I SAW THE FIGURE OF A LOVELY MAID. Despised by that stern God to whom they raise 71 PART III. [When I came to this part of the series I had the dream described in this Sonnet.t The figure was that of my daughter, and the whole passed exactly as here represented. The Sonnet was composed on the middle road leading from Grasmere to Ambleside it was begun as I left the last house of the vale, and finished, word for word as it now stands, before I came in view of Rydal. I wish I could say the same of the five or six hundred I have written: most of them were frequently retouched in the course of composition, and, not a few, laboriously. I have only further to observe that the intended Church which prompted these Sonnets was erected on Coleorton Moor towards the centre of a very populous parish between three and four miles from Ashby-de-la-Zouch, on the road to Loughborough, and has proved, I believe, a great benefit to the neighbourhood.] FROM THE RESTORATION TO THE PRESENT TIMES. L I SAW the figure of a lovely Maid Set off her brightness with a pleasing shade. But while I gazed in tender reverie (Or was it sleep that with my Fancy played?) The bright corporeal presence-form and face- Of dissolution, melted into air. II. PATRIOTIC SYMPATHIES. LAST night, without a voice, that Vision spake Fear to my Soul, and sadness which might seem Wholly dissevered from our present theme; Yet, my beloved country! I partake 3 Of kindred agitations for thy sake; 4 Thou, too, dost visit oft my midnight dream; Of light, which tells that Morning is awake. 6 Or but forebode destruction, I deplore 1 1845. this Vision spake Fear to my Spirit-passion that might seem 1822. Fear to my Soul, and sadness that might seem 1837. CHARLES THE SECOND. With filial love the sad vicissitude; If thou hast1 fallen, and righteous Heaven restore And sorrow bartered for exceeding joy. III. CHARLES THE SECOND. WHO Comes with rapture greeted, and caressed That bigotry may swallow the good name,2 ‡ And, with that draught, the life-blood: misery, shame, By Poets loathed; from which Historians shrink! 1 1832. If she hath 1822. 73 Already stands our Country on the brink Of bigot rage, that all distinction levels Of truth and falsehood, swallowing the good name, 1822. * "No event ever marked a deeper or a more lasting change in the temper of the English people, than the entry of Charles the Second into Whitehall. With it modern England begins."-(Green's History of the English People, Chap. IX.)-Ed. +"The Restoration brought Charles to Whitehall; and in an instant the whole face of England was changed. All that was noblest and best in Puritanism was whirled away."-(Green.) The excesses of every kind that came in with the Restoration were notorious.-ED. In 1672 the Duke of York was publicly received into the Church of Rome.-ED. IV. LATITUDINARIANISM. YET Truth is keenly sought for, and the wind Charged with rich words poured out in thought's defence; Whether the Church inspire that eloquence,* Or a Platonic Piety confined To the sole temple of the inward mind; † Sad thoughts; for from above the starry sphere Shines through his soul—that he may see and tell V. WALTON'S BOOK OF LIVES.|| THERE are no colours in the fairest sky So fair as these. The feather, whence the pen Was shaped that traced the lives of these good men, As in the case of John Hales of Eton, William Chillingworth, who wrote The Religion of Protestants, and Jeremy Taylor, author of The Liberty of Prophecying.-ED. + The Cambridge Platonists, Ralph Cudworth, John Smith, and Henry More, are referred to.-ED. Milton.-ED. ? Compare Paradise Lost, Book iii., 1. 54-55.-Ed. || Izaak Walton, author of The Complete Angler, wrote also The Lives of John Donne, Sir Henry Wotton, Richard Hooker, George Herbert, and Robert Sanderson. -ED. CLERICAL INTEGRITY. Dropped from an Angel's wing. With moistened eye We read of faith and purest charity In Statesman, Priest, and humble Citizen. O could we copy their mild virtues, then 1 A guiding ray; or seen-like stars on high, Around meek Walton's heavenly memory. 75 VI. CLERICAL INTEGRITY. NOR shall the eternal roll of praise reject To poverty, and grief, and disrespect,† And some to want as if by tempests wrecked 2 glow-worms in the woods of spring, Or lonely tapers shooting far a light 1822. tempest wreck'd Compare the following with those lines of Wordsworth "Whose noble praise Deserve a quill pluckt from an angel's wing." 1822. (Dorothy Berry, in a Sonnet prefixed to Diana Primrose's Chain of Pearl, a memorial of the peerless graces, &c., of Queen Elizabeth, London, 1639.) And a still older passage "The pen wherewith thou dost so heavenly singe, (Henry Constable's Diana, a volume of Sonnets published in 1594).—ED. |