DEVOTIONAL INCITEMENTS
Composed 1832.—Published 1835
[Written at Rydal Mount.—I. F.]
One of the "Poems of the Imagination."—Ed.
"Not to the earth confined,
Ascend to heaven."[742]
Where will they stop, those breathing Powers,
The Spirits of the new-born flowers?
They wander with the breeze, they wind
Where'er the streams a passage find;
Up from their native ground they rise 5
In mute aërial harmonies;[743]
From humble violet—modest thyme—
Exhaled, the essential odours climb,
As if no space below the sky
Their subtle flight could satisfy: 10
Heaven will not tax our thoughts with pride
If like ambition be their guide.
Roused by this kindliest of May-showers,
The spirit-quickener of the flowers,
That with moist virtue softly cleaves 15
The buds, and freshens the young leaves,
The birds pour forth their souls in notes
Of rapture from a thousand throats—
Here checked by too impetuous haste,
While there the music runs to waste, 20
With bounty more and more enlarged,
Till the whole air is overcharged;
Give ear, O Man! to their appeal
And thirst for no inferior zeal,
Thou, who canst think, as well as feel. 25
Mount from the earth; aspire! aspire!
So pleads the town's cathedral quire,
In strains that from their solemn height
Sink, to attain a loftier flight;
While incense from the altar breathes 30
Rich fragrance in embodied wreaths;
Or, flung from swinging censer, shrouds
The taper-lights, and curls in clouds
Around angelic Forms, the still
Creation of the painter's skill, 35
That on the service wait concealed
One moment, and the next revealed.
—Cast off your bonds, awake, arise,
And for no transient ecstasies!
What else can mean the visual plea 40
Of still or moving imagery—
The iterated summons loud,
Not wasted on the attendant crowd,
Nor wholly lost upon the throng
Hurrying the busy streets along? 45
Alas! the sanctities combined
By art to unsensualise the mind,
Decay and languish; or, as creeds
And humours change, are spurned like weeds:
The priests are from their altars thrust; 50
Temples are levelled with the dust;
And solemn rites and awful forms
Founder amid fanatic storms.[744][745]
Yet evermore, through years renewed
In undisturbed vicissitude 55
Of seasons balancing their flight
On the swift wings of day and night,
Kind Nature keeps a heavenly door
Wide open for the scattered Poor.
Where flower-breathed incense to the skies 60
Is wafted in mute harmonies;
And ground fresh-cloven by the plough
Is fragrant with a humbler vow;
Where birds and brooks from leafy dells
Chime forth unwearied canticles, 65
And vapours magnify and spread
The glory of the sun's bright head—
Still constant in her worship, still
Conforming to the eternal Will,[746]
Whether men sow or reap the fields, 70
Divine monition[747] Nature yields,
That not by bread alone we live,
Or what a hand of flesh can give;
That every day should leave some part
Free for a sabbath of the heart: 75
So shall the seventh be truly blest,
From morn to eve, with hallowed rest.
FOOTNOTES:
[742] See Paradise Lost, book v. ll. 78-80—
Not to Earth confined,
But sometimes in the Air, as we; sometimes
Ascend to heaven.
Ed.
[743] Compare, in Bacon's Essays, No. 46, 'Of Gardens,' "The Breath of Flowers is farre Sweeter in the Aire, when it comes and goes, like the Warbling of Musick."—Ed.
[744] 1836.
The solemn rites, the awful forms,
Founder amid fanatic storms;
The priests are from their altars thrust,
The temples levelled with the dust: 1835.
[745] Compare a passage in Daniel's Musopilus, beginning—
Sacred Religion! mother of form and fear!
How gorgeously sometimes dost thou sit decked!—Ed.
[746] 1836.
... almighty Will, 1835.
[747] 1845.
Her admonitions Nature yields; 1835.
Divine admonishment She yields, 1836.
["CALM IS THE FRAGRANT AIR, AND LOTH TO LOSE"]
Composed 1832.—Published 1835
One of the "Evening Voluntaries."—Ed.
Calm is the fragrant air, and loth to lose
Day's grateful warmth, tho' moist with falling dews.
Look for the stars, you'll say that there are none;
Look up a second time, and, one by one,
You mark them twinkling out with silvery light, 5
And wonder how they could elude the sight!
The birds, of late so noisy in their bowers,
Warbled a while with faint and fainter powers,
But now are silent as the dim-seen flowers:
Nor does the village Church-clock's iron tone 10
The time's and season's influence disown;
Nine beats distinctly to each other bound
In drowsy sequence—how unlike the sound
That, in rough winter, oft inflicts a fear
On fireside listeners, doubting what they hear! 15
The shepherd, bent on rising with the sun,
Had closed his door before the day was done,
And now with thankful heart to bed doth creep,
And joins[748] his little children in their sleep.
The bat, lured forth where trees the lane o'ershade, 20
Flits and reflits along the close arcade;
The busy[749] dor-hawk chases the white moth
With burring note, which Industry and Sloth
Might both be pleased with, for it suits them both.
A stream is heard—I see it not, but know 25
By its soft music whence the waters flow:
Wheels[750] and the tread of hoofs are heard no more;
One boat there was, but it will touch the shore
With the next dipping of its slackened oar;
Faint sound, that, for the gayest of the gay, 30
Might give to serious thought a moment's sway,
As a last token of man's toilsome day!
FOOTNOTES:
[748] 1837.
And join ... 1835.
[749] 1837.
Far-heard the ... 1835.
[750] 1837.
... both.
Wheels ... 1835.