Wordsworth
Lofty and strenuous of sentiment
But narrow and partial in its scope and bent,
And thence the bigot of a local set
Of habitudes, meshed round him like a net.
Hence too his intellect, though large it be
By nature, hath one prime deficiency,—
Of moral difference that broad view which leads
The steps of thought beyond the snares of creeds
And circles of opinion, whether they
Be of the Old Time or of yesterday.
Hence too his narrow bias, I suspect,
Even in poesy to attempt a sect.
Still as a Poet he is great and rare,
A King of Thought upon the peak of bare
And rigid majesty, for power immense
Enthroned for ever! And in spirit thence,—
Thence let him waft us on a white-wing’d dream
Within the murmur of some profluent stream,
And there, just whither a dim line of brakes
In the remotest haze of distance shakes,
On his lone rounds let Peter Bell be seen,—
Seen o’er the White Doe on the herbage green
Heard breathing where she lies, and near her there
« The oldest seeming man that ever wore grey hair.”
Then shall we find him verily a Seer
Of Nature’s myst’ries, simple and severe.
With what a plenitude of pure delight
He triumphs on the mountain’s cloudy height,
With what a gleeful harmony of joy
He wanders down the vale “as happy as a boy!”
How in his verse, each picture-pregnant phrase
Full to the eye some given shape conveys,
And thus though in the jarring city pent
Through him we reach the country and content.
Fond Memory apprehends with gladdened eyes
All that is richest in each wilding’s dyes
As blending with the beauty and the grace
Of some bright advent of our happier days—
Hears through the sway of greenest boughs, as heard
Even then, the far voice of some favourite bird,
The murmurous industry of bees, the low
Responsive throbs of Echo throbbing slow
Out of some lonely dell, as to the tread
Of our own feet in days for ever fled!
Then of some brook that gushes in his lines
Glad Fancy drinks or on the bank reclines,
While of far cloud, grey rock and ancient tree
The dusky shadows on the page we see:
Yea, the air sweetens as the spells prevail
And our locks seem to wave as in a mountain gale!
Still there remains to tell the charm serene
Wherewith this Bard most sanctifies the scene:
’Tis that with eyes of love he’s quick to find
In all its forms meet ministers of Mind
And that with the rare wealth of his own heart
As with a golden chain he interlinks each part.
But vainly the fond spirit of youth may look
For its peculiar food in Wordsworth’s book,
Where Passion is but introduced to wear
A vestal’s tenderness, demure as fair:
Not as to see it the new soul desires,
In all the splendour of its tragic fires,
Or, at the least, in all the bright distress
And rosy beauty of its wilfulness!
The Verse of Coleridge’s ‘Christabel.’
Mark yon runnel how ’tis flowing,
Like a sylvan spirit dreaming
Of the Spring-blooms near it blowing
And the sunlight in it gleaming!
Where that shelving rock is spied,
There with a smooth warbling slide
It lapses down into a cool
And brimming, not o’erflowing pool.
Then between its narrow’d banks
Playing mellow gurgling pranks,
It gushes till a channel’d stone
Gives it a more strenuous tone;
Or with an under-swirling spread
Over a wide pebbled bed
It bubbles with a gentle pleasure,
Ere some new mood change the measure:
Such a runnel typeth well
The sweet wild verse of ‘ Christabel;’
But what might fitly picture too
The Wonder-World it warbles through?
To My Young Countryman, D. H. D
Who doubteth when the Morning Star doth light
Its lamp of beauty, that the day is coming?
Or where prime odours track the breeze’s flight
That in the vicinage rare flowers are blooming,
Or where the wild bees round about are humming
That there is honey in some cedar’s height,
Or that the Sea is heaving into sight
When from afar a surgy sound comes booming?
And surely, as the observer understands
What these pre-signify, as yet behind,
Thy Intellectual Amplitude expands
Before me in the Future when I find
Some early blossom breathing of thy mind—
Some thing of promise fashion’d by thy hands!
A Trooper of France, in desperate need
Had struggled from under his dying steed,
Where Egypt’s pyramids appeared:
While on his black war-horse, the Turk
Who had borne him down, to finish his work
Back wheelingly careered.
Taking his resolute stand
Foot deep in his charger’s blood,
The soldier of Christendom, sword in hand
That gleamily out-pointing, showed
Like the lightning-tongue of a settling cloud,
His foe awaiting stood.
Urged into whirlwind speed,
On on with a scattering tail
Like the hurrying thunderbolt’s smoky trail!
On on with a streaming mane
Like the foremost racks of a hurricane,
On came the Tartar steed!
Then passed with a vengeful clash
Of blades and a lunging downward crash
The imminent shock!
And when its cloud of dust upthrown
Clear’d off, there stood that Trooper alone,
Firm as a rock!
But two steeds and a Moslem in death lay still—
And a kite of the Desert that came, flop, flop,
In heavy flight from a pyramid’s top,
In a merry mood
At the scent of blood,
Was circling o’er and screaming shrill.
Records of Romantic Passion
There’s a rare Soul of Poesy which may be
But concentrated by the chastened dreams
Of constant hearts. Where’er the ministry
Of beautiful Nature hath enhanced the themes
Of some Petrarchian mind whose story gleams
Within the Past like a moon-silvered sea,
Or where grey Interest the spirit free
Of faithful Love hath caged in iron schemes,
Or round it stirr’d such dangers as o’erdrove
Long Ruin’s storm at last—there evermore
The very airs that whisper to the grove,
The echo’s mystery and the streamlet’s lore
Savour of Passion and transfusive pour
Abroad suggestions to heroic Love.
The Flight of Peace
Trust and Treachery, Wisdom, Folly,
Madness, Mirth and Melancholy,
Love and Hatred, Thrift and Pillage,
All are housed in one small village.
And if such be Life’s mix’d being,
Where may Peace from ruin fleeing,
Find a shelter and inherit
All the calm of her own merit?
In a bark of gentle motion
Sailing on the summer ocean?
There worst war the tempest wages
And the whirlpool’s hunger rages.
In some lonely new-world bower,
Hidden like a forest flower?
There too, there, to irk the stranger,
Stalks the wild-eyed spirit Danger!
Vainly would she build by roving
Or in hoping or in loving,
Or in solitary spaces,
Having in all times and places,
Or in none a home of beauty
In the fearless heart of Duty,
Dwelling there and seeing
God’s right hand all things decreeing.
To My First Born, Washington Harpur
My beautiful! For beautiful thou art
To me thy father, as the morning light
Which makes all common objects fresh and bright,
Yea gives them out of the dun void to start
As they were newly fashion’d from the Night!
For long there was a darkness round my heart,
Until thy mother made her life a part
Of mine, to pierce it with Love’s genial might—
The Aurora she and the young Morning thou
Of a new era in my worldly way!
Whence it behoves me heedfully to plough
The future for thy sake and for the vow
That I have made, to make thee (if I may)
A Man right worthy of our Australia.
FINIS.
Notes
AN ABORIGINAL MOTHER’S LAMENT (p. 113.)
It will be remembered that, a few years back, a party of Stockmen (several of whom were afterwards executed for the crime) made wholesale massacre of a small tribe of defenceless Blacks—to the number, it is believed, of more than a score— heaping their bodies, as they slaughtered them, upon a large fire kindled for the purpose. Of this doomed tribe, one woman only, with her infant, as it appeared subsequently on evidence, escaped the White man’s vengeance. The poem is supposed to describe the ejaculations of the mother after having fled to a considerable distance from the scene of the massacre, and when wearied and overtaken by the night.
The arrangement of the Rhymes in the Sonnets scattered through this Volume, is somewhat peculiar. In departing from the Italian model in this respect, I am conscious of not being induced thereto by a desire merely to innovate. But carefully trying the form I have here chosen, not to say invented, by my own ear, I venture to believe that it fits the English Sonnet—or rather, the Sonnet in English more agreeably than that usually adopted.