PART IV.

In the stormy east-wind straining,

The pale yellow woods were waning,

The broad stream in his banks complaining,

Heavily the low sky raining

Over towered Camelot;

Down she came and found a boat

Beneath a willow left afloat,

And round about the prow she wrote,

_The Lady of Shalott_.

And down the river's dim expanse--

Like some bold seër in a trance,

Seeing all his own mischance--

With a glassy countenance

Did she look to Camelot.

And at the closing of the day

She loosed the chain, and down she lay;

The broad stream bore her far away,

The Lady of Shalott.

Lying, robed in snowy white

That loosely flew to left and right--

The leaves upon her falling light--

Through the noises of the night

She floated down to Camelot:

And as the boat-head wound along

The willowy hills and fields among,

They heard her singing her last song,

The Lady of Shalott.

Heard a carol, mournful, holy,

Chanted loudly, chanted lowly,

Till her blood was frozen slowly,

And her eyes were darkened wholly,

Turned to towered Camelot;

For ere she reached upon the tide

The first house by the water-side,

Singing in her song she died,

The Lady of Shalott.

Under tower and balcony,

By garden-wall and gallery,

A gleaming shape she floated by,

A corse between the houses high,

Silent into Camelot.

Out upon the wharfs they came,

Knight and burgher, lord and dame,

And round the prow they read her name,

_The Lady of Shalott_.

Who is this? and what is here?

And in the lighted palace near

Died the sound of royal cheer;

And they crossed themselves for fear,

All the knights at Camelot;

But Lancelot mused a little space;

He said, "She has a lovely face;

God in his mercy lend her grace,

The Lady of Shalott."

NOTES.

This poem was written in 1832. Considered as a picture, or as a series

of pictures, its beauty is unsurpassed. The story which is here so

briefly told is founded upon a touching legend connected with the

romance of King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table. Tennyson

afterwards (in 1859) expanded it into the _Idyll_ called "Elaine,"

wherein he followed more closely the original narrative as related by

Sir Thomas Malory.

Sir Lancelot was the strongest and bravest of the Knights of the Round

Table, and for him Elaine, "the fair maid of Astolat," conceived a

hopeless passion. "Her love was platonic and pure as that of a child,

but it was masterful in its strength." Having learned that Lancelot was

pledged to celibacy, she pined away and died. But before her death she

called her brother, and having dictated a letter which he was to write,

she spake thus:

"'While my body is whole, let this letter be put into my right hand, and

my hand bound fast with the letter until I be cold, and let me be put in

a fair bed with all my richest clothes that I have about me, and so let

my bed and all my rich clothes be laid with me in a chariot to the next

place whereas the Thames is, and there let me be put in a barge, and but

one man with me, such as ye trust to steer me thither, and that my barge

be covered with black samite over and over.' . . . So when she was dead,

the corpse and the bed and all was led the next way unto the Thames, and

there all were put in a barge on the Thames, and so the man steered the

barge to Westminster, and there he rowed a great while to and fro, or

any man espied."[23:A] At length the King and his Knights, coming down

to the waterside, and seeing the boat and the lily maid of Astolat, they

uplifted the hapless body of Elaine, and bore it to the hall.

"But Arthur spied the letter in her hand,

Stoopt, took, brake seal, and read it; this was all:

'Most noble Lord, Sir Lancelot of the Lake,

I, sometime called the maid of Astolat,

Come, for you left me taking no farewell,

Hither, to take my last farewell of you.

I loved you, and my love had no return,

And therefore my true love has been my death. . . .

Pray for my soul and yield me burial.

Pray for my soul thou too Sir Lancelot,

As thou art a knight peerless.'"[24:A]

And so the maid was buried, "not as one unknown, nor meanly, but with

gorgeous obsequies, and mass and rolling music, like a queen. And the

story of her dolorous voyage was blazoned on her tomb in letters gold

and azure."

1. =wold.= An open tract of hilly country, where but few trees are left.

This word is more frequently used, however, to designate a forest or

thick wood.

2. =Camelot.= It is supposed that this Camelot was Winchester. It was the

seat of King Arthur's court, and visitors are still shown the remains of

what appear to have been certain kinds of intrenchments, which the

inhabitants call "King Arthur's Palace." Sir Thomas Malory says: "Sir

Ballin's sword was put into marble stone, standing it upright as a great

millstone, and it swam down the stream to the city of Camelot, that is,

in English, Wincheste." There was another Camelot, also King Arthur's

capital, on the river Camel, in Cornwall, to which Shakespeare makes

reference in _King Lear_, II, ii. Tennyson, in "Gareth and Lynette,"

describes the appearance of the city when approached in the early

morning:

"Far off they saw the silver-misty morn

Rolling her smoke about the Royal mount,

That rose between the forest and the field.

At times the summit of the high city flash'd;

At times the spires and turrets half-way down

Prick'd thro' the mist; at times the great gate shone

Only, that open'd on the field below:

Anon, the whole fair city had disappear'd."

3. =dusk.= Produce a ruffled surface. A very rare use of this word. The

river referred to is probably the Thames.

4. =trailed.= Lat. _traho_, to draw; Dutch _treilen_, to tow. What picture

is presented to the imagination in the first five lines of this stanza?

How do the barges differ in appearance and movement from the shallop

mentioned two lines below?

5. =web.= Anything woven. =stay.= Stop.

6. =pad.= An easy-going saddle-horse; a palfrey. Describe the picture

which is presented in this stanza.

7. Explain the meaning of the Lady's exclamation.

8. =red-cross knight.= A Knight wearing a red cross. One of King Arthur's

Knights. The red-cross Knight in Spenser's _Faerie Queene_ symbolizes

holiness.

"And on his brest a bloodie crosse he bore,

The deare remembrance of his dying Lord,

For whose sweete sake that glorious badge he wore,

And dead, as living ever, him ador'd;

Upon his shield the like was also scor'd,

For soveraine hope, which in his helpe he had.

Right, faithfull, true he was in deede and word;

But of his cheere did seeme too solemne sad;

Yet nothing did he dread, but ever was ydrad."

9. =Galaxy.= The milky-way. Gr. _gala_, _galaktos_, milk.

10. =baldric.= A belt thrown over the shoulder. From Lat. _balteus_.

11. =bearded meteor.= A shooting-star emitting rays of light in the

direction in which it moves. The beard of a comet is the light which it

throws out in front of it, in distinction from the tail or rays behind.

12. =He flashed.= His image was thrown upon and reflected from.

13. "=Tirra lirra.=" French _tire lire_. Probably intended to imitate the

note of the lark.

FOOTNOTES:

[23:A] Malory's King Arthur, Part III.

[24:A] Tennyson's Elaine.

THE BROOK.

I come from haunts of coot{1} and hern,{2}

I make a sudden sally,

And sparkle out among the fern,

To bicker{3} down a valley.

By thirty hills I hurry down,

Or slip between the ridges,

By twenty thorps,{4} a little town,

And half a hundred bridges.

Till last by Philip's farm I flow

To join the brimming river,

For men may come and men may go,

But I go on forever.

I chatter over stony ways,

In little sharps and trebles,

I bubble into eddying bays,

I babble on the pebbles.

With many a curve my banks I fret

By many a field and fallow,

And many a fairy foreland{5} set

With willow-weed and mallow.

I chatter, chatter, as I flow

To join the brimming river,

For men may come and men may go,

But I go on forever.

I wind about, and in and out,

With here a blossom sailing,

And here and there a lusty trout,

And here and there a grayling,

And here and there a foamy flake

Upon me, as I travel,

With many a silvery waterbreak

Above the golden gravel,

And draw them all along, and flow

To join the brimming river,

For men may come and men may go,

But I go on forever.

I steal by lawns and grassy plots,

I slide by hazel{6} covers;

I move the sweet forget-me-nots

That grow for happy lovers.

I slip, I slide, I gloom,{7} I glance,

Among my skimming swallows;

I make the netted sunbeams dance

Against my shady shallows.

I murmur under moon and stars

In brambly wildernesses;

I linger by my shingly{8} bars;

I loiter round my cresses;

And out again I curve and flow

To join the brimming river,

For men may come and men may go,

But I go on forever.

NOTES.

This little lyric forms a part of "an idyl" of the same title, published

in 1855. The poet introduces it in the following manner:

"Here, by this brook, we parted; I to the East

And he to Italy--too late--too late:

. . . . . . . . . Yet the brook he loved

. . . . . . . seems, as I re-listen to it,

Prattling the primrose fancies of the boy,

To me that loved him; for, 'O brook,' he says,

'O babbling brook,' says Edmund in his rhyme,

'Whence come you?' and the brook, why not? replies:

'I come from haunts of coot and hern,'" etc.

In reading this poem, observe how strikingly the sound is made to

correspond to the sense.

1. =coot.= A wild water-fowl, resembling the duck.

2. =hern.= Heron.

3. =bicker.= To move unsteadily.

4. =thorps.= Small villages. A. S. _thorpe_. From Ger. _trupp_, a troop.

5. =foreland.= A promontory.

6. =hazel covers.= Hazel thickets.

7. =gloom.= Glimmer, shine obscurely.

8. =shingly.= Gravelly.

THE LOTOS-EATERS.

"Courage!" he said, and pointed toward the land;

"This mounting wave will roll us shoreward soon."

In the afternoon they came unto a land,

In which it seemed always afternoon.

All round the coast the languid air did swoon,

Breathing like one that hath a weary dream.

Full-faced above the valley stood the moon;

And like a downward smoke, the slender stream

Along the cliff to fall and pause and fall did seem.

A land of streams! some, like a downward smoke,

Slow-dropping veils of thinnest lawn, did go;

And some through wavering lights and shadows broke

Rolling a slumbrous sheet of foam below.

They saw the gleaming river seaward flow

From the inner land: far off, three mountain-tops,

Three silent pinnacles of aged snow,

Stood sunset-flushed: and, dewed with showery drops,

Up-clomb the shadowy pine above the woven copse.

The charmed sunset lingered low adown

In the red West: through mountain clefts the dale

Was seen far inland, and the yellow down

Bordered with palm, and many a winding vale

And meadow, set with slender galingale;

A land where all things always seemed the same!

And round about the keel with faces pale,

Dark faces pale against that rosy flame,

The mild-eyed melancholy Lotos-eaters came.

Branches they bore of that enchanted stem,

Laden with flower and fruit, whereof they gave

To each, but whoso did receive of them,

And taste, to him the gushing of the wave

Far, far away did seem to mourn and rave

On alien shores; and if his fellow spake,

His voice was thin, as voices from the grave;

And deep-asleep he seemed, yet all awake,

And music in his ears his beating heart did make.

They sat them down upon the yellow sand,

Between the sun and moon upon the shore;

And sweet it was to dream of Father-land,

Of child and wife, and slave; but evermore

Most weary seemed the sea, weary the oar,

Weary the wandering fields of barren foam.

Then some one said, "We will return no more;"

And all at once they sang, "Our island home

Is far beyond the wave; we will no longer roam."

CHORIC SONG.

I.

There is sweet music here that softer falls

Than petals from blown roses on the grass,

Or night-dews on still waters between walls

Of shadowy granite, in a gleaming pass;

Music that gentlier on the spirit lies,

Than tired eyelids upon tired eyes;

Music that brings sweet sleep down from the blissful skies.

Here are cool mosses deep.

And thro' the moss the ivies creep,

And in the stream the long-leaved flowers weep,

And from the craggy ledge the poppy hangs in sleep.

II.

Why are we weighed upon with heaviness,

And utterly consumed with sharp distress,

While all things else have rest from weariness?

All things have rest: why should we toil alone,

We only toil, who are the first of things,

And make perpetual moan,

Still from one sorrow to another thrown:

Nor ever fold our wings,

And cease from wanderings,

Nor steep our brows in slumber's holy balm;

Nor hearken what the inner spirit sings,

"There is no joy but calm!"

Why should we only toil, the roof and crown of things?

III.

Lo! in the middle of the wood,

The folded leaf is woo'd from out the bud

With winds upon the branch, and there

Grows green and broad, and takes no care,

Sun-steeped at noon, and in the moon

Nightly dew-fed; and turning yellow

Falls, and floats adown the air.

Lo! sweetened with the summer light,

The full-juiced apple, waxing over-mellow,

Drops in a silent autumn night.

All its allotted length of days,

The flower ripens in its place,

Ripens and fades, and falls, and hath no toil,

Fast-rooted in the fruitful soil.

IV.

Hateful is the dark-blue sky,

Vaulted o'er the dark-blue sea.

Death is the end of life; ah, why

Should life all labour be?

Let us alone. Time driveth onward fast,

And in a little while our lips are dumb.

Let us alone. What is it that will last?

All things are taken from us, and become

Portions and parcels of the dreadful Past.

Let us alone. What pleasure can we have

To war with evil? Is there any peace

In ever climbing up the climbing wave?

All things have rest, and ripen toward the grave

In silence; ripen, fall, and cease:

Give us long rest or death, dark death, or dreamful ease.

V.

How sweet it were, hearing the downward stream,

With half-shut eyes ever to seem

Falling asleep in a half-dream!

To dream and dream, like yonder amber light

Which will not leave the myrrh-bush on the height;

To hear each other's whispered speech;

Eating the Lotos day by day,

To watch the crisping ripples on the beach,

And tender curving lines of creamy spray;

To lend our hearts and spirits wholly

To the influence of mild-minded melancholy;

To muse and brood and live again in memory,

With those old faces of our infancy

Heaped over with a mound of grass,

Two handfuls of white dust, shut in an urn of brass!

VI.

Dear is the memory of our wedded lives,

And dear the last embraces of our wives

And their warm tears: but all hath suffered change;

For surely now our household hearths are cold:

Our sons inherit us: our looks are strange:

And we should come like ghosts to trouble joy.

Or else the island-princes over-bold

Have eat our substance, and the minstrel sings

Before them of the ten-years' war in Troy,

And our great deeds, as half-forgotten things.

Is there confusion in the little isle?

Let what is broken so remain.

The gods are hard to reconcile:

'Tis hard to settle order once again.

There _is_ confusion worse than death,

Trouble on trouble, pain on pain,

Long labour unto aged breath,

Sore task to hearts worn out by many wars,

And eyes grown dim with gazing on the pilot-stars.

VII.

But, propped on beds of amaranth and moly,

How sweet (while warm airs lull us, blowing lowly)

With half-dropped eyelids still,

Beneath a heaven dark and holy,

To watch the long bright river drawing slowly

His waters from the purple hill--

To hear the dewy echoes calling

From cave to cave thro' the thick-twined vine--

To watch the emerald-coloured water falling

Thro' many a wov'n acanthus-wreath divine!

Only to hear and see the far-off sparkling brine,

Only to hear were sweet, stretched out beneath the pine.

VIII.

The Lotos blooms below the barren peak:

The Lotos blows by every winding creek:

All day the wind breathes low with mellower tone:

Thro' every hollow cave and alley lone

Round and round the spicy downs the yellow Lotos-dust is blown.

We have had enough of action, and of motion we,

Rolled to starboard, rolled to larboard, when the surge was

seething free,

Where the wallowing monster spouted his foam-fountains in the sea.

Let us swear an oath, and keep it with an equal mind,

In the hollow Lotos-land to live and lie reclined

On the hills like gods together, careless of mankind.

For they lie beside their nectar, and the bolts are hurled

Far below them in the valleys, and the clouds are lightly curled

Round their golden houses, girdled with the gleaming world:

Where they smile in secret, looking over wasted lands,

Blight and famine, plague and earthquake, roaring deeps and fiery

sands,

Clanging fights, and flaming towns, and sinking ships, and praying

hands.

But they smile, they find a music centred in a doleful song

Steaming up, a lamentation and an ancient tale of wrong,

Like a tale of little meaning tho' the words are strong;

Chanted from an ill-used race of men that cleave the soil,

Sow the seed, and reap the harvest with enduring toil,

Storing yearly little dues of wheat, and wine and oil;

Till they perish and they suffer--some, 'tis whispered, down in hell

Suffer endless anguish, others in Elysian valleys dwell,

Resting weary limbs at last on beds of asphodel.

Surely, surely, slumber is more sweet than toil, the shore

Than labour in the deep mid-ocean, wind and wave and oar;

Oh, rest ye, brother mariners, we will not wander more.

NOTE.

"Thence for nine whole days was I borne by ruinous winds over the

teeming deep; but on the tenth day we set foot on the land of the

lotus-eaters, who eat a flowery food. So we stepped ashore and drew

water, and straightway my company took their mid-day meal by the swift

ships. Now when we had tasted meat and drink, I sent forth certain of my

company to go and make search of what manner of men they were who here

live upon the earth by bread, and I chose out two of my fellows, and

sent a third with them as herald. Then straightway they went and mixed

with the men of the lotus-eaters, and so it was that the lotus-eaters

devised not death for our fellows, but gave them of the lotus to taste.

Now whosoever of them did eat the honey-sweet fruit of the lotus, had no

more wish to bring tidings nor to come back, but there he chose to abide

with the lotus-eating men, ever feeding on the lotus, and forgetful of

his homeward way. Therefore I led them back to the ships weeping, and

sore against their will, and dragged them beneath the benches, and bound

them in the hollow barques. But I commanded the rest of my well-loved

company to make speed and go on board the swift ships, lest haply any

should eat of the lotus and be forgetful of returning."--_Homer's

Odyssey_, ix, 80.

"In this poem, 'The Lotos-Eaters,' the artistic ideal of the young poet

(it was written in 1830) found its most finished expression and its

culminating point. Here he seems to have attained a consciousness that

beyond the ideal which he had adopted there is another, larger, grander,

and more satisfying. Nowhere else, perhaps, in the range of poetry, is

the trance of a listless life so harmoniously married to appropriate

melodies and appropriate accompaniments."--_North British Review._

BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE.

ALFRED TENNYSON was born at Somersby, Lincolnshire, England, in 1809.

His early education was received at home from his father, who was rector

of Somersby and vicar of Bennington and Grimsby. He was afterwards sent

to Trinity College, Cambridge, where, at the age of twenty, he received

the chancellor's medal for a poem in blank verse, entitled "Timbuctoo."

In 1830 he published a small volume of "Poems chiefly Lyrical." A

revised edition of this volume, published in 1833, contained "The Lady

of Shalott," "The Lotos-Eaters," and others of his best-known short

poems. In 1850, upon the death of Wordsworth, he was appointed

poet-laureate. In the same year he was married to Emily, daughter of

Henry Sellwood, Esq., and niece of Sir John Franklin. Since 1851,

Tennyson has resided for the greater part of the time at Farringford,

Freshwater, Isle of Wight. In December, 1883, he was made Baron Tennyson

of Aldworth and Freshwater.

"Mr. Tennyson," says R. H. Hutton, "was an artist even before he was a

poet; in other words, the eye for beauty, grace, and harmony of effect

was even more emphatically one of his original gifts than the voice for

poetic utterance itself. This, probably, it is which makes his very

earliest pieces appear so full of effort, and sometimes even so full of

affectation. They were elaborate attempts to embody what he saw, before

the natural voice of the poet had come to him. I think it possible to

trace not only a pre-poetic period in his art, but to date the period at

which the soul was 'infused' into his poetry, and the brilliant external

figures became the dwelling-places of germinating poetic thoughts

creating their own music. Curiously enough, the first poem where there

is any trace of those musings of the Round Table to which he has

directed so much of his maturest genius, is also a confession that the

poet was sick of the magic mirror of fancy and its picture-shadows, and

was turning away from them to the poetry of human life. Whenever Mr.

Tennyson's pictorial fancy has had it in any degree in its power to run

away with the guiding and controlling mind, the richness and the

workmanship have to some extent overgrown the spiritual principle of his

poems. It is obvious, for instance, that even in relation to natural

scenery, what his poetical faculty delights in most are rich, luxuriant

landscapes, in which either nature or man has accumulated a lavish

variety of effects. It is in the scenery of the mill, the garden, the

chase, the down, the rich pastures, the harvest-field, the palace

pleasure-grounds, the Lord of Burleigh's fair domains, the luxuriant

sylvan beauty, bearing testimony to the careful hand of man, 'the summer

crisp with shining woods,' that Mr. Tennyson most delights. If he strays

to rarer scenes, it is almost in search of richer and more luxuriant

loveliness, like the tropical splendors of 'Enoch Arden' and the

enervating skies which cheated the Lotos-Eaters of their longing for

home."

"Mr. Tennyson," says a writer in the _North British Review_, "deserves

an especial study, not only as a poet, but as a leader and a landmark of

popular thought and feeling. As a poet, he belongs to the highest

category of English writers; for poetry is the strongest and most

vigorous branch of English literature. In this literature his works are

evidently destined to secure a permanent place; for they express in

language refined and artistic, but not unfamiliar, a large segment of

the popular thought of the period over which they range. He has,

moreover, a clearly marked if not strongly individualized style, which

has served as a model for imitators, and as a starting-point for poets

who have sought to improve upon it."

=Principal Poems of Tennyson:= Charge of the Light Brigade, written in

1854; Dora, 1842; The Dying Swan, 1830; Enoch Arden, 1864; Idylls of the

King, 1859-1873,--to be read in the following order: The Coming of

Arthur; Gareth and Lynette; Geraint and Enid; Merlin and Vivien;

Lancelot and Elaine; The Holy Grail; Pelleas and Ettarre; The Last

Tournament; Guinevere; The Passing of Arthur;--In Memoriam, 1850 (131

parts); Locksley Hall, 1842; Locksley Hall Sixty Years Afterwards, 1886;

Maud, 1855 (3 parts); The Princess, 1847 (7 parts); Ode on the Death of

the Duke of Wellington, 1852.

DRAMATIC PIECES: Queen Mary, 1875; Harold, 1876; The Cup, 1881; The

Falcon, 1882; Becket, 1884; The Foresters: Robin Hood and Maid Marian,

1892.

REFERENCES: Stedman's _Victorian Poets_; Van Dyke's _The Poetry of

Tennyson_; Taine's _History of English Literature_, vol. IV; Kingsley's

_Miscellanies_; Elsdale's _Studies in the Idylls_; Buchanan's _Master

Spirits_; Tainsh's _Studies in Tennyson_; Hutton's _Essays_; Chapman's

_Companion to In Memoriam_; Walters's _In Tennyson Land_.

William Wordsworth.

ODE.

INTIMATIONS OF IMMORTALITY FROM RECOLLECTIONS OF EARLY CHILDHOOD.

The Child is father{1} of the Man;

And I could wish my days to be

Bound each to each by natural piety.

I.

There was a time when meadow, grove, and stream,

The earth, and every common sight,

To me did seem

Apparelled{2} in celestial light,

The glory and the freshness of a dream.

It is not now as it hath been of yore;--

Turn wheresoe'er I may,

By night or day,

The things which I have seen I now can see no more.

II.

The rainbow comes and goes,

And lovely is the rose;

The moon doth with delight

Look round her when the heavens are bare;

Waters on a starry night

Are beautiful and fair;

The sunshine is a glorious birth;

But yet I know, where'er I go,

That there hath passed away a glory from the earth.

III.

Now, while the birds thus sing a joyous song,

And while the young lambs bound

As to the tabor's{3} sound,

To me alone there came a thought of grief:

A timely utterance gave that thought relief,

And I again am strong.

The cataracts{4} blow their trumpets from the steep;

No more shall grief of mine the season wrong;

I hear the echoes{5} through the mountains throng;

The winds come to me from the fields of sleep,{6}

And all the earth is gay;

Land and sea

Give themselves up to jollity,{7}

And with the heart of May{8}

Doth every beast keep holiday.

Thou child of joy,

Shout round me, let me hear thy shouts, thou happy shepherd-boy!

IV.

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,{9}

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

On every side,

In a thousand valleys far and wide,

Fresh flowers, while the sun shines warm,

And the babe leaps up{10} on his mother's arm:

I hear, I hear, with joy I hear!

--But there's a tree,{11} of many, one,

A single field which I have looked upon,

Both of them speak of something that is gone:

The pansy{12} at my feet

Doth the same tale repeat.

Whither is fled the visionary gleam?

Where is it now, the glory and the dream?

V.

Our birth is but a sleep{13} 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,

And by the vision splendid

Is on his way attended;

At length the man perceives it die away,

And fade into the light of common day.

VI.

Earth fills her lap with pleasures of her own;

Yearnings she hath in her own natural kind,

And even with something of a mother's mind,

And no unworthy aim,

The homely nurse doth all she can

To make her foster-child, her inmate man,

Forget the glories he hath known,

And that imperial palace whence he came.

VII.

Behold the child{14} 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'{15}

With all the persons, down to palsied age,

That Life brings with her in her equipage,

As if his whole vocation

Were endless imitation.

VIII.

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!{16}

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

Broods like the day, a master o'er a slave,

A presence which is not to be put by;

Thou little child, yet glorious in the might

Of heaven-born freedom on thy being's height,

Why with such earnest pains dost thou provoke

The years to bring the inevitable yoke,

Thus blindly with thy blessedness at strife?

Full soon thy soul shall have her earthly freight,

And custom lie upon thee with a weight,

Heavy as frost, and deep almost as life!

IX.

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;{17}

Blank misgivings{18} of a creature

Moving about in worlds not realized,

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 endeavor,

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.

X.

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!

What though the radiance which was once so bright

Be now forever taken from my sight,

Though nothing can bring back the hour

Of splendor 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.

XI.

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:

The innocent brightness of a new-born day

Is lovely yet:

The clouds that gather round the setting sun{19}

Do take a sober coloring 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.

NOTES.

"This was composed," says Wordsworth, "during my residence at Town-End,

Grasmere (1803-1806). Two years at least passed between the writing of

the first four stanzas and the remaining part. To the attentive and

competent reader the whole sufficiently explains itself, but there may

be no harm in adverting here to particular feelings or experiences of my

own mind on which the structure of the poem partly rests. Nothing was

more difficult for me in childhood than to admit the notion of death as

a state applicable to my own being. I have said elsewhere:

'A simple child

That lightly draws its breath,

And feels its life in every limb,

What should it know of death?'[44:A]

"But it was not so much from the source of animal vivacity that _my_

difficulty came, as from a sense of the indomitableness of the spirit

within me. I used to brood over the stories of Enoch and Elijah, and

almost persuade myself that, whatever might become of others, I should

be translated in something of the same way to heaven. With a feeling

congenial to this, I was often unable to think of external things as

having external existence, and I communed with all that I saw as

something not apart from, but inherent in, my own immaterial nature.

Many times while going to school have I grasped at a wall or tree to

recall myself from this abyss of idealism to reality. At that time I was

afraid of mere processes. In later periods of life I have deplored, as

we have all reason to do, a subjugation of an opposite character, and

have rejoiced over the remembrances, as is expressed in the lines,

_Obstinate questionings_, etc. To that dream-like vividness and splendor

which invests objects of sight in childhood every one, I believe, if he

could look back, could bear testimony, and I need not dwell upon it

here; but having in the poem regarded it as a presumptive evidence of a

prior state of existence, I think it right to protest against a

conclusion which has given pain to some good and pious persons, that I

meant to inculcate such a belief. It is far too shadowy a notion to be

recommended to faith as more than an element in our instincts of

immortality. But let us bear in mind that, though the idea is not

advanced in Revelation, there is nothing there to contradict it, and the

fall of man presents an analogy in its favor. Accordingly, a

pre-existent state has entered into the popular creeds of many nations,

and among all persons acquainted with classic literature is known as an

ingredient in Platonic philosophy. Archimedes said that he could move

the world if he had a point whereon to rest his machine. Who has not

felt the same aspirations as regards the world of his mind? Having to

wield some of its elements when I was impelled to write this poem on the

'Immortality of the Soul,' I took hold of the notion of pre-existence as

having sufficient foundation in humanity for authorizing me to make for

my purpose the best use of it I could as a poet."

Lord Houghton says of this poem: "If I am asked what is the greatest

poem in the English language, I never for a moment hesitate to say,

Wordsworth's 'Ode on the Intimations of Immortality.'"

Principal Shairp says: "'The Ode on Immortality' marks the highest limit

which the tide of poetic inspiration has reached in England within this

century, or indeed since the days of Milton."

The idea of the pre-existence of the soul had already been treated by

Henry Vaughan in "Silex Scintillans" (1655).

"Happy those infant days, when I

Shined in my angel-infancy!

Before I understood this place

Appointed for my second race,

Or taught my soul to fancy aught

But a white, celestial thought;

When yet I had not walked above

A mile or two from my first Love,

And looking back at that short space

Could see a glimpse of his bright face."

Shelley, in "A Lament," hints at the same thought:

"O world! O life! O time!

On whose last steps I climb,

Trembling at that where I had stood before,

When will return the glory of your prime?

No more--oh, never more!

"Out of the day and night

A joy has taken flight;

Fresh spring, and summer, and winter hoar,

Move my faint heart with grief, but with delight

No more--oh, never more!"

1. =The child is father, etc.= These lines are from a short poem by

Wordsworth, entitled "My Heart leaps up":

"My heart leaps up when I behold

A rainbow in the sky.

So was it when my life began;

So is it now I am a man;

So be it when I shall grow old,

Or let me die!

The child is father of the man;

And I could wish my days to be

Bound each to each by natural piety."

Compare with Milton's lines in 'Paradise Regained,' Bk. IV:

"The childhood shows the man

As morning shows the day."

2. =apparelled.= From Fr. _pareil_, Lat. _parilis_. Other English words as

_pair_, _compare_, etc., are similarly derived. To _apparel_ is strictly

to pair, to suit, to put like to like.

3. =tabor.= From Old Fr. _tabour_, Fr. _tambour_. Compare Eng.

_tambourine_. Originally from the root _tap_, Gr. _tup_, to strike

lightly. An ancient musical instrument,--a small one-ended drum having a

handle projecting from the frame, by which it was held in the left hand,

while it was beaten with a stick held in the right hand.

4. =the cataracts.= The poet has probably in mind the "ghills" or falls of

his own lake country. The metaphor which he uses is a bold one.

5. =the echoes.= Compare with a similar line by Shelley:

"Lost Echo sits amid the voiceless mountains."

--_Adonais_, 127.

6. =the fields of sleep.= "The yet reposeful, slumbering country

side."--_Hales._ "The fields that were dark during the hours of

sleep."--_Knight._

7. =jollity.= Merriment. From Lat. _jovialis_. See Milton's 'L'Allegro,'

26:

"Haste thee nymph and bring with thee

Jest and youthful jollity."

8. =May.= May, with the poets, is the month of gayety. The older poetry

especially is full of May raptures. Chaucer says:

"For May will have no sluggardy a-night:

The season pricketh every gentle heart,

And maketh him out of his sleep to start."

9. =coronal.= A crown of flowers, a chaplet. As at the Roman banquets. On

such occasions it was usual for the host to give chaplets to his guests.

Festoons of flowers were also sometimes hung over their necks and

breasts. The chaplet, or coronal, was regarded as a cheerful ornament

and symbol of festivity.

10. =the babe leaps up.= That is for joy. See the poem, "My heart leaps

up," on page 46.

11. =there's a tree.= Compare this thought with that contained in the

following lines:

"Only, one little sight, one plant,

. . . whene'er the leaf grows there

Its drop comes from my heart, that's all."

--_Browning's May and Death._

12. =pansy.= The flower of thought. From Fr. _pensée_, thought; _penser_,

to think. "It probably derived its name, thought or fancy, from its

fanciful appearance."--_Nares._ Another derivation of the word is from

_panacea_, meaning _all-heal_, a name given by the Greeks to a plant

which was popularly supposed to cure diseases and dispel sorrow. The

notion that the pansy is a cure for grief is shown in its common English

name, _heart's-ease_.

13. =Our birth is but a sleep.= The idea of pre-existence was a favorite

one of the ancient philosophers. The doctrine of metempsychosis, a form

of the same idea, was held by the ancient Egyptians and is still

maintained by the Buddhists. Tennyson says:

"As old mythologies relate,

Some draught of Lethe might await

The slipping through from state to state.

"And if I lapsed from nobler place,

Some legend of a fallen race

Alone might hint of my disgrace."--_Two Voices._

14. =Behold the child.= Pope gives a similar picture:

"Behold the child, by Nature's kindly law,

Pleased with a rattle, tickled with a straw;

Some livelier plaything gives his youth delight,

A little louder, but as empty quite."--_Essay on Man._

When Wordsworth wrote of

"A six years' darling of a pigmy size,"

he probably had in mind Hartley Coleridge, who was then a child of that

age. See his poem "To Hartley Coleridge, Six Years Old."

15. =humorous stage.= See Shakespeare's lines beginning "All the world's

a stage," "As You like It," Act ii, sc. 7. The word _humorous_ has here

a special sense, such as is used by Ben Jonson in his "Every Man in his

Humor."

16. =best philosopher . . . mighty prophet! seer blest!= Stopford Brooke

says: "These expressions taken separately have scarcely any recognizable

meaning. By taking them all together, we feel rather than see that

Wordsworth intended to say that the child, having lately come from a

perfect existence, in which he saw truth directly, and was at home with

God, retains, unknown to us, that vision;--and, because he does, is the

best philosopher, since he sees at once that which we through philosophy

are endeavoring to reach; is the mighty prophet, because in his actions

and speech he tells unconsciously the truths he sees, but the sight of

which we have lost; is more closely haunted by God, more near to the

immortal life, more purely and brightly free because he half shares in

the pre-existent life and glory out of which he has come."--_Theology in

the English Poets._

17. =Fallings from us, vanishings.= "Fits of utter dreaminess and

abstraction, when nothing material seems solid, but everything mere mist

and shadow."--_Hales._

18. =Blank misgivings.= Compare Tennyson, "Two Voices":

"Moreover, something is or seems,

That touches me with mystic gleams,

Like glimpses of forgotten dreams;

"Of something felt, like something here;

Of something done, I know not where;

Such as no language may declare."

19. =The clouds that gather.= Compare these lines with the following from

Wordsworth's "Excursion":

"Ah! why in age

Do we revert so fondly to the walks

Of childhood, but that there the soul discerns

The dear memorial footsteps unimpair'd

Of her own native vigor, thence can hear

Reverberations and a choral song,

Commingling with the incense that ascends

Undaunted toward the imperishable heavens,

From her own lonely altar?"

FOOTNOTES:

[44:A] The first stanza of We are Seven, said to have been written by

Coleridge.

THE TWO APRIL MORNINGS.

We walked along, while bright and red

Uprose the morning sun;

And Matthew{1} stopped, he looked, and said,

'The will of God be done!'

A village schoolmaster was he,

With hair of glittering gray;

As blithe a man as you could see

On a spring holiday.

And on that morning, through the grass,

And by the steaming rills,

We travelled merrily, to pass

A day among the hills.

'Our work,' said I, 'was well begun:

Then, from thy breast what thought,

Beneath so beautiful a sun,

So sad a sigh has brought?'

A second time did Matthew stop,

And fixing still his eye

Upon the eastern mountain-top,

To me he made reply:

'Yon cloud with that long purple cleft

Brings fresh into my mind

A day like this which I have left

Full thirty years behind.

And just above yon slope of corn

Such colors, and no other,

Were in the sky, that April morn,

Of this the very brother.

With rod and line I sued the sport

Which that sweet season gave,

And, to the church-yard come, stopped short

Beside my daughter's grave.

Nine summers had she scarcely seen,

The pride of all the vale:

And then she sang;--she would have been

A very nightingale.

Six feet in earth my Emma lay;

And yet I loved her more,

For so it seemed, than till that day

I e'er had loved before.

And, turning from her grave, I met,

Beside the churchyard yew,

A blooming girl, whose hair was wet

With points of morning dew.

A basket on her head she bare;

Her brow was smooth and white:

To see a child so very fair,

It was a pure delight!

No fountain from its rocky cave

E'er tripped with foot so free;

She seemed as happy as a wave

That dances on the sea.

There came from me a sigh of pain

Which I could ill confine;

I looked at her, and looked again:

And did not wish her mine!'

Matthew is in his grave, yet now,

Methinks, I see him stand,

As at that moment, with a bough

Of wilding{2} in his hand.

NOTES.

This poem was written in 1799, and published the following year.

1. =Matthew.= This old schoolmaster is described elsewhere by Wordsworth

as being "made up of several, both of his class and men of other

occupations."

2. =wilding.= A twig from a wild apple tree.

"Ten ruddy wildings in the wood I found."--_Dryden._

THE SOLITARY REAPER.

Behold her, single in the field,

Yon solitary highland lass!

Reaping and singing by herself;

Stop here, or gently pass!

Alone she cuts and binds the grain,

And sings a melancholy strain;

O listen! for the vale profound

Is overflowing with the sound.

No nightingale did ever chaunt

More welcome notes to weary bands

Of travellers in some shady haunt

Among Arabian sands:

A voice so thrilling ne'er was heard

In spring-time from a cuckoo-bird,

Breaking the silence of the seas

Among the farthest Hebrides.

Will no one tell me what she sings?--

Perhaps the plaintive numbers flow

For old, unhappy, far-off things,

And battles long ago:

Or is it some more humble lay,

Familiar matter of to-day?

Some natural sorrow, loss, or pain,

That has been, or may be again?

Whate'er the theme, the maiden sang

As if her song could have no ending;

I saw her singing at her work,

And o'er the sickle bending;--

I listened, motionless and still;

And, as I mounted up the hill,

The music in my heart I bore,

Long after it was heard no more.

BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE.

WILLIAM WORDSWORTH was born at Cockermouth, a town in Cumberland,

England, April 7, 1770. He went to school at Hawkshead, Lancashire,

whence in his seventeenth year he was sent to St. John's College,

Cambridge. In January, 1791, he took his degree at the University, but

without having distinguished himself in any way. The next fifteen or

sixteen months were spent in France, just then in the first wild hopes

of the Revolution. "In the aspirations and hopes of the revolutionists

he was an ardent sharer; he thought that the world's great age was

beginning anew; and with all his soul he hailed so splendid an era. The

ultimate degradation of that great movement by wild lawlessness, and

then by most selfish ambition, alienated his sympathy for it." Towards

the close of 1792 he returned to England, and passed the subsequent time

among his friends in London and elsewhere till he settled with his

sister at Racedown, Dorsetshire, in 1796. In the following year they

removed to Alfoxden. It was during this period that he made the

acquaintance of Coleridge. Wordsworth had already published (1793) two

little volumes of poetry, entitled _Descriptive Sketches_ and _The

Evening Walk_; but they showed little promise of the triumphs which were

to crown his later life. In 1798 the first volume of the _Lyrical

Ballads_ was published at Bristol, which purported to be the joint work

of himself and Mr. Coleridge, but to which the latter contributed only

"The Ancient Mariner" and two or three shorter poems. After some months

spent in Germany, Wordsworth and his sister established themselves at

Grasmere, in the lake country. In 1800 he published the second volume of

the _Lyrical Ballads_, and in 1802 he married Mary Hutchinson. From 1799

to 1814 he was mainly busy with his great philosophical poem, to be

called "The Recluse," "containing views of Man, Nature, and Society," of

which "The Prelude" was to be the introduction and "The Excursion" the

Second and main Part. He designed that his minor pieces should be so

arranged in connection with this work as to "give them claim to be

likened to the little cells, oratories, and sepulchral recesses,

ordinarily included in Gothic churches." This plan, however, was never

carried out, as of the First and Third Parts only one book was written,

and it has never been published. From 1814 until his death Wordsworth

lived serenely and quietly at Rydal Mount, making occasional excursions

into Scotland and Wales, and a tour upon the continent. In 1843, upon

the death of Southey, he was appointed Poet-Laureate. His life was a

long one, of steady work and much happiness. He died April 23, 1850.

The distinguishing feature of Wordsworth's poetry is well set forth in

his own words:

"The moving accident is not my trade,

To freeze the blood I have no ready arts;

'Tis my delight, alone in summer shade,

To pipe a simple song for thinking hearts."

--_Hart-Leap Well, Part II._

"Every great poet," he said, "is a teacher; I wish either to be

considered as a teacher or as nothing."

And he avowed that the purpose of his poetry was "to console the

afflicted; to add sunshine to daylight by making the happy happier; to

teach the young and the gracious of every age _to see, to think and

feel_, and therefore to become more actively and securely virtuous."

"Love had he found in huts where poor men lie,

His daily teachings had been woods and rills,

The silence that is in the starry sky,

The sleep that is among the lonely hills."

"Wordsworth," says John Campbell Shairp, "was the first who, both in

theory and practice, shook off the trammels of the so-called poetic

diction which had tyrannized over English poetry for more than a

century. This diction of course exactly represented the half-courtly,

half-classical mode of thinking and feeling. As Wordsworth rebelled

against this conventionality of spirit, so against the outward

expression of it. The whole of the stock phrases and used-up metaphors

he discarded, and returned to living language of natural feeling, as it

is used by men, instead of the dead form of it which had got stereotyped

in books. And just as in his subjects he had taken in from the waste

much virgin soil, so in his diction he appropriated for poetic use a

large amount of words, idioms, metaphors, till then by the poets

disallowed. His shorter poems, both the earlier and the later, are, for

the most part, very models of natural, powerful, and yet sensitive

English; the language being, like a garment, woven out of, and

transparent with, the thought."

=Other Poems to be Read:= We are Seven; The Pet Lamb; To a Highland Girl;

Laodamia; Matthew; The Fountain; The Wishing Gate; To the Small

Celandine; "Three Years She Grew"; "She was a Phantom of Delight"; At

the Grave of Burns.

REFERENCES: Shairp's _Studies in Poetry and Philosophy_; Hazlitt's

_English Poets_; De Quincey's _Miscellaneous Works_; _Literature and

Life_, by E. P. Whipple; _Wordsworth_ (English Men of Letters), by

Goldwin Smith; _Yesterdays with Authors_, by James T. Fields; _Among My

Books_, Second Series, by J. R. Lowell; Matthew Arnold's Introduction to

the Poems of William Wordsworth.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge.

CHRISTABEL.

PART I.

'Tis the middle of night by the castle clock,

And the owls have awaken'd the crowing cock,

Tu--whit!----Tu--whoo!

And hark, again! the crowing cock,

How drowsily it crew.

Sir Leoline, the Baron rich,

Hath a toothless mastiff bitch;

From her kennel beneath the rock

She maketh answer to the clock,

Four for the quarters, and twelve for the hour;

Ever and aye, by shine and shower,

Sixteen short howls, not over loud;

Some say, she sees my lady's shroud.

Is the night chilly and dark?

The night is chilly, but not dark.

The thin gray cloud is spread on high,

It covers but not hides the sky.

The moon is behind, and at the full;

And yet she looks both small and dull.

The night is chill, the cloud is gray:

'Tis a month before the month of May,

And the Spring comes slowly up this way.

The lovely lady, Christabel,

Whom her father loves so well,

What makes her in the wood so late,

A furlong from the castle gate?

She had dreams all yesternight

Of her own betrothed knight;

Dreams that made her moan and leap

As on her bed she lay in sleep;

And she in the midnight wood will pray

For the weal of her lover that's far away.

She stole along, she nothing spoke,

The sighs she heaved were soft and low,

And naught was green upon the oak

But moss and rarest mistletoe:

She kneels beneath the huge oak tree,

And in silence prayeth she.

The lady sprang up suddenly,

The lovely lady, Christabel!

It moaned as near as near can be,

But what it is she cannot tell.--

On the other side it seems to be

Of the huge, broad-breasted, old oak tree.

The night is chill; the forest bare;

Is it the wind that moaneth bleak?

There is not wind enough in the air

To move away the ringlet curl

From the lovely lady's cheek--

There is not wind enough to twirl

The one red leaf, the last of its clan,

That dances as often as dance it can,

Hanging so light, and hanging so high,

On the topmost twig that looks up at the sky.

Hush, beating heart of Christabel!

Jesu, Maria, shield her well!

She folded her arms beneath her cloak,

And stole to the other side of the oak.

What sees she there?

There she sees a damsel bright,

Drest in a silken robe of white,

That shadowy in the moonlight shone:

The neck that made that white robe wan,

Her stately neck and arms were bare;

Her blue-vein'd feet unsandal'd were,

And wildly glitter'd here and there,

The gems entangled in her hair.

I guess, 'twas frightful there to see

A lady so richly clad as she--

Beautiful exceedingly!

"Mary, mother, save me now!"

(Said Christabel,) "And who art thou?"

The lady strange made answer meet,

And her voice was faint and sweet:--

"Have pity on my sore distress,

I scarce can speak for weariness:

Stretch forth thy hand, and have no fear!"

Said Christabel, "How camest thou here?"

And the lady, whose voice was faint and sweet,

Did thus pursue her answer meet:--

"My sire is of a noble line,

And my name is Geraldine:

Five warriors seized me yestermorn,

Me, even me, a maid forlorn:

They choked my cries with force and fright,

And tied me on a palfrey white.

The palfrey was as fleet as wind,

And they rode furiously behind.

They spurred amain, their steeds were white:

And once we cross'd the shade of night.

As sure as Heaven shall rescue me,

I have no thought what men they be;

Nor do I know how long it is

(For I have lain entranced I wis)

Since one, the tallest of the five,

Took me from the palfrey's back,

A weary woman, scarce alive.

Some mutter'd words his comrades spoke:

He placed me underneath this oak;

He swore they would return with haste;

Whither they went I cannot tell--

I thought I heard, some minutes past,

Sounds as of a castle bell.

Stretch forth thy hand" (thus ended she),

"And help a wretched maid to flee."

Then Christabel stretch'd forth her hand

And comforted fair Geraldine;

"O well, bright dame! may you command

The service of Sir Leoline;

And gladly our stout chivalry

Will he send forth and friends withal

To guide and guard you safe and free

Home to your noble father's hall."

She rose: and forth with steps they pass'd

That strove to be, and were not, fast.

Her gracious stars the lady blest,

And thus spake on sweet Christabel:

"All our household are at rest,

The hall is silent as the cell;

Sir Leoline is weak in health,

And may not well awaken'd be,

But we will move as if in stealth,

And I beseech your courtesy,

This night, to share your couch with me."

They cross'd the moat, and Christabel

Took the key that fitted well;

A little door she open'd straight,

All in the middle of the gate;

The gate that was iron'd within and without,

Where an army in battle array had march'd out.

The lady sank, belike through pain,

And Christabel with might and main

Lifted her up, a weary weight,

Over the threshold of the gate:

Then the lady rose again,

And moved, as she were not in pain.

So free from danger, free from fear,

They cross'd the court: right glad they were.

And Christabel devoutly cried

To the lady by her side;

"Praise we the Virgin all divine

Who hath rescued thee from thy distress!"

"Alas, alas!" said Geraldine,

"I cannot speak for weariness."

So free from danger, free from fear,

They cross'd the court: right glad they were.

Outside her kennel the mastiff old

Lay fast asleep, in moonshine cold.

The mastiff old did not awake,

Yet she an angry moan did make!

And what can ail the mastiff bitch?

Never till now she utter'd yell

Beneath the eye of Christabel.

Perhaps it is the owlet's scritch:

For what can ail the mastiff bitch?

They pass'd the hall, that echoes still,

Pass as lightly as you will!

The brands were flat, the brands were dying,

Amid their own white ashes lying;

But when the lady pass'd, there came

A tongue of light, a fit of flame;

And Christabel saw the lady's eye,

And nothing else saw she thereby,

Save the boss of the shield of Sir Leoline tall,

Which hung in a murky old niche in the wall.

"O softly tread," said Christabel,

"My father seldom sleepeth well."

Sweet Christabel her feet both bare,

And, jealous of the listening air,

They steal their way from stair to stair,

Now in glimmer, and now in gloom,

And now they pass the Baron's room,

And still as death, with stifled breath!

And now have reach'd her chamber door;

And now doth Geraldine press down

The rushes of the chamber floor.

The moon shines dim in the open air,

And not a moonbeam enters here.

But they without its light can see

The chamber carved so curiously,

Carved with figures strange and sweet,

All made out of the carver's brain,

For a lady's chamber meet:

The lamp with twofold silver chain

Is fasten'd to an angel's feet.

The silver lamp burns dead and dim;

But Christabel the lamp will trim.

She trimm'd the lamp, and made it bright,

And left it swinging to and fro,

While Geraldine, in wretched plight,

Sank down upon the floor below.

"O weary lady, Geraldine,

I pray you, drink this cordial wine!

It is a wine of virtuous powers;

My mother made it of wild flowers."

"And will your mother pity me,

Who am a maiden most forlorn?"

Christabel answered--"Woe is me!

She died the hour that I was born.

I have heard the gray-hair'd friar tell,

How on her death-bed she did say,

That she should hear the castle-bell

Strike twelve upon my wedding-day.

O mother dear! that thou wert here!"

"I would," said Geraldine, "she were!"

But soon with altered voice, said she--

"Off, wandering mother! Peak and pine!

I have power to bid thee flee."

Alas! what ails poor Geraldine?

Why stares she with unsettled eye?

Can she the bodiless dead espy?

And why with hollow voice cries she,

"Off, woman, off! this hour is mine--

Though thou her guardian spirit be,

Off, woman, off! 'tis given to me."

Then Christabel knelt by the lady's side,

And raised to heaven her eyes so blue--

"Alas!" said she, "this ghastly ride--

Dear lady! it hath wilder'd you!"

The lady wiped her moist cold brow,

And faintly said, "'Tis over now!"

Again the wild-flower wine she drank:

Her fair large eyes 'gan glitter bright,

And from the floor whereon she sank,

The lofty lady stood upright:

She was most beautiful to see,

Like a lady of a far countrée.

And thus the lofty lady spake--

"All they who live in the upper sky,

Do love you, holy Christabel!

And you love them, and for their sake

And for the good which me befell,

Even I in my degree will try,

Fair maiden, to requite you well.

But now unrobe yourself; for I

Must pray, ere yet in bed I lie."

Quoth Christabel, "So let it be!"

And as the lady bade, did she.

Her gentle limbs did she undress,

And lay down in her loveliness.

But through her brain of weal and woe

So many thoughts move to and fro,

That vain it were her lids to close;

So half-way from the bed she rose,

And on her elbow did recline

To look at the lady Geraldine.

Beneath the lamp the lady bow'd,

And slowly roll'd her eyes around;

Then drawing in her breath aloud

Like one that shudder'd, she unbound

The cincture from beneath her breast;

Her silken robe and inner vest,

Dropt to her feet, and full in view,

Behold! her bosom and half her side--

A sight to dream of, not to tell!

O shield her! shield sweet Christabel.

Yet Geraldine nor speaks nor stirs;

Ah! what a stricken look was hers!

Deep from within seems half-way

To lift some weight with sick assay,

And eyes the maid and seeks delay;

Then suddenly as one defied

Collects herself in scorn and pride,

And lay down by the maiden's side!--

And in her arms the maid she took,

Ah, well-a-day!

And with low voice and doleful look

These words did say:

"In the touch of this bosom there worketh a spell

Which is lord of thy utterance, Christabel!

Thou knowest to-night, and wilt know to-morrow

This mark of my shame, this seal of my sorrow;

But vainly thou warrest,

For this is alone in

Thy power to declare,

That in the dim forest

Thou heardest a low moaning,

And foundest a bright lady, surpassingly fair:

And didst bring her home with thee in love and in charity,

To shield her and shelter her from the damp air."

NOTES

The first part of the unfinished poem, "Christabel," was written in

1797, the second part which, however, left the story apparently as

incomplete as before, in 1808. The two parts were first published in

1816. The poem is a picture of white innocence, purity, and truth,

pursued and persecuted by the powers of evil. Its incompleteness seems

to enhance its interest. "Completion could scarcely have failed to

lessen its reality, for the reader could not have endured, neither could

the poet's own theory have endured, the sacrifice of Christabel, the

triumph of evil over good; and had she triumphed, there is a vulgar

well-being in victory which has nothing to do with such a strain."

"Such is the unfinished and unfinishable tale of Christabel--a poem

which, despite its broken notes and over-brevity, has raised its author

to the highest rank of poets, and which in itself is at once one of

the sweetest, loftiest, most spiritual utterances that has ever

been framed in English words. We know of no existing poem in any

language to which we can compare it. It stands by itself exquisite,

celestial, ethereal,--a song of the spheres,--yet full of such

pathos and tenderness and sorrowful beauty as only humanity can

give."--_Blackwood's Magazine_, 1871.

It is worthy of note that "Christabel" was the immediate inspiration of

Scott's "Lay of the Last Minstrel." "It is to Mr. Coleridge," says Sir

Walter, "that I am bound to make the acknowledgment due from the pupil

to his master." "But certainly," says Hales, "Scott himself never

succeeded in surrounding any one of his works with so fine an atmosphere

of glamour and romance."

The language and metrical arrangement of this poem are not only peculiar

but are in full accord with the weird and fantastic conception of the

piece as a whole. The versification is based upon a principle not

commonly practised--that of counting the number of accentuated words in

a line instead of the number of syllables. Though the latter varies from

seven to twelve, yet in each line the accents never exceed four. The

result is an irregular, but strangely beautiful harmony of a kind that

can hardly be attained through the ordinary methods of versification.

This poem is to be studied for its exquisite beauty, for the true poetic

qualities which it possesses and which distinguish it from mere verse.

Hence, no explanatory notes are given with reference to any particular

passage, nor is it desirable that it should be analyzed with a view to

grammatical or philological study. It should be read and reread until

the student is thoroughly in accord with the poetic spirit which

breathes in and vivifies the entire production. "It was indolence, no

doubt, that left the tale half told--indolence and misery--and a poetic

instinct higher than all the better impulses of industry and virtuous

gain. The subject by its very nature was incomplete; it had to be left a

lovely, weird suggestion--a vision for every eye that could see."

BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE.

SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE was born at Ottery Saint Mary, October 21, 1772.

He was educated at Christ's Hospital and at Jesus College, Cambridge. At

the age of twenty-two he left the University without having taken a

degree. He was an intimate friend of Charles Lamb and Southey, and with

the latter formed a wild scheme for the founding of a "Pantisocratic

State" in America, which, however, was soon abandoned. His first book of

poetry was published in 1794. In 1796 he and Charles Lamb published a

volume of poems together. He soon afterwards became acquainted with

Wordsworth, and in 1798 the two brought out their famous volume of

_Lyrical Ballads_, containing some of Wordsworth's best pieces and

Coleridge's "Ancient Mariner." "Christabel," after lying in manuscript

for several years, was published in 1816, three editions being issued

within twelve months. Coleridge's chief poems were published in 1817 in

a collection entitled _Sibylline Leaves_, so called, he says, "in

allusion to the fragmentary and wildly scattered state in which they had

long been suffered to remain." At about the same time he was received

into the house of Mr. Gillman, a surgeon residing at Highgate, in order

to be cured if possible of his excessive use of opium. Here he produced

his more important prose works, _Aids to Reflection_, and _On the

Constitution of Church and State_; and here he died, July 25, 1834.

Coleridge was forever planning and designing,--beginning a work and

leaving its completion until to-morrow--which never came. He devoted his

attention only sparingly to poetry--and that chiefly during his youth.

Later in life he was occupied with political, social, and religious

questions. "He was a living Hamlet, full of the most splendid thoughts

and the noblest purposes, but a most incompetent doer." "His mind,"

wrote Southey, "is a perpetual St. Vitus's dance--eternal activity

without action."

"Of Coleridge's best verses," says Swinburne, "I venture to affirm that

the world has nothing like them, and can never have; that they are of

the highest kind, and of their own. They are jewels of the diamond's

price, flowers of the rose's rank, but unlike any rose or diamond

known."

"His best work is but little," says Stopford Brooke, "but of its kind it

is perfect and unique. . . . All that he did excellently might be bound

up in twenty pages, but it should be bound in pure gold."

=Other Poems to be Read:= The Rime of the Ancient Mariner; Hymn before

Sunrise in the Vale of Chamouni; Ode to France; Genevieve.

REFERENCES: Swinburne's _Studies and Essays_; Shairp's _Studies in

Poetry_; Carlyle's _Reminiscences_; Coleridge's _Biographia Literaria_;

De Quincey's _Essays_; _Coleridge_ (English Men of Letters), by H. D.

Traill; Hazlitt's _English Poets_; Hunt's _Imagination and Fancy_;

Chorley's _Authors of England_; Walter Pater's _Apprecia_.

Percy Bysshe Shelley.

TO A SKYLARK

Hail to thee, blithe spirit!

Bird thou never wert,

That from heaven, or near it,

Pourest thy full heart

In profuse{1} strains of unpremeditated art.

Higher still, and higher,

From the earth thou springest

Like a cloud of fire;

The deep blue thou wingest,{2}

And singing still dost soar, and soaring ever singest.

In the golden lightning

Of the sunken sun,{3}

O'er which clouds are brightening,

Thou dost float and run,

Like an unbodied joy whose race is just begun.

The pale purple even

Melts around thy flight;

Like a star of heaven,

In the broad daylight

Thou art unseen, but yet I hear thy shrill delight.

Keen as are the arrows

Of that silver sphere,

Whose intense lamp narrows

In the white dawn clear,

Until we hardly see, we feel that it is there.

All the earth and air

With thy voice is loud,

As, when night is bare,

From one lonely cloud

The moon rains{4} out her beams, and heaven is overflowed.

What thou art we know not;--

What is most like thee?

From rainbow clouds there flow not

Drops so bright to see,

As from thy presence showers a rain of melody.

Like a poet hidden

In the light of thought,

Singing hymns unbidden,

Till the world is wrought{5}

To sympathy with hopes and fears it heeded not:

Like a high-born maiden

In a palace tower,

Soothing her love-laden

Soul in secret hour

With music sweet as love, which overflows her bower:

Like a glow-worm golden

In a dell of dew,

Scattering unbeholden

Its aërial hue

Among the flowers and grass, which screen it from the view:

Like a rose embowered

In its own green leaves,

By warm winds deflowered,

Till the scent it gives

Makes faint with too much sweet these heavy-winged thieves.

Sound of vernal showers

On the twinkling grass,

Rain-awakened flowers,

All that ever was

Joyous, and clear, and fresh, thy music doth surpass.

Teach us, sprite{6} or bird,

What sweet thoughts are thine:

I have never heard

Praise of love or wine

That panted forth a flood of rapture so divine.

Chorus hymeneal,{7}

Or triumphal chaunt,

Matched with thine would be all

But an empty vaunt--

A thing wherein we feel there is some hidden want.

What objects are the fountains

Of thy happy strain?

What fields, or waves, or mountains?

What shapes of sky or plain?

What love of thine own kind? what ignorance of pain?

With thy clear keen joyance

Langour cannot be:

Shadow of annoyance

Never came near thee:

Thou lovest; but ne'er knew love's sad satiety.

Waking or asleep;

Thou of death must deem

Things more true and deep

Than we mortals dream--

Or how could thy notes flow in such a crystal stream?

We look before and after,

And pine for what is not:{8}

Our sincerest laughter

With some pain is fraught:

Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought.

Yet if we could scorn

Hate, and pride, and fear;

If we were things born

Not to shed a tear,

I know not how thy joy we ever should come near.

Better than all measures

Of delight and sound,

Better than all treasures

That in books are found,

Thy skill to poet were, thou scorner of the ground!

Teach me half the gladness

That thy brain must know,

Such harmonious madness

From my lips would flow,

The world should listen then, as I am listening now.

NOTES.

This is perhaps the most perfect lyric of its kind in the English

language. Every verse is worthy of careful study, and it should be read

and reread until its exquisite melody is felt and the subtle thoughts

which it embodies fully understood. Yet there is little in the poem

which requires annotation--the lark's song itself admits of no

explanation.

"For sweetness the 'Ode to a Skylark' is inferior only to

Coleridge, in rapturous passion to no man. It is like the bird

it sings,--enthusiastic, enchanting, profuse, continuous, and

alone,--small, but filling the heavens."--_Leigh Hunt._

"Has any one, since Shakespeare and Spenser, lighted on such tender and

such grand ecstasies?"--_Taine._

The skylark is very generally distributed over the northern portions of

the Old World, but is not found in America. Its song in the morning may

often be heard when the bird is so high as to be entirely out of sight,

and although not finely modulated is remarkably cheerful and prolonged.

A person who is accustomed to the song can tell by its variations

whether it be ascending, stationary, or descending.

1. =profuse.= Accent here on the first syllable. From Lat. _profundo_, to

pour forth.

2. Explain the figures of rhetoric employed in this line. The meaning of

=blue=; of =wingest=.

3. =sunken sun.= The sun is not yet above the horizon, but the bird has

risen so high that it is visible to him, and he "floats and runs" in its

golden light.

4. What is the meaning of =rains=? of =rain= in the next stanza?

5. =wrought.= Influenced. A.-S. _worhte_, _wyrcan_, to work.

6. =sprite.= Spirit. In the first stanza he calls the lark a spirit and

says it never was a bird; here he calls it "bird or sprite."

7. =Chorus hymeneal.= See note on "Prothalamion," page 241.

8. Compare this thought with the ideas contained in Wordsworth's "Ode on

the Intimations of Immortality."

=pine.= From A.-S. _pinan_, to pain. Our word _pain_ is derived from the

same root.

HYMN OF PAN.

From the forests and highlands

We come, we come;

From the river-girt islands,

Where loud waves are dumb

Listening to my sweet pipings.

The wind in the reeds and the rushes,

The bees on the bells of thyme,

The birds on the myrtle-bushes,

The cicale above in the lime,

And the lizards below in the grass,

Were as silent as ever old Tmolus{1} was,

Listening to my sweet pipings.

Liquid Peneus{2} was flowing,

And all dark Tempe lay

In Pelion's shadow, outgrowing

The light of the dying day,

Speeded by my sweet pipings.

The Sileni{3} and Sylvans and Fauns,

And the Nymphs of the woods and waves,

To the edge of the moist river-lawns,

And the brink of the dewy caves,

And all that did then attend and follow,

Were silent with love,--as you now, Apollo,{4}

With envy of my sweet pipings.

I sang of the dancing stars,

I sang of the dædal{5} earth,

And of heaven, and the Giant wars,{6}

And love, and death, and birth,

And then I changed my pipings,--

Singing how down the vale of Mænalus

I pursued a maiden,{7} and clasped a reed:

Gods and men, we are all deluded thus;

It breaks in our bosom, and then we bleed.

All wept--as I think both ye now would,

If envy or age had not frozen your blood--

At the sorrow of my sweet pipings.

NOTES.

Pan, as described in the Homeric hymns, is "lord of all the hills and

dales": sometimes he ranges along the tops of the mountains; sometimes

pursues the game in the valleys, roams through the woods, or floats

along the streams; or drives his sheep into a cave, and there plays on

his reeds music not to be excelled by that of the sweetest singing

birds; and

"With him the clear-singing mountain-nymphs

Move quick their feet, by the dark-watered spring

In the soft mead, where crocus, hyacinths,

Fragrant and blooming, mingle with the grass

Confused, and sing, while echo peals around

The mountain's top."

Keats, in "Endymion," thus apostrophizes Pan:

"O Hearkener to the loud clapping shears,

While ever and anon to his shorn peers

A ram goes bleating: Winder of the horn,

When snouted wild-boars routing tender corn

Anger our huntsmen: Breather round our farms,

To keep off mildews, and all weather harms:

Strange ministrant of undescribed sounds,

That come a-swooning over hollow grounds,

And wither drearily on barren moors:

Dread opener of the mysterious doors

Leading to universal knowledge--see,

Great son of Dryope,

The many that are come to pay their vows

With leaves about their brows!"

1. =Tmolus.= It was Tmolus who acted as umpire in the musical contest

between Pan and Apollo. This contest is directly referred to throughout

this poem.

2. =Peneus.= The chief river of Thessaly. It flows through the Vale of

Tempe, and between the mountains Ossa and Pelion, emptying finally into

the Ægean Sea. (See map of ancient Greece.)

3. =Sileni.= A name applied to the older satyrs. They were fond of wine

and of every kind of sensual pleasure, and hence represented the

luxuriant powers of nature, and were connected with the worship of

Bacchus.

=Sylvans.= Deities of the fields and forests.

=Fauns.= Gods of the shepherds, flocks, and fields. A faun was usually

represented as half man and half goat.

4. =Apollo.= One of the chief divinities of the Greeks; the god of music

and song, of prophecy, of the flocks and herds, of the founding of

towns, and of the sun. He was the son of Zeus and Leto, and was born on

the island of Delos. His favorite oracle was at Delphi.

5. =dædal.= Labyrinthine, wonderful. From Dædalus, a famous Athenian

architect, who designed the labyrinth at Crete in which the Minotaur was

kept.

6. =Giant wars.= The wars of the Titans,--the contest in which Zeus

overcame and deposed his father, Chronos, and made himself supreme ruler

of the universe. The Titans, who were opposed to him, were overcome, and

hurled into the lowest depths of Tartarus.

=Mænalus.= A mountain in Arcadia, celebrated as the favorite haunt of Pan.

7. =maiden.= Syrinx, a nymph of Arcadia, devoted to the service of

Artemis. "As she was returning one day from the chase, Pan saw and loved

her; but when he would address her, she fled. The god pursued. She

reached the river Ladon, and, unable to cross it, implored the aid of

her sister nymphs; and when Pan thought to grasp the object of his

pursuit, he found his arms filled with reeds. At that moment the wind

began to agitate the reeds and produced a low musical sound. The god

took the hint, cut seven of the twigs, and formed from them his

_syrinx_, or pastoral pipe." See Ovid's _Metamorphoses_.

FROM "EPIPSYCHIDION."

Emily,

A ship is floating in the harbor now;

A wind is hovering o'er the mountain's brow;

There is a path on the sea's azure floor,--

No keel has ever ploughed that path before;

The halcyons{1} brood around the foamless isles;

The treacherous ocean has forsworn its wiles;

The merry mariners are bold and free:

Say, my heart's sister, wilt thou sail with me?

Our bark is as an albatross whose nest

Is a far Eden of the purple east;

And we between her wings will sit, while Night

And Day and Storm and Calm pursue their flight,

Our ministers, along the boundless sea,

Treading each other's heels, unheededly.

It is an isle under Ionian{2} skies,

Beautiful as a wreck of paradise;

And, for{3} the harbors are not safe and good,

This land would have remained a solitude

But for some pastoral people native there,

Who from the elysian, clear, and golden air

Draw the last spirit of the age of gold,{4}--

Simple and spirited, innocent and bold.

The blue Ægean girds this chosen home,

With ever-changing sound and light and foam

Kissing the sifted sands and caverns hoar;

And all the winds wandering along the shore

Undulate with the undulating tide.

There are thick woods where sylvan forms abide;

And many a fountain, rivulet, and pond,

As clear as elemental diamond,

Or serene morning air. And far beyond,

The mossy tracks made by the goats and deer

(Which the rough shepherd treads but once a year)

Pierce into glades, caverns, and bowers, and halls

Built round with ivy, which the waterfalls

Illumining, with sound that never fails,

Accompany the noonday nightingales.

And all the place is peopled with sweet airs.{5}

The light clear element which the isle wears

Is heavy with the scent of lemon-flowers,

Which floats like mist laden with unseen showers,

And falls upon the eyelids like faint sleep;

And from the moss violets and jonquils peep,

And dart their arrowy odor through the brain,

Till you might faint with that delicious pain.

And every motion, odor, beam, and tone,

With that deep music is in unison:

Which is a soul within the soul,--they seem

Like echoes of an antenatal dream.{6}

It is an isle 'twixt heaven, air, earth, and sea,

Cradled, and hung in clear tranquillity;

Bright as that wandering Eden, Lucifer,{7}

Washed by the soft blue oceans of young air.{8}

It is a favored place. Famine or blight,

Pestilence, war, and earthquake, never light

Upon its mountain-peaks; blind vultures, they

Sail onward far upon their fatal way.

The wingèd storms, chaunting their thunder-psalm

To other lands, leave azure chasms of calm

Over this isle, or weep themselves in dew,

From which its fields and woods ever renew

Their green and golden immortality.

And from the sea there rise, and from the sky

There fall, clear exhalations, soft and bright,

Veil after veil, each hiding some delight:

Which sun or moon or zephyr draw aside,

Till the isle's beauty, like a naked bride

Glowing at once with love and loveliness,

Blushes and trembles at its own excess.

Yet, like a buried lamp, a soul no less

Burns in the heart of this delicious isle,

An atom of the Eternal, whose own smile

Unfolds itself, and may be felt not seen

O'er the gray rocks, blue waves, and forests green,

Filling their bare and void interstices.

This isle and house are mine, and I have vowed

Thee to be lady of the solitude.

And I have fitted up some chambers there

Looking towards the golden eastern air,

And level with the living winds which flow

Like waves above the living waves below.

I have sent books and music there, and all

Those instruments with which high spirits call

The future from its cradle, and the past

Out of its grave, and make the present last

In thoughts and joys which sleep but cannot die,

Folded within their own eternity.

Our simple life wants little, and true taste

Hires not the pale drudge Luxury to waste

The scene it would adorn; and therefore still

Nature with all her children haunts the hill.

The ringdove in the embowering ivy yet

Keeps up her love-lament; and the owls flit

Round the evening tower; and the young stars glance

Between the quick bats in their twilight dance;

The spotted deer bask in the fresh moonlight

Before our gate; and the slow silent night

Is measured by the pants of their calm sleep.

Be this our home in life; and, when years heap

Their withered hours like leaves on our decay,

Let us become the overhanging day,

The living soul, of this elysian isle--

Conscious, inseparable, one. Meanwhile

We two will rise and sit and walk together

Under the roof of blue Ionian weather;

And wander in the meadows; or ascend

The mossy mountains, where the blue heavens bend

With lightest winds to touch their paramour;{9}

Or linger where the pebble-paven shore

Under the quick faint kisses of the sea

Trembles and sparkles as with ecstasy;--

Possessing and possessed by all that is

Within that calm circumference of bliss,

And by each other, till to love and live

Be one. . . .

We shall become the same, we shall be one

Spirit within two frames, oh wherefore two?

One passion in twin hearts, which grows and grew

Till, like two meteors of expanding flame,

Those spheres instinct with it become the same,

Touch, mingle, are transfigured; ever still

Burning, yet ever inconsumable;

In one another's substance finding food,

Light flames too pure and light and unimbued

To nourish their bright lives with baser prey,

Which point to heaven and cannot pass away:

One hope within two wills, one will beneath

Two overshadowing minds, one life, one death,

One heaven, one hell, one immortality,

And one annihilation!

Woe is me!

The wingèd words on which my soul would pierce

Into the height of Love's rare universe

Are chains of lead around its flight of fire--

I pant, I sink, I tremble, I expire!

NOTES.

"A clever but disreputable professor at Pisa one day related to Shelley

the sad story of a beautiful and noble lady, the Contessina Emilia

Viviani, who had been confined by her father in a dismal convent of the

suburbs, to await her marriage with a distasteful husband." Shelley,

fired as ever by a tale of tyranny, was eager to visit the fair captive.

The professor accompanied him and Medwin to the convent parlor, where

they found her more lovely than even the most glowing descriptions had

led them to expect. Nor was she only beautiful. Shelley soon discovered

that she had "cultivated her mind beyond what I have ever met with in

Italian women"; and a rhapsody composed by her upon the subject of

Uranian Love--"Il Vero Amore"--justifies the belief that she possessed

an intellect of more than ordinary elevation. He took Mrs. Shelley to

see her; and both did all they could to make her convent prison less

irksome by frequent visits, by letters, by presents of flowers and

books. It was not long before Shelley's sympathy for this unfortunate

lady took the form of love, which, however spiritual and Platonic, was

not the less passionate. The result was the composition of

"Epipsychidion," the most unintelligible of all his poems to those who

have not assimilated the spirit of Plato's _Symposium_ and Dante's _Vita

Nuova_.--_J. A. Symonds._

W. M. Rossetti characterizes this poem as "a pure outpouring of poetry;

a brimming and bubbling fountain of freshness and music, magical with

its own spray rainbows."

A year after its composition, Shelley wrote: "The 'Epipsychidion' I

cannot look at. If you are curious, however, to hear what I am and have

been, it will tell you something thereof. It is an idealized history of

my life and feelings."

=Epipsychidion.= From Gr. _epi_, upon, and _psyche_, the soul. This poem

is addressed "to the noble and unfortunate Lady Emilia Viviani, now

imprisoned in the Convent of St. Anne, Pisa," and was written in 1821.

1. =halcyons.= Kingfishers. Halcyone was the daughter of Æolus and wife of

Ceyx. When her husband died she was changed into a bird,--the

kingfisher,--and, floating over the sea, she still calls for the lost

Ceyx in tones full of plaining and tears. And "whensoever she makes her

nest, a law of nature brings round what is called Halcyon's

weather--days distinguishable among all others for their serenity."

2. =Ionian.= Greek. See the expression "Under the roof of blue Ionian

weather," below. Explain its meaning.

3. =for.= Since, because.

=elysian.= Heavenly. Pertaining to Elysium, the islands of the blest, the

Elysian fields.

4. =age of gold.= Compare Milton, "Hymn on the Nativity" (see note 36,

page 192. See, also, poem by John Lydgate, page 275).

5. =peopled with sweet airs.= Filled with sweet music.

6. =antenatal dream.= See Wordsworth's "Ode on the Intimations of

Immortality" (also, note 13, page 47).

"Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting."

7. =Lucifer.= Venus when seen in the morning, rising before the sun is

called Lucifer, the light-bearer. From Lat. _lux_, light, and _fero_, to

bear (see note 18, page 189). The same star when seen in the evening,

following the sun, is called Hesperus.

8. =blue oceans of young air.= Explain.

9. =paramour.= See Milton's "Ode on the Nativity," stanza i.

"It was no reason then for her

To wanton with the sun, her lusty paramour."

Milton makes the sun the paramour of the earth; Shelley, the earth the

paramour of the sky.

A LAMENT.

Swifter far than summer's flight,

Swifter far than youth's delight,

Swifter far than happy night,

Art thou come and gone:

As the earth when leaves are dead,

As the night when sleep is sped,

As the heart when joy is fled,

I am left alone, alone.

The swallow Summer comes again,

The owlet Night resumes her reign,

But the wild swan Youth is fain

To fly with thee, false as thou.

My heart each day desires the morrow,

Sleep itself is turned to sorrow,

Vainly would my winter borrow

Sunny leaves from any bough.

Lilies for a bridal bed,

Roses for a matron's head,

Violets for a maiden dead,

Pansies let my flowers be:

On the living grave I bear,

Scatter them without a tear,

Let no friend, however dear,

Waste one hope, one fear, for me.

BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE.

PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY was born at Field Place, near Horsham in Sussex,

August 4, 1792. He was educated at Eton and at Oxford. While a student

at the latter place, he wrote a pamphlet, entitled _The Necessity of

Atheism_, which caused his expulsion from college. This occurred in

1811, and in the same year he married Harriet Westbrook, from whom,

three years later, he separated. In 1816 he married Mary Godwin. In 1818

he left England for Italy, where he remained until his death by drowning

in the gulf of Spezia, July 8, 1822. His first considerable poem, "Queen

Mab," was published in 1813; "Alastor, or the Spirit of Solitude," in

1816; "The Revolt of Islam," in 1818; and "Epipsychidion" and "Adonais"

in 1821. His two dramas, the "Cenci" and "Prometheus Unbound," were

issued, the former in 1819, the latter in 1821.

"Shelley's early rupture with the English world," says Hales, "lost him

all the advantages which a fuller experience of it and a longer

intercourse with it might have given. That world was no less estranged

from him than he from it. It misunderstood and misinterpreted him

throughout his career. It covered him with its opprobrium. Assuredly, he

was not the man that world painted. It by no means follows that because

Shelley did not repeat the ordinary creeds, and even mocked at them,

that he believed nothing. Shelley was never in his soul an atheist: it

was simply impossible with his nature that he should be; what he did

deny and defy was a deity whose worship seemed, as he saw the world,

consistent with the reign of selfishness and bigotry."

Lord Macaulay says: "We doubt whether any modern poet has possessed in

an equal degree some of the highest qualities of the great ancient

masters. The words _bard_ and _inspiration_, which seem so cold and

affected when applied to other modern writers, have a perfect propriety

when applied to him. He was not an author, but a bard. His poetry seems

not to have been an art, but an inspiration. Had he lived to the full

age of man, he might not improbably, have given to the world some great

work of the very highest rank in design and execution."

Leigh Hunt says: "Assuredly, had he lived, he would have been the

greatest dramatic writer since the days of Elizabeth. In general, if

Coleridge is the sweetest of our poets, Shelley is at once the most

ethereal and most gorgeous--the one who has clothed his thoughts in

draperies of the most evanescent and most magnificent words and imagery.

His poetry is as full of mountains, seas, and skies, of light, and

darkness, and the seasons, and all the elements of our being, as if

Nature herself had written it, with the Creation and its hopes newly

cast around her, not, it must be confessed, without too indiscriminate a

mixture of great and small, and a want of sufficient shade--a certain

chaotic brilliancy, 'dark with excess of light.'"

Another English poet says: "Shelley outsang all poets on record but some

two or three throughout all time; his depths and heights of inner and

outer music are as divine as nature's, and not sooner exhaustible. He

was alone the perfect singing-god; his thoughts, words, deeds, all sang

together."

"The poet who creates a new ideal, and fills men's hearts with the flame

of a divine desire, is a practical force in the stream of human

development--and this Shelley has done. So much of his poetry is full of

the tender melancholy of the moonlight he loved, that the world is still

half blind to his highest bardic character, as the poet of a spiritual

dawn, the eager spirit who flies forward--

"Calling the lapsèd soul,

And weeping in the morning dew."

Even his moonlight seems to reflect the beams of some unrisen sun; and

his sunlight has all the ethereal exhilaration of that of the first

hours of a glorious day."--_John Todhunter._

=Other Poems to be Read:= Adonais; The Sensitive Plant; The Cloud; Mount

Blanc; To Wordsworth; The Euganean Hills; Liberty; Alastor; Prometheus

Unbound.

REFERENCES: De Quincey's _Essays_; Jeaffreson's _The Real Shelley_;

_Shelley_ (English Men of Letters), by J. A. Symonds; Leigh Hunt's

_Imagination and Fancy_; Rossetti's _Memoir of Shelley_; Dowden's _Life

of P. B. Shelley_; Moore's _Life of Lord Byron_; Middleton's _Shelley

and his Writings_; Medwin's _Life of Shelley_; Trelawney's

_Recollections of the Last Days of Shelley and Byron_; Todhunter's

_Shelley: A Study_.

John Keats.

ODE TO A NIGHTINGALE.

I

My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains

My sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk,

Or emptied some dull opiate to the drains

One minute past, and Lethe-wards{1} had sunk:

'Tis not through envy of thy happy lot,

But being too happy in thy happiness,--

That thou, light-winged Dryad{2} of the trees,

In some melodious plot

Of beechen green, and shadows numberless,

Singest of summer in full-throated ease.

II.

O for a draught of vintage, that hath been

Cooled a long age in the deep-delved earth,

Tasting of Flora and the country-green,

Dance, and Provençal song,{3} and sun-burnt mirth!

O for a beaker full of the warm South,

Full of the true, the blushful Hippocrene,{4}

With beaded bubbles winking at the brim,

And purple-stained mouth;

That I might drink, and leave the world unseen,

And with thee fade away into the forest dim:

III.

Fade far away, dissolve, and quite forget

What thou among the leaves hast never known,

The weariness, the fever, and the fret

Here, where men sit and hear each other groan;

Where palsy shakes a few, sad, last gray hairs,

Where youth grows pale, and spectre-thin, and dies;

Where but to think is to be full of sorrow

And leaden-eyed despairs;

Where Beauty cannot keep her lustrous eyes,

Or new Love pine at them beyond to-morrow.

IV.

Away! away! for I will fly to thee,

Not charioted by Bacchus and his pards,{5}

But on the viewless wings of Poesy,

Though the dull brain perplexes and retards:

Already with thee! tender is the night,

And haply the Queen-Moon is on her throne,

Clustered around by all her starry Fays;

But here there is no light,

Save what from heaven is with the breezes blown

Through verdurous glooms and winding mossy ways.

V.

I cannot see what flowers are at my feet,

Nor what soft incense hangs upon the boughs,

But, in embalmed darkness, guess each sweet

Wherewith the seasonable month endows

The grass, the thicket, and the fruit-tree wild;

White hawthorn, and the pastoral eglantine;{6}

Fast-fading violets covered up in leaves;

And mid-May's eldest child,

The coming musk-rose, full of dewy wine,

The murmurous haunt of flies on summer eyes.

VI.

Darkling{7} I listen; and for many a time

I have been half in love with easeful Death,

Called him soft names in many a mused rhyme,

To take into the air my quiet breath;

Now more than ever seems it rich to die,

To cease upon the midnight with no pain,

While thou art pouring forth thy soul abroad

In such an ecstasy!

Still wouldst thou sing, and I have ears in vain--

To thy high requiem{8} become a sod.

VII.

Thou wast not born for death, immortal Bird!

No hungry generations tread thee down;

The voice I hear this passing night was heard

In ancient days by emperor and clown:

Perhaps the self-same song that found a path

Through the sad heart of Ruth, when, sick for home,

She stood in tears amid the alien corn{9};

The same that oft-times hath

Charmed magic casements, opening on the foam

Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn.

VIII.

Forlorn! the very word is like a bell

To toll me back from thee to my sole self!

Adieu! the fancy cannot cheat so well

As she is famed to do, deceiving elf.

Adieu! adieu! thy plaintive anthem fades

Past the near meadows, over the still stream,

Up the hill-side; and now 'tis buried deep

In the next valley-glades:

Was it a vision, or a waking dream?

Fled is that music:--do I wake or sleep?

NOTES.

"This poem," says Leigh Hunt, "was written in a house at the foot of

Highgate Hill, on the border of the fields looking towards Hampstead.

The poet had then his mortal illness upon him, and knew it; never was

the voice of death sweeter."

1. =Lethe-wards.= That is, towards Lethe. Lethe was one of the rivers of

Hell. Its name means "forgetfulness." Milton describes it thus:

"A slow and silent stream,

Lethe, the river of oblivion, rolls

Her watery labyrinth, whereof who drinks

Forthwith his former state and being forgets--

Forgets both joy and grief, pleasure and pain."

--_Paradise Lost_, ii, 583.

2. =Dryad.= A wood-nymph. From Gr. _drus_, an oak tree. The life of the

Dryad was supposed to be bound up with that of her tree.

"The quickening power of the soul, like Martha, is 'busy about many

things,' or, like a Dryad, living in a tree."--_Sir John Davis._

3. =Provençal song.= Song of the troubadours, a school of lyric poets that

flourished in Provence, in the south of France, from the eleventh to the

thirteenth century. A love song.

4. =Hippocrene.= The "Fountain of the Horse" (_Fons Caballinus_). A

fountain on Mount Helicon, Boeotia, sacred to the Muses. It was said

to have been produced by the horse Pegasus striking the ground with his

feet. Its waters were supposed to be a source of poetical inspiration.

Longfellow, in "The Goblet of Life," says:

"No purple flowers--no garlands green,

Conceal the goblet's shade or sheen,

Nor maddening draughts of Hippocrene,

Like gleams of sunshine, flash between

Thick leaves of mistletoe."

5. =Bacchus and his pards.= Bacchus was frequently represented as riding

on the back of a leopard, a tiger, or a lion, or in a chariot drawn by

panthers.

=pards.= Spotted beasts.

See Dryden's "Alexander's Feast," third stanza, page 160.

6. Compare with Shakespeare's "A Midsummer Night's Dream," Act ii, sc.

i:

"I know a bank where the wild thyme blows,

Where oxlips and the nodding violet grows,

Quite over-canopied with luscious woodbine,

With sweet musk-roses and with eglantine."

7. =darkling.= In the dark. The word is very rarely used.

8. =requiem.= A dirge, or funeral song. "So called from the first word in

the Catholic mass for the dead, _Requiem æternum dona iis Domine_ (Give

eternal rest to them, O Lord)."--_Brand._

=become a sod.= Compare with Ecclesiastes, xii, 7: "Then shall the dust

return to the earth as it was."

9. =alien corn.= See Ruth, ii. Why _alien_ corn? Longfellow, in his poem

on "Flowers," says:

"Everywhere about us they are glowing--

Some like stars, to tell us Spring is born;

Others, their blue eyes with tears o'erflowing,

Stand like Ruth amid the golden corn."

FROM "THE EVE OF ST. AGNES."

Full on this casement shone the wintry moon,

And threw warm gules on Madeline's fair breast,

As down she knelt for heaven's grace and boon;

Rose-bloom fell on her hands, together prest,

And on her silver cross soft amethyst,

And on her hair a glory, like a saint:

She seem'd a splendid angel, newly drest,

Save wings, for heaven:--Porphyro grew faint:

She knelt, so pure a thing, so free from mortal taint.

Anon his heart revives: her vespers done,

Of all its wreathed pearls her hair she frees;

Unclasps her warmed jewels one by one;

Loosens her fragrant bodice; by degrees

Her rich attire creeps rustling to her knees:

Half-hidden, like a mermaid in sea-weed,

Pensive awhile she dreams awake, and sees,

In fancy, fair St. Agnes in her bed,

But dares not look behind, or all the charm is fled.

Soon, trembling in her soft and chilly nest,

In sort of wakeful swoon, perplexed she lay,

Until the poppied warmth of sleep oppressed

Her soothed limbs, and soul fatigued away;

Flown, like a thought, until the morrow-day;

Blissfully havened both from joy and pain;

Clasped like a missal where swart Paynims pray:

Blinded alike from sunshine and from rain,

As though a rose should shut, and be a bud again.

Stolen to this paradise, and so entranced,

Porphyro gazed upon her empty dress,

And listened to her breathing, if it chanced

To wake into a slumberous tenderness;

Which when he heard, that minute did he bless,

And breathed himself: then from the closet crept,

Noiseless as fear in a wide wilderness,

And over the hushed carpet, silent, stept,

And 'tween the curtains peeped, where, lo!--how fast she slept.

Then by the bed-side, where the faded moon

Made a dim, silver twilight, soft he set

A table, and, half anguished, threw thereon

A cloth of woven crimson, gold, and jet:--

O for some drowsy Morphean amulet!

The boisterous, midnight, festive clarion,

The kettle-drum, and far-heard clarionet,

Affray his ears, though but in dying tone:--

The hall-door shuts again, and all the noise is gone.

And still she slept an azure-lidded sleep,

In blanched linen, smooth, and lavendered,

While he from forth the closet brought a heap

Of candied apple, quince, and plum, and gourd;

With jellies soother than the creamy curd,

And lucent syrups, tinct with cinnamon;

Manna and dates, in argosy transferred

From Fez; and spiced dainties, every one,

From silken Samarcand to cedared Lebanon.

These delicates he heaped with glowing hand

On golden dishes and in baskets bright

Of wreathed silver: sumptuous they stand

In the retired quiet of the night,

Filling the chilly room with perfume light.--

"And now, my love, my seraph fair, awake!

Thou art mine heaven, and I thine eremite:

Open thine eyes, for meek St. Agnes' sake,

Or I shall drowse beside thee, so my soul doth ache."

Thus whispering, his warm, unnerved arm

Sank in her pillow. Shaded was her dream

By the dusk curtains:--'twas a midnight charm

Impossible to melt as iced stream:

The lustrous salvers in the moonlight gleam;

Broad golden fringe upon the carpet lies:

It seemed he never, never could redeem

From such a steadfast spell his lady's eyes;

So mused awhile, entoiled in woofed phantasies.

Awakening up, he took her hollow lute,--

Tumultuous,--and, in chords that tenderest be,

He play'd an ancient ditty, long since mute,

In Provence called "La belle dame sans mercy":

Close to her ear touching the melody;--

Wherewith disturbed, she uttered a soft moan:

He ceased--she panted quick--and suddenly

Her blue affrayed eyes wide open shone:

Upon his knees he sank, pale as smooth-sculptured stone.

Her eyes were open, but she still beheld,

Now wide awake, the vision of her sleep:

There was a painful change, that nigh expelled

The blisses of her dream so pure and deep.

At which fair Madeline began to weep,

And moan forth witless words with many a sigh

While still her gaze on Porphyro would keep;

Who knelt, with joined hands and piteous eye,

Fearing to move or speak, she looked so dreamingly.

"Ah, Porphyro!" said she, "but even now

Thy voice was at sweet tremble in mine ear,

Made tuneable with every sweetest vow;

And those sad eyes were spiritual and clear:

How changed thou art! how pallid, chill, and drear!

Give me that voice again, my Porphyro,

Those looks immortal, those complainings dear!

Oh leave me not in this eternal woe,

For if thou diest, my Love, I know not where to go."

Beyond a mortal man impassioned far

At these voluptuous accents, he arose,

Ethereal, flushed, and like a throbbing star

Seen 'mid the sapphire heaven's deep repose;

Into her dream he melted, as the rose

Blendeth its odor with the violet,--

Solution sweet: meantime the frost-wind blows

Like Love's alarum pattering the sharp sleet

Against the window-panes; St. Agnes' moon hath set.

'Tis dark: quick pattereth the flaw-blown sleet:

"This is no dream, my bride, my Madeline!"

'Tis dark: the iced gusts still rave and beat:

"No dream, alas! alas! and woe is mine!

Porphyro will leave me here to fade and pine.--

Cruel! what traitor could thee hither bring?

I curse not, for my heart is lost in thine,

Though thou forsakest a deceived thing;--

A dove forlorn and lost with sick unpruned wing."

"My Madeline! sweet dreamer! lovely bride!

Say, may I be for aye thy vassal blest?

Thy beauty's shield, heart-shaped and vermeil dyed?

Ah, silver shrine, here will I take my rest

After so many hours of toil and quest,

A famished pilgrim,--saved by miracle.

Though I have found, I will not rob thy nest,

Saving of thy sweet self; if thou think'st well

To trust, fair Madeline, to no rude infidel."

"Hark!'tis an elfin-storm from faery land,

Of haggard seeming, but a boon indeed:

Arise--arise! the morning is at hand;--

The bloated wassailers will never heed:--

Let us away, my love, with happy speed;

There are no ears to hear, or eyes to see,--

Drowned all in Rhenish and the sleepy mead:

Awake! arise! my love, and fearless be,

For o'er the southern moors I have a home for thee."

She hurried at his words, beset with fears,

For there were sleeping dragons all around,

At glaring watch, perhaps with ready spears--

Down the wide stairs a darkling way they found,

In all the house was heard no human sound.

A chain-drooped lamp was flickering by each door;

The arras, rich with horseman, hawk, and hound,

Fluttered in the besieging wind's uproar;

And the long carpets rose along the gusty floor.

They glide, like phantoms, into the wide hall!

Like phantoms to the iron porch they glide,

Where lay the Porter, in uneasy sprawl,

With a huge empty flagon by his side:

The wakeful bloodhound rose, and shook his hide,

But his sagacious eye an inmate owns:

By one, and one, the bolts full easy slide:--

The chains lie silent on the footworn stones;

The key turns, and the door upon its hinges groans.

And they are gone: ay, ages long ago

These lovers fled away into the storm.

That night the Baron dreamt of many a woe,

And all his warrior-guests, with shade and form

Of witch and demon and large coffin-worm,

Were long be-nightmared. Angela, the old,

Died palsy-twitch'd with meagre face deform;

The Beadsman, after thousand aves told,

For aye unsought-for slept among his ashes cold.

NOTES.

"The Eve of St. Agnes" is one of the finest of Keats's shorter poems.

Leigh Hunt describes it as "the most complete specimen of his genius;

exquisitely loving; young, but full-grown poetry of the rarest

description; graceful as the beardless Apollo; glowing and gorgeous with

the colors of romance." The stanzas here quoted, while comprising the

main portion of the story, are not quite half of the entire poem.

Madeline, the beautiful daughter of a rude and rich old baron, is

secretly betrothed to Porphyro, a young man whom her father has sworn to

slay. On the eve of St. Agnes a great feast is in progress in the

baron's castle. Porphyro, at the risk of his life, "comes across the

moors, with heart on fire for Madeline." With the aid of the old nurse,

Angela, he gains admission into the castle and is concealed in a closet,

where he conceives the plan for their elopement. In the meanwhile,

Madeline, having danced with her father's guests, retires to her room,

her mind full of the thought of Porphyro, and intent upon testing the

truth of the belief, then current, that on this evening, maidens might,

if they performed certain ceremonies and forms, be vouchsafed a sight of

their future husbands.

St. Agnes was a young virgin of Palermo, who is said to have suffered

martyrdom at the age of thirteen, in the Diocletian persecution, about

A.D. 304. Her feast was celebrated on the 21st of January.

With reference to the versification of this poem, see what is said of

the Spenserian stanza, page 232. There are many imitations of Spenser in

these verses.

The student is desired to discover for himself the peculiarities of

thought, of feeling, of expression, which give interest and beauty to

this production. The following are a few of the words and expressions

whose meaning he should study: "Gules"; "taint"; "vespers"; "poppied";

"Swart Paynims"; "Noiseless as fear in a wide wilderness"; "Morphean

amulet"; "affray"; "azure-lidded sleep"; "argosy"; "missal"; "tinct";

"Fez"; "Samarcand"; "Lebanon"; "eremite"; "witless"; "alarum"; "entoiled

in woofed phantasies"; "La belle dame sans mercy"; "heart-shaped and

vermeil dyed"; "Of haggard seeming"; "arras."

BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE.

JOHN KEATS was born October 29, 1795, in Moorfields, London. He was sent

to school at Enfield, where he gained the rudiments of a classical

education; but, his father having died when John was a mere child, he

was apprenticed at an early age to a surgeon in Edmonton. When seventeen

years old a copy of Spenser's "Faerie Queene" fell into his hands, and

the perusal of that great poem was the beginning, for him, of a new

life. He felt the poetic instinct within him, and resolved that he too

would be a poet. In 1817 he published a small volume of poems, which

attracted but little attention; and in 1818 his more ambitious effort,

"Endymion," was presented to the world. The latter poem was unkindly

received by the great reviews. The author was advised to "go back to his

gallipots," and told that "a starved apothecary was better than a

starved poet." A story was long current that these severe criticisms

induced Keats's early death, but this is entirely improbable. He

continued writing, although consumption, a hereditary disease in his

family, had already begun its work upon him. He published "The Eve of

St. Agnes" in 1820, and had made some progress with a noble poem,

entitled "Hyperion," which Lord Byron declared to be "actually inspired

by the Titans, and as sublime as Æschylus." In September of that year he

sailed for Italy, but the hope of prolonging life by a change of climate

proved to be vain. On the 27th of February, 1821, he died at Rome.

"We can hardly be wrong in believing," says Masson, "that had Keats

lived to the ordinary age of man, he would have been one of the greatest

of all our poets. As it is, I believe we shall all be disposed to place

him very near indeed to our very best."

"That which was deepest in his mind," says Stopford Brooke, "was the

love of loveliness for its own sake, the sense of its rightful and

pre-eminent power; and, in the singleness of worship which he gave to

Beauty, Keats is especially the artist, and the true father of the

latest modern school of poetry."

=Other Poems to be Read:= Endymion; Ode on a Grecian Urn; Lamia; Hyperion;

To Autumn; Hymn to Apollo; Isabella.

REFERENCES: _Keats_ (English Men of Letters), by Sidney Colvin; _Keats_,

by W. M. Rossetti; Matthew Arnold's Essay on Keats, in Ward's _English

Poets_; Shairp's _Studies in Poetry_.

The Eighteenth Century.

"_The influence of the poetry of the past lasted; new elements were

added to poetry, and new forms of it took shape. The study of the Greek

and Latin classics revived, and with it a more artistic poetry. Not only

correct form, for which Pope sought, but beautiful form was sought

after. Men like Thomas Gray and William Collins strove to pour into

their work that simplicity of beauty which the Greek poets and Italians

like Petrarca had reached as the last result of genius restrained by

art. . . . Two things had been learned. First, that artistic rules were

necessary, and, secondly, that natural feeling was necessary in order

that poetry should have a style fitted to express nobly the emotions and

thoughts of man. The way was therefore now made ready for a style in

which the Art should itself be Nature, and it sprang at once into being

in the work of the poets of this time. The style of Gray is polished to

the finest point, and yet it is instinct with natural feeling. Goldsmith

is natural even to simplicity, and yet his verse is even more accurate

than Pope's. Cowper's style, in such poems as the 'Lines to my Mother's

Picture,' arises out of the simplest pathos, and yet it is as pure in

expression as Greek poetry._"--STOPFORD BROOKE.

"_At last there started up an unfortunate Scotch peasant (Burns),

rebelling against the world, and in love, with the yearnings, lusts,

greatness, and irrationality of modern genius. Now and then behind his

plough, he lighted on genuine verses, verses such as Heine and Alfred de

Musset have written in our own days. In those few words, combined after

a new fashion, there was a revolution._"--TAINE.

Poets of the Eighteenth Century.

=Alexander Pope= (1688-1744). See biographical note, page 155.

=Thomas Parnell= (1679-1718). "The Hermit"; short poems.

=Edward Young= (1684-1765), "Night Thoughts"; "The Last Day";

"Resignation."

=Allan Ramsay= (1686-1758). "The Gentle Shepherd": "Scots Songs"; "Fables

and Tales."

=John Gay= (1688-1732). "The Beggar's Opera"; "The Shepherd's Week";

"Trivia"; "Rural Sports"; fables, and other short poems.

=Matthew Green= (1696-1737). "The Grotto"; "The Spleen."

=John Dyer= (1698-1758). "Grongar Hill"; "The Fleece."

=Robert Blair= (1699-1746). "The Grave."

=James Thomson= (1700-1748). "The Seasons"; "The Castle of Indolence."

=Samuel Johnson= (1709-1784), "The Vanity of Human Wishes"; "London."

=Richard Glover= (1712-1785). "Leonidas"; "Admiral Hosier's Ghost"; "The

Athenaid."

=William Shenstone= (1714-1763). "The Schoolmistress"; "Pastoral Ballads."

=Thomas Gray= (1716-1771). See biographical note, page 139.

=William Collins= (1721-1759). Odes and other short poems.

=Mark Akenside= (1721-1770). "The Pleasures of the Imagination."

=Oliver Goldsmith= (1728-1774). See biographical note, page 128.

=Thomas Warton= (1728-1790). "The Pleasures of Melancholy"; "The Triumph

of Isis"; short poems.

=William Cowper= (1731-1800). See biographical note, page 122.

=Charles Churchill= (1731-1764). "The Prophecy of Famine"; "The Rosciad."

=James Beattie= (1735-1803). "The Minstrel."

=Robert Fergusson= (1750-1774). Short Scottish poems.

=Thomas Chatterton= (1752-1770). "Poems of Thomas Rowlie"; short poems.

=George Crabbe= (1754-1832). "Tales of the Hall"; "The Village"; "The

Parish Register"; "Tales in Verse."

=William Blake= (1757-1827). "Songs of Innocence"; "Songs of Experience";

"Poetical Sketches."

=Robert Burns= (1759-1796). See biographical note, page 111.

Robert Burns.

THE COTTER'S{1} SATURDAY NIGHT.

INSCRIBED TO R. AIKEN, ESQ.{2}

Let not Ambition mock their useful toil,

Their homely joys, and destiny obscure;

Nor Grandeur hear, with a disdainful smile,

The short but simple annals of the Poor.{3}--_Gray._

My loved, my honored, much respected friend!

No mercenary bard his homage pays;

With honest pride, I scorn each selfish end,

My dearest meed, a friend's esteem and praise:

To you I sing, in simple Scottish lays,{4}

The lowly train{5} in life's sequestered scene;

The native feelings strong, the guileless ways;

What Aiken in a cottage would have been;

Ah! though his worth unknown, far happier there I ween.

November chill blaws loud wi' angry sugh;{6}

The short'ning winter-day is near a close;

The miry beasts retreating frae the pleugh;

The black'ning trains o' craws to their repose;

The toil-worn Cotter frae his labor goes,--

This night his weekly moil is at an end,--

Collects his spades, his mattocks, and his hoes,

Hoping the morn in ease and rest to spend,

And weary, o'er the moor, his course does hameward bend.{7}

At length his lonely cot appears in view,

Beneath the shelter of an aged tree;

Th' expectant wee things toddlin', stacher thro'

To meet their dad, wi' flichterin noise an' glee.

His wee bit ingle, blinkin' bonnily,

His clean hearth-stane, his thriftie wine's smile,

The lisping infant prattling on his knee,

Does a' his weary carking cares beguile,

An' makes him quite forget his labor an' his toil.{8}

Belyve, the elder bairns{9} come drapping in,

At service out, amang the farmers roun';

Some ca'{10} the pleugh, some herd, some tentie rin

A cannie errand to a neibor{11} town:

Their eldest hope, their Jenny, woman grown,

In youthfu' bloom, love sparkling in her e'e,

Comes hame, perhaps, to shew a braw new gown,

Or deposit{12} her sair-won penny-fee,{13}

To help her parents dear, if they in hardship be.

Wi' joy unfeigned, brothers and sisters meet,

An' each for other's welfare kindly spiers:

The social hours, swift-winged, unnoticed fleet;

Each tells the uncos that he sees or hears;

The parents, partial, eye their hopeful years,

Anticipation forward points the view.

The mother wi' her needle an' her shears,

Gars auld claes look amaist as weel's the new;

The father mixes a' wi' admonition due.

Their master's and their mistress's command,

The younkers a' are warned to obey;

And mind their labors wi' an eydent hand,

And ne'er, tho' out o' sight, to jauk or play:

"And, oh! be sure to fear the Lord alway,

And mind your duty, duly, morn and night!

Lest in temptation's path ye gang astray,

Implore His counsel and assisting might:

They never sought in vain that sought the Lord aright!"{14}