A DORSET IDYL
HARCOMBE NEAR LYME
September: 1878
Before me with one happy heave
Of golden green the hillside curves,
Where slowly, smoothly, rounding swerves
The shadow of each perfect tree,
By slanting shafts of eve
Flame-fringed and bathed in pale transparency.
And that long ridge that crowns the hill
Stands fir-dark ’gainst the falling rays;
Above, a waft of pearly haze
Lies on the sapphire field of air,
So radiant and so still
As though a star-cloud took its station there.
Up wold and wild the valley goes,
’Mid heath and mounded slopes of oak,
And light ash-thicket, where the smoke
Wreathes high in evening’s air serene,
Floating in white repose
O’er the blue reek of cottage-hearths unseen.
Another landscape at my feet
Unfolds its nearer grace the while,
Where gorses gleam with golden smile;
Where Inula lifts a russet head
The shepherd’s spikenard sweet;
And closing Centaury points her rosy red.
One light cicada’s simmering cry,
Survivor of the summer heat,
Chimes faint; the robin, shrill and sweet,
Pipes from green holly; whilst from far
The rookery croaks reply,
Hoarse, deep, as veterans readying for war.
—Grief on a happier future dwells;
The happy present haunts the past;
And those old minstrels who outlast
Our looser-textured webs of song,
Nursed in Hellenic dells,
Sicilian, or Italian, hither throng.
Why care if Turk and Tartar fume,
Barbarian ’gainst barbarian set,
Or how our politic prophets fret,
When on this tapestry-thyme and heath,
Fresh work of Nature’s loom,
Thus, thus, we can diffuse ourselves, and breathe
Autumnal sparkling freshness?—while
The page by some bless’d miracle saved
When Goth and Frank ’gainst Hellas raved.
Paints how the wanderer-chief divine,
Snatch’d from Circaean guile,
Led by Nausicaa past Athéné’s shrine,
In that delicious garden sate
Where summer link’d to summer glows,
Grapes ever ripe, and rose on rose;
And all the wonders of thy tale
—O greatest of the great—
Whose splendour ne’er can fade, nor beauty fail!
Or by the city of God above
In rose-red meadows, where the day
Eternal burns, the bless’d ones stray;
The harp lets loose its silver showers
From the dark incense-grove;
And happiness blooms forth with all her flowers.
O Theban strain,—remote and pure,
Voice of the higher soul, that shames
Our downward, dry, material aims,
The bestial creed of earth-to-earth,—
Owning with insight sure
The signs that speak of Man’s celestial birth!
Or white Colonos here through green
Green Dorset winds his holy vale,
Where the divine deep nightingale
Heaps note on note and love on love,
In ivy thick unseen,
While goddesses with Dionysos rove.
Another music then we hear,
A cry from the Sicilian dell,
‘Here ’mid sweet grapes and laurel dwell;
Slips by from wood-girt Aetna’s dome
Snow-cold the stream and clear:—
Hither to me, come, Galataea, come!’
—Voices and dreams long fled and gone!
And other echoes make reply,
The low Maenalian melody
‘’Twas in our garth, a twelve-year child,
I saw thee, little one,
Pick the red fruit that to thy fancy smiled,
‘Thee and thy mother: I, your guide:’—
O sweet magician! Happy heart!
Content with that unrivall’d art,—
The soul of grace in music shrined,—
And notes of modest pride,
To sing the life he loved to all mankind!
There, shading pine and torrent-song
Breathe midday slumber, sudden, sweet;
Deep meadows woo the wayward feet;
In giant elm the ring-doves moan;
There, peace secure from wrong,
The life that keeps its promise, there, alone!
—O loftier than the wordy strife
That floats o’er capitals; the chase
Of florid pleasure; the blind race
Of gold for gold by gamblers run,
This fair Vergilian life,
Where heaven and we and nature are at one!
On that deep soil great Rome was sown;
Our England her foundations laid:—
Hence, while the nations, change-dismay’d,
To tyrant or to quack repair,
A healthier heart we own,
And the plant Man grows stronger than elsewhere.
Should changeful commerce shun the shore,
And newer, mightier races meet
To push us from our empire-seat,
England will round her call her own,
And as in days of yore
The sea-girt Isle be Freedom’s central throne.
Freedom, fair daughter-wife of Law;
One bright face on the future cast,
One reverent fix’d upon the past,
And that for Hope, for Wisdom this:—
While counsels wild and raw
Fly those keen eyes, and leave the land to bliss:—
Dear land, where new is one with old:
Land of green hillside and of plain,
Gray tower and grange and tree-fringed lane,
Red crag and silver streamlet sweet,
Wild wood and ruin bold,
And this repose of beauty at my feet:—
Fair Vale, for summer day-dreams high,
For reverie in solitude
Fashion’d in Nature’s finest mood;
Or, sweeter yet, for fond excess
Of glee, and vivid cry,
Whilst happy children find more happiness
Ranging the brambled hollows free
For purple feast;—till, light as Hope,
The little footsteps scale the slope;
And from the highest height we view
Our island-girdling sea
Bar the green valley with a wall of blue.
The poets whose landscape-pictures are here contrasted with English scenery, are Homer, Pindar, Sophocles, Theocritus, and Vergil.
A HOME IN THE PALACE
1840-1861
Thrice fortunate he
Who, in the palace born, has early learn’d
The lore of sweet simplicity:
From smiling gold his eyes inviolate turn’d,
Turn’d unreturning:—Who the people’s cause,
The sovereign-levelling laws,
Above the throne,
—He made for them, not they for him,—has set;
Life-lavish for his land alone,
Whether she crown with gratitude, or forget:—
He, who in courts beneath the purple weight
Of precedence moves sedate,
By all that glare
Of needful pageantry less stirr’d than still’d,
Bringing a waft of natural air
Through halls with pomp and flattering incense fill’d;
And in the central heart’s calm secret, waits
The closure of the gates,
The music mute,
The darkling lamps, the festal tables clear:—
Then,—glad as one who from pursuit
Breathes safe, and lets himself himself appear,—
Turns to the fireside jest, the laughing eyes,
The love without disguise,—
On home alone,
The loyal partnership of man with wife,
Building a throne beyond the throne;
All happiness in that common household life
By peasant shared with prince,—when toil and health,
True parents of true wealth,
To its fair close
Round the long day, and all are in the nest,
And care relaxes to repose,
And the blithe restless nursery lulls to rest;
Prayer at the mother’s knee; and on their beds
We kiss the shining heads!
—Thrice fortunate he
Who o’er himself thus won his masterdom,
Earning that rare felicity
E’en in the palace walls to find the Home!
Who shaped his life in calmness, firm and true,
Each day, and all day through,
To that high goal
Where self, for England’s sake, was self-effaced,
In silence reining-in his soul
On the strait difficult line by wisdom traced,
’Twixt gulf and siren, avalanche and ravine,
Guarding the golden mean.
Hence, as the days
Went by, with insight time-enrich’d and true,
O’er Europe’s policy-tangled maze
He glanced, and touch’d the central shining clue:
And when the tides of party roar’d and surged,
’Gainst the state-bulwarks urged
By factious aim
Masquing beneath some specious patriot cloke,
Or flaunting a time-honour’d name,—
Athwart the flood he held an even stroke;
Between extremes on her old compass straight
Aiding to steer the state.
With equal mind,
Hence,—sure of those he loved on earth, and then
His loved ones sure again to find,—
For Christ’s and England’s cause, Goodwill to men,
To the end he strove, and put the fever by,—
Ready to live or die.
—And if in death
We were not so alone, who might not quit,
Smiling, this tediousness of breath,
These bubble joys that flash and burst and flit,—
This tragicomedy of life, where scarce
We know if it be farce,
A puppet-sight
Of nerve-pull’d dolls that o’er the world dance by,
Or Good in that unequal fight
With Ill . . . who from such theatre would not fly?
—But those dear faces round the bed disarm
Death of his natural charm!
—O Prince, to Her
First placed, first honour’d in our love and faith,
True stay, true constant counseller,
From that first love of boyhood’s prime,—to death!
O if thy soul on earth permitted gaze
In these less-fortunate days
When, hour by hour,
The million armaments of the world are set
Skill-weapon’d with new demon-power,
Mouthing around this little isle, . . . and yet
On dream-security our fate we cast,
Of all that glory-past
With light fool-heart
Oblivious! . . . O in spirit again restored,
Insoul us to the nobler part,
The chivalrous loyalty of thy life and word!
Thou, who in Her to whom first love was due,
Didst love her England too,
If earthly care
In that eternal home, where thou dost wait
Renewal of the days that were,
Move thee at all,—upon the realm estate
The wisdom of thy virtue, the full store
Thy life’s experience bore!
O known when lost,
Lost, yet not fully known, in all thy grace
Of bloom by cruel early frost,
Best prized and most by Her, to whom thy face
Was love and life and counsel:—If this strain
Renew not all in vain
The bitter cry
Of yearning for the loss we yet deplore,—
Yet for her heart, who stood too nigh
For comfort, till God’s hour thy face restore.
Man has no lenitive! He, who wrought the grief, . . .
Alone commands relief.
—Thou, as the rose
Lies buried in her fragrance, when on earth
The summer-loosen’d blossom flows,
Art sepulchred and embalm’d in native worth:
While to thy grave, in England’s anxious years,
We bring our useless tears.
Above the throne; ‘He knows that if Princes exist, it is for the good of the people. . . . Well for him that he does so,’ was the remark made by an observing foreigner on Prince Albert: (Martin: Life of H.R.H. the Prince Consort: ch. xi).
On home alone; ‘She who reigns over us,’ said the then Mr. Disraeli when seconding the Address on the death of the Duchess of Kent, (March, 1861), ‘She who reigns over us has elected, amid all the splendour of empire, to establish her life on the principle of domestic love’ (Martin: ch. cxi).
Firm and true, ‘Treu und Fest’ is the motto of the Saxe-Coburg family.
Goodwill to men; A revision of the despatch to the Cabinet of the United States, remonstrating on the ‘Trent affair,’ whilst the fatal fever was on him, was the last of Prince Albert’s many services (Nov. 30, 1861) to England. To the temperate and conciliatory tone which he gave to this message, its success in the promotion of peace between the two countries was largely due: (Martin: ch. cxvi).