XLV. CONTINUED. THEY dreamt not of a perishable home Who thus could build. Be mine, in hours of fear XLVI. EJACULATION. GLORY to God! and to the Power who came In hours of peace, or when the storm is driven When first our infant brows their lustre won; XLVII. CONCLUSION. WHY sleeps the future, as a snake enrolled, ADDITIONAL ECCLESIASTICAL SONNETS. I. (SEQUEL TO NO. XXXI., PART II.) COLDLY we spake. The Saxons, overpowered From fields laid waste, from house and home devoured His Country's virtue, fought, and breathes no more; * Some say that Monte Rosa takes its name from a belt of rock at its summit a very unpoetical and scarcely a probable supposition. II. (TO PRECEDE NO. 1., PART II.) How soon -alas! did man created pure- III. (TO FOLLOW THE FOREGOING.) FROM false assumption rose, and fondly hail'd She daunts, forth-thundering from her spiritual tower Yes, to thy domination, Roman See, IV (TO FOLLOW NO. VI., PART II.) As faith thus sanctified the warrior's crest By works of Art, that shed on the outward frame V. (TO FOLLOW The above.) Where long and deeply hath been fixed the root NOTES TO POEMS OF THE IMAGINATION. "Song at the Feast of Brougham Castle." Henry Lord Clifford, &c. &c., who is the subject of this Poem, was the son of John Lord Clifford, who was slain at Towton Field, which John Lord Clifford, as is known to the Reader of English History, was the person who after the battle of Wakefield slew, in the pursuit, the young Earl of Rutland, son of the Duke of York, who had fallen in the battle, "in part of revenge" (say the Authors of the History of Cumberland and Westmoreland); "for the Earl's Father had slain his." A deed which worthily blemished the author (saith Speed): but who, as he adds, "dare promise any thing temperate of himself in the heat of martial fury? chiefly, when it was resolved not to leave any branch of the York line standing; for so one maketh this Lord to speak." This, no doubt, I would observe by the by, was an action sufficiently in the vindictive spirit of the times, and yet not altogether so bad as represented; "for the Earl was no child, as some writers would have him, but able to bear arms, being sixteen or seventeen years of age, as is evident from this, (say the Memoirs of the Countess of Pembroke, who was laudably anxious to wipe away, as far as could be, this stigma from the illustrious name to which she was born,) that he was the next Child to King Edward the Fourth, which his mother had by Richard Duke of York, and that King was then eighteen years of age: and for the small distance betwixt her Children, see Austin Vincent, in his Book of Nobility, page 622., where he writes of them all." It may further be observed, that Lord Clifford, who was then himself only twenty-five years of age, had been a leading Man and Commander, two or three years together, in the army of Lancaster, before this time; and, therefore, would be less likely to think that the Earl of Rutland might be entitled to mercy from his youth. But, independent of this act, at best a cruel and savage one, the Family of Clifford had done enough to draw upon them the vehement hatred of the House of York: so that after the Battle of Towton there was no hope for them but in flight and concealment. Henry, the subject of the Poem, was deprived of his estate and honours during the space of twenty-four years; all which time he lived as a shepherd in Yorkshire, or in Cumberland, where the estate of his Father-in-law (Sir Lancelot Threlkeld) lay. He was restored to his estate and honours in the first year of Henry the Seventh. It is recorded that, "when called to parliament, he behaved nobly and wisely; but otherwise came seldom to London or the Court; and rather delighted to live in the country, where he repaired several of his Castles, which had gone to decay during the late troubles." Thus far is chiefly collected from Nicholson and Burn; and I can add, from my own knowledge, that there is a tradition current in the village of Threlkeld and its neighbourhood, his principal retreat, that, in the course of his shepherd-life, he had acquired great astronomical knowledge. I cannot conclude this note without adding a word upon the subject of those numerous and noble feudal Edifices, spoken of in the Poem, the ruins of some of which are, at this day, so great an ornament to that interesting country. The Cliffords had always been distinguished for an honourable pride in these Castles; and we have seen that after the wars of York and Lancaster they were rebuilt; in the civil wars of Charles the First they were again laid waste, and again restored almost to their former magnificence by the celebrated Lady Anne Clifford, Countess of Pembroke, &c. &c. Not more than twenty-five years after this was done, when the estates of Clifford had passed into the Family of Tufton, three of these Castles, namely, Brough, Brougham, and Pendragon, were demolished, and the timber and other materials sold by Thomas Earl of Thanet. We will hope that, when this order was issued, the Earl had not consulted the text of Isaiah, 58th chap. 12th verse, to which the inscription placed over the gate of Pendragon Castle, by the Countess of Pembroke (I believe his Grandmother), at the time she repaired that structure, refers the reader: "And they that shall be of thee shall build the old waste places: thou shalt raise up the foundations of many generations; and thou shalt be called the repairer of the breach, the restorer of paths to dwell in." The Earl of Thanet, the present possessor of the Estates, with a due respect for the memory of his ancestors, and a proper sense of the value and beauty of these remains of antiquity, has (I am told) given orders that they shall be preserved from all depredations. [This subject is again alluded to in Canto I. of 'The White Doe of Rylstone,' p. 331, and in an additional note (N. 16) attached to it. The story of the Shepherd Lord" has so deep an interest that, at the hazard of repetition, I am induced to enlarge these notices of his career by the insertion of a passage from Mr. Hartley Coleridge's 'Lives of Distinguished Northerns' -a volume which may be classed with that brief list of works, which fully develop the charm of biographical composition. "Thus was the house of Clifford driven from its possessions, and deprived of its rank. The children of the ruthless warrior sought and found a refuge among the simple dalesmen of Cumberland. Who has not heard of the Good Lord Clifford, the Shepherd Lord? He that in his childhood was placed among lowly men for safety, found more in obscurity than he sought,-love, humble wisdom, and a docile heart. How his time past during his early years, it is pleasanter to imagine than safe to conjecture; but we doubt not, happily, and since he proved equal to his highest elevation, his nurture must needs have been good. His mother Margaret, with whom came in the barony of Vescy, was married to Sir Lancelot Threlkeld who extended his protection over the offspring of her former husband. Much of Henry Clifford's boyhood is said to have been passed in the village named after his kind step-father, which lies under Blencathara, on the road between Keswick and Penrith . . . . . The Shepherd Lord' was restored to all his estates and titles in the first year of Henry VII. He was a lover of study and retirement, who had lived too long at liberty, and according to reason, to assimilate readily with the court of the crafty Henry. By the Lady Anne, he is described as a plain man, who lived for the most part a country life, and came seldom either to court or to London, excepting when called to Parliament, on which occasion he behaved himself like a wise and good English nobleman.' His usual retreat, when in Yorkshire, was Barden-tower; his chosen companions the Canons of Bolton. His favourite pursuit was astronomy. He had been accustomed to watch the motions of the heavenly bodies from the hill-tops, when he kept sheep: for in those days, when clocks and almanacs were few, every shepherd made acquaintance with the stars. If he added a little judicial astrology, and was a seeker for the philosopher's-stone, he had the countenance of the wisest of his time for his learned superstition. It is asserted that at the period of his restoration he was almost wholly illiterate. Very probably he was so; but it does not follow that he was ignorant. He might know many things well worth knowing, without being able to write his name. He might learn a great deal of Astronomy by patient observation. He might know where each native flower of the hills was grown, what real qualities it possessed, and what occult powers the fancy, the fears, or the wishes of men had ascribed to it. The haunts, habits, and instincts of animals, the notes of birds, and their wondrous architecture, were to him instead of books; but above all, he earned to know something of what man is, in that condition to which the greater number of men are born, and to know himself better than he could have done in his hereditary sphere. Moreover, the legendary lore, the floating traditions, the wild superstitions, of that age, together with the family history, which must have been early instilled into him, and the romantic and historical ballads, which were orally communicated from generation to generation, or published by the voice and harp of the errant minstrel, if they did not constitute sound knowledge, at least preserved the mind from unidead vacancy. The man whose daily teachers had been woods and rills," must needs, when suddenly called to the society of Knights and barons bold,' have found himself deficient in many things; and that want was exceeding great gain, both to his tenantry and neighbours, and to his own moral nature. He lived at Barden with what was then a small retinue, though his household accounts make mention of sixty servants on that establishment, whose wages were from five to five-and-twenty shillings each. But the state of his revenues, after so many years of spoliation, must have required rigorous economy, and he preferred abating something of ancestral splendour, to grinding the faces of the poor. This peaceful life he led, with little interruption, from the accession of the house of Tudor, till the Scotch invasion, which was defeated at Floddenfield. Then he became a warrior in his sixtieth year, and well supported the military fame of his house on that bloody day. He survived the battle ten years, and died April 23, 1523, aged about 70.” HARTLEY COLERIDGE's Laves of Distinguished Northerns': Life of Anne Clifford.-11. R.] Note 2, p. 189. "French Revolution." [The passage in 'The Friend', introductory to this extract on the French Revolution is here annexed, with a view to restore the original connection, and thus to preserve unimpaired their mutual interest. Coleridge records his own lofty enthusiasm in this confession: "My feelings and imagination did not remain unkindled in this general conflagration; and I confess I should be more inclined to be ashamed than proud of myself, if they had! I was a sharer in the general vortex, though my little world described the patn of its revolution in an orbit of its own. What I dared not expect from constitutions of government and whole nations, I hoped from Religion and a small company of chosen individuals, and formed a plan, as harmless as it was extravagant, of trying the experiment of See Wordsworth's "Song at the Feast of Brougham Castle," a strain of triumph supposed to be chanted by a minstrel of the day of rejoicing for the "good Lord's restoration, in which the boet has almost excelled himself. Had he never written another Ode, this alone would set him decidedly at the head of the lyric poets of England."] |