A lonely Wordsworth, from the crowd
Half hid in light, half veiled in cloud?
A sphere-born Milton, cold and proud,
In hallowing dews
Dipt, and with gorgeous ritual vowed
Unto the Muse?
Nay, none of these,-and little skilled
On heavenly heights to sing and build!
Thine, thine, O Earth, whose fields he tilled,
And thine alone,
Was he whose fiery heart lies stilled
'Neath yonder stone.
No mystic torch through Time he bore,
No virgin veil from Life he tore;
His soul no bright insignia wore
He saw what all men see-no more
In heaven and earth:
But as, when thunder crashes nigh,
All darkness opes one flaming eye,
And the world leaps against the sky,-
So fiery-clear
Did the old truths that we pass by
HE old rude church, with bare, bald tower, is here;
Beneath its shadow high-born Rotha flows; Rotha, remembering well who slumbers near, And with cool murmur lulling his repose.
Rotha, remembering well who slumbers near.
His hills, his lakes, his streams are with him yet.
Surely the heart that read her own heart clear
Nature forgets not soon: 't is we forget.
Poet who sleepest by this wandering wave!
When thou wast born, what birth-gift hadst thou then?
To thee what wealth was that the Immortals gave,
The wealth thou gavest in thy turn to men?
Not Milton's keen, translunar music thine;
Not Shakespeare's cloudless, boundless human view; Not Shelley's flush of rose on peaks divine; Nor yet the wizard twilight Coleridge knew.
What hadst thou that could make so large amends
For all thou hadst not and thy peers possessed,
Motion and fire, swift means to radiant ends?—
Thou hadst, for weary feet, the gift of rest.
From Shelley's dazzling glow or thunderous haze,
From Byron's tempest-anger, tempest-mirth,
Men turned to thee and found—not blast and blaze,
Tumult of tottering heavens, but peace on earth.
Nor peace that grows by Lethe, scentless flower,
There in white languors to decline and cease;
But peace whose names are also rapture, power,
Clear sight, and love: for these are parts of peace.
OETHE in Weimar sleeps, and Greece,
Long since, saw Byron's struggle cease.
But one such death remained to come:
The last poetic voice is dumb-
We stand to-day by Wordsworth's tomb.
When Byron's eyes were shut in death,
We bowed our head and held our breath.
He taught us little; but our soul
Had felt him like the thunder's roll.
With shivering heart the strife we saw
Of passion with eternal law;
And yet with reverential awe
We watched the fount of fiery life
Which served for that Titanic strife.
And Wordsworth!-Ah, pale ghosts, rejoice!
For never has such soothing voice
Been to your shadowy world conveyed,
Since erst, at morn, some wandering shade
Heard the clear song of Orpheus come
Through Hades, and the mournful gloom.
Wordsworth has gone from us and ye,
Ah, may ye feel his voice as we!
He too upon a wintry clime
Had fallen-on this iron time
Of doubts, disputes, distractions, fears.
He found us when the age had bound
Our souls in its benumbing round;
He spoke, and loosed our heart in tears.
He laid us as we lay at birth
On the cool flowery lap of earth,
Smiles broke from us and we had ease;
The hills were round us, and the breeze
Went o'er the sun-lit fields again;
Our foreheads felt the wind and rain.
Our youth returned; for there was shed
On spirits that had long been dead,
Spirits dried up and closely furled,
The freshness of the early world.
Ah! since dark days still bring to light
Man's prudence and man's fiery might,
Time may restore us in his course
Goethe's sage mind and Byron's force;
But where will Europe's latter hour
Again find Wordsworth's healing power?
Others will teach us how to dare,
And against fear our breast to steel;
Others will strengthen us to bear-
But who, ah! who, will make us feel?
The cloud of mortal destiny,
Others will front it fearlessly-
But who, like him, will put it by?
Keep fresh the grass upon his grave,
Oh Rotha, with thy living wave!
Sing him thy best! for few or none
Hear thy voice right, now he is gone.
YRON lay, lazily lay,
Hid from lesson and game away,
Dreaming poetry, all alone,
Up-a-top of the Peachey stone.
All in a fury enters Drury,
Sets him grammar and Virgil due;
Poets shouldn't have, shouldn't have, shouldn't have, Poets shouldn't have work to do.
Peel stood, steadily stood,
Just by the name in the carven wood,
Reading rapidly, all at ease,
Pages out of Demosthenes.
"Where has he got to? Tell him not to!"
All the scholars who hear him, cry,
"That's the lesson for, lesson for, lesson for,
That's the lesson for next July!"
Peel could never, you needs must own,
Rhyme one rhyme on the Peachey stone;
Byron never his task have said
Under the panel where PEEL is read.
"Even a goose's brain has uses
Cricketing comrades argue thus-
"Will they ever be, ever be, ever be,
Will they ever be boys like us?"
Byron lay, solemnly lay,
Dying for freedom, far away;
Peel stood up on the famous floor,
Ruled the people and fed the poor;
None so narrow the range of Harrow;
Welcome poet and statesman too;
Doer and dreamer, dreamer, dreamer,
Doer and dreamer, dream and do!
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