I SAW THE FIGURE OF A LOVELY MAID.

Despised by that stern God to whom they raise
Their suppliant hands; but holy is the feast
He keepeth; like the firmament His ways:
His statutes like the chambers of the deep.*

71

PART III.

[When I came to this part of the series I had the dream described in this Sonnet.t The figure was that of my daughter, and the whole passed exactly as here represented. The Sonnet was composed on the middle road leading from Grasmere to Ambleside it was begun as I left the last house of the vale, and finished, word for word as it now stands, before I came in view of Rydal. I wish I could say the same of the five or six hundred I have written: most of them were frequently retouched in the course of composition, and, not a few, laboriously.

I have only further to observe that the intended Church which prompted these Sonnets was erected on Coleorton Moor towards the centre of a very populous parish between three and four miles from Ashby-de-la-Zouch, on the road to Loughborough, and has proved, I believe, a great benefit to the neighbourhood.]

FROM THE RESTORATION TO THE PRESENT TIMES.

L

I SAW the figure of a lovely Maid
Seated alone beneath a darksome tree,
Whose fondly-overhanging canopy

Set off her brightness with a pleasing shade.
No Spirit was she; that1 my heart betrayed;
For she was one I loved exceedingly:

But while I gazed in tender reverie

(Or was it sleep that with my Fancy played?)

The bright corporeal presence-form and face-
Remaining still distinct grew thin and rare,
Like sunny mist;—at length the golden hair,
Shape, limbs, and heavenly features, keeping pace
Each with the other in a lingering race

Of dissolution, melted into air.

II.

PATRIOTIC SYMPATHIES.

LAST night, without a voice, that Vision spake Fear to my Soul, and sadness which might seem Wholly dissevered from our present theme; Yet, my beloved country! I partake 3

Of kindred agitations for thy sake;

4

Thou, too, dost visit oft my midnight dream;
Thy 5 glory meets me with the earliest beam

Of light, which tells that Morning is awake.
If aught impair thy beauty or destroy,

6

Or but forebode destruction, I deplore

1 1845.

this Vision spake

Fear to my Spirit-passion that might seem
this Vision spake

1822.

Fear to my Soul, and sadness that might seem

1837.

CHARLES THE SECOND.

With filial love the sad vicissitude;

If thou hast1 fallen, and righteous Heaven restore
The prostrate, then my spring-time is renewed,

And sorrow bartered for exceeding joy.

III.

CHARLES THE SECOND.

WHO Comes with rapture greeted, and caressed
With frantic love-his kingdom to regain? *
Him Virtue's Nurse, Adversity, in vain
Received, and fostered in her iron breast:
For all she taught of hardiest and of best,
Or would have taught, by discipline of pain
And long privation, now dissolves amain,
Or is remembered only to give zest
To wantonness-Away, Circean revels! †
But for what gain? if England soon must sink
Into a gulf which all distinction levels,

That bigotry may swallow the good name,2 ‡

And, with that draught, the life-blood: misery, shame, By Poets loathed; from which Historians shrink!

1 1832.

If she hath

1822.

73

Already stands our Country on the brink

Of bigot rage, that all distinction levels

Of truth and falsehood, swallowing the good name, 1822.

* "No event ever marked a deeper or a more lasting change in the temper of the English people, than the entry of Charles the Second into Whitehall. With it modern England begins."-(Green's History of the English People, Chap. IX.)-Ed.

+"The Restoration brought Charles to Whitehall; and in an instant the whole face of England was changed. All that was noblest and best in Puritanism was whirled away."-(Green.) The excesses of every kind that came in with the Restoration were notorious.-ED.

In 1672 the Duke of York was publicly received into the Church of Rome.-ED.

IV.

LATITUDINARIANISM.

YET Truth is keenly sought for, and the wind

Charged with rich words poured out in thought's defence; Whether the Church inspire that eloquence,*

Or a Platonic Piety confined

To the sole temple of the inward mind; †
And One there is who builds immortal lays,
Though doomed to tread in solitary ways,
Darkness before and danger's voice behind;
Yet not alone, nor helpless to repel

Sad thoughts; for from above the starry sphere
Come secrets, whispered nightly to his ear;
And the pure spirit of celestial light

Shines through his soul—that he may see and tell
Of things invisible to mortal sight.'§

V.

WALTON'S BOOK OF LIVES.||

THERE are no colours in the fairest sky

So fair as these. The feather, whence the pen

Was shaped that traced the lives of these good men,

As in the case of John Hales of Eton, William Chillingworth, who wrote The Religion of Protestants, and Jeremy Taylor, author of The Liberty of Prophecying.-ED.

+ The Cambridge Platonists, Ralph Cudworth, John Smith, and Henry More, are referred to.-ED.

Milton.-ED.

? Compare Paradise Lost, Book iii., 1. 54-55.-Ed.

|| Izaak Walton, author of The Complete Angler, wrote also The Lives of John Donne, Sir Henry Wotton, Richard Hooker, George Herbert, and Robert Sanderson. -ED.

CLERICAL INTEGRITY.

Dropped from an Angel's wing. With moistened eye We read of faith and purest charity

In Statesman, Priest, and humble Citizen.

O could we copy their mild virtues, then
What joy to live, what blessedness to die!
Methinks their very names shine still and bright;
Apart-like glow-worms on a summer night;
Or lonely tapers when from far they fling

1

A guiding ray; or seen-like stars on high,
Satellites burning in a lucid ring

Around meek Walton's heavenly memory.

75

VI.

CLERICAL INTEGRITY.

NOR shall the eternal roll of praise reject
Those Unconforming; whom one rigorous day
Drives from their Cures, a voluntary prey

To poverty, and grief, and disrespect,†

And some to want as if by tempests wrecked 2

glow-worms in the woods of spring,

Or lonely tapers shooting far a light
That guides and cheers,-

1822.

tempest wreck'd

Compare the following with those lines of Wordsworth

"Whose noble praise

Deserve a quill pluckt from an angel's wing."

1822.

(Dorothy Berry, in a Sonnet prefixed to Diana Primrose's Chain of Pearl, a memorial of the peerless graces, &c., of Queen Elizabeth, London, 1639.) And a still older

passage

"The pen wherewith thou dost so heavenly singe,
Made of a quill pluckt from an Angell's winge."

(Henry Constable's Diana, a volume of Sonnets published in 1594).—ED.
+ By the Act of Uniformity (1662), nearly 2000 Presbyterian and In-
dependent Ministers, who had been admitted to benefices in the Church of
England during the Puritan Ascendancy, were ejected from their livings.
-ED.