On wider aims, not worthier, set:—A soul
Immured in self-control;
Saving the thankless in their own despite:—
Then turning with a gasp
Of joy, to his own land by native right;
Changing the Hall of Rufus and the Keep
Of Windsor’s terraced steep
For Guelderland horizons, silvery-blue;
The green deer-twinkling glades,
And long, long, avenues of the stately Loo.
‘William,’ says his all too zealous panegyrist, ‘never became an Englishman. He served England, it is true; but he never loved her, and he never obtained her love. To him she was always a land of exile, visited with reluctance and quitted with delight. . . . Her welfare was not his chief object. Whatever patriotic feeling he had was for Holland. . . . In the gallery of Whitehall he pined for the familiar House in the Wood at the Hague, and never was so happy as when he could quit the magnificence of Windsor for his humbler seat at Loo:’ (Macaulay: Hist. ch. vii)
One labouring breath; William throughout life was tortured by asthma.
Demon’s russet coast; Torbay.—Capital of the garden-West; Exeter.—Gracious spire; Salisbury.—Hall of Rufus; The one originally built by William II at Westminster.
THE CHILDLESS MOTHER
1700-1702
Oft in midnight visions
Ghostly by my bed
Stands a Father’s image,
Pale discrownéd head:—
—I forsook thee, Father!
Was no child to thee!
Child-forsaken Mother,
Now ’tis so with me.
Oft I see the brother,
Baby born to woe,
Crouching by the church-wall
From the bloodhound-foe.
Evil crown’d of evil,
Heritage of strife!
Mine, an heirless sceptre:
His, an exile life!
—O my vanish’d darlings,
From the cradle torn!
Dewdrop lives, that never
Saw their second morn!
Buds that fell untimely,—
Till one blossom grew;
As I watch’d its beauty,
Fading whilst it blew.