The Poetical Works of William Lisle Bowles Vol. 2

PART SECOND

REFLECTIONS ON THE MORAL AND RELIGIOUS STATE OF PARISHES, PAST AND PRESENTA shower, even while we gaze, steals o'er the scene,Shrouding it, and the sea-view is shout out,Save where, beyond the holms, one thread of lightHangs, and a pale and sunny stream shoots on,O'er the dim vapours, faint and far away,Like Hope's still light beyond the storms of Time.Come, let us rest a while in this rude seat!I was a child when first I heard the soundOf the great sea. 'Twas night, and journeying far,We were belated on our road, 'mid scenesNew and unknown, – a mother and her child,Now first in this wide world a wanderer: —My father came, the pastor of the church16That crowns the high hill crest, above the sea;When, as the wheels went slow, and the still nightSeemed listening, a low murmur met the ear,Not of the winds: – my mother softly said,Listen! it is the sea! With breathless awe,I heard the sound, and closer pressed her hand.Much of the sea, in infant wonderment,I oft had heard, and of the shipwrecked man,Who sees, on some lone isle, day after day,The sun sink o'er the solitude of waves,Like Crusoe; and the tears would start afresh,Whene'er my mother kissed my cheek, and toldThe story of that desolate wild man,And how the speaking bird, when he returnedAfter long absence to his cave forlorn,Said, as in tones of human sympathy,Poor Robin Crusoe!Thoughts like these arose,When first I heard, at night, the distant sound,Great Ocean, "of thy everlasting voice!"17Where the white parsonage, among the trees,Peeped out, that night I restless passed. The seaFilled all my thoughts; and when slow morning came,And the first sunbeam streaked the window-pane,I rose unnoticed, and with stealthy pace,Straggling along the village green, exploredAlone my fearful but adventurous way;When, having turned the hedgerow, I beheld,For the first time, thy glorious element,Old Ocean, glittering in the beams of morn,Stretching far off, and, westward, without bound,Amid thy sole dominion, rocking loud!Shivering I stood, and tearful; and even now,When gathering years have marked my look, – even nowI feel the deep impression of that hour,As but of yesterday!Spirit of Time,A moment pause, and I will speak to thee!Dark clouds are round thee; but, lo! Memory wavesHer wand, – the clouds disperse, as the gray rackDisperses while we gaze, and light steals out,While the gaunt phantom almost seems to dropHis scythe! Now shadows of the past, distinct,Are thronging round; the voices of the deadAre heard; and, lo! the very smoke goes up —For so it seems – from yonder tenement,Where leads the slender pathway to the door.Enter that small blue parlour: there sits one,A female, and a child is in her arms;A child leans at her side, intent to showA pictured book, and looks upon her face;One, from the green, comes with a cowslip ball;18And one,19 a hero, sits sublime and horsed,Upon a rocking-steed, from Banwell-fair;This,20 drives his tiny wheel-barrow, without,On the green garden-sward; whilst one,21 apart,Sighs o'er his solemn task – the spelling-book —Half moody, half in tears. Some lines of thoughtAre on that matron's brow; yet placidness,Such as resigned religion gives, is there,Mingled with sadness; for who e'er beheld,Without one stealing sigh, a progenyOf infants clustering round maternal knees,Nor felt some boding fears, how they might fareIn the wide world, when they who loved them mostWere silent in their graves!Nay! pass not on,Till thou hast marked a book – the leaf turned down —Night Thoughts on Death and Immortality!This book, my mother! in the weary hoursOf life, in every care, in every joy,Was thy companion: next to God's own Word,The book that bears this name,22 thou didst revere,Leaving a stain of tears upon the page,Whose lessons, with a more emphatic truth,Touched thine own heart!That heart has long been still!But who is he, of aspect more severe,Yet with a manly kindness in his mien,He, who o'erlooks yon sturdy labourerDelving the glebe! My father as he lived!That father, and that mother, "earth to earth,And dust to dust," the inevitable doomHath long consigned! And where is he, the son,Whose future fate they pondered with a sigh?Long, nor unprosperous, has been his wayThrough life's tumultuous scenes, who, when a child,Played in that garden platform in the sun;Or loitered o'er the common, and pursuedThe colts among the sand-hills; or, intentOn hardier enterprise, his pumpkin-ship,New-rigged, and buoyant, with its tiny sail,Launched on the garden pond; or stretched his hand,At once forgetting all this glorious toil,When the bright butterfly came wandering by.But never will that day pass from his mind,When, scarcely breathing for delight, at Wells,He saw the horsemen of the clock23 ride round,As if for life; and ancient Blandifer,24Seated aloft, like Hermes, in his chairComplacent as when first he took his seat,Some hundred years ago; saw him lift up,As if old Time was cowering at his feet,Solemn lift up his mace, and strike the bell,Himself for ever silent in his seat.How little thought I then, the hour would come,When the loved prelate of that beauteous fane,At whose command I write, might placidlySmile on this picture, in my future verse,When Blandifer had struck so many hoursFor me, his poet, in this vale of years,Himself unchanged and solemn as of yore!My father was the pastor, and the friendOf all who, living then – the scene is closed —Now silent in that rocky churchyard sleep,The aged and the young! A village thenWas not as villages are now. The hind,Who delved, or "jocund drove his team a-field,"Had then an independence in his lookAnd heart; and, plodding on his lowly path,Disdained a parish dole, content, though poor.He was the village monitor: he taughtHis children to be good, and read their book,And in the gallery took his Sunday place, —To-morrow, with the bee, to work.So passedHis days of cheerful, independent toil;And when the pastor came that way, at eve,He had a ready present for the childWho read his book the best; and that poor childRemembered it, when, treading the same pathIn which his father trod, he so grew upContented, till old Time had blanched his locks,And he was borne – whilst the bell tolled – to sleepIn the same churchyard where his father slept!His daughter walked content, and innocentAs lovely, in her lowly path. She turnedThe hour-glass, while the humming wheel went round,Or went "a-Maying" o'er the fields in spring,Leading her little brother by the hand,Along the village lane, and o'er the stile,To gather cowslips; and then home again,To turn her wheel, contented, through the day.Or, singing low, bend where her brother slept,Rocking the cradle, to "sweet William's grave!"25No lure could tempt her from the woodbine shed,Where she grew up, and folded first her handsIn infant prayer: yet oft a tear would stealDown her young cheek, to think how desolateThat home would be when her poor mother died;Still praying that she ne'er might cause a pain,Undutiful, to "bring down her gray hairsWith sorrow to the grave!"Now mark this scene!The fuming factory's polluted airHas stained the country! See that rural nymph,An infant in her arms! She claims the doleFrom the cold parish, which her faithless swainDenies: he stands aloof, with clownish leer;The constable behind – and mark his brow —Beckons the nimble clerk; the justice, grave,Turns from his book a moment, with a lookOf pity, signs the warrant for her pay,A weekly eighteen pence; she, unabashed,Slides from the room, and not a transient blush,Far less the accusing tear, is on her cheek!A different scene comes next: That village maidApproaches timidly, yet beautiful;A tear is on her lids, when she looks downUpon her sleeping child. Her heart was won,The wedding-day was fixed, the ring was bought!'Tis the same story – Colin was untrue!He ruined, and then left her to her fate.Pity her, she has not a friend on earth,And that still tear speaks to all human heartsBut his, whose cruelty and treacheryCaused it to flow! So crime still follows crime.Ask we the cause? See, where those engines heave,That spread their giant arms o'er all the land!The wheel is silent in the vale! Old ageAnd youth are levelled by one parish law!Ask why that maid, all day, toils in the field,Associate with the rude and ribald clown,Even in the shrinking April of her youth?To earn her loaf, and eat it by herself.Parental love is smitten to the dust;Over a little smoke the aged sireHolds his pale hands – and the deserted hearthIs cheerless as his heart: but PietyPoints to the Bible! Shut the book again:The ranter is the roving gospel now,And each his own apostle! Shut the book:A locust-swarm of tracts darken its light,And choke its utterance; while a Babel-routOf mock-religionists, turn where we will,Have drowned the small still voice, till Piety,Sick of the din, retires to pray alone.But though abused Religion, and the doleOf pauper-pay, and vomitories hugeOf smoke, are each a steam-engine of crime,Polluting, far and wide, the wholesome air,And withering life's green verdure underneath,Full many a poor and lowly flower of wantHas Education nursed, like a pure rill,Winding through desert glens, and bade it liveTo grace the cottage with its mantling sweets.There was a village girl, I knew her well,From five years old and upwards; all her friendsWere dead, and she was to the workhouse left,And there a witness to such sounds profaneAs might turn virtue pale! When Sunday came,Assembled with the children of the poor,Upon the lawn of my own parsonage,She stood among them: they were taught to readIn companies and groups, upon the green,Each with its little book; her lighted eyesShone beautiful where'er they turned; her formWas graceful; but her book her sole delight!26Instructed thus she went a serving-maidInto the neighbouring town, – ah! who shall guideA friendless maid, so beautiful and young,From life's contagions! But she had been taughtThe duties of her humble lot, to prayTo God, and that one heavenly Father's eyeWas over rich and poor! On Sunday night,She read her Bible, turning still awayFrom those who flocked, inflaming and inflamed,To nightly meetings; but she never closedHer eyes, or raised them to the light of morn,Without a prayer to Him who "bade the sunGo forth," a giant, from his eastern gate!No art, no bribe, could lure her steps astrayFrom the plain path, and lessons she had learned,A village child. She is a mother now,And lives to prove the blessings and the fruitsOf moral duty, on the poorest child,When duty, and when sober piety,Impressing the young heart, go hand in hand.No villager was then a disputantIn Calvinistic and contentious creeds;No pale mechanic, from a neighbouring sinkOf steam and rank debauchery and smoke,Crawled forth upon a Sunday morn, with looksSaddening the very sunshine, to instructThe parish poor in evangelic lore;To teach them to cast off, "as filthy rags,"Good works! and listen to such ministers,Who all (be sure) "are worthy of their hire;"Who only preach for good of their poor souls,That they may turn "from darkness unto light,"And, above all, fly, as the gates of hell,Morality!27 and Baal's steeple house,Where, without "heart-work," Doctor LittlegraceDrones his dull requiem to the snoring clerk!"28True; he who drawls his heartless homilyFor one day's work, and plods, on wading stilts,Through prosing paragraphs, with inference,Methodically dull, as orthodox,Enforcing sagely that we all must dieWhen God shall call – oh, what a pulpit droneIs he! The blue fly might as well preach "Hum,"And "so conclude!"But save me from the sightOf curate fop, half jockey and half clerk,The tandem-driving Tommy of a town,Disdaining books, omniscient of a horse,Impatient till September comes again,Eloquent only of "the pretty girlWith whom he danced last night!" Oh! such a thingIs worse than the dull doctor, who performsDuly his stinted task, and then to sleep,Till Sunday asks another homilyAgainst all innovations of the age,Mad missionary zeal, and Bible clubs,And Calvinists and Evangelicals!Yes! Evangelicals! Oh, glorious word!But who deserves that awful name? Not heWho spits his puny Puritanic spiteOn harmless recreation; who revilesAll who, majestic in their distant scorn,Bear on in silence their calm Christian course.He only is the EvangelicalWho holds in equal scorn dogmas and dreams,The Shibboleth of saintly magazines,Decked with most grim and godly visages;The cobweb sophistry, or the dark codeOf commentators, who, with loathsome track,Crawl o'er a text, or on the lucid page,Beaming with heavenly love and God's own light,Sit like a nightmare!29 Soon a deadly mistCreeps o'er our eyes and heart, till angel formsTurn into hideous phantoms, mocking us,Even when we look for comfort at the springAnd well of life, while dismal voices cry,Death! Reprobation! Woe! Eternal woe!He only is the EvangelicalWho from the human commentary turnsWith tranquil scorn, and nearer to his heartPresses the Bible, till repentant tears,In silence, wet his cheek, and new-born faith,And hope, and charity, with radiant smile,Visit his heart, – all pointing to the cross!He only is the Evangelical,Who, with eyes fixed upon that spectacle,Christ and him crucified, with ardent hope,And holier feelings, lifts his thoughts from earth,And cries, My Father! Meantime, his whole heartIs on God's Word: he preaches Faith, and Hope,And Charity, – these three, and not that one!And Charity, the greatest of these three!30Give me an Evangelical like this! But nowThe blackest crimes in tract-religion's codeAre moral virtues! Spare the prodigal, —He may awake when God shall "call;" but, hell,Roll thy avenging flames, to swallow upThe son who never left his father's homeLest he should trust to morals when he dies!Let him not lay the unction to his soul,That his upbraiding conscience tells no taleAt that dread hour; bid him confess his sin,The greater that, with humble hope, he looksBack on a well-spent life! Bid him confessThat he hath broken all God's holy laws, —In vain hath he done justly, – loved, in vain,Mercy, and hath walked humbly with his God!These are mere works; but faith is everything,And all in all! The Christian code containsNo "if" or "but!"31 Let tabernacles ring,And churches too,32 with sanctimonious strainsBaneful as these; and let such strains be heardThrough half the land; and can we shut our eyes,And, sadly wondering, ask the cause of crimes,When infidelity stands lowering here,With open scorn, and such a code as this,So baneful, withers half the charitiesOf human hearts! Oh! dear is Mercy's voiceTo man, a mourner in the vale of sinAnd death: how dear the still small voice of Faith,That bids him raise his look beyond the cloudsThat hang o'er this dim earth; but he who tearsFaith from her heavenly sisterhood, deniesThe gospel, and turns traitor to the causeHe has engaged to plead. Come, Faith, and Hope,And Charity! how dear to the sad heart,The consolations and the glorious viewsThat animate the Christian in his course!But save, oh! save me from the tract-led Miss,Who trots to every Bethel club, and broodsO'er some black missionary's monstrous tale,Reckless of want around her!But the priest,Who deems the Almighty frowns upon his throne,Because two pair of harmless dowagers,Whose life has passed without a stain, beguileAn evening hour with cards; who deems that hellBurns fiercer for a saraband; that thou —Thou, my sweet Shakspeare – thou, whose touch awakesThe inmost heart of virtuous sympathy, —Thou, O divinest poet! at whose voiceSad Pity weeps, or guilty Terror dropsThe blood-stained dagger from his palsied hand, —That thou art pander to the criminal!He who thus edifies his Christian flock,Moves, more than even the Bethel-trotting Miss,My pity, my aversion, and my scorn.Cry aloud! – Oh, speak in thunder to the soulThat sleeps in sin! Harrow the inmost heartOf murderous intent, till dew-drops standUpon his haggard brow! Call conscience up,Like a stern spectre, whose dim finger pointsTo dark misdeeds of yore! Wither the armOf the oppressor, at whose feet the slaveCrouches, and pleading lifts his fettered hands!Thou violator of the innocentHide thee! Hence! hide thee in the deepest cave,From man's indignant sight! Thou hypocrite!Trample in dust thy mask, nor cry faith, faith,Making it but a hollow tinkling sound,That stirs not the foul heart! Horrible wretch!Look not upon the face of that sweet child,With thoughts which hell would tremble to conceive!Oh, shallow, and oh, senseless! In a worldWhere rank offences turn the good man pale,Who leave the Christian's sternest code, to ventTheir petty ire on petty trespasses,If trespasses they are; – when the wide worldGroans with the burthen of offence; when crimesStalk on, with front defying, o'er the land,Whilst, her own cause betraying, Christian zealThus swallows camels, straining at a gnat!Therefore, without a comment, or a note,We love the Bible; and we prize the moreThe spirit of its pure unspotted page,As pure from the infectious breath that stains,Like a foul fume, its hallowed light, we hailThe radiant car of heaven, amidst the cloudsOf mortal darkness, and of human mist,Sole, as the sun in heaven!33Oh! whilst the carOf God's own glory rolls along in light,We join the loud song of the Christian host,(All puny systems shrinking from the blaze),Hosannah to the car of light! Roll on!Saldanna's34 rocks have echoed to the hymnsOf Faith, and Hope, and Charity! Roll on!Till the wild wastes of inmost Africa,Where the long Niger's track is lost, respond,Hosannah to the car of light! Roll on!From realm to realm, from shore to farthest shore,O'er dark pagodas, and huge idol-fanes,That frown along the Ganges' utmost stream,Till the poor widow, from the burning pileStarting, shall lift her hands to heaven, and weepThat she has found a Saviour, and has heardThe sounds of Christian love! Oh, horrible!The pile is smoking! – the bamboos lie there,That held her down when the last struggle shookThe blazing pile!35 Hasten, O car of light!Alas for suffering nature! Juggernaut,Armed, in his giant car goes also forth,Goes forth amid his red and reeling priests,While thousands gasp and die beneath the wheels,As they go groaning on, 'mid cries, and drums,And flashing cymbals, and delirious songsOf tinkling dancing girls, and all the routOf frantic superstition! Turn away!And is not Juggernaut himself with us?Not only cold insidious sophistryComes, blinking with its taper-fume, to light,If so he may, the sun in the mid heaven!Not only blind and hideous blasphemyScowls in his cloak, and mocks the glorious orb,Ascending, in its silence, o'er a worldOf sin and sorrow; but a hellish broodOf imps, and fiends, and phantoms, ape the formOf godliness, till godliness itselfSeems but a painted monster, and a nameFor darker crimes, at which the shuddering heartShrinks; while the ranting rout, as they march on,Mock Heaven with hymns, till, see! pale BelialSighs o'er a filthy tract, and Moloch marks,With gouts of blood, his brandished magazine!Start, monster, from the dismal dream! Look up!Oh! listen to the apostolic voice,That, like a voice from heaven, proclaims, To faithAdd virtue! There is no mistaking here;Whilst moral education by the handShall lead the children to the house of God,Nor sever Christian faith from Christian love.If we would see the fruits of charity,Look at that village group, and paint the scene!Surrounded by a clear and silent stream,Where the swift trout shoots from the sudden ray,A rural mansion on the level lawnUplifts its ancient gables, whose slant shadeIs drawn, as with a line, from roof to porch,Whilst all the rest is sunshine. O'er the treesIn front, the village church, with pinnaclesAnd light gray tower, appears; whilst to the right,An amphitheatre of oaks extendsIts sweep, till, more abrupt, a wooded knoll,Where once a castle frowned, closes the scene.And see! an infant troop, with flags and drum,Are marching o'er that bridge, beneath the woods,On to the table spread upon the lawn,Raising their little hands when grace is said;Whilst she who taught them to lift up their heartsIn prayer, and to "remember, in their youth,"God, "their Creator," mistress of the scene(Whom I remember once as young), looks on,Blessing them in the silence of her heart.And we too bless them. Oh! away, away!Cant, heartless cant, and that economy,Cold, and miscalled "political," away!Let the bells ring – a Puritan turns paleTo hear the festive sound: let the bells ring —A Christian loves them; and this holidayRemembers him, while sighs unbidden steal,Of life's departing and departed days,When he himself was young, and heard the bells,In unison with feelings of his heart —His first pure Christian feelings, hallowingThe harmonious sound!And, children, now rejoice, —Now, for the holidays of life are few;Nor let the rustic minstrel tune, in vain,The cracked church-viol, resonant to-dayOf mirth, though humble! Let the fiddle scrapeIts merriment, and let the joyous groupDance in a round, for soon the ills of lifeWill come! Enough, if one day in the year,If one brief day, of this brief life, be givenTo mirth as innocent as yours! But, lo!That ancient woman, leaning on her staff!Pale, on her crutch she rests one withered hand;One withered hand, which Gerard Dow might paint,Even its blue veins! And who is she? The nurseOf the fair mistress of the scene: she ledHer tottering steps in infancy – she speltHer earliest lesson to her; and she nowLeans from that open window, while she thinks —When summer comes again, the turf will lieOn my cold breast; but I rejoice to seeMy child thus leading on the progenyOf her poor neighbours in the peaceful pathOf humble virtue! I shall be at rest,Perhaps, when next they meet; but my last prayerIs with them, and the mistress of this home."The innocent are gay,"36 gay as the larkThat sings in morn's first sunshine; and why not?But may they ne'er forget, as life steals on,In age, the lessons they have learned in youth!How false the charge, how foul the calumnyOn England's generous aristocracy,That, wrapped in sordid, selfish apathy,They feel not for the poor!Ask, is it true?Lord of the whirling wheels, the charge is false!37Ten thousand charities adorn the land,Beyond thy cold conception, from this source.What cottage child but has been neatly clad,And taught its earliest lesson, from their care?Witness that schoolhouse, mantled with festoonOf various plants, which fancifully wreathIts window-mullions, and that rustic porch,Whence the low hum of infant voices blendWith airs of spring, without. Now, all alive,The green sward rings with play, among the shrubs —Hushed the long murmur of the morning task,Before the pensive matron's desk!But turn,And mark that aged widow! By her sideIs God's own Word; and, lo! the spectaclesAre yet upon the page. Her daughter kneelsAnd prays beside her! Many years have shedTheir snow so silently and softly downUpon her head, that Time, as if to gaze,Seems for a moment to suspend his flightOnward, in reverence to those few gray hairs,That steal beneath her cap, white as its snow.Whilst the expiring lamp is kept alive,Thus feebly, by a duteous daughter's love,Her last faint prayer, ere all is dark on earth,Will to the God of heaven ascend, for thoseWhose comforts smoothed her silent bed.And thou,Witness Elysian Tempe of Stourhead!Oh, not because, with bland and gentle smile,Adding a radiance to the look of age,Like eve's still light, thy liberal master spreadsHis lettered treasures; – not because his searchHas dived the Druid mound, illustratingHis country's annals, and the monumentsOf darkest ages; – not because his woodsWave o'er the dripping cavern of Old Stour,Where classic temples gleam along the edgeOf the clear waters, winding beautiful; —Oh! not because the works of breathing art,Of Poussin, Rubens, Rembrandt, Gainsborough,Start, like creations, from the silent walls;To thee, this tribute of respect and love,Beloved, benevolent, and generous Hoare,Grateful I pay; – but that, when thou art dead(Late may it be!) the poor man's tear will fall,And his voice falter, when he speaks of thee.38And witness thou, magnificent abode,Where virtuous Ken,39 with his gray hairs and shroud,Came, for a shelter from the world's rude storm,In his old age, leaving his palace-throne,Having no spot where he might lay his head,In all the earth! Oh, witness thou, the seatOf his first friend, his friend from schoolboy days!Oh! witness thou, if one who wanted breadHas not found shelter there; if one poor manHas been deserted in his hour of need;Or one poor child been left without a guide,A father, an instructor, and a friend;In him, the pastor, and distributor40Of bounties large, yet falling silentlyAs dews on the cold turf! And witness thou,Marston,41 the seat of my kind, honoured friend —My kind and honoured friend, from youthful days.Then wandering on the banks of Rhine, we sawCities and spires, beneath the mountains blue,Gleaming; or vineyards creep from rock to rock;Or unknown castles hang, as if in clouds:Or heard the roaring of the cataract,Far off, beneath the dark defile or gloomOf ancient forests; till behold, in light,Foaming and flashing, with enormous sweep,Through the rent rocks – where, o'er the mist of sprayThe rainbow, like a fairy in her bower,Is sleeping, while it roars – that volume vast,White, and with thunder's deafening roar, comes down.Live long, live happy, till thy journey close,Calm as the light of day! Yet witness thou,The seat of noble ancestry, the seatOf science, honoured by the name of Boyle,Though many sorrows, since we met in youth,Have pressed thy generous master's manly heart,Witness, the partner of his joys and griefs;Witness the grateful tenantry, the homeOf the poor man, the children of that school —Still warm benevolence sits smiling there.And witness, the fair mansion, on the edgeOf those chalk hills, which, from my garden walk,Daily I see, whose gentle mistress droops42With her own griefs, yet never turns her lookFrom others' sorrows; on whose lids the tearShines yet more lovely than the light of youth.And many a cottage-garden smiles, whose flowersInvite the music of the morning bee.And many a fireside has shot out, at eve,Its light upon the old man's withered handAnd pallid cheek from their benevolence —Sad as is still the parish-pauper's home —Who shed around their patrimonial seatsThe light of heaven-descending Charity.And every feeling of the Christian heartWould rise accusing, could I pass unsung,Thee,43 fair as Charity's own form, who lateDidst stand beneath the porch of that gray fane,Soliciting44 a mite from all who passed,With such a smile, as to refuse would seemTo do a wrong to Charity herself.How many blessings, silent and unheard,The mistress of the lonely parsonageDispenses, when she takes her daily roundAmong the aged and the sick, whose prayersAnd blessings are her only recompense!How many pastors, by cold obloquyAnd senseless hate reviled, tread the same pathOf charity in silence, taught by HimWho was reviled not to revile again;And leaving to a righteous God their cause!Come, let us, with the pencil in our hand,Portray a character. What book is this?Rector of Overton!45 I know him not;But well I know the Vicar, and a manMore worthy of that name, and worthier stillTo grace a higher station of our Church,None knows; – a friend and father to the poor,A scholar, unobtrusive, yet profound,"As e'er my conversation coped withal;"His piety unvarnished, but sincere.46Killarney's lake,47 and Scotia's hills,48 have heardHis summer-wandering reed; nor on the themesOf hallowed inspiration49 has his harpBeen silent, though ten thousand jangling strings —When all are poets in this land of song,And every field chinks with its grasshopper —Have well-nigh drowned the tones; but poesyMingles, at eventide, with many a moodOf stirring fancy, on his silent heartWhen o'er those bleak and barren downs, in rainOr sunshine, where the giant Wansdeck sweeps,Homewards he bends his solitary way.Live long; and late may the old villagerLook on thy stone, amid the churchyard grass,Remembering years of kindness, and the tongue,Eloquent of his Maker, when he satAt church, and heard the undivided codeOf apostolic truth – of hope, of faith,Of charity – the end and test of all.Live long; and though I proudly might recallThe names of many friends – like thee, sincereAnd pious, and in solitude adornedWith rare accomplishments – this grateful praiseAccept, congenial to the poet's theme;For well I know, haply when I am dead,And in my shroud, whene'er thy homeward pathLies o'er those hills, and thou shalt cast a lookBack on our garden-slope, and Bremhill tower,Thou wilt remember me, and many a dayThere passed in converse and sweet harmony.A truce to satire, and to harsh reproof,Severer arguments, that have detainedThe unwilling Muse too long: – come, while the cloudsWork heavy and the winds at intervals,Pipe, and at intervals sink in a sigh,As breathed o'er sounds and shadows of the past —Change we our style and measure, to relateA village tale of a poor Cornish maid,And of her prayer-book. It is sad, but true;And simply told, though not in lady phraseOf modish song, may touch some gentle heart,And wake an interest, when description fails.