FILIAL PIETY. The last of their humanity, and scoffed By their own daring. But the People prayed Their spirit mounted, crying, "God us aid! 311 FILIAL PIETY. (ON THE WAYSIDE BETWEEN PRESTON AND LIVERPOOL.) [This was also communicated to me by a coachman in the same way In the course of my many coach rambles and journeys, which, during the day-time always, and often in the night, were taken on the outside of the coach, I had good and frequent opportunities of learning the characteristics of this class of men. One remark I made that is worth recording; that whenever I had occasion especially to notice their well-ordered, respectful and kind behaviour to women, of whatever age, I found them, I may say almost always, to be married men.] UNTOUCHED through all severity of cold; The fast was appointed because of an outbreak of cholera in England. -ED. Yes, Traveller! fifty winters have been told Since suddenly the dart of death went forth 'Gainst him who raised it,-his last work on earth: Its waste. Though crumbling with each breath of air, Rude Mausoleum! but wrens nestle there, And red-breasts warble when sweet sounds are rare. PICTURE OF TO B. R. HAYDON, ON SEEING HIS [This Sonnet, though said to be written on seeing the Portrait of Napoleon, was, in fact, composed some time after, extempore, in the wood at Rydal Mount.] 1 HAYDON! let worthier judges praise the skill Set, like his fortunes; but not set for aye 1837. Thence by his Son more prized than aught which gold 1832. IF THOU INDEED DERIVE THY LIGHT FROM HEAVEN. 313 Like them. The unguilty Power pursues his way, [These verses were written some time after we had become residents at Rydal Mount, and I will take occasion from them to observe upon the beauty of that situation, as being backed and flanked by lofty fells, which bring the heavenly bodies to touch, as it were, the earth upon the mountain-tops, while the prospect in front lies open to a length of level valley, the extended lake, and a terminating ridge of low hills; so that it gives an opportunity to the inhabitants of the place of noticing the stars in both the positions here alluded to, namely, on the tops of the mountains, and as winter-lamps at a distance among the leafless trees.] * IF thou indeed derive thy light from Heaven, Then, to the measure of that heaven-born light, Haydon, as he tells us in his Autobiography, received a commission from Sir Robert Peel, in Dec. 1830, "to paint Napoleon musing, the size of life." He finished it in June 1831, and thus described it himself : "Napoleon was peculiarly alive to poetical association as produced by scenery or sound; village bells with their echoing ding, dong, dang, now bursting full on the ear, now dying in the wind, affected him as they affect everybody alive to natural impressions, and on the eve of all his great battles you find him stealing away in the dead of the night, between the two hosts, and indulging in every species of poetical reverie. It was impossible to think of such a genius in captivity, without mysterious associations of the sky, the sea, the rock, and the solitude with which he was enveloped. I never imagined him but as if musing at dawn, or melancholy at sunset, listening at midnight to the beating and roaring of the Atlantic, or meditating as the stars gazed and the moon shone on him; in short Napoleon never appeared to me but at those seasons of silence and twilight, when nature seems to sympathise with the fallen, and when if there be moments in this turbulent earth fit for celestial intercourse, one must imagine these would be the times immortal spirits might select to descend within the sphere of mortality, to soothe and comfort, to inspire and support the afflicted. Under such impressions the present picture was produced. . . . I imagined him standing on the brow of an impending cliff, and musing on his past fortunes, sea-birds screaming at his feet, the sun just down, . . the sails of his guard ship glittering on the horizon, and the Atlantic, calm, silent, awfully deep, and endlessly extensive."-Life of Benjamin Robert Haydon, Vol. II., pp. 301-2.-ED. 314 IF THOU INDEED DERIVE THY LIGHT FROM HEAVEN. Shine, Poet in thy place, and be content: The stars pre-eminent in magnitude, And they that from the zenith dart their beams,2 (Visible though they be to half the earth, Though half a sphere be conscious of their brightness) Are yet of no diviner origin, No purer essence, than the one that burns, Like an untended watch-fire on the ridge Of some dark mountain; or than those which seem These lines were first published in 1832; and they found a place in the edition of that year, amongst the "Poems of Sentiment and Reflection." In the edition of 1845 they appeared as a Preface to the entire volume of Poems.-ED. The Star that from the zenith darts its beams, 1832. A WREN'S NEST. 315 1833. The most important of the poems written in 1833 were the Memorials of the Tour undertaken during the summer of that year. They refer to several Cumbrian localities, to the Isle of Man, to the Clyde, the Western Isles of Scotland, and again to Cumberland. [Written at Rydal Mount. This nest was built, as described, in a tree that grows near the pool in Dora's field, next the Rydal Mount garden.*] AMONG the dwellings framed by birds In field or forest with nice care, No door the tenement requires, And seldom needs a laboured roof; Yet is it to the fiercest sun Impervious, and storm-proof. So warm, so beautiful withal, In perfect fitness for its aim, That to the Kind by special grace And when for their abodes they seek An opportune recess, The hermit has no finer eye For shadowy quietness. * Wrens still build (1884) in the same pollard oak tree, which survives in "Dora's Field ;" and primroses grow beneath it.—ED. |