Rejoiced is Brough, right glad I deem Oh! it was a time forlorn Swords that are with slaughter wild Blissful Mary, Mother mild, Save a Mother and her Child! Now Who is he that bounds with joy On Carrock's side, a Shepherd-boy? X No thoughts hath he but thoughts that pass Light as the wind along the grass. Can this be He who hither came In secret, like a smothered flame? O'er whom such thankful tears were shed 'My own, my own, thy Fellow-guest Alas! when evil men are strong No life is good, no pleasure long. The Boy must part from Mosedale's groves, And leave Blencathara's rugged coves, And quit the flowers that summer brings To Glenderamakin's lofty springs; Must vanish, and his careless cheer Be turned to heaviness and fear. -Give Sir Lancelot Threlkeld praise! Hear it, good man, old in days! Thou tree of covert and of rest For this young Bird that is distrest ; Among thy branches safe he lay, And he was free to sport and play, When falcons were abroad for prey. A recreant harp, that sings of fear And heaviness in Clifford's ear! I said, when evil men are strong, And tends a flock from hill to hill: To his side the fallow-deer Came, and rested without fear; And glancing, gleaming, dark or bright,† He knew the rocks which Angels haunt He hath kenned them taking wing: * Yet lacks not friends for solemn glee That learned of him submissive ways, They moved about in open sight.-Edit. 1815. He hath entered; and been told By Voices how men lived of old. On the blood of Clifford calls ;— Is the longing of the Shield— Tell thy name, thou trembling Field; Happy day, and mighty hour, When our Shepherd, in his power, Mailed and horsed, with lance and sword, To his ancestors restored Like a re-appearing Star, Like a glory from afar, First shall head the flock of war!" Alas! the impassioned minstrel did not know * * Alas! the fervent Harper did not know, Who long compelled in humble walks to go.-Edit. 1815. Love had he found in huts where poor men lie; The sleep that is among the lonely hills. In him the savage virtue of the Race, Glad were the vales, and every cottage-hearth; "The good Lord Clifford was the name he bore.* HESPERUS. It is no Spirit who from heaven hath flown, And is descending on his embassy; Nor Traveller gone from earth the heavens to espy ! 'Tis Hesperus-there he stands with glittering crown, First admonition that the sun is down! For yet it is broad day-light: clouds pass by; A few are near him still—and now the sky, * "I know nothing in lyric poetry more beautiful or affecting than the final transition from the rapid metre, to the slow elegiac stanzas at the end, when from the warlike fervor and eagerness, the jubilant menacing strain, the Poet passes back into the sublime silence of Nature, gathering amid her deep and quiet bosom a more subdued and solemn tenderness than he had manifested before :-it is as if from the heights of the imaginative intellect his spirit had retreated into the recesses of a profoundly thoughtful Christian heart."-SARA COLERIDGE. |