FOOTNOTES:

FOOTNOTES:[1]This poem, published in 1829, was dedicated to Dr Henry Law, the Bishop of Bath and Wells.[2]Of blank verse of the kind to which I have alluded, I am tempted to give a specimen:—"'Twas summer, and we sailed to GreenwichinA four-oared boat. The sun was shining,andThe scenes delightful; while we gazedonThe river winding, till we landedatThe Ship."[3]Baxter's "Saints' Rest."

[1]This poem, published in 1829, was dedicated to Dr Henry Law, the Bishop of Bath and Wells.

[2]Of blank verse of the kind to which I have alluded, I am tempted to give a specimen:—"'Twas summer, and we sailed to GreenwichinA four-oared boat. The sun was shining,andThe scenes delightful; while we gazedonThe river winding, till we landedatThe Ship."

[2]Of blank verse of the kind to which I have alluded, I am tempted to give a specimen:—

"'Twas summer, and we sailed to GreenwichinA four-oared boat. The sun was shining,andThe scenes delightful; while we gazedonThe river winding, till we landedatThe Ship."

[3]Baxter's "Saints' Rest."

PART FIRST.

Introduction—Retrospect—General view—Cave—Bones—Brief sketch of events since the deposit—Egypt—Druid—Roman—Saxon—Dane—Norman—Hill—Campanula—Bleadon—Weston—Steep Holms—Solitary flower on Steep Holms, the Peony—Flat Holms—Three unknown graves—Sea—Sea treacherous in its tranquillity—Mr Elton's children—Packet-boat sunk.

PART SECOND.

First sound of the sea—First sight of the sea—Mother—Children—Uphill parsonage—Father—Wells clock—Clock figure—Contrast of village manners—Village maid—Rural nymph before the justices—State of agricultural districts—Cause of crime—Workhouse girl—Manufactory ranters—Prosing parson—Prig parson—Calvinistic commentators,etc.—Anti-moral preaching—True and false piety—Crimes passed over by anti-moral preachers—Bible, without note or comment—English Juggernaut—Village picture of Coombe—Village-school children, educated by Mrs P. Scrope—Annual meeting on the lawn of 140 children—Old nurse—Benevolence of English landlords—Poor widow and daughter—Stourhead—Ken at Longleat—Marston house—Early travels in Switzerland—Compton house—Clergyman's wife—Village clergyman.

PART THIRD.

A tale of a Cornish maid—Her prayer-book—Her mother—Widow and son—Tales of sea life—Phantom-ship of the Cape.

PART FOURTH.

Solitary sea—Ship—Sea scenes of Southampton contrasted—Solitary sand—Young Lady—Severn—Walton Castle—Picture of Bristol—Congresbury—Brockley-Coombe—Fayland—Cottage—Poor Dinah—Goblin-Coombe—Langford court—Mendip lodge—Wrington—Blagdon—Author of the tune of "Auld Robin Gray"—Auld Robin Gray—Auld Lang Syne.

PART FIFTH.

Lang syne—Return to the Deluge—Vision of the Flood—Archangel—Trump—Voice—Phantom-horse—Dove of the Ark—Dove ascending—Conclusion.

If, gazing from this eminence, I wake,With thronging thoughts, the harp of poesyOnce more, ere night descend, haply with tonesFainter, and haply with a long farewell;If, looking back upon the lengthened wayMy feet have trod, since, long ago, I leftThose well-known shores, and when mine eyes are filledWith tears, I take the pencil in its turn,And shading light the landscape spread below,So smilingly beguile those starting tears;10Something, the feelings of the human heart—Something, the scene itself, and something more—A wish to gratify one generous mind—May plead for pardon.To this spot I cameTo view the dark memorials of a world[4]Perished at the Almighty's voice, and swept17With all its noise away! Since then, unmarked,In that rude cave those dark memorials lay,And told no tale!Spirit of other times,Sad shadow of the ancient world, come forth!Thou who has slept four thousand years, awake!Rise from the cavern's last recess, and say,What giant cleft in twain the neighbouring rocks,[5]Then slept for ages in vast Ogo's Cave,[6]And left them rent and frowning from that hour;Say, rather, when the stern Archangel stood,Above the tossing of the flood, what armShattered this mountain, and its hollow chasm30Heaped with the mute memorials of that doom!Spirit of other times, thou speakest not!Yet who could gaze a moment on that wreckOf desolation, but must pause to thinkOf the mutations of the globe—of time,Hurrying to onward spoil—of his own life,Swift passing, as the summer light, away—Of Him who spoke, and the dread storm went forth.The surge came, and the surge went back, and there—There—when the black abyss had ceased to roar,40And waters, shrinking from the rocks and hills,Slept in the solitary sunshine—thereThe bones that strew the inmost cavern lay:And when forgotten centuries had passed,And the gray smoke went up from villages,And cities, with their towers and temples, shone,And kingdoms rose and perished—there they lay!The crow sailed o'er the spot; the villagerPlodded to morning toil, yet undisturbed49They lay:—when, lo! as if but yesterdayThe Archangel's trump had thundered o'er the deepThe mighty shade of ages that are passedTowers into light! Say, Christian, is it true,That dim recess, that cavern, heaped with bones,Will echo to thy Bible!But a whileHere let me stand, and gaze upon the scene;That headland, and those winding sands, and markThe morning sunshine, on that very shoreWhere once a child I wandered. Oh! return,60(I sigh) return a moment, days of youth,Of childhood,—oh, return! How vain the thought,Vain as unmanly! yet the pensive Muse,Unblamed, may dally with imaginings;For this wide view is like the scene of life,Once traversed o'er with carelessness and glee,And we look back upon the vale of years,And hear remembered voices, and behold,In blended colours, images and shadesLong passed, now rising, as at Memory's call,70Again in softer light.I see thee not,Home of my infancy—I see thee not,Thou fane that standest on the hill alone,[7]The homeward sailor's sea-mark; but I viewBrean Down beyond; and there thy winding sands,Weston; and, far away, one wandering ship,Where stretches into mist the Severn sea.There, mingled with the clouds, old Cambria drawsIts stealing line of mountains, lost in haze;80There, in mid-channel, sit the sister holms,[8]Secure and tranquil, though the tide's vast sweep,82As it rides by, might almost seem to riveThe deep foundations of the earth again,Threatening, as once, resistless, to ascendIn tempest to this height, to bury hereFresh-weltering carcases!But, lo, the Cave!Descend the steps, cut rudely in the rock,Cautious. The yawning vault is at our feet!90Long caverns, winding within caverns, spreadOn either side their labyrinths; all dark,Save where the light falls glimmering on huge bones,In mingled multitudes. Ere yet we askWhose bones, and of what animals they formedThe structure, when no human voice was heardIn all this isle; look upward to the roofThat silent drips, and has for ages dripped,From which, like icicles, the stalactitesDepend: then ask of the geologist,100How nature, vaulting the rude chamber, scoopedIts vast recesses; he with learning vastWill talk of limestone rock, of stalactites,And oolites, and hornblende, and graywacke—With sounds almost as craggy as the rockOf which he speaks—feldspar, and gneis, and schorl!But let us learn of this same troglodyte,[9]Who guides us through the winding labyrinth,The erudite "Professor" of the cave,Not of the college; stagyrite of bones.110He leads, with flickering candle, through the heapsHimself has piled, and placed in various forms,Grotesque arrangement, while the cave itselfSeems but his element of breathing! Look!114This humereus is that of the wild ox.The very candle, as with sympathy,Flares while he speaks, in glimmering wonderment!But who can mark these visible remains,Nor pause to think how awful, and how true,The dread event they speak! What monuments120Hath man, since then, the lord, the emmet, raisedOn earth! He hath built pyramids, and said,Stand there! and in their solitude they stood,Whilst, like the camel's shadow on the sandsBeneath them years and ages passed. He said,My name shall never die! and like the GodOf silence,[10]with his finger on his lip,Oblivion mocked, then pointed to a tomb,'Mid vast and winding vaults, without a name.Where art thou, Thebes? The chambers of the dead130Echo, Behold! and twice ten thousand men,Even in their march of rapine and of blood,Involuntary halted,[11]at the sightOf thy majestic wreck, for many, a league—Sphynxes, colossal fanes, and obelisks—Pale in the morning sun! Ambition sighedA moment, and passed on. In this rude isle,The Druid altars frowned; and still they stand,As silent as the barrows at their feet,Yet tell the same stern tale. Soldier of Rome,140Art thou come hither to this land remoteHid in the ocean-waste? Thy chariot wheelsRung on that road below![12]—Cohorts, and turms,With their centurions, in long file appear,Their golden eagles glittering to the sun,O'er the last line of spears; and standard-flags146Wave, and the trumpets sounding to advance,And shields, and helms, and crests, and chariots, markThe glorious march of Cæsar's soldiery,Firing the gray horizon! They are passed!150And, like a gleam of glory, perishing,Leave but a name behind! So passes man,An armed spectre o'er a field of blood,And vanishes; and other armed shadesPass by, red battle hurtling as they pass.The Saxon kings have strewed their palacesFrom Thames to Tyne. But, lo! the sceptre shakes;The Dane, remorseless as the hurricaneThat sweeps his native cliffs, harries the land!What terror strode before his track of blood!160What hamlets mourned his desultory march,When on the circling hills, along the sea,The beacon-flame shone nightly! He has passed!Now frowns the Norman victor on his throne,And every cottage shrouds its lonely fire,As the sad curfew sounds. Yet Piety,With new-inspiring energies, awoke,And ampler polity: in woody vales,In unfrequented wilds, and forest-glens,The towers of the sequestered abbey shone,170As when the pinnacles of Glaston-FaneFirst met the morning light. The parish church,Then too, exulting o'er the ruder cross,Upsprung, till soon the distant village pealFlings out its music, where the tapering spireAdds a new picture to the sheltered vale.Uphill, thy rock, where sits the lonely church,Above the sands, seems like the chroniclerOf other times, there left to tell the tale!But issuing from the cave, look round, behold180How proudly the majestic Severn ridesOn to the sea; how gloriously in lightIt rides! Along this solitary ridge,Where smiles, but rare, the blue campanula,Among the thistles and gray stones that peepThrough the thin herbage, to the highest pointOf elevation, o'er the vale below,Slow let us climb. First look upon that flower,The lowly heath-bell, smiling at our feet.How beautiful it smiles alone! The Power190That bade the great sea roar, that spread the heavens,That called the sun from darkness, decked that flower,And bade it grace this bleak and barren hill.Imagination, in her playful mood,Might liken it to a poor village maid,Lowly, but smiling in her lowliness,And dressed so neatly as if every dayWere Sunday. And some melancholy bardMight, idly musing, thus discourse to it:—Daughter of Summer, who dost linger here,200Decking the thistly turf, and arid hill,Unseen, let the majestic dahliaGlitter, an empress, in her blazonryOf beauty; let the stately lily shine,As snow-white as the breast of the proud swanSailing upon the blue lake silently,That lifts her tall neck higher as she viewsHer shadow in the stream! Such ladies brightMay reign unrivalled in their proud parterres!Thou wouldst not live with them; but if a voice,210Fancy, in shaping mood, might give to thee,To the forsaken primrose thou wouldst say—Come, live with me, and we two will rejoice:Nor want I company; for when the sea214Shines in the silent moonlight, elves and fays,Gentle and delicate as Ariel,That do their spiritings on these wild holts,Circle me in their dance, and sing such songsAs human ear ne'er heard! But cease the strain,Lest wisdom and severer truth should chide.220Behind that windmill, sailing round and round,Like days on days revolving, Bleadon lies,Where first I pondered on the grammar-lore,Sad as the spelling-book, beneath the roofOf its secluded parsonage; Brean DownEmerges o'er the edge of Hutton Hill,Just seen in paler light! And Weston there,Where I remember a few cottagesSprinkling the sand, uplifts its tower, and shines,As if in conscious beauty, o'er the scene.230And I have seen a far more welcome sight,The living line of population stream—Children, and village maids, and gray old men—Stream o'er the sands to church: such change has beenIn the brief compass of one hastening life!And yet that hill, the light, is to my eyesFamiliar as those sister isles that sitIn the mid channel! Look, how calm they sit,As listening each to the tide's rocking roar!Of different aspects—this, abrupt and high,240And desolate, and cold, and bleak, upliftsIts barren brow—barren, but on its steepOne native flower is seen, the peony;One flower, which smiles in sunshine or in storm,There sits companionless, but yet not sad:She has no sister of the summer-field,None to rejoice with her when spring returns,None that, in sympathy, may bend its head,248When evening winds blow hollow o'er the rock,In autumn's gloom! So Virtue, a fair flower,Blooms on the rock of Care, and, though unseen,So smiles in cold seclusion; while, remoteFrom the world's flaunting fellowship, it wears,Like hermit Piety, one smile of peace,In sickness or in health, in joy or tears,In summer days or cold adversity;And still it feels Heaven's breath, reviving, stealOn its lone breast; feels the warm blessednessOf Heaven's own light about it, though its leavesAre wet with evening tears!260Yonder islandSeems not so desolate, nor frowns aloof,As if from human kind. The lighthouse there,Through the long winter night, shows its pale fire;And three forgotten mounds mark the rude graves,None knows of whom; but those of men who breathed,And bore their part in life, and looked to Heaven,As man looks now!—they died and left no name!Fancy might think, amid the wildernessOf waves, they sought to hide from human eyes270All memory of their fortunes. Till the trumpOf doom, they rest unknown. But mark that hill—Where Kewstoke seems to creep into the sea,Thy abbey, Woodspring, rose.[13]Wild is the spot;And there three mailed murderers retired,To the last point of land. There they retired,276And there they knelt upon the ground, and cried,Bury us 'mid the waves, where none may knowThe whispered secret of a deed of blood!No stone is o'er those graves:—the sullen tide,As it flows by and sounds along the shore,Seems moaningly to say, Pray for our souls!Nor other "Miserere" have they hadAt eve, nor other orison at morn.Thou hast put on thy mildest look to-day,Thou mighty element! Solemn, and still,And motionless, and touched with softer light,And without noise, lies all thy long expanse.Thou seemest now as calm, as if a childMight dally with thy playfulness, and stand,290The weak winds lifting gently its light hair;Upon thy margin, watching one by oneThe long waves, breaking slow, with such a soundAs Silence, in her dreamy mood, might love,When she more softly breathed, fearing a breathMight mar thy placidness!Oh, treachery!So still, and like a giant in his strengthReposing, didst thou lie, when the fond sireOne moment looked, and saw his blithsome boys300Gay on the sands, one moment, and the next,Heart-stricken and bereft, by the same surge,Stood in his desolation;[14]—for he looked,And thought how he had blessed them in their sleep,And the next moment they were borne away,Snatched by the circling surge, and seen no more;While morning shone, and not a ripple told307How terrible and dark a deed was done!And so the seas were hushed, and not a cloudMarred the pale moonlight, save that, here and there,Wandering far off, some feathery shreds were seen,As the sole orb, above the lighthouse, heldIts course in loveliness; and not a soundCame from the distant deep, save that, at times,Amid the noise of human merriment,The ear might seem to catch a low faint moan,A boding sound, as of a dying dirge,From the sunk rocks;[15]while all was still beside,And every star seemed listening in its watch;When the gay packet-bark, to Erin bound,320Resounding with the laugh and song, went on!Look! she is gone! O God! she is gone down,With her light-hearted company; gone down,And all at once is still, save, on the mast,Just peering o'er the waters, the wild shrieksOf three, at times, are heard! They, when the deadWere round them, floating on the moonlight wave,Kept there their dismal watch till morning dawned,And to the living world were then restored!

A shower, even while we gaze, steals o'er the scene,Shrouding it, and the sea-view is shout out,Save where, beyond the holms, one thread of lightHangs, and a pale and sunny stream shoots on,O'er the dim vapours, faint and far away,Like Hope's still light beyond the storms of Time.Come, let us rest a while in this rude seat!I was a child when first I heard the soundOf the great sea. 'Twas night, and journeying far,We were belated on our road, 'mid scenes10New and unknown,—a mother and her child,Now first in this wide world a wanderer:—My father came, the pastor of the church[16]That crowns the high hill crest, above the sea;When, as the wheels went slow, and the still nightSeemed listening, a low murmur met the ear,Not of the winds:—my mother softly said,Listen! it is the sea! With breathless awe,I heard the sound, and closer pressed her hand.Much of the sea, in infant wonderment,20I oft had heard, and of the shipwrecked man,Who sees, on some lone isle, day after day,The sun sink o'er the solitude of waves,Like Crusoe; and the tears would start afresh,Whene'er my mother kissed my cheek, and toldThe story of that desolate wild man,26And how the speaking bird, when he returnedAfter long absence to his cave forlorn,Said, as in tones of human sympathy,Poor Robin Crusoe!Thoughts like these arose,When first I heard, at night, the distant sound,Great Ocean, "of thy everlasting voice!"[17]Where the white parsonage, among the trees,Peeped out, that night I restless passed. The seaFilled all my thoughts; and when slow morning came,And the first sunbeam streaked the window-pane,I rose unnoticed, and with stealthy pace,Straggling along the village green, exploredAlone my fearful but adventurous way;40When, having turned the hedgerow, I beheld,For the first time, thy glorious element,Old Ocean, glittering in the beams of morn,Stretching far off, and, westward, without bound,Amid thy sole dominion, rocking loud!Shivering I stood, and tearful; and even now,When gathering years have marked my look,—even nowI feel the deep impression of that hour,As but of yesterday!Spirit of Time,50A moment pause, and I will speak to thee!Dark clouds are round thee; but, lo! Memory wavesHer wand,—the clouds disperse, as the gray rackDisperses while we gaze, and light steals out,While the gaunt phantom almost seems to dropHis scythe! Now shadows of the past, distinct,Are thronging round; the voices of the deadAre heard; and, lo! the very smoke goes up—For so it seems—from yonder tenement,60Where leads the slender pathway to the door.Enter that small blue parlour: there sits one,A female, and a child is in her arms;A child leans at her side, intent to showA pictured book, and looks upon her face;One, from the green, comes with a cowslip ball;[18]And one,[19]a hero, sits sublime and horsed,Upon a rocking-steed, from Banwell-fair;This,[20]drives his tiny wheel-barrow, without,On the green garden-sward; whilst one,[21]apart,Sighs o'er his solemn task—the spelling-book—70Half moody, half in tears. Some lines of thoughtAre on that matron's brow; yet placidness,Such as resigned religion gives, is there,Mingled with sadness; for who e'er beheld,Without one stealing sigh, a progenyOf infants clustering round maternal knees,Nor felt some boding fears, how they might fareIn the wide world, when they who loved them mostWere silent in their graves!Nay! pass not on,80Till thou hast marked a book—the leaf turned down—Night Thoughts on Death and Immortality!This book, my mother! in the weary hoursOf life, in every care, in every joy,Was thy companion: next to God's own Word,The book that bears this name,[22]thou didst revere,Leaving a stain of tears upon the page,Whose lessons, with a more emphatic truth,Touched thine own heart!That heart has long been still!90But who is he, of aspect more severe,Yet with a manly kindness in his mien,He, who o'erlooks yon sturdy labourerDelving the glebe! My father as he lived!That father, and that mother, "earth to earth,And dust to dust," the inevitable doomHath long consigned! And where is he, the son,Whose future fate they pondered with a sigh?Long, nor unprosperous, has been his wayThrough life's tumultuous scenes, who, when a child,100Played in that garden platform in the sun;Or loitered o'er the common, and pursuedThe colts among the sand-hills; or, intentOn hardier enterprise, his pumpkin-ship,New-rigged, and buoyant, with its tiny sail,Launched on the garden pond; or stretched his hand,At once forgetting all this glorious toil,When the bright butterfly came wandering by.But never will that day pass from his mind,When, scarcely breathing for delight, at Wells,110He saw the horsemen of the clock[23]ride round,As if for life; and ancient Blandifer,[24]Seated aloft, like Hermes, in his chairComplacent as when first he took his seat,Some hundred years ago; saw him lift up,As if old Time was cowering at his feet,Solemn lift up his mace, and strike the bell,Himself for ever silent in his seat.How little thought I then, the hour would come,When the loved prelate of that beauteous fane,120At whose command I write, might placidlySmile on this picture, in my future verse,122When Blandifer had struck so many hoursFor me, his poet, in this vale of years,Himself unchanged and solemn as of yore!My father was the pastor, and the friendOf all who, living then—the scene is closed—Now silent in that rocky churchyard sleep,The aged and the young! A village thenWas not as villages are now. The hind,130Who delved, or "jocund drove his team a-field,"Had then an independence in his lookAnd heart; and, plodding on his lowly path,Disdained a parish dole, content, though poor.He was the village monitor: he taughtHis children to be good, and read their book,And in the gallery took his Sunday place,—To-morrow, with the bee, to work.So passedHis days of cheerful, independent toil;140And when the pastor came that way, at eve,He had a ready present for the childWho read his book the best; and that poor childRemembered it, when, treading the same pathIn which his father trod, he so grew upContented, till old Time had blanched his locks,And he was borne—whilst the bell tolled—to sleepIn the same churchyard where his father slept!His daughter walked content, and innocentAs lovely, in her lowly path. She turned150The hour-glass, while the humming wheel went round,Or went "a-Maying" o'er the fields in spring,Leading her little brother by the hand,Along the village lane, and o'er the stile,To gather cowslips; and then home again,To turn her wheel, contented, through the day.156Or, singing low, bend where her brother slept,Rocking the cradle, to "sweet William's grave!"[25]No lure could tempt her from the woodbine shed,Where she grew up, and folded first her hands160In infant prayer: yet oft a tear would stealDown her young cheek, to think how desolateThat home would be when her poor mother died;Still praying that she ne'er might cause a pain,Undutiful, to "bring down her gray hairsWith sorrow to the grave!"Now mark this scene!The fuming factory's polluted airHas stained the country! See that rural nymph,An infant in her arms! She claims the dole170From the cold parish, which her faithless swainDenies: he stands aloof, with clownish leer;The constable behind—and mark his brow—Beckons the nimble clerk; the justice, grave,Turns from his book a moment, with a lookOf pity, signs the warrant for her pay,A weekly eighteen pence; she, unabashed,Slides from the room, and not a transient blush,Far less the accusing tear, is on her cheek!A different scene comes next: That village maid180Approaches timidly, yet beautiful;A tear is on her lids, when she looks downUpon her sleeping child. Her heart was won,The wedding-day was fixed, the ring was bought!'Tis the same story—Colin was untrue!He ruined, and then left her to her fate.Pity her, she has not a friend on earth,And that still tear speaks to all human heartsBut his, whose cruelty and treachery189Caused it to flow! So crime still follows crime.Ask we the cause? See, where those engines heave,That spread their giant arms o'er all the land!The wheel is silent in the vale! Old ageAnd youth are levelled by one parish law!Ask why that maid, all day, toils in the field,Associate with the rude and ribald clown,Even in the shrinking April of her youth?To earn her loaf, and eat it by herself.Parental love is smitten to the dust;Over a little smoke the aged sire200Holds his pale hands—and the deserted hearthIs cheerless as his heart: but PietyPoints to the Bible! Shut the book again:The ranter is the roving gospel now,And each his own apostle! Shut the book:A locust-swarm of tracts darken its light,And choke its utterance; while a Babel-routOf mock-religionists, turn where we will,Have drowned the small still voice, till Piety,Sick of the din, retires to pray alone.210But though abused Religion, and the doleOf pauper-pay, and vomitories hugeOf smoke, are each a steam-engine of crime,Polluting, far and wide, the wholesome air,And withering life's green verdure underneath,Full many a poor and lowly flower of wantHas Education nursed, like a pure rill,Winding through desert glens, and bade it liveTo grace the cottage with its mantling sweets.There was a village girl, I knew her well,220From five years old and upwards; all her friendsWere dead, and she was to the workhouse left,And there a witness to such sounds profane223As might turn virtue pale! When Sunday came,Assembled with the children of the poor,Upon the lawn of my own parsonage,She stood among them: they were taught to readIn companies and groups, upon the green,Each with its little book; her lighted eyesShone beautiful where'er they turned; her form230Was graceful; but her book her sole delight![26]Instructed thus she went a serving-maidInto the neighbouring town,—ah! who shall guideA friendless maid, so beautiful and young,From life's contagions! But she had been taughtThe duties of her humble lot, to prayTo God, and that one heavenly Father's eyeWas over rich and poor! On Sunday night,She read her Bible, turning still awayFrom those who flocked, inflaming and inflamed,240To nightly meetings; but she never closedHer eyes, or raised them to the light of morn,Without a prayer to Him who "bade the sunGo forth," a giant, from his eastern gate!No art, no bribe, could lure her steps astrayFrom the plain path, and lessons she had learned,A village child. She is a mother now,And lives to prove the blessings and the fruitsOf moral duty, on the poorest child,When duty, and when sober piety,250Impressing the young heart, go hand in hand.No villager was then a disputantIn Calvinistic and contentious creeds;No pale mechanic, from a neighbouring sinkOf steam and rank debauchery and smoke,255Crawled forth upon a Sunday morn, with looksSaddening the very sunshine, to instructThe parish poor in evangelic lore;To teach them to cast off, "as filthy rags,"Good works! and listen to such ministers,260Who all (be sure) "are worthy of their hire;"Who only preach for good of their poor souls,That they may turn "from darkness unto light,"And, above all, fly, as the gates of hell,Morality![27]and Baal's steeple house,Where, without "heart-work," Doctor LittlegraceDrones his dull requiem to the snoring clerk!"[28]True; he who drawls his heartless homilyFor one day's work, and plods, on wading stilts,Through prosing paragraphs, with inference,270Methodically dull, as orthodox,Enforcing sagely that we all must dieWhen God shall call—oh, what a pulpit droneIs he! The blue fly might as well preach "Hum,"And "so conclude!"But save me from the sightOf curate fop, half jockey and half clerk,The tandem-driving Tommy of a town,Disdaining books, omniscient of a horse,Impatient till September comes again,280Eloquent only of "the pretty girlWith whom he danced last night!" Oh! such a thingIs worse than the dull doctor, who performsDuly his stinted task, and then to sleep,Till Sunday asks another homilyAgainst all innovations of the age,Mad missionary zeal, and Bible clubs,287And Calvinists and Evangelicals!Yes! Evangelicals! Oh, glorious word!But who deserves that awful name? Not heWho spits his puny Puritanic spiteOn harmless recreation; who revilesAll who, majestic in their distant scorn,Bear on in silence their calm Christian course.He only is the EvangelicalWho holds in equal scorn dogmas and dreams,The Shibboleth of saintly magazines,Decked with most grim and godly visages;The cobweb sophistry, or the dark codeOf commentators, who, with loathsome track,300Crawl o'er a text, or on the lucid page,Beaming with heavenly love and God's own light,Sit like a nightmare![29]Soon a deadly mistCreeps o'er our eyes and heart, till angel formsTurn into hideous phantoms, mocking us,Even when we look for comfort at the springAnd well of life, while dismal voices cry,Death! Reprobation! Woe! Eternal woe!He only is the EvangelicalWho from the human commentary turns310With tranquil scorn, and nearer to his heartPresses the Bible, till repentant tears,In silence, wet his cheek, and new-born faith,And hope, and charity, with radiant smile,Visit his heart,—all pointing to the cross!He only is the Evangelical,316Who, with eyes fixed upon that spectacle,Christ and him crucified, with ardent hope,And holier feelings, lifts his thoughts from earth,And cries, My Father! Meantime, his whole heart320Is on God's Word: he preaches Faith, and Hope,And Charity,—these three, and not that one!And Charity, the greatest of these three![30]Give me an Evangelical like this! But nowThe blackest crimes in tract-religion's codeAre moral virtues! Spare the prodigal,—He may awake when God shall "call;" but, hell,Roll thy avenging flames, to swallow upThe son who never left his father's homeLest he should trust to morals when he dies!330Let him not lay the unction to his soul,That his upbraiding conscience tells no taleAt that dread hour; bid him confess his sin,The greater that, with humble hope, he looksBack on a well-spent life! Bid him confessThat he hath broken all God's holy laws,—In vain hath he done justly,—loved, in vain,Mercy, and hath walked humbly with his God!These are mere works; but faith is everything,And all in all! The Christian code contains340No "if" or "but!"[31]Let tabernacles ring,And churches too,[32]with sanctimonious strainsBaneful as these; and let such strains be heardThrough half the land; and can we shut our eyes,And, sadly wondering, ask the cause of crimes,345When infidelity stands lowering here,With open scorn, and such a code as this,So baneful, withers half the charitiesOf human hearts! Oh! dear is Mercy's voiceTo man, a mourner in the vale of sin350And death: how dear the still small voice of Faith,That bids him raise his look beyond the cloudsThat hang o'er this dim earth; but he who tearsFaith from her heavenly sisterhood, deniesThe gospel, and turns traitor to the causeHe has engaged to plead. Come, Faith, and Hope,And Charity! how dear to the sad heart,The consolations and the glorious viewsThat animate the Christian in his course!But save, oh! save me from the tract-led Miss,360Who trots to every Bethel club, and broodsO'er some black missionary's monstrous tale,Reckless of want around her!But the priest,Who deems the Almighty frowns upon his throne,Because two pair of harmless dowagers,Whose life has passed without a stain, beguileAn evening hour with cards; who deems that hellBurns fiercer for a saraband; that thou—Thou, my sweet Shakspeare—thou, whose touch awakesThe inmost heart of virtuous sympathy,—371Thou, O divinest poet! at whose voiceSad Pity weeps, or guilty Terror dropsThe blood-stained dagger from his palsied hand,—That thou art pander to the criminal!He who thus edifies his Christian flock,Moves, more than even the Bethel-trotting Miss,My pity, my aversion, and my scorn.Cry aloud!—Oh, speak in thunder to the soul379That sleeps in sin! Harrow the inmost heartOf murderous intent, till dew-drops standUpon his haggard brow! Call conscience up,Like a stern spectre, whose dim finger pointsTo dark misdeeds of yore! Wither the armOf the oppressor, at whose feet the slaveCrouches, and pleading lifts his fettered hands!Thou violator of the innocentHide thee! Hence! hide thee in the deepest cave,From man's indignant sight! Thou hypocrite!Trample in dust thy mask, nor cry faith, faith,390Making it but a hollow tinkling sound,That stirs not the foul heart! Horrible wretch!Look not upon the face of that sweet child,With thoughts which hell would tremble to conceive!Oh, shallow, and oh, senseless! In a worldWhere rank offences turn the good man pale,Who leave the Christian's sternest code, to ventTheir petty ire on petty trespasses,If trespasses they are;—when the wide worldGroans with the burthen of offence; when crimes400Stalk on, with front defying, o'er the land,Whilst, her own cause betraying, Christian zealThus swallows camels, straining at a gnat!Therefore, without a comment, or a note,We love the Bible; and we prize the moreThe spirit of its pure unspotted page,As pure from the infectious breath that stains,Like a foul fume, its hallowed light, we hailThe radiant car of heaven, amidst the cloudsOf mortal darkness, and of human mist,410Sole, as the sun in heaven![33]Oh! whilst the car412Of God's own glory rolls along in light,We join the loud song of the Christian host,(All puny systems shrinking from the blaze),Hosannah to the car of light! Roll on!Saldanna's[34]rocks have echoed to the hymnsOf Faith, and Hope, and Charity! Roll on!Till the wild wastes of inmost Africa,Where the long Niger's track is lost, respond,420Hosannah to the car of light! Roll on!From realm to realm, from shore to farthest shore,O'er dark pagodas, and huge idol-fanes,That frown along the Ganges' utmost stream,Till the poor widow, from the burning pileStarting, shall lift her hands to heaven, and weepThat she has found a Saviour, and has heardThe sounds of Christian love! Oh, horrible!The pile is smoking!—the bamboos lie there,That held her down when the last struggle shook430The blazing pile![35]Hasten, O car of light!Alas for suffering nature! Juggernaut,Armed, in his giant car goes also forth,Goes forth amid his red and reeling priests,While thousands gasp and die beneath the wheels,As they go groaning on, 'mid cries, and drums,And flashing cymbals, and delirious songsOf tinkling dancing girls, and all the routOf frantic superstition! Turn away!And is not Juggernaut himself with us?440Not only cold insidious sophistryComes, blinking with its taper-fume, to light,If so he may, the sun in the mid heaven!Not only blind and hideous blasphemyScowls in his cloak, and mocks the glorious orb,Ascending, in its silence, o'er a worldOf sin and sorrow; but a hellish broodOf imps, and fiends, and phantoms, ape the formOf godliness, till godliness itselfSeems but a painted monster, and a name450For darker crimes, at which the shuddering heartShrinks; while the ranting rout, as they march on,Mock Heaven with hymns, till, see! pale BelialSighs o'er a filthy tract, and Moloch marks,With gouts of blood, his brandished magazine!Start, monster, from the dismal dream! Look up!Oh! listen to the apostolic voice,That, like a voice from heaven, proclaims, To faithAdd virtue! There is no mistaking here;Whilst moral education by the hand460Shall lead the children to the house of God,Nor sever Christian faith from Christian love.If we would see the fruits of charity,Look at that village group, and paint the scene!Surrounded by a clear and silent stream,Where the swift trout shoots from the sudden ray,A rural mansion on the level lawnUplifts its ancient gables, whose slant shadeIs drawn, as with a line, from roof to porch,Whilst all the rest is sunshine. O'er the trees470In front, the village church, with pinnaclesAnd light gray tower, appears; whilst to the right,An amphitheatre of oaks extendsIts sweep, till, more abrupt, a wooded knoll,474Where once a castle frowned, closes the scene.And see! an infant troop, with flags and drum,Are marching o'er that bridge, beneath the woods,On to the table spread upon the lawn,Raising their little hands when grace is said;Whilst she who taught them to lift up their hearts480In prayer, and to "remember, in their youth,"God, "their Creator," mistress of the scene(Whom I remember once as young), looks on,Blessing them in the silence of her heart.And we too bless them. Oh! away, away!Cant, heartless cant, and that economy,Cold, and miscalled "political," away!Let the bells ring—a Puritan turns paleTo hear the festive sound: let the bells ring—AChristianloves them; and this holiday490Remembers him, while sighs unbidden steal,Of life's departing and departed days,When he himself was young, and heard the bells,In unison with feelings of his heart—His first pureChristianfeelings, hallowingThe harmonious sound!And, children, now rejoice,—Now, for the holidays of life are few;Nor let the rustic minstrel tune, in vain,The cracked church-viol, resonant to-day500Of mirth, though humble! Let the fiddle scrapeIts merriment, and let the joyous groupDance in a round, for soon the ills of lifeWill come! Enough, if one day in the year,If one brief day, of this brief life, be givenTo mirth as innocent as yours! But, lo!That ancient woman, leaning on her staff!507Pale, on her crutch she rests one withered hand;One withered hand, which Gerard Dow might paint,Even its blue veins! And who is she? The nurseOf the fair mistress of the scene: she ledHer tottering steps in infancy—she speltHer earliest lesson to her; and she nowLeans from that open window, while she thinks—When summer comes again, the turf will lieOn my cold breast; but I rejoice to seeMy child thus leading on the progenyOf her poor neighbours in the peaceful pathOf humble virtue! I shall be at rest,Perhaps, when next they meet; but my last prayer520Is with them, and the mistress of this home."The innocent are gay,"[36]gay as the larkThat sings in morn's first sunshine; and why not?But may they ne'er forget, as life steals on,In age, the lessons they have learned in youth!How false the charge, how foul the calumnyOn England's generous aristocracy,That, wrapped in sordid, selfish apathy,They feel not for the poor!Ask, is it true?530Lord of the whirling wheels, the charge is false![37]Ten thousand charities adorn the land,Beyond thy cold conception, from this source.What cottage child but has been neatly clad,And taught its earliest lesson, from their care?Witness that schoolhouse, mantled with festoonOf various plants, which fancifully wreath537Its window-mullions, and that rustic porch,Whence the low hum of infant voices blendWith airs of spring, without. Now, all alive,The green sward rings with play, among the shrubs—Hushed the long murmur of the morning task,Before the pensive matron's desk!But turn,And mark that aged widow! By her sideIs God's own Word; and, lo! the spectaclesAre yet upon the page. Her daughter kneelsAnd prays beside her! Many years have shedTheir snow so silently and softly downUpon her head, that Time, as if to gaze,550Seems for a moment to suspend his flightOnward, in reverence to those few gray hairs,That steal beneath her cap, white as its snow.Whilst the expiring lamp is kept alive,Thus feebly, by a duteous daughter's love,Her last faint prayer, ere all is dark on earth,Will to the God of heaven ascend, for thoseWhose comforts smoothed her silent bed.And thou,Witness Elysian Tempe of Stourhead!560Oh, not because, with bland and gentle smile,Adding a radiance to the look of age,Like eve's still light, thy liberal master spreadsHis lettered treasures;—not because his searchHas dived the Druid mound, illustratingHis country's annals, and the monumentsOf darkest ages;—not because his woodsWave o'er the dripping cavern of Old Stour,Where classic temples gleam along the edgeOf the clear waters, winding beautiful;—570Oh! not because the works of breathing art,571Of Poussin, Rubens, Rembrandt, Gainsborough,Start, like creations, from the silent walls;To thee, this tribute of respect and love,Beloved, benevolent, and generous Hoare,Grateful I pay;—but that, when thou art dead(Late may it be!) the poor man's tear will fall,And his voice falter, when he speaks of thee.[38]And witness thou, magnificent abode,Where virtuous Ken,[39]with his gray hairs and shroud,580Came, for a shelter from the world's rude storm,In his old age, leaving his palace-throne,Having no spot where he might lay his head,In all the earth! Oh, witness thou, the seatOf his first friend, his friend from schoolboy days!Oh! witness thou, if one who wanted breadHas not found shelter there; if one poor manHas been deserted in his hour of need;Or one poor child been left without a guide,A father, an instructor, and a friend;590In him, the pastor, and distributor[40]Of bounties large, yet falling silentlyAs dews on the cold turf! And witness thou,Marston,[41]the seat of my kind, honoured friend—My kind and honoured friend, from youthful days.Then wandering on the banks of Rhine, we sawCities and spires, beneath the mountains blue,Gleaming; or vineyards creep from rock to rock;599Or unknown castles hang, as if in clouds:Or heard the roaring of the cataract,Far off, beneath the dark defile or gloomOf ancient forests; till behold, in light,Foaming and flashing, with enormous sweep,Through the rent rocks—where, o'er the mist of sprayThe rainbow, like a fairy in her bower,Is sleeping, while it roars—that volume vast,White, and with thunder's deafening roar, comes down.Live long, live happy, till thy journey close,Calm as the light of day! Yet witness thou,610The seat of noble ancestry, the seatOf science, honoured by the name of Boyle,Though many sorrows, since we met in youth,Have pressed thy generous master's manly heart,Witness, the partner of his joys and griefs;Witness the grateful tenantry, the homeOf the poor man, the children of that school—Still warm benevolence sits smiling there.And witness, the fair mansion, on the edgeOf those chalk hills, which, from my garden walk,620Daily I see, whose gentle mistress droops[42]With her own griefs, yet never turns her lookFrom others' sorrows; on whose lids the tearShines yet more lovely than the light of youth.And many a cottage-garden smiles, whose flowersInvite the music of the morning bee.And many a fireside has shot out, at eve,Its light upon the old man's withered handAnd pallid cheek from their benevolence—Sad as is still the parish-pauper's home—630Who shed around their patrimonial seatsThe light of heaven-descending Charity.632And every feeling of the Christian heartWould rise accusing, could I pass unsung,Thee,[43]fair as Charity's own form, who lateDidst stand beneath the porch of that gray fane,Soliciting[44]a mite from all who passed,With such a smile, as to refuse would seemTo do a wrong to Charity herself.How many blessings, silent and unheard,640The mistress of the lonely parsonageDispenses, when she takes her daily roundAmong the aged and the sick, whose prayersAnd blessings are her only recompense!How many pastors, by cold obloquyAnd senseless hate reviled, tread the same pathOf charity in silence, taught by HimWho was reviled not to revile again;And leaving to a righteous God their cause!Come, let us, with the pencil in our hand,650Portray a character. What book is this?Rector of Overton![45]I know him not;But well I know the Vicar, and a manMore worthy of that name, and worthier stillTo grace a higher station of our Church,None knows;—a friend and father to the poor,A scholar, unobtrusive, yet profound,"As e'er my conversation coped withal;"His piety unvarnished, but sincere.[46]Killarney's lake,[47]and Scotia's hills,[48]have heard660His summer-wandering reed; nor on the themesOf hallowed inspiration[49]has his harp662Been silent, though ten thousand jangling strings—When all are poets in this land of song,And every field chinks with its grasshopper—Have well-nigh drowned the tones; but poesyMingles, at eventide, with many a moodOf stirring fancy, on his silent heartWhen o'er those bleak and barren downs, in rainOr sunshine, where the giant Wansdeck sweeps,670Homewards he bends his solitary way.Live long; and late may the old villagerLook on thy stone, amid the churchyard grass,Remembering years of kindness, and the tongue,Eloquent of his Maker, when he satAt church, and heard the undivided codeOf apostolic truth—of hope, of faith,Of charity—the end and test of all.Live long; and though I proudly might recallThe names of many friends—like thee, sincere680And pious, and in solitude adornedWith rare accomplishments—this grateful praiseAccept, congenial to the poet's theme;For well I know, haply when I am dead,And in my shroud, whene'er thy homeward pathLies o'er those hills, and thou shalt cast a lookBack on our garden-slope, and Bremhill tower,Thou wilt remember me, and many a dayThere passed in converse and sweet harmony.A truce to satire, and to harsh reproof,690Severer arguments, that have detainedThe unwilling Muse too long:—come, while the cloudsWork heavy and the winds at intervals,Pipe, and at intervals sink in a sigh,As breathed o'er sounds and shadows of the past—695Change we our style and measure, to relateA village tale of a poor Cornish maid,And of her prayer-book. It is sad, but true;And simply told, though not in lady phraseOf modish song, may touch some gentle heart,700And wake an interest, when description fails.

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