The Norton Anthology of English literature. Volume 2

95 O'erwhelms the sober pomp of elder days; Corruption follows with gigantic stride, And scarce vouchsafes his shameless front to hide: The spreading leprosy taints ev'ry part, Infects each limb, and sickens at the heart.

ioo Simplicity! most dear of rural maids, Weeping resigns her violated shades: Stern Independance from his glebe0 retires, cidtivated land And anxious Freedom eyes her drooping fires; By foreign wealth are British morals chang'd,

105 And Afric's sons, and India's, smile aveng'd.

For you, whose temper'd ardour long has borne Untir'd the labour, and unmov'd the scorn; In Virtue's fasti0 be inscrib'd your fame, records And utter'd yours with Howard's honour'd name,3

no Friends of the friendless�Hail, ye generous band! Whose efforts yet arrest Heav'n's lifted hand, Around whose steady brows, in union bright, The civic wreath, and Christian's palm unite: Your merit stands, no greater and no less,

us Without, or with the varnish of success; But seek no more to break a Nation's fall, For ye have sav'd yourselves�and that is all. Succeeding times your struggles, and their fate, With mingled shame and triumph shall relate,

3. John Howard (1726-1790), philanthropist and prison and public health reformer.

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T HE R IGHTS OF W OMAN / 3 5 120 While faithful History, in her various page, Marking the features of this motley age, To shed a glory, and to fix a stain, Tells how you strove, and that you strove in vain. 1791 1791

The Rights of Woman1

Yes, injured Woman! rise, assert thy right! Woman! too long degraded, scorned, opprest; O born to rule in partial" Law's despite, biased Resume thy native empire o'er the breast!

5 Go forth arrayed in panoply" divine; suit of armor That angel pureness which admits no stain; Go, bid proud Man his boasted rule resign, And kiss the golden sceptre of thy reign.

Go, gird thyself with grace; collect thy store

10 Of bright artillery glancing from afar; Soft melting tones thy thundering cannon's roar, Rlushes and fears thy magazine0 of war. storehouse of arms

Thy rights are empire: urge no meaner claim,� Felt, not defined, and if debated, lost; 15 Like sacred mysteries, which withheld from fame, Shunning discussion, are revered the most.

Try all that wit and art suggest to bend Of thy imperial foe the stubborn knee; Make treacherous Man thy subject, not thy friend;

20 Thou mayst command, but never canst be free.

Awe the licentious, and restrain the rude; Soften the sullen, clear the cloudy brow: Be, more than princes' gifts, thy favours sued;� She hazards all, who will the least allow.

25 But hope not, courted idol of mankind, On this proud eminence secure to stay; Subduing and subdued, thou soon shalt find Thy coldness soften, and thy pride give way.

Then, then, abandon each ambitious thought, 30 Conquest or rule thy heart shall feebly move,

1. A response�seemingly favorable until the last ers" as evidence that even women of sense were two stanzas�to Mary Wollstonecraft's A Vindica-capable of adopting the masculine-centered gention of the Rights of Woman (1792). In chapter 4 der code that identified the feminine with the ornaof Vindication, Wollstonecraft had singled out Bar-mental and the frivolous. bauld's poem "To a Lady with Some Painted Flow

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36 / ANNA LETITIA BARBAULD

In Nature's school, by her soft maxims taught, That separate rights are lost in mutual love.

ca. 1792-95 1825

To a Little Invisible Being Who Is Expected Soon to Become Visible

Germ of new life, whose powers expanding slow For many a moon their full perfection wait,� Haste, precious pledge of happy love, to go Auspicious borne through life's mysterious gate.

s What powers lie folded in thy curious frame,� Senses from objects locked, and mind from thought! How little canst thou guess thy lofty claim To grasp at all the worlds the Almighty wrought!

And see, the genial season's warmth to share,

io Fresh younglings" shoot, and opening roses glow! young plants Swarms of new life exulting fill the air,� Haste, infant bud of being, haste to blow!0 bloom

For thee the nurse prepares her lulling songs, The eager matrons count the lingering day; 15 But far the most thy anxious parent longs On thy soft cheek a mother's kiss to lay.

She only asks to lay her burden down, That her glad arms that burden may resume; And nature's sharpest pangs her wishes crown,

20 That free thee living from thy living tomb.

She longs to fold to her maternal breast Part of herself, yet to herself unknown; To see and to salute the stranger guest, Fed with her life through many a tedious moon.

25 Come, reap thy rich inheritance of love! Bask in the fondness of a Mother's eye! Nor wit nor eloquence her heart shall move Like the first accents of thy feeble cry.

Haste, little captive, burst thy prison doors!

30 Launch on the living world, and spring to light! Nature for thee displays her various stores, Opens her thousand inlets of delight.

If charmed verse or muttered prayers had power, With favouring spells to speed thee on thy way,

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WASHING-DAY / 37

35 Anxious I'd bid my beads0 each passing hour, offer a prayer Till thy wished smile thy mother's pangs o'erpay.0 more than compensate ca. 1795? 1825

Washing-Day

. . . and their voice, Turning again towards childish treble, pipes And whistles in its sound.1

The Muses are turned gossips; they have lost The buskined0 step, and clear high-sounding phrase, tragic, elevated Language of gods. Come then, domestic Muse, In slipshod measure loosely prattling on

5 Of farm or orchard, pleasant curds and cream, Or drowning flies, or shoe lost in the mire By little whimpering boy, with rueful face; Come, Muse; and sing the dreaded Washing-Day. Ye who beneath the yoke of wedlock bend,

10 With bowed soul, full well ye ken� the day know Which week, smooth sliding after week, brings on Too soon;�for to that day nor peace belongs Nor comfort;�ere the first gray streak of dawn, The red-armed washers come and chase repose,

is Nor pleasant smile, nor quaint device of mirth, E'er visited that day: the very cat, From the wet kitchen scared, and reeking hearth, Visits the parlour,�an unwonted0 guest. unaccustomed The silent breakfast-meal is soon dispatched;

20 Uninterrupted, save by anxious looks Cast at the lowering sky, if sky should lower. From that last evil, O preserve us, heavens! For should the skies pour down, adieu to all Remains of quiet: then expect to hear

25 Of sad disasters,�dirt and gravel stains Hard to efface, and loaded lines at once Snapped short,�and linen-horse0 by dog thrown down, drying rack And all the petty miseries of life. Saints have been calm while stretched upon the rack,

30 And Guatimozin2 smiled on burning coals; But never yet did housewife notable Greet with a smile a rainy washing-day. �But grant the welkin0 fair, require not thou sky Who call'st thyself perchance the master there,

35 Or study swept or nicely dusted coat, Or usual 'tendance;�ask not, indiscreet, Thy stockings mended, though the yawning rents Gape wide as Erebus;0 nor hope to find the underworld

1. Looselv quoted from Shakespeare's As You Like who was tortured and executed by the Spanish It 2.7.160-62. conquistadors. 2. The last Aztec emperor (Cuanht^moc, d. 1525),

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3 8 / ANN A LETITI A BARBAUL D Some snug recess impervious: shouldst thou try 40 The 'customed garden walks, thine eye shall rue The budding fragrance of thy tender shrubs, Myrtle or rose, all crushed beneath the weight Of coarse checked apron,�with impatient hand Twitched off when showers impend: or crossing lines 45 Shall mar thy musings, as the wet cold sheet Flaps in thy face abrupt. Woe to the friend Whose evil stars have urged him forth to claim On such a day the hospitable rites! Looks, blank at best, and stinted courtesy, 50 Shall he receive. Vainly he feeds his hopes With dinner of roast chicken, savoury pie, Or tart or pudding:�pudding he nor tart That day shall eat; nor, though the husband try, Mending what can't be helped, to kindle mirth 55 From cheer deficient, shall his consort's brow Clear up propitious:�the unlucky guest In silence dines, and early slinks away. I well remember, when a child, the awe This day struck into me; for then the maids, 60 I scarce knew why, looked cross, and drove me from them; Nor soft caress could I obtain, nor hope Usual indulgencies; jelly or creams, Relic of costly suppers, and set by For me, their petted one; or buttered toast, 65 When butter was forbid; or thrilling tale Of ghost or witch, or murder�so I went And sheltered me beside the parlour fire: There my dear grandmother, eldest of forms, Tended the little ones, and watched from harm, 70 Anxiously fond, though oft her spectacles With elfin cunning hid, and oft the pins Drawn from her ravelled stocking, might have soured One less indulgent.� At intervals my mother's voice was heard, 75 Urging dispatch: briskly the work went on, All hands employed to wash, to rinse, to wring, To fold, and starch, and clap,0 and iron, and plait. flatten Then would I sit me down, and ponder much Why washings were. Sometimes through hollow bowl so Of pipe amused we blew, and sent aloft The floating bubbles; little dreaming then To see, Mongolfier,3 thy silken ball Ride buoyant through the clouds�so near approach The sports of children and the toils of men. 85 Earth, air, and sky, and ocean, hath its bubbles,4 And verse is one of them�this most of all. 1797

3. Brothers Joseph-Michel and Jacques-Etienne 4. Cf. Shakespeare's Macbeth 1.3.77: "The earth Mongolfier successfully launched the first hot-air hath bubbles, as the water has." balloon, at Annonay, France, in 1783.

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39

CHARLOTTE SMITH 1749-1806

The melancholy of Charlotte Smith's poems was no mere literary posture. After her father married for the second time, she herself was married off, at the age of fifteen, and bore a dozen children (three of whom died in infancy or childhood), before permanently separating from her husband, Benjamin Smith, because of his abusive temper, infidelities, and financial irresponsibility. She began writing to make money when her husband was imprisoned for debt in 1783. Her first book, Elegiac Sonnets, and Other Essays by Charlotte Smith ofBignor Park, in Sussex, came out in 1785 and went through nine expanding editions in the following sixteen years.

Beginning with the 1788 publication of Emmeline, Smith also enjoyed considerable success as a novelist, rapidly producing nine more novels within the decade, including Desmond (1792), The Old Manor House (1793), The Banished Man (1794), and The Young Philosopher (1798). The liberal political views espoused in these fictions made the books key contributions to the Revolution Controversy in Britain. This was also the case with her eight-hundred-line blank verse poem The Emigrants (1793), which both evokes the suffering endured by political refugees from France and links their plight to that of the poet herself, who as a woman has discovered the emptiness of her native land's "boast / Of equal law." Such views earned Smith a place of dishonor, alongside Mary Wollstonecraft and Anna Letitia Barbauld, in Richard Polwhele's conservative satire The Unsex'd Females (1797), which scolds her for having suffered "her mind to be infected with the Gallic mania." We are more likely now to follow Stuart Curran, Smith's modern editor, and hail The Emigrants as "the finest piece of extended blank verse in English between Cowper's The Task (1785) and Wordsworth's unpublished initial version of The Prelude (1799)."

The sonnet as a form, after its great flourishing in the Renaissance in the hands of Sidney, Spenser, Shakespeare, Donne, and Milton, dropped out of fashion in the eighteenth century. It was, Samuel Johnson declared in his Dictionary (1755), "not very suitable to the English language." Its revival toward the end of that century�by Coleridge in the 1790s; Wordsworth (who wrote some five hundred sonnets beginning in 1802); and in the next generation, Shelley and Keats�was largely the result of Smith's influential refashioning of the sonnet as a medium of mournful feeling. Cole- ridge noted in the introduction to his privately printed "sheet of sonnets" in 1796 that "Charlotte Smith and [William Lisle] Bowles are they who first made the Sonnet popular among the present English"; but Bowles's Fourteen Sonnets of 1789, imitating those that Smith first published five years earlier (which by 1789 had reached a fifth edition), rode on a wave of popularity of the form that she had already established.

Coleridge in his 1796 introductory essay on the sonnet, using Smith as a principal example, remarked that "those Sonnets appear to me the most exquisite, in which moral Sentiments, Affections, or Feelings, are deduced from, and associated with, the scenery of Nature." Subsequently, of course, the connecting of feelings and nature became a central theme and strategy in Romantic poetry, especially in the genre that has come to be known as "the greater Romantic lyric." But Smith's engagement with nature differs from Coleridge's and Wordsworth's in its quasi-scientific insistence on the faithful rendering of detail: it is not surprising to learn that she addressed a sonnet to the "goddess of botany." That close-up view of nature is rendered exquisitely in her last long poem, the posthumously published Beachy Head (1807).

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40 / CHARLOTTE SMITH

FROM ELEGIAC SONNETS

Written at the Close of Spring

The garlands fade that Spring so lately wove, Each simple flower, which she had nursed in dew, Anemonies,1 that spangled every grove, The primrose wan, and hare-bell mildly blue. 5 No more shall violets linger in the dell, Or purple orchis variegate the plain, Till Spring again shall call forth every bell, And dress with humid hands her wreaths again.� Ah! poor humanity! so frail, so fair, 10 Are the fond visions of thy early day, Till tyrant passion, and corrosive care,

Bid all thy fairy colors fade away! Another May new buds and flowers shall bring; Ah! why has happiness�no second Spring?

1784

To Sleep

Come, balmy Sleep! tired nature's soft resort! On these sad temples all thy poppies shed; And bid gay dreams, from Morpheus'0 airy court, Greek god of sleep Float in light vision round my aching head! 5 Secure of all thy blessings, partial0 Power! friendly On his hard bed the peasant throws him down; And the poor sea boy, in the rudest hour, Enjoys thee more than he who wears a crown.1 Clasp'd in her faithful shepherd's guardian arms, 10 Well may the village girl sweet slumbers prove And they, O gentle Sleep! still taste thy charms,

Who wake to labor, liberty, and love. But still thy opiate aid dost thou deny To calm the anxious breast; to close the streaming eye.

1784

To Night

I love thee, mournful, sober-suited Night! When the faint moon, yet lingering in her wane, And veil'd in clouds, with pale uncertain light Hangs o'er the waters of the restless main.

1. Anemonies. Anemony Nemeroso. The wood cradle of the rude impetuous surge?" Shake- Anemony [Smith's note], speare's Henry IV [Smith's note; "imperious surge" 1. "Wilt thou upon the high and giddy mast / seal in the original]. up the ship boy's eyes, and rock his brains / In

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On Being Cautioned against Walking / 41

5 In deep depression sunk, the enfeebled mind Will to the deaf cold elements complain, And tell the embosom'd grief, however vain,

To sullen surges and the viewless wind. Though no repose on thy dark breast I find, 10 I still enjoy thee�cheerless as thou art;

For in thy quiet gloom the exhausted heart Is calm, though wretched; hopeless, yet resign'd. While to the winds and waves its sorrows given, May reach�though lost on earth�the ear of Heaven!

1788

Written in the Church-Yard at Middleton in Sussex1

Press'd by the Moon, mute arbitress of tides, While the loud equinox its power combines, The sea no more its swelling surge confines,

But o'er the shrinking land sublimely rides.

5 The wild blast, rising from the Western cave, Drives the huge billows from their heaving bed; Tears from their grassy tombs the village dead,

And breaks the silent sabbath of the grave! With shells and sea-weed mingled, on the shore 10 Lo! their bones whiten in the frequent wave;

But vain to them the winds and waters rave; They hear the warring elements no more: While I am doom'd�by life's long storm opprest, To gaze with envy on their gloomy rest.

1789

On Being Cautioned against Walking on an Headland Overlooking the Sea, Because It Was Frequented by a Lunatic

Is there a solitary wretch who hies To the tall cliff, with starting pace or slow, And, measuring, views with wild and hollow eyes Its distance from the waves that chide below; 5 Who, as the sea-born gale with frequent sighs Chills his cold bed upon the mountain turf, With hoarse, half-utter'd lamentation, lies

1. Middleton is a village on the margin of the sea, The wall, which once surrounded the churchyard, in Sussex, containing only two or three houses. is entirely swept away, many of the graves broken There were formerly several acres of ground up, and the remains of bodies interred washed into between its small church and the sea, which now, the sea: whence human bones are found among by its continual encroachments, approaches within the sand and shingles on the shore [Smith's note]. a few feet of this half ruined and humble edifice.

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42 / CHARLOTTE SMITH

Murmuring responses to the dashing surf? In moody sadness, on the giddy brink, 10

I see him more with envy than with fear; He has no nice felicities that shrink1

From giant horrors; wildly wandering here, He seems (uncursed with reason) not to know The depth or the duration of his woe.

1797

The Sea View1

The upland shepherd, as reclined he lies On the soft turf that clothes the mountain brow, Marks the bright sea-line mingling with the skies; Or from his course celestial, sinking slow, 5 The summer-sun in purple radiance low, Blaze on the western waters; the wide scene Magnificent, and tranquil, seems to spread Even o'er the rustic's breast a joy serene, When, like dark plague-spots by the Demons shed,

10 Charged deep with death, upon the waves, far seen, Move the war-freighted ships; and fierce and red, Flash their destructive fire.�The mangled dead

And dying victims then pollute the flood. Ah! thus man spoils Heaven's glorious works with blood!

1797

The Emigrants1

From Book 1

scene, on the Cliffs to the Eastward of the Town of Brighthelmstone in Sussex.

time, a Morning in November, 1792.

Slow in the Wintry Morn, the struggling light Throws a faint gleam upon the troubled waves;

1. " Tis delicate felicity that shrinks / when rock-tion of the system that had sanctioned their social ing winds are loud." Walpole [Smith's note; the privilege. It is set, as Smith indicates, in November passage from Walpole has not been identified]. 1792, just after the downfall of the French mon1. Suggested by the recollection of having seen, archy and the declaration of a Republic. Its "scene" some years since, on a beautiful evening of Sum-is atop the cliffs at Brighthelmstone (Brighton), mer, an engagement between two armed ships, across the Channel from France. Book 2, set five from the high down called the Beacon Hill, near months later, at a time following the execution of Brighthelmstone [Smith's note, referring to a loca-Louis XVI and the outbreak of war between Britain tion near Brighton]. and France, narrates how the emigrants, forming 1. As the Revolution unfolded in France, growing a counterrevolutionary army, invade France to numbers of aristocrats, aghast at their loss of wage war on their own countrymen. Here Smith power and increasingly in fear for their lives, aban-emphasizes the situation of the women this fooldoned their estates and riches and sought refuge hardy army leaves behind, abandoned to an in England. Following the new Republic's abolition unwanted independence in a strange land. of state religion and confiscation of Church lands, Smith dedicated The Emigrants to William Cow- these nobles were joined in their exile by Catholic per, whose easy, informal blank verse in The Task clerics. Book 1 of The Emigrants traces how these (1785) was an immediate influence on her own. people cope, and fail to cope, with the disintegra

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THE EMIGRANTS / 43

Their foaming tops, as they approach the shore

And the broad surf that never ceasing breaks On the innumerous pebbles, catch the beams Of the pale Sun, that with reluctance gives To this cold northern Isle, its shorten'd day. Alas! how few the morning wakes to joy! How many murmur at oblivious night

For leaving them so soon; for bearing thus Their fancied bliss (the only bliss they taste!), On her black wings away!�Changing0 the dreams exchanging That sooth'd their sorrows, for calamities (And every day brings its own sad proportion)

For doubts, diseases, abject dread of Death, And faithless friends, and fame and fortune lost; Fancied or real wants; and wounded pride, That views the day star,0 but to curse his beams. the sun

Yet He, whose Spirit into being call'd This wondrous World of Waters; He who bids The wild wind lift them till they dash the clouds, And speaks to them in thunder; or whose breath, Low murmuring o'er the gently heaving tides, When the fair Moon, in summer night serene,

Irradiates with long trembling lines of light Their undulating surface; that great Power, Who, governing the Planets, also knows If but a Sea-Mew falls, whose nest is hid In these incumbent0 cliffs; He surely means overhanging

To us, his reasoning Creatures, whom He bids Acknowledge and revere his awful0 hand, awe-inspiring Nothing but good: Yet Man, misguided Man, Mars the fair work that he was bid enjoy, And makes himself the evil he deplores.

How often, when my weary soul recoils From proud oppression, and from legal crimes (For such are in this Land, where the vain boast Of equal Law is mockery, while the cost Of seeking for redress is sure to plunge Th' already injur'd to more certain ruin And the wretch starves, before his Counsel pleads) How often do I half abjure Society, And sigh for some lone Cottage, deep embower'd In the green woods, that these steep chalky Hills

Guard from the strong South West; where round their base The Beach2 wide flourishes, and the light Ash With slender leaf half hides the thymy0 turf!� abounding in thyme There do I wish to hide me; well content If on the short grass, strewn with fairy flowers,

I might repose thus shelter'd; or when Eve In Orient crimson0 lingers in the west, the setting sun Gain the high mound, and mark these waves remote (Lucid tho' distant), blushing with the rays Of the far-flaming Orb, that sinks beneath them;

2. Possibly a variant spelling of beech (the tree).

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44 / CHARLOTTE SMITH

For I have thought, that I should then behold The beauteous works of God, unspoil'd by Man And less affected then, by human woes I witness'd not; might better learn to bear Those that injustice, and duplicity And faithlessness and folly, fix on me: For never yet could I derive relief, When my swol'n heart wap bursting with its sorrows, From the sad thought, that others like myself Live but to swell affliction's countless tribes! �Tranquil seclusion I have vainly sought; Peace, who delights in solitary shade, No more will spread for me her downy wings, But, like the fabled Danai'ds�or the wretch, Who ceaseless, up the steep acclivity, Was doom'd to heave the still rebounding rock,3 Onward I labour; as the baffled wave, Which yon rough beach repulses, that returns With the next breath of wind, to fail again.� Ah! Mourner�cease these wailings: cease and learn, That not the Cot sequester'd, where the briar And wood-bine wild, embrace the mossy thatch,

(Scarce seen amid the forest gloom obscure!) Or more substantial farm, well fenced and warm, Where the full barn, and cattle fodder'd round Speak rustic plenty; nor the statelier dome By dark firs shaded, or the aspiring pine, Close by the village Church (with care conceal'd By verdant foliage, lest the poor man's grave Should mar the smiling prospect of his Lord), Where offices0 well rang'd, or dove-cote stock'd, outbuildings Declare manorial residence; not these Or any of the buildings, new and trim With windows circling towards the restless Sea, Which ranged in rows, now terminate my walk, Can shut out for an hour the spectre Care, That from the dawn of reason, follows still Unhappy Mortals,'till the friendly grave (Our sole secure asylum) "ends the chace."4

Behold, in witness of this mournful truth, A group approach me, whose dejected looks, Sad Heralds of distress! proclaim them Men Banish'd for ever5 and for conscience sake From their distracted Country, whence the name Of Freedom misapplied, and much abus'd By lawless Anarchy, has driven them far To wander; with the prejudice they learn'd

3. In Greek mythology Sisyphus was condemned forever to push a rock uphill, only to have it roll back down just before it reached the top. The Danaides were condemned to pour water into leaky vessels. 4. I have a confused notion, that this expression, with nearly the same application, is to be found in [Edward] Young: but I cannot refer to it [Smith's note; the quotation has never been identified],

5. Catholic clergymen, banished from France by the revolutionists.

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THE EMIGRANTS / 45

From Bigotry (the Tut'ress of the blind), Thro' the wide World unshelter'd; their sole hope, That German spoilers, thro' that pleasant land

105 May carry wide the desolating scourge Of War and Vengeance;6 yet unhappy Men, Whate'er your errors, I lament your fate: And, as disconsolate and sad ye hang Upon the barrier of the rock, and seem

110 " To murmur your despondence, waiting long Some fortunate reverse that never comes; Methinks in each expressive face, I see Discriminated0 anguish; there droops one, distinct, marked Who in a moping cloister long consum'd

115 This life inactive, to obtain a better, And thought that meagre abstinence, to wake From his hard pallet with the midnight bell, To live on eleemosynary bread,0 alms And to renounce God's works, would please that God.

120 And now the poor pale wretch receives, amaz'd, The pity, strangers give to his distress, Because these strangers are, by his dark creed, Condemn'd as Heretics�and with sick heart Regrets0 his pious prison, and his beads.7� recalls with regret

125 Another, of more haughty port, declines The aid he needs not; while in mute despair His high indignant thoughts go back to France, Dwelling on all he lost�the Gothic dome, That vied with splendid palaces;8 the beds

130 Of silk and down, the silver chalices, Vestments with gold enwrought for blazing altars; Where, amid clouds of incense, he held forth To kneeling crowds the imaginary bones Of Saints suppos'd, in pearl and gold enchas'd,0 decoratively set

135 And still with more than living Monarchs' pomp Surrounded; was believ'd by mumbling bigots To hold the keys of Heaven, and to admit Whom he thought good to share it.�Now alas! He, to whose daring soul and high ambition

140 The World seem'd circumscrib'd; who, wont to dream Of Fleuri, Richelieu, Alberoni,9 men Who trod on Empire, and whose politics Were not beyond the grasp of his vast mind, Is, in a Land once hostile, still prophan'd

6. An Austro-Prussian army invaded France in August 1792 but was driven back. 7. Lest the same attempts at misrepresentation should now be made, as have been made on former occasions, it is necessary to repeat, that nothing is farther from my thoughts, than to reflect invidiously on the Emigrant clergy, whose steadiness of principle excites veneration, as much as their sufferings compassion. Adversity has now taught them the charity and humility they perhaps wanted, when they made it a part of their faith, that salvation could be obtained in no other religion than their own [Smith's note].

8. Let it not be considered as an insult to men in fallen fortune, if these luxuries (undoubtedly inconsistent with their profession) be here enumerated.� France is not the only country, where the splendour and indulgences of the higher, and the poverty and depression of the inferior Clergy, have alike proved injurious to the cause of Religion [Smith's note]. 9. Three cardinals who held important political offices.

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46 / CHARLOTTE SMITH

145 By disbelief, and rites un-orthodox, The object of compassion.�At his side, Lighter of heart than these, but heavier far Than he was wont, another victim comes, An Abbe�who with less contracted brow

150 Still smiles and flatters, and still talks of Hope; Which, sanguine as he is, he does not feel, And so he cheats the sad and weighty pressure Of evils present;�Still, as Men misled By early prejudice (so hard to break),

155 I mourn your sorrows; for I too have known Involuntary exile; and while yet England had charms for me, have felt how sad It is to look across the dim cold sea,

That melancholy rolls its refluent0 tides ebbing

160 Between us and the dear regretted land We call our own�as now ye pensive wait On this bleak morning, gazing on the waves That seem to leave your shore; from whence the wind Is loaded to your ears, with the deep groans

165 Of martyr'd Saints and suffering Royalty, While to your eyes the avenging power of Heaven Appears in aweful anger to prepare The storm of vengeance, fraught with plagues and death. Even he of milder heart, who was indeed

170 The simple shepherd in a rustic scene, And,'mid the vine-clad hills of Languedoc, Taught to the bare-foot peasant, whose hard hands Produc'd1 the nectar he could seldom taste, Submission to the Lord for whom he toil'd;

175 He, or his brethren, who to Neustria's sons0 the men of Normandy Enforc'd religious patience, when, at times, On their indignant hearts Power's iron hand Too strongly struck; eliciting some sparks Of the bold spirit of their native North;

180 Even these Parochial Priests, these humbled men, Whose lowly undistinguish'd cottages Witness'd a life of purest piety, While the meek tenants were, perhaps, unknown Each to the haughty Lord of his domain,

185 Who mark'd them not; the Noble scorning still The poor and pious Priest, as with slow pace He glided thro' the dim arch'd avenue Which to the Castle led; hoping to cheer The last sad hour of some laborious life

190 That hasten'd to its close�even such a Man Becomes an exile; staying not to try By temperate zeal to check his madd'ning flock,

1. See the finely descriptive Verses written at Montauban in France in 1750, by Dr. Joseph War- ton. Printed in Dodsley's Miscellanies, Vol. IV, page 203 [Smith's note; the lines begin, "Tarn, how delightful wind thy willow'd waves, / But ah! they fructify a land of slaves! / In vain thy barefoot, sunburnt peasants hide / With luscious grapes yon hill's romantic side; / No cups nectareous shall their toils repay . . ."]. Languedoc is in southern France, just above the Pyrenees.

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BEACHY HEAD / 47

Who, at the novel sound of Liberty (Ah! most intoxicating sound to slaves!),

195 Start into licence.�Lo! dejected now, The wandering Pastor mourns, with bleeding heart, His erring people, weeps and prays for them, And trembles for the account that he must give To Heaven for souls entrusted to his care.�

200 Where the cliff, hollow'd by the wintry storm, Affords a seat with matted sea-weed strewn, A softer form reclines; around her run, On the rough shingles,0 or the chalky bourn, pebbles Her gay unconscious children, soon amus'd;

205 Who pick the fretted stone, or glossy shell, Or crimson plant marine: or they contrive The fairy vessel, with its ribband sail And gilded paper pennant: in the pool, Left by the salt wave on the yielding sands,

210 They launch the mimic navy.�Happy age! Unmindful of the miseries of Man!� Alas! too long a victim to distress, Their Mother, lost in melancholy thought, Lull'd for a moment by the murmurs low

215 Of sullen billows, wearied by the task Of having here, with swol'n and aching eyes Fix'd on the grey horizon, since the dawn Solicitously watch'd the weekly sail From her dear native land, now yields awhile 220 To kind forgetfulness, while Fancy brings, In waking dreams, that native land again! Versailles2 appears�its painted galleries, And rooms of regal splendour; rich with gold, Where, by long mirrors multiply'd, the crowd 225 Paid willing homage�and, united there, Beauty gave charms to empire.�Ah! too soon From the gay visionary pageant rous'd, See the sad mourner start!�and, drooping, look With tearful eyes and heaving bosom round 230 On drear reality�where dark'ning waves, Urg'd by the rising wind, unheeded foam Near her cold rugged seat. * 4 *

1793

Beachy Head1

On thy stupendous summit, rock sublime! That o'er the channel rear'd, half way at sea

2. Louis XIV's opulent palace, south of Paris. what degree Smith considered the poem finished. 1. This is the longest of several works left in man-Beachy Head is the southernmost point of Sussex, uscript when Smith died in October 1806 and pub-near Eastbourne and directly across the Channel lished in the posthumous volume Beachy Head and from the French town of Dieppe. Other Poems the following year. It is not known to

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48 / CHARLOTTE SMITH

The mariner at early morning hails,2 I would recline; while Fancy should go forth,

5 And represent the strange and awful hour Of vast concussion;3 when the Omnipotent Stretch'd forth his arm, and rent the solid hills, Bidding the impetuous main flood rush between The rifted shores, and from the continent

10 Eternally divided this green isle. Imperial lord of the high southern coast! From thy projecting head-land I would mark Far in the east the shades of night disperse, Melting and thinned, as from the dark blue wave

is Emerging, brilliant rays of arrowy light0 dawn Dart from the horizon; when the glorious sun Just lifts above it his resplendent orb. Advances now, with feathery silver touched, The rippling tide of flood; glisten the sands,

20 While, inmates of the chalky clefts that scar Thy sides precipitous, with shrill harsh cry, Their white wings glancing in the level beam, The terns, and gulls, and tarrocks, seek their food,4 And thy rough hollows echo to the voice

25 Of the gray choughs,5 and ever restless daws, With clamour, not unlike the chiding hounds, While the lone shepherd, and his baying dog, Drive to thy turfy crest his bleating flock.

The high meridian0 of the day is past, noon

30 And Ocean now, reflecting the calm Heaven, Is of cerulean hue; and murmurs low The tide of ebb, upon the level sands. The sloop, her angular canvas shifting still, Catches the light and variable airs

35 That but a little crisp the summer sea, Dimpling its tranquil surface.

Afar off, And just emerging from the arch immense Where seem to part the elements, a fleet Of fishing vessels stretch their lesser sails;

40 While more remote, and like a dubious spot Just hanging in the horizon, laden deep, The ship of commerce richly freighted, makes Her slower progress, on her distant voyage, Bound to the orient climates, where the sun

2. In crossing the Channel from the coast of mandy has no likeness whatever to the part of France, Beachy-Head is the first land made England opposite to it [Smith's note]. [Smith's note]. 4. Terns. Sterna hirundo, or Sea Swallow. Gulls. 3. Alluding to an idea that this Island was once Lams canus. Tarrocks. Larus tridactyhis [Smith's joined to the continent of Europe, and torn from note]. it by some convulsion in Nature. I confess I never 5. Gray choughs. Connis Graculus, Cornish could trace the resemblance between the two Choughs, or, as these birds are called by the Sussex countries. Yet the cliffs about Dieppe, resemble people, Saddle-backed Crows, build in great numthe chalk cliffs on the Southern coast. But Nor-bers on this coast [Smith's note].

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BEACHY HEAD / 49

45 Matures the spice within its odorous shell, And, rivalling the gray worm's filmy toil, Bursts from its pod the vegetable down;6 Which in long turban'd wreaths, from torrid heat Defends the brows of Asia's countless castes.

50 There the Earth hides within her glowing breast The beamy adamant,7 and the round pearl Enchased0 in rugged covering; which the slave, enclosed With perilous and breathless toil, tears off From the rough sea-rock, deep beneath the waves.

55 These are the toys of Nature; and her sport Of little estimate in Reason's eye: And they who reason, with abhorrence see Man, for such gaudes and baubles, violate The sacred freedom of his fellow man�

60 Erroneous estimate! As Heaven's pure air, Fresh as it blows on this aerial height, Or sound of seas upon the stony strand, Or inland, the gay harmony of birds, And winds that wander in the leafy woods;

65 Are to the unadulterate taste more worth Than the elaborate harmony, brought out From fretted stop, or modulated airs Of vocal science.�So the brightest gems, Glancing resplendent on the regal crown,

70 Or trembling in the high born beauty's ear,

Are poor and paltry, to the lovely light Of the fair star,0 that as the day declines Venus Attendent on her queen, the crescent moon, Bathes her bright tresses in the eastern wave.

75 For now the sun is verging to the sea, And as he westward sinks, the floating clouds Suspended, move upon the evening gale, And gathering round his orb, as if to shade The insufferable brightness, they resign

so Their gauzy whiteness; and more warm'd, assume All hues of purple. There, transparent gold Mingles with ruby tints, and sapphire gleams, And colours, such as Nature through her works Shews only in the ethereal canopy.

85 Thither aspiring Fancy fondly soars, Wandering sublime thro' visionary vales, Where bright pavilions rise, and trophies, fann'd By airs celestial; and adorn'd with wreaths Of flowers that bloom amid elysian bowers.

90 Now bright, and brighter still the colours glow, Till half the lustrous orb within the flood Seems to retire: the flood reflecting still Its splendor, and in mimic glory drest;

6. Cotton. Goss)'pium herbaceum [Smith's note]. the Indians in diving for the pearl oysters, see the The worm's "filmy toil" in line 46 produces silk. account of the Pearl fisheries in Percival's Vieiv of 7. Diamonds, the hardest and most valuable of Ceylon [Smith's note]. precious stones. For the extraordinary exertions of

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50 / CHARLOTTE SMITH

Till the last ray shot upward, fires the clouds

95 With blazing crimson; then in paler light, Long lines of tenderer radiance, lingering yield To partial darkness; and on the opposing side The early moon distinctly rising, throws Her pearly brilliance on the trembling tide.

100 The fishermen, who at set seasons pass Many a league off at sea their toiling night, Now hail their comrades, from their daily task Returning; and make ready for their own, With the night tide commencing:�The night tide

105 Bears a dark vessel on, whose hull and sails Mark her a coaster8 from the north. Her keel Now ploughs the sand; and sidelong now she leans, While with loud clamours her athletic crew Unload her; and resounds the busy hum

no Along the wave-worn rocks. Yet more remote Where the rough cliff hangs beetling0 o'er its base, projecting All breathes repose; the waters rippling sound Scarce heard; but now and then the sea-snipe's9 cry Just tells that something living is abroad;

115 And sometimes crossing on the moonbright line, Glimmers the skiff, faintly discern'd awhile, Then lost in shadow.

Contemplation here, High on her throne of rock, aloof may sit, And bid recording Memory unfold

120 Her scroll voluminous�bid her retrace The period, when from Neustria's hostile shore0 Normandy The Norman launch'd his galleys, and the bay O'er which that mass of ruin1 frowns even now In vain and sullen menace, then received

125 The new invaders; a proud martial race, Of Scandinavia2 the undaunted sons,

8. Ship that sails along the coast. 9. In crossing the channel this bird is heard at night, uttering a short cry, and flitting along near the surface of the waves. The sailors call it the Sea Snipe; but I can find no species of sea bird of which this is the vulgar name. A bird so called inhabits the Lake of Geneva [Smith's note]. 1. Pevensey Castle [Smith's note]. 2. The Scandinavians (modern Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Lapland, &c.) and other inhabitants of the north, began towards the end of the 8th century, to leave their inhospitable climate in search of the produce of more fortunate countries. The North-men made inroads on the coasts of France; and carrying back immense booty, excited their compatriots to engage in the same piratical voyages: and they were afterwards joined by numbers of necessitous and daring adventurers from the coasts of Provence and Sicily.

In 844, these wandering innovators had a great number of vessels at sea; and again visiting the coasts of France, Spain, and England, the follow

ing year they penetrated even to Paris: and the unfortunate Charles the Bald, king of France, purchased at a high price, the retreat of the banditti he had no other means of repelling.

These successful expeditions continued for some time; till Rollo, otherwise Raoul, assembled a number of followers, and after a descent on England, crossed the channel, and made himself master of Rouen, which he fortified. Charles the Simple, unable to contend with Rollo, offered to resign to him some of the northern provinces, and to give him his daughter in marriage. Neustria, since called Normandy, was granted to him, and afterwards Brittany. He added the more solid virtues of the legislator to the fierce valour of the conqueror� converted to Christianity, he established justice, and repressed the excesses of his Danish subjects, till then accustomed to live only by plunder. His name became the signal for pursuing those who violated the laws; as well as the cry of Haro, still so usual in Normandy. The Danes and Francs produced a race of men celebrated for their

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BEACHY HEAD / 51

Whom Dogon, Fier-a-bras, and Humfroi led To conquest: while Trinacria to their power Yielded her wheaten garland; and when thou,

130 Parthenope! within thy fertile bay Receiv'd the victors�

In the mailed ranks Of Normans landing on the British coast Rode Taillefer; and with astounding voice Thunder'd the war song daring Roland sang

135 First in the fierce contention: vainly brave, One not inglorious struggle England made� But failing, saw the Saxon heptarchy3 Finish for ever. Then the holy pile,4 Yet seen upon the field of conquest, rose,

ho Where to appease heavens wrath for so much blood, The conqueror bade unceasing prayers ascend, And requiems for the slayers and the slain. But let not modern Gallia0 form from hence France Presumptuous hopes, that ever thou again,

145 Queen of the isles! shalt crouch to foreign arms. The enervate sons of Italy may yield; And the Iberian, all his trophies torn And wrapp'd in Superstition's monkish weed, May shelter his abasement, and put on

150 Degrading fetters. Never, never thou! Imperial mistress of the obedient sea; But thou, in thy integrity secure, Shalt now undaunted meet a world in arms.

England! 'twas where this promontory rears

155 Its rugged brow above the channel wave, Parting the hostile nations, that thy fame, Thy naval fame was tarnish'd, at what time Thou, leagued with the Batavian, gavest to France5

valour; and it was a small party of these that in 983, having been on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, arrived on their return at Salerno, and found the town surrounded by Mahometans, whom the Salernians were bribing to leave their coast. The Normans represented to them the baseness and cowardice of such submission; and notwithstanding the inequality of their numbers, they boldly attacked the Saracen camp, and drove the infidels to their ships. The prince of Salerno, astonished at their successful audacity, would have loaded them with the marks of his gratitude; but refusing every reward, they returned to their own country, from whence, however, other bodies of Normans passed into Sicily (anciently called Trinacria); and many of them entered into the service of the emperor of the East, others of the Pope, and the duke of Naples was happy to engage a small party of them in defence of his newly founded dutchy. Soon afterwards three brothers of Coutance, the sons of Tancred de Hauteville, Guillaume Fier-a-bras, Drogon, and Humfroi, joining the Normans established at Aversa, became masters of the fertile island of Sicily; and Robert Guiscard joining them,

the Normans became sovereigns both of Sicily and Naples (Parthenope). How William, the natural son of Robert, duke of Normandy, possessed himself of England, is too well known to be repeated here. William sailing from St. Valori, landed in the bay of Pevensey; and at the place now called Battle, met the English forces under Harold: an esquire (ecuyer) called Taillefer, mounted on an armed horse, led on the Normans, singing in a thundering tone the war song of RoIIo. He threw himself among the English, and was killed on the first onset. In a marsh not far from Hastings, the skeletons of an armed man and horse were found a few years since, which are believed to have belonged to the Normans, as a party of their horse, deceived in the nature of the ground, perished in the morass [Smith's note].

3. The seven kingdoms of Saxon England. 4. Battle Abbey was raised by the Conqueror, and endowed with an ample revenue, that masses might be said night and day for the souls of those who perished in battle [Smith's note]. 5. In 1690, King William being then in Ireland, Tourville, the French admiral, arrived on the coast

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52 / CHARLOTTE SMITH

One day of triumph�triumph the more loud,

160 Because even then so rare. Oh! well redeem'd, Since, by a series of illustrious men, Such as no other country ever rear'd, To vindicate her cause. It is a list Which, as Fame echoes it, blanches the cheek

165 Of bold Ambition; while the despot feels The extorted sceptre tremble in his grasp.

From even the proudest roll� by glory fill'd, historical record How gladly the reflecting mind returns To simple scenes of peace and industry,

170 Where, bosom'd in some valley of the hills Stands the lone farm; its gate with tawny ricks0 haystacks Surrounded, and with granaries and sheds, Roof'd with green mosses, and by elms and ash Partially shaded; and not far remov'd

175 The hut of sea-flints built; the humble home Of one, who sometimes watches on the heights,6 When hid in the cold mist of passing clouds, The flock, with dripping fleeces, are dispers'd O'er the wide down; then from some ridged point

i8o That overlooks the sea, his eager eye Watches the bark that for his signal waits To land its merchandize:�Quitting for this Clandestine traffic his more honest toil, The crook abandoning, he braves himself

185 The heaviest snow-storm of December's night, When with conflicting winds the ocean raves, And on the tossing boat, unfearing mounts To meet the partners of the perilous trade, And share their hazard. Well it were for him,

190 If no such commerce of destruction known, He were content with what the earth affords To human labour; even where she seems Reluctant most. More happy is the hind,� peasant Who, with his own hands rears on some black moor,

195 Or turbary,0 his independent hut peat bog Cover'd with heather, whence the slow white smoke Of smouldering peat arises A few sheep, His best possession, with his children share

of England. His fleet consisted of seventy-eight culty between the Dutch and French;�but three largfe ships, and twenty-two fire-ships. Lord Tor-Dutch ships were burnt, two of their admirals rington, the English admiral, lay at St. Helens, with killed, and almost all their ships disabled. The only forty English and a few Dutch ships; and con-English and Dutch declining a second engagescious of the disadvantage under which he should ment, retired towards the mouth of the Thames. give battle, he ran up between the enemy's fleet The French, from ignorance of the coast, and misand the coast, to protect it. The queen's council, understanding among each other, failed to take all dictated to by Russel, persuaded her to order Tor-the advantage they might have done of this victory rington to venture a battle. The orders Torrington [Smith's note], appears to have obeyed reluctantly: his fleet now 6. The shepherds and labourers of this tract of consisted of twenty-two Dutch and thirty-four country, a hardy and athletic race of men, are English ships. Evertson, the Dutch admiral, was almost universally engaged in the contraband eager to obtain glory; Torrington, more cautious, trade, carried on for the coarsest and most destrucreflected on the importance of the stake. The con-tive spirits, with the opposite coast. When no other sequence was, that the Dutch rashly sailing on vessel will venture to sea, these men hazard their were surrounded, and Torrington, solicitous to lives to elude the watchfulness of the Revenue offirecover this false step, placed himself with diffi-cers, and to secure their cargoes [Smith's note].

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BEACHY HEAD / 53

The rugged shed when wintry tempests blow;

200 But, when with Spring's return the green blades rise Amid the russet heath, the household live Joint tenants of the waste0 throughout the day, uncultivated land And often, from her nest, among the swamps, Where the gemm'd sun-dew grows, or fring'd buck-bean,7

205 They scare the plover,8 that with plaintive cries Flutters, as� sorely wounded, down the wind. pretending to be Rude, and but just remov'd from savage life Is the rough dweller among scenes like these, (Scenes all unlike the poet's fabling dreams

210 Describing Arcady9)�But he is free; The dread that follows on illegal acts He never feels; and his industrious mate Shares in his labour. Where the brook is traced By crowding osiers,0 and the black coot1 hides willows

215 Among the plashy reeds, her diving brood, The matron wades; gathering the long green rush2 That well prepar'd hereafter lends its light To her poor cottage, dark and cheerless else Thro' the drear hours of Winter. Otherwhile

220 She leads her infant group where charlock0 grows wild mustard "Unprofitably gay,"3 or to the fields, Where congregate the linnet and the finch, That on the thistles, so profusely spread, Feast in the desert; the poor family

225 Early resort, extirpating with care These, and the gaudier mischief of the ground; Then flames the high rais'd heap; seen afar off Like hostile war-fires flashing to the sky.4 Another task is theirs: On fields that shew

230 As� angry Heaven had rain'd sterility, as if Stony and cold, and hostile to the plough, Where clamouring loud, the evening curlew5 runs And drops her spotted eggs among the flints; The mother and the children pile the stones

235 In rugged pyramids;�and all this toil They patiently encounter; well content On their flock bed6 to slumber undisturb'd Beneath the smoky roof they call their own. Oh! little knows the sturdy hind, who stands

240 Gazing, with looks where envy and contempt Are often strangely mingled, on the car0 carriage Where prosperous Fortune sits; what secret care Or sick satiety is often hid, Beneath the splendid outside: He knows not

7. Sun-dew. Drosera rotundifolia. Buck-bean. line 194]. Menyanthes trifoliatum [Smith's note]. 4. The Beacons formerly lighted up on the hills to 8. Plover. Tringa vanelltis [Smith's note]. give notice of the approach of an enemy. These 9. Arcadia, an imagined land of peace and sim-signals would still be used in case of alarm, if the plicity. Telegraph [the signaling apparatus] now substi1. Coot. Fulica aterrima [Smith's note]. tuted could not be distinguished on account of fog 2. A reedy plant burned for light. or darkness [Smith's note]. 3. "With blossom'd furze, unprofitably gay." Gold-5. Curlew. Charadrilis oedienemus [Smith's note]. smith [Smith's note, citing The Deserted Village, 6. A bed stuffed with tufts of wool.

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54 / CHARLOTTE SMITH

245 How frequently the child of Luxury Enjoying nothing, flies from place to place In chase of pleasure that eludes his grasp; And that content is e'en less found by him, Than by the labourer, whose pick-axe smooths

250 The road before his chariot; and who doffs What was an hat; and as the train pass on, Thinks how one day's expenditure, like this, Would cheer him for long months, when to his toil The frozen earth closes her marble breast.

255 Ah! who is happy? Happiness! a word That like false fire,0 from marsh effluvia born, xvill-o'-the-wisp Misleads the wanderer, destin'd to contend In the world's wilderness, with want or woe� Yet they are happy, who have never ask'd

260 What good or evil means. The boy That on the river's margin gaily plays, Has heard that Death is there.�He knows not Death, And therefore fears it not; and venturing in He gains a bullrush, or a minnow�then,

265 At certain peril, for a worthless prize, A crow's, or raven's nest, he climbs the boll" hole, trunk Of some tall pine; and of his prowess proud, Is for a moment happy. Are your cares, Ye who despise him, never worse applied?

270 The village girl is happy, who sets forth To distant fair, gay in her Sunday suit, With cherry colour'd knots, and flourish'd shawl, And bonnet newly purchas'd. So is he Her little brother, who his mimic drum

275 Beats, till he drowns her rural lovers' oaths Of constant faith, and still increasing love; Ah! yet a while, and half those oaths believ'd, Her happiness is vanish'd; and the boy While yet a stripling, finds the sound he lov'd

280 Has led him on, till he has given up His freedom, and his happiness together. I once was happy, when while yet a child, I learn'd to love these upland solitudes, And, when elastic as the mountain air, 285 To my light spirit, care was yet unknown And evil unforseen:�Early it came, And childhood scarcely passed, I was condemned, A guiltless exile, silently to sigh, While Memory, with faithful pencil, drew 290 The contrast; and regretting, I compar'd With the polluted smoky atmosphere

And dark and stifling streets, the southern hills That to the setting Sun, their graceful heads Rearing, o'erlook the frith," where Vecta7 breaks firth, inlet

7. Vecta. The Isle of Wight, which breaks the somewhere described as "Vecta shouldering the force of the waves when they are driven by south-Western Waves" [Smith's note]. west winds against this long and open coast. It is

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BEACHY HEAD / 55

295 With her white rocks, the strong impetuous tide, When western winds the vast Atlantic urge To thunder on the coast.�Haunts of my youth! Scenes of fond day dreams, I behold ye yet! Where 'twas so pleasant by thy northern slopes

300 To climb the winding sheep-path, aided oft By scatter'd thorns: whose spiny branches bore Small woolly tufts, spoils of the vagrant lamb There seeking shelter from the noon-day sun; And pleasant, seated on the short soft turf,

305 To look beneath upon the hollow way While heavily upward mov'd the labouring wain,� wagon And stalking slowly by, the sturdy hind To ease his panting team, stopp'd with a stone The grating wheel.

Advancing higher still

310 The prospect widens, and the village church But little, o'er the lowly roofs around Rears its gray belfry, and its simple vane; Those lowly roofs of thatch are half conceal'd By the rude arms of trees, lovely in spring,8

315 When on each bough, the rosy-tinctur'd bloom Sits thick, and promises autumnal plenty. For even those orchards round the Norman Farms, Which, as their owners mark the promis'd fruit, Console them for the vineyards of the south, Surpass not these.

320 Where woods of ash, and beech, And partial copses, fringe the green hill foot, The upland shepherd rears his modest home, There wanders by, a little nameless stream That from the hill wells forth, bright now and clear,

325 Or after rain with chalky mixture gray, But still refreshing in its shallow course, The cottage garden; most for use design'd, Yet not of beauty destitute. The vine Mantles the little casement; yet the briar

330 Drops fragrant dew among the July flowers; And pansies rayed, and freak'd and mottled pinks Grow among balm, and rosemary and rue; There honeysuckles flaunt, and roses blow Almost uncultured:0 Some with dark green leaves uncultivated

335 Contrast their flowers of pure unsullied white; Others, like velvet robes of regal state Of richest crimson, while in thorny moss Enshrined and cradled, the most lovely, wear The hues of youthful beauty's glowing cheek.�

8. Every cottage in this country has its orchard; mavera Candida e vermiglia," is every where so and I imagine that not even those of Herefordshire, enchanting [Smith's note, quoting Petrarch's son- or Worcestershire, exhibit a more beautiful pros-net 310, "pure and ruddy spring"]. pect, when the trees are in bloom, and the "Pri

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56 / CHARLOTTE SMITH

340 With fond regret I recollect e'en now In Spring and Summer, what delight I felt Among these cottage gardens, and how much Such artless nosegays, knotted with a rush By village housewife or her ruddy maid,

345 Were welcome to me; soon and simply pleas'd.

An early worshipper at Nature's shrine, I loved her rudest scenes�warrens,0 and heaths, land for breeding And yellow commons, and birch-shaded hollows, And hedge rows, bordering unfrequented lanes

350 Bowered with wild roses, and the clasping woodbine Where purple tassels of the tangling vetch9 With bittersweet, and bryony inweave,1 And the dew fills the silver bindweed's2 cups.� I loved to trace the brooks whose humid banks

355 Nourish the harebell, and the freckled pagil;3 And stroll among o'ershadowing woods of beech, Lending in Summer, from the heats of noon A whispering shade; while haply there reclines Some pensive lover of uncultur'd flowers,0 wildflowers

360 Who, from the tumps0 with bright green mosses clad, hillocks, mounds Plucks the wood sorrel,4 with its light thin leaves, Heart-shaped, and triply folded; and its root Creeping like beaded coral; or who there Gathers, the copse's pride, anemones,5

365 With rays like golden studs on ivory laid Most delicate: but touch'd with purple clouds, Fit crown for April's fair but changeful brow.

Ah! hills so early loved! in fancy still I breathe your pure keen air; and still behold

370 Those widely spreading views, mocking alike The Poet and the Painter's utmost art. And still, observing objects more minute, Wondering remark the strange and foreign forms Of sea-shells; with the pale calcareous0 soil chalky

375 Mingled, and seeming of resembling substance.6 Tho' surely the blue Ocean (from the heights Where the downs westward trend, but dimly seen) Here never roll'd its surge. Does Nature then

9. Vetch. Vicia syivatica [Smith's note], 1. Bittersweet. Solatium dulcamara. Bryony. Bryonia alba [Smith's note]. 2. Bindweed. Convolvulus senium [Smith's note]. 3. Harebell. Hyacinthus non scriptus. Pagil. Primula veris [Smith's note]. 4. Sorrel. Oxalis acetosella [Smith's note]. 5. Anemones. Anemone tiemorosa. It appears to be settled on late and excellent authorities, that this word should not be accented on the second syllable, but on the penultima. I have however ventured the more known accentuation, as more generally used, and suiting better the nature of my verse [Smith's note]. 6. Among the crumbling chalk I have often found shells, some quite in a fossil state and hardly distinguishable from chalk. Others appeared more recent; cockles, muscles, and periwinkles, I well remember, were among the number; and some whose names I do not know. A great number were like those of small land snails. It is now many years since I made these observations. The appearance of sea-shells so far from the sea excited my surprise, though I then knew nothing of natural history. I have never read any of the late theories of the earth, nor was I ever satisfied with the attempts to explain many of the phenomena which call forth conjecture in those books I happened to have had access to on this subject [Smith's note].

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BEACHY HEAD / 57

Mimic, in wanton mood, fantastic shapes

380 Of bivalves, and inwreathed volutes,7 that cling To the dark sea-rock of the wat'ry world? Or did this range of chalky mountains, once8 Form a vast basin, where the Ocean waves Swell'd fathomless? What time these fossil shells,

385 Buoy'd on their native element, were thrown Among the imbedding calx:� when the huge hill lime Its giant bulk heaved, and in strange ferment Grew up a guardian barrier, 'twixt the sea And the green level of the sylvan weald.9

390 Ah! very vain is Science' proudest boast, And but a little light its flame yet lends To its most ardent votaries; since from whence These fossil forms are seen, is but conjecture, Food for vague theories, or vain dispute,

395 While to his daily task the peasant goes, Unheeding such inquiry; with no care But that the kindly change of sun and shower, Fit for his toil the earth he cultivates. As little recks the herdsman of the hill,

400 Who on some turfy knoll, idly reclined, Watches his wether0 flock, that deep beneath male sheep Rest the remains of men, of whom is left1 No traces in the records of mankind, Save what these half obliterated mounds

405 And half fill'd trenches doubtfully impart To some lone antiquary; who on times remote, Since which two thousand years have roll'd away, Loves to contemplate. He perhaps may trace, Or fancy he can trace, the oblong square

410 Where the mail'd legions, under Claudius,2 rear'd The rampire,0 or excavated fosse0 delved; rampart / ditch What time the huge unwieldy Elephant3

7. Spiral-shelled mollusks such as periwinkles. "Bivalves": hinge-shelled mollusks such as clams and oysters. 8. The theory here slightly hinted at, is taken from an idea started by Mr. White [Smith's note, referring to Gilbert White, author of The Natural History and Antiquities of Selborne, 1789]. 9. The Sussex Weald, a wooded tract of land between the North and South Downs. 1. These Downs are not only marked with traces of encampments, which from their forms are called Roman or Danish; but there are numerous tumuli [burial mounds] among them. Some of which having been opened a few years ago, were supposed by a learned antiquary to contain the remains of the original natives of the country [Smith's note]. 2. That the legions of Claudius [ 10 b.c.e-54 c.e.] were in this part of Britain appears certain. Since this emperor received the submission of Cantii, Atrebates, Irenobates, and Regni, in which latter denomination were included the people of Sussex [Smith's note]. 3. In the year 1740, some workmen digging in the park at Burton in Sussex, discovered, nine feet below the surface, the teeth and bones of an elephant; two of the former were seven feet eight inches in length. There were besides these, tusks, one of which broke in removing it, a grinder not at all decayed, and a part of the jaw-bone,. with bones of the knee and thigh, and several others. Some of them remained very lately at Burton House, the seat of John Biddulph, Esq. Others were in possession of the Rev. Dr. Langrish, minister of Petworth at that period, who was present when some of these bones were taken up, and gave it as his opinion, that they had remained there since the universal deluge [the Flood]. The Romans under the Emperor Claudius probably brought elephants into Britain. Milton, in the Second Book of his History [of Britain], in speaking of the expedition, says that "He like a great eastern king, with armed elephants, marched through Gallia." This is given on the authority of Dion Cassius, in his Life of the Emperor Claudius. It has therefore been conjectured, that the bones found at Burton might have been those of one of these elephants, who perished there soon after its

.

58 / CHARLOTTE SMITH

Auxiliary reluctant, hither led, From Afric's forest glooms and tawny sands,

415 First felt the Northern blast, and his vast frame Sunk useless; whence in after ages found, The wondering hinds, on those enormous bones Gaz'd; and in giants4 dwelling on the hills Believed and marvell'd.�

Hither, Ambition come!

420 Come and behold the nothingness of all For which you carry thro' the oppressed Earth, War, and its train of horrors�see where tread The innumerous0 hoofs of flocks above the works countless By which the warrior sought to register

425 His glory, and immortalize his name.� The pirate Dane,5 who from his circular camp Bore in destructive robbery, fire and sword Down thro' the vale, sleeps unrememberd here; And here, beneath the green sward, rests alike

430 The savage native,6 who his acorn meal Shar'd with the herds, that ranged the pathless woods; And the centurion, who on these wide hills Encamping, planted the Imperial Eagle.0 the Roman standard All, with the lapse of Time, have passed away,

435 Even as the clouds, with dark and dragon shapes, Or like vast promontories crown'd with towers, Cast their broad shadows on the downs: then sail Far to the northward, and their transient gloom Is soon forgotten.

But from thoughts like these,

440 By human crimes suggested, let us turn To where a more attractive study courts The wanderer of the hills; while shepherd girls Will from among the fescue7 bring him flowers, Of wonderous mockery; some resembling bees

445 In velvet vest, intent on their sweet toil,8 While others mimic flies,9 that lightly sport

landing; or dying on the high downs, one of which, called Duncton Hill, rises immediately above Burton Park, the bones might have been washed down by the torrents of rain, and buried deep in the soil. They were not found together, but scattered at some distance from each other. The two tusks were twenty feet apart. I had often heard of the elephant's bones at Burton, but never saw them; and I have no books to refer to. I think I saw, in what is now called the National Museum at Paris, the very large bones of an elephant, which were found in North America: though it is certain that this enormous animal is never seen in its natural state, but in the countries under the torrid zone of the old world. I have, since making this note, been told that the bones of the rhinoceros and hippopotamus have been found in America [Smith's note].

4. The peasants believe that the large bones sometimes found belonged to giants, who formerly lived on the hills. The devil also has a great deal to do with the remarkable forms of hill and vale: the Devil's Punch Bowl, the Devil's Leaps, and the Devil's Dyke, are names given to deep hollows, or high and abrupt ridges, in this and the neighbouring county [Smith's note].

5. The incursions of the Danes were for many ages the scourge of this island [Smith's note]. 6. The Aborigines of this country lived in woods, unsheltered but by trees and caves; and were probably as truly savage as any of those who are now termed so [Smith's note]. 7. The grass called Sheep's Fescue (Festuca ovina), clothes these Downs with the softest turf [Smith's note]. 8. Ophrys apifera, Bee Ophrys, or Orchis found plentifully on the hills, as well as the next [Smith's note]. 9. Ophrys muscifera. Fly Orchis. Linnaeus, misled by the variations to which some of this tribe are really subject, has perhaps too rashly esteemed all those which resemble insects, as forming only one

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BEACHY HEAD / 59

In the green shade, or float along the pool, But here seen perch'd upon the slender stalk, And gathering honey dew. While in the breeze

450 That wafts the thistle's plumed seed along, Blue bells wave tremulous. The mountain thyme1 Purples the hassock0 of the heaving mole, tuft of grass And the short turf is gay with tormentil,2 And bird's foot trefoil, and the lesser tribes

455 Of hawkweed;3 spangling it with fringed stars.� Near where a richer tract of cultur d land Slopes to the south; and burnished by the sun, Bend in the gale of August, floods of corn; The guardian of the flock, with watchful care,4

460 Repels by voice and dog the encroaching sheep� While his boy visits every wired trap5 That scars the turf; and from the pit-falls takes The timid migrants,6 who from distant wilds, Warrens, and stone quarries, are destined thus

465 To lose their short existence. But unsought By Luxury yet, the Shepherd still protects The social bird,7 who from his native haunts Of willowy current, or the rushy pool, Follows the fleecy crowd, and flirts and skims, In fellowship among them.

470 Where the knoll More elevated takes the changeful winds, The windmill rears its vanes; and thitherward With his white load,0 the master travelling, load of grain Scares the rooks rising slow on whispering wings,

475 While o'er his head, before the summer sun Lights up the blue expanse, heard more than seen, The lark sings matins; and above the clouds Floating, embathes his spotted breast in dew.

species, which he terms Ophrys insecti fera. See English Botany [Smith's note].

1. Blue bells. Campanula rotundifolia. Mountain thyme. Thymus serpyllum. "It is a common notion, that the flesh of sheep which feeds upon aromatic plants, particularly wild thyme, is superior in flavour to other mutton. The truth is, that sheep do not crop these aromatic plants, unless now and then by accident, or when they are first turned on hungry to downs, heaths, or commons; but the soil and situations favourable to aromatic plants, produce a short sweet pasturage, best adapted to feeding sheep, whom nature designed for mountains, and not for turnip grounds and rich meadows. The attachment of bees to this, and other aromatic plants, is well known." Martyn's Miller [Smith's note, citing Thomas Martyn's revision of Philip Miller's The Gardener's and Botanist's Dictionar\', 1797-1807].

2. Tormentil. Tormentilla reptans [Smith's note]. 3. Bird's foot trefoil. Trifolium ornithopoides. Hawkweed. Hieracium, many sorts [Smith's note]. 4. The downs, especially to the south, where they are less abrupt, are in many places under the plough; and the attention of the shepherds is there particularly required to keep the flocks from trespassing [Smith's note].

5. Square holes cut in the turf, into which a wire noose is fixed, to catch Wheatears. Mr. White [Natural History of Selborne] says, that these birds (Motacilla oenanthe) are never taken beyond the river Adur, and Beding Hill; but this is certainly a mistake [Smith's note]. 6. These birds are extremely fearful, and on the slightest appearance of a cloud, run for shelter to the first rut, or heap of stone, that they see [Smith's note]. 7. The Yellow Wagtail. Motacilla flava. It frequents the banks of rivulets in winter, making its nest in meadows and corn-fields. But after the breeding season is over, it haunts downs and sheepwalks, and is seen constantly among the flocks, probably for the sake of the insects it picks up. In France the shepherds call it LaBergeronette, and say it often gives them, by its cry, notice of approaching danger [Smith's note].

.

60 / CHARLOTTE SMITH

Beneath the shadow of a gnarled thorn,

480 Bent by the sea blast8 from a seat of turf With fairy nosegays strewn, how wide the view!9 Till in the distant north it melts away, And mingles indiscriminate with clouds: But if the eye could reach so far, the mart

485 Of England's capital, its domes and spires Might be perceived.�Yet hence the distant range Of Kentish hills,1 appear in purple haze; And nearer, undulate the wooded heights, And airy summits,2 that above the mole

490 Rise in green beauty; and the beacon'd ridge Of Black-down3 shagg'd with heath, and swelling rude Like a dark island from the vale; its brow Catching the last rays of the evening sun That gleam between the nearer park's old oaks,

495 Then lighten up the river, and make prominent The portal, and the ruin'd battlements4 Of that dismantled fortress; rais'd what time The Conqueror's successors fiercely fought, Tearing with civil feuds the desolate land.

500 But now a tiller of the soil dwells there, And of the turret's loop'd and rafter'd halls Has made an humbler homestead�Where he sees, Instead of armed foemen, herds that graze Along his yellow meadows; or his flocks

505 At evening from the upland driv'n to fold.�

In such a castellated mansion once A stranger chose his home; and where hard by In rude disorder fallen, and hid with brushwood Lay fragments gray of towers and buttresses,

510 Among the ruins, often he would muse.� His rustic meal soon ended, he was wont To wander forth, listening the evening sounds Of rushing milldam,5 or the distant team, Or night-jar, chasing fern-flies:6 the tir'd hind

8. The strong winds from the south-west occasion almost all the trees, which on these hills are exposed to it, to grow the other way [Smith's note]. 9. So extensive are some of the views from these hills, that only the want of power in the human eye to travel so far, prevents London itself being discerned. Description falls so infinitely short of the reality, that only here and there, distinct features can be given [Smith's note]. 1. A scar of chalk in a hill beyond Sevenoaks in Kent, is very distinctly seen of a clear day [Smith's note]. 2. The hills about Dorking in Surry; over almost the whole extent of which county the prospect extends [Smith's note]. "Mole" refers to the cliffs descending to the sea. 3. This is an high ridge, extending between Sussex and Surry. It is covered with heath, and has almost always a dark appearance. On it is a telegraph [Smith's note]. 4. In this country there are several of the fortresses or castles built by Stephen of Blois [King of England, 1135�54], in his contention for the kingdom, with the daughter of Henry the First, the empress Matilda. Some of these are now converted into farm houses [Smith's note].

5. I.e., the water in the dammed millstream. 6. Dr. Aikin remarks, I believe, in his essay "On the Application of Natural History to the Purposes of Poetry," how many of our best poets have noticed the same circumstance, the hum of the Dor Beetle (Scaraboens stercorarius) among the sounds heard by the evening wanderer. I remember only one instance in which the more remarkable, though by no means uncommon noise, of the Fern Owl, or Goatsucker, is mentioned. It is called the Night Hawk, the Jar Bird, the Churn Owl, and the Fern Owl, from its feeding on the Scaraboens solstitialis, or Fern Chafer, which it catches while on the wing with its claws, the middle toe of which is long and curiously serrated, on purpose to hold them. It was this bird that was intended to be

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BEACH Y HEA D / 6 1 515520525530 Pass'd him at nightfall, wondering he should sit On the hill top so late: they from the coast Who sought by-paths with their clandestine load, Saw with suspicious doubt, the lonely man Cross on their way: but village maidens thought His senses injur'd; and with pity say That he, poor youth! must have been cross'd in love� For often, stretch'd upon the mountain turf With folded arms, and eyes intently fix'd Where ancient elms and firs obscured a grange,0 Some little space within the vale below, They heard him, as complaining of his fate, And to the murmuring wind, of cold neglect And baffled hope he told.�The peasant girls These plaintive sounds remember, and even now Among them may be heard the stranger's songs. farm Were I a Shepherd on the hill And ever as the mists withdrew Could see the willows of the rill 535Shading the footway to the mill Where once I walk'd with you� 540And as away Night's shadows sail, And sounds of birds and brooks arise, Believe, that from the woody vale I hear your voice upon the gale In soothing melodies; 545And viewing from the Alpine height, The prospect dress'd in hues of air, Could say, while transient colours bright Touch'd the fair scene with dewy light, 'Tis, that her eyes are there! 550I think, I could endure my lot And linger on a few short years, And then, by all but you forgot, Sleep, where the turf that clothes the spot May claim some pitying tears. For 'tis not easy to forget One, who thro' life has lov'd you still, And you, however late, might yet

described in the Forty-second sonnet. I was mistaken in supposing it as visible in November; it is a migrant, and leaves this country in August. I had often seen and heard it, but I did not then know its name or history. It is called Goatsucker (Caprimitlgtis), from a strange prejudice taken against it by the Italians, who assert that it sucks their goats; and the peasants of England still believe that a disease in the backs of their cattle, occasioned by a

fly, which deposits its egg under the skin, and raises a boil, sometimes fata! to calves, is the work of this bird, which they call a Puckeridge. Nothing can convince them that their beasts are not injured by this bird, which they therefore hold in abhorrence [Smith's note, referring at the beginning to John Aikin's An Essay on the Application of Natural History to Poetry, 1777, and in the middle to sonnet 42 in her own Elegiac Sonnets].

.

62 / CHARLOTTE SMITH

With sighs to Memory giv'n, regret0 recall with regret 555 The Shepherd of the Hill.

Yet otherwhile it seem'd as if young Hope Her flattering pencil gave to Fancy's hand, And in his wanderings, rear'd to sooth his soul Ideal bowers of pleasure.�Then, of Solitude

560 And of his hermit life, still more enamour'd, His home was in the forest; and wild fruits And bread sustain'd him. There in early spring The Barkmen7 found him, e'er the sun arose; There at their daily toil, the Wedgecutters8

565 Beheld him thro' the distant thicket move. The shaggy dog following the truffle hunter,9 Bark'd at the loiterer; and perchance at night Belated villagers from fair or wake, While the fresh night-wind let the moonbeams in

570 Between the swaying boughs, just saw him pass, And then in silence, gliding like a ghost He vanish'd! Lost among the deepening gloom.� But near one ancient tree, whose wreathed roots Form'd a rude couch, love-songs and scatter'd rhymes,

575 Unfinish'd sentences, or half erased, And rhapsodies like this, were sometimes found.�

Let us to woodland wilds repair While yet the glittering night-dews seem To wait the freshly-breathing air,

580 Precursive of the morning beam, That rising with advancing day, Scatters the silver drops away.

An elm, uprooted by the storm, The trunk with mosses gray and green, 585 Shall make for us a rustic form,

Where lighter grows the forest scene; And far among the bowery shades, Are ferny lawns and grassy glades.

Retiring May to lovely June 590 Her latest garland now resigns; The banks with cuckoo-flowers1 are strewn, The woodwalks blue with columbines,2

7. As soon as the sap begins to rise, the trees intended for felling are cut and barked. At which time the men who are employed in that business pass whole days in the woods [Smith's note], 8. The wedges used in ship-building are made of beech wood, and great numbers are cut every year in the woods near the Downs [Smith's note]. 9. Truffles are found under the beech woods, by means of small dogs trained to hunt them by the scent [Smith's note].

1. Cuckoo-flowers. Lychnis dioica. Shakespeare describes the Cuckoo buds as being yellow [Love's Labor's Lost 5.2.871], He probably meant the numerous Ranunculi, or March marigolds (Caltha palustris) which so gild the meadows in Spring; but poets have never been botanists. The Cuckoo flower is the Lychnisfloscuctili [Smith's note]. 2. Columbines. Aquilegia vulgaris [Smith's note].

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BEACH Y HEA D / 6 3 And with its reeds, the wandering stream Reflects the flag-flower's3 golden gleam. 595600 There, feathering down the turf to meet, Their shadowy arms the beeches spread, While high above our sylvan seat, Lifts the light ash its airy head; And later leaved, the oaks between Extend their boughs of vernal green. 605The slender birch its paper rind Seems offering to divided love, And shuddering even without a wind Aspens, their paler foliage move, As if some spirit of the air Breath'd a low sigh in passing there. 6ioThe Squirrel in his frolic mood, Will fearless bound among the boughs; Yaffils4 laugh loudly thro' the wood, And murmuring ring-doves tell their vows; While we, as sweetest woodscents rise, Listen to woodland melodies. 615And I'll contrive a sylvan room Against the time of summer heat, Where leaves, inwoven in Nature's loom, Shall canopy our green retreat; And gales that "close the eye of day"5 Shall linger, e'er they die away. And when a sere and sallow hue 620 From early frost the bower receives, I'll dress the sand rock cave for you, And strew the floor with heath and leaves, That you, against the autumnal air May find securer shelter there. 625630 The Nightingale will then have ceas'd To sing her moonlight serenade; But the gay bird with blushing breast,6 And Woodlarks7 still will haunt the shade, And by the borders of the spring Reed-wrens8 will yet be carolling.

3. Flag-flower. Iris pseudacorns [Smith's note], 4. Yaffils. Woodpeckers (Picus); three or four species in Britain [Smith's note]. 5. "And liquid notes that close the eye of day." Milton [Sonnet 1, "O Nightingale"]. The idea here meant to be conveyed is of the evening wind, so welcome after a hot day of Summer, and which appears to sooth and lull all nature into tranquillity [Smith's note]. 6. The Robin (Motacilla rubecula), which is always heard after other songsters have ceased to sing [Smith's note]. 7. The Woodlark (Alauda nemorosa), sings very late [Smith's note]. 8. Reed-wrens (Motacilla amndinacea), sing all the summer and autumn, and are often heard during the night [Smith's note].

.

64 / CHARLOTTE SMITH

The forest hermit's lonely cave None but such soothing sounds shall reach, Or hardly heard, the distant wave Slow breaking on the stony beach; 635 Or winds, that now sigh soft and low, Now make wild music as they blow.

And then, before the chilling North The tawny foliage falling light, Seems, as it flits along the earth,

640 The footfall of the busy Sprite, Who wrapt in pale autumnal gloom, Calls up the mist-born Mushroom.

Oh! could I hear your soft voice there, And see you in the forest green 645 All beauteous as you are, more fair

You'd look, amid the sylvan scene, And in a wood-girl's simple guise, Be still more lovely in mine eyes.

Ye phantoms of unreal delight, 650 Visions of fond delirium born! Rise not on my deluded sight,

Then leave me drooping and forlorn To know, such bliss can never be, Unless Amanda loved like me.

655 The visionary, nursing dreams like these, Is not indeed unhappy. Summer woods Wave over him, and whisper as they wave, Some future blessings he may yet enjoy. And as above him sail the silver clouds,

660 He follows them in thought to distant climes, Where, far from the cold policy of this, Dividing him from her he fondly loves, He, in some island of the southern sea,9 May haply build his cane-constructed bower

665 Beneath the bread-fruit, or aspiring palm, With long green foliage rippling in the gale. Oh! let him cherish his ideal bliss� For what is life, when Hope has ceas'd to strew Her fragile flowers along its thorny way?

670 And sad and gloomy are his days, who lives Of Hope abandon'd!

Just beneath the rock Where Beachy overpeers the channel wave,

9. An allusion to the visionary delights of the fertility of their country gives them, produces the newly discovered islands [Polynesia], where it was grossest vices; and a degree of corruption that late at first believed men lived in a state of simplicity navigators think will end in the extirpation of the and happiness; but where, as later enquiries have whole people in a few years [Smith's note]. ascertained, that exemption from toil, which the

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BEACHY HEAD / 65

Within a cavern mined by wintry tides Dwelt one,1 who long disgusted with the world

675 And all its ways, appear'd to suffer life Rather than live; the soul-reviving gale, Fanning the bean-field, or the thymy� heath, abounding in thyme Had not for many summers breathed on him; And nothing mark'd to him the season's change,

6so Save that more gently rose the placid sea, And that the birds which winter on the coast Gave place to other migrants; save that the fog, Hovering no more above the beetling cliffs Betray'd not then the little careless sheep2

685 On the brink grazing, while their headlong fall Near the lone Hermit's flint-surrounded home, Claim'd unavailing pity; for his heart Was feelingly alive to all that breath'd; And outraged as he was, in sanguine youth,

690 By human crimes, he still acutely felt For human misery.

Wandering on the beach, He learn'd to augur from the clouds of heaven, And from the changing colours of the sea, And sullen murmurs of the hollow cliffs,

695 Or the dark porpoises,3 that near the shore Gambol'd and sported on the level brine When tempests were approaching: then at night He listen'd to the wind; and as it drove The billows with o'erwhelming vehemence

7oo He, starting from his rugged couch, went forth And hazarding a life, too valueless, He waded thro' the waves, with plank or pole Towards where the mariner in conflict dread Was buffeting for life the roaring surge;

705 And now just seen, now lost in foaming gulphs, The dismal gleaming of the clouded moon Shew'd the dire peril. Often he had snatch'd From the wild billows, some unhappy man Who liv'd to bless the hermit of the rocks.

710 But if his generous cares were all in vain, And with slow swell the tide of morning bore Some blue swol'n cor'se� to land; the pale recluse corpse Dug in the chalk a sepulchre�above Where the dank sea-wrack0 mark'd the utmost tide, refuse from the sea

1. In a cavern almost immediately under the cliff called Beachy Head, there lived, as the people of the country believed, a man of the name of Darby, who for many years had no other abode than this cave, and subsisted almost entirely on shell-fish. He had often administered assistance to shipwrecked mariners; but venturing into the sea on this charitable mission during a violent equinoctial storm, he himself perished. As it is above thirty years since I heard this tradition of Parson Darby (for so I think he was called): it may now perhaps be forgotten [Smith's note].

2. Sometimes in thick weather the sheep feeding on the summit of the cliff, miss their footing, and are killed by the fall [Smith's note]. 3. Dark porpoises. Del-phimts phoccena [Smith's note].

.

66 / MARY ROBINSON

715 And with his prayers perform'd the obsequies For the poor helpless stranger.

One dark night The equinoctial wind blew south by west, Fierce on the shore;�the bellowing cliffs were shook Even to their stony base, and fragments fell

720 Flashing and thundering on the angry flood. At day-break, anxious for the lonely man, His cave the mountain shepherds visited, Tho' sand and banks of weeds had choak'd their way. � He was not in it; but his drowned cor'se

725 By the waves wafted, near his former home Receiv'd the rites of burial. Those who read Chisel'd within the rock, these mournful lines, Memorials of his sufferings, did not grieve, That dying in the cause of charity

730 His spirit, from its earthly bondage freed, Had to some better region fled for ever.

1806 1807

MARY ROBINSON 1 757?�1800

Mary Robinson, whom the Dictionary of National Biography, at the beginning of a long entry, describes as "actress, author, and mistress of George, Prince of Wales," lived a more sensational life than any other poet of the period, Byron and Shelley included. Her father was a Bristol whaler, her mother a woman of "genteel background" who, after her husband deserted the family, ran a school for girls. At fifteen Mary was married to Thomas Robinson, an articled law clerk who seemed a good match but quickly proved a gambler and libertine; he was arrested for debt, and Mary and her infant daughter spent a year with him in debtors' prison, where, to pass the time, she began writing poetry. Her first pieces appeared in a two-volume Poems published under the patronage of the duchess of Devonshire in 1775.

In December 1776, accepting a long-standing invitation of David Garrick, the actor-manager of the Drury Lane theater, Robinson made her stage debut as Juliet, and for the next four years she was constantly before the public�in thirty or more principal roles, nine of them in plays by Shakespeare. A beauty and leader of fashion, she attracted many suitors and was painted by many of the leading portraitists of the day, including George Romney, Thomas Gainsborough, and Sir Joshua Reynolds, president of the Royal Academy. At a command performance of The Winter's Tale in December 1779, playing the role of Perdita, Robinson captivated the teenaged prince of Wales and, after negotiating financial compensation in the form of a .20,000 bond (because she would have to give up her acting career), became his mistress. As a royal mistress, she was even more exposed to the public eye than she had been on the stage; years after the prince abandoned her, ribald speculation about the erotic adventures of "Perdita" continued to engross gossip columnists and satiric cartoonists. Robin- son's attempt, following the prince's desertion, to sue for the promised .20,000 failed, but through the efforts of the Whig parliamentarian Charles James Fox, another

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MARY ROBINSON / 67

famous man who may have been her lover, she received an annuity from the prince of .500 per year. At twenty-five she formed an attachment with Banastre Tarleton, an army officer who had just returned from the war in America and was embarking on a career in Parliament. That attachment lasted ten years, until Tarleton married an heiress. Robinson was by this time in poor health and, as a consequence of either a miscarriage (in some accounts) or rheumatic fever (in others), was paralyzed from the waist down. Even in this condition she made a striking public figure, as four liveried servants, covering their arms with long white sleeves, bore her from the opera house to her waiting carriage. A sawy self-publicist, she appears to have been well aware of the part she played in the spectacle that was fashionable London, accepting and even embracing (in the words of her modern editor, Judith Pascoe) her role as "the most attractive object in a large urban display."

Literature became Robinson's principal activity and source of income when she was in her early thirties. In 1788 and 1789, writing under the pen name "Laura Maria" and sending her verse to the papers the World and the Oracle, she entered into a passionate poetical correspondence with "Delia Crusca" (pseudonym of the poet Robert Merry, who had already participated in a similar public flirtation in the periodical press, in the series of love poems he exchanged with "Anna Matilda," the poet Hannah Cowley). When, in her Poems of 1791, Robinson reprinted some of these "effusions" of feeling, she attracted six hundred subscribers. In 1796 she contributed to the English revival of the sonnet with her Petrarchan series Sappho and Phaon. In the

1790s she also authored seven novels, beginning in 1792 with Vacenza, or The Dangers of Credulity. She succeeded Robert Southey in the influential office of poetry editor of the Morning Post in 1799. Other writings by Robinson include her political tracts Impartial Reflections on the Present Situation of the Queen of France (1793) and Thoughts on the Condition of Women, and on the Injustice of Mental Subordination (1799) and her posthumous Memoirs (1801), an autobiography whose description of a woman's poetic vocation makes it (like Robinson's critical discussion of the Greek poet of passion Sappho) exceptional in an era now better known for its models of masculine artistry.

Robinson is one of the accomplished writers of blank verse in the 1790s (as in "London's Summer Morning") as well as one of the most irrepressibly musical in many different forms of rhyme. Outspokenly liberal in its politics, good-humored, satirical, and sentimental by turns, her late verse in particular exemplifies what Stuart Curran calls "the new realism that will impel English poetry into the nineteenth century." Lyrical Tales (1800), the final volume of Robinson's poetry to be published in her lifetime, appeared the month before the second edition of Wordsworth and Coleridge's Lyrical Ballads�from the same publisher and printer and in exactly the same format and typography (Wordsworth, in reaction, tried to change his own title to Poems by W. Wordsworth). Robinson's "The Poor Singing Dame" is modeled on the most popular of Wordsworth's 1798 ballads, "Goody Blake and Harry Gill." Wordsworth in turn based one of his pieces ("The Seven Sisters; or, The Solitude of Binnorie") on the elaborate metrical scheme of Robinson's "The Haunted Beach," a poem that prompted Coleridge to exclaim to Southey, when he first saw it in the Morning Post, "the Metre�ay! that Woman has an Ear." Coleridge admired her "undoubted Genius," and Robinson returned the compliment in one of her last poems, "To the Poet Coleridge," a shrewd reading of "Kubla Khan" sixteen years before it first got into print.

.

68 / MARY ROBINSON

January, 17951

Pavement slipp'ry, people sneezing, Lords in ermine, beggars freezing; Titled gluttons dainties carving, Genius in a garret starving.

5 Lofty mansions, warm and spacious; Courtiers cringing and voracious; Misers scarce the wretched heeding; Gallant soldiers fighting, bleeding.

Wives who laugh at passive spouses;

10 Theatres, and meeting-houses; Ralls, where simp'ring misses languish; Hospitals, and groans of anguish.

Arts and sciences bewailing; Commerce drooping, credit failing;

15 Placemen" mocking subjects loyal; Separations, weddings royal.

Authors who can't earn a dinner; Many a subtle rogue a winner; Fugitives for shelter seeking;

20 Misers hoarding, tradesmen breaking.0

Taste and talents quite deserted; All the laws of truth perverted; Arrogance o'er merit soaring; Merit silently deploring.

25 Ladies gambling night and morning; Fools the works of genius scorning; Ancient dames for girls mistaken, Youthful damsels quite forsaken.

Some in luxury delighting;

30 More in talking than in fighting; Lovers old, and beaux decrepid; Lordlings empty and insipid.

Poets, painters, and musicians; Lawyers, doctors, politicians: 35 Pamphlets, newspapers, and odes, Seeking fame by diff'rent roads.

Gallant souls with empty purses; Gen'rals only fit for nurses; School-boys, smit with martial spirit,

40 Taking place of vet'ran merit.

1. First published in the Morning Post as the work of "Portia." political appointees

going bankrupt

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L ONDON'S S UMMER M ORNING / 69

Honest men who can't get places, Knaves who shew unblushing faces; Ruin hasten'd, peace retarded; Candor spurn'd, and art rewarded.

1795 1806

London's Summer Morning

Who has not wak'd to list the busy sounds Of summer's morning, in the sultry smoke Of noisy London? On the pavement hot The sooty chimney-boy, with dingy face

5 And tatter'd covering, shrilly bawls his trade, Rousing the sleepy housemaid. At the door The milk-pail rattles, and the tinkling bell Proclaims the dustman's0 office; while the street trash collector's Is lost in clouds impervious. Now begins

10 The din of hackney-coaches, waggons, carts; While tinmen's shops, and noisy trunk-makers, Knife-grinders, coopers, squeaking cork-cutters, Fruit-barrows, and the hunger-giving cries Of vegetable venders, fill the air.

15 Now ev'ry shop displays its varied trade, And the fresh-sprinkled pavement cools the feet Of early walkers. At the private door The ruddy housemaid twirls the busy mop,1 Annoying the smart 'prentice, or neat girl,

20 Tripping with band-box2 lightly. Now the sun Darts burning splendor on the glitt'ring pane, Save where the canvas awning throws a shade On the gay merchandise. Now, spruce and trim, In shops (where beauty smiles with industry)

25 Sits the smart damsel; while the passenger" passerby Peeps through the window, watching ev'ry charm. Now pastry dainties catch the eye minute Of humming insects, while the limy snare3 Waits to enthral them. Now the lamp-lighter

30 Mounts the tall ladder, nimbly venturous, To trim the half-fill'd lamp; while at his feet The pot-boy4 yells discordant! All along The sultry pavement, the old-clothes-man cries In tone monotonous, and side-long views

35 The area for his traffic: now the bag Is slily open'd, and the half-worn suit (Sometimes the pilfer'd treasure of the base Domestic spoiler), for one half its worth, Sinks in the green abyss. The porter now

40 Bears his huge load along the burning way;

1. An echo of Jonathan Swift's urban pastoral "A 2. Box for hats, gloves, etc. Description of the Morning" (1709), in which Moll 3. Sticky substance used to catch insects. whirls "her mop with dex'trous airs" (line 7). 4. Servant from a nearby pub.

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70 / MARY ROBINSON

And the poor poet wakes from busy dreams, To paint the summer morning.

1795-1800 1800

The Camp1

Tents, marquees, and baggage waggons; Suttling houses,2 beer in flaggons; Drums and trumpets, singing, firing; Girls seducing, beaux admiring;

5 Country lasses gay and smiling, City lads their hearts beguiling; Dusty roads, and horses frisky; Many an Eton boy in whisky;3 Tax'd carts full of farmer's daughters;

io Brutes condemn'd, and man�who slaughters! Public-houses, booths, and castles; Belles of fashion, serving vassals; Lordly Gen'rals fiercely staring, Weary soldiers, sighing, swearing!

15 Petit maitres� always dressing� fops In the glass themselves caressing; Perfum'd, painted, patch'd and blooming Ladies�manly airs assuming! Dowagers of fifty, simp'ring 20 Misses, for a lover whimp'ring� Husbands drill'd to household tameness; Dames heart sick of wedded sameness. Princes setting girls a-madding� Wives for ever fond of gadding� 25 Princesses with lovely faces, Beauteous children of the Graces! Britain's pride and Virtue's treasure, Fair and gracious, beyond measure! Aid de Camps, and youthful pages� 30 Prudes, and vestals0 of all ages!� virgins Old coquets, and matrons surly, Sounds of distant hurly burly\ Mingled voices uncouth singing; Carts, full laden, forage bringing; 35 Sociables,4 and horses weary; Houses warm, and dresses airy; Loads of fatten'd poultry; pleasure Serv'd (TO NOBLES) without measure. Doxies' who the waggons follow; 40 Beer, for thirsty hinds0 to swallow; farm boys

1. Robinson's description of the social world of a able two-wheeled carriage. Eton, the famous pub- military camp was published in the Morning Post, lic school, is in Windsor, where a military camp on Aug. 1, !800, as the work of "Oberon," king of had been established. the fairies. 4. ^Carriages with facing seats. 2. Establishments selling provisions to soldiers. 5. Mistresses, perhaps prostitutes. 3. Besides being a drink, a whisky was a fashion

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T HE P OOR SINGING D AME / 71

Washerwomen, fruit-girls cheerful, ANTIENT LADIES�chaste and fearfull Tradesmen, leaving shops, and seeming More of war than profit dreaming;

45 Martial sounds, and braying asses; Noise, that ev'ry noise surpasses! All confusion, din, and riot� NOTHING CLEAN�and NOTHING QUIET.

1800

The Poor Singing Dame

Beneath an old wall, that went round an old castle, For many a year, with brown ivy o'erspread, A neat little hovel, its lowly roof raising, Defied the wild winds that howl'd over its shed: 5 The turrets, that frown'd on the poor simple dwelling, Were rock'd to and fro, when the tempest would roar, And the river, that down the rich valley was swelling, Flow'd swiftly beside the green step of its door.

The summer sun gilded the rushy roof slanting, 10 The bright dews bespangled its ivy-bound hedge, And above, on the ramparts, the sweet birds were chanting, And wild buds thick dappled the clear river's edge. When the castle's rich chambers were haunted and dreary, The poor little hovel was still and secure; 15 And no robber e'er enter'd, nor goblin nor fairy, For the splendors of pride had no charms to allure.

The Lord of the castle, a proud surly ruler, Oft heard the low dwelling with sweet music ring, For the old Dame that Iiv'd in the little hut cheerly, 20 Would sit at her wheel, and would merrily sing: When with revels the castle's great hall was resounding, The old Dame was sleeping, not dreaming of fear; And when over the mountains the huntsmen were bounding She would open her lattice, their clamors to hear.

25 To the merry-ton'd horn she would dance on the threshold, And louder, and louder, repeat her old song:

And when winter its mantle of frost was displaying, She caroll'd, undaunted, the bare woods among: She would gather dry fern, ever happy and singing,

30 With her cake of brown bread, and her jug of brown beer, And would smile when she heard the great castle-bell ringing, Inviting the proud�to their prodigal cheer.

Thus she liv'd, ever patient and ever contented, Till envy the Lord of the castle possess'd, 35 For he hated that poverty should be so cheerful,

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72 / MARY ROBINSON

While care could the fav'rites of fortune molest; He sent his bold yeomen with threats to prevent her, And still would she carol her sweet roundelay; At last, an old steward relentless he sent her� 40 Who bore her, all trembling, to prison away!

Three weeks did she languish, then died broken-hearted, Poor Dame! how the death-bell did mournfully sound! And along the green path six young bachelors bore her, And laid her for ever beneath the cold ground!

45 And the primroses pale 'mid the long grass were growing, The bright dews of twilight bespangled her grave, And morn heard the breezes of summer soft blowing

To bid the fresh flow'rets in sympathy wave.

The Lord of the castle, from that fatal moment so When poor singing Mary was laid in her grave, Each night was surrounded by screech-owls appalling, Which o'er the black turrets their pinions would wave! On the ramparts that frown'd on the river, swift flowing, They hover'd, still hooting a terrible song, 55 When his windows would rattle, the winter blast blowing, They would shriek like a ghost, the dark alleys among!

Wherever he wander'd they follow'd him crying, At dawnlight, at eve, still they haunted his way! When the moon shone across the wide common they hooted, 60 Nor quitted his path till the blazing of day. His bones began wasting, his flesh was decaying, And he hung his proud head, and he perish'd with shame; And the tomb of rich marble, no soft tear displaying, O'ershadows the grave of the Poor Singing Dame!

1799-1800 1800

The Haunted Beach

Upon a lonely desart Beach, Where the white foam was scatter'd, A little shed uprear'd its head, Though lofty barks0 were shatter'd. ships 5 The sea-weeds gath'ring near the door

A somber path display'd; And, all around, the deaf'ning roar Re-echo'd on the chalky shore,

By the green billows made.

10 Above a jutting cliff was seen Where Sea Birds hover'd, craving; And all around the craggs were bound With weeds�for ever waving.

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T HE H AUNTED

And here and there, a cavern wide is Its shad'wyjaws display'd; And near the sands, at ebb of tide, A shiver'd mast was seen to ride Where the green billows stray'd. And often, while the moaning wind 20 Stole o'er the Summer Ocean, The moonlight scene was all serene, The waters scarce in motion; Then, while the smoothly slanting sand The tall cliff wrapp'd in shade, 25 The Fisherman beheld a band Of Spectres gliding hand in hand� Where the green billows play'd. And pale their faces were as snow, And sullenly they wander'd; 30 And to the skies with hollow eyes They look'd as though they ponder'd. And sometimes, from their hammock shroud, They dismal howlings made, And while the blast blew strong and loud 35 The clear moon mark'd the ghastly crowd, Where the green billows play'd! And then above the haunted hut The Curlews screaming hover'd; And the low door, with furious roar, 40 The frothy breakers cover'd. For in the Fisherman's lone shed A murder'd man was laid, With ten wide gashes in his head, And deep was made his sandy bed 45 Where the green billows play'd. A shipwreck'd Mariner was he, Doom'd from his home to sever; Who swore to be through wind and sea Firm and undaunted ever! 50 And when the wave resistless roll'd, About his arm he made A packet rich of Spanish gold, And, like a British sailor bold, Plung'd where the billows play'd! 55 The Spectre band, his messmates brave, Sunk in the yawning ocean, While to the mast he lash'd him fast, And braVd the storm's commotion. The winter moon upon the sand 60 A silv'ry carpet made, And mark'd the Sailor reach the land,

B EACH / 73

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74 / MARY ROBINSON

And mark'd his murd'rer wash his hand Where the green billows play'd.

And since that hour the Fisherman 65

Has toil'd and toil'd in vain; For all the night the moony light Gleams on the specter'd main! And when the skies are veil'd in gloom, The Murd'rer's liquid way

70 Bounds o'er the deeply yawning tomb, And flashing fires the sands illume, Where the green billows play!

Full thirty years his task has been Day after day more weary; 75 For Heav'n design'd his guilty mind Should dwell on prospects dreary. Bound by a strong and mystic chain, He has not pow'r to stray; But destin'd mis'ry to sustain, so He wastes, in Solitude and Pain, A loathsome life away.

1800

To the Poet Coleridge1

Rapt in the visionary theme! Spirit divine! with thee I'll wander, Where the blue, wavy, lucid stream, 'Mid forest glooms, shall slow meander! 5 With thee I'll trace the circling bounds Of thy new Paradise extended; And listen to the varying sounds Of winds, and foamy torrents blended.

Now by the source which lab'ring heaves 10 The mystic fountain, bubbling, panting, While gossamer" its net-work weaves, filmy cobweb

Adown the blue lawn slanting! I'll mark thy sunny dome, and view Thy caves of ice, thy fields of dew!

15 Thy ever-blooming mead, whose flow'r Waves to the cold breath of the moonlight hour! Or when the day-star, peering bright On the grey wing of parting night; While more than vegetating pow'r

20 Throbs grateful to the burning hour,

1. This poem is a tribute to, and running commentary on, Coleridge's "Kubla Khan," which Robinson read in manuscript (Coleridge had drafted it in 1797 but did not publish it until 1816).

.

T o THE P OET C OLERIDGE / 7 5 As summer's whisper'd sighs unfold Her million, million buds of gold; Then will I climb the breezy bounds, Of thy new Paradise extended, 25 And listen to the distant sounds Of winds, and foamy torrents blended! Spirit divine! with thee I'll trace Imagination's boundless space! With thee, beneath thy sunny dome, 30 I'll listen to the minstrel's lay, Hymning the gradual close of day; In caves of ice enchanted roam, Where on the glitt'ring entrance plays The moon's-beam with its silv'ry rays; 35 Or, when the glassy stream, That through the deep dell flows, Flashes the noon's hot beam; The noon's hot beam, that midway shows Thy flaming temple, studded o'er 40 With all Peruvia's0 lustrous store! Peru's There will I trace the circling bounds Of thy new Paradise extended! And listen to the awful sounds, Of winds, and foamy torrents blended! 45 And now I'll pause to catch the moan Of distant breezes, cavern-pent; Now, ere the twilight tints are flown, Purpling the landscape, far and wide, On the dark promontory's side 50 I'll gather wild flow'rs, dew besprent,0 sprinkled And weave a crown for thee, Genius of Heav'n-taught poesy! While, op'ning to my wond'ring eyes, Thou bidst a new creation rise, 55 I'll raptur'd trace the circling bounds Of thy rich Paradise extended, And listen to the varying sounds Of winds, and foaming torrents blended. And now, with lofty tones inviting, 60 Thy nymph, her dulcimer swift smiting, Shall wake me in ecstatic measures! Far, far remov'd from mortal pleasures! In cadence rich, in cadence strong, Proving the wondrous witcheries of song! 65 I hear her voice! thy sunny dome, Thy caves of ice, aloud repeat, Vibrations, madd'ning sweet, Calling the visionary wand'rer home. She sings of thee, O favor'd child 70 Of minstrelsy, sublimely wild!

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76 / WILLIAM BLAKE

Of thee, whose soul can feel the tone Which gives to airy dreams a magic all thy own!

Oct. 1800 1801

WILLIAM BLAKE

1757-1827

What William Blake called his "Spiritual Life" was as varied, free, and dramatic as his "Corporeal Life" was simple, limited, and unadventurous. His father was a London tradesman. His only formal education was in art: at the age of ten he entered a drawing school, and later he studied for a time at the school of the Royal Academy of Arts. At fourteen he entered an apprenticeship for seven years to a well-known engraver, James Basire, and began reading widely in his free time and trying his hand at poetry. At twenty-four he married Catherine Boucher, daughter of a market gardener. She was then illiterate, but Blake taught her to read and to help him in his engraving and printing. In the early and somewhat sentimentalized biographies, Catherine is represented as an ideal wife for an unorthodox and impecunious genius. Blake, however, must have been a trying domestic partner, and his vehement attacks on the torment caused by a possessive, jealous female will, which reached their height in 1793 and remained prominent in his writings for another decade, probably reflect a troubled period at home. The couple was childless.

The Blakes for a time enjoyed a moderate prosperity while Blake gave drawing lessons, illustrated books, and engraved designs made by other artists. When the demand for his work slackened, Blake in 1800 moved to a cottage at Felpham, on the Sussex seacoast, to take advantage of the patronage of the wealthy amateur of the arts and biographer William Hayley (also a supporter of Charlotte Smith), who with the best of narrow intentions tried to transform Blake into a conventional artist and breadwinner. But the caged eagle soon rebelled. Hayley, Blake wrote, "is the Enemy of my Spiritual Life while he pretends to be the Friend of my Corporeal."

At Felpham in 1803 occurred an event that left a permanent mark on Blake's mind and art�an altercation with one John Schofield, a private in the Royal Dragoons. Blake ordered the soldier out of his garden and, when Schofield replied with threats and curses against Blake and his wife, pushed him the fifty yards to the inn where he was quartered. Schofield brought charges that Blake had uttered seditious statements about king and country. Since England was at war with France, sedition was a hanging offense. Blake was acquitted�an event, according to a newspaper account, "which so gratified the auditory that the court was . . . thrown into an uproar by their noisy exultations." Nevertheless Schofield, his fellow soldier Cock, and other participants in the trial haunted Blake's imagination and were enlarged to demonic characters who play a sinister role in Jerusalem. The event exacerbated Blake's sense that ominous forces were at work in the contemporary world and led him to complicate the symbolic and allusive style by which he veiled the radical religious, moral, and political opinions that he expressed in his poems.

The dominant literary and artistic fashion of Blake's youth involved the notion that the future of British culture would involve the recovery, through archaeology as well as literary history, of an all but lost past. As an apprentice engraver who learned to draw by sketching the medieval monuments of London churches, Blake began his artistic career in the thick of that antiquarianism. It also informs his early lyric poetry. Poetical Sketches, published when he was twenty-six, suggests Blake's affinities with a group of later-eighteenth-century writers that includes Thomas Warton, poet and student of Middle English romance and Elizabethan verse; Thomas Gray, translator

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WILLIAM BLAKE / 77

from Old Icelandic and Welsh and author, in 1757, of "The Bard," a poem about the English conquest of Wales; Thomas Percy, the editor of the ballad collection Reliques of Ancient English Poetry (1765); and James Macpherson, who came before the public in the 1760s claiming to be the translator of the epic verse of a third-century Gaelic bard named Ossian. Like these figures, Blake located the sources of poetic inspiration in an archaic native tradition that, according to the prevailing view of national history, had ended up eclipsed after the seventeenth century, when French court culture, manners, and morals began their cultural ascendancy. Even in their orientation to a visionary culture, the bards of Blake's later Prophetic Books retain an association with this imagined version of a primitive past.

Poetical Sketches was the only book of Blake's to be set in type according to customary methods. In 1788 he began to experiment with relief etching, a method that he called "illuminated printing" (a term associating his works with the illuminated manuscripts of the Middle Ages) and used to produce most of his books of poems. Working directly on a copper plate with pens, brushes, and an acid-resistant medium, he wrote the text in reverse (so that it would print in the normal order) and also drew the illustration; he then etched the plate in acid to eat away the untreated copper and leave the design standing in relief. The pages printed from such plates were colored by hand in water colors, often by Catherine Blake, and stitched together to make up a volume. This process was laborious and time-consuming, and Blake printed very few copies of his books; for example, of Songs of Innocence and of Experience only twenty-eight copies (some of them incomplete) are known to exist; of The Book ofThel, sixteen; of The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, nine; and of Jerusalem, five.

To read a Blake poem without the pictures is to miss something important: Blake places words and images in a relationship that is sometimes mutually enlightening and sometimes turbulent, and that relationship is an aspect of the poem's argument. In this mode of relief etching, he published Songs of Innocence (1789), then added supplementary poems and printed Songs of Innocence and of Experience (1794). The two groups of poems represent the world as it is envisioned by what he calls "two contrary states of the human soul."

Gradually Blake's thinking about human history and his experience of life and suffering articulated themselves in the "Giant Forms" and their actions, which came to constitute a complete mythology. As Blake's mythical character Los said, speaking for all imaginative artists, "I must Create a System or be enslaved by another Man's." This coherent but constantly altering and enlarging system composed the subject matter first of Blake's "minor prophecies," completed by 1795, and then of the major prophetic books on which he continued working until about 1820: The Four Zoas, Milton, and Jerusalem.

In his sixties Blake gave up poetry to devote himself to pictorial art. In the course of his life, he produced hundreds of paintings and engravings, many of them illustrations for the work of other poets, including a representation of Chaucer's Canterbury pilgrims, a superb set of designs for the Book of Job, and a series of illustrations of Dante, on which he was still hard at work when he died. At the time of his death, Blake was little known as an artist and almost entirely unknown as a poet. In the mid- nineteenth century he acquired a group of admirers among the Pre-Baphaelites, who regarded him as a precursor. Since the mid-1920s Blake has finally come into his own, both in poetry and in painting, as one of the most dedicated, intellectually challenging, and astonishingly original artists. His marked influence ranges from William Butler Yeats, who edited Blake's writings and modeled his own system of mythology on Blake's, to Allen Ginsberg and other Beat writers, Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy, and the graphic novels of the present day.

The explication of Blake's cryptic prophetic books has been the preoccupation of many scholars. Blake wrote them in the persona, or "voice," of "the Bard! / Who Present, Past, & Future sees"�that is, as a British poet who follows Spenser, and especially Milton, in a lineage going back to the prophets of the Bible. "The Nature of my Work," he said, "is Visionary or Imaginative." What Blake meant by the key

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78 / WILLIAM BLAKE

terms vision and imagination, however, is often misinterpreted by taking literally what he, speaking the traditional language of his great predecessors, intended in a figurative sense. "That which can be made Explicit to the Idiot," he declared, "is not worth my care." Blake was a born ironist who enjoyed mystifying his well-meaning but literal- minded friends and who took a defiant pleasure in shocking the dull and complacent "angels" of his day by being deliberately outrageous in representing his work and opinions.

Blake declared that "all he knew was in the Bible" and that "The Old & New Testaments are the Great Code of Art." This is an exaggeration of the truth that all his prophetic writings deal, in various formulations, with some aspects of the overall biblical plot of the creation and the Fall, the history of the generations of humanity in the fallen world, redemption, and the promise of a recovery of Eden and of a New Jerusalem. These events, however, Blake interprets in what he calls "the spiritual sense." For such a procedure he had considerable precedent, not in the neoplatonic and occult thinkers with whom some modern commentators align him, but in the "spiritual" interpreters of the Bible among the radical Protestant sects in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century England. In The French Revolution, America: A Prophecy, Europe: A Prophecy, and the trenchant prophetic satire The Marriage of Heaven and Hell�all of which Blake wrote in the early 1790s while he was an ardent supporter of the French Revolution�he, like Wordsworth, Coleridge, Southey, and a number of radical English theologians, represented the contemporary Revolution as the purifying violence that, according to biblical prophecy, portended the imminent redemption of humanity and the world. (For discussion of these apocalyptic expectations, see "The French Revolution" at Norton Literature Online.) In Blake's later poems Ore, the fiery spirit of violent revolution, gives way as a central personage to Los, the type of the visionary imagination in the fallen world.

BLARE'S MYTHMAKING

Blake's first attempt to articulate his full myth of humanity's present, past, and future was The Four Zoas, begun in 1796 or 1797. A passage from the opening statement of its theme exemplifies the long verse line (what Blake called "the march of long resounding strong heroic verse") in which he wrote his Prophetic Books and will serve also to outline the Books' vision:

Four Mighty Ones are in every Man; a Perfect Unity

Cannot Exist, but from the Universal Brotherhood of Eden,

The Universal Man. To Whom be Glory Evermore, Amen. . . .

Los was the fourth immortal starry one, & in the Earth

Of a bright Universe Empery attended day & night

Days & nights of revolving joy, Urthona was his name

In Eden; in the Auricular Nerves of Human life

Which is the Earth of Eden, he his Emanations propagated. . . .

Daughter of Beulah, Sing

His fall into Division & his Resurrection to Unity.

Blake's mythical premise, or starting point, is not a transcendent God but the "Universal Man" who is God and who incorporates the cosmos as well. (Blake elsewhere describes this founding image as "the Human Form Divine" and names him "Albion.") The Fall, in this myth, is not the fall of humanity away from God but a falling apart of primal people, a "fall into Division." In this event the original sin is what Blake calls "Selfhood," the attempt of an isolated part to be self-sufficient. The breakup of the all-inclusive Universal Man in Eden into exiled parts, it is evident, serves to identify the Fall with the creation�the creation not only of man and of nature as we ordinarily know them but also of a separate sky god who is alien from humanity. Universal Man divides first into the "Four Mighty Ones" who are the Zoas, or chief powers and component aspects of humanity, and these in turn divide sexually into

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ALL RELIGIONS ARE ONE / 79

male Spectres and female Emanations. (Thus in the quoted passage the Zoa known in the unfallen state of Eden as Urthona, the imaginative power, separates into the form of Los in the fallen world.) In addition to Eden there are three successively lower "states" of being in the fallen world, which Blake calls Beulah (a pastoral condition of easy and relaxed innocence, without clash of "contraries"), Generation (the realm of common human experience, suffering, and conflicting contraries), and Ulro (Blake's hell, the lowest state, or limit, of bleak rationality, tyranny, static negation, and isolated Selfhood). The fallen world moves through the cycles of its history, successively approaching and falling away from redemption, until, by the agency of the Redeemer (who is equated with the human imagination and is most potently operative in the prophetic poet), it will culminate in an apocalypse. In terms of his controlling image of the Universal Man, Blake describes this apocalypse as a return to the original, undivided condition, "his Resurrection to Unity."

What is confusing to many readers is that Blake alternates this representation of the Fall (as a fragmentation of the one Primal Man into separate parts) with a different kind of representation, in terms of two sharply opposed ways of seeing the universe. In this latter mode the Fall is a catastrophic change from imaginative insight (which sees the cosmos as unified and humanized) to sight by the physical eye (which sees the cosmos as a multitude of isolated individuals in an inhuman and alien nature). In terms of this distinction, the apocalypse toward which Blake as imaginative artist strives unceasingly will enable men and women once again to envision all beings as participant in the individual life that he calls "the Universal Brotherhood of Eden"� that is, a humanized world in which all individuals, in familial union, can feel at home.

The text for Blake's writings is that of The Complete Poetry and Prose of William Blake, edited by David V. Erdman and Harold Bloom (rev. ed., Berkeley, 1982). Blake's erratic spelling and punctuation have been altered when the original form might mislead the reader. The editors are grateful for the expert advice of Joseph Viscomi and Robert Essick in editing the selections from Blake.

All Religions Are One1

The Voice of one crying in the Wilderness2

The Argument. As the true method of knowledge is experiment the true faculty of knowing must be the faculty which experiences. This faculty I treat of.

PRINCIPLE 1st. That the Poetic Genius is the true Man, and that the body or outward form of Man is derived from the Poetic Genius. Likewise that the forms of all things are derived from their Genius, which by the Ancients was call'd an Angel & Spirit & Demon.

PRINCIPLE 2d. As all men are alike in outward form, So (and with the same infinite variety) all are alike in the Poetic Genius. PRINCIPLE 3d. No man can think write or speak from his heart, but he must

1. This and the following two selections are early illuminated works, probably etched in 1788. They are directed both against 18th-century Deism, or "natural religion" (which bases its religious tenets not on scriptural revelation, but on evidences of God in the natural or "organic" world), and against Christian orthodoxy, whose creed is based on a particular Scripture. In this selection Blake ironically accepts the Deistic view that all particular religions are variants of the one true religion but rejects the Deists' "Argument" that this religion is grounded on reasoning from sense experience. He attributes the one religion instead to the innate possession by all people of "Poetic Genius"�that is, of a capacity for imaginative vision.

2. Applied in the Gospels (e.g., Matthew 3.3) to John the Baptist, regarded as fulfilling the prophecy in Isaiah 39.3. Blake applies the phrase to himself, as a later prophetic voice in an alien time.

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80 / WILLIAM BLAKE

intend truth. Thus all sects of Philosophy are from the Poetic Genius, adapted to the weaknesses of every individual.

P RINCIPLE 4. As none by travelling over known lands can find out the unknown, So from already acquired knowledge Man could not acquire more. Therefore an universal Poetic Genius exists.

P RINCIPLE 5. The Religions of all Nations are derived from each Nation's different reception of the Poetic Genius, which is every where call'd the Spirit of Prophecy.

P RINCIPLE 6. The Jewish & Christian Testaments are An original derivation from the Poetic Genius. This is necessary from the confined nature of bodily sensation.

P RINCIPLE 7th. As all men are alike (tho' infinitely various), So all Religions & as all similars have one source. The true Man is the source, he being the Poetic Genius.

1788

There Is No Natural Religion1

[a] The Argument. Man has no notion of moral fitness but from Education. Naturally he is only a natural organ subject to Sense.

I. Man cannot naturally Percieve but through his natural or bodily organs. II. Man by his reasoning power can only compare & judge of what he has already perciev'd. III. From a perception of only 3 senses or 3 elements none could deduce a fourth or fifth. IV. None could have other than natural or organic thoughts if he had none but organic perceptions. V. Man's desires are limited by his perceptions; none can desire what he has not perciev'd. VI. The desires & perceptions of man, untaught by any thing but organs of sense, must be limited to objects of sense. Conclusion. If it were not for the Poetic or Prophetic character the Philosophic & Experimental would soon be at the ratio of all things, & stand still unable to do other than repeat the same dull round over again.

1788

There Is No Natural Religion1

[b] I. Man's perceptions are not bounded by organs of perception; he percieves more than sense (tho' ever so acute) can discover. 1. In this selection Blake presents his version of tions (in opposition to those in the preceding tract) English empiricism, which derives all mental con-that knowledge is not limited to the physical tent (including the evidences from which, in "nat-senses, but is as unbounded as the infinite desires ural religion," reason is held to prove the existence of humankind and its godlike capacity for infinite of God) from perceptions by the physical senses. vision. 1. In this third document Blaki? presents his asser

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INTRODUCTION / 81

II. Reason, or the ratio2 of all we have already known, is not the same that it shall be when we know more. [Ill lacking]

IV. The bounded is loathed by its possessor. The same dull round even of a universe would soon become a mill with complicated wheels. V. If the many become the same as the few when possess'd, More! More! is the cry of a mistaken soul. Less than All cannot satisfy Man. VI. If any could desire what he is incapable of possessing, despair must be his eternal lot. VII. The desire of Man being Infinite, the possession is Infinite & himself Infinite. Application. He who sees the Infinite in all things sees God. He who sees the Ratio only sees himself only. Therefore God becomes as we are, that we may be as he is.

1788

FROM SONGS OF INNOCENCE AND OF EXPERIENCE1

SHEWING THE TWO CONTRARY STATES OF THE HUMAN SOUL

FROM SONGS OF INNOCENCE

Introduction

Piping down the valleys wild Piping songs of pleasant glee On a cloud I saw a child, And he laughing said to me,

5 "Pipe a song about a Lamb"; So I piped with merry chear; "Piper pipe that song again"� So I piped, he wept to hear.

2. In Latin ratio signifies both "reason" and "calculation." Blake applies the term derogatorily to the 18th-century concept of reason as a calculating faculty whose operations are limited to sense perceptions. 1. Songs of Innocence was etched in 1789, and in 1794 was combined with additional poems under the title Songs of Innocence and of Experience; this collection was reprinted at various later times with varying arrangements of the poems. In his songs of innocence Blake assumes the stance that he is writing "happy songs / Every child may joy to hear," but they do not all depict an innocent and happy world; many of them incorporate injustice, evil, and suffering. These aspects of the fallen world, however, are represented as they appear to a "state" of the human soul that Blake calls "innocence" and that he expresses in a simple pastoral language, in the tradition both of Isaac Watts's widely read Divine Songs for Children (1715) and of the picture-books for child readers pioneered by mid-eighteenth-century booksellers such as John Newbery. The vision of the same world, as it appears to the "contrary" state of the soul that Blake calls "experience," is an ugly and terrifying one of poverty, disease, prostitution, war, and social, institutional, and sexual repression, epitomized in the ghastly representation of modern London. Though each stands as an independent poem, a number of the songs of innocence have a matched counterpart, or "contrary," in the songs of experience. Thus "Infant Joy" is paired with "Infant Sorrow," and the meek "Lamb" reveals its other aspect of divinity in the flaming, wrathful "Tyger."

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82 / WILLIAM BLAKE

10"Drop thy pipe thy happy pipe Sing thy songs of happy chear"; So I sung the same again While he wept with joy to hear. 15"Piper sit thee down and write In a book that all may read"�So he vanish'd from my sight. And I pluck'd a hollow reed, 20And I made a rural pen, And I stain'd the water clear, And I wrote my happy songs Every child may joy to hear. 1789 The Ecchoing Green The Sun does arise, And make happy the skies. The merry bells ring

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THE LAMB / 83

To welcome the Spring.

5 The sky-lark and thrush, The birds of the bush, Sing louder around, To the bells' chearful sound. While our sports shall be seen

10 On the Ecchoing Green.

Old John with white hair Does laugh away care, Sitting under the oak, Among the old folk.

15 They laugh at our play, And soon they all say: "Such, such were the joys. When we all, girls & boys, In our youth-time were seen,

20 On the Ecchoing Green."

Till the little ones weary No more can be merry The sun does descend, And our sports have an end:

25 Round the laps of their mothers, Many sisters and brothers, Like birds in their nest, Are ready for rest; And sport no more seen,

30 On the darkening Green.

1789

The Lamb1

Little Lamb, who made thee?

Dost thou know who made thee? Gave thee life & bid thee feed, By the stream & o'er the mead;

5 Gave thee clothing of delight, Softest clothing wooly bright; Gave thee such a tender voice, Making all the vales rejoice!

Little Lamb who made thee? 10 Dost thou know who made thee?

Little Lamb I'll tell thee, Little Lamb I'll tell thee! He is called by thy name,

1. The opening of this poem mimes the form of the catechistic questions and answers customarily used for children's religious instruction.

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8 4 / WILLIA M BLAK E For he calls himself a Lamb; is He is meek & he is mild, He became a little child; I a child & thou a lamb, We are called by his name. Little Lamb God bless thee. 20 Little Lamb God bless thee. 1789 The Little Black Boy My mother bore me in the southern wild, And I am black, but O! my soul is white; WTiite as an angel is the English child, But I am black as if bereav'd of light. 5 My mother taught me underneath a tree, And sitting down before the heat of day, She took me on her lap and kissed me, And pointing to the east, began to say: "Look on the rising sun: there God does live 10 And gives his light, and gives his heat away; And flowers and trees and beasts and men receive Comfort in morning, joy in the noon day. "And we are put on earth a little space, That we may learn to bear the beams of love, 15 And these black bodies and this sun-burnt face Is but a cloud, and like a shady grove. "For when our souls have leam'd the heat to bear, The cloud will vanish; we shall hear his voice, Saying: 'Come out from the grove, my love & care, 20 And round my golden tent like lambs rejoice.' " Thus did my mother say, and kissed me; And thus I say to little English boy: When I from black and he from white cloud free, And round the tent of God like lambs we joy, 25 I'll shade him from the heat till he can bear To lean in joy upon our father's knee. And then I'll stand and stroke his silver hair, And be like him, and he will then love me. 178 9

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THE DIVINE IMAGE / 85

The Chimney Sweeper

When my mother died I was very young, And my father sold me while yet my tongue Could scarcely cry " 'weep! 'weep! 'weep! 'weep!"1 So your chimneys I sweep & in soot I sleep.

5 There's little Tom Dacre, who cried when his head That curl'd like a lamb's back, was shav'd, so I said, "Hush, Tom! never mind it, for when your head's bare, You know that the soot cannot spoil your white hair."

And so he was quiet, & that very night,

10 As Tom was a-sleeping he had such a sight! That thousands of sweepers, Dick, Joe, Ned, & Jack, Were all of them lock'd up in coffins of black;

And by came an Angel who had a bright key, And he open'd the coffins & set them all free; is Then down a green plain, leaping, laughing they run, And wash in a river and shine in the Sun.

Then naked & white, all their bags left behind, They rise upon clouds, and sport in the wind. And the Angel told Tom, if he'd be a good boy,

20 He'd have God for his father & never want joy.

And so Tom awoke; and we rose in the dark And got with our bags & our brushes to work. Tho' the morning was cold, Tom was happy & warm; So if all do their duty, they need not fear harm.

The Divine Image

To Mercy, Pity, Peace, and Love, All pray in their distress, And to these virtues of delight Return their thankfulness.

5 For Mercy, Pity, Peace, and Love, Is God, our father dear: And Mercy, Pity, Peace, and Love, Is Man, his child and care.

For Mercy has a human heart,

10 Pity, a human face, And Love, the human form divine, And Peace, the human dress.

1. The child's lisping attempt at the chimney sweeper's street cry, "Sweep! Sweep!"

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86 / WILLIAM BLAKE

Then every man of every clime, That prays in his distress, 15 Prays to the human form divine, Love, Mercy, Pity, Peace.

And all must love the human form, In heathen, Turk, or Jew. Where Mercy, Love, & Pity dwell,

20 There God is dwelling too.

1789

Holy Thursday1

'Twas on a Holy Thursday, their innocent faces clean, The children walking two & two, in red & blue & green; Grey headed beadles2 walkd before with wands as white as snow, Till into the high dome of Paul's they like Thames' waters flow.

5 O what a multitude they seemd, these flowers of London town! Seated in companies they sit with radiance all their own. The hum of multitudes was there, but multitudes of lambs, Thousands of little boys & girls raising their innocent hands.

Now like a mighty wind they raise to heaven the voice of song,

10 Or like harmonious thunderings the seats of heaven among. Beneath them sit the aged men, wise guardians of the poor; Then cherish pity, lest you drive an angel from your door.3

ca.1784 1789

Nurse's Song

When the voices of children are heard on the green And laughing is heard on the hill, My heart is at rest within my breast And everything else is still.

5 "Then come home my children, the sun is gone down And the dews of night arise; Come, come, leave off play, and let us away Till the morning appears in the skies."

"No, no, let us play, for it is yet day 10 And we cannot go to sleep;

1. In the Anglican Church the Thursday celebrat-2. Lower church officers, one of whose duties is ing the ascension of Jesus (thirty-nine days after to keep order. Easter). It was the custom on this day to march the 3. Cf. Hebrews 13.2: "Be not forgetful to entertain poor (frequently orphaned) children from the strangers: for thereby some have entertained charity schools of London to a service at St. Paul's angels unawares." Cathedral.

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INTRODUCTIO N / 8 7 Besides, in the sky, the little birds fly And the hills are all coverd with sheep." "Well, well, go & play till the light fades away And then go home to bed." 15 The little ones leaped & shouted & laugh'd And all the hills ecchoed. ca. 1784 1789

Infant Joy

"I have no name, I am but two days old." What shall I call thee? "I happy am,

5 Joy is my name." Sweet joy befall thee!

Pretty joy! Sweet joy but two days old, Sweet joy I call thee;

10 Thou dost smile, I sing the while� Sweet joy befall thee.

1789

FROM SONGS OF EXPERIENCE

Introduction

Hear the voice of the Bard! Who Present, Past, & Future sees; Whose ears have heard The Holy Word

5 That walk'd among the ancient trees;1

Calling the lapsed Soul2 And weeping in the evening dew, That might controll3 The starry pole,

io And fallen, fallen light renew!

1. Genesis 3.8: "And [Adam and Eve] heard the "the Bard" or "the Holy Word" who calls to the voice of the Lord God walking in the garden in the fallen ("lapsed") soul and to the fallen earth to stop cool of the day." The Bard, or poet-prophet, whose the natural cycle of light and darkness. imagination is not bound by time, has heard the 3. The likely syntax is that "Soul" is the subject of voice of the Lord in Eden. "might controll." 2. The syntax leaves it ambiguous whether it is

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88 / WILLIAM BLAKE

PERIENCL Pr/nW V fib I Separate title page for Songs of Experience (1794)

"O Earth, O Earth, return! Arise from out the dewy grass; Night is worn, And the morn 15 Rises from the slumberous mass. 20"Turn away no more; Why wilt thou turn away? The starry floor The watry shore4 Is giv'n thee till the break of day." 1794

Earth's Answer1

Earth rais'd up her head, From the darkness dread & drear.

4. In Blake's recurrent symbolism the starry sky 1. The Earth explains why she, the natural world, ("floor") signifies rigid rational order, and the sea cannot by her unaided endeavors renew the fallen signifies chaos. light.

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TH E CLO D & TH E PEBBL E / 8 9 5Her light fled: Stony dread! And her locks cover'd with grey despair. 10"Prison'd on watry shore Starry Jealousy does keep my den, Cold and hoar Weeping o'er I hear the Father of the ancient men.2

"Selfish father of men, Cruel, jealous, selfish fear! Can delight Chain'd in night

15 The virgins of youth and morning bear?

"Does spring hide its joy When buds and blossoms grow? Does the sower Sow by night,

20 Or the plowman in darkness plow?

"Break this heavy chain That does freeze my bones around; Selfish! vain! Eternal bane!

25 That free Love with bondage bound."

1794

The Clod & the Pebble

"Love seeketh not Itself to please, Nor for itself hath any care; But for another gives its ease, And builds a Heaven in Hell's despair."

5 So sang a little Clod of Clay, Trodden with the cattle's feet; But a Pebble of the brook, Warbled out these metres meet:

"Love seeketh only Self to please,

10 To bind another to its delight; Joys in another's loss of ease, And builds a Hell in Heaven's despite."

2. This is the character that Blake later named imposes a moral bondage on sexual desire and "Urizen" in his prophetic works. He is the tyrant other modes of human energy. who binds the mind to the natural world and also

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90 / WILLIAM BLAKE

Holy Thursday

Is this a holy thing to see, In a rich and fruitful land, Babes reduced to misery, Fed with cold and usurous hand?

5 Is that trembling cry a song? Can it be a song of joy? And so many children poor? It is a land of poverty!

And their sun does never shine,

10 And their fields are bleak & bare, And their ways are fill'd with thorns; It is eternal winter there.

For where-e'er the sun does shine, And where-e'er the rain does fall, 15 Babe can never hunger there, Nor poverty the mind appall.

1794

The Chimney Sweeper

A little black thing among the snow Crying " 'weep, weep," in notes of woe! "Where are thy father & mother? say?" "They are both gone up to the church to pray.

5 "Because I was happy upon the heath, And smil'd among the winter's snow; They clothed me in the clothes of death, And taught me to sing the notes of woe.

"And because I am happy, & dance & sing,

IO They think they have done me no injury, And are gone to praise God & his Priest & King, Who make up a heaven of our misery."

1790-92 1794

Nurse's Song

When the voices of children are heard on the green And whisperings are in the dale, The days of my youth rise fresh in my mind, My face turns green and pale.

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T H E F L Y / 9 1 5 Then come home my children, the sun is gone down And the dews of night arise; Your spring & your day are wasted in play, And your winter and night in disguise. 1794 The Sick Rose O Rose, thou art sick. The invisible worm That flies in the night In the howling storm 5 Has found out thy bed Of crimson joy, And his dark secret love Does thy life destroy. 1794 The Fly Little Fly Thy summer's play My thoughtless hand Has brush'd away 5 Am not I A fly like thee? Or art not thou A man like me? 10For I dance And drink & sing, Till some blind hand Shall brush my wing. 15If thought is life And strength & breath, And the want Of thought is death; 20Then am I A happy fly, If I live, Or if I die. 179 4

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92 / WILLIAM BLAKE

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