WRITTEN AFTER THE DEATH OF CHARLES LAMB
[Light will be thrown upon the tragic circumstance alluded to in this poem when, after the death of Charles Lamb’s Sister, his biographer, Mr. Sergeant Talfourd, shall be at liberty to relate particulars which could not, at the time his Memoir was written, be given to the public. Mary Lamb was ten years older than her brother, and has survived him as long a time. Were I to give way to my own feelings, I should dwell not only on her genius and intellectual powers, but upon the delicacy and refinement of manner which she maintained inviolable under most trying circumstances. She was loved and honoured by all her brother’s friends; and others, some of them strange characters, whom his philanthropic peculiarities induced him to countenance. The death of C. Lamb himself was doubtless hastened by his sorrow for that of Coleridge, to whom he had been attached from the time of their being school-fellows at Christ’s Hospital. Lamb was a good Latin scholar, and probably would have gone to college upon one of the school foundations but for the impediment in his speech. Had such been his lot, he would most likely have been preserved from the indulgences of social humours and fancies which were often injurious to himself, and causes of severe regret to his friends, without really benefiting the object of his misapplied kindness.—I.F.]
In the edition of 1837, these lines had no title. They were printed privately,—before their first appearance in that edition,—as a small pamphlet of seven pages without title or heading. A copy will be found in the fifth volume of the collection of pamphlets, forming part of the library bequeathed by the late Mr. John Forster to the South Kensington Museum. There are several readings to be found only in this privately-printed edition. The poem was placed among the “Epitaphs and Elegiac Pieces.”—Ed.
Composed November 19, 1835.—Published 1837
To a good Man of most dear memory[22]
This Stone is sacred.[23] Here he lies apart
From the great city where he first drew breath,
Was reared and taught; and humbly earned his bread,
To the strict labours of the merchant’s desk 5
By duty chained. Not seldom did those tasks
Tease, and the thought of time so spent depress,
His spirit, but the recompense was high;
Firm Independence, Bounty’s rightful sire;
Affections, warm as sunshine, free as air; 10
And when the precious hours of leisure came,
Knowledge and wisdom, gained from converse sweet
With books, or while he ranged the crowded streets
With a keen eye, and overflowing heart:
So genius triumphed over seeming wrong, 15
And poured out truth in works by thoughtful love
Inspired—works potent over smiles and tears.
And as round mountain-tops the lightning plays,
Thus innocently sported, breaking forth
As from a cloud of some grave sympathy, 20
Humour and wild instinctive wit, and all
The vivid flashes of his spoken words.
From the most gentle creature nursed in fields[24]
Had been derived the name he bore—a name,
Wherever christian altars have been raised, 25
Hallowed to meekness and to innocence;
And if in him meekness at times gave way,
Provoked out of herself by troubles strange,
Many and strange, that hung about his life;[25]
Still, at the centre of his being, lodged 30
A soul by resignation sanctified:
And if too often, self-reproached, he felt
That innocence belongs not to our kind,
A power that never ceased to abide in him,
Charity, ’mid the multitude of sins[26] 35
That she can cover, left not his exposed
To an unforgiving judgment from just Heaven.
O, he was good, if e’er a good Man lived!
From a reflecting mind and sorrowing heart
Those simple lines flowed with an earnest wish, 40
Though but a doubting hope, that they might serve
Fitly to guard the precious dust of him
Whose virtues called them forth. That aim is missed;
For much that truth most urgently required
Had from a faltering pen been asked in vain: 45
Yet, haply, on the printed page received,
The imperfect record, there, may stand unblamed
As long as verse of mine shall breathe the air
Of memory, or see the light of love.[27]
Thou wert a scorner of the fields, my Friend, 50
But more in show than truth;[28] and from the fields,
And from the mountains, to thy rural grave
Transported, my soothed spirit hovers o’er
Its green untrodden turf, and blowing flowers;
And taking up a voice shall speak (tho’ still 55
Awed by the theme’s peculiar sanctity
Which words less free presumed not even to touch)
Of that fraternal love, whose heaven-lit lamp
From infancy, through manhood, to the last
Of threescore years, and to thy latest hour, 60
Burnt on with ever-strengthening light, enshrined[29]
Within thy bosom.
“Wonderful” hath been
The love established between man and man,
“Passing the love of women;” and between
Man and his help-mate in fast wedlock joined 65
Through God,[30] is raised a spirit and soul of love
Without whose blissful influence Paradise
Had been no Paradise; and earth were now
A waste where creatures bearing human form,
Direst of savage beasts, would roam in fear, 70
Joyless and comfortless. Our days glide on;[31]
And let him grieve who cannot choose but grieve
That he hath been an Elm without his Vine,
And her bright dower of clustering charities,
That, round his trunk and branches, might have clung 75
Enriching and adorning. Unto thee,
Not so enriched, not so adorned, to thee
Was given (say rather thou of later birth
Wert given to her) a Sister—’tis a word
Timidly uttered, for she lives, the meek, 80
The self-restraining, and the ever-kind;
In whom thy reason and intelligent heart
Found—for all interests, hopes, and tender cares,
All softening, humanising, hallowing powers,
Whether withheld, or for her sake unsought— 85
More than sufficient recompense!
Her love
(What weakness prompts the voice to tell it here?)
Was as the love of mothers; and when years,
Lifting the boy to man’s estate, had called
The long-protected to assume the part 90
Of a protector, the first filial tie
Was undissolved; and, in or out of sight,
Remained imperishably interwoven
With life itself. Thus, ’mid a shifting world,
Did they together testify of time[32] 95
And season’s difference—a double tree
With two collateral stems sprung from one root;
Such were they—such thro’ life they might have been
In union, in partition only such;
Otherwise wrought the will of the Most High; 100
Yet, thro’ all visitations and all trials,
Still they were faithful; like two vessels launched
From the same beach one ocean to explore[33]
With mutual help, and sailing—to their league
True, as inexorable winds, or bars 105
Floating or fixed of polar ice, allow.[34]
But turn we rather, let my spirit turn
With thine, O silent and invisible Friend!
To those dear intervals, nor rare nor brief,
When reunited, and by choice withdrawn 110
From miscellaneous converse, ye were taught
That the remembrance of foregone distress,
And the worse fear of future ill (which oft
Doth hang around it, as a sickly child
Upon its mother) may be both alike 115
Disarmed of power to unsettle present good
So prized, and things inward and outward held
In such an even balance, that the heart
Acknowledges God’s grace, his mercy feels,
And in its depth of gratitude is still. 120
O gift divine of quiet sequestration!
The hermit, exercised in prayer and praise,
And feeding daily on the hope of heaven,
Is happy in his vow, and fondly cleaves
To life-long singleness; but happier far 125
Was to your souls, and, to the thoughts of others,
A thousand times more beautiful appeared,
Your dual loneliness. The sacred tie
Is broken; yet why grieve? for Time but holds
His moiety in trust, till Joy shall lead 130
To the blest world where parting is unknown.[35]
[22] 1837.
To the dear memory of a frail good Man
In privately printed edition.
[23] Charles Lamb died December 27, 1834, and was buried in Edmonton Churchyard, in a spot selected by himself.—Ed.
[24] This way of indicating the name of my lamented friend has been found fault with, perhaps rightly so; but I may say in justification of the double sense of the word, that similar allusions are not uncommon in epitaphs. One of the best in our language in verse, I ever read, was upon a person who bore the name of Palmer†; and the course of the thought, throughout, turned upon the Life of the Departed, considered as a pilgrimage. Nor can I think that the objection in the present case will have much force with any one who remembers Charles Lamb’s beautiful sonnet addressed to his own name, and ending—
No deed of mine shall shame thee, gentle name!
W. W. 1837.
† 1840. Pilgrim; 1837.
Professor Henry Reed, in his edition of 1837, added the following note to Wordsworth’s. “In Hierologus, a Church Tour through England and Wales, I have met with an epitaph which is probably the one alluded to above … a Kentish epitaph on one Palmer:
Palmers all our fathers were;
I, a Palmer lived here,
And traveyled sore, till worn with age,
I ended this world’s pilgrimage,
On the blest Ascension Day
In the cheerful month of May.”
The above is Professor Reed’s note. The following is an exact copy of the epitaph:—
Palmers all our faders were;
I, a Palmer livyd here
And travyld still till worne wyth age,
I endyd this world’s pylgramage,
On the blyst assention day
In the cherful month of May;
A thowsand wyth fowre hundryd seven,
And took my jorney hense to heven.
(Printed by Weever.)
Ed.
[25] Compare Talfourd’s Final Memorials of Charles Lamb, passim.—Ed.
[26] 1837.
He had a constant friend—in Charity;
Her who, among a multitude of sins,
In privately printed edition.
[27] 1837.
From a reflecting mind and sorrowing heart
This tribute flow’d, with hope that it might guard
The dust of him whose virtues call’d it forth;
But ’tis a little space of earth that man,
Stretch’d out in death, is doom’d to occupy;
Still smaller space doth modest custom yield,
On sculptured tomb or tablet, to the claims
Of the deceased, or rights of the bereft.
’Tis well; and tho’, the record overstepped
Those narrow bounds, yet on the printed page
Received, there may it stand, I trust, unblamed
As long as verse of mine shall steal from tears
Their bitterness, or live to shed a gleam
Of solace over one dejected thought.
In privately printed edition.
Professor Dowden quotes, from “a slip of MS. in the poet’s hand-writing,” the following variation of these lines—
’Tis well, and if the Record in the strength
And earnestness of feeling, overpass’d
Those narrow limits and so miss’d its aim,
Yet will I trust that on the printed page
Received, it there may keep a place unblamed.
Ed.
[28] Lamb’s indifference to the country “was a sort of ‘mock apparel,’ in which it was his humour at times to invest himself.” (H. N. Coleridge, Supplement to the Biographia Literaria, p. 333.)—Ed.
[29] 1837.
Burned, and with ever-strengthening light, enshrined
In privately printed edition.
[30] 1837.
By God, …
In privately printed edition.
[31] 1837.
… Our days pass on;
In privately printed edition.
[32] 1837.
Together stood they witnessing of time
In privately printed edition.
[33] 1837.
Yet, in all visitations, through all trials
Still they were faithful, like two goodly ships
Launch’d from the beach, …
In privately printed edition.
[34] Compare the testimony borne to Mary Lamb by Mr. Procter (Barry Cornwall), and by Henry Crabb Robinson.—Ed.
[35] 1837.
… The sacred tie
Is broken, to become more sacred still.
In privately printed edition.
Wordsworth originally meant to write an epitaph on Charles Lamb, but his verse grew into an elegy of some length. A reference to the circumstance of its “composition” will be found in one of his letters, in a later volume.—Ed.