Classic Poem

Once more I welcome Thee, and Thou, fair Plant,
Fair Primrose, hast put forth thy radiant Flowers
All eager to be welcomed once again.
O pity if the faithful Spring beguiled
By her accustomed hopes had come to breathe
Upon the bosom of this barren crag
And found thee not; but Thou art here, revived
And beautiful as ever like a Queen
Smiling from thy imperishable throne,
And so shall keep for ages yet untold
Frail as Thou art, if the prophetic Muse
Be rightly trusted, so shalt Thou maintain
Conspicuously thy solitary state
In splendour unimpaired. For Thou art safe
From most adventurous bound of mountain sheep
By keenest hunger pressed, and from approach
Of the wild Goat still bolder, nor more cause,
Though in that sunny and obtrusive crag,
Hast thou to dread the desolating grasp
Of Child or Schoolboy, and though hand perchance
Of taller Passenger might want not power
To win thee, yet a thought would intervene
Though Thou be tempting, and that thought of love
Would hold him back, checked in the first conceit
And impulse of such rapine. A benign,
A good and friendly Spirit Thee hath watched
Thus far, and shall continue to preserve
Less for thy beauty's sake, though that might claim
All favour, than for pleasure which Thou shed'st
Down-looking and far-looking all day long
From that thy sunny and obtrusive seat
Upon the Travellers that do hourly climb
This steep, new gladness yielding to the glad,
And genial promises to those who droop
Sick, poor, or weary, or disconsolate,
Brightening at once the winter of their souls.

I have a Friend, whom Seasons as they passed
All pleased: they in her bosom damped no joy
And from her light step took no liberty,
When suddenly as lightning from a cloud
Came danger with disease; came suddenly
And lingered long, and this commanding Hill
Which with its rocky chambers heretofore
Had been to her a range of dear resort,
The palace of her freedom, now, sad change,
Was interdicted ground, a place of fear
For her, a melancholy Hill for us
Constrained to think and ponder for her sake.

Fair primrose, lonely and distinguished Flower
Well worthy of that honourable place
That holds thy beauty up to public view,
For ever parted from all neighbourhood,
In a calm course of meditative years,
Oft have I hailed thee with serene delight;
This greeting is far more — it is the voice
Of a surpassing joyance. She herself
With her own eyes shall bless thee, ere Thou fade
The Prisoner shall come forth, and all the toil
And labours of this sharp ascent shall melt
Before thy mild assurances, and pain
And weakness shall pass from her like a sleep
Chased by a bright glimpse of the morning Sun.

Farewell, yet turning from thee, happy Flower,
With these dear thoughts, not therefore are old claims
Unrecognized, nor have I languid sense
Of what thy reappearance would have been
Without this further joy, have been to me
In its pure self. For often when I pass
This way, while thou art in thy winter sleep,
Or the rank Summer hides thee from my view
Even then I think of thee. Alas how much,
Since I beheld and loved thee first, how much
Is gone, though thou be left. I would not speak
Of best Friends dead, or other deep heart-loss
Bewailed with weeping, but by River sides
And in broad fields how many gentle loves,
How many mute memorials passed away.
Stately herself, though of a lowly kind
That little Flower remains and has survived
The lofty band of Firs that overtopped
Their ancient neighbour the old Steeple Tower,
That consecrated File which had so oft
Swung in the blast, mingling their solemn strain
Of music with the one determined voice
From the slow funeral bell, a symphony
Most awful and affecting to the ear
Of him who passed beneath: or had dealt forth
Soft murmurs like the cooing of a Dove
Ere first distinguishably heard, and cast
Their dancing shadows on the flowery turf
While through the Churchyard tripped the bridal train
In festive Ribbands decked, and those same trees
By moonlight in their stillness and repose
Deepened the silence of a hundred graves.
Ah what a welcome! when from absence long
Returning, on the centre of the Vale
I looked a first glad look, and saw them not.
Was it a dream? the aerial grove, no more
Right in the centre of the lovely Vale
Suspended like a stationary cloud,
Had vanished like a cloud — yet say not so
For here and there a straggling Tree was left
To mourn in blanc and monumental grief,
To pine and wither for its fellows gone.
— Ill word that laid them low — unfeeling Heart
Had He who could endure that they should fall,
Who spared not them, nor spared that Sycamore high,
The universal glory of the Vale,
And did not spare the little avenue
Of lightly stirring Ash-trees that sufficed
To dim the glare of Summer, and to blunt
The strong Wind turned into a gentle breeze
Whose freshness cheered the paved walk beneath,
That ancient walk, which from the Vicar's door
Led to the Church-yard gate. Then, Grasmere, then
Thy sabbath mornings had a holy grace,
That incommunicable sanctity
Which Time and nature only can bestow
When from his plain abode the rustic Priest
Did issue forth glistening in best attire,
And down that consecrated vista paced
Towards the Churchyard where his ready Flock
Were gathered round in sunshine or in shade;
While Trees and mountains echoed to the Voice
Of the glad bells, and all the murmuring streams
United their Soft chorus with the Song.

Now stands the Steeple naked and forlorn
And from the Haven, the " last Central Home",
To which all change conducts the Thought, looks round
Upon the changes of this peaceful Vale.
What sees the old grey Tower, through high or low
Of his domain, that calls for more regret
Than yon small Cottage? there it is aloft
And nearest to the flying clouds of three
Perched each above the other on the side
Of the vale's northern outlet — from below
And from afar — yet say not from afar
For all things in this little world of ours
Are in one bosom of close neighbourhood.
The hoary steeple now beholds that roof
Laid open to the glare of Common day,
And marks five graves beneath his feet, in which
Divided by a breadth of smooth green space
From nearer neighbourhood they who were erewhile
The Inmates of that Cottage are at rest.
Death to the happy House in which they dwelt
Had given a long reprieve of forty years.
Suddenly then they disappeared — not twice
Had Summer scorched the fields, not twice had fallen
The first white snow upon Helvellyn's top
Before the greedy visiting was closed
And the long-privileged House left empty, swept
As by a plague; yet no rapacious plague
Had been among them, all was gentle death,
One after one with intervals of peace,
A consummation, and a harmony
Sweet, perfect, to be wished for, save that here
Was something sounding to our mortal sense
Like harshness, that the old grey headed sire,
The oldest, he was taken last, survived
When the dear Partner of his manhood's prime,
His Son, and Daughter, then a blooming Wife,
And little smiling Grandchild were no more.
(Methinks that Emma hears the murmuring song
And the pure Ether of her Maiden soul
Is overcast, and thy maternal eyes,
Mary, are wet, but not with tears of grief.)
'Twas but a little patience and his term
Of solitude was spent — the aged One
Our very first in Eminence of years
The Patriarch of the Vale; a busy Hand
Yea more, a burning palm, a flashing eye
A restless foot, a head that beat at nights
Upon its pillow with a thousand schemes,
A Planter, and a Rearer from the Seed,
Builder had been but scanty means forbad.
A Man of Hope, a forward-looking Mind
Even to the last, he and his cheerful throng
Of open schemes, and all his inward hoard
Of unsunned griefs, too many and too keen,
Fell with the body into gentle sleep
In one blest moment, and the family
By yet a higher privilege once more
Were gathered to each other.
Yet I own,
Though I can look on their associate graves
With nothing but still thoughts, that I repine,
It costs me something like a pain to feel
That after them so many of their works
Which round that Dwelling covertly preserved
The History of their unambitious lives
Have perished, and so soon! the Cottage-Court
Spread with blue gravel from the torrent's side
And gay with shrubs, the garden, bed and walk
His own creation; that embattled Host
Of garish tulips, fruit-trees choice and rare
And roses of all colours, which he sought
Most curiously, as generously dispersed
Their kinds, to beautify his neighbours' grounds,
Trees of the forest, too, a stately fence
Planted for shelter in his manhood's prime,
And small Flowers watered by his wrinkled hand,
That all are ravaged — that his Daughter's bower
Is creeping into shapelessness, self lost
In the wild wood, like a neglected image
Or Fancy which hath ceased to be recalled.
The jasmine, her own charge, which she had trained
To climb the wall, and of one flowery spray
Had made an Inmate, luring it from sun
And breeze, and from its fellows, to pervade
The inside of her chamber with its sweet,
I grieve to see that jasmine on the ground
Stretching its desolate length, mourn that these works
Of love and diligence and innocent care
Are sullied and disgraced; or that a gulf
Hath swallowed them which renders nothing back
That they so quickly in a cave are hidden
Which cannot be unlocked; upon their bloom
That a perpetual winter should have fallen.
Meanwhile the little Primrose of the rock
Remains, in sacred beauty, without taint
Of injury or decay, lives to proclaim
Her charter in the blaze of noon; salutes
Not unobserved the Early Shepherd-Swain
Or Labourer plodding at the accustomed hour
Home to his distant hearth, and will be seen
Long as the fullness of her bloom endures,
Once with an instantaneous cheer of mind
By stranger in late travel; as I myself
Have often seen her, when the last lone Thrush
Hath ceased his Vesper hymn, piercing the gloom
Of Twilight with the vigour of a star;
Or rather say, hung from the shadowy Rock
Like the broad Moon, with lustre somewhat dimmed
Lovely and bright, and as the Moon secure.

Oh for some band of guardian spirits prompt
As were those human Ministers of old
Who daily, nightly, under various names
With various service stood or walked their rounds
Through the wide Forest, to protect from harm
The wild Beast with her young, and from the touch
Of waste the green-leaved thicket to defend,
Her secret couching-place, and stately tree
Her canopy, and berry-bearing shrub
And grassy lawn, their pasture's pleasant range,
Continual and firm peace from outrage safe
And all annoyance, till the Sovereign comes
Heading his train, and through that franchise high
Urges the chase with clamorous Hound and horn.
O grant some wardenship of spirits pure
As duteous in their office to maintain
Inviolate for nobler purposes,
These individual precincts, to protect
Here, if here only, from despoil and wrong
All growth of nature and all frame of Art
By, and in which the blissful pleasures live.
Have not the incumbent Mountains looks of awe
In which their mandate may be read, the streams
A Voice that pleads, beseeches, and implores?
In vain: the deafness of the world is here
Even here, and all too many of the haunts
Which Fancy most delights in, and the best
And dearest resting-places of the heart
Vanish beneath an unrelenting doom.

What impulse drove the Hermit to his Cell,
And what detained him there till life was spent
Fast anchored in the desart? Not alone
Dread of the persecuting sword, remorse,
Wrongs unredressed, and insults unavenged
And unavengeable, defeated pride,
Prosperity subverted, maddening want,
Love with despair or grief in agony.
Not always from intolerable pangs
He fled; but compassed round by pleasure sighed
For independent quiet, craving peace,
The central feeling of all happiness,
Not as a refuge from distress or pain
A breathing time, vacation, or a truce,
But for its absolute self, a life of peace,
Stability without regret or fear,
That hath been, is, and shall be evermore.
Therefore on few external things his heart
Was set, and those his own, or if not his
Subsisting under nature's steadfast law.
What other yearnings was the master tie
Of the monastic brotherhood, upon rock
Airial or in Green secluded Vale
One after one collected from afar
An undissolving fellowship? What but this
The universal instinct of repose
The longing for confirmed tranquillity
In small and great, in humble and sublime,
The life where hope and memory are as one,
Earth quiet and unchanged, the human soul
Consistent in self-rule, and heaven revealed
To meditation in that quietness.

Thus tempted, thus inspired, St Basil left
(Man as he was of noble blood, high born,
High stationed, and elaborately taught)
The vain felicities of Athens, left
Her throng of Sophists glorying in their snares,
Her Poets, and conflicting Orators,
Abandoned Alexandria's splendid Halls,
Antioch and Cesarea, and withdrew
To his delicious Pontic solitude,
Remembering with deep thankfulness meanwhile
Those exhortations of a female voice
Pathetically urged, his Sister's voice,
Macrina, pious Maid, most beautiful
And in the gentleness of woman wise,
By whom admonished, He, while yet a youth
And a triumphant Scholar, had dismissed
That loftiness and to the way inclined
Of virtue, self-restraint and privacy,
Virtue severe and absolute Restraint,
Which, when he chose, erelong he found the same
Beyond the utmost of its promise, rich
In dignity, sincere content, and joy.

Mark! for the Picture to this hour remains,
With what luxuriant fondness he portrays
The lineaments and image of that spot
In which upon a Mount, sylvan and high,
And at the boldest jutting in its side,
His cell was fixed, a Mount with towering Hills
Girt round, and valleys intricate and deep,
Which, leaving one blind entrance to a plain
Of fertile meadow-ground that lay beneath
Fronting the cell, had from all quarters else
Forbidden all approach; by rocks abrupt,
Or rampart as effectual of huge woods
Neither austere nor gloomy to behold
But in gay prospect lifting to the Sun
Majestic beds of diverse foliage, fruits
And thousand laughing blossoms; and the plain
Stretched out beneath the high-perched cell was bright
With herbs and flowers and tufts of flowering plants,
The choicest which the lavish East pours forth,
And sober-headed cypress interspersed,
And graced with presence of a famous stream
The Rapid Iris, journeying from remote
Armenian Mountains to his Euxine bourne,
Sole Traveller by the guarded mount; and He
To enter there had leapt with thunderous voice
Down a steep rock, and through the secret place,
Not without many a lesser bound advanced
Self-cheered with song to keep his onward course
Like a belated Pilgrim.
" Come, O Friend,"
Thus did St Basil fervently break forth,
Thus call upon the man he held most dear:
" Come Nazianzen to these fortunate Isles,
This blest Arcadia, to these purer fields
Than those which Pagan superstition feigned
For mansions of the happy dead — O come
To this Enduring Paradise, these walks
Of Contemplation, piety and love,
Coverts serene of blessed mortality.
What if the Roses and the flowers of Kings,
Princes and Emperors, and the crowns and palms
Of all the great are blasted, or decay;
What if the meanest of their subjects, each
Within the narrow region of his cares,
Tremble beneath a sad uncertainty?
There is a privilege to plead, there is;
Renounce, and thou shalt find that privilege here.
No loss lamenting, no privation felt,
Disturbed by no vicissitudes, unscared
By civil faction, by religious broils
Unplagued, forgetting and forgotten here
Mayst thou possess thy own invisible nest
Like one of those small birds that round us chaunt
In multitudes; their warbling will be thine,
And freedom to unite thy voice with theirs
When they at morn or dewy evening praise
High heaven in sweet and solemn services.
Here mayst thou dedicate thyself to God,
And acceptably fill the votive hours
Not only as these Creatures of the grove
That need no rule, and live but to enjoy;
Not only lifted often to the calm
Of that entire beatitude in which
The Angels serve, but when thou must descend
From the pure vision, and thy soul admit
A salutary glow of hope and fear,
Searching in patience and humility
Among the written mysteries of faith
The will divine; or when thou wouldst assume
The burden and the seasonable yoke
Befitting our frail nature, wouldst be tamed
By vigils, abstinence and prayer with tears,
What place so fit? — a deeper solitude
Thebais or the Syrian Wilderness
Contains not in its dry and barren round.
For not a human form is seen this way
Unless some straggling Hunter led by chance;
Him, if the graver duties be performed,
Or overwrought with study if the mind
Be haunted by a vain disquietude
And gladly would be taken from itself;
Or if it be the time when thoughts are blithe,
Him mayst thou follow to the hills, or mount
Alone, as fancy prompts, equipped with bow
And shafts and quiver, not for perilous aim
At the gaunt wolf, the lion or the Pard, —
These lurk not in our bounds, but Deer and Goat
And other kinds as peaceable are there
In readiness for inoffensive chase.
The River also owns his harmless tribes,
And tempts thee to like sport; labour itself
Is pastime here; for generous is the sun,
And cool airs blowing from the mountain top
Refresh the brow of him who in plain field
Or garden presses his industrious spade.
Or if a different exercise thou choose
And from boon nature rather wouldst receive
Food for the day, behold the fruits that hang
In the primaeval woods; the Wells and Springs
Have each a living garland of green herbs
From which they to the rifling hand will yield
Ungrudgingly supply that never fails,
Bestowed as freely as their waters pure,
To deck thy temperate board."
From theme to theme
Transported in this sort by fervent zeal
That stopped not here, the venerable man
Holy and great his invitation breathed —
And Nazianzen fashioned a reply
Ingenious and rhetorical, with taunts
Of wit and gay good-humoured ridicule
Directed both against the life itself
And that strong passion for those fortunate Isles
For the Arcadia of a golden dream.
But in his inward council-seat, his soul
Was moved, was rapt and filled with seriousness,
Nor was it long ere broken loose from ties
Of the world's business he the call obeyed.
And Amphilochius came, and numbers more,
Men of all tempers, qualities, estates,
Came with one spirit, like a troop of fowl
That single or in clusters, at a sign
Given by their leader, settle on the breast
Of some broad pool, green field, or loftiest tree
In harmony and undisturbed repose;
Or as a brood of eager younglings flock
Delighted, to the mother's outspread wings
And shelter there in unity and love.

An intellectual Champion of the faith,
Accomplished above all who then appeared
Or, haply, since victoriously have stood
In opposition to the desperate course
Of Pagan rites or impious heresies,
St Basil, after lapse of years, went forth
To a station of authority and power
Upon an urgent summons, and resigned,
Ah! not without regret, the heavenly Mount,
The sheltering valley, and his loved Compeers.
He parted from them, but their common life,
If neither first nor singular, at least
More beautiful than any of like frame
That hitherto had been conceived, a life
To which by written institutes and rules
He gave a solid being, did not fail
Nor die with him, and hung through many an age
In bright remembrance, like a shining cloud
O'er the vast regions of the western Church;
Whence those communities of holy men,
That spread so far, to shrouded quietness
Devoted, and of saintly Virgins pure.

Fallen, in a thousand vales the stately Towers
And branching windows gorgeously arrayed
And aisles and roofs magnificent that thrilled
With hallelujahs, and the strong-ribbed vaults
Are crushed; and buried under weeds and earth
The cloistral avenues — they that heard the voice
Of Rhone or Loire or some sequestered brook
Soft murmuring among woods and olive bowers
And tilth and vineyard, and the Piles that rose
On British lawns by Severn, Thames, or Tweed,
And saw their pomp reflected in the stream,
As Tintern saw; and, to this day beholds
Her faded image in the depths of Wye;
Of solemn port smitten but unsubdued
She stands; nor less tenacious of her rights
Stands Fountains Abbey, glorious in decay,
Before the pious Traveller's lifted eye
Threatening to outlive the ravages of Time
And bear the cross till Christ shall come again.
So cleave they to the earth in monument
Of Revelation, nor in memory less
Of nature's pure religion, as in line
Uninterrupted it hath travelled down
From the first man who heard a howling storm
Or knew a troubled thought or vain desire,
Or in the very sunshine of his joy
Was saddened at a perishable bliss
Or languished idly under fond regrets
That would not be subdued . . . [Methinks I hear,
Not from these woods, but from some merry grove
That lies I know not where, the spritely blast
Of the clear bugle, and from thicket green
Of hollies sparkling in an April sun
Forth, in a moment, issues to the glade
A Troop of green-clad Foresters in arms
Blithe Outlaws with their Chieftain: Would they rouse
The Stag, dislodge the Hart; or will they keep
Their oath in presence of Maid Marian sworn
And with a cloud of shafts this day confound
The royal Officers? Let them on, and yield
Even at their pleasure to the boisterous drift
Of pastime or adventure — let them on
I love them better when at ease]
" And is thy doom
Pronounced" (I said, a stripling at that time
Who with a Fellow-pilgrim had been driven
Through madding France before a joyous gale
And to the solemn haven of Chartreuse
Repaired for timely rest) " and are we twain
The last, perchance the very last, of men
Who shall be welcomed here, whose limbs shall find
Repose within these modest cells, whose hearts
Receive a comfort from these awful spires?
Alas! for what I see, the flash of arms,
O Sorrow! and yon military glare;
And hark, those Voices! let us hide in gloom
Profoundest of St Bruno's wood — these sighs
These whispers that pursue or meet me, whence
[ ] are they but a common [ ]
From the two Sister streams of Life and Death,
Or are they by the parting Genius sent
Unheard till now and to be heard no more"?

Yes, I was moved and to this hour am moved;
What Man would bring to nothing if he might
A natural power or element? and who,
If the ability were his, would dare
To kill a species of insensate life,
Or to the bird of meanest wing would say,
Thou and thy kind must perish? Even so
So consecrated, almost, might he deem
That power, that organ, that transcendent frame
Of social being. — " Stay your impious hand":
Such was the vain injunction of that hour
By Nature uttered from her Alpine throne:
" O leave in quiet this embodied dream
This substance by which mortal men have clothed,
Humanly clothed, the ghostliness of things
In silence visible and perpetual calm,
Let this one Temple last — be this one spot
Of Earth devoted to Eternity." —
I heard or seemed to hear, and thus the Voice
Proceeded: " Honour to the Patriot's zeal
Glory and life to new-born liberty —
All hail ye mighty Passions of the Time,
The vengeance and the transport and the hope,
But spare, if past and future be the wings
On whose support harmoniously conjoined
Moves the great Spirit of human knowledge, spare
This House, these courts of mystery, where a step
Between the Portals of the shadowy rocks
Leaves far behind the vanities of life;
Where, if a peasant enter or a king,
One holy thought, a single holy thought
Has power to initiate. Let it be redeemed
With all its blameless priesthood for the sake
Of Heaven-descended truth; and humbler claim
Of these majestic floods, my noblest boast,
These shining cliffs, pure as their home, the sky,
These forests unapproachable by death
That shall endure as long as Man endures
To think, to hope, to worship and to feel;
To struggle, — to be lost within himself
In trepidation, — from the dim abyss
To look with bodily eyes, and be consoled."
Such repetition of that [ ]
My thoughts demanded; now an humbler task
Awaits us for the unwearied Song will lead
Into a lonely Vale the mild abode
Of female Votaries — No [ ] plain
Blank as the Arabian wilderness defends
This chosen spot nor is it [ ]
By rocks like those of Caucasus or Alps
Shapes untransmuted of successive worlds,
Nor can it boast a massy structure huge
Founded and built by hands with arch and towers,
Pillar and pinnacle and glittering spire
Sublime as if in Emulation reared
Of the eternal Architect — these signs
These tokens, admonitions to recall,
Curbs to restrain, or stays to lean upon,
Such food to nourish or appease the Soul
The gentle Beings who found harbour here
Required not — Them a lowly Edifice
Embraced by [?] grounds that did not aim
To overshadow but to screen and hide,
Contented; and an unassuming brook
Working between these hills its careless way
Through meadow, chestnut woods and olive-bowers
And tilth and vineyard.
cetera desunt