Such have I been deem'd.
But, O dear Britain! O my mother Isle !
Needs must thou prove a name most dear and holy To me, a son, a brother, and a friend,
A husband, and a father! who revere All bonds of natural love, and find them all Within the limits of thy rocky shores.
O native Britain! O my mother Isle !
How shouldst thou prove aught else but dear and holy
To me, who from thy lakes and mountain-hills, Thy clouds, thy quiet dales, thy rocks and seas, Have drunk in all my intellectual life, All sweet sensations, all ennobling thoughts, All adoration of the God in Nature, All lovely and all honourable things, Whatever makes this mortal spirit feel The joy and greatness of its future being? There lives nor form nor feeling in my soul Unborrow'd from my country! O divine And beauteous island! thou hast been my sole And most magnificent temple, in the which I walk with awe, and sing my stately songs, Loving the God that made me !—
My filial fears, be vain! and may the vaunts And menace of the vengeful enemy Pass like the gust, that roar'd and died away In the distant tree: which heard, and only heard In this low dell, bow'd not the delicate grass.
But now the gentle dew-fall sends abroad The fruit-like perfume of the golden furze : The light has left the summit of the hill, Though still a sunny gleam lies beautiful, Aslant the ivied beacon.* Now farewell, Farewell, awhile, O soft and silent spot! On the green sheep-track, up the heathy hill, Homeward I wind my way; and lo! recall'd From bodings that have well-nigh wearied me, I find myself upon the brow, and pause Startled! And after lonely sojourning In such a quiet and surrounded nook,† This burst of prospect, here the shadowy main, Dim-tinted, there the mighty majesty Of that huge amphitheatre of rich And elmy fields, seems like society— Conversing with the mind, and giving it A livelier impulse and a dance of thought; And now, beloved Stowey! I behold
Thy church-tower, and, methinks, the four huge elms
Clustering, which mark the mansion of my friend; And close behind them, hidden from my view, Is my own lowly cottage, where my babe
And my babe's mother dwell in peace! With light And quicken'd footsteps thitherward I tend, Remembering thee, O green and silent dell! And grateful, that by Nature's quietness
* On the long-ivied beacon.-1798.
And solitary musings, all my heart
Is soften'd, and made worthy to indulge Love, and the thoughts that yearn for human kind. Nether Stowey, April 20th, 1798.
THE NIGHTINGALE :
A CONVERSATIONAL POEM, WRITTEN IN APRIL, 1798.* NO cloud, no relique of the sunken day
Distinguishes the West, no long thin slip Of sullen light, no obscure trembling hues. Come, we will rest on this old mossy bridge! You see the glimmer of the stream beneath, But hear no murmuring: it flows silently, O'er its soft bed of verdure. All is still, A balmy night! and though the stars be dim, Yet let us think upon the vernal showers That gladden the green earth, and we shall find A pleasure in the dimness of the stars. And hark! the Nightingale begins its song, "Most musical, most melancholy" + bird!
* First printed in Lyrical Ballads, 1798.
"Most musical, most melancholy." This passage in Milton possesses an excellence far superior to that of mere description: it is spoken in the character of the melancholy man, and has therefore a dramatic propriety. The author makes this remark to rescue himself from the charge of having alluded with levity to a line in Milton, a charge than which none could be more painful to him, except perhaps that of having ridiculed his Bible.
A melancholy bird? Oh! idle thought!
In Nature there is nothing melancholy.
But some night-wandering man whose heart was pierced
With the remembrance of a grievous wrong,
Or slow distemper, or neglected love,
(And so, poor wretch! fill'd all things with himself, And made all gentle sounds tell back the tale Of his own sorrow) he, and such as he, First named these notes a melancholy strain. And many a poet echoes the conceit; Poet who hath been building up the rhyme When he had better far have stretch'd his limbs Beside a brook in mossy forest-dell,
By sun or moon-light, to the influxes
Of shapes and sounds and shifting elements Surrendering his whole spirit, of his song And of his fame forgetful! so his fame Should share in Nature's immortality, A venerable thing! and so his song Should make all Nature lovelier, and itself Be loved like Nature! But 'twill not be so ; And youths and maidens most poetical, Who lose the deepening twilights of the spring In ball-rooms and hot theatres, they still Full of meek sympathy must heave their sighs O'er Philomela's pity-pleading strains.
My Friend, and thou, our Sister!* we have learnt
*My Friend and my Friend's Sister.-1798.
A different lore: we may not thus profane Nature's sweet voices, always full of love And joyance! 'Tis the merry Nightingale That crowds, and hurries, and precipitates With fast thick warble his delicious notes, As he were fearful that an April night Would be too short for him to utter forth His love-chant, and disburthen his full soul Of all its music!
And I know a grove Of large extent, hard by a castle huge, Which the great lord inhabits not; and so This grove is wild with tangling underwood, And the trim walks are broken up, and grass, Thin grass and king-cups grow within the paths. But never elsewhere in one place I knew So many nightingales; and far and near, In wood and thicket, over the wide grove, They answer and provoke each other's songs, With skirmish and capricious passagings,
And murmurs musical and swift jug jug,
And one low piping sound more sweet than all— Stirring the air with such an harmony,
That should you close your eyes, you might almost Forget it was not day! On moonlight bushes, Whose dewy leafits are but half-disclosed, You may perchance behold them on the twigs, Their bright, bright eyes, their eyes both bright and full,
Glistening, while many a glow-worm in the shade Lights up her love-torch.
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