Or the swan stirs the reeds, his neck and bill
Wetting, that drip upon the water still;
And heron, as resounds the trodden shore,
Shoots upward, darting his long neck before.
Now, with religious awe, the farewell light
Blends with the solemn colouring of night;
'Mid groves of clouds that crest the mountain's brow, And round the west's proud lodge their shadows throw, Like Una shining on her gloomy way,
The half-seen form of Twilight roams astray;
Shedding, through paly loop-holes mild and small,
Gleams that upon the lake's still bosom fall;
Soft o'er the surface creep those lustres pale
Tracking the fitful motions of the gale.
With restless interchange at once the bright
Wins on the shade, the shade upon the light.
No favoured eye was e'er allowed to gaze
On lovelier spectacle in fairy days;
When gentle Spirits urged a sportive chase,
Brushing with lucid wands the water's face;
While music, stealing round the glimmering deeps,
Charmed the tall circle of the enchanted steeps.
-The lights are vanished from the watery plains:
No wreck of all the pageantry remains.
Unheeded night has overcome the vales:
On the dark earth the baffled vision fails;
The latest lingerer of the forest train,
The lone black fir, forsakes the faded plain;
Last evening sight, the cottage smoke, no more,
Lost in the thickened darkness, glimmers hoar;
And, towering from the sullen dark-brown mere,
Like a black wall, the mountain-steeps appear.
-Now o'er the soothed accordant heart we feel
A sympathetic twilight slowly steal,
And ever, as we fondly muse, we find
The soft gloom deepening on the tranquil mind.
Stay! pensive, sadly-pleasing visions, stay!
Ah no! as fades the vale, they fade away:
Yet still the tender, vacant gloom remains;
Still the cold cheek its shuddering tear retains.
The bird, who ceased, with fading light, to thread
Silent the hedge or steamy rivulet's bed,
From his gray re-appearing tower shall soon
Salute with boding note the rising moon,
Frosting with hoary light the pearly ground,
And pouring deeper blue to Ether's bound;
And pleased, her solemn pomp of clouds to fold
In robes of azure, fleecy-white, and gold.
See o'er the eastern hill, where darkness broods O'er all its vanished dells, and lawns, and woods; Where but a mass of shade the sight can trace. She lifts in silence up her lovely face :
Above the gloomy valley flings her light,
Far to the western slopes with hamlets white;
'And gives, where woods the chequered upland strew,
To the green corn of summer, autumn's hue.
Thus Hope, first pouring from her blessed horn
Her dawn, far lovelier than the moon's own morn,
"Till higher mounted, strives in vain to cheer
The weary hills, impervious, blackening near;
Yet does she still, undaunted, throw the while
On darling spots remote her tempting smile.
Even now she decks for me a distant scene,
(For dark and broad the gulf of time between)
Gilding that cottage with her fondest ray,
(Sole bourn, sole wish, sole object of my way;
How fair its lawns and sheltering woods appear!
How sweet its streamlet murmurs in mine ear!)
Where we, my Friend, to happy days shall rise,
"Till our small share of hardly-paining sighs
(For sighs will ever trouble human breath)
Creep hushed into the tranquil breast of death.
But now the clear bright Moon her zenith gains,
And, rimy without speck, extend the plains:
The deepest cleft the mountain's front displays
Scarce hides a shadow from her searching rays;
From the dark-blue faint silvery threads divide
The hills, while gleams below the azure tide;
The scene is wakened, yet its peace unbroke
By silvered wreaths of quiet charcoal smoke
That o'er the ruins of the fallen wood,
Steal down the hill, and spread along the flood.
The song of mountain-streams, unheard by day.
Now hardly heard, beguiles my homeward way.
All air is like the sleeping water, still,
List'ning the aerial music of the hill,
Broke only by the slow clock tolling deep,
Or shout that wakes the ferry-man from sleep,
The echoed hoof approaching the far shore,
Soon followed by his hollow parting oar;
Sound of closed gate, across the water borne,
Hurrying the feeding hare through rustling corn;
The tremulous sob of the complaining owl;
And at long intervals the mill-dog's howl;
The distant forge's swinging thump profound
Or yell in the deep woods of lonely hound.
WRITTEN WHILE SAILING IN A BOAT AT EVENING.
How richly glows the water's breast
Before us, tinged with Evening hues,
While, facing thus the crimson west,
The Boat her silent course pursues!
And see how dark the backward stream!
A little moment past so smiling!
And still, perhaps, with faithless gleam,
Some other loiterers beguiling.
Such views the youthful Bard allure;
But, heedless of the following gloom,
He deems their colours shall endure
Till peace go with him to the tomb.
-And let him nurse his fond deceit,
And what if he must die in sorrow!
Who would not cherish dreams so sweet,
Though grief and pain may come to-morrow?
WRITTEN UPON THE THAMES NEAR RICHMOND.
GLIDE gently, thus for ever glide,
O Thames! that other Bards may see
As lovely visions by thy side
As now, fair river! come to me.
O glide, fair stream! for ever so,
Thy quiet soul on all bestowing,
Till all our minds for ever flow,
As thy deep waters now are flowing.
Vain thought!-Yet be as now thou art,
That in thy waters may be seen
The image of a Poet's heart,
How bright, how solemn, how serene!
Such as did once the Poet bless,
Who, murmuring here a later* ditty,
Could find no refuge from distress
But in the milder grief of pity.
Now let us, as we float along,
For him suspend the dashing oar;
And pray that never Child of Song
May know that Poet's sorrows more.
How calm! how still! the only sound,
The dripping of the oar suspended!
-The evening darkness gathers round
By virtue's holiest powers attended.
*Collins' Ode on the death of Thomson, the last written, I believe, of th poems which were published during his lifetime. This Ode is also alluded to in the next stanza.
TAKEN DURING A PEDESTRIAN TOUR AMONG THE ALPS.
No sad vacuities his heart annoy,
Blows not a zephyr but it whispers joy;
For him the loneliest flowers their sweets exhale;
He marks"the meanest note that swells the gale;"
For him sod seats the cottage-door adorn,
And peeps the far-off spire, his evening bourne.
Dear is the forest frowning o'er his head,
And dear the velvet green sward to his tread;
Moves there a cloud o'er mid-day's flaming eye?
Upward he looks-" and calls it luxury;"
Kind Nature's charities his steps attend;
In every babbling brook he finds a friend;
Whilst chast'ning thoughts of sweetest use, bestowed
By Wisdom, moralize his pensive road.
Host of his welcome inn, the noontide bower,
To his spare meal he calls the passing poor;
He views the Sun uplift his golden fire,
Or sink, with heart alive like Memnon's* lyre;
Blesses the Moon that comes with kindly ray,
To light him shaken by his viewless way;
With bashful fear no cottage children steal
From him, a brother at the cottage meal;
His humble looks no shy restraint impart,
Around him plays at will the virgin heart.
While unsuspended wheels the village dance,
The maidens eye him with inquiring glance,
Much wondering what sad stroke of crazing Care
Or desperate Love could lead a wanderer there.
I sigh at hoary Chartreusè doom.
Where now is fled that Power whose frown severe
Tamed "sober Reason" till she crouched in fear?
That breathed a death-like silence wide around.
The cloister startles at the gleam of arms,
And Blasphemy the shuddering fane alarms;
Nod the cloud-piercing pines their troubled heads;
Spires, rocks, and lawns, a browner night o'erspreads.
Strong terror checks the female peasant's sighs,
And start the astonish'd shades at female eyes.
The thundering tube the aged angler hears,
And swells the groaning torrent with his tears.
From Bruno's forest screams the affrighted jay,
And slow the insulted eagle wheels away.
The cross, with hideous laughter, Demons mock,
By Angels planted on the aerial rock.
The "parting Genius" sighs with hollow breath
The lyre of Memnon is reported to have emitted melancholy or cheerful tones,
as it was touched by the sun's evening or morning rays.
Alluding to crosses seen on the tops of the spiry rocks of Chartreuse, which have every appearance of being inaccessible.
Along the mystic streams of* Life and Death.
Swelling the outery dull, that long resounds
Portentous, through her old woods' trackless bounds,
Vallombre,† 'mid her falling fanes, deplores,
For ever broke, the Sabbath of her bowers.
More pleased, my foot the hidden margin roves
Of Como bosomed deep in chesnut groves.
No meadows thrown between, the giddy steeps
Tower, bare or sylvan, from the narrow deeps.
To towns, whose shades of no rude sound complain,
To ringing team unknown and grating wain,
To flat-roofed towns, that touch the water's bound,
Or lurk in woody sunless glens profound,
Or, from the bending rocks, obtrusive cling,
And o'er the whitened wave their shadows fling;
Wild round the steeps the little pathway twines,
And Silence loves its purple roof of vines.
The viewless lingerer hence, at evening, sees
From rock-hewn steps the sail between the trees;
Or marks, 'mid opening cliffs, fair dark-eyed maids
Tend the small harvest of their garden glades,
Or stops the solemn mountain-shades to view
Stretch, o'er the pictured mirror, broad and blue,
Tracking the yellow sun from steep to steep,
As up the opposing hills, with tortoise foot they creep.
Here, half a village shines, in gold arrayed,
Bright as the moon; half hides itself in shade.
From the dark sylvan roofs the restless spire,
Inconstant glancing, mounts like springing fire.
There, all unshaded, blazing forests throw
Rich golden verdure on the waves below.
Slow glides the sail along the illumined shore,
And steals into the shade the lazy oar;
Soft bosoms breathe around contagious sighs,
And amorous music on the water dies.
How bless'd, delicious scene! the eye that greets Thy open beauties, or thy lone retreats;
The unwearied sweep of wood thy cliffs that scales;
The never-ending waters of thy vales;
The cots, those dim religious groves embower,
Or, under rocks that from the water tower
Insinuated, sprinkling all the shore;
Each with his household boat beside the door,
Whose flaccid sails in forms fantastic droop,
Brightening the gloom where thick the forests stoop; -Thy torrents shooting from the clear blue sky,
Thy towns, like swallows' nests that cleave on high:
That glimmer hoar in eve's last light, descry'd
Dim from the twilight water's shaggy side,
Whence lutes and voices down the enchanted woods Steal, and compose the oar-forgotten floods.
Names of rivers at the Chartreuse.
Name of one of the valleys of the Chartreuse.
|