TO THE AUTHOR'S PORTRAIT Painted at Rydal Mount, by W. Pickersgill, Esq., for St. John's College, Cambridge. The six last lines of this Sonnet are not written for poetical effect, but as a matter of fact, which, in more than one instance, could not escape my notice in the servants of the house. Go, faithful Portrait ! and where long hath knelt And marked it for my own; A lasting link in Nature's chain From highest heaven let down! The flowers, still faithful to the stems, The stems are faithful to the root, Margaret, the Saintly Foundress, take thy Close clings to earth the living rock, place; And, if Time spare the colours for the grace Which to the work surpassing skill hath dealt, Thou, on thy rock reclined, though kingdoms melt And states be torn up by the roots, wilt seem To breathe in rural peace, to hear the stream, And think and feel as once the Poet felt. Whate'er thy fate, those features have not grown Unrecognised through many a household tear More prompt, more glad, to fall than drops of dew By morning shed around a flower halfblown ; Tears of delight, that testified how true To life thou art, and, in thy truth, how dear! 1830. THE PRIMROSE OF THE ROCK Written at Rydal Mount. The Rock stands on the right hand a little way leading up the middle road from Rydal to Grasmere. We have been in the habit of calling it the glow-worm rock from the number of glow-worms we have often seen hanging on it as described. The tuft of primrose has, I fear, been washed away by the heavy rains. A ROCK there is whose homely front Yet there the glow-worms hang their lamps, What hideous warfare hath been waged, Though threatening still to fall; The earth is constant to her sphere; And God upholds them all: So blooms this lonely Plant, nor dreads Her annual funeral. Here closed the meditative strain; I sang-Let myriads of bright flowers, That love which changed-for wan disease, O'er hopeless dust, for withered age- And turned the thistles of a curse Sin-blighted though we are, we too, The reasoning Sons of Men, From one oblivious winter called Shall rise, and breathe again; And in eternal summer lose Our threescore years and ten. To humbleness of heart descends And makes each soul a separate heaven, A court for Deity. 1831. YARROW REVISITED, AND OTHER POEMS COMPOSED (TWO EXCEPTED) DURING A TOUR IN SCOTLAND AND ON THE ENGLISH BORDER, IN THE AUTUMN OF 1831. In the autumn of 1831, my daughter and I set off from Rydal to visit Sir Walter Scott before his departure for Italy. This journey had been delayed by an inflammation in my eyes till we found that the time appointed for his leaving home would be too near for him to receive us without considerable inconvenience. Nevertheless we proceeded and reached Abbotsford on Monday. I was then scarcely able to lift up my eyes to the light. How sadly changed did I find him from the man I had seen so healthy, gay, and hopeful, a few years before, when he said at the inn at Paterdale, in my presence, his daughter Anne also being there, with Mr. Lockhart, my own wife and daughter, and Mr. Quillinan,-"I mean to live till I am eighty, and shall write as long as I live." But to return to Abbotsford, the inmates and guests we found there were Sir Walter, Major Scott, Anne Scott, and Mr. and Mrs. Lockhart, Mr. Liddell, his Lady and Brother, and Mr. Allan the painter, and Mr. Laidlow, a very old friend of Sir Walter's. One of Burns's sons, an officer in the Indian service, had left the house a day or two before, and had kindly expressed his regret that he could not await my arrival, a regret that I may truly say was mutual. In the evening, Mr. and Mrs. Liddell sang, and Mrs. Lockhart chanted old ballads to her harp; and Mr. Allan, hanging over the back of a chair, told and acted odd stories in a humorous way.. With this exhibition and his daughter's singing, Sir Walter was much amused, as indeed were we all as far as circumstances would allow. But what is most worthy of mention is the admirable demeanour of Major Scott during the following evening, when the Liddells were gone and only ourselves and Mr. Allan were present. He had much to suffer from the sight of his father's infirmities and from the great change that was about to take place at the residence he had built, and where he had long lived in so much prosperity and happiness. But what struck me most was the patient kindness with which he supported himself under the many fretful expressions that his sister Anne addressed to him or uttered in his hearing. She, poor thing, as mistress of that house, had been subject, after her mother's death, to a heavier load of care and responsibility and greater sacri fices of time than one of such a constitution of body and mind was able to bear. Of this, Dora and I were made so sensible, that, as soon as we had crossed the Tweed on our departure, we gave vent at the same moment to our apprehensions that her brain would fail and she would go out of her mind, or that she would sink under the trials she had passed and those which awaited her. On Tuesday morning Sir Walter Scott accompanied us and most of the party to Newark Castle on the Yarrow. When we alighted from the carriages he walked pretty stoutly, and had great pleasure in revisiting those his favourite haunts. Of that excursion the verses "Yarrow revisited" are a memorial. Notwithstanding the romance that pervades Sir Walter's works and attaches to many of his habits, there is too much pressure of fact for these verses to harmonise as much as I could wish with other poems. On our return in the afternoon we had to cross the Tweed directly opposite Abbotsford. The wheels of our carriage grated upon the pebbles in the bed of the stream, that there flows somewhat rapidly; a rich but sad light of rather a purple than a golden hue was spread over the Eildon hills at that moment; and, thinking it probable that it might be the last time Sir Walter would cross the stream, I was not a little moved, and expressed some of my feelings in the sonnet beginning-" A trouble, not of clouds, or weeping rain." At noon on Thursday we left Abbotsford, and in the morning of that day Sir Walter and I had a serious conversation tête-à-tête, when he spoke with gratitude of the happy life which upon the whole he had led. He had written in my daughter's Album, before he came into the breakfast-room that morning, a few stanzas addressed to her, and, while putting the book into her hand, in his own study, standing by his desk, he said to her in my presence-"I should not have done anything of this kind but for your father's sake: they are probably the last verses I shall ever write." They show how much his mind was impaired, not by the strain of thought but by the execution, some of the lines being imperfect, and one stanza wanting corresponding rhymes: one letter, the initial S, had been omitted in the spelling of his own name. In this interview also it was that, upon my expressing a hope of his health being benefited by the climate of the country to which he was going, and by the interest he would take in the classic remembrances of Italy, he made use of the quotation from "Yarrow unvisited" as recorded by me in the "Musings at Aquapendente" six years afterwards. Mr. Lockhart has mentioned in his Life of him what I heard from several quarters while abroad, both at Rome and elsewhere, that little seemed to interest him but what he could collect " or heard of the fugitive Stuarts and their adherents who had followed them into exile. Both the "Yarrow revisited" and the "Sonnet were sent him before his departure from England. Some further particulars of the conversations which occurred during this visit I should have set down had they not been already accurately recorded by Mr. Lockhart. I first became acquainted with this great and amiable man--Sir Walter Scott-in the year 1803, when my sister and I, making a tour in Scotland, were hospitably received by him in Lasswade upon the banks of the Esk, where he was then living. We saw a good deal of him in the course of the following week the particulars are given in my sister's Journal of that tour. ΤΟ SAMUEL ROGERS, Esq., AS A TESTIMONY OF FRIENDSHIP, AND ACKNOWLEDGMENT OF INTELLECTUAL OBLIGATIONS, THESE MEMORIALS ARE AFFECTIONATELY INSCRIBED RYDAL MOUNT, Dec. 11, 1834. I The following Stanzas are a memorial of a day passed with Sir Walter Scott and other Friends visiting the Banks of the Yarrow under his guidance, immediately before his departure from Abbotsford, for Naples. The title Yarrow Revisited will stand in no need of explanation for Readers acquainted with the Author's previous poems suggested by that celebrated Stream. THE gallant Youth, who may have gained, Or seeks, a "winsome Marrow,' Was but an Infant in the lap When first I looked on Yarrow; Once more, by Newark's Castle-gate Long left without a warder, I stood, looked, listened, and with Thee, Great Minstrel of the Border! Grave thoughts ruled wide on that sweet day, Their dignity installing In gentle bosoms, while sere leaves Were on the bough, or falling; But breezes played, and sunshine gleamed-| The forest to embolden; Reddened the fiery hues, and shot Transparence through the golden. For busy thoughts the Stream flowed on And slept in many a crystal pool Brisk Youth appeared, the Morn of youth, Past, present, future, all appeared In harmony united, Like guests that meet, and some from far, By cordial love invited. And if, as Yarrow, through the woods Did meet us with unaltered face, Though we were changed and changing; The soul's deep valley was not slow Eternal blessings on the Muse, And her divine employment! Has o'er their pillow brooded; For thee, O SCOTT! compelled to change May classic Fancy, linking Oh! while they minister to thee, With Strength, her venturous brother; And Tiber, and each brook and rill Renowned in song and story, With unimagined beauty shine, Similar places for burial are not unfrequent in Scotland. The one that suggested this Sonnet lies on the banks of a small stream called the Wauchope that flows into the Esk near Langholme. Mickle, who, as it appears from his poem on Sir Martin, was not without genuine poetic Bear witness, Ye, whose thoughts that day feelings, was born and passed his boyhood in In Yarrow's groves were centred; Who through the silent portal arch Of mouldering Newark entered; And clomb the winding stair that once Too timidly was mounted By the last Minstrel," (not the last!) Ere he his Tale recounted. Flow on for ever, Yarrow Stream ! Fulfil thy pensive duty, Well pleased that future Bards should chant For simple hearts thy beauty; To memory's shadowy moonshine! No vestige now remains; yet thither creep Bereft Ones, and in lowly anguish weep Their prayers out to the wind and naked skies. Proud tomb is none; but rudely-sculptured knights, By humble choice of plain old times, are seen Level with earth, among the hillocks green: Union not sad, when sunny daybreak smites Scattered all Britain over, through deep glen, On airy upland, and by forest rills, And o'er wide plains cheered by the lark that trills His sky-born warblings-does aught meet your ken More fit to animate the Poet's pen, The spangled turf, and neighbouring Of the good Priest: who, faithful through thickets ring With jubilate from the choirs of spring! IV ON THE SIGHT OF A MANSE IN THE SOUTH OF SCOTLAND The manses in Scotland and the gardens and grounds about them have seldom that attractive appearance which is common about our English parsonages, even when the clergyman's income falls below the average of the Scotch minister's. This is not merely owing to the one country being poor in comparison with the other, but arises rather out of the equality of their benefices, so that no one has enough to spare for decorations that might serve as an example for others; whereas, with us, the taste of the richer incumbent extends its influence more or less to the poorest. After all, in these observations the surface only of the matter is touched. I once heard a conversation in which the Roman Catholic Religion was decried on account of its abuses. "You cannot deny, however," said a lady of the party, repeating an expression used by Charles II., "that it is the religion of a gentleman." It may be left to the Scotch themselves to determine how far this observation applies to their Kirk, while it cannot be denied, if it is wanting in that characteristic quality, the aspect of common life, so far as concerns its beauty, must suffer. Sincere christian piety may be thought not to stand in need of refinement or studied ornament; but assuredly it is ever ready to adopt them, when they fall within its notice, as means allow; and this observation applies not only to manners, but to everything a christian (truly so in spirit) culti vates and gathers round him, however humble his social condition. SAY, ye far-travelled clouds, far-seeing hills Among the happiest-looking homes of men all hours To his high charge, and truly serving God, Has yet a heart and hand for trees and flowers, Enjoys the walks his predecessors trod, Nor covets lineal rights in lands and towers. V COMPOSED IN ROSLIN CHAPEL DURING A STORM We were detained by incessant rain and storm at the small inn near Roslin Chapel, and I passed a great part of the day pacing to and fro in this beautiful structure, which, though not used for public service, is not allowed to go to ruin. Here this Sonnet was composed. If it has at all done justice to the feeling which the place and the storm raging without inspired, I was as a prisoner. A painter delineating the interior of the chapel and its minute features under such circumstances would have, no doubt, found his time agreeably shortened. But the movements of the mind must be more free while dealing with words than with lines and colours; such at least was then and has been on many other occasions my belief, and, as it is allotted to few to follow both arts with success, I am grateful to my own calling for this and a thousand other recommendations which are denied to that of the painter. THE wind is now thy organist;-a clank (We know not whence) ministers for a bell To mark some change of service. As the swell Of music reached its height, and even when sank The notes, in prelude, ROSLIN! to a blank Of silence, how it thrilled thy sumptuous roof, Pillars, and arches, -1 proof, -not in vain time |