I

"I SAW THE FIGURE OF A LOVELY MAID"

I SAW the figure of a lovely Maid
Seated alone beneath a darksome tree,
Whose fondly-overhanging canopy

Set off her brightness with a pleasing shade.
No Spirit was she; that1 my heart betrayed,
For she was one I loved exceedingly;
But while I gazed in tender reverie

(Or was it sleep that with my Fancy played?)
The bright corporeal presence-form and face—
Remaining still distinct grew thin and rare,
Like sunny mist ;—at length the golden hair,
Shape, limbs, and heavenly features, keeping pace
Each with the other in a lingering race

Of dissolution, melted into air.

5

ΙΟ

II

PATRIOTIC SYMPATHIES

LAST night, without a voice, that Vision spake
Fear to my Soul, and sadness which might seem 2
Wholly dissevered from our present theme;

1837.

1822.

this Vision spake

Fear to my Soul, and sadness that might seem

3 1827.

To lie

CHARLES THE SECOND

Yet, my beloved Country! I partake 1
Of kindred agitations for thy sake;

Thou, too, dost visit oft 2 my midnight dream;
Thy glory meets me with the earliest beam

3

Of light, which tells that Morning is awake.
If aught impair thy 4 beauty or destroy,

Or but forebode destruction, I deplore
With filial love the sad vicissitude;

If thou hast 5 fallen, and righteous Heaven restore
The prostrate, then my spring-time is renewed,
And sorrow bartered for exceeding joy.

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ΙΟ

III

CHARLES THE SECOND

WHO Comes with rapture greeted, and caress'd
With frantic love-his kingdom to regain? *
Him Virtue's Nurse, Adversity, in vain
Received, and fostered in her iron breast:
For all she taught of hardiest and of best,

5

If she hath.

1822.

* "No event ever marked a deeper or a more lasting change in the temper of the English people, than the entry of Charles the Second into Whitehall. With it modern England begins." (Green's Short History of the English People, chap. ix. sec. 1.)-ED.

Or would have taught, by discipline of pain
And long privation, now dissolves amain,
Or is remembered only to give zest

*

ΙΟ

To wantonness-Away, Circean revels!
But for what gain? if England soon must sink
Into a gulf which all distinction levels—
That bigotry may swallow the good name,1 †
And, with that draught, the life-blood: misery, shame,
By Poets loathed; from which Historians shrink!

1

IV

LATITUDINARIANISM

YET Truth is keenly sought for, and the wind Charged with rich words poured out in thought's defence;

Whether the Church inspire that eloquence,+

Or a Platonic Piety confined

To the sole temple of the inward mind; §
And One there is who builds immortal lays,
Though doomed to tread in solitary ways, ||
Darkness before and danger's voice behind;

1837.

Already stands our Country on the brink

Of bigot rage, that all distinction levels

Of truth and falsehood, swallowing the good name, 1822.

5

* "The Restoration brought Charles to Whitehall; and in an instant the whole face of England was changed. All that was noblest and best in Puritanism was whirled away." (Green, chap. ix. sec. 1.) The excesses of every kind that came in with the Restoration were notorious.-ED.

In 1672 the Duke of York was publicly received into the Church of Rome.-ED.

As in the case of John Hales of Eton, William Chillingworth, who wrote The Religion of Protestants, and Jeremy Taylor, author of The Liberty of Prophesying.-ED.

§ The Cambridge Platonists, Ralph Cudworth, John Smith, and Henry More, are referred to.-ED.

Milton.-ED.

WALTON'S BOok of Lives

77

Yet not alone, nor helpless to repel

Sad thoughts; for from above the starry sphere
Come secrets, whispered nightly to his ear;

And the pure spirit of celestial light

Shines through his soul-" that he may see and tell Of things invisible to mortal sight." *

V

WALTON'S BOOK OF LIVES †

THERE are no colours in the fairest sky
So fair as these. The feather, whence the pen
Was shaped that traced the lives of these good men,
Dropped from an Angel's wing. With moistened eye
We read of faith and purest charity

In Statesman, Priest, and humble Citizen:

O could we copy their mild virtues, then

What joy to live, what blessedness to die!

Methinks their very names shine still and bright;
Apart-like glow-worms on a summer night;
Or lonely tapers when from far they fling

5

* Compare Paradise Lost, book iii. ll. 54, 55.-ED.

Izaak Walton, author of The Complete Angler, wrote also The Lives of John Donne, Sir Henry Wotton, Richard Hooker, George Herbert, and Robert Sanderson.-ED.

With those lines of Wordsworth compare the following: a Sonnet addressed "to the King of Scots," in Henry Constable's Diana, published in 1594

The pen wherewith thou dost so heavenly singe,
Made of a quill pluck't from an Angell's winge.

A sonnet by Dorothy Berry, prefixed to Diana Primrose's Chain of Pearl, a memorial of the peerless graces, etc., of Queen Elizabeth, London, 1639

Whose noble praise

Deserves a quill pluck't from an angel's wing.

Also John Evelyn, in his Life of Mrs. Godolphin, "It would become the pen of an angel's wing to describe the life of a saint," etc.-ED.

A guiding ray; or seen- -like stars on high,
Satellites burning in a lucid ring
Around meek Walton's heavenly memory.

VI

CLERICAL INTEGRITY

NOR shall the eternal roll of praise reject
Those Unconforming; whom one rigorous day
Drives from their Cures, a voluntary prey
To poverty, and grief, and disrespect,*
And some to want-as if by tempests wrecked 2
On a wild coast; how destitute! did They
Feel not that Conscience never can betray,
That peace of mind is Virtue's sure effect.
Their altars they forego, their homes they quit,
Fields which they love, and paths they daily trod,
And cast the future upon Providence ;
As men the dictate of whose inward sense
Outweighs the world; whom self-deceiving wit
Lures not from what they deem the cause of God.

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10

1 1827.

glow-worms in the woods of spring,

Or lonely tapers shooting far a light

* By the Act of Uniformity (1662), nearly 2000 Presbyterian and Independent Ministers, who had been admitted to benefices in the Church of England during the Puritan Ascendency, were ejected from their livings. -ED.