1831

THE Poems of 1831 included The Primrose of the Rock, a few Sonnets, and Yarrow Revisited, and other Poems, composed during a tour in Scotland, and on the English Border, in the Autumn of 1831.—ED.

THE PRIMROSE OF THE ROCK

Composed 1831.-Published 1835

[Written at Rydal Mount. The Rock stands on the right hand a little way leading up the middle road from Rydal to Grasmere. We have been in the habit of calling it the glowworm rock from the number of glow-worms we have often seen hanging on it as described. The tuft of primrose has, I fear, been washed away by the heavy rains.-I. F.]

One of the "Poems of the Imagination."-ED.

A Rock there is whose homely front 1
The passing traveller slights;

Yet there the glow-worms hang their lamps,
Like stars, at various heights;

And one coy Primrose to that Rock

The vernal breeze invites.

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1835.

lonely front

1836.

The edition of 1841 returns to the text of 1835.

THE PRIMROSE OF THE ROCK

What hideous warfare hath been waged,
What kingdoms overthrown,
Since first I spied that Primrose-tuft
And marked it for my own; *

A lasting link in Nature's chain
From highest heaven let down!

The flowers, still faithful to the stems,
Their fellowship renew;

The stems are faithful to the root,

That worketh out of view;
And to the rock the root adheres
In every fibre true.

Close clings to earth the living rock,
Though threatening still to fall;
The earth is constant to her sphere;
And God upholds them all:

So blooms this lonely Plant, nor dreads
Her annual funeral.

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Here closed the meditative strain ;

But air breathed soft that day,

The hoary mountain-heights were cheered,

The sunny vale looked gay;

And to the Primrose of the Rock

I gave this after-lay.

I sang-Let myriads of bright flowers,
Like Thee, in field and grove

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* In Dorothy Wordsworth's Grasmere Journal the following occurs:April 24, 1802.-"We walked in the evening to Rydal. Coleridge and I lingered behind. We all stood to look at Glow-worm Rock-a primrose that grew there, and just looked out on the road from its own sheltered bower."

The Primrose had disappeared when the Fenwick note was dictated, and Glow-worms have now almost deserted the district; but the Rock is unmistakable, and it is one of the most interesting spots connected with Wordsworth in the Lake District.-ED.

Revive unenvied ;-mightier far,
Than tremblings that reprove
Our vernal tendencies to hope,
Is1 God's redeeming love;

That love which changed-for wan disease,
For sorrow that had bent

O'er hopeless dust, for withered age

Their moral element,

And turned the thistles of a curse

To types beneficent.

Sin-blighted though we are, we too,

The reasoning Sons of Men,
From one oblivious winter called

Shall rise, and breathe again;

And in eternal summer lose

Our threescore years and ten.

To humbleness of heart descends
This prescience from on high,
The faith that elevates the just,
Before and when they die;

And makes each soul a separate heaven,
A court for Deity.

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TO B. R. HAYDON, ON SEEING HIS PICTURE

OF NAPOLEON BONAPARTE

ISLAND OF ST. HELENA

Composed 1831.-Published 1832

ON

THE

[This Sonnet, though said to be written on seeing the Portrait of Napoleon, was, in fact, composed some time after, extempore, in the wood at Rydal Mount.-I. F.]

1 1836.

In

1835.

*

TO B. R. HAYDON

HAYDON! let worthier judges praise the skill
Here by thy pencil shown in truth of lines
And charm of colours; I applaud those signs
Of thought, that give the true poetic thrill;
That unencumbered whole of blank and still,
Sky without cloud-ocean without a wave;
And the one Man that laboured to enslave
The World, sole-standing high on the bare hill—
Back turned, arms folded, the unapparent face
Tinged, we may fancy, in this dreary place
With light reflected from the invisible sun

Set, like his fortunes; but not set for aye
Like them.

The unguilty Power pursues his way,
And before him doth dawn perpetual run. *

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ΙΟ

Haydon, as he tells us in his Autobiography, received a commission from Sir Robert Peel, in December 1830, "to paint Napoleon musing, the size of life." He finished it in June 1831, and thus described it himself:

"Napoleon was peculiarly alive to poetical association as produced by scenery or sound; village bells with their echoing ding, dong, dang, now bursting full on the ear, now dying in the wind, affected him as they affect everybody alive to natural impressions, and on the eve of all his great battles you find him stealing away in the dead of the night, between the two hosts, and indulging in every species of poetical reverie. It was impossible to think of such a genius in captivity, without mysterious associations of the sky, the sea, the rock, and the solitude with which he was enveloped. I never imagined him but as if musing at dawn, or melancholy at sunset, listening at midnight to the beating and roaring of the Atlantic, or meditating as the stars gazed and the moon shone on him; in short Napoleon never appeared to me but at those seasons of silence and twilight, when nature seems to sympathise with the fallen, and when if there be moments in this turbulent earth fit for celestial intercourse, one must imagine these would be the times immortal spirits might select to descend within the sphere of mortality, to soothe and comfort, to inspire and support the afflicted. "Under such impressions the present picture was produced. I imagined him standing on the brow of an impending cliff, and musing on his past fortunes, sea-birds screaming at his feet, the sun just down,

the sails of his guard-ship glittering on the horizon, and the Atlantic, calm, silent, awfully deep, and endlessly extensive."-Life of Benjamin Robert Haydon, vol. ii. pp. 301, 302.

This picture, one of the noblest which Haydon painted, is still at Drayton Manor.-ED.

YARROW REVISITED, AND OTHER POEMS

COMPOSED (TWO EXCEPTED) DURING A TOUR IN SCOTLAND, AND ON THE ENGLISH BORDER, IN THE AUTUMN OF 1831.

Composed 1831.-Published 1835

[In the autumn of 1831, my daughter and I set off from Rydal to visit Sir Walter Scott before his departure for Italy. This journey had been delayed by an inflammation in my eyes till we found that the time appointed for his leaving home would be too near for him to receive us without considerable inconvenience. Nevertheless we proceeded and reached Abbotsford on Monday. I was then scarcely able to lift up my eyes to the light. How sadly changed did I find him from the man I had seen so healthy, gay, and hopeful, a few years before, when he said at the inn at Paterdale, in my presence, his daughter Anne also being there, with Mr. Lockhart, my own wife and daughter, and Mr. Quillinan,-"I mean to live till I am eighty, and I shall write as long as I live." But to return to Abbotsford: the inmates and guests we found there were Sir Walter, Major Scott, Anne Scott, and Mr. and Mrs. Lockhart, Mr. Liddell, his Lady and Brother, and Mr. Allan the painter, and Mr. Laidlaw, a very old friend of Sir Walter's. One of Burns's sons, an officer in the Indian service, had left the house a day or two before, and had kindly expressed his regret that he could not wait my arrival, a regret that I may truly say was mutual. In the evening, Mr. and Mrs. Liddell sang, and Mrs. Lockhart chanted old ballads to her harp; and Mr. Allan, hanging over the back of a chair, told and acted old stories in a humorous way. With this exhibition and his daughter's singing, Sir Walter was much amused, as indeed were we all as far as circumstances would allow. But what is most worthy of mention is the admirable demeanour of Major Scott during the following evening when the Liddells were gone and only ourselves and Mr. Allan were present. He had much to suffer from the sight of his father's infirmities and from the great change that was about to take place at the residence