Beheld what I had fear'd to see,
Unwilling to surrender
Dreams treasured up from early days,
The holy and the tender.
And what, for this frail world, were all
That mortals do or suffer,
Did no responsive harp, no pen,
Memorial tribute offer?
Yea, what were mighty Nature's self?
Her features could they win us,
Unhelp'd by the poetic voice
That hourly speaks within us?
Nor deem that localized Romance
Play false with our affections;
Unsanctifies our tears-made sport
For fanciful dejections :
Ah, no! the visions of the past
Sustain the heart in feeling
Life as she is our changeful Life,
With friends and kindred dealing.
Bear witness, Ye, whose thoughts that day
In Yarrow's groves were center'd;
Who through the silent portal arch
Of mouldering Newark enter'd;
And clomb the winding stair that once
Too timidly was mounted
By the 'Last Minstrel' (not the last !)
Ere he his Tale recounted.
Flow on for ever, Yarrow Stream!
Fulfil thy pensive duty,
Well pleased that future bards should chant
For simple hearts thy beauty;
To dream-light dear while yet unseen,
Dear to the common sunshine,
And dearer still, as now I feel,
To memory's shadowy moonshine!
On the departure of Sir Walter Scott from Abbotsford for Naples. [1831 A TROUBLE, not of clouds, or weeping rain, Nor of the setting sun's pathetic light Engender'd, hangs o'er Eildon's triple height; Spirits of Power, assembled there, complain For kindred Power departing from their sight; While Tweed, best pleased in chanting a blithe strain,
Saddens his voice again, and yet again.
Lift up your hearts, ye Mourners! for the might
Of the whole world's good wishes with him goes;
Blessings and prayers in nobler retinue
Than sceptred king or laurell'd conqueror knows,
Follow this wondrous Potentate.
Be true,
Ye winds of ocean, and the midland sea,
Wafting your Charge to fair Parthenope!
Extempore Effusion upon the Death of
James Hogg.
WHEN first, descending from the moorlands,
I saw the Stream of Yarrow glide
Along a bare and open valley,
The Ettrick Shepherd was my guide.
When last along its banks I wander'd,
Through groves that had begun to shed
Their golden leaves upon the pathways,
My steps the Border-minstrel led.
The mighty Minstrel breathes no longer,
'Mid mouldering ruins low he lies;
And death upon the braes of Yarrow,
Has closed the Shepherd-poet's eyes :
Nor has the rolling year twice measured,
From sign to sign, its steadfast course,
Since every mortal power of Coleridge
Was frozen at its marvellous source;
The rapt One, of the godlike forehead,
The heaven-eyed creature sleeps in earth:
And Lamb, the frolic and the gentle,
Has vanish'd from his lonely hearth.
Like clouds that rake the mountain-summits,
Or waves that own no curbing hand,
How fast has brother follow'd brother,
From sunshine to the sunless land!
Yet I, whose lids from infant slumber
Were earlier raised, remain to hear
A timid voice, that asks in whispers,
"Who next will drop and disappear?"
Our haughty life is crown'd with darkness,
Like London with its own black wreath,
On which with thee, O Crabbe! forth-looking
I gazed from Hampstead's breezy heath,
As if but yesterday departed,
Thou too art gone before; but why,
O'er ripe fruit, seasonably gather'd,
Should frail survivors heave a sigh?
Mourn rather for that holy Spirit,
Sweet as the spring, as ocean deep;
For Her who, ere her summer faded,
Has sunk into a breathless sleep.
No more of old romantic sorrows,
For slaughter'd Youth or love-lorn Maid!
With sharper grief is Yarrow smitten,
And Ettrick mourns with her their Poet dead.
COLERIDGE.
To William Wordsworth,
Composed on the night after his recitation
of a Poem on the growth of an
individual mind.
FRIEND of the wise! and teacher of the good!
Into my heart have I received that lay
More than historic, that prophetic lay
Wherein (high theme by thee first sung aright)
Of the foundations and the building up
Of a Human Spirit thou hast dar'd to tell
What may be told, to the understanding mind
Revealable; and what within the mind
By vital breathings secret as the soul
Of vernal growth, oft quickens in the heart
Thoughts all too deep for words !-
An Orphic song indeed,
A song divine of high and passionate thoughts
To their own music chanted!
Ere yet that last strain dying awed the air,
With steadfast eye I view'd thee in the choir
Of ever-enduring men. The truly great
Have all one age, and from one visible space
Shed influence! They, both in power and act,
Are permanent, and Time is not with them,
Save as it worketh for them, they in it.
Nor less a sacred roll, than those of old,
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