DIRGE

Mourn, Shepherd, near thy old grey stone;
Thou Angler, by the silent flood;
And mourn when thou art all alone,
Thou Woodman, in the distant wood!

Thou one blind Sailor, rich in joy
Though blind, thy tunes in sadness hum;
And mourn, thou poor half-witted Boy!
Born deaf, and living deaf and dumb.

Thou drooping sick Man, bless the Guide Who checked or turned thy headstrong youth,

As he before had sanctified

Thy infancy with heavenly truth.

Ye Striplings, light of heart and gay,
Bold settlers on some foreign shore,
Give, when your thoughts are turned this
way,

A sigh to him whom we deplore.

For us who here in funeral strain
With one accord our voices raise,
Let sorrow overcharged with pain
Be lost in thankfulness and praise.

And when our hearts shall feel a sting
From ill we meet or good we miss,
May touches of his memory bring
Fond healing, like a mother's kiss.

1799.

BY THE SIDE OF THE GRAVE SOME YEARS
AFTER

LONG time his pulse hath ceased to beat
But benefits, his gift, we trace-
Expressed in every eye we meet
Round this dear Vale, his native place.

To stately Hall and Cottage rude
Flowed from his life what still they hold,
Light pleasures, every day, renewed ;
And blessings half a century old.

Oh true of heart, of spirit gay,
Thy faults, where not already gone
From memory, prolong their stay
For charity's sweet sake alone.

Such solace find we for our loss;

And what beyond this thought we crave
Comes in the promise from the Cross,
Shining upon thy happy grave.

-MATTHEW

In the School of is a tablet, on which are inscribed, in gilt letters, the Names of the several persons who have been Schoolmasters there since the foundation of the School, with the time at which they entered upon and quitted their office. Opposite to one of those names the Author wrote the following lines.

Such a Tablet as is here spoken of continued to be preserved in Hawkshead School, though the inscriptions were not brought down to our time. This and other poems connected with Matthew would not gain by a literal detail of facts. Like the Wanderer in "The Excursion," this Schoolmaster was made up of several both of his class and men of other occupations. I do not ask pardon for what there is of untruth in such verses, considered strictly as matters of fact. It is enough if, being true and consistent in spirit, they move and teach in a manner not unworthy of a Poet's calling.

IF Nature, for a favourite child,
In thee hath tempered so her clay,
That every hour thy heart runs wild,
Yet never once doth go astray,

Read o'er these lines; and then review
This tablet, that thus humbly rears
In such diversity of hue

Its history of two hundred years.

-When through this little wreck of fame,
Cipher and syllable! thine eye
Has travelled down to Matthew's name,
Pause with no common sympathy.

And, if a sleeping tear should wake,
Then be it neither checked nor stayed:
For Matthew a request I make
Which for himself he had not made.

Poor Matthew, all his frolics o'er,
Is silent as a standing pool;
Far from the chimney's merry roar,
And murmur of the village school.

The sighs which Matthew heaved were sighs
Of one tired out with fun and madness;
The tears which came to Matthew's eyes
Were tears of light, the dew of gladness.

Yet, sometimes, when the secret cup
Of still and serious thought went round,
It seemed as if he drank it up-
He felt with spirit so profound.

In silence Matthew lay, and eyed
The spring beneath the tree;
And thus the dear old Man replied,
The grey-haired man of glee :

"No check, no stay, this Streamlet fears; How merrily it goes!

'Twill murmur on a thousand years, And flow as now it flows.

"And here, on this delightful day, I cannot choose but think

How oft, a vigorous man, I lay
Beside this fountain's brink.

"My eyes are dim with childish tears, My heart is idly stirred,

For the same sound is in my ears
Which in those days I heard.

"Thus fares it still in our decay: / And yet the wiser mind

Mourns less for what age takes away Than what it leaves behind.

The blackbird amid leafy trees, The lark above the hill,

Let loose their carols when they please Are quiet when they will.

"With Nature never do they wage A foolish strife; they see

A happy youth, and their old age Is beautiful and free:

But we are pressed by heavy laws; And often, glad no more,

We wear a face of joy, because
We have been glad of yore.

"If there be one who need bemoan

His kindred laid in earth,

The household hearts that were his own; It is the man of mirth.

My days, my Friend, are almost gone, My life has been approved,

And many love me; but by none
Am I enough beloved."

"Now both himself and me he wrongs,

The man who thus complains ;

I live and sing my idle songs

Upon these happy plains;

Where three thousand skulls are laid; These died in peace each with the other,Father, sister, friend, and brother.

Mark the spot to which I point!

From this platform, eight feet square,
Take not even a finger-joint :
Andrew's whole fire-side is there.
Here, alone, before thine eyes,
Simon's sickly daughter lies,

From weakness now, and pain defended,
Whom he twenty winters tended.

Look but at the gardener's pride-
How he glories, when he sees
Roses, lilies, side by side,
Violets in families!

By the heart of Man, his tears,
By his hopes and by his fears,
Thou, too heedless, art the Warden
Of a far superior garden.

Thus then, each to other dear,
Let them all in quiet lie,

Andrew there, and Susan here,
Neighbours in mortality.

And, should I live through sun and rain
Seven widowed years without my Jane,
O Sexton, do not then remove her,

Let one grave hold the Loved and Lover!

1799.

In clouds above, the lark is heard,
But drops not here to earth for rest;
Within this lonesome nook the bird
Did never build her nest.

No beast, no bird hath here his home;
Bees, wafted on the breezy air,
Pass high above those fragrant bells
To other flowers to other dells
Their burthens do they bear;
The Danish Boy walks here alone:
The lovely dell is all his own.

III

A Spirit of noon-day is he;

Yet seems a form of flesh and blood;
Nor piping shepherd shall he be,
Nor herd-boy of the wood.
A regal vest of fur he wears,
In colour like a raven's wing;

It fears not rain, nor wind, nor dew;
But in the storm 'tis fresh and blue
As budding pines in spring;
His helmet has a vernal grace,
Fresh as the bloom upon his face.

IV

A harp is from his shoulder slung;
Resting the harp upon his knee,
To words of a forgotten tongue
He suits its melody.

-LUCY GRAY

OR, SOLITUDE

1799.

Written at Goslar in Germany. It was founded on a circumstance told me by my Sister, of a little girl who, not far from Halifax in Yorkshire, was bewildered in a snow-storm. Her footsteps were traced by her parents to the middle of the lock of a canal, and no other vestige of her, backward or forward, could be traced. The body however was found in the canal. The way in which the incident was treated and the spiritualising of the character might furnish hints for contrasting the imaginative influences which I have endeavoured to throw over common life with Crabbe's matter of fact style of treating subjects of the same kind. This is not spoken to his disparagement, far from it, but to direct the attention of thoughtful readers, into whose hands these notes may fall, to a comparison that may both enlarge the circle of their sensibilities, and tend to produce in them a catholic judgment.

OFT I had heard of Lucy Gray:
And, when I crossed the wild,
I chanced to see at break of day
The solitary child.

No mate, no comrade Lucy knew;
She dwelt on a wide moor,
-The sweetest thing that ever grew
Beside a human door!

You yet may spy the fawn at play,
The hare upon the green;
But the sweet face of Lucy Gray
Will never more be seen.

"To-night will be a stormy night-
You to the town must go ;
And take a lantern, Child, to light
Your mother through the snow.'

"That, Father! will I gladly do:
'Tis scarcely afternoon-

The minster-clock has just struck two, And yonder is the moon!"

At this the Father raised his hook,

And snapped a faggot-band;

He plied his work ;-and Lucy took The lantern in her hand.

Not blither is the mountain roe:
With many a wanton stroke
Her feet disperse the powdery snow,
That rises up like smoke.

The storm came on before its time:
She wandered up and down;
And many a hill did Lucy climb :
But never reached the town.

The wretched parents all that night
Went shouting far and wide;
But there was neither sound nor sight
To serve them for a guide.

At day-break on a hill they stood That overlooked the moor;

And thence they saw the bridge of wood, A furlong from their door.

They wept-and, turning homeward, cried,

In heaven we all shall meet ;" -When in the snow the mother spied The print of Lucy's feet.

Then downwards from the steep hill's edge
They tracked the footmarks small;
And through the broken hawthorn hedge,
And by the long stone-wall;

And then an open field they crossed:
The marks were still the same;
They tracked them on, nor ever lost;
And to the bridge they came.

Written in Germany. Suggested by an account
I had of a wanderer in Somersetshire.

WHEN Ruth was left half desolate,
Her Father took another Mate;
And Ruth, not seven years old,
A slighted child, at her own will
Went wandering over dale and hill,
In thoughtless freedom, bold.

And she had made a pipe of straw,
And music from that pipe could draw
Like sounds of winds and floods;
Had built a bower upon the green,
As if she from her birth had been
An infant of the woods.

Beneath her father's roof, alone

She seemed to live; her thoughts her own; Herself her own delight;

Pleased with herself, nor sad, nor gay;

And, passing thus the live-long day,
She grew to woman's height.

There came a Youth from Georgia's shore--
A military casque he wore,

With splendid feathers drest;

He brought them from the Cherokees;
The feathers nodded in the breeze,
And made a gallant crest.

From Indian blood you deem him sprung:
But no! he spake the English tongue,
And bore a soldier's name;
And, when America was free
From battle and from jeopardy,
He 'cross the ocean came.