Delphi Complete Works of Ann Radcliffe (Illustrated) (282 page)
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Authors: Ann Radcliffe
O HAPPY bird! thy gay return I hail;
For now I see young Spring, with all her train
Of sports and joys, borne on the western gale,
And hear afar her sweetly warbling strain.
Once more the opening clouds shall now disclose
The heaven’s blue vault — the sun’s all-cheering ray;
The vales, once more, in tender green repose,
The violet wake beneath the breath of May.
O happy bird! how playful and how light
Thy circling pinions skim the upward air;
Exulting, gay and playful in thy flight,
Companion of the Summer season fair!
Yet?
while I welcome thee, and wish thee long,
I sigh to think that ere the Autumn fade
Thou ‘It seek, in other climes, a vernal song,
More gentle gales and renovated shade.
Ev’n now I see thee on the light clouds soar,
And melt in distant aether from my view;
As laughing Summer, to the western shore,
Over the seas Biscayan you pursue.
Thy policy to us, ah! dost thou lend?
Flies thus, with gay prosperity — the friend?
OH, forest lawns! — Oh, lawns of tender green,
That spread in sunshine, crowned with copsy groves,
Or, winding in deep glades, retire among
The shades of ages, my glad steps receive!
Oh! let me, with your fawns, bound o’er these slopes,
Fresh with the dew, that melts apace before
The morning ray, leaving long level lines
Of hoary silver, ‘mid the various hues
Of lichen, turf and mead-flower. Let me seek,
With tempered pace and reverential thought,
Your far seen solitudes and deepest gloom,
And often note the monarch of the woods
In pious wonder. Oh, ye stem-browed oaks,
That raise your giant arms on all the scene,
How like your parent Druids ye appear!
Lonely, severe and in your grandeur dark,
Your fearful shades, like superstitious night,
Fall on the awe-struck spirit! —— —
Steadfast ye stand, and ever silent, save
Unto the potent, unknown winds, that shake
Your grey tops, when a voice of plaint is heard.
The traveller, listening this, at eventide,
Thinks ‘tis the voice of one departed hence,
Prophet of evil, warning him of death!
Then to his fancy lours, with deeper gloom,
The cloud, which sheds a pale and ghastly light
Upon the woods. He pauses oft, and back
Through the long forest-glades marks the last gleam
The sun has left, for in the lonely West;
While shapes uncertain seem to glide athwart
The twilight vista, and approach his path;
The hollow murmur swells upon his ear!
And, shuddering then, he takes his onward way.
How oft, ye Druid oaks! —
Your voice has sounded, in a distant age,
To him, who hears no more; and now it speaks
In the same tone to him, who then was not —
The passing traveller of the living hour!
Thus, ever and anon, it sounds the knell
Of fleeting, swift mortality!
“JUST LIKE LOVE IS YONDER ROSE.”
No, ah! no; not jnst like love,
Is you gay and conscious rose;
‘ All its flaunting leaves disclose
Sunshine joy — and fearless prove;
Not like love!
But yonder little violet-flower,
That, folded in its purple veil,
And trembling to the lightest gale,
Weeps beneath that shadowing bower,
Is just like love!
Though filled with dew its closing eyes,
Though bends its slender stem in air,
It breathes perfume and blossoms fair,
It feeds on tears, and lives on sighs,
Just like love!
And should a sunbeam kiss its leaf,
How bright the dewdrops would appear!
Like beams of hope upon a tear,
Like light of smiles through parting grief!
And just like love
ABROAD.
AWFUL is Winter’s setting sun,
When, from beneath a sullen cloud,
He eyes his dreary course now run,
And shrinks within his lurid shroud —
Leaving to Twilight’s cold, grey sky
Yon Minster’s dark and lonely tower,
That seems to shun the searching eye,
And vanish with the parting hour.
Dim is the long roofs sloping line,
Whose airy pinnacles I trace,
Point over point, and o’er the shrine
And eastern window’s gothic grace.
While load the winds, in chorus clear,
Swell, or in sinking murmurs grieve,
The Ministers of Night I hear
In requiem o’er December’s Eve.
Wide o’er the plains and distant wolds
I see her pall of darkness flow;
And all around, in mighty folds,
Her winding sheet of new-fallen snow.
Farewell December’s dismal night I
Appalled I hear thy shrieking breath;
And view, aghast by glimmering light,
Thy visage, terrible in death!
Farewell December’s dismal night!
AT HOME.
WELCOME December’s cheerful night,
When the taper-lights appear;
When the piled hearth blazes bright,
And those we love are circled there!
And, on the soft rug basking lies,
‘Outstretched at ease, the spotted friend,
With glowing coat and half-shut eyes,
Where watchfulness and slumber blend.
Welcome December’s cheerful hour,
When books, with converse sweet combined,
And music’s many-gifted power
Exalt, or soothe th’ awakened mind.
Then, let the snow-wind shriek aloud,
And menace oft the guarded sash,
And all his diapason crowd,
As o’er the frame his white wings dash.
He sings of darkness and of storm,
Of icy cold, and lonely ways;
But, gay the room, the hearth more warm,
And brighter is the taper’s blaze.
Then, let the merry tale go round,
And airy songs the hours deceive;
And let our heart-felt laughs resound,
In welcome to December’s Eve!
A BREEZE is springing up. Mark yon grey cloud,
That from th* horizon piles it’s Alpy steeps
Upon the sky; there the fierce tempest rides.
Our vessel owns the gale, and all her sails
Are full; the broad and slanted deck cuts with i edge
The foaming waves, that roll almost within it,
And often bow their curling tops, as if
In homage. Not so the onward billows;
For while, with steady force, the vexing prow
Flings wide the groaning waters, high rise they,
Darting their dragon-headed vengeance: now
Baffled they burst on either side with rage,
And dash their spray in the hard seaman’s face.
The gale is rising: and the roughening waves
Show darker shades of green, with, here and there,
Far out, white foamy tops, that rise and fell
Incessant. Storm-lights, issuing from the clouds,
Mark distances upon the mighty deep;
There, in one gleam, a white sail scuds along —
Farther, those vessels seem to hang in shade;
And, farther still, on the last edge of ocean,
Where fells a paler, mistier sun-light,
See where some port-town peeps above the tide,
With its long, level ramparts, turret-crowned;
There a broad tower and there a slender spire
Stand high upon the light, while all between,
Of intermingled roofs, embattled gates,
Quays, ancient halls and smoking chimneys, — sunk
Low, and all blended in one common mass,
Are undiscerned so far. There, all is calm;
The waters slumber; the anchored keels repose;
And not a top-mast trembles; —
While here the chafing billows mount the deck
Dash through the sturdy shrouds, and with their foam
Buffet the braced sail. Toward that port
Our vessel steers, which from the seas and winds
May soon receive us. —— —
But ah! while yet we gaze, the vision fades!
The high-piled ramparts, overtopped with turrets,
Vanish in shade before the searching eye,
Which nought but waves and sky can trace o’er all
The lone horizon! So on Calabria’s shore,
Where the old Reggio spreads its walls
Beside the sea, the fairy’s wand, at eve,
Is lifted — and behold! far on the waters,
Another landscape rise! Wood-mantled steeps
And shadowy mountains soar, and turrets from
Some promontory’s point hang o’er the vale,
Where sleeps among its palms the hamlet low,
Hid from the bustling, ostentatious world,
Deep in the bosom of this silent scene.
Ah! beauteous work of Fairie! that can paint
Unreal visions to th’ admiring eye,
Charming it with distinct, though faithless forms.
The magic sceptre dropt, behold, they vanish!
A desert world of water’s only there!
*
And thus th’ enchantress on the daily path
Of Youth attends, known only by her power
Unseen, and conjures up Hope, Joy and Bliss,
To dance in the fresh bowers of fadeless spring.
At Reason’s touch the airy dream dissolves;
We gaze, and wonder at such wild delusion,
Yet weep its loss, and court its forms again.
Hail, beauteous scenes of Fairie, Fancy’s world!
Where Truth, so cold and colourless, comes not,
Or far away in lonely grandeur stands,
Like the great snowy Alps, whose cloudy shapes
And aspect stem (deforming the horizon),
Make the still landscape, spread below, appear
More green, more gay, more cheering to our view.
Hail, beauteous scenes of Fairie, Fancy’s world!
And now, as if the spell had worked again,
The stormy shade far distant floats away.
Again the spired city shines in light,
Peering beyond the waves, here shadowed yet
By the lingering storm. The pier outstretches
Its arm to meet us, and the lighthouse shows
Its column, and we see the lanthorn high,
Suspended o’er the margin of the tidé,
The star of the night-wandering mariner.
Hail, cheering port, first vision of the land,
Vision, but not illusion, hail again!
OH speak no more of Fiction’s painted woes!
Her laboured scenes are colourless and cold;
Her high-wrought sorrows are but dull repose,
Beside the tale that simple Truth has told.
O’er the sad Poet dead shall Pity weep,
Weep tears of anguish, such as mothers shed
O’er the poor infant, when its paling lip
Moves with a last faint smile; when droops the head,
And the imploring eyes look up once more
To her, whose fondness can no aid dispense!
‘Tis well there is a Higher World, where soar
The accepted hopes of suffering Innocence!
OH! for a cottage on the shady brow
Of this green Island, where the Channel flows
With less tumultuous wave, and sends abroad
The many sails of England to the world,
And beareth to his home the mariner,
Who shouts to view the light blue hills, that dawn
O’er Wight’s gay plains; and soon he spies the woods,
That shade its shores, and brighter tints of corn
And pastoral slopes and all their “green delights.”
Advancing gently, ‘mid the sleepy tide,
Soon he marks some long-left object clear,
A lofty watchtower, or some village church,
Or the white parsonage peeping through the trees,
To which, when last beheld, he sighed farewell
With throbbing grief. — These now he hails with joy,
As he steers onward to the wellknown shore.
Oh! for a cottage on the breezy cliff,
That points the crescent of thy harbour, Cowes!
And bears the raptured glance o’er seas and shores —
A boundless prospect, tinted all around
With summer shades of soft ethereal blue! —
O’er the wide waters rise the far-famed downs
Of Sussex; while thy forests, Hampshire, vast,
Spread their dark line, for many a winding mile,
By the blue waves, till, failing, the sight rests
Where yon dim hill-tops overlook the main.
There Purbeck’s summits rise, while broader hills,
Marking their grey lines on the forest shade,
Lead back the eye to where Southampton’s vale
Pours forth th’ abundant wave, and spreads its
lawns,
Its jutting slopes, with villas gaily crowned,
Its sheltered cots, the rough wood’s shade, whence peers
The village fane ‘mid the high foliage: —
Southampton’s vale, where lurks the twilight glade.
Whose ancient oaks their branches stretch austere,
And half conceal that Abbey’s fretted arch,
As if to guard from eye and hand profane
The mouldering stones, whose pious founder once
Dropped them, green acorns, in this hallowed ground,
To shelter and adorn the sainted walls,
Whose long-forgotten sons mused ‘neath their shade,
Blest thoughts of sure Eternity; and now
Leave here all that was mortal of themselves.
Oh! reverence this ground; for it is holy,
Sacred to pious thought; for worldly grace
By the high-gifted poet often praised.
Here winged steps have passed, and brightest thoughts,
Creative as the sunbeam, have up-flown.
Here pensive Gray some sad sweet moments passed,
And breathed a spell that saved these falling walls;
There walks that solemn vision, telling his beads;
Where ‘neath the leafy gloom, the Poet’s glance
Espied him! Still athwart yon vista dark
Shoots the white sail; still in the sun the waves
Glitter, as when Gray’s musing abbot viewed them,
Measuring the moments with his pangs. Oh! pause
Awhile, and shed a melancholy tear
To the departed shade of him, who sung
“The paths of glory lead but to the grave
Weep o’er the memory of that wondrous Bard,
That master of the song, whose full-toned harp
Called round him loftiest themes of Fantasy,
Whose voice, rolling on the midnight thunder,
Waked sublimest awe; or played in cadence,
While the Graces danced; or, still oftener, mourned
O’er mortal doom and life’s brief vanities,
While early youth and all the train of joy
Would leave their sports, listening the strain that bade
Them woo the languishments of Melancholy.
Farewell! thou mighty master, who, with high
Disdain of vulgar fame, “knew thine own worth
And reverenced the lyre,” and kept thy still
Footstep far away from the thronged path and
Vanity’s dull round. Farewell! thou doff’st
Thy mortal weeds, and the same strain sublime,
That moralized th’ unstoried lives and deaths
Of villagers, is oft repeated o’er thy grave,
With faltering voice, by those, who walk thy path
From Eton’s shades to Stoke, and view the scene
That filled thy youthful eye and charmed thy mind —
Where, years ago, thy “careless childhood strayed,
A stranger yet to pain.” —— —
Now let us leave the vale, thus dedicate
To memory, sweet and melancholy,
And trace the landscape o’er yon chalky ridge
To Portsdown, shielding in its concave all
That tract of greyer land, that banks the sea.
On the low point extends the busy port,
Its forts and ramparts rising o’er the main,
And wide o’erlooking all its anchored fleets.
Oh! for the magic pencil of Lorraine!
To give the soft perspective, where the wares
Fade to thin air in tints of mildest bine,
And the dark masts and cobweb-shrouds and lines
Of spiry shipping trace themselves in light.
Midway the sails of tarions vessels swell,
Gliding their silent course; here the swift-winged
Slant cutter skims the sea; and there the skiff,
Low on the mighty waters, shows a speck,
Invisible, but that its tiny sail
Catches the sunbeam, and, wondrous! tells that
Human life dwells in the moving atom
Amidst the waters. While we gaze, each wave
Threatens to whelm it; and the shores appear
Too distant for its small and feeble wing;
Yet on it goes in safety, and displays
Regular purpose, well-considered rules,
And skill, which guides its weakness through the strength
Of waves, o’er pathless distance, to the sheltering port.
Oh! that the old Spirit of Song
Would sound his harp from this high aery brow,
And bid its sweet tones languish, till the Nymphs,
That dwell beneath its waves, wake at the strain,
And send up answering music, now scarce heard,
Now lost, now heard again with wondering doubt,
Till, rising slow, a clearer chorus swells
In the soft gale, and makes its voice its own:
Then, the full sounds float over woods and rocks;
And then, descending on the wave, retire,
Die with the ‘plaining of the distant tide,
And leave a blessed peace o’er all the soul.
Raise such a strain, O Nymphs! whose spell may spread
A sweeter grace on all the eye beholds,
That the fine vision of these seas and shores
May paint their living colours on the mind,
With charm so forceful, as Time cannot fade.
Then Memory with their own truth shall give
The blue shades of the main, under these dark
And waving boughs upon the steep; the mast
Now seen, or lost, in the smooth bay, as choose
The dancing leaves; the grey fort on the strand,
Its low, round tower o’ercanopied with elms,
The pacing sentinel, beneath their gloom,
Safe
horn
the noonday sun. Then would she paint
The slopes, that swell beside thy harbour, Cowes,
With pasture gay and oft with groves embrowned,
That amid veiling leaves, half show the villa,
Gray mimic of a cottage, or the trim crest
Of some proud castle, falsely old. Thy town
Would still be seen to climb the craggy bank;
Thy vale, withdrawing from the sunny bay,
Would wind beneath these green hills’ shade, where droops
The sail becalmed, that on Medina’s tide
Bears the full freight to Newport. Memory then
Would give these nearer scenes of gentle beauty,
Those spreading waters and the dim-seen coast,
Fading into the sky. Then, gentle Nymphs,
Borne far upon the winds, my song might tell
Of your sweet haunts, perchance in Indian seas —
Of them, who dance before the rising sun,
With songs of joyance breathing spicy gales.
Methinks, I hear their far-off notes complain:
“Oh! ne’er yet tripp’d we on the yellow sands,
That Fame says base the cliffs of English land;
Never yet danced we on those heights, that send
Airs from their mantling woods; never yet trod
The ridges of her stormy waves, nor watched
The tender azure melt into the green,
Then deepen to the purple’s changing shades,
Beneath the sleepy indolence of noon.
For such delights we ‘ll leave our splendid clime,
Our groves of cassia and our coral bowers,
Our diamond-beaming caves and golden beds,
‘Broidered with rubies, with transparent pearl,
And emeralds, that steal the sea-wave’s hue,
And shells of rainbow-tint, fairy pavilions:
All but our tortoise cars; they shall bear us
O’er many a curling surge and chasm deep,
Farther than where the blended sea and sky
Hide from our sight the cooler, better oceans.
That way seek we those temperate islands, now
Wearing green Neptune’s livery, crowned with oak,
And terraced with bright cliffs; such Oberon,
The fairy, told of, to win our music.
‘Twas a charmful moon-time, and he perched him
In a purple shell, he called his mantle,
And basked him in the pure light, and then asked
A lullaby to soothe his care, for he
Was sad and weary, and had, all the day,
Toiled on a north-beam; and now Titania,
For whom he sought, had left the spicy steeps
Of India, on a bat’s wing, at twilight.
We asked a story of the northern clime
To pay our melody, and I remember
It told of castles moving on the waves,
Of a soft emerald throne upon an isle,
Beyond the falling sun, and other wonders,
That we, all night, could well have listened him,
But that he craved our pity and our song.
On that we breathed a soul into our shells,
And charmed him into slumber!”