OTHER INFLUENCES

19

XIX

PRIMITIVE SAXON CLERGY *

How beautiful your presence, how benign,
Servants of God! who not a thought will share
With the vain world; who, outwardly as bare
As winter trees, yield no fallacious sign
That the firm soul is clothed with fruit divine!
Such Priest, when service worthy of his care
Has called him forth to breathe the common air,
Might seem a saintly Image from its shrine
Descended :-happy are the eyes that meet
The Apparition; evil thoughts are stayed
At his approach, and low-bowed necks entreat

A benediction from his voice or hand;

5

ΙΟ

Whence grace, through which the heart can understand, And vows, that bind the will, in silence made.

XX

OTHER INFLUENCES

Aн, when the Body,1 round which in love we clung,

Is chilled by death, does mutual service fail ?

Is tender pity then of no avail ?

Are intercessions of the fervent tongue

1 1837.

Frame,

1822.

* Having spoken of the zeal, disinterestedness, and temperance of the clergy of those times, Bede thus proceeds :-"Unde et in magna erat veneratione tempore illo religionis habitus, ita ut ubicunque clericus aliquis aut monachus adveniret, gaudenter ab omnibus tanquam Dei famulus exciperetur. Etiam si in itinere pergens inveniretur, accurrebant, et flexa cervice, vel manu signari, vel ore illius se benedici, gaudebant. Verbis quoque horum exhortatoriis diligenter auditum praebebant." (Lib. iii. cap. 26.) W. W. 1822.

A waste of hope ?-From this sad source have sprung
Rites that console the Spirit, under grief
Which ill can brook more rational relief:

6

Hence, prayers are shaped amiss, and dirges sung For Souls whose doom is fixed! The way is smooth For Power that travels with the human heart:

Confession ministers the pang to soothe

In him who at the ghost of guilt doth start.
Ye holy Men, so earnest in your care,
Of your own mighty instruments beware!

IO

XXI
*

SECLUSION

LANCE, shield, and sword relinquished—at his side
A bead-roll, in his hand a clasped book,

Or staff more harmless than a shepherd's crook,
The war-worn Chieftain quits the world—to hide
His thin autumnal locks where Monks abide

In cloistered privacy. But not to dwell
In soft repose he comes. Within his cell,
Round the decaying trunk of human pride,
At morn, and eve, and midnight's silent hour,
Do penitential cogitations cling;

Like ivy, round some ancient elm, they twine
In grisly folds and strictures serpentine ; †
Yet, while they strangle, a fair growth they bring,2
For recompense—their own perennial bower.

5

ΙΟ

* This, and the two following sonnets, were published in Time's Telescope, July 2, 1823.-ED.

The ancient elm," with ivy twisting round it "in grisly folds and strictures serpentine," which suggested these lines, grew in Rydal Park, near the path to the upper waterfall.-ED.

REPROOF

21

XXII

CONTINUED

METHINKS that to some vacant hermitage
My feet would rather turn-to some dry nook
Scooped out of living rock, and near a brook
Hurled down a mountain-cove from stage to stage,
Yet tempering, for my sight, its bustling rage
In the soft heaven of a translucent pool;
Thence creeping under sylvan 1 arches cool,
Fit haunt of shapes whose glorious equipage
Would elevate 2 my dreams.* A beechen bowl,
A maple dish, my furniture should be ;

Crisp, yellow leaves my bed; the hooting owl
My night-watch: nor should e'er the crested fowl
From thorp or vill his matins sound for me,
Tired of the world and all its industry.

5

XXIII

REPROOF

BUT what if One, through grove or flowery meed,
Indulging thus at will the creeping feet

Of a voluptuous indolence, should meet

Thy hovering Shade, O 3 venerable Bede!

*

There are several natural "hermitages," such as this, near the Rydal beck.-ED.

The saint, the scholar, from a circle freed

Of toil stupendous, in a hallowed seat

Of learning, where thou heard'st 1 the billows beat
On a wild coast, rough monitors to feed
Perpetual industry.* Sublime Recluse !

The recreant soul, that dares to shun the debt
Imposed on human kind, must first forget
Thy diligence, thy unrelaxing use

Of a long life; and, in the hour of death,
The last dear service of thy passing breath! †

5

ΙΟ

XXIV

SAXON MONASTERIES, AND LIGHTS AND SHADES OF THE RELIGION

By such examples moved to unbought pains,
The people work like congregated bees; +
Eager to build the quiet Fortresses

Where Piety, as they believe, obtains

1 1827.

he heard

1822.

* Bede spent the most of his life in the seclusion of the monastery of Jarrow, near the mouth of the Tyne; the wild coast referred to in the Sonnet being the coast of Northumberland.-ED.

He expired in the act of concluding a translation of St. John's Gospel. -W. W. 1822.

He expired dictating the last words of a translation of St. John's Gospel. -W. W. 1827.

See, in Turner's History, vol. iii. p. 528, the account of the erection of Ramsey Monastery. Penances were removable by the performance of acts of charity and benevolence.-W. W. 1822.

"Wherever monasteries were founded, marshes were drained, or woods cleared, and wastes brought into cultivation; the means of subsistence were increased by improved agriculture, and by improved horticulture new comforts were added to life. The humblest as well as the highest pursuits were followed in these great and most beneficial establishments. While part of the members were studying the most inscrutable points of theology, others were employed in teaching babes and children the rudiments of useful knowledge; others as copyists, limners, carvers, workers in wood, and in stone, and in metal, and in trades and manufactures of every kind which the community required." (Southey's Book of the Church, vol. i. chap. iv. pp. 61, 62.)-ED.

MISSIONS AND TRAVELS

23

5

From Heaven a general blessing; timely rains
Or needful sunshine; prosperous enterprise,
Justice and peace :-bold faith! yet also rise
The sacred Structures for less doubtful gains.1
The Sensual think with reverence of the palms
Which the chaste Votaries seek, beyond the grave;
If penance be redeemable, thence alms

Flow to the poor, and freedom to the slave;

And if full oft the Sanctuary save

Lives black with guilt, ferocity it calms.

XXV

MISSIONS AND TRAVELS

NOT sedentary all: there are who roam
To scatter seeds of life on barbarous shores;
Or quit with zealous step their knee-worn floors
To seek the general mart of Christendom;
Whence they, like richly-laden merchants, come 5
To their beloved cells :-or shall we say

That, like the Red-cross Knight, they urge their way,
To lead in memorable triumph home

Truth, their immortal Una? Babylon,
Learned and wise, hath perished utterly,

Nor leaves her Speech one word to aid the sigh2
That would lament her ;—Memphis, Tyre, are gone
With all their Arts,—but classic lore glides on
By these Religious saved for all posterity.

1 1832.

And peace, and equity.-Bold faith! yet rise
The sacred Towers for universal gains.
And peace, and equity.-Bold faith! yet rise
The sacred Structures for less doubtful gains.
2 1827.

1822.

1827.

speech wherewith to clothe a sigh

1822.