No, all is hushed and still as death.—’Tis dreadful!
How reverend is the face of this tall pile,
Whose ancient pillars rear their marble heads,
To bear aloft its arched and ponderous roof,
By its own weight made steadfast and immovable,
Looking tranquillity! It strikes an awe
And terror on my aching sight; the tombs
And monumental caves of death look cold,
And shoot a chillness to my trembling heart.
Give use thy hand, and let me hear thy voice;
Nay, quickly speak to me, and let me hear
Thy voice—my own affrights me with its echoes.
He who reads these lines enjoys for a moment the powers of a poet; he
feels what he remembers to have felt before, but he feels it with great
increase of sensibility; he recognises a familiar image, but meets it
again amplified and expanded, embellished with beauty and enlarged with
majesty. Yet could the author, who appears here to have enjoyed the
confidence of Nature, lament the death of Queen Mary in lines like
these:—
“The rocks are cleft, and new-descending rills
Furrow the brows of all the impending hills.
The water-gods to floods their rivulets turn,
And each, with streaming eyes, supplies his wanting urn.
The fauns forsake the woods, the nymphs the grove,
And round the plain in sad distractions rove:
In prickly brakes their tender limbs they tear,
And leave on thorns their locks of golden hair.
With their sharp nails, themselves the satyrs wound,
And tug their shaggy beards, and bite with grief the ground.
Lo Pan himself, beneath a blasted oak,
Dejected lies, his pipe in pieces broke
See Pales weeping too in wild despair,
And to the piercing winds her bosses bare.
And see yon fading myrtle, where appears
The Queen of Love, all bathed in flowing tears;
See how she wrings her hands, and beats her breast,
And tears her useless girdle from her waist:
Hear the sad murmurs of her sighing doves!
For grief they sigh, forgetful of their loves.”
And many years after he gave no proof that time had improved his wisdom
or his wit, for, on the death of the Marquis of Blandford, this was his
song:—
“And now the winds, which had so long been still,
Began the swelling air with sighs to fill;
The water-nymphs, who motionless remained
Like images of ice, while she complained,
Now loosed their streams; as when descending rains
Roll the steep torrents headlong o’er the plains.
The prone creation who so long had gazed
Charmed with her cries, and at her griefs amazed,
Began to roar and howl with horrid yell,
Dismal to hear, and terrible to tell!
Nothing but groans and sighs were heard around,
And echo multiplied each mournful sound.”
In both these funeral poems, when he has _yelled_ out many _syllables_ of
senseless _dolour_, he dismisses his reader with senseless consolation.
From the grave of Pastora rises a light that forms a star, and where
Amaryllis wept for Amyntas from every tear sprung up a violet. But
William is his hero, and of William he will sing:—
“The hovering winds on downy wings shall wait around,
And catch, and waft to foreign lands, the flying sound.”