Web Concordance - Wordsworth and Coleridge, Lyrical Ballads

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THE FOSTER-MOTHER'S TALE,

A DRAMATIC FRAGMENT.

FOSTER-MOTHER.
I never saw the man whom you describe.

MARIA.
'Tis strange! He spake of you familiarly
As mine and Albert's common Foster-mother.

FOSTER-MOTHER.
Now blessings on the man, whoe'er he be,
That joined your names with mine! O my sweet lady,
As often as I think of those dear times
When you two little ones would stand at eve
On each side of my chair, and make me learn
All you had learnt in the day; and how to talk
In gentle phrase, then bid me sing to you --
'Tis more like heaven to come than what has been.

MARIA.
O my dear Mother! this strange man has left me
Troubled with wilder fancies, than the moon
Breeds in the love-sick maid who gazes at it,
Till lost in inward vision, with wet eye
She gazes idly! -- But that entrance, Mother!

FOSTER-MOTHER.
Can no one hear? It is a perilous tale!

MARIA.
No one.

FOSTER-MOTHER
My husband's father told it me,
Poor old Leoni! -- Angels rest his soul!
He was a woodman, and could fell and saw
With lusty arm. You know that huge round beam
Which props the hanging wall of the old chapel?
Beneath that tree, while yet it was a tree
He found a baby wrapt in mosses, lined
With thistle-beards, and such small locks of wool
[As] hang on brambles. Well, he brought him home,
And reared him at the then Lord Velez' cost.
And so the babe grew up a pretty boy,
A pretty boy, but most unteachable --
And never learnt a prayer, nor told a bead,
But knew the names of birds, and mocked their notes,
And whistled, as he were a bird himself:
And all the autumn 'twas his only play
To get the seeds of wild flowers, and to plant them
With earth and water, on the stumps of trees.
A Friar, who gathered simples in the wood,
A grey-haired man -- he loved this little boy,
The boy loved him -- and, when the Friar taught him,
He soon could write with the pen: and from that time,
Lived chiefly at the Convent or the Castle.
So he became a very learned youth.
But Oh! poor wretch! -- he read, and read, and read,
'Till his brain turned -- and ere his twentieth year,
He had unlawful thoughts of many things:
And though he prayed, he never loved to pray
With holy men, nor in a holy place --
But yet his speech, it was so soft and sweet,
The late Lord Velez ne'er was wearied with him.
At once, as by the north side of the Chapel
They stood together, chained in deep discourse,
The earth heaved under them with such a groan,
That the wall tottered, and had well-nigh fallen
Right on their heads. My Lord was sorely frightened;
A fever seized him, and he made confession
Of all the heretical and lawless talk
Which brought this judgment: so the youth was seized
And cast into that hole. My husband's father
Sobbed like a child -- it almost broke his heart:
And once as he was working in the cellar,
He heard a voice distinctly; 'twas the youth's,
Who sung a doleful song about green fields,
How sweet it were on lake or wild savannah,
To hunt for food, and be a naked man,
And wander up and down at liberty.
He always doted on the youth, and now
His love grew desperate; and defying death,
He made that cunning entrance I described:
And the young man escaped.

MARIA.
'Tis a sweet tale:
Such as would lull a listening child to sleep,
His rosy face besoiled with unwiped tears.
And what became of him?

FOSTER-MOTHER
He went on ship-board
With those bold voyagers, who made discovery
Of golden lands. Leoni's younger brother
Went likewise, and when he returned to Spain,
He told Leoni, that the poor mad youth,
Soon after they arrived in that new world,
In spite of his dissuasion, seized a boat,
And all alone, set sail by silent moonlight
Up a great river, great as any sea,
And ne'er was heard of more: but 'tis supposed,
He lived and died among the savage men.

LINES
LEFT UPON A SEAT IN
A YEW-TREE
WHICH STANDS NEAR THE LAKE OF ESTHWAITE,
ON A DESOLATE PART OF THE SHORE,
YET COMMANDING A BEAUTIFUL PROSPECT.

-- Nay, Traveller! rest. This lonely yew-tree stands
Far from all human dwelling: what if here
No sparkling rivulet spread the verdant herb;
What if these barren boughs the bee not loves;
Yet, if the wind breathe soft, the curling waves,
That break against the shore, shall lull thy mind
By one soft impulse saved from vacancy.

-------------------------- Who he was
That piled these stones, and with the mossy sod
First covered o'er, and taught this aged tree,
Now wild, to bend its arms in circling shade,
I well remember. -- He was one who own'd
No common soul. In youth, by genius nurs'd,
And big with lofty views, he to the world
Went forth pure in his heart, against the taint
Of dissolute tongues, 'gainst jealousy, and hate,
And scorn, against all enemies prepared,
All but neglect: and so, his spirit damped
At once, with rash disdain he turned away,
And with the food of pride sustained his soul
In solitude. -- Stranger! these gloomy boughs
Had charms for him; and here he loved to sit,
His only visitants a straggling sheep,
The stone-chat, or the glancing sand-piper;
And on these barren rocks, with juniper,
And heath, and thistle, thinly sprinkled o'er,
Fixing his downward eye, he many an hour
A morbid pleasure nourished, tracing here
An emblem of his own unfruitful life:
And lifting up his head, he then would gaze
On the more distant scene; how lovely 'tis
Thou seest, and he would gaze till it became
Far lovelier, and his heart could not sustain
The beauty still more beauteous. Nor, that time,
Would he forget those beings, to whose minds,
Warm from the labours of benevolence,
The world, and man himself, appeared a scene
Of kindred loveliness: then he would sigh
With mournful joy, to think that others felt
What he must never feel: and so, lost man!
On visionary views would fancy feed,
Till his eye streamed with tears. In this deep vale
He died, this seat his only monument.

If thou be one whose heart the holy forms
Of younger imagination have kept pure,
Stranger! henceforth be warned; and know, that pride,
Howe'er disguised in its own majesty,
Is littleness; that he, who feels contempt
For any living thing, hath faculties
Which he has never used; that thought with him
Is in its infancy. The man, whose eye
Is ever on himself, doth look on one,
The least of nature's works, one who might move
The wise man to that scorn which wisdom holds
Unlawful, ever. O, be wiser thou!
Instructed that true knowledge leads to love,
True dignity abides with him alone
Who, in the silent hour of inward thought,
Can still suspect, and still revere himself,
In lowliness of heart.

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 tho' 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" [1] Bird!
A melancholy Bird? O idle thought!
In nature there is nothing melancholy.
-- But some night-wandering Man, whose heart was pierc'd
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 sorrows) he and such as he
First nam'd 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 moonlight, 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 lov'd, like nature! -- But 'twill not be so;
And youths and maidens most poetical
Who lose the deep'ning 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 my Friend's Sister! we have learnt
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 disclos'd,
You may perchance behold them on the twigs,
Their bright, bright eyes, their eyes both bright and full,
Glistning, while many a glow-worm in the shade
Lights up her love-torch.

A most gentle maid
Who dwelleth in her hospitable home
Hard by the Castle, and at latest eve,
(Even like a Lady vow'd and dedicate
To something more than nature in the grove)
Glides thro' the pathways; she knows all their notes,
That gentle Maid! and oft, a moment's space,
What time the moon was lost behind a cloud,
Hath heard a pause of silence: till the Moon
Emerging, hath awaken'd earth and sky
With one sensation, and those wakeful Birds
Have all burst forth in choral minstrelsy,
As if one quick and sudden Gale had swept
An hundred airy harps! And she hath watch'd
Many a Nightingale perch giddily
On blosmy twig still swinging from the breeze,
And to that motion tune his wanton song,
Like tipsy Joy that reels with tossing head.

Farewell, O Warbler! till to-morrow eve,
And you, my friends! farewell, a short farewell!
We have been loitering long and pleasantly,
And now for our dear homes. -- That strain again!
Full fain would it delay me! -- My dear Babe,
Who, capable of no articulate sound,
Mars all things with his imitative lisp,
How he would place his hand beside his ear,
His little hand, the small forefinger up,
And bid us listen! And I deem it wise
To make him Nature's playmate. He knows well
The evening star: and once when he awoke
In most distressful mood (some inward pain
Had made up that strange thing, an infant's dream)
I hurried with him to our orchard plot,
And he beholds the moon, and hush'd at once
Suspends his sobs, and laughs most silently,
While his fair eyes that swam with undropt tears
Did glitter in the yellow moon-beam! Well --
It is a father's tale. But if that Heaven
Should give me life, his childhood shall grow up
Familiar with these songs, that with the night
He may associate Joy! Once more farewell,
Sweet Nightingale! once more, my friends! farewell.

LEWTI;

OR,

THE CIRCASSIAN LOVE CHANT

At midnight, by the stream I rov'd
To forget the form I lov'd.
Image of LEWTI! from my mind
Depart; for LEWTI is not kind.
The moon was high, the moonlight gleam,
And the shadow of a star
Heav'd upon Tamaha's stream;
But the rock shone brighter far.
The rock half-sheltered from my view,
By pendant boughs of tressy yew. --
So shines my LEWTI's forehead fair,
Gleaning thro' her sable hair.
Image of LEWTI! from my mind
Depart; for Lewti is not kind.
I saw a cloud of palest hue,
Onward to the moon it pass'd.
Still brighter and more bright it grew,
With floating colours not a few,
Till it reach'd the moon at last.
Then the cloud was wholly bright,
With a rich and amber light;
And so with many a hope I seek,
And with such joy I find my LEWTI;
And even so my pale wan cheek
Drinks in as deep a flush of beauty!
Nay, treach'rous image! leave my mind,
If LEWTI never will be kind.
The little cloud -- it floats away,
Away it goes -- away so soon!
Alas! it has no pow'r to stay:
Its hues are dim, its hues are grey --
Away it passes from the moon.
How mournfully it seems to fly,
Ever fading more and more,
To joyless regions of the sky --
And now 'tis whiter than before,
As white as my poor cheek will be,
When, LEWTI! on my couch I lie,
A dying man, for love of thee.
Nay, treach'rous image! leave my mind --
And yet thou didst not look unkind!
I saw a vapour in the sky,
Thin and white and very high.
I ne'er beheld so thin a cloud --
Perhaps the breezes that can fly
Now below, and now above,
Have snatch'd aloft the lawny shroud
Of lady fair, that died for love:
For Maids, as well as Youths, have perish'd
From fruitless love, too fondly cherish'd!
Nay treach'rous image! leave my mind --
For LEWTI never will be kind.
Hush! my heedless feet from under
Slip the crumbling banks for ever;
Like echoes to a distant thunder,
They plunge into the gentle river:
The river-swans have heard my tread,
And startle from their reedy bed.
O beauteous birds! methinks ye measure
Your movements to some heav'nly tune!
O beauteous birds! 'tis such a pleasure
To see you move beneath the moon;
I would, it were your true delight
To sleep by day and wake all night.
I know the place where LEWTI lies,
When silent night has clos'd her eyes --
It is a breezy jasmin bow'r,
The Nightingale sings o'er her head;
Had I the enviable pow'r
To creep unseen with noiseless tread,
Then should I view her bosom white,
Heaving lovely to the sight,
As those two swans together heave
On the gently swelling wave.
O that she saw me in a dream,
And dreamt that I had died for care!
All pale and wasted I would seem,
Yet fair withal, as spirits are.
I'd die indeed, if I might see
Her bosom heave, and heave for me!
Soothe, gentle image! soothe my mind!
To-morrow LEWTI may be kind.

Footnote

[1] "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 of Milton: a charge than which none could be more painful to him, except perhaps that of having ridiculed his Bible.