The vivid flashes of his spoken words. From the most gentle creature nursed in fields Had been derived the name he bore-a name, Wherever christian altars have been raised, Hallowed to meekness and to innocence; And if in him meekness at times gave way, Provoked out of herself by troubles strange, Many and strange, that hung about his life; Still, at the centre of his being, lodged A soul by resignation sanctified: And if too often, self-reproached, he felt That innocence belongs not to our kind, A power that never ceased to abide in him, Charity, 'mid the multitude of sins That she can cover, left not his exposed To an unforgiving judgment from just Heaven. O, he was good, if e'er a good Man lived!
From a reflecting mind and sorrowing heart Those simple lines flowed with an earnest wish, Though but a doubting hope, that they might serve Fitly to guard the precious dust of him
Whose virtues called them forth. That aim is missed;
For much that truth most urgently required Had from a faltering pen been asked in vain : Yet, haply, on the printed page received, The imperfect record, there, may stand unblamed As long as verse of mine shall breathe the air Of memory, or see the light of love.
Thou wert a scorner of the fields, my Friend, But more in show than truth; and from the fields, And from the mountains, to thy rural grave Transported, my soothed spirit hovers o'er Its green untrodden turf, and blowing flowers; And taking up a voice shall speak (tho' still Awed by the theme's peculiar sanctity Which words less free presumed not even to touch) Of that fraternal love, whose heaven-lit lamp From infancy, through manhood, to the last Of threescore years, and to thy latest hour, Burnt on with ever-strengthening light, enshrined Within thy bosom.
"Wonderful' hath been The love established between man and man, 'Passing the love of women;' and between Man and his help-mate in fast wedlock joined Through God, is raised a spirit and soul of love Without whose blissful influence Paradise Had been no Paradise; and earth were now A waste where creatures bearing human form, Direst of savage beasts, would roam in fear, Joyless and comfortless. Our days glide on;
And let him grieve who cannot choose but grieve That he hath been an Elm without his Vine, And her bright dower of clustering charities, That, round his trunk and branches, might have clung Enriching and adorning. Unto thee, Not so enriched, not so adorned, to thee Was given (say rather thou of later birth Wert given to her) a Sister-'tis a word Timidly uttered, for she lives, the meek, The self-restraining, and the ever-kind; In whom thy reason and intelligent heart Found-for all interests, hopes, and tender cares, All softening, humanising, hallowing powers, Whether withheld, or for her sake unsought- More than sufficient recompence!
(What weakness prompts the voice to tell it here?) Was as the love of mothers; and when years, Lifting the boy to man's estate, had called The long-protected to assume the part Of a protector, the first filial tie
Was undissolved; and, in or out of sight, Remained imperishably interwoven With life itself. Thus, 'mid a shifting world, Did they together testify of time
And season's difference-a double tree With two collateral stems sprung from one root; Such were they-such thro' life they might have been In union, in partition only such;
Otherwise wrought the will of the Most High; Yet, thro' all visitations and all trials,
Still they were faithful; like two vessels launched From the same beach one ocean to explore With mutual help, and sailing-to their league True, as inexorable winds, or bars Floating or fixed of polar ice, allow.
But turn we rather, let my spirit turn With thine, O silent and invisible Friend! To those dear intervals, nor rare nor brief, When reunited, and by choice withdrawn From miscellaneous converse, ye were taught That the remembrance of foregone distress, And the worse fear of future ill (which oft Doth hang around it, as a sickly child Upon its mother) may be both alike Disarmed of power to unsettle present good So prized, and things inward and outward held In such an even balance, that the heart Acknowledges God's grace, his mercy feels, And in its depth of gratitude is still.
O gift divine of quiet sequestration! The hermit, exercised in prayer and praise,
Shall Southey feed upon your precious lore, To works that ne'er shall forfeit their renow Adding immortal labours of his own— Whether he traced historic truth, with zeal For the State's guidance, or the Church's was!, Or Fancy, disciplined by studious art, Inform'd his pen, or wisdom of the heart, Or judgments sanctioned in the Patriot's mind By reverence for the rights of all mankind. Wide were his aims, yet in no human breast Could private feelings meet for holier rest. His joys, his griefs, have vanished like a cloud From Skiddaw's top; but he to heaven was Through his industrious life, and Christian faith Calmed in his soul the fear of change and death
Now, while the birds thus sing a joyous song, And while the young lambs bound 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 hear the Echoes through the mountains throng, The Winds come to me from the fields of sleep, And all the earth is gay;
Give themselves up to jollity,
And with the heart of May
Doth every Beast keep holiday;
Thou Child of Joy,
Shout round me, let me hear thy shouts, thou happy
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,
The fulness of your bliss, I feel-I feel it all. Oh evil day! if I were sullen While Earth herself is adorning, This sweet May-morning, And the Children are culling
In a thousand valleys far and wide, Fresh flowers; while the sun shines warm,
And the Babe leaps up on his Mother's arm :- I hear, I hear, with joy I hear! -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, our life's Star, Hath had elsewhere its setting,
And cometh from afar: Not in entire forgetfulness, And not in utter nakedness, But trailing 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 Boy,
But He beholds the light, and whence it flows, He sees it in his joy;
The Youth, who daily farther from the east
Must travel, still is Nature's Priest,
Behold the Child among his new-born blisses, A six years' Darling of a pigmy size ! See, where '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, Some fragment from his dream of human life, Shaped by himself with newly-learned art; A wedding or a festival, A mourning or a funeral;
And this hath now his heart, And unto this he frames his song: Then will he fit his tongue
To dialogues of business, love, or strife; But it will not be long
Ere this be thrown aside,
And with new joy and pride
The little Actor cons another part; Filling 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 semblance doth belie Thy Soul's immensity;
Thou best Philosopher, who yet dost keep Thy heritage, thou Eye among the blind, That, deaf and silent, read'st the eternal deep, Haunted for ever by the eternal mind,— 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
O joy! that in our embers Is something that doth live, 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; But for those obstinate questionings Of sense and outward things, Fallings from us, vanishings;
Blank misgivings of a Creature Moving about in worlds not realised, High instincts before which our mortal Nature Did tremble like a guilty Thing surprised: But for those first affections, Those shadowy recollections, Which, be they what they may,
Are yet the fountain light of all our day, 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!
Hence in a season of calm weather Though inland far we be,
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 waters rolling evermore.
Then sing, ye Birds, sing, sing a joyous song! And let the young Lambs bound
As to the tabor's sound!
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!
And O, ye Fountains, Meadows, Hills, and Groves, Forebode not any severing of our loves!
Yet in my heart of hearts I feel your might;
I only have relinquished one delight
To live beneath your more habitual sway.
I love the Brooks which down their channels fret, Even more than when I tripped lightly as they;
What though the radiance which was once so bright The innocent brightness of a new-born Day 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; In the primal sympathy
Which having been must ever be; In the soothing thoughts that spring Out of human suffering;
In the faith that looks through death, In years that bring the philosophic mind.
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, 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.
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