The poetical works of Wordsworth, with memoir, notes etc

Concealed from friends who might disturb
Thy quiet with no ill intent,
Secure from evil eyes and hands
On barbarous plunder bent,

Rest, mother-bird! and when thy young
Take flight, and thou art free to roam,
When withered is the guardian flower,
And empty thy late home,

Think how ye prospered, thou and thine,
Amid the unviolated grove
Housed near the growing primrose tuft
In foresight, or in love.

SONNETS.

COMPOSED OR SUGGESTED DURING
TOUR IN SCOTLAND IN THE SUMMER

OF 1833.

II.

WHY should the Enthusiast, journeying
through this Isle,

Repine as if his hour were come too late?
Not unprotected in her mouldering state,
Antiquity salutes him with a smile,

'Mid fruitful felds that ring with jocund
toil,

And pleasure-grounds where Taste, re-
fined Co-mate

Of Truth and Beauty, strives to imitate,
Far as she may, primeval Nature's style.
Fair land! by Time's parental love made
free,

By social Order's watchful arms embraced,
With unexampled union meet in thee,
For eye and mind, the present and the
past;

A With golden prospect for futurity,
If what is rightly reverenced may last.

III.

THEY called Thee merry England, in old
time;

A happy people won for thee that name
With envy heard in many a distant clime;
And, spite of change, for me thou keep'st

[Having been prevented by the lateness of the season, in 1831, from visiting Staffa and Iona, the author made these the principal objects of a short tour in the summer of 1833, of which the following series of sonnets is a Memorial. The course pursued was down the Cumberland river Derwent, and to Whitehaven; thence (by the Isle of Man, where a few days were passed) up the Frith of Clyde to Greenock, then to Oban, Staffa, Iona; and back towards England, by Loch Awe, Inverary, Endearing title, a responsive chime Loch Goil-head, Greenock, and through parts. To the heart's fond belief, though some of Renfrewshire, Ayrshire, and Dumfriesshire to Carlisle, and thence up the river, Whose sterner judgments deem that word Eden, and homewards by Ullswater.]

the same

there are

a snare

For inattentive Fancy, like the lime
Which foolish birds are caught with. Can,
I ask,

This face of rural beauty be a mask
For discontent, and poverty, and crime;
These spreading towns a cloak for lawless
will;

Forbid it, Heaven!-that "merry Eng-
land" still

May be thy rightful name, in prose and rhyme !

IV.

TO THE RIVER GRETA, NEAR KESWICK.
GRETA, what fearful listening! when huge

stones

Rumble along thy bed, block after block :
Or, whirling with reiterated shock,
Combat, while darkness aggravates the

greans:

But if thou (like Cocytus from the moans

Heard on his rueful margin) thence wert | And You, my Offspring! that do still
named
remain,

The Mourner, thy true nature was defamed, Yet may outstrip me in the appointed race,
And the habitual murmur that atones If e'er, through fault of mine, in mutual
For thy worst rage, forgotten. Oft as
Spring

Deeks, on thy sinuous banks, her thousand thrones,

Seats of glad instinct and love's carolling, The concert, for the happy, then may vie With liveliest peals of birth-day harmony: To a grieved heart, the notes are benisons.

pain

We breathed together for a moment's space, The wrong, by love provoked, let love arraign,

And only love keep in your hearts a place.

TO THE RIVER DERWENT.

VII.

ADDRESS FROM THE SPIRIT OF
COCKERMOUTH CASTLE.

THOU look'st upon me, and dost fondly think,

AMONG the mountains were we nursed, Poet! that, stricken as both are by years, We, differing once so much, are now Compeers,

loved stream!

Thou near the Eagle's nest-within brief sail,

I, of his bold wing floating on the gale, Where thy deep voice could lull me! Faint the beam

Of human life when first allowed to gleam On mortal notice.-Glory of the Vale, Such thy meek outset, with a crown, though frail,

Kept in perpetual verdure by the steam Of thy soft breath!-Less vivid wreath entwined

Nemaan victor's brow; less bright was

Prepared, when each has stood his time, to sink

Into the dust. Erewhile a sterner link United us; when thou, in boyish play, Entering my dungeon, didst become a prey To soul-appalling darkness. Not a blink Of light was there;-and thus did I, thy Tutor,

Make thy young thoughts acquainted with the grave;

While thou wert chasing the winged butterfly

Through my green courts; or climbing, a bold suitor,

Up to the flowers whose golden progeny Still round my shattered brow in beauty

wave.

VI.

IN SIGHT OF THE TOWN OF
COCKERMOUTH,

(WHERE THE AUTHOR WAS BORN, AND HIS FATHER'S REMAINS ARE LAID.

A POINT of life between my Parents' dust,
And yours, my buried Little-ones! am I;
And to those graves looking habitually
In kindred quiet I repose my trust.
Death to the innocent is more than just,
And, to the sinner, mercifully bent;
So may I hope, if truly I repent
And meekly bear the ills which bear I mus

VIII.

NUN'S WELL, BRIGHAM.

THE cattle crowding round this beverage clear

To slake their thirst, with reckless hoofs have trod

The encircling turf into a barren clod; Through which the waters creep, thea disappear,

Born to be lost in Derwent flowing near; Yet, o'er the brink, and round the limestone-cell

Of the pure spring (they call it the '
Well,"

Name that first struck by chance my startled ear)

A tender Spirit broods- the pensive Shade | The gloom that did its loveliness enshroud) She smiled; but Time, the old Saturnian Seer,

Of ritual honours to this Fountain paid
By hooded Votaries with saintly cheer;
Albeit oft the Virgin-mother mild

Looked down with pity upon eyes beguiled
Into the shedding of "too soft a tear.'

Sighed on the wing as her foot pressed the
strand,

With step prelusive to a long array
Of woes and degradations hand in hand,
Weeping captivity, and shuddering fear
Stilled by the ensanguined block of Fo-
theringay!

IX.

TO A FRIEND.

(ON THE BANKs of the Derwent.)

XI.

PASTOR and Patriot ! at whose bidding rise IN THE CHANNEL, BETWEEN THE COAST These modest Walls, amid a flock that

OF CUMBERLAND AND THE ISLE OF
MAN.

RANGING the Heights of Scawfell or

Black-coom,

In his lone course the Shepherd oft will

MARY QUEEN OF SCOTS,

(LANDING AT the mouth of the derwENT, WORKINGTON.)

DEAR to the Loves, and to the Graces vowed,

The Queen drew back the wimple that she

wore;

And to the throng how touchingly she bowed

That hailed her landing on the Cumbrian shore ;

Bright as a Star (that, from a sombre cloud

Of pine-tree foliage poised in air, forth darts,

XII.

AT SEA OFF THE ISLE OF MAN.

BOLD words affirmed, in days when faith was strong,

That no adventurer's bark had power to gain

These shores if he approached them bent on wrong;

For, suddenly up-conjured from the Main,
Mists rose to hide the Land-that search,
though long

And eager, might be still pursued in vain.
O Fancy, what an age was that for song!
That age, when not by laws inanimate,
As men believed, the waters were impelled,
The air controlled, the stars their courses
held,

When a soft summer gale at evening parts | But element and orb on acts did wait

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