dusky eyelids of the south, 10
Till shade and silence waken up as one.
And morning sings with a warm odorous mouth.
Where are the merry birds?— ^V way, away.
On pantmg wings through the inclement skies,
Lest owls should prey
Undazzled at noon-day,
And tear with horny beak their lustrous eyes.
C 2
20 POEMS OF ENGLISH
Where are the blooms of summer ?~In the west
Bhishing their last to the last sunny hours,
Wlien the mild eve by sudden night is prest 20
Like tearful Pi'oserpine, snatched from her flow'rs
To a most gloomy breast.
Where is the pride of summer,— the green prime, —
The many, many leaves all twinkling? — Three
On the mossed elm ; three on the naked lime
Trembling,— and one upon the old oak tree !
Where is the Dryad's immortality?—
Gone into mournful cypress and dark yew,
And wearing the long gloomy winter through
In the smooth holly's green eternity. 30
The squirrel gloats on his accomplished hoard,
The ants have brimmed their garners with ripe grain,
And honey bees have stored
The sweets of summer in their luscious cells ;
The swallows all have winged across the main ;
But here the autumn melancholy dwells.
And sighs her tearful spells
Amongst the sunless shadows of the plain.
Alone, alone,
Upon a mossy stone, ^ ^ 40
She sits and reckons up the dead and gone
With the last leaves for a love-rosary.
Whilst all the withered world looks drearily.
Like a dim picture of the drowned past
In the hushed mind's mysterious far away,
Doubtful what ghostly thing will steal the last
Into that distance, grey upon the grey.
T. HOOD.
«
COUNTRY LIFE ^ 21
XIII
' NUTTING '
It seems a day
(I speak of one from many singled out)
One of those heavenly days that cannot die ;
When, in the eagerness of boyish hope,
I left our cottage-threshold, sallying forth
With a huge wallet o'er my shoulders slung,
A nutting-crook in hand ; and turned my steps
Toward some far-distant wood, a figure quaint,
Tricked out in proud disguise of cast-oif weeds
Which for that service had been husbanded 10
By exhortation of my frugal dame —
Motley accoutrement, of power to smile
At thorns, and brakes, and biambles, — and, in truth,
More ragged than need was. O'er pathless rocks,
Through beds of matted fern, and tangled thickets,
Forcing my way, I came to one dear nook
Un visited, where not a ])roken bough
Drooped with its withered leaves, ungracious sign
Of devastation ; jjut the hazels rose
Tall and erect, with tempting clusters hung, 20
A virgin scene. A little while I stood,
Breathing with such suppression of the heart
As joy delights in ; and, with wise restraint
Voluptuous, fearless of a rival, eyed
The banquet ;— or beneath the trees I sate
Among the flowers, and with the flowers I [)layed ;
A temper known to those who, after long
And weary expectation, have been blest
With sudden hajipiness l)eyond all hope.
Perhaps it was a bower beneath whose leaves oO
The violets of five seasons reappear
22 ., POEMS OF ENGLISH
And fade, unseen by any human eye ;
Where fairy waterbreaks do murmur on
For ever ; and I saw the sparkling foam,
And— with my cheek on one of those green stones
That, fleeced with moss, under the shady trees.
Lay round me, scattered like a flock of sheep —
I heard the murmur and the murmuring sound,
In that sweet mood when pleasure loves to pay
Tribute to ease; and, of its joy secure, 40
The heart luxuriates with indifferent things.
Wasting its kindliness on stocks and stones.
And on the vacant air. Then up I rose,
And dragged to earth both branch and bough, with
crash
And merciless ravage : and the shady nook
Of hazels, and the green and mossy bower,
Deformed and sullied, patiently gave up
Their quiet being: and, unless I now
Confound my present feelings with the past,
Ere from the mutilated bower I turned 50
Exulting, rich beyond the wealth of kings,
I felt a sense of pain when I beheld
The silent trees, and saw the intruding sky.
W. WORDSWOETII.
XIV
AUTUMN CHANUING TO WINTER'
November's sky is chill and drear,
November's leaf is red and sear :
Late, gazing down the steepy linn
That hems our little garden in,
COUNTRY LIFE 23
Low in its dark and narrow glen
You scarce the rivulet might ken,
So thick the tangled greenwood grew,
So feeble trilled the streamlet through :
Now, murmuring hoarse, and frequent seen
Through bush and briar, no longer green, 10
An angry brook, it sw^eeps the glade,
Brawls over rock and wild cascade,
And foaming brow^n, with doubled speed,
Hurries its waters to the Tweed.
No longer autumn's glowing red
Upon our forest hills is shed ;
No more, beneath the evening beam,
Fair Tweed reflects their purple gleam ;
Away hath passed the heather-bell
That bloomed so rich on Needpath Fell ; 20
Sallow his brow ; and russet bare
Are now the sister-heights of Yair.
The sheep, before the pinching heaven,
To sheltered dale and down are driven,
Whore yet some faded herbage pines.
And yet a watery sunbeam shines :
In meek despondency they eye
The withered sward and wintry sky,
And far beneath their summer hill.
Stray sadly by Glenkinnon's rill : 30
The shepherd shifts his mantle's fold,
And wraps him closer from the cold ;
His dogs no merry circles wheel,
But, shivering, follow at his heel;
A cowering glance they often cast,
As deeper moans the gathering blast.
My imps, though hardy, bold, and wild.
As best belits the mountain child,
24 POEMS OF ENGLISH
Feel the sad influence of the hour,
And wail the daisy's vanished flower ; 40
Their summer gambols tell, and mourn,
And anxious ask, — 'Will spring return.
And birds and lambs again be gay,
And blossoms clothe the hawthorn spray?'
Yes, prattlers, yes. The daisy's flower
Again shall paint your summer bower ;
Again the haw^thorn shall supply
The garlands you delight to tie ;
The lambs upon the lea shall bound,
And wild birds carol to the round, 50
And, while you frolic light as they,
Too short shall seem the summer day.
SIR W. SCOTT.
XV
'A WINTER WALK'
The night was winter in his roughest mood,
The morning sharp and clear : but now at noon
Upon the southern side of the slant hills,
And where the woods fence oflp the northern blast.
The season smiles, resigning all its rage.
And has the warmth of May. The vault is blue
Without a cloud, and white without a speck
The dazzling splendour of the scene below.
Again the harmony comes o'er the vale,
And through the trees I view the embattled tower 10
AVhence all the music. 1 again perceive
The soothing influence of the wafted strains,
And settle in soft musings as 1 tread
The walk, still verdant, under oaks and elms,
Whose outspread branches overarch the glade.
COUNTRY LIFE 25
The roof, though movable through all its length
As the wind sways it. has yet well sufficed,
And, intercepting in their silent fall
The frequent flakes, has kept a path for me.
No noise is here, or none that hinders thought : '20
The redbreast warbles still, but is content
With slender notes, and more than half suppressed :
Pleased with his solitude, and flitting light
From spray to spray, where'er he rests he shakes
From many a twig the pendent drops of ice,
That tinkle in the withered leaves below.
Stillness, accompanied with sounds so soft.
Charms more than silence.
W. C0AVr£K.
XVI
' SKATING '
Wisdom and Spirit of the universe,
Thou Soul that art the eternity of thought.
That givest to forms and images a Ijreath
And everlasting motion, not in vain
By day or star-light thus from my first dawn
Of childhood didst thou intertwine for me
The passions that build up our human soul ;
Not with the moan and vulgar works of man.
But with high oJ»jects, -v^-ith endui'ing things—
With life and nature— purifying thus 10
The elements of feeling and of thought,
And sanctifying, by such discipline.
Both pain and fear, until we recognize
A grandeur in the beatings of the heart.
Nor was this fellowship vouchsafed to me
With stinted kindness. In November days,
A\ hen vapours rolling down the valley made
26 POEMS OF ENGLISH
A lonely scene more lonesome, among woods,
At noon, and 'mid the calm of summer nights,
When, by the margin of the trembling lake, 20
Beneath the gloomy hills homeward I went
In solitude, such intercourse was mine ;
Mine was it in the fields both day and night,
And by the waters, all the summer long.
And in the frosty season, when the sun
Was set, and visible for many a mile
The cottage windows blazed through twilight gloom,
I heeded not their summons : happy time
It was indeed for all of us— for me
It was a time of rapture. Clear and loud 30
The village clock tolled six, — I wheeled about,
Proud and exulting like an untired horse
That cares not for his home. All shod with steel,
We hissed along the polished ice in games
Confederate, imitative of the chase
And woodland pleasures, — the resounding horn.
The pack loud chiming, and the hunted hare.
So through the darkness and the cold we flew,
And not a voice was idle ; with the din
Smitten, the precipices rang aloud ; 40
The leafless trees and every icy crag
Tinkled like iron ; while far-distant hills
Into the tumult sent an alien sound
Of melancholy not unnoticed, while the stars
Eastward were sparkling clear, and in the west
The orange sky of evening died away.
Not seldom from the uproar I retired
Into a silent bay, or sportively
Glanced sideway, leaving the tumultuous throng.
To cut across the reflex of a star 50
That fled, and, flying still before me, gleamed
Upon the glassy plain ; and oftentimes,
COUNTRY LIFE 27
Whoa we had given our bodies to the wind,
And all the shadowy banks on either side
Came sweeping througli the darkness, spinning still
The rapid line of motion, then at once
Have I, reclining back ujion my heels,
Stopped short ; j-et still the solitary cliffs
Wheeled by me— even as if the earth had rolled
With visible motion her diurnal round ; CO
Behind me did they stretch in solemn train,
Feebler and feebler, and I stood and watched
Till all was tranquil as a dreamless sleep.
W. "WORDSWORTH.
XVII
' CHRISTMAS-TIDE '
Heap on more wood, the wind is chill ;
But let it whistle as it will,
We'll keep our Christmas merry still.
Each age has deemed the new-born year
The fittest time for festal cheer :
Even, heathen yet, the savage Dane
At lol more deep the mead did drain ;
High on the beach his galleys drew,
And feasted all his i)irate crew ;
Then in his low and pine-built hall, 10
Where shields and axes decked the wall,
They gorged upon the half dressed steer,
Caroused in seas of sable beer ;
While round, in brutal jest, were thrown
The half-gnawed rib, and marrow-bone :
Or listened all, in grim delight.
While scalds yelled out the joys of fight.
Then forth, in frenzy, would they hie.
While wildly-loose their red locks fly,
28 POEMS OF ENGLISH
And dancing round the blazing pile, 20
They make such Ijarbarous mirth the while,
As best might to the mind recall
The boisterous joys of Odin's hall.
x\nd Avell our Christian sires of old
Loved when the year its course had rolled,
And brought blithe Christmas back again,
With all his hospitable train.
Domestic and religious rite
Gave honour to the holy night ;
On Christmas eve the bells were rung ; 30
On Christmas eve the mass was sung :
That only night in all the year,
Saw the stoled priest the chalice rear.
The damsel donned her kirtle sheen ;
The hall was dressed with holly gieen ;
Foi-th to the wood did merry-men go.
To gather in the mistletoe.
Then opened wide the baron's hall
To vassal, tenant, serf, and all ;
Power laid his rod of rule aside, 40
And ceremony doffed his pride.
The heir, with roses in his shoes,
That night might village partner choose ;
The lord, underogating, share
The vulgar game of 'post and pair.'
All hailed, with uncontrolled delight.
And general voice, the happy night.
That to the cottage, as the crown,
Brought tidings of salvation down.
The fire, with well-dried logs supphed,
Went roaring up the chimney wide ;
The huge hall-tal)le's oaken face,
Scrubbed till it shone, the day to grace.
50
COUNTRY LIFE 29
Bore then upon its massive board
No mark to part the squire and lord.
Then was brought in the lusty braAvn,
By old blue-coated serving-man ;
Then the grim boar's head frowned on high,
Crested with bays and rosemary.
Well can the green-garbed ranger tell ^0
How, when, and where, the monster fell ;
What dogs before liis death ho tore,
And all the baiting of the boar.
The wassel round, in good brown bowls,
Garnished with ribbons, blithely trowls.
There the huge sirloin reeked ; hard by
Plum-porridge stood, and Christmas pie ;
Nor failed old Scotland to produce.
At such high tide, her savoury goose.
Then came the merry maskers in, 70
And carols roared with blithesonu- din ;
If unmelodious was the song,
It was a hearty note, and strong.
Who lists may in their mumming see
Traces of ancient mystery ;
White shirts supplied the masquerade.
And smutted cheeks the visors made ;
But, oh, what maskers, richly dight,
Can boast of bosoms half so light !
England was merry England, when 80
Old Christmas brought his sports again.
'Twas Christmas broached the mightiest ale ;
'Twas Christmas told the merriest tale ;
A Christmas gambol oft could cheer
The poor man's heart through half the year.
Still linger, in our northern clime.
Some remnants of the good old time ;
And still, within our valleys here,
30 POEMS OF ENGLISH
We hold the kindred title dear,
Even when, perchance, its far-fetched claim 90
To Southron ear sounds empty name ;
For course of blood, our proverbs deem,
Is warmer than the mountain-stream.
And thus, my Christmas still I hold
Where my great-grandsire came of old,
With amber beard, and flaxen hair,
And reverend apostolic air —
The feast and holy-tide to share.
And mix sobriety with wine,
And honest mirth Avith thoughts divine. 100
Small thought was his, in after time
E'er to be hitched into a rhyme ;
The simple sire could only boast.
That he was loyal to his cost ;
The banished race of kings revered.
And lost his land, — but kept his beard.
SIR V/. SCOTT.
XVIII
'ENGLISH RIVERS'
KiVEES, arise ; whether thou be the son
Of utmost Tweed, or Ouse, or gulphy Dun,
Or Trent, who, like some earth-born giant, spreads
His thirty arms along the indented meads ;
Or sullen Mole, that runneth underneath ;
Or Severn swift, guilty of maiden's death ;
Or rocky Avon, or of sedgy Lee,
Or coaly Tine, or ancient hallowed Dee ;
Or Humber loud, that keeps the Scythian's name ;
Or Medway mouth, or roj^al-towered Thame. 10
J. MILTON.
COUNTRY LIFE 31
XIX
THE BROOK
I COME from haunts of coot and hern,
I make a sudden sally,
And sparkle out among the fern,
To bicker down a valley.
By thirty hills I hurry down,
Or shp between the ridges,
By twenty thorps, a little town,
And half a hundred bridges.
Till last by PhHip's farm I flow
To join the brimming river, 10
For men may come and men may go,
But I go on for over.
I chatter over stony Avays,
In little sharps and trebles,
I bubble into eddying bays,
I babble on the pebbles.
With many a curve my banks I fret
By many a field and fallow,
And many a fairy foreland set
With willow-weed and mallow. 20
I chatter, chatter, as I flow
To join the brimming river,
For men may come and men ma)' go,
But I go on for ever.
I wind about, and in and out,
With here a blossom sailing,
And here and there a lusty trout,
And here and there a grayling,
32 POEMS OF ENGLISH
And here and there a foamy flake
Upon me, as I travel 30
With many a silvery waterbreak
Above the golden gravel,
And draw them all along, and flow
To join the brimming river,
For men may come and men may go,
But I go on for evex'.
I steal by lawns and grassy plots,
I slide by hazel covers ;
I move the sweet forget-me-nots
That grow for happy lovers. 40
I slip, I slide, I gloom, I glance,
Among my skimming swallows ;
I make the netted sunbeam dance
Against mj' sandj^ shallows.
I murmur under moon and stars
In brambly wildernesses ;
I linger by my shingly bars,
I loiter round my cresses ;
And out again I curve and flow
To join the brimming river, 50
For men may come and men may go,
But I go on for ever.
LORD TENNYSON.
XX
THE EBB TIDE
Slowly thy flowing tide
Came in, old Avon ; scarcelj^ did mine eyes.
As watchfully I roamed thj' green-wood side,
Behold the gentle rise.
COUNTRY LIFE 33
With many a stroke and strong
The hibouring boatmen upward plied their oars,
And yet the eye beheld them labouring long
Between thy winding shores.
Now down thine ebbing tide
The unlaboured boat falls rapidly along, 10
The solitary helmsman sits to guide
And sings an idle song.
Now o'er the rocks, that lay
So silent late, the shallow current roars ;
Fast flow thy waters on their seaward way
Through wider-spreading shores.
Avon, I gaze and know
The wisdom emblemed in thy varying way,
It speaks of human joys that rise so slow.
So rapidly decay. 20
Kingdoms that long have stood
And slow to strength and power attained at last,
Thus from the sunmiit of high fortune's flood
Ebb to their ruin fast.
So tardily appears
The coui"se of time to manhood's envied stage,
Alas, how hunyingly the ebl)ing years
Then hasten to old age!
R. SOUTH EY.
XXI
'A GREEN AND SILENT SPOT'
A GREEN and silent spot, amid the hills,
A small and silent dell ! O'er stiller place
No singing skylark ever poised himself.
The hills are heathy, save that swelling slope,
D
34 POEMS OF ENGLISH
Which hath a gay and gorgeous covering on,
All golden with the never-bloomless furze,
Which now blooms most profusely : but the dell,
Bathed by the mist, is fresh and delicate
As vernal corn-field, or the unripe flax,
When, through its half-transimrent stalks, at eve, 10
The level sunshine glimmers with green light.
Oh, 'tis a quiet spirit-healing nook.
Which all, methinks, would love ; but chiefly he,
The humble man, who, in his 5-outhful years,
Knew just so much of folly as had made
His early manhood more securely wise.
Here he might lie on fern or withered heath,
While from the singing-lark (that sings unseen
The minstrelsy that solitude loves best).
And from the sun, and from the breezy air, 20
Sweet influences trembled o'er his frame ;
And he, with many feelings, many thoughts,
Made up a meditative joy, and found
Eeligious meanings in the foiTns of nature.
And so, his senses gradually wrapt
In a half sleep, he dreams of better worlds.
And dreaming, hears thee still, O singing-lark,
That singest like an angel in the clouds.
S. T. COLERIDGE.
XXII
'A LONELY COTTAGE'
Once went I forth, and found, till then unknown,
A cottage, whither oft we since repair:
'Tis perched upon the green hill-top, but close
Environed with a ring of branching elms
That overhang the thatch, itself unseen,
Peeps at the vale below; so thick beset
I
COUNTRY LIFE 35
With foliage of such dark redundant growth,
I called the low-roofed lodge the Peasant's Nest.
And hidden as it is, and far remote
From such unpleasing sounds as haunt the ear 10
In ■village or in town, the bay of curs
Incessant, clinking hammers, grinding wdieels,
And infants clamorous whether pleased or pained.
Oft have I wished the peaceful covert mine.
Here, I have said, at least I should possess
The poet's treasure, silence, and indulge
The dreams of fancy, tranquil and secure.
Vain thought ! the dAveller in that still retreat
Dearly obtains the refuge it affords.
Its elevated site forbids the wretch 20
To drink sweet waters of the crystal well ;
He dips his bowl into the weedy ditch,
And, heavy laden, brings his beverage homo,
Far-fetched and little worth : nor seldom waits.
Dependent on the baker's punctual call,
To hear his creaking panniers at the door.
Angry and sad, and his last crust consumed.
So farewell envy of the Peasant's Nest ;
If solitude make scant the means of life,
Society for me ! Thou seeming sweet, 30
Be still a pleasing object in my view,
My visit still, but never mine abode.
w. cowrER.
XXIII
'LEAVING A COUNTRY HOME'
Unwatched, the garden bough shall sway,
The tender blossom flutter down,
Unloved, that beech will gather brown.
This maple burn itself away ;
1) 2
36 POEMS OF ENGLISH
Unloved, the sun-flower, shining frar,
Ray round with flames her disk of seed,
And many a rose-carnation feed
With summer spice the humming air;
Unloved, by many a sandy bar,
The brook shall babble down the plain, 10
At noon or when the lesser wain
Is twisting round the polar star;
Un cared for, gird the windy grove,
And flood the haunts of hern and crake ;
Or into silver arrows break
The sailing moon in creek and cove ;
Till from the garden and the wild
A fresh association blow,
And year by year the landscape grow
Familiar to the stranger's child ; 20
As year by year the labourer tills
His wonted glebe, or lojjs the glades ;
And year by year our memory fades
From all the circle of the hills.
We leave the well-beloved place
Where first we gazed upon the sky ;
The roofs, that heard our earliest cry,
Will shelter one of stranger race.
We go, but ere we go from home,
As down the garden-walks I move, 30
Two spirits of a diverse love
Contend for loving masterdom.
One whispers, 'Here thy boyhood sung
Long since its matin song, and heard
The low lovo-language of the bird
In native b.azels tassel-hung.'
COUNTRY LIFE 37
The other answers, 'Yea, but here
Thy feet have strayed in after hours
With thy lost friend among tlie bowers,
And this hath made them trebly dear.' 40
These two have striven half the day,
And each prefers his se]>arate claim,
Poor rivals in a losing game.
That will not yield each other way.
I turn to go : my feet are set
To leave the pleasant fields and farms ;
They mix in one another's arms
To one pure image of regret.
LORD TENNYSON.
XXIV
FOUNTAINS ABBEY
Abbey, for ever smihng pensively,
How like a thing of nature dost thou rise
Amid her loveliest works ; as if the skies.
Clouded with grief, were arched thy roof to be,
And the tall trees were copied all fi'om tliee.
Mourning thy fortunes -while the waters dim
Flow like the memory of thy evening hymn,
Beautiful in their sorrowing sympathy ;
As if they with a weeping sister wept,
Winds name thy name ; but thou, though sad,
art calm, 10
And time with thee his plighted troth hath kept ;
For harebells deck thy brow, and, at thy feet,
Where sleep the proud, the bee and redbreast meet.
Mixing thy sighs with nature's lonely psalm.
E. ELLIOTT.
38 POEMS OF ENGLISH
XXV
'SCENERY ABOUT OXFORD'
Go, for they call you, shepherd, from the hill ;
Go, shepherd, and untie the wattled cotes ;
No longer leave thy wistful flock unfed,
Nor let thy bawling fellows rack their throats,
Nor the cropped grasses shoot another head.
But when the fields are still,
And the tired men and dogs all gone to rest,
And only the white sheep are sometimes seen
Cross and recross the strips of moon-blanched green,
Come, shepherd, and again begin the quest. 10
Here, where the reaper was at work of late —
In this high field's dark corner, where he leaves
His coat, his basket, and his earthen cruise,
And in the sun all morning binds the sheaves,
Then here, at noon, comes back his stores to use—
Here will I sit and wait.
While to my ear from uplands far away
The bleating of the folded flocks is borne,
With distant cries of reapers in the corn-
All the live murmur of a summer's day. 20
Screened is this nook o er the high, half-reajied field,
And here till sun-down, shepherd, will I be ;
Through the thick corn the scarlet poppies peep,
And round green roots and yellowing stalks I see
Pale blue convolvulus in tendrils creep ;
And air-swept lindens yield
Their scent, and rustle down their perfumed showers
Of bloom on the bent grass where I am laid.
And bower me from the August sun with shade,
And the eye travels down to Oxford's towers. 30
COUNTRY LIFE 39
And near me on the grass lies Glanvil's book-
Come, let me read the oft-read tale again,
The story of that Oxford scholar poor,
Of shining parts and quick inventive brain,
Who, tired of knocking at preferment's door,
One summer morn forsook
His friends, and went to learn the gipsy lore.
And roamed the world with that wild brotherhood,
And came, as most men deemed, to little good,
But came to Oxford and his friends no more. 40
But once, years after, in the country lanes,
Two scholars whom at college erst he knew
Met him, and of his way of life enquired.
Whereat he answered, that the gipsy crew.
His mates, had arts to rule as they desired
The workings of men's brains ;
And they can bind them to what thoughts they will.
' And I,' he said, ' the secret of their art,
When fully learned, will to the world impart ;
But it needs heaven-sent moments for this skill.' 50
This said, he left them, and returned no more.—
But rumours hung about the country-side,
That the lost scholar long was seen to stray.
Seen by rare glimpses, pensive and tongue-tied.
In hat of antique shape, and cloak of grey,
The same the gipsies wore.
Shepherds had mot him on the Hurst in spring ;
At some lone alehouse in the Berkshire moors.
On the warm ingle-bench, the smock-frocked boors
Had found him seated at their entering, CO
But, mid theii' drink and clatter, ho would fly ;—
And I myself seem half to know thy looks,
40 POEMS OF ENGLISH
And put the shepherds, wanderer, on thy trace ;
And boys who in lone wheatfields scare the rooks
I ask if thou hast passed their quiet place ;
Or in my boat I lie
Moored to the cool bank in the summer heats.
Mid wide grass meadows which the sunshine tills.
And watch the warm green-muffled Cumnor hills,
And wonder if thou haunt'st their shy retreats. 70
For most, I know, thou lov'st retired ground ;
Thee, at the ferry, Oxford riders blithe,
Eeturning home on summer nights, have met
Crossing the stripling Thames at Bablock-hithe,
Trailing in the cool stream thy fingers wet,
As the i^unt's rope chops round ;
And leaning backward in a pensive dream,
And fostering in thy lap a heap of flowers
Plucked in shy fields and distant Wj'chwood bowers,
And thine eyes resting on the moonlit stream. 80
And tlien they land, and thou art seen no more. —
Maidens who from the distant hamlets come
To dance around the Fyfield elm in May,
Oft through the darkening fields have seen thee roam.
Or cross a stile into the public way.
Oft thou hast given them store
Of flowers— the frail-leafed, white aliemone.
Dark bluebells drenched with dews of summer eves,
And purple orchises with spotted leaves—
But none has words she can report of thee. 90
And, above Godstow bridge, when hay-time's here
In June, and many a scythe in sunshine flames.
Men who through those wide fields of breezy grass
Where black-winged swallows haunt the glittering
Thames,
COUNTEY LIFE 41
To bathe in the almndoned lasher pass,
Have often passed thee near
Sitting upon the river bank o'ergrown ;
Marked thine outlandish garb, thy figure spare,
Thy dark vague e3^es, and soft abstracted air —
But, -when they came from bathing, thou wert gone. 100
At some lone homestead in the Cumnor hills.
Where at her open door the housewife darns,
Thou hast been seen, or hanging on a gate
To watch the threshers in the mossy barns.
Children, who early range these slopes and late
For cresses from the rills,
Have known thee haunting, all an April day,
The springing pastures and the feeding kine ;
And marked thee, when the stars come out and
shine.
Through the long dewy grass move slow away. 110
In autunm, on the skirts of Bagley-wood,
Where most the gipsies by the turf-edged way
Pitch their smoked tents, and every bush you see
With scarlet patches tagged and shreds of grey.
Above the forest-ground called Thessaly—
The blackbird picking food
Sees thee, nor stops his meal, nor fears at all ;
So often has he known thee past him stray
Eapt, twirling in thy hand a withered spray,
And waiting for the spark from Heaven to fall. 120
And once, in winter, on the causeway chill
Where home through flooded fields foot-travellers go.
Have I not passed thee on the wooden bridge
Wrapt in thy cloak and battling with the snow.
Thy face toward Hinksey and its wintry ridge?
And thou hast climbed the hill.
42 POEMS OF ENGLISH
And gained the white brow of the Cumnor range ;
Turned once to watch, while thick the snowflakes
fall,
The line of festal light in Christ Church hall-
Then sought thy straw in some sequestered grange. 130
But what— I dream ! Two hundred years are flown
Since first thy story ran through Oxford halls.
And the grave Glanvil did the tale inscribe
That thou wert wandered from the studious walls
To learn strange aris, and join a gipsy tribe.
And thou from earth art gone
Long since, and in some quiet churchyard laid —
Some country nook, where o'er thy unknown grave
Tall grasses and white flowering nettles wave —
Under a dark red-fruited yew-tree's shade. 140
M. AENOLD.
XXVI
THE DESERTED VILLAGE
Sweet Auburn, loveliest village of the plain,
Where health and plenty cheered the labouring swain,
Where smiling spring its earliest visit paid,
And parting summer's lingering blooms delaj^ed :
Dear lovely bowers of innocence and ease.
Seats of my youth, when every sport could please,
How often have I loitered o'er thy green,
Where hmnble happiness endeared each scene ;
How often have I paused on every charm,
The sheltered cot, the cultivated farm, 10
The never-failing brook, the busy mill,
The decent church that topped the neighbouring hill,
The hawthorn bush, with seats beneath the shade.
For talking age and wliispering lovers made.
COUNTRY LIFE 43
How often have I blessed the coming day,
When toil, remitting, lent its turn to play.
And all the village train, from labour free,
Led up their sports beneath the spreading tree ;
While many a pastime circled in the shade,
The young contending as the old surveyed ; 20
And many a gambol frohcked o'er the ground.
And sleights of art and feats of strength went round ;
And still, as each repeated pleasure tired,
Succeeding sports the mirthful band inspired ;
The dancing pair that simply sought I'enown,
By holding out to tire each other down ;
The swain, mistrustless of his smutted face,
While secret laughter tittered round the place;
The bashful virgin's side-long looks of love, 29
The matron's glance that Avould those looks reprove.
These were thy charms, sweet village ; sports like these.
With sweet succession, taught e'en toil to please ;
These round thy bowers their cheerful influence shed,
These were thy charms— but all these charms are fled.
Sweet smiling village, loveliest of the lawn,
Thy sports are fled, and all thy charms withdrawn ;
Amidst thy bowers the tyrant's hand is seen,
And desolation saddens all thy green :
One only master grasps the whole domain,
And half a tillage stints thy smiling plain. 40
No more thy glassy brook reflects the day.
But, choked with sedges, works its weedy way;
Along thy glades, a solitary guest,
The hollow-sounding bittern guards its nest ;
Amidst thy desert walks the lapwing flies.
And tires their echoes with unvaried cries.
Sunk are thy bowers in shapeless ruin all,
And the long grass o'ertops the mouldering wall ;
And, trembling, shrinking from the spoiler's hand,
Far, far away, thy children leave the land. 50
44 POEMS OF ENGLISH
111 fares the land, to hastening ills a prey,
Where wealth accumulates, and men decaj'' :
Princes and lords may flourish, or may fade ;
A breath can make them, as a breath has made:
But a bold peasantry, their country's pride.
When once destroyed, can never be supplied.
A time there was, ere England's griefs began,
When every rood of ground maintained its man ;
For him light labour spread her wholesome store,
Just gave what life required, but gave no more : 60
His best companions, innocence and health ;
And his best riches, ignorance of wealth.
But times are altered ; trade's imfeeling train
Usurp the land, and dispossess the swain ;
Along the lawn, where scattered hamlets rose.
Unwieldy wealth and cumbrous pomp repose ;
And every want to opulence allied.
And eveiy pang that folly pays to pride.
Those gentle hours that plenty bade to bloom,
Those calm desires that asked but little room, 70
Those healthful sports that graced the peaceful scene,
Lived in each look, and brightened all the green—
These, far departing, seek a kinder shore.
And rural mirth and manners are no more.
Sweet Auburn, parent of the blissful hour.
Thy glades forlorn confess the tyrant's power.
Here, as I take my solitary rounds.
Amidst thy tangling walks and ruined grounds,
And, many a year elapsed, retm-n to view
Where once the cottage stood, the hawthorn gi-ew, 80
Remembrance Avakes Avith all her busy train.
Swells at my breast, and turns the past to pain.
In all my wanderings round this world of care,
In all my griefs— and God has given my share—
I still had hopes, my latest hours to crown,
Amidst these humble bowers to lay me down ;
COUNTRY LIFE 45
To husband out life's taper at the close,
And keep the flame from wasting by repose :
I still had hopes, for pride attends us still,
Amidst the swains to show my book-learned skill, 00
Around my fire an evening group to draw,
And tell of all I felt, and all I saw ;
And, as a hare, whom hounds and horns pursue.
Pants to the place from whence at first she flew,
I still had hopes, my long vexations past.
Here to return— and die at home at last.
blest retirement, friend to life's decline,
Eetreats from care, that never must be mine.
How happy he who crowns, in shades like these,
A youth of lal)0ur with an age of ease ; 100
Who quits a world wliere strong temptations try,
And, since 'tis hard to combat, learns to fly.
For him no wretches, born to work and weep,
Explore the mine, or tempt the dangerous dcej) ;
No surly porter stands, in guilty state.
To spurn imploring famine from the gate ;
But on he moves to meet his latter end,
Angels around befriending virtue's friend ;
Bends to the gi-ave -with unperceived decay.
While resignation gently slopes the way; 110
And, all his prospects brightening to the last,
His heaven commences ere the world be past.
Sweet was the sound, when oft, at evening's close.
Up yonder hill the village murmur rose ;
There, as I passed with careless steps and slow,
The mingled notes came softened from below ;
The swain responsive as the milkmaid sung,
The sober herd that lowed to meet their young ;
The noisy geese that gabbled o'er the pool.
The playful children just let loose from school ; 120
The watch-dog's voice that bayed the whispering wind,
And tlie loud laugh that spoke the vacant mind ; —
46 POEMS OF ENGLISH
These all in sweet confusion sought the shade,
And filled each pause the nightingale had made.
But now the sounds of population fail,
No cheerful murmurs fluctuate in the gale ;
No busy steps the grass-grown footway tread,
For all the bloomy flush of life is fled :
All but yon widowed, solitary thing,
That feebly bends beside the plashy spring; 130
She, wretched matron,— forced, in age, for bread.
To strip the brook with mantling cresses spread,
To pick her wintry faggot from the thorn.
To seek her nightly shed, and weep till morn,—
She only left of all the harmless train.
The sad historian of the pensive plain.
Near yonder copse, where once the garden smiled.
And still where many a garden-flower grows wild ;
There, where a few torn shrubs the place disclose,
The village preacher's modest mansion rose. 140
A man he was to all the country dear.
And passing rich with forty pounds a year;
Eemote from towns he ran his godly race.
Nor e'er had changed, nor wished to change, his place ;
Unpractised he to fawn, or seek for power
By doctrines fashioned to the varying hour ;
Far other aims his heart had learned to prize,
More skilled to raise the wretched than to rise.
His house was known to all the vagrant train.
He chid their wanderings, but relieved their pain ; 150
The long-remembered beggar was his guest.
Whose beard descending swept his aged breast ;
The ruined spendthrift, now no longer proud.
Claimed kindred there, and had his claims allowed ;
The broken soldier, kindly bade to stay.
Sat by his fire, and talked the night away ;
Wept o'er his wounds, or, tales of sorrow done.
Shouldered his crutch, and showed how fields were won.
COUNTRY LIFE 47
Pleased with liis guests, the good man learned to glow,
And quite forgot their vices in their woe ; 160
Careless their merits or their faults to scan,
His pity gave ere charity began.
Thus to relieve the wretched was his pride,
And e'en his failings leaned to virtue's side;
But in his duty prompt at every call.
He watched and wept, he prayed and felt for all ;
And, as a bird each fond endearment tries,
To tempt its new-fledged offspring to the skies.
He tried each art, reproved each dull delay.
Allured to brighter worlds, and led the way. 170
Beside the bed where parting life was laid.
And sorrow, guilt, and pain, by turns dismayed.
The reverend champion stood. At his control.
Despair and anguish fled the struggling soul ;
Comfort came down the trembling wretch to raise,
And his last faltering accents whispered praise.
At church, with meek and unaffected grace,
His looks adorned the venerable place ;
Truth from his lips prevailed wath double sway,
And fools, who came to scoff, remained to pray. 180
The service past, around the pious man.
With steady zeal, each honest rustic ran ;
E'en children foUow^ed with endearing wile,
And plucked his gown, to share the good man's smile ;
His ready smile a parent's warmth expressed ;
Their welfare pleased him, and their cares distressed ;
To them his heart, his love, his griefs were given,
But all his serious thoughts had rest in heaven.
As some tall cliff that lifts its awful form.
Swells from the vale, and midway leaves the storm, 190
Though round its breast the rollmg clouds are spread,
Eternal sunshine settles on its head.
Beside yon straggling fence that skirts the way,
With blossomed furze unprofitably gay.
48 POEMS OF ENGLISH
Tliere, in his noisy mansion, skilled to rule,
The village master taught his little school :
A man severe he was, and stern to view,
I knew him well, and every truant knew ;
Well had the boding tremblers learned to trace
The day's disasters in his morning face ; 200
Full well they laughed 'wdth counterfeited glee
At all his jokes, for many a joke had he ;
Full well the busy whisper, circling round,
Conveyed the dismal tidings when he frowned :
Yet he was kind, or if severe in aught,
The love he bore to learning was in fault.
The village all declared how much he knew;
'Twas certain he could write, and cipher too ;
Lands he could measure, terms and tides presage.
And e'en the story ran that he could gauge, 210
In arguing, too, the parson owned his skill.
For e'en though vanquished, he could argue still ;
While words of learned length and thundering sound
Amazed the gazing rustics ranged around ;
And still they gazed, and still the wonder grew,
That one small head could carry all he knew.
But past is all his fame ;— the very spot
Where many a time he triumphed, is forgot.
Near yonder thorn, that lifts its head on high,
Where once the sign-post caught the passing eye, 220
Low lies that houge where nut-brown draughts inspired,
Where grey-beard mirth and smiling toil retired.
Where village statesmen talked with looks profound.
And news much older than their ale went round
Imagination fondly stoops to trace
The parlour splendours of that festive place ;
The whitewashed wall, the nicely-sanded floor,
The varnished clock that clicked behind the door ;
The chest, contrived a double debt to pay,
A bed by night, a chest of drawers by day ; 230
COUNTRY LIFE 49
The pictures placed for ornament and use,
The twelve good rules, the royal game of goose ;
The hearth, except when winter chilled the day,
With aspen boughs, and flowers, and fennel gay ;
While broken tea-cups, wisely kept for show,
Ranged o'er the chimney, glistened in a row.
Vain transitory splendours, could not all
Reprieve the tottering mansion from its fall?
Obscure it sinks, nor shall it more impart
An hour's importance to the poor man's heart ; 240
Thither no more the peasant shall repair
To sweet oblivion of his daily care ;
No more the farmer's news, the barber's tale.
No more the woodman's ballad shall prevail ;
No more the smith his dusky brow shall clear.
Relax his ponderous strength, and lean to hear ;
The host himself no longer shall bo found
Careful to see the mantling bliss go round ;
Nor the coy maid, half willing to be prest.
Shall kiss the cup to pass it to the rest. 250
Yes, let the rich deride, the proud disdain.
These simple blessings of the lowly train ;
To me more dear, congenial to my heart.
One native charm, than all the gloss of art :
Spontaneous joys, where nature has its play,
The soul adopts, and owns their first-born sway ;
Lightly they frolic o'er the vacant mind,
Unenvied, unmolested, unconfinod :
But the long pomp, the midnight masquerade,
With all the freaks of wanton wealth arrayed, 260
In these, ere triflers half their wish ol^lain,
The toiling pleasure sickens into pain :
And, e'en while fashion's brightest aits decoy,
The heart distrusting asks if this be joy.
Ye friends to truth, ye statesmen, who survey
The rich man's joys increase, the poor's decay,
£
50 POEMS OF ENGLISH
'Tis yours to judge how wide the limits stand
Between a splendid and a happy land.
Proud swells the tide with loads of freighted ore,
And shouting folly hails them from her shore ; 270
Hoards, e'en beyond the miser's wish, abound,
And rich men flock from all the world around.
Yet count our gains. This wealth is but a name
That leaves our useful products still the same.
Not so the loss. The man of wealth and pride
Takes up a space that manj' poor supplied ;
Space for his lake, his park's extended bounds,
Si^ace for his horses, equipage, and hounds :
The robe that wraps his limbs in silken sloth
Has robbed the neighbouring fields of half their growth ;
His seat, where solitary sports are seen, 281
Indignant si^urns the cottage from the green ;
Around the world each needful product flies,
For all the luxuries the world supplies ;
While thus the land, adorned for pleasure all,
In barren splendour feebly vraits the fall.
As some fair female, unadorned and plain,
Secure to please while youth confirms her reign,
Slights eveiy borrowed charm that dress supplies.
Nor shares ■with art the triumph of her eyes ; 290
But when those charms are past, for charms are frail,
When time advances, and when lovers fail,
She then shines forth, solicitous to bless,
In all the glaring impotence of dress :
Thus fares the land by luxury betrayed ;
In nature's simplest charms at first arrayed,
But verging to decline, its splendours rise,
Its vistas strike, its palaces surprise ;
While, scourged by famine, from the smiling laud
The mournful peasant leads his humble band ; 3u0
And while he sinks, without one arm to save.
The countiy blooms— a garden and a grave.
COUNTRY LIFE 61
Where, then, ah, where shall poverty reside,
To 'scape the pressure of contiguous pride?
If to some common's fenceless limits straj-ed,
Ho drives his flocks to pick the scanty blade,
Those fenceless fields the sons of wealth divide,
And e'en the bare-worn common is denied.
If to the city sped— what waits him there?
To see profusion that he must not share ; lilO
To see ten thousand baneful arts combined
To pamper luxury and thin mankind ;
To see those joys the sons of pleasure know,
Extol'ted from his fellow-creature's woe.
Here while the courtier glitters in brocade.
There the pale artist plies the sickly trade ;
Here while the proud their long-drawn pomps display,
There the black gibbet glooms beside the way.
The dome where Pleasure holds her midnight reign,
Here, richly decked, admits the gorgeous train ; 320
Tumultuous grandeur crowds the blazing square,
The rattling chariots clash, the torches glare.
Sure scenes Hke these no troubles e'er annoy ;
kSure these denote one universal joy.
Are these thy serious thoughts? Ah, turn thine eyes
Where the poor houseless shivering female lies :
She once, perhaps, in village plenty blessed.
Has wept at tales of innocence distressed ;
Her modest looks the cottage might adorn,
Sweet as the primrose peeps beneath the thorn ; 330
Now lost to all, her friends, her virtue fled,
Near her betrayer's door she lays her head,
And, pinched -with cold, and shrinking from the shower
With heavy heart deplores that luckless hour,
When idly first, ambitious of the town,
She left her wheel and robes of country )-»rown.
Do thine, sweet Aul)urn, thine, the loveliest train,
Do thy fair tribes participate her pain?
E 2
52 POEMS OF ENGLISH
E'en now, perhaps, by cold and hunger led,
At proud men's doors they ask a little bread ! 340
Ah, no ! To distant climes, a dreary scene,
Where half the convex world intrudes between,
Through torrid tracts with fainting steps they go,
Where wild Altama murmurs to their woe.
Far different there from all that charmed before,
The various terrors of that horrid shore ;
Those blazing suns that dart a downward ray,
And fiercely shed intolerable day ;
Those matted woods where birds forget to sing,
But silent bats in drowsy clusters cling ; 350
Those poisonous fields, with rank luxuriance crowned,
Where the dark scorpion gathers death around ;
Where at each step the stranger fears to wake
The rattling tei-rors of the vengeful snake ;
Where crouching tigers wait their hapless prey.
And savage men more murderous still than they ;
While oft in whirls the mad tornado flies.
Mingling the ravaged landscape with the skies.
Far different these from every former scene,
The cooling brook, the grassy-vested green, 3G0
The breezy covert of the warbling grove.
That only sheltered thefts of harmless love.
Good Heaven ! what sorrows gloomed that parting day.
That called them from their native walks away ;
When the poor exiles, every pleasure past,
Hung round the bowers, and fondly looked their labt,
And took a long farewell, and ^vished in vain
For seats like these beyond the western main ;
And, shuddering still to face the distant deep.
Returned and wept, and still returned to weep. 370
The good old sii*e the first prepared to go
To new-found worlds, and wept for others' woe ;
But for himself, in conscious virtue brave.
He only wished for worlds beyond the grave.
COUNTRY LIFE 53
His lovely daughter, lovelier in her tears,
The fond companion of his helpless years,
Silent went next, neglectful of her charms.
And left a lover's for a father's arms.
With louder plaints the mother spoke her woes.
And blessed the cot where every pleasure rose, 3S0
And kissed her thoughtless babes with many a tear,
And clasped them close, in sorrow doubly dear;
Whilst her fond husband strove to lend relief
In all the silent manliness of grief.
O Luxury, thou cursed by Heaven's decree,
How iU exchanged are things like these for thee ;
How do thy potions, with insidious joy.
Diffuse their pleasure only to destroy ;
Kingdoms, by thee, to sickly gi-eatness grown.
Boast of a florid vigour not their own ; 390
At every draught more large and large they gi'ow,
A bloated mass of rank vm wield y woe ;
Till, sapped their strength, and every part unsound,
Down, down they sink, and spread a ruin round.
E'en now the devastation is begun,
And half the business of destruction done;
E'en now, methinks, as pondering hero I stand,
I see the rural virtues leave the land.
Down where yon anchoring vessel spreads the sail
That idly waiting flaps with every gale, 400
Downward they move, a melancholy band,
Pass from the shore, and darken all the strand.
Contented Toil, and hospitable Care,
And kind connubial Tenderness are there ;
And Piety with wishes placed above.
And steady Loyalty, mid faithful Love.
And thou, sweet Poetry, thou loveliest maid,
Still first to fly where sensual joys invade ;
Unfit, in these degenerate times of shame,
To catch the heart, or strike for honest fame ; 4io
64 POEMS OF ENGLISH
Dear charming nympli, neglected and decried,
My shame in crowds, my solitaiy pride ;
Thou source of all my bliss and all my woe,
That found'st me poor at first, and keep'st me so ;
Thou guide by which the nobler arts excel,
Thou nurse of every virtue, fare thee well !
Farewell ! and oh, where'er thy voice be tried,
On Torno's cliffs, or Pambamarca's side.
Whether where equinoctial fervours glow.
Or winter wraps the polar world in snow, 420
Still let thy voice, prevailing over time.
Redress the rigours of th' inclement clime ;
Aid slighted Truth with thy persuasive strain ;
Teach erring man to spurn the rage of gain ;
Teach him, that states of native strength possessed.
Though A'er}^ poor, maj' still be xevy blessed ;
That trade's proud omi^ire hastes to swift decay,
As ocean sweeps the laboured mole awaj' ;
While self-dependent power can time defy.
As rocks resist the billows and the sky. 430
O. GOLDSMITH.
XXVII
ODE TO A SKYLARK
Hail to thee, blithe spirit !
Bird thou never wert.
That from heaven, or near it
Pourest thy full heart
In profuse strains of unpremeditated art.
Higher still and higher
From the earth thou springest,
Like a cloud of fire,
The blue deep thou wingest, 9
And singing still dost soar, and soaring ever singest.
COUNTRY LIFE 55
In the golden lightning
Of the sunken sun
O'er which clouds are briglitening,
Thou dost float and run,
Like an unbodied joy whose race is just begun.
The pale purple even
Melts around thy flight ;
Like a star of heaven
In the broad daylight
Thou art unseen, but yet I hear thy shrill delight : 20
Keen as are the arrows
Of that silver sphere,
Whose intense lamp narrows
In the white dawn clear
Until we hardly see, we feel that it is there.
All the earth and air
With thy voice is loud,
As, when night is bare,
From one lonely cloud
The moon rains out her beams, and heaven is over-
flowed. 30
What thou art we know not ;
What is most like thee?
From ]-ain1)ow clouds there flow not
Drops so blight to see
As from thy presence showers a rain of melody ;—
Like a poet hidden
In the light of thought,
Singing hymns unbidden.
Till the world is wrouglit
To sympathy with hopes and fears it heeded not : 40
5G POEMS OF ENGLISH
Like a high-born maiden
In a palace tower,
Soothing her love-laden
Soul in secret hour
With music sweet as love, which overflows her bower :
Like a glow-worm golden
In a dell of dew,
Scattering unbeholden
Its aerial hue
Among the flowers and grass, which screen it from
the view: 50
Like a rose embowered
In its own green leaves,
By warm ■winds deflowered.
Till the scent it gives
Makes faint with too much sweet these heavy-winged
thieves.
Sound of vernal showers
On the twinkling grass,
Eain-awakened flowers,
All that ever was 59
Joyous, and clear, and fresh, thy music doth surpass.
Teach us, sprite or bird,
What sweet thoughts are thine ;
I have never heard
Praise of love or wine
That panted forth a flood of rapture so divine.
Chorus hymeneal
Or triumjihal chaunt
Matched with thine, Avould be all
But an empty vaunt— . 69
A thing wherein we feel there is some hidden want.
COUNTEY LIFE 67
What objects are the fountains
Of thy happy strain ?
What fields, or waves, or mountains?
What shapes of sky or plain?
What love of thine own kind ? what ignorance of pain ?
With thy clear keen joyance
Languor cannot be :
Shadow of annoyance
Never came near thee :
Thou lovest ; but ne'er knew love's sad satiety. 80
Waking or asleep
Thou of death must deem
Things more true and deep
Than we mortals dream,
Or how could thy notes flow in such a crystal stream ?
We look before and after.
And pine for what is not :
Our sincerest laughter
With some pain is fraught ;
Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest
thought. 90
Yet if we could scorn
Hate, and pride, and fear ;
If we were things born
Not to shed a tear,
I know not how thy joy we ever should come near.
Better than all measures
Of delightful sound,
Better than all treasures
That in books are found, 99
Thy skill to poet were, thou scorner of the ground.
68. POEMS OF ENGLISH
Teach me half the gladness
That thy brain must know,
Such harmonious madness
From my lips would flow,
The world should listen then, as I am listening now !
p. B. SHELLEY.
XXVIII
THE CUCKOO
Hail, beauteous stranger of the grove,
Thou messenger of spring ;
Now Heaven repairs thy rural seat,
And woods thy welcome sing.
What time the daisy decks the green,
Thy certain voice we hear ;
Hast thou a star to guide thy path.
Or mark the rolling year?
Dehghtful visitant, with thee
I hail the time of flowers, 10
And hear the sound of music sweet
From birds among the bowers.
The school-boy wandering through the wood
To pull the primrose gaj^,
Starts the new voice of spring to hear,
And imitates the lay.
What time the pea puts on the bloom
Thou fliest thy vocal vale.
An annual guest in other lands.
Another spring to hail. 20
Sweet bird, thy bower is ever green,
Thy sky is ever clear ;
Thou hast no sorrow in thy song,
No winter in thy year !
COUNTRY LIFE 59
O could 1 fly, I'd fly with thee ;
We'd make, with joyful wing.
Our annual visit o'er the globe,
Companions of the spring.
J. LOGAN.
XXIX
THE GREEN LINNET
Beneath these fruit-tree boughs that shed
Their snow-white blossoms on my head.
With brightest sunshine round me spread
Of spring's unclouded weather.
In this sequestered nook how sweet
To sit upon my orchard-seat.
And birds and flowers once more to greet.
My last year's friends together.
One have I marked, the happiest guest
In all this covert of the blest : 10
Hail to thee, far above the rest
In joy of voice and pinion :
Thou, linnet, in thy green array,
Presiding spirit here to-day.
Dost lead the revels of the May ;
And this is thy duminion.
While birds, and 1)utterflies, and flowers,
Make all one band of paramours,
Thou, ranging up and down the bowers,
Art sole in thy employment : 20
A life, a presence like the air,
Scattering thy gladness without care,
Too blest with anj^ one to pair ;
Thyself thy own enjoyment.
GO POEMS OF ENGLISH
Amid yon tuft of hazel trees,
That twinkle to the gusty breeze,
Behold him perched in ecstasies,
Yet seeming still to hover ;
There, where the flutter of his wings
Upon his back and body flings 30
Shadows and sunny glimmerings,
That cover him all over.
My dazzled sight he oft deceives,
A brother of the dancing leaves ;
Then flits, and from the cottage eaves
Pours forth his song in gushes;
As if by that exulting strain
He mocked and treated with disdain
The voiceless form he chose to feign.
While fluttering in the bushes. 40
W. WORDSWORTH.
XXX
THE THRUSH'S NEST
Within a thick and spreading hawthorn bush,
That overhung a mole-hill large and round,
I heard from morn to morn a merry thrush
Sing hymns of rapture, while I drank the sound
With joy ; and oft, an unintruding guest,
I watched her secret toils from day to day.
How true she warped the moss to form her nest,
And modelled it within with wool and clay.
And by-and-by, like heath-bells gilt with dew,
There lay her shining eggs as bright as flowers, 10
Ink-spotted over, shells of green and blue ;
And there I witnessed, in the summer hours,
A brood of nature's minstrels chirp and fly.
Glad as the sunshine and the laughing skj'-.
J. CLARE.
COUNTRY LIFE 61
XXXI
THE WREN'S NEST
Among the dwellings framed by birds
In field or forest with nice care,
Is none that with the little wren's
In snugness may compare.
No door the tenement requires,
And seldom needs a laboured roof;
Yet is it to the fiercest sun
Impervious, and storm-proof.
So warm, so beautiful withal,
In perfect fitness for its aim, 10
That to the kind by special grace
Their instinct surely came.
And when for their abodes they seek
An opportune recess,
The hermit has no finer eye
For shadowy quietness.
These find, 'mid ivied abbey-walls,
A canopy in some still nook ;
Others are pent-housed by a brae
That overhangs a brook. 20
There to the brooding bird her mate
Warbles by fits his low clear song ;
And by the busy streamlet both
Are sung to all day long.
Or in sequestered lanes they build.
Where, till the flitting bird's return,
Her eggs within the nest repose,
Like relics in an urn.
62 POEMS OF ENGLISH
But still, where general choice is good,
There is a better and a best ; 30
And, among fairest objects, some
Are fairer than the rest;
This, one of those small builders proved
In a green covert, where, from out
The forehead of a pollard oak,
The leafy antlers sprout ;
For she who planned the mossy lodge,
Mistrusting her evasive skill,
Had to the primrose looked for aid
Her wishes to fulfil. 40
High on the trunk's projecting brow.
And fixed an infant's span above
The budding flowers, peeped forth the nest
The prettiest of the grove.
The treasure proudly did I show
To some whose minds without disdain
Can turn to little things ; but once
Looked up for it in vain :
'Tis gone— a ruthless spoiler's prey,
Who heeds not beauty, love, or song, 50
'Tis gone (so seemed it), and we grieved
Indignant at the wrong.
Just three days after, passing by
In clearer light the moss-built cell
I saw, espied its shaded mouth ;
And felt that all was well.
The primrose for a veil had spread
The largest of her upright leaves ;
And thus, for purposes benign,
A simple flower deceives. 60
COUNTRY LIFE 63
Concealed from friends Avho might disturb
Thy quiet with no ill intent,
Secure from evil eyes and hands
On barbarous plunder bent,
Eest, mother-bird, and when thy young
Take flight, and thou art free to roam.
When withered is the guardian flower,
And empty thy late home.
Think how ye prospered, thou and thine,
Amid the unviolated grove 70
Housed near the growing primrose-tufc
In foresight, or in love.
W. WOKDSWORril.
XXXII
THE NIGHTINGALE
'Tis the merry nightingale
That crowds, and hurries, and precipitates
With fast thick warble his delicious notes,
As he were fearful that an April night
Would be too short for him to utter forth
His love-chant, and disburthen his full soul
Of all its music.
And I know a grove
Of lai'ge extent, hard by a castle huge.
Which the great lord inhabits not ; and so
This gi'ove is wild with tangling underwood. 10
And the trim walks are broken up, and grass,
Thin grass and king-cups grow within the patlis.
But never elsewhere in one place I knew
So many nightingales ; and far and near,
In wood and thicket, over the wide grove,
64 POEMS OF ENGLISH
They answei* and provoke each other's song,
With skirmish and capricious passagings,
And murmurs musical and swift jug jug,
And one low piping sound more sweet than all-
Stirring the air Avith such an harmony, 20
That should you close your eyes, you might almost
Forget it was not day. On moon-lit bushes,
Whose dewy leaflets are but half disclosed,
You may perchance behold them on the twigs,
Their blight, bright eyes, their eyes both bright and
full.
Glistening, while many a glow-worm in the shade
Lights up her love-torch.
S. T. COLERIDGE.
XXXIII
THE REDBREAST AND THE BUTTERFLY
Art thou the bird whom man loves best,
The pious bird with the scarlet breast,
Our little English robin ;
The bird that comes about our doors
When autumn- winds are sobbing?
Art thou the Peter of Norway boors?
Their Thomas in Finland,
And Eussia far inland?
The bird that by some name or other
All men who know thee call their brother, 10
The darling of children and men?
Could Father Adam open his eyes
And see this sight beneath the skies,
He'd Avish to close them again.
—If the butterfly knew but his friend,
Hither his flight he would bend ;
COUNTRY LIFE 65
And find his way to me,
Under the branches of the tree :
In and out, he darts about ;
Can tliis be the bird, to man so good, 20
That, after their bewildering,
Covered with leaves the little children,
So painfully in the wood?
What ailed thee, robin, that thou couldst pursue
A beautiful creature,
That is gentle by nature?
Beneath the summer sky
From flower to flower let him fly ;
'Tis all that he wishes to do.
The cheerer thou of our indoor sadness, 30
Ho is the friend of our summer gladness :
What hinders, then, that ye should bo
Playmates in the sunny weather,
And fly about in the air together?
His beautiful ^^^ngs in crimson are drest,
A crimson as bright as thine own :
Wouldst thou be happy in thy nest,
pious bird, whom man loves best.
Love him, or leave him alone.
W. WORDSWORTH.
XXXIV
BLOSSOMS
Fair pledges of a fruitful tree,
Why do ye fall so fast?
Your date is not so past,
But you may stay yet here awhile
To blush and gently smile,
And go at last.
66 POEMS OF ENGLISH
What, were ye born to be
An hour or half's delight,
And so to bid good-night?
'Twas pity Nature brought ye forth
Merely to show your worth,
And lose you quite.
10
But you are lovely leaves, where wo
May read how soon things have
Their end, though ne'er so brave :
And after they have shown their pride
Like you, awhile, they glide
Into the grave.
K. HERRICK.
XXXV
DAFFODILS
Fair daffodils, we weep to sco
You haste away so soon :
As yet the earlj'-rising sun
Has not attained his noon.
Stay, stay,
Until the hasting day
Has run
But to the even-song ;
And, having prayed together, wo
Will go with you along.
10
We have short time to stay, as you.
We have as short a spring ;
As quick a growth to meet decay
As you, or any thing.
COUNTRY LIFE 67
We die,
As your hours do, and dry
Away
Like to the summer's rain ;
Or as the pearls of morning's dew
Ne'er to be found again. 20
K. HERRICK.
XXXVI
'SPRING FLOWERS'
At length the finished garden to the view
Its vistas opens, and its alleys green.
Snatched through the verdant maze, the hurried eye
Distracted wanders ; now the bowery walk
Of covert close, where scarce a speck of day
Falls on the lengthened gloom, protracted sweeps :
Now meets the bending sky ; the river now
Dimpling along, the breezy ruffled lake,
The forest darkening round, the glittering spire.
Th' ethereal mountain, and the distant main. 10
But why so far excursive? when at hand.
Along these blushing borders, bright with dew.
And in yon mingled wilderness of flowers.
Fair-handed spring unbosoms every grace ;
Throws out the snowdrop, and the crocus first ;
The daisy, primrose, violet darkly blue.
And polyanthus of unnumbered dj-es ;
The yellow wall-flower, stained with iron-brown ;
And lavish stock that scents the garden round :
From the soft wing of vernal breezes shed, 20
Anemones ; auriculas, enriched
With sliining meal o'er all their velvet leaves ;
And full ranunculas, of glowing red.
Then comes the tulip race, where beauty plays
Her idle freaks ; from family diff"used
To family, as flies the father-dust,
F 2
G8 POEMS OF ENGLISH
The Y-arictl colours run; and, while they break
On the chixrmecl eye, th' exulting florist marks, *
With secret pride, the wonders of his hand.
No gradual bloom is wanting : from the bud, 30
First-born of spring, to summer's musky tribes :
Nor hyacinths, of purest virgin white,
Low bent, and blushing inward ; nor jonquils,
Of potent fragrance ; nor Narcissus fair.
As o'er the fabled fountain hanging still ;
Nor broad carnations, nor gay-spotted pinks ;
Nor, showered from every bush, the damask rose.
Infinite numbers, delicacies, smells.
With hues on hues expression cannot paint.
The breath of nature, and her endless bloom. 40
J. TUOMSON.
XXXVII
THE DAISY
With little here to do or see
Of things that in the great world be,
Daisy, again I talk to thee,
For thou art worthy.
Thou unassuming common-place
Of nature, with that homely face,
And yet with something of a grace
Which love makes for thee.
Oft on the daj)pled turf at ease
I sit, and play with similes, 10
Loose types of things through all degrees.
Thoughts of thy raising :
And many a fond and idle name
I give to thee, for praise or blame,
As is the humour of the game,
Wliilo 1 am gazing.
COUNTRY LITE 69
A nun demure of lowly port ;
Or sprightly maiden, of Love's court,
In thy simplicity the sport
Of all temptations ; 20
A queen in crown of rubies drest ;
A starveling in a scanty vest ;
Are all, as seems to suit thee best,
Thy appellations. -
A- little Cyclops with one eye
Staring to threaten and defy,
That thought comes next— and instantly
The freak is over.
The shape will vanish — and behold
A silver shield with boss of gold, 30
That spreads itself, some faery bold
In fight to cover.
*&••
I see thee glittering from afar—
And then thou art a pretty star;
Not quite so fair as many are
In heaven above thee :
Yet like a star, with glittering crest.
Self-poised in air thou seem'st to rest ; —
May peace come never to his nest,
Who shall reprove thee ! 40
Bright flower, for by that name at last.
When all my reveries are past,
I call thee, and to that cleave fast,
Sweet silent creature,
That breath'st with mo in sun and air,
Do thou, as thou art wont, repair
My heai't with gladness, and a share
Of thy meek nature.
W. WORDSWORTH.
70 POEMS OF ENGLISH
XXXVIII
THE LESSER CELANDINE
There is a flower, the lesser celandine,
*That shrinks, like many more, from cold and rain ;
And, the first moment that the sun may shine,
Bright as the sun himself, 'tis out again.
When hailstones have been falling, swarm on swarm.
Or blasts the green field and the trees distrest,
Oft have I seen it muffled up from harm,
In close self-shelter, like a thing at rest.
But lately, one rough day, this flower I passed
And recognized it, though an altered form, 10
Now standing forth an offering to the blast.
And buffeted at will by rain and storm.
I stopped, and said with inly-muttered voice,
'It doth not love the shower, nor seek the cold :
This neither is its courage nor its choice,
But its necessity in being old.
' The sunshine may not cheer it, nor the dew ;
It cannot help itself in its decay ;
Stiff in its members, withered, changed of hue.'
And, in my spleen, I smiled that it was grey. 20
To be a prodigal's favourite— then, worse truth,
A miser's pensioner— beliold our lot :
O man, that from thy fair and shining youth
Age might but take the things youth needed not !
W. WORDSWORTH.
COUNTRY LIFE 71
XXXIX
THE HOLLY TREE
Eeader, hast thou ever stood to see
The Holly Tree?
The eye that contemplates it well perceives
Its glossy leaves
Ordered by an intelligence so wise,
As might confound the atheist's sophistries.
Below, a circling fence, its leaves are seen
Wrinkled and keen ;
No grazing cattle through their prickly round
Can reach to wound ; 10
But as they grow where nothing is to fear.
Smooth and unarmed the pointless leaves appear.
1 love to view these things with curious eyes,
And moralize ;
And in the wisdom of the Holly Tree
Can emblems see
Wherewith perchance to make a pleasant rhyme,
Such as may profit in the after-time.
So, though abroad perchance I might appear
Harsh and austere, 20
To those who on my leisure would intrude
Reserved and rude ;
Gentle at home amid my friends I'd be,
Like the high leaves upon the Holly Tree.
And should my youth, as youth is apt, I know,
Some harshnebs show.
All vain asperities I day by day
Would wear away,
Till the smooth temiH-r of my age should be
Like the high leaves upon the Holly Tree. 30
72 POEMS OF ENGLISH
And as when all the summer trees are seen
So bright and green,
The holly leaves their fadeless hues display
Less bright than they,
But when the bare and wintry woods we see,
What then so cheerful as the Holly Tree?
So serious should my youth appear among
The thoughtless throng,
So would I seem amid the young and gay
More grave than they, 40
That in my age as cheerful I might be
As the green winter of the Holly Tree.
R. SOUTH EY.
XL
ODE ON THE INTIMATIONS OF
IMMORTALITY
There was a time when meadow, grove, and stream,
The earth, and every common sight,
To me did seem
Apparelled in celestial light.
The glory and the freshness of a dream.
It is not now as it hath been of yore ;—
Turn wheresoe'er I may,
By night or day,
The things which I have seen I now can see no more.
The rainbow comes and goes, 10
And lovely is the rose,
The moon doth with delight
Look round her when the heavens are bare.
COUNTRY LIFE 73
Waters on a starry night
Ai-e beautiful and fair ;
The sunshine is a glorious birth ;
But yet I know, where'er I go,
That there hath past away a glory from the earth.
Now, while the birds thus sing a joyous song,
And while the young lambs bound 20
As to the tabor's sound.
To me alone there came a thought of grief:
A timely utterance gave that thought relief,
And I again am strong :
The cataracts blow their trumpets from the steep ;
No more shall grief of mine the season wrong ;
I hoar the echoes thi'ough the mountains throng,
The ^vinds come to me from the fields of sleep,
And all the earth is gay ;
Land and sea
Give themselves up to jollity,
And with the heart of May
Doth every beast keep holiday ;—
Thou child of joy.
Shout round mo, let me hear thy shouts, thou happy
shepherd-boy !
Ye blessed creatures, I have heard the call
Ye to each other make ; I see
The heavens laugh with you in your jubilee ;
My heart is at your festival,
My head hath its coronal, 40
Tlie fullness of your bliss, I fool— I feel it all.
O evil day, if I were sullen
While Earth herself is adorning,
This sweet May-morning,
And the children are culling
On every side,
^6 J
74 POEMS OF ENGLISH
In a thousand valleys far and wide,
Fresh flowers ; while the sun shines warm,
And the habe leaps up on his mother's arm :—
I hear, I hear, with joy I hear ! 50
—But there's a tree, of many, one,
A single field which I have looked upon.
Both of them speak of something that is gone :
The pansy at my feet
Doth the same tale repeat :
Whither is fled the visionary gleam?
Where is it now, the glory and the dream?
Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting :
The soul that rises with us, oiu" life's star.
Hath had elsewhere its setting, 60
And Cometh from afar :
Not in entire forgetfulness,
And not in utter nakedness,
But traihng clouds of glory do we come
From God, who is our home.
Heaven lies about us in our infancy ;
Shades of the prison-house begin to close
Upon the growing bo5%
But he beholds the light, and whence it flows.
He sees it in his joy ; 70
The youth, who daily farther from the east
Must travel, still is Nature's priest.
And by the vision splendid
Is on his way attended ;
At length the man perceives it die awaj''.
And fade into the light of common day.
Earth fills her lap with pleasures of her own ;
Yearnings she hath in her own natural kind,
And, even with something of a mother's mind,
COUNTRY LIFE 75
And no unworthy aim, 80
The homely nurse doth all she can
To make her foster-child, her inmate, man,
Forget the glories he hath known.
And that imperial palace whence he came.
Behold the child among his new-born blisses,
A six years' darling of a pigmy size ;
See, Avhere 'mid work of his own hand he lies,
Fretted by sallies of his mother's kisses,
With light upon him from his father's eyes ;
See, at his feet, some little plan or chart, 90
Some fragment from his dream of human life,
Shaped by himself with newly-learned art ;
A wedding or a festival,
A mom-ning or a funeral ;
And this hath now his heart,
And unto this he frames his song :
Then will he fit his toiigue
To dialogues of business, love, or strife ;
But it will not be long
Ere this be thrown aside, 100
And with new joy and pride
The little actor cons another part ;
Filhng from time to time his 'humorous stage'
With all the persons, down to palsied Age,
That Life brings with her in her equipage ;
As if his whole vocation
Were endless imitation.
Thou, whose exterior semldance doth belie
Thy soul's immensity ;
Thou best philosopher, who yet dost keep 110
Thy heritage, thou eye among the blind.
That, deaf and silent, read'st the eternal deep.
Haunted for ever by (he eternal mind, —
76 POEMS OF ENGLISH
Mighty prophet, seer blest,
On whom those truths do rest,
Which we are toiling all our lives to find,
In darkness lost, the darkness of the grave ;
Thou, over whom thy immortality
Broods like the day, a master o'er a slave,
A presence which is not to be put by ; 120
Thou little child, yet glorious in the might
Of heaven-born freedom on thy being's height.
Why with such earnest pains dost thou provoke
The years to bring the inevitable yoke,
Thus blindly with thy blessedness at strife?
Full soon thy soul shall have her earthly freight,
And custom lie upon thee with a weight,
Heavy as frost, and deep almost as life.
O joy, that in our embers
Is something that doth live, 130
That nature yet remembers
What was so fugitive !
The thought of our past years in me doth breed
Perpetual benediction : not indeed
For that which is most worthy to be blest ;
Delight and liberty, the simple creed
Of childhood, whether busy or at rest.
With new-fledged hope still fluttering in his breast : —
Not for these I raise
The song of thanks and praise ; 140
But for those obstinate questionings
Of sense and outward things.
Fallings from us, vanishings ;
Blank misgivings of a creature
Moving about in worlds not realized,
High instincts before which our mortal nature
Did tremble like a guilty thing suri^rised ;
COUNTRY LIFE 77
But for those first affections,
Those shadowy recollections,
Which, be they what they may, 150
Are yet the fountain-light of all our clay.
Are yet a master-light of all our seeing ;
Uphold us, cherish, and have power to make
Our noisy years seem moments in the being
Of the eternal silence : truths that wake,
To perish never:
Which neither listlessness, nor mad endeavour.
Nor man nor boy,
Nor all that is at enmity with joy,
Can utterly abolish or destroy. IGO
Hence in a season of calm weather
Though inland far we bo,
Our souls have sight of that immortal sea
Which brought us hither.
Can in a moment travel thither.
And see the children sport upon the shore.
And hear the mighty M'aters rolling evermore.
Then sing, ye birds, sing, sing a joyous song,
And let the young lambs bound
As to the tabor's sound : 170
We in thought will join your throng,
Ye that pipe and ye that play,
Ye that through your hearts to-day
Feel the gladness of the May.
What though the radiance Avhich was once so bright
Be now for ever taken from my sight,
Though nothing can bring back the hour
Of splendour in the grass, of glory in the flower ;
We will grieve not, rather find
Strength in what remains behind ; ISO
In the primal sympathy
Which having been mu.-^l ever be ;
78 POEMS OF ENGLISH
In the soothing thoughts that spring
Out of human suflfering ;
In the faith that looks through death,
In 5'ears that bring the philosophic mind.
And oh, ye fountains, meadows, hills, and groves,
Forebode not any severing of our loves :
Yet in my heai't of hearts I feel your might ;
I only have relinquished one delight 190
To live beneath your more habitual sway.
I love the brooks which dow^n their channels fret,
Even more than when I tripped lightly as they ;
The innocent brightness of a new-born day
Is lovely yet;
The clouds that gather round the setting sun
Do take a sober colouring from an eye
That hath kept watch o'er man's mortality ;
Another race hath been, and other palms are won.
Thanks to the human heart by which we live, 200
Thanks to its tenderness, its joys, and fears,
To me the meanest flower that blows can give
Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.
W. WOEDSWORTH.
XLI
SONG FROM 'AS YOU LIKE IT'
Under the greenwood tree,
Who loves to lie with me, w
And tune his merry note / vtK^
Unto the sweet bird's throa^/<^^*^
Come hither, come hither, come hither:
Here shall he see
No enemy ,
But winter and rough weather.,' ,
COUNTRY LIFE 79
Who doth ambition shun,
And loves to live in the sun, 10
Seeking the food he eats,
And pleased with what he gct^^^T'''
Come hither, come hither, come hither:
Here shall he see
No enemy
But winter and rough weather. "^
W. SHAKESPEARE.
XLII
THE USEFUL PLOUGH
A COUNTRY life is sweet ;
In moderate cold and heat,
To walk in the air, how pleasant and fair.
In every field of wheat,
The fairest of flowers adorning the bowers,
And every meadow's brow ;
So that I say, no courtier may
Compare with them who clothe in grey,
And follow the useful plough.
They rise with the morning lark, 10
And labour till almost dark ;
Then folding their sheep, they hasten to sleep ;
While every pleasant park
Next morning is ringing with birds that are singing
On each green, tender bough.
With what content and merriment.
Their days are spent, whose minds are bent
To follow the useful plough !
Old SoHfj.
80 POEMS OF ENGLISH
XLIII
THE SHEPHERD
How sweet is the shepherd's sweet lot ;
From the morn to the evening he strays ;
He shall follow his sheep all the day,
And his tongue shall be filled ^vith praise.
For he hears the lambs' innocent call.
And he hears the ewes' tender reply ;
He is watchful while they are at peace,
For they know when their shepherd is nigh.
W. BLAKE.
XLIV
ELEGY IN A COUNTRY CHURCHYARD
The curfew tolls the knell of parting day,
The lowing herd wind slowly o'er the lea.
The ploughman homeward plods his weary way.
And leaves the world to darkness and to me.
Now fades the glimmering landscape on the sight,
And all the air a solemn stillness holds,
Save where the beetle wheels his droning flight.
And drowsy tinklings lull the distant folds :
Save that from yonder ivy-mantled tower
The moping owl does to the moon complain 10
Of such as, wandering near her secret bower.
Molest her ancient solitary reign.
Beneath those rugged elms, that yew-tree's shade
Where heaves the turf in many a mouldering heap.
Each in his narrow cell for ever laid,
The rude forefathers of the hamlet sleep.
COUNTRY LIFE 81
The breezy call of incense-breathing morn,
The swallow twittering from the straw-built shed,
The cock's shrill clarion, or the echoing horn,-
No more shall rouse them from their lowly bed. 20
For them no more the blazing hearth shall burn
Or busy housewife ply her evening care :
No children run to lisp their sire's return,
Or climb his knees the envied kiss to share.
Oft did the harvest to their sickle yield,
Their furrow oft the stubborn glebe has broke ;
How jocund did they drive their team afield,
How bowed the woods beneath their sturdy stroke!
Let not ambition mock their useful toil,
Their homely joys, and destiny obscure ; 30
Nor grandeur hear with a disdainful smile
The short and simple annals of the poor.
The boast of heraldry, the pomp of power.
And all that beauty, all that wealth e'er gave
Await alike th' inevitable hour : —
The paths of glory lead but to the grave.
Nor you, ye proud, impute to these the fault
If memory o'er their tomb no trophies raise,
Where through the long-drawn aisle and fretted vault
The pealing anthem swells the note of praise. 40
Can storied urn or animated bust
Back to its mansion call the fleeting breath?
Can honour's voice provoke the silent dust.
Or flattery soothe the dull cold ear of death?
Perhaps in this neglected spot is laid
Some heart once pregnant with celestial fire;
Hands, that the rod of empire might have swayed,
Or waked to ecstasy the living lyre:
a
82 POEMS OF ENGLISH
But knowledge to their eyes her ample page,
Rich with the spoils of time, did ne'er unroll ; 50
Chill penury repressed their noble rage,
And froze the genial current of the soul.
Full many a gem of purest ray serene
The dark unfathomed caves of ocean bear :
Full many a flower is born to blush unseen,
And waste its sweetness on the desert air.
Some village Hampden, that with dauntless breast
The little tyrant of his fields withstood,
Some mute inglorious Milton here may rest.
Some Cromwell, guiltless of his country's blood. GO
Th' applause of listening senates to command,
The threats of pain and ruin to despise.
To scatter plenty o'er a smiling land,
And read their history in a nation's eyes
Their lot forbad : nor circumscribed alone
Their growing virtues, but their crimes confined ;
Forbad to wade through slaughter to a throne.
And shut the gates of mercy on mankind ;
The struggling pangs of conscious truth to hide,
To quench the blushes of ingenuous shame, 70
Or heap the shrine of luxury and pride
With incense kindled at the Muse's flame.
Far from the madding crowd's ignoble strife
Their sober wishes never learned to stray ;
Along the cool sequestered vale of life
They kept the noiseless tenour of their way.
Yet e'en these bones from insult to protect
Some frail memorial still erected nigh,
With uncouth rhymes and shapeless sculpture decked,
Implores the passing tribute of a sigh. 80
COUNTEY LIFE 83
Tht'ir name, their years, spelt by th' unletterecl Muse
The place of fame and elegy supply :
And many a holy text around she strews,
That teach the rustic moralist to die.
For who, to dumb forgetfulness a prey,
This pleasing anxious being e'er resigned,
Left the warm precincts of the cheerful day,
Nor cast one longing lingering look behind?
On some fond breast the parting soul relies.
Some pious drops the closing eye requires ; 00
E'en from the tomb the voice of nature cries,
E'en in our ashes live their wonted fires.
For thee, who, mindful of th' unhonoured dead,
Dost in these lines their artless tale relate ;
If chance, by lonely contemplation led.
Some kindred spirit shall inquire thy fate, —
Haply some hoary-headed swain may say,
'Oft have we seen him at the peep of dawn
Brushing with hasty steps the dews awaj',
To meet the sun upon the upland lawn ; 100
'There at the foot of yonder nodding beech
That wreathes its old fantastic roots so high,
His listless length at noon-tide would he stretcli.
And pore upon the brook that babljles by.
'Hard by yon wood, now smiHng as in scorn,
Muttering his way^vard fancies he would rove;
Now drooping, woeful-wan, like one forlorn,
Or crazed with care, or crossed in hopeless love.
'One morn I missed him on the customed hill,
Along the heath, and near his favourite tree; 110
Another came ; nor yet beside the rill,
Nor up the lawn, nor at the wood was ho;
O 2
84 POEMS OF ENGLISH COUNTRY LIFE
'The next Avith dirges due in sad array
Slow through the church-way path we saw him borne,—
Approach and read (for thou canst read) the lay
Graved on the stone beneath yon aged thorn.'
THE EPITAPH
Here rests his head upon the lap of earth
A youth, to fortune and to fame unknown ;
Fair science frowned not on his humble birth,
And melancholy marked him for her own. 120
Large was his bounty, and his soul sincere ;
Heaven did a recompense as largely send :
He gave to misery (all he had) a tear,
He gained from Heaven ('twas all he wished) a friend.
No farther seek his merits to disclose,
Or draw his frailties fi'om their dread abode,
(There they alike in trembling hope repose,)
The bosom of his Father and his God.
T. GRAY.
NOTES
The poet is depicting the varied aspects of a life full of
innocent pleasures : the nj'mphs whom he invokes to give it
are Mirth and Liberty. Foremost among these are the joys
of those dwelling in the country : and Milton takes the
opportunity of describing with short vivid touches the
various scenes that would necessarily strike the eye of
a traveller— a castle among the trees, a set of haymakers
at work, the villagers dancing on the green after the day's
toil is over, &c. It is to be observed that he does not seem
to include among country pleasures the contemplation of the
beauties of nature.
3. quips, properly taunts, and so any form of jest.
cranks. The original sense of the word is ' crooked ' —
hence anything fanciful or fantastic.
4. becks, a bend of the head, by way of salutation.
12. the mountain-nymph. It has become an historical
commonplace to speak of mountain regions as homes of
liberty, and not without reason. A mountainous country
is necessarily more difficult for an invader, and therefore
helps its inhabitants in defending themselves. For instance,
when the Angles and Saxons invaded Britain, they drove
the earlier inhabitants out of the level parts of the island, or
reduced them to slavery; but the Celts were able to maintain
their independence in the hilly regions, in Devon and Corn-
wall, in Wales and in Scotland.
21. then to come, i. e. Mirth is to come. The grammati-
cal constructions throughout the poem are often very loose,
but there is never any doubt as to the meaning.
24. eglantine, properly the sweet-briar. It is suggested
that Milton here uses the word to mean honeysuckle, to which
the epithet 'twi-ted' is exactly appropriate.
86 NOTES
26. rear of darkness. The night is like a retreating
army, and the lively crow of the cock makes a successful
attack on it.
38. dight, pp. of 'to dight'; often taken as an archaic
form of decked.
43. tells his tale, i. e. counts over liis flock. ' Tale,' in the
sense of a number to be reckoned, is now obsolete, though
we may still so use the verb ' to tell.' Both are found in
the Authorized Version of the Bible, which had not been
published many years when Milton wrote this poem ; e.g.
Exod. V. 8, ' the tale of the bricks,' and Ps. xlviii. 12, ' Walk
about Zion . . . and tell the towers thereof.'
47. rvisset lawns. Russet is properly reddish brown
(Fr. 7vux), which is not the colour of grass. Possibly Milton
means that combination of brown and green which may be
seen in a closely mown meadow by morning light. Thomson
(x. 16) speaks of a ' russet haycock,' which would be some-
what of the same shade. Poets, however, have been apt,
until accurate observation of nature became common, to
use colour epithets somewhat loosely. In xiv. 21 Scott
uses the word ' russet ' of a hillside in late autumn,, which is
in closer accordance with the derivation.
56. cynosure, properly the constellation of the Little
Bear, in the tail of which is the pole-star ; then for the pole-
star itself. Then it is used derivatively for anything which
forcibly attracts attention, as the magnetic needle is attracted
to point towards the pole.
70. jocund, joyous (Lat. iucundus), has never been any-
thing but a poetic word.
rebecks. The rebeck (more properly rebec) was an
ancestor of the violin, possibly of Eastern origin. It had
three strings stretched across a body shaped like the half of
a pear, and was played with a bow. In Henry Vlll'sreign
it was an important instniment, and occupied a place in the
State band ; later it declined in dignity, and by Milton's time
was mainly used in rustic meriy-makings.
77-90. The belief in fairies or pixies or ' good people,'
as they are variously called, used to be prevalent in England,
and is still to be found in outlying parts of the country.
The stories, some of which Milton has here collected, repre-
sent them as tiny beings with superhuman powers, somewhat
capricious and mischievous, but often giving assistance if
properly treated, and above all if allowed to do their work
unobserved.
NOTES 87
78. Mab, the queen of the fairies: see Mercutio's speech
in Eomco and Juliet, Act i. sc. 4.
junkets, a preparation of milk and rennet, to which
are added cream and spice or other flavouring ; it belongs
particularly to the west of England. The word originally
meant a kind of cream-cheese which was served on rushes
(Lat. iuncus, Ital. giunco, and so giuncuta). It may Le used
here loosely for any dainty or sweetmeat.
79. pinched and pulled, i. e. by fairy hands.
80. Friar's lantern, the marsh-light or Will of the Wisp.
81-90. One of the commonest legends of the fairies is that
they visit houses or farmsteads in the dark, and if a bowl of
cream is set out for them, work all the night through, and
vanish before cock-crow.
86. lubber, here used as an adjective in the sense of
clumsy or boorish.
fiend, rather loosely used for ' supernatural being.' It
properly implies malevolence (A. S. fednd, an enemy), not
assistance.
96. weeds of peace, i. e. dress suited not for war but
for peace. ' Weeds,' as a word for dress generally, is now
obsolete, except when applied to the dress of a widow. The
word occurs again in xiil. 9.
101. Hymen, the classical god of marriage.
102. saffron, a species of crocus. The pollen, which is
of deep yellow colour, is used for flavouring and colouring.
The bridal veil among the Romans was of this colour.
104. mask, a form of dramatic entertainment, common
in the seventeenth century, especially at weddings, as here.
It had usually little or no plot, and was moi-e in the nature
of a pageant than of a play. Milton's well-known poem of
Comus is a mask, or masqice, as the word in this signification
is now usually spelt.
108. Jonson's leam6d sock. 'Sock' (Lat. scccus) was
a loose shoe. It was worn by comic actors on the Roman
stage, while the colhnrnus, a kind of boot, wa> worn in
tragedy. Hence soccus came to be used as a metai^hor for
comedy. Ben Jonson was a dramatist of the generation
before Milton, and had, as is here implied, carefully studied
the ancient drama.
110. native wood-notes wild. It would seem as if
Shakespeare's originality and independence of classical
models were the characteristics that most struck Milton.
The phrase here used is very appropriate to such plays as
88 NOTES
As YoH Like It, Tlte Tempest, The Midsummer Night's Dream,
though it hardly does justice to Shakespeare's grander
works.
112. lap, i. e. enfold, wrap up. The substantive originally
meant any part of a garment which admitted of being
folded over.
Lydian airs. The music of the Middle Ages did not
employ our modern system of scales, but borrowed from
Greek music what were called modes, i. e. primitive scales
which differed from each other in the relative position of
the semitones. Imagine a pianoforte without any black
notes : then any length of eight notes on it would represent
a mode. One of them, the Lydian mode, consisted of the
eight ' white notes ' from F to F ; it was condemned by
strict musicians as not being sufficiently dignified for
Church -use, and hence came to be regarded as wanton or
luxurious in character. So Milton speaks of melodies written
in this mode as "soft Lydian airs.'
117. heed, i.e. care, pains, or possibly the suffix -hede,
signifying quality or condition, now generally superseded
by the analogous form -hood. The structure of the phrase
makes the former alternative far more probable.
121. The Greek legend is that the singer Orpheus, on the
death of his bride Eurydice, penetrated to the regions of
the dead, and by his music charmed Pluto into allowing
Eurydice to return to earth, on condition that he should
not turn to look at her until they reached the upper world
again. At the last moment of the ascent Orpheus could
bear the suspense no longer, and turned to look behind
him, whereupon Eurydice vanished, and he saw her again
no more.
]]
The Question. This is Shelley's own title for the poem :
the explanation is in the last three words.
9. ■wind-flowers, i. e. anemones. The name is derived
from the Greek "wtfxos, wind. Turner's Herbal (1568) says,
' Anemone hath the name, because the floure never openeth
it selfe, but when the wynde bloweth.' The writer does not
however say who is responsible for this very incorrect piece
of observation.
10-1. Arcturus is a prominent star in the constellation
Bootes, close to the tail of the Great Bear, which in the
NOTES sa
latitude of England never goes below the horizon. The
epithet 'constellated' is given to the daisy because it covers
the grass with groups of white blossoms, as the constellations
cover the sky with groups of stars. The daisy may be
found in blossom all the year round in England, and so is
aptly compared to stars that never set. Shelley repeats this
allusion in vi. 40.
13. that tall flower, probably the daffodil. See a note on
this poem in W. M. Rossetti's edition of Shelley.
17. lush, i. e. growing luxuriantly.
18. moonlight-coloured. The blossoms of the white-
thom have a faint tinge which differs from -white, somewhat
as moonlight differs from pure white light.
26. pranked, i.e. adorned. The flowers of the purple iris
have often great splashes of white on them.
32. sheen, i. e. brightness. The word was also used as an
adjective : see xvii. 33.
37. these imprisoned children is the subject of the
sentence. The flowers in the poet's hand keep the same order
as in their natural gi-owth.
^ IV
2. burgeons every maze of quick. Every tangled quick-
set hedge bursts out into bud.
3. squares, i.e. fields, which are apt to be more or loss
square in shape. Tennyson uses the word in the same
sense elsewhere.
5. rings the woodland, i. e. with the song of the birds.
14. greening gleam, i. e. the sea as seen from a distance.
13. my regret. This is an extract from hi Memoriam,
Tennyson's great poem suggested by the death of his friend
Arthur Hallam.
20. this gaudy melon-flower. Browning was writing in
Italy, where the melon is common. Its flower, like that of
other fruits of the same class, is large and of a rather dull
yellow.
VI
Shelley wrote this poem near Pisa. In the Italian climate
the beginnings of spring appear in February (see 1. 10),
a couple of months on the average earlier than in England.
90 NOTES
With this excei:»tion the poem is as apt a description of
a bright spring day in England as in Italy.
9. halcyon morn. Halcyon is the Greek name of the
kingfisher. There was an ancient belief that there was
a season of calm weather about midwinter, when the halcyon
was brooding. Hence the word came to be used adjectively,
meaning calm and bright.
32-3. The pools formed by the winter rains, which now
reflect the new leaves of the trees overhanging them.
40. the daisy-star : see ii. ii note.
42. join not scent to hue. Shelley means the flowers
which we commonly call dog-violets. They come out in the
early spring, and have no scent.
VII
8. the hoary steed. Until artificial lines were intro-
duced, grey horsehair was the least visible thing to which
flies could be attached.
10. the tortured worm. The poet seems to have more
compassion for the worm than for the trout, which he does
not scruple to hook. A fish caught with a fly, however, will
usually be hooked in the mouth, and will suff"er much less
in having the hook pulled out than if it had swallowed a
worm with a hook inside.
25. Naiads. The name for the nymphs whom the Greeks
supposed to inhabit streams of water. The poet suggests that
those coming from mere brooks would be of correspondingly
small size, and would enjoy the greater space in the river.
The Greek mythology included other kinds of nymphs, e. g.
Oreads in the mountains, Dryads in the trees (see xil. 27).
VIII
6. starry diadems, i. e. their crowns of dewdrops, which
would be shaken off by any breeze.
7. sobbing of the morn— a false metaphor. Dewdrops
might be represented as the tears of the morn, but only as
silent tears.
11. a little noiseless noise, a noise so faint that it is
scarcely perceptible.
24. wings of Mercury. Mercury, the classical messenger
of the gods, was depicted with wings on his heels.
38. chequer, originally a chess-board, which is divided
NOTES 91
into squares alternately dark and light; tlicn anything
showing a pattern of the same type. A young tree, with
thin branches, throws a shadow more or less flecked with
intervals of sunlight.
50. Apollo in classical mythology is the sun, and also
the god of song ; his two capacities are here blended.
57. on tiptoe for a flight. The flower of the sweet pea
much resembles in shape a butterfly with its wings partly
opened, preparing for flight.
67. sallows (Lat. salix, Fr. saule), the willow.
IX
6. hawks are whistling. In the time when hawking
was an established sport, it was not unusual to use hawks in
hunting the deer. The hawk pounced on the stag's head,
blinding it, and so rendering it an easy prey to the dogs.
Hawking went entirely out of fashion during the seven-
teenth century ; thus Scott's song is marked as referring to
bygone times.
Whistling is not a very appropriate word for the ciy of
the hawk.
11. springlets in the dawn are steaming, i. e. the
moisture is evaporating wherever there is any on the ground.
2. tneridian toil, toil at midday (Lat. mendies). This
word as an adjective is only found in poetiy.
10. wide flies the tedded grain. Grass is said to be
t (Jded when, after being mown, it is spread out to dry. The
tedded grain is the ripe grass seeds which would be widely
scattered in the process of tossing about the hay.
35. sordid stream (Lat. sordidus, dirty), dirtied by the
sheep-washing. Trout will not stay in a stream whicli is
artificially defiled. The effects of sheep-washing would of
course pass off quickly.
38. swelling treasures, their fleeces, which as they
dried w-ould cease to cling closely to their bodies.
44. wattled pen. Anything is said to be wattled which
is made by interlacing slips or twigs of wood, such as a
hurdle.
57. the master's cipher. Cipher is properly the arith-
metical symbol for o. Then it came to bo used loosely to
92 NOTES
mean any arithmetical figure (the French equivalent cliiffre
is generally so used), and so for any device, such as inter-
twined initials, engraved or stamped on anything belonging
to the owner.
XI
18. the next swath, the next line of corn to be cut,
which Autumn, represented as a reaper, is for the time
sparing, through having fallen asleep.
25. barred clouds. The sunset clouds arc apt to lie in
bars near the horizon, and their bright colours may be said
to make the dying day bloom. They often throw a rosy
glow on the mountains, sometimes on an open expanse of
ground.
XII
21. tearful Proserpine. According to the Greek mytho-
logy, Persephone or Proserpine, daughter of Demeter goddess
of the earth, was carried otf by force to be the wife of Pluto,
god of the world of the dead.
26. one upon the old oak tree. The poet's observation
is here at fault. The oak retains upon the bough more of its
dead leaves than any other deciduous tree. Many stay on
until the new buds begin to form in the spring.
27. Dryad (Gr. hpvs, an oak), one of the nymphs of
Greek mythology residing in trees, properly in oak trees
(see VII. 25).
XIII
9. weeda, i.e. clothes : see I. 96 note.
XIV
3. linn. This word, which is Scotch rather than English,
may possibly be connected with the Celtic llyn, a lake. It
is used to mean a stream, especially a cataract, and also, as
here, for the steep-sided ravine in which a stream sometimes
flows.
40. the daisy's vanished flower. Sir W. Scott probably
takes the daisy as the typical wild flower, without having
carefully noted its habits. The daisy flowers throughout the
year far north of the Tweed (see also 11. 11 note).
NOTES 93
XV
10. embattled tower, the church tower, having battle-
ments round it. So Macaulay, in the Armada, calls Lancaster
castle ' Gaunt's embattled pile.'
XVI
31. the village clock tolled six. It must be remembered
that the frosty season lasts sometimes very long in the
latitude of the lakes, where Wordsworth wrote. In the
middle of winter six o'clock would be an impossibly late
hour for the ' orange sky ' (1. 46).
35. confederate, i.e. played not singl}', but in 'sides' or
parties.
50-1. reflex of a star that fled. The reflection of a star
in water, or in ice clear enough to reflect at all, seems to move
awa}'- as one approaches, just because it is a reflection : and the
faster one moves, the faster of course it seems to move also.
XVII
7. lol, the midwinter feast of the heathen Danes. The
word, in the form Yule, is still used, especially in Scotland,
for the Christmas season.
13. sable beer. Beer can be brewed of a very dark
colour, though it is not now often done in England.
17. scalds, the bards of the Scandinavian peoples.
23. Odin, also spelt Woden, was the chief Scandinavian
deity. Their mythology represented the future life as spent
in carousing in Odin's hall, in the intervals of fighting and
hunting.
30-1. Christinas Eve was, and is, the only occasion in
all the year when the Roman Catholic Church allows mass
to be said in the evening.
31. kirtle sheen. Kirtle is a short upper garment.
Sheen is the same as ' shining.'
45. ' post and pair,' an ancient card game.
64. waasel, otherwise spelt wassail (A. S. wes hul), the
words used in drinking any one's health : then the liquor
used on such occasions, especially at Christmas time, hot
spiced wine or ale.
65. trowls or ttvUs, i. e. circulates. The verb is used both
transitively and, as here, intransitively.
94 NOTES
74. mumming. The word is probably Danish in origin,
and means 'those who disguise themselves.'
Among other Christmas festivities it has long been the
custom, in many parts of this countiy, that a band of men
should dress up and go round from house to house acting a
kind of rude play. They knock at the door, ask whether the
' mummers ' are wanted, and if the answer is favourable (as
it usually is) they come into the hall or kitchen and begin
their performance as soon as the family is assembled. The
l^lot is always more or less the same. After a short prologue
the hero (usually called St. George or Prince George) is
introduced by the king his father, and boasts to the audience
about his braveiy and his victory over the dragon. Then
comes an enemy (called in the North ' Alexander,' in the
Midlands 'the Turkish knight'), roundly abuses him, and
challenges him to single combat. They fight with wooden
swords until one of the two falls : the other is filled with
remorse, and calls for a doctor, who comes bustling in, makes
a comic speech about his skill, and administers some absurd
cure. The entertainment ends sometimes with a dance,
sometimes with an epilogue, and always with a collection,
after which the mummers go on to the next house and pei'-
form their play over again. The words of one version, called
' Alexander and the king of Egypt,' are printed in Hone's
Every Day Book, vol. ii. pp. 1645-8, and are said to have
been acted in that form at Whitehaven. A shorter version,
called ' St. George and the Turkish knight,' has been fre-
quently witnessed by the present writer in Gloucestershire.
75. mystery. The mystery was an ancient form of rude
play, in which the chaiacters were personified virtues and
vices.
89. the kindred title, i. e. relationship. The Scotch are
noted for acknowledging the ties of kindred in very distant
degrees, more so than most peoples.
103-6. Scott's ancestor sacrificed the little he possessed
in the cau?e of the exiled Stuarts, and vowed, so Scott tells
in a note on this passage, never to shave his beard until they
were restored to the throne.
XVIII
Most of the characteristics of the rivers, as here given,
are to be found in Drayton's Fohjolhion, and also in Spenser's
Faery Queen (iv. 11) in the account of the marriage between
Thames and Medway.
NOTES 95
2. utmoat Tweed, on the extreme northern border of
England.
Ouse. There is more than one river of this name.
This is probably that which flows southward through York,
and helps to form the Humber.
gulphy Dun, the Don, one of the affluents of the
Yorkshire Ouse. Giiliyhy means full of eddies or whirlpools
('It may be that the gulfs will wash us down,' Tennyson) ;
but the epithet is by no means appropriate to the Don,
which is a sluggish stream. It is probable that Milton, who
could not have seen the Don, borrowed the epithet— not
however from Spenser or Drayton, neither of whom men-
tion it.
4. his thii'ty arms. Drayton gives a sort of legend that
the Trent had thirty tributaries, thirty abbeys on its banks,
and produced thirty kinds of fish. This, as he indicates, is
implied in the name (Fr. trente, thirty).
5. that runneth underneath. The Mole disappears
underground near Mickleham. The legend was that the
river burrowed under the hills which tried to prevent its
joining the Thames.
6. guilty of maiden's death. Sabrina, according to
legend, was the daughter of a British king, who was drowned
in the Severn in trying to escape from the enmity of her
stepmother, and gave her name to the river. Milton makes
use of this legend in Conius.
7. rocky Avon. This must be the Somersetshire Avon, the
lower course of which, between Bristol and the Severn, flows
between high rocks. The Clifton Suspension Bridge crosses
it about where the valley is narrowest and the rocks
highest.
sedgy Lee, now spelt Lea, a tributaiy of the Thames
flowing out of Hertfordshire.
8. coaly Tine, now spelt Tyne. Newcastlc-on-Tyne was
the only place from which, in Milton's days, coal was brought
to London.
ancient hallowed Dee. The Dee is believed to have
been a sacred river in the days of Druid worshiij.
9. the Scythian's name. The legend is that more than
a thousand years before the Christian era, a body of Scythians
invaded Britain by way of the Humber estuary and were
defeated, and that the river i-eceived its name from their
leader, who was drowned in it.
10. royal-towered Thame. The final -s is dropped for
96 NOTES
the sake of the rhyme. The royal castle of Windsor is close
to the Thames.
XIX
It is noteworthy how, throughout this poem, the music of
the words suggests the motion and sound of a quick-flowing
brook. Tennyson excelled in this fox-m of verbal mu>ic.
7. thorps, i. e. hamlets, the same word as the German Dorf.
XX
The tide always appears to ebb faster than it comes in.
In a river, at any rate, this is really the case, for the flowing
tide has to overcome the stream, which on the contrary
helps the ebbing tide.
XXI
6. never-bloomless furze. Wliere gorse or furze is
plentiful, its golden flowers may be found all the year
through.
XXIIl
4. burn itself away. This refers to the brilliant red of
the maple leaves when they are withering in autumn, before
falling off.
11. the leaser wain. The constellation of the Great
Bear is also called ' Charles's Wain.' Tennyson here gives
the same name to the Little Bear, in the tail of which is the
pole-star. The Little Bear in the course of the night
seems to describe part of a circle round the pole-star as
centre. Wain is the same word as wagon.
22. glebe, the soil (Lat. qleba, a clod of earth), obsolete
in this sense except in poetry. The word is now technically
used to mean that portion of the land in a parish which
forms the endowment for the clergyman.
£9. thy lost friend. This poem, like iv, is an extract
from In Me>ii(»i'<t)ii.
XXIV
Fountains Abbey, one of the finest of monastic ruins, is
enclosed in the beautiful park of Studley Koyal, near Ripon.
NOTES 97
XXV
The poem from which these stanzas have been taken is
founded on a tale in GlanviFs Vanitie of Dogmatising ' (1661),
which tells how an Oxford scholar was obliged, by pressure
of poverty, to give up his studies, and how he joined a
wandering band of gipsies and adopted their life. Matthew
Arnold has not followed the stoiy in all its details, and has
mainly used it, in these lines, as a thread on which to hang
his description of the scenes near Oxford, and especially of
those which lie on the border of Oxfordshire and Berkshire.
Take a map of the Oxford country and trace along the
road which passes from the city westward, and then south-
westward. About two miles out, across the Berkshire
frontier, stands a piece of rising ground called Cumnor
Hurst (the 'Hurst' of 1. 57), and just beyond it the village
of Cumnor (see 11. 69, loi, and 127), famous for the story
of Amy Robsart (see Sir Walter Scott's Kenihcorth). Another
stretch of two miles or so, in the same direction, leads to
the feny of Bablock-hithe (1. 74), where the ' promontory ' of
Berkshire ends and the traveller crosses into Oxfordshire
again. The forest of Wychwood (1. 79) is in this part of
Oxfordshire, to the west and north-west of Witney.
A few miles south of Bablock-hithe is Fyfield (1. 83^ which
lies almost directly south-west of Oxfoi'd.
Return towards the city until you once more arrive at
Cumnor: then strike away to the right and you will pass
the village of South Hinksey mentioned in 1. 125. The low-
lying fields, often flooded in winter, are still traversed by the
causeway mentioned in 1. 121. Close by South Hinksey runs
the road from Oxford to Abingdon, passing through Bagley
Wood (1. Ill) and near a patch of forest-ground which is
sometimes called Thessaly from its shape (see 1. 115).
So far all the places mentioned have been, with one ex-
ception, to the south and south-west of Oxford. One still
remains, the bridge (1. 91) of Godstow (there is practically
no village) close to the ruined nunnery of Godstow, famous
for the story of Fair Rosamond : this is situated nearly north
of the city, almost two miles distant.
It may be added that the place from which the poem is
supposed to be written is the upland that lies between
Hinksey and Cumnor, from which one of the finest views of
Oxford is to be seen. One of its conspicuous features is the
II
9^ KOTES
Hall of Christ (Jliurch (1. 129), especially in the evening when
the long line of windows is lighted up.
2. wattled. See x. 46 note.
cotes, sheep pens. The Cotswold hills take the first
part of their name from this word.
9. moon-blanclied, pale in the moonlight,
13. crtiise, or cntse, a pitcher. It is the same word as
the German knig and the English crock and crockery. It is
probably of Celtic origin. Cf. ' a little oil in a cruse,' i Kings
xvii. 12.
26. lindens, the lime-tree (Ger. Uncle). The two words
may possibly be originally identical. The modern use of
the word linden is, however, a conscious borrowing from the
German.
37. lore, learning, derived from the Gothic lais, to find
out : compare iron from eisen.
59. ingle-bench, i. e. the bench by the chimney-corner.
The word ingle is of obscure origin ; usually identified with
Gael. Aingeal, fire, light.
Smock-frock, a long white frock which used to be frequently
(and is still sometimes) worn by farmers and farm labourers.
Its name is derived from the A. S. smi'igan, to creep
through a hole, because the wearer has to draw it over his
head and ' creep through' the neckhole.
69. green-muflaed : muff means a warm soft covering,
hence applied to the long grass in the summer fields.
74. stripling Thames, more accurately the Isis.
83. The old May-day customs, and especially the May-day
dance, are still kept up in some parts of Oxfordshire and
Berkshire.
120. the spark from Heaven. For the explanation of
this phrase see 11. 45-50.
XXVI
The Deserted Village is usually reckoned among didactic
poems, those written to set forth the author's opinions on
moral or social questions. Its value, however, lies not in the
poet's views about the evils of wealth and the true sources
of national prosperity, but in his vivid descriptions of
village life.
It is generally said that Auburn is the Irish village in
which Goldsmith's childhood was spent. The description,
however, is rather of English than of Irish scenes, and is not
to be taken as strictly true of any one place. Indeed, it is
NOTES 99
not credible that any village bhould have been deserted, and
its houses left to fall into liteial ruins, in the manner
described.
2. swain. This word, signifying a rustic, and especially
a rustic lover, belongs to the poetry of the seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries, and can scarcely be said to have ever
been in ordinary use.
40. half a tillage. This must not be taken literally.
A rich man might buy up land to extend his own park, in
which case tillage would cease : otherwise he would have
every motive for cultivating the land fully.
58. every x'ood. A rood is literally a quarter of an
acre ; but is here used loosely for a patch of ground.
104. Goldsmith is pleading that the peasant should
remain on his native soil, and he naturally in so doing
ignores the benefits of commerce. It is of course literally
tnie that the miner or the sailor does not work directly for
the peasant ; but it is equally true that without their labour
he could not live the life which the poet desires for him,
140. The character of the village preacher is said to have
been drawn mainly from the author's brother, Henry Gold-
smith, Vicar of Athlone, who died shortly before these lines
were composed. See Forster's Life of Goldsmith, 303.
142. passing, surpassingly, exceedingly. The word is
occasionally used as equivalent to 'passably,' which would
fit the facts of the case here. It is, however, generally
thought that Goldsmith used it in the other sense, of course
ironically.
210. gauge. To gauge is to ascertain, by measurement
and calculation, the amount of liquid contained in a cask or
other vessel.
232. the twelve good rules. A common ornament in
the eighteenth century, in houses of the humbler class, was
a woodcut of the execution of Charles I, with twelve rules
of conduct printed below it, which were supposed to be his.
the royal game of goose wa? a game, now obsolete,
played with counters on a board divided into compartments,
on some of which a goose was painted.
248. mantling bliss : the foaming beer, which gives the
drinkers pleasure. The verb to mantle is used both actively
and also, as here, intransitively, always with a sense of some
kind of covering. For an instance of the first, see 1. 132,
'mantling cresses,' i.e. covering the surface of the brooks.
Here the liquid is mantling, i. e. has a covering of froth.
H2
100 NOTES
307-8. During the eighteenth century many hundreds of
Acts of Parliament were passed, authorizing the enclosure
of commons in various parts of England. On these commons
the peasants had been able to pasture their cattle gratis, in
some cases of right, in others by the tacit permission of the
landowners. Hence the enclosures were a serious loss to
them, and in many cases deprived them of actual rights. It
was not till 1801 that Parliament enacted that no enclosures
should henceforth be made without providing compensation
for these ' rights of common.'
315. brocade, a fabric with a raised pattern, originally
one worked in gold or silver thread.
341-58. This paragrajjh is a very highly coloured descrip-
tion of the terrors of the tropics, and is indeed inapplicable
to any one region : the rattlesnake is peculiar to America,
the tiger is found only in Asia. The name Altama, it is
suggested, is contracted, for the sake of the verse, from
Altamaha, a river in Georgia. That colony, the last of the
English settlements in what are now the United States of
America, was founded a generation before, with objects
mainly benevolent, and a certain number of Plnglish
emigrants had gone there. The southern limit of Georgia
is 30"" N., but the swampy belt along the coast has many
of the drawbacks of the tropics. It is probable enough
that Goldsmith may have heard accounts, perhaps exag-
gerated, of the evils encountered by the early settlers in
Georgia.
357. tornado, from tronada, the Spanish word for a
whirling storm, such as is now called a cyclone. These
storms are not uncommon in tropical I'egions, and often
do much destruction.
S63-84. This description of the exiles' intense grief is
appropriate rather to the Irish than to the English. Few
peoples, if any, have furnished more willing or more capable
emigrants than the J^nglish ; few cling to home more fondly
than the Irish. It should not be forgotten that Goldsmith
was himself an Irishman.
418. Neither of these names is found in the modern map.
Torno, it is suggested, may be altered from Tornea in the
north of Sweden. There is no name even remotely resem-
bling Fanibamarca, but the context imialies that a mountain
near the Equator is intended, probably in the Andes.
419. equinoctial. A slip for 'equatorial,' the regions
about the Equator being on the whole the hottest.
NOTES 101
XXVIII
The authorship of this poem, which Burke considered the
niOft beautiful lyric in the English language, was long
a matter of dispute, the claims put forward being those of
Michael Brace and John Logan, both ministers near Edin-
bui'gh during the latter part of the eighteenth century. It is
now regarded as certain that Logan was the author.
XXXI
19. pent-housed by a brae. A penthouse is a projecting
roof. Brae is a Lowland Scotch word, meaning a steeji bank,
especially one overhanging a stream. It is the same word
as biviv.
XXXIII
6. art thou the Peter of Norway boors ? It was in old
times customary to give pet names to the commoner kinds of
bird. Thus in the sixteenth century the sparrow was called
' Philip ' ; and two other instances survive in ' Robin ' Red-
breast and 'Tom' Tit. Wordsworth here quotes examples
from Norway (' Peter ') and from Finland ('Thomas ') of names
similarly applied by the peasants of those countries.
Boor (Ger. Bauer) originally meant peasant or country-
man. Our idea of roughness or ill manners has become
attached to the word later.
13. this sight, i.e. the sight of the redbreast chasing
a butterfly.
35. in crimson are drest. Tlie butterfly which most
nearly answers this description is the Red Admiral [Vanessa
Atalanta), the wings of which are strongly marked with red
bars. Crimson is not quite an accurate word, either for the
butterfly or for the redbreast ; but colour names are often
used loosely in poetry, even by so close an observer as
Wordsworth.
XXXVI
34. Ifarcissus fair. The Greek fable is that Narcissus
saw his own lace reflected in the water, and fell in love with
it, and at last threw himself in to embrace the reflection, and
was drowned.
XXXVII
25. a little Cyclops. Homer tells how Ulysses in his
wanderings came upon a giant with a single eye in the
102 NOTES
centre of his forehead. Tlie name Cyclops is derived from
two Greek words suggesting this.
XXXVIII
21-4. The meaning of the last stanza is -Man, like the
celandine, is in youth ' a prodigal's favourite,' i. e. is enriched
with every kind of blessing, and in old age is ' a miser's
pensioner,' i. e. must be satisfied with the little he can
enjoy. It is well for a man if in his progress from youth to
age he loses only those things which age can spare without
regret.
XXXIX
6. sophistries, i.e. shallow and fallacious arguments.
The Sophists were Greek teachers of rhetoric, who had
a reputation, not always deserved, for instructing their
pupils ' how to make the worse appear the better reason.'
Hence the word came to be used for those who argued
plausibly but not soundly.
XL
In this ode the feeling for the beauties of nature is
expressed in a deeper and a graver tone. Thomson is
throughout a rustic poet ; he describes the scenes and
events of country life just as they occur, and makes little
or no attempt to draw from them any lesson for the reader's
instruction. Goldsmith uses his Deseiied Village as a text
from which to preach a few simple truths— the dangers of the
race for wealth, the temptations of the town, the blessings
of home, and the pains of exile. But Wordsworth penetrates
more deeply ; to him nature was full of voices in which the
' wisdom and spirit of the universe ' comes into direct com-
munion with the soul. Much of his thought is difficult to
understand, not because it is obscurely expressed (for no
poem in our language is more nobly written), but because it
deals with matters which lie beyond the reach of our ordinary
every-day concerns. It may be well, therefore, to introduce
the ode by a short paraphrase, which shall explain Words-
worth's point of view, and state his meaning without
criticism or commentary on our part. The intention and
doctrine of the poem are briefly as follows : —
When we speak of the soul as immortal we commonly
look forward and think of it as continuing to exist after the
NOTES 103
death of the body. Many writers, however, have understood
immortality in a wider sense, and have taken it to mean not
only that the soul will continue to exist, but that it has
always existed ; not only that it will outlive the body, but that
it was before the body was born. Some such thought we
may find in the last chapter of Ecclesiastes, where the
•writer, speaking of death, says, 'Then shall the dust return
to the earth as it was : and the spirit shall return unto God
who gave it.' The spirit of man, as it will return to
God when we die, so it came from God to be born into
our human life.
When the soul is born into the body it is impeded by all
the errors and imperfections of our mortal nature. Not
that it loses its own spiritual character, but, for the time of
our life on earth, it is obliged to work through our limited
human senses and our limited human experience. And
if this is so, it is possible to hold that the soul is purest
and most free in childhood, before the cares and troubles
and misdoings of our human life have gathered round it.
It is then nearest to God from whom it came, it has a closer
vision of divine truth. In later years it is only at rare
moments that we can recall glimpses of the heaven which
' lies about us_in our infancy,' and can once more become as
little children.
This is the foundation upon which Wordsworth's ode
is built. In the first four stanzas he contrasts the child's
vision of nature ' apparelled in celestial light ' with that
of the grown man to whom this light has partly faded, from
whom ' the glory and the dream' have fled. Nature is just
as beautiful,— the rainbow, the rose, the waters on a starry
night,— but the man's eyes are holden ; he can see the
beauty, but he can no longer find in it the joy of his child-
hood. The fifth stanza, which is the very core and centre
of the ode, describes the coming of the soul from God, its
birth into the body, and how the divine^ light which it
brings from heaven is gradually dimmed in the shades of
our mortal prison-house until
The man perceives it die away,
And fade into the light of common day.
(vi-viii.) The soul, in its life on earth, is like a prince
who has been sent away from his imperial palace to be
brought up in a distant land by a foster-nurse. At fiist he
will remember something of his old home, it will be in his
thoughts even among new pleasures and new occupations ;
104 NOTES
but as the years go on he will recollect it less and less, the
new life will take hold of him, and with ' no unworthy aim '
(for we must all live the life appointed to us) ' the homely
nurse doth all she can ' to make him forget. And so the
very sports of the child are often imitations of the events of
the human life, toys which the foster-nurse has brought him
that he may grow accustomed to his exile. Though he has
still in his'heart the light of God's presence, from whence
he is so lately come, yet ' earth fills her lap with pleasures
of her own,' and the child, 'blindly with his blessedness
at strife,' is content to play with the things of this world
before the years come which shall lay them upon him as
a burden.
(ix-xi.) But the vision of God, though dimmed by the
things of this world, is never wholly lost. Even in our
embers the divine spark yet lives. There are moments when
we feel the reality of the Spirit so strongly that we are led
to question whether * outward things '—those that we can
touch and see— are in the same sense real at all. There are
moments when we feel affections and impulses which are not
of this world, which belong to our true home in heaven, and
which nothing on the earth can ever ' abolish or destroy.'
In them we recollect the presence of God, just as a man
living inland may recollect the sea which brought him to
the coast, and on the shores of which the children are still
playing. True, it is only a memory, not an actual vision :
we no longer see it face to face, but keep it in remembrance.
Yet this memory is ' the fountain-light of all our day,' the
' laith that looks through death.' and waits in confidence
for our return to the ' imperial palace whence we came.' We
shall love nature more, not less, when we realize that nature
is not all, but that there is God behind it. To the soul
which can hold fast the message of the Eternal Mind, every-
thing in nature is full of divine significance.
4. apparelled in celestial light, i.e. clothed in the
spiritual light of which, Wordsworth tells us, childhood has
a clearer vision than that of later years.
12-3. There is a similar thought in Shelley's Skylark
(xxvii. 28-30).
21. tabor, a small drum used in olden days to beat the
time for rustic dances. It generally accompanied a ' pipe,'
which played the melody. See 11. 170-2.
38. jubilee. The Jewish law (Lev. xxv) appointed that
every fiftieth year should be a period of rest and restitution.
NOTES 105
Hence the word is used for any fiftieth annivorsaiy, and
generally, as here, for any occasion of rejoicing.
40. coronal, the crown or garland worn in ancient times
at a festival.
58-78. our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting. The
perceptions of the soul are dulled by its birth into the body.
The direct knowledge of God— the 'light' of which this
stanza speaks — is gradually covered and enclosed by the
growth of human experience. Hence it is fainter in boy-
hood than in infancy, in youth than in boyhood, until ' at
length the man perceives it die away.'
71. from the east, i. e. from the source of the light.
72. priest : because he still sees something of the divine
vision, though less than in earlier years.
78. in her own natural kind, i. e. according to her own
special nature. The word ' kind ' is here used in the same
sense as in Gen. i. 24, ' the living creature after his kind.''
84. imperial palace : see introductory note.
86. pigmy. The Greeks knew of the existence of a race
of dwarfs somewhere in Africa, whom they believed to be
much smaller than they really are, and called Pygmies, from
a word meaning the forearm, which they thought was the
measure of their height. The dwarfish race known as the
Bushmen once occupied a great part of the extreme south of
Africa, but has now greatly dwindled in numbers. Another
such race has been found in the forest region between the
Upper Congo and the great lakes whence the Nile flows.
88. fretted, touched lightly and rapidly, sallies, flights.
102. con means 'to study, peruse, scan,' A. S. cunnian,
to test. Of. ale-conner — ale-tester. Midsummer Nir/hfs Dream,
I. ii. ' Here are your parts, and I am to entreat you to con
them.' Allied to A. S. cunnan, to know (Ger. kemxen).
[Skeat.]
103. humorous, capricious or versatile.
105. equipage, attendance or retinue : so Spenser speaks
of ' The god of war with his fierce eqiiipac/e.'
108-28. The child has not yet lost his inheritance of
divine knowledge, and therefore sees face to face the truths
which men ' are toiling all their lives to find.' To the
turmoil of the world he is ' deaf and silent,' just as men have
grown * blind ' to his vision of the eternal dfep.
141-55. obstinate questionings of sense and outward
things. Wordsworth tells us that in his boyhood he was
often so oviM-powored by the feeling of his spiritual nature
106 NOTES
as to doubt whether the ' outward things ' which he perceived
by his senses had any reality at all. At the time he was
afraid of these ' blank misgivings ' ; in later life he regretted
that they had left him, and welcomed them on the rare
occasions when they returned. The things of the soul have
a higher reality and a deeper truth than the things of the
body, as God has a higher reality than the world which He
has created. To ' question ' the reality of the world, in
whatever way one answers the question, is only possible to
a soul that has come from God. And the same witness is
borne by those 'high instincts' beside which we feel our
mortal nature as ' guilty ' ; by the ' affections ' which can
enable us to treat our 'noisy years' as of little account
beside the 'eternal silence ' ; by the truths of divine origin
which we can never wholly disbelieve or forget. All alike
teach us to know that we have a higher and traer life than
our temporary sojourn in this world.
177-8. the hour of splendour, i.e. the time of child-
hood when the earth ' did seem apparelled in celestial
light.'
181. primal, i.e. belonging to the very essence of the
soul, not derived from anything external to it. It means
that which has existed in us from the first.
188. forebode not any severing of our loves.
Wordsworth means that though the poet can see through
the beauties of nature to the higher reality beyond them,
though he can exchange their ' habitual sway ' for the truer
freedom of the spiritual life, yet he will not love them less.
The flower becomes to him not only a flower, but the symbol
of a spiritual truth.
Forbode. Used loosely in the sense of * foretell ' or ' expect.'
The old word bode means properly to portend, i.e. to give
a reason for expecting : so in Hamlet, ' This bodes some
strange eruption to our state.'
199. palms. Used from ancient times as the symbols of
victory.
XLIV
1. curfew (Fr. coiivrefeu). In the Middle Ages there
was a rule in many places that all fires should be extinguished
by a fixed hour in the evening, announced by the ringing of
a bell. The practice of ringing the bell was continued in
some places after the rule had ceased to be enforced, and so
the word came to be used for any evening bell, as here.
NOTES 107
The introduction of the curfew is usually attributed to
William the Conqueror, but there is no evidence for this.
26. glebe : see xxiii. 22 note.
33. heraldry, properly the system of rules for determining
what coat-of-arnis a man is entitled to use. _ Here the ' boast
of heraldry ' signifies the claim to distinction derived from
ancient birth.
41. storied urn. It was the practice of the Romans, who
burned their dead, to keep the ashes in a closed urn, on
which was inscribed the name, &c., of the deceased.
animated bust, a statue representing the dead as he
was in life.
45-72. The poet suggests that perhaps some of those
buried here might have been great men, for good or for evil,
had their lot not been cast in obscurity— rulers (11. 47,
61-4), poets (1. 48), tyrants (11. 67-8).
57. some village Hampden : some peasant who had the
courage to resist injustice from the great man of the viHage,
as HamiDden withstood Charles I.
59. some mute inglorious Milton : some one who had
the gifts of a great poet like Milton, but did in fact remain
silent, and therefore won no glory.
60. some Cromwell, guiltless : some one capable of
being a great revolutionary soldier and statesman, like
Cromwell, who never had the opportunity, and therefore
never shed the blood of his countrymen.
69-72. The obscurity which prevented some possible
poets from being known saved them also from making
an unworthy use of their talents. In the eighteenth cen-
tury a poor man of letters was dependent on the patronage
of the great, and might be tempted to write against his
conscience, especially in the form of flattery to his patron.
92. in our ashes. From the Roman practice of burning
the dead, the word ashes came to be used in poetry for
the remains of the dead. The line means that even after
we are dead we retain an interest in the world.
93. for thee. The rest of the poem is an anticipation
by Gray of the career of the supposed author of the elegy,
by no means answering to his own prospects.
95. if chance. The expression is elliptical, * If it should
hapjien that.'
119. fair science frowned not. Humble though his
birth was, he had the opportunity of acquiring knowledge.
108 LIST OF POETS
[The following is the list, in alphabetical order, of the
poets from whose works extracts have been taken. A very-
short biographical note is appended to each name.]
Arnold, Matthew (1822-1888) xxv.
Eldest son of Dr. Arnold of Rugby : born at Laleham,
near Staines, and educated at Kugby and Balliol College,
Oxford, He became a Fellow of Oriel, and in 1851 was
appointed to an Inspectorship of Schools. For ten years,
from 1857 t*^ 1867, he was Professor of Poetry at Oxford,
and some of his famous Critical Essays were first delivered
as lectures from that Chair.
Blake, William (1757-1827) XLiii.
Poet and painter: born and educated in London. His
poetic gift showed itself early, and some of his most
beautiful lyrics were written before he was fourteen. He
maintained himself mainly by engraving. The Songs
of Innocence, from which XLlil is taken, were written in
1787 and refused by all publishers; whereupon Blake
engraved the entire book himself, a practice which he
continued for many of his later works.
Browning, Robert (1812-1889) v.
Born in Camberwell : wrote verses before he was six, and
endeavoured, without success, to publish his first volume
before he was twelve. He had little regular education,
but he was always a voluminous reader, and from the
first trained himself for literature. In 1846 he married
Miss Barrett, the poetess, and lived with her for the rest
of her life in Italy. He died at Venice in 1889, and was
buried in Westminster Abbey.
Clare, John (1793-1864) iii, xxx.
The son of a Northamptonshire peasant, he earned as a
ploughboy the pence which paid for his education at the
village school, and on leaving it maintained himself as
a farm-labourer on wages which seem never to have
risen above nine shillings a week. A collected volunTe of
his poems, dealing almost entirely with the scenery and
life of his native district, was published in 1820, and
others later. Towards the end of his life he became insane,
and he died in the Asylum at Northampton.
Coleridge, Samuel Taylor (1772-1834) xxi, xxxii.
Born at his father's vicarage, Ottery St. Mary in
Devonshire : educated at Christ's Hospital (where he
LIST OF POETS 100
was the school-fellow of Charles Lamb), and at Jtvsus
College, Cambridge. He was a close friend of Words-
worth and Southey, with whom his name is generally
associated as a member of the so-called ' Lake School '
of iDoetry. He was a great philosopher as well as a great
poet, and one of the first Englishmen to acquire a thorough
knowledge of German literature.
COWPEK, William (1731-1800) xv, xxii.
Born at his father's rectory, Great Berkhampstead :
educated at Westminster, and in 1754 called to the Bar.
Early in his career he was attacked by a form of religious
melancholy, which so affected his spirits that he was
obliged to give up his profession. In 1765 he went to
live at Olney with his friends the Unwins, who looked
after him until his death. While living with them he
wrote most of his poems : the Olney Hymns (1773-1779),
John Gilpin (1782), The Task (1784) (from which are taken
XV and xxii), and the Translation of Homer.
Elliott, Ebcnezer (1781-1849) xxiv.
Born at Masborough, Rotherham, the son of a workman
in an iron-foundry. He had scarcely any education,
though he wrote verses from boyhood. He was all his
life a strong Radical, and took part in the Chartist move-
ment, and in the agitation against the Corn Laws. His
most famous woi'k is the Corn Law lilu/tnes (1831), a
vigorous protest in favour of repeal. He lived just long
enough to see his cause successful.
Goldsmith, Oliver (1728-1774) xxvi.
Born near Longford in Ireland. His lather in 1730
became Vicar of Lissoy, the village which probably, more
than any other single place, suggested the scenery of
The Deserted Village. Educated at Athlone, Longford, and
Trinity College, Dublin. For some years he led an unsettled
life, and in 1756 reached London in great poverty, and
began to write for the booksellers. His greatest works
were: The Vicar of Wakefield (1766), the two comedies
The Good-natured Man (1767) and She Stoo2)s to Conquer
(1771), and 27ie Deserted Village (published in 1770). He
was the close friend of Johnson, Garrick, Burke, and Sir
Joshua Reynolds.
Gray, Thomas (1716-1771) xliv.
Born in London, educated at Eton and Peterhouse,
Cambridge, a lifelong friend of Horace Walpole. After
no LIST OF POETS
travelling for three years on the Continent he settled
down at Cambridge, where he was appointed Professor
of History and Modern Languages in 1768, and where
he died in 1771. The Elegij in a Country Churchyard
was begun at Stoke Pogis in 1742, but was laid aside, and
not finished until 1750.
Herrick, Robert (1591-1674) xxxiv, xxxv.
Born in London, the son of a goldsmith : educated at
Westminster School and Trinity Hall, Cambridge. In
1629 he became Vicar of Dean Prior in Devonshire, where
he remained till his death, except that, being a royalist,
he was ejected during the Commonwealth. His poems,
which are mostly short and largely lyrical or epigram-
matic, were published under the collective title of
Hesperides in 1648.
Hood, Thomas (1799-1845) xii.
Born and educated in London. His health not being
strong enough for a profession, he supported himself
by literatui-e, and was contributor and editor to several
magazines. His poems were mainly humorous, usually
with a strong element of pathos : the most noted of them
are The Song of the Shirt, The Bridge of Sighs, and Miss
Kilmansegg.
Keats, John (1795-1821) viii, xi.
Born in London and educated for the medical profession,
but abandoned active practice almost immediately, to
devote himself to poetry. His health broke down under
the pressure of domestic troubles, aided by the effect, it is
said, of the contemptuous reviews of his first poems, and
he died at Rome, having been taken to Italy as a last
chance of restoring his health. His poems mark a com-
plete revolt against the conventional methods of the
eighteenth century, and are full of imagination : the
chief of them are Endymion and The Eve of St. Agnes.
Logan, John (1748-1788) xxviii.
Born at Sontra, Fala, Midlothian, and educated at
Musselburgh and Edinburgh University. From 1770 till
his death he was licensed preacher at Haddington.
Milton, John (1608-1674) i, xviii.
Born in London, and educated at St. Paul's School and
at Christ's College, Cambridge. U Allegro and II Pen-
seroso were written soon after he left the University
LIST OF POETS 111
(1632), then came Comus (1634) ^^^ Lycidas (printed
in 1638). Shortly after the appearance of Lycidas he
went abroad for a year, and on returning began to take
part in j^olitical controversy on the parliamentary side.
The most famous of his tracts, Aieopcujitica, -w-as written
in 1644. I" 1649 he was appointed Latin Secretary to the
government of the Commonwealth, an office which he held
until the Restoration. In 1653 or 1654 he became totally
blind. About 1658 he began Famdise Lost, completed
it in 1665, ^"^^ followed it, in 1670, with Paradise Re-
gained (which he regarded as his greatest poem) and
Samson Agonistes.
Scott, Walter (1771-1832) ix, xiv, xvii.
Descended from the great Border family of which the
Duke of Buccleuch is the head. Born and educated
at Edinburgh, he went to the Scotch Bar: but his life
was devoted to literature. His Waverley novels, published
at first anonymously, are the works on which his fame
chiefly depends. His poems were, however, the origin of
his literary reputation, most of them having been publit^hed
before Waverley. Marmiou, from which xiv and xvii
are extracted, aj^peared in 1808.
SuAKESPEARE, William (1564 1616) XLI.
Born and educated at Stratford-on-Avon, where his
father was a prosi^erous trader. In 1586 he went up
to London, and maintained himself first as an actor, and
then as a dramatic author. From 1591 to J 597 he was
employed in revising and amending the works of other
playwrights; in 1597 he published Lore's Labour's Lout,
his first independent play, and from thence to 1611 the
rest of his dramas, the latest of which were probably
The Winter's Tale and The Tenq^est. In 161 1 he re-
turned to Stratford, where he spent the last five years
of his life. He was unquestionably recognized as the
greatest dramatist of his day— in the year 1613 alone no
less than seven of his plays were performed in London —
but it was not until long after his death that the full
value and meaning of his work began to be understood.
Shelley, Percy Bysshe (1792-1822) 11, vi, xxvii.
Son of Sir Timothy Shelley, Bart. : born at Field Place,
near Horsham, and educated at Eton and University
College, Oxford. In 1814 he left England and settled
in Italy, where he remained for the rest of his life. In
112 LIST OF POETS
1822 he was drowned off the coast near Viareggio, and was
buried at Rome.
SOUTHEY, Robert (1774-1843) XX, XXXIX.
Son of a linendraper : born in Bristol, and educated
at Westminster and at Balliol College, Oxford. His
republican sympathies gained him the friendship of Cole-
ridge, and for some time the two lived together in Bristol,
where Southey wrote his. first two important works, Joan
of Arc and Thalaha. A few years later he removed to
Greta in Cumberland, where he resided for the rest of his
life, writing almost continuously both poetry and prose.
In 1813, at the suggestion of Sir Walter Scott, he was
made Poet Laureate.
Tennyson, Alfred (1809-1892) iv, xix, xxiii.
Son of a clergyman : born at Somersby in Lincolnshire :
educated first at home, and afterwards at Trinity College,
Cambridge. He devoted himself early to poetry, and
began publishing at the age of twenty-one. In 1850, on
the death of Wordsworth, he was made Poet Laureate ;
and in the same year published In Memoriam, a reflec-
tive elegiac poem suggested by the death of his friend
Arthur Hallam. It is from this poem that IV and xxiii
are taken.
Thomson, James (1700-1748) vii, x, xxxvi.
Son of a Scottish minister on the Border : educated
at Edinburgh, and went up to London at twenty-five to seek
his fortune in literature. His Se«so«s (1726-1730) are his
principal work, and may reasonably be said to be the
beginning of nature-poetry in England.
Wordsworth, William (1770-1850) xiii, xvi, xxix, xxxi
XXXIII, XXXVII, XXXVIII, XL.
Son of a lawyer : born at Cockermouth, and educated at
Hawkshead and at St. John's College, Cambridge. Like
Coleridge and Southey he was an ardent republican in
early life, and he visited France in 1791-2, the years
in which the monarchy was overthrown. Prom 1793
to 1799 he spent much of his time in travelling, partly in
England, partly on the Continent ; after this he settled
down near Grasmere, where his life passed almost without
event, until in 1843, though seventy-three years of age,
he accepted the Laureateship, vacated by the death of
his Iriend Southey.
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