“Thou too be heard, lone eagle!”
were, he says, suggested near the Giant’s Causeway, where he saw a pair of eagles wheel over his head, and then dart off “as if to hide themselves in a blaze of sky made by the setting sun.”
It was about this time also that the sweet poem, entitled “The Triad,” was written, in which the daughters of Southey, Wordsworth, and Coleridge, are bound together in the most musical and flowery forms, as the three Graces. Wordsworth often promised these fair children to send them down to immortality in his verses, but it was long before the mood seized him, and the modus operandi was made plain to him. At last the ideas embodied in “The Triad” struck him, and the result is something finer than the most vivid sculpture. The poet commences—
“Shew me the noblest youth of present time,
Whose trembling fancy would to love give birth;
Some god or hero from the Olympian clime
Returned to seek a consort upon earth;
Or, in no doubtful prospect let me see,
The brightest star of ages yet to be,
And I will mate and match him blissfully.”
So confident is he of the beauty and virtue of the three fair girls hidden amongst the recesses of the hills, that he boasts of their worthiness to match even the noblest of gods or heroes. And then he invokes them to appear, whilst a youth expectant at his side, and breathless as they,
“Looks to the earth and to the vacant air;
And with a wandering air that seems to chide,
Asks of the clouds what occupants they hide.”
And now the poet will fulfil his promise, and show the golden youth this beautiful triad of Graces.
“Fear not a constraining measure!
—Yielding to the gentle spell,
Lucida! from domes of pleasure,
Or from cottage-sprinkled dell,
Comes to regions solitary,
Where the eagle builds her aery,
Above the hermit’s long-forsaken cell!
—She comes!—behold
That figure, like a ship with silver sail!
Nearer she draws; a breeze uplifts her veil;
Upon her coming wait
As pure a sunshine, and as soft a gale,
As e’er, on herbage-covering earthly mold,
Tempted the bird of Juno to unfold
His richest splendour,—when his veering gait,
And every motion of his starry train,
Seem governed by a strain
Of music, audible to him alone.”
And then we have a picture of the lady:—
“worthy of earth’s proudest throne!
Nor less, by excellence of nature, fit
Beside an unambitious hearth to sit
Domestic queen, where grandeur is unknown;
What living man could fear
The worst of fortune’s malice, wer’t thou near,
Humbling that lily stem, thy sceptre meek,
That its fair flowers may brush from off his cheek
The too, too, happy tear?
—Queen, and handmaid lowly!
Whose skill can speed the day with lively cares,
And banish melancholy
By all that mind invents, or hand prepares;
O thou, against whose lip, without its smile
And in its silence even, no heart is proof;
Whose goodness, sinking deep, would reconcile
The softest nursling of a gorgeous palace,
To the bare life beneath the hawthorn roof
Of Sherwood’s archer, or in caves of Wallace—
Who that hath seen thy beauty could content
His soul with but a glimpse of heavenly day?
Who that hath loved thee, but would lay
His strong hand on the wind, if it were bent
To take thee in thy majesty away?
Pass onward (even the glancing deer
Till we depart intrude not here;)
That mossy slope, o’er which the woodbine throws
A canopy, is smooth’d for thy repose!”