(ON THE BANKS OF THE DERWENT).
PASTOR and Patriot! at whose bidding rise
These modest Walls, amid a flock that need
For one who comes to watch them and to feed
A fixed Abode, keep down presageful sighs.
Threats which the unthinking only can despise,
Perplex the Church; but be thou firm, be true
To thy first hope, and this good work pursue,
Poor as thou art. A welcome sacrifice
Dost Thou prepare, whose sign will be the smoke
Of thy new hearth; and sooner shall its wreaths,
Mounting while earth her morning incense breathes,
From wandering fiends of air receive a yoke,
And straightway cease to aspire, than God disdain
This humble tribute as ill-timed or vain.
(LANDING AT THE MOUTH OF THE DERWENT, WORKINGTON.4)
DEAR to the Loves, and to the Graces vowed,
The Queen drew back the wimple that she wore ;
And to the throng how touchingly she bowed
That hailed her landing on the Cumbrian shore ;
Bright as a Star (that, from a sombre cloud
Of pine-tree foliage poised in air, forth darts,
When a soft summer gale at evening parts
The gloom that did its loveliness enshroud)
She smiled; but Time, the old Saturnian Seer,
Sighed on the wing as her foot pressed the strand,
With step prelusive to a long array
Of woes and degradations hand in hand,
Weeping captivity, and shuddering fear
Stilled by the ensanguined block of Fotheringay!
RANGING the Heights of Scawfell or Black-coom,
In his lone course the Shepherd oft will pause,
And strive to fathom the mysterious laws
By which the clouds, arrayed in light or gloom,
On Mona settle, and the shapes assume
Of all her peaks and ridges. What He draws
From sense, faith, reason, fancy, of the cause
He will take with him to the silent tomb :
Or, by his fire, a Child upon his knee,
Haply the untaught Philosopher may speak
Of the strange sight, nor hide his theory
That satisfies the simple and the meek,
Blest in their pious ignorance, though weak
To cope with Sages undevoutly free.
AT SEA OFF THE ISLE OF MAN.
BOLD words affirmed, in days when faith was
That no adventurer's bark had power to gain
These shores if he approached them bent on wrong; For, suddenly up-conjured from the Main,
Mists rose to hide the Land that search, though
And eager, might be still pursued in vain.
O Fancy, what an age was that for song!
That age, when not by laws inanimate,
As men believed, the waters were impelled,
The air controlled, the stars their courses held,
But element and orb on acts did wait
Of Powers endued with visible form, instinct
With will, and to their work by passion linked.
DESIRE we past illusions to recall?
To reinstate wild Fancy would we hide
Truths whose thick veil Science has drawn aside.
No,-let this Age, high as she may, install
In her esteem the thirst that wrought man's fall,
The universe is infinitely wide,
And conquering Reason, if self-glorified,
Can nowhere move uncrossed by some new wall
Or gulf of mystery, which thou alone,
Imaginative Faith! canst overleap,
In progress toward the fount of Love,-the throne
Of Power, whose ministering Spirits records keep
Of periods fixed, and laws established, less
Flesh to exalt than prove its nothingness.
|