The Poem


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We talked with open heart, and tongue
Affectionate and true,
A pair of friends, though I was young,
And Matthew seventy-two.

We lay beneath a spreading oak,
Beside a mossy seat;
And from the turf a fountain broke,
And gurgled at our feet.

"Now, Matthew!" said I, "let us match
This water's pleasant tune
With some old border-song, or catch
That suits a summer's noon;

"Or of the church-clock and the chimes
Sing here beneath the shade,
That half-mad thing of witty rhymes
Which you last April made!"

In silence Matthew lay, and eyed
The spring beneath the tree;
And thus the dear old Man replied,
The grey-haired man of glee:

"No check, no stay, this Streamlet fears;
How merrily it goes!
'Twill murmur on a thousand years,
And flow as now it flows.

"And here, on this delightful day,
I cannot choose but think
How oft, a vigorous man, I lay
Beside this fountain's brink.

"My eyes are dim with childish tears,
My heart is idly stirred,
For the same sound is in my ears
Which in those days I heard.

"Thus fares it still in our decay:
And yet the wiser mind
Mourns less for what age takes away
Than what it leaves behind.

"The blackbird amid leafy trees,
The lark above the hill,
Let loose their carols when they please,
Are quiet when they will.

"With Nature never do they wage
A foolish strife; they see
A happy youth, and their old age
Is beautiful and free:

"But we are pressed by heavy laws;
And often, glad no more,
We wear a face of joy, because
We have been glad of yore.

"If there be one who need bemoan
His kindred laid in earth,
The household hearts that were his own;
It is the man of mirth.

"My days, my Friend, are almost gone,
My life has been approved,
And many love me; but by none
Am I enough beloved."

"Now both himself and me he wrongs,
The man who thus complains!
I live and sing my idle songs
Upon these happy plains;

"And, Matthew, for thy children dead
I'll be a son to thee!"
At this he grasped my hand, and said,
"Alas! that cannot be."

We rose up from the fountain-side;
And down the smooth descent
Of the green sheep-track did we glide;
And through the wood we went;

And, ere we came to Leonard's rock,
He sang those witty rhymes
About the crazy old church-clock,
And the bewildered chimes.



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Variant 1:
 
1820
Now, Matthew, let us try to match
 1800
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Variant 2:
 
1837
Down to the vale this water steers,
1800
Down to the vale with eager speed
Behold this streamlet run,
From subterranean bondage freed,
And glittering in the sun.



C.
From subterranean darkness freed,
A pleasant course to run.

C.
Down to the vale this streamlet hies,
Look, how it seems to run,
As if 't were pleased with summer skies,
And glad to meet the sun.



C.
And glad to greet the sun.
 MS.
No guide it needs, no check it fears,
How merrily it goes!
'Twill murmur on a thousand years,
And flow as now it flows.


C.
Down towards the vale with eager speed,
Behold this streamlet run
As if 'twere pleased with summer skies
And glad to meet the sun.


C.
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Variant 3:
 
1837
The blackbird in the summer trees,
The lark upon the hill,
1800
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Variant 4:
 
1832
... is ....
 1800 and MS.
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Variant 5:
 
1815
... his hands, ...
 1800
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Footnote A:
 
"Pour me plaindre a moy, regarde noti tant ce qu'on moste, que ce qui me reste de sauvre, et dedans et dehors."
Montaigne,
Essais
, iii. 12.


Compare also:
"Themistocles quidem, cum ei Simonides, an quis alius artem memoriæ polliceretur, Oblivionis, inquit, mallem; nam memini etiam quæ nolo, oblivisci non possum quæ volo."
Cicero,
De Finibus
, II. 32
.—Ed.

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1799 Contents
Main Contents



To a Sexton

Composed 1799.—Published 1800

[Written in Germany, 1799.—I. F.]


One of the "Poems of the Fancy."—Ed.





The Poem


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Let thy wheel-barrow alone—
Wherefore, Sexton, piling still
In thy bone-house bone on bone?
'Tis already like a hill
In a field of battle made,
Where three thousand skulls are laid;
These died in peace each with the other,—
Father, sister, friend, and brother.

Mark the spot to which I point!
From this platform, eight feet square,
Take not even a finger-joint:
Andrew's whole fire-side is there.
Here, alone, before thine eyes,
Simon's sickly daughter lies,
From weakness now, and pain defended,
Whom he twenty winters tended.

Look but at the gardener's pride—
How he glories, when he sees
Roses, lilies, side by side,
Violets in families!
By the heart of Man, his tears,
By his hopes and by his fears,
Thou, too heedless, art the Warden
Of a far superior garden.

Thus then, each to other dear,
Let them all in quiet lie,
Andrew there, and Susan here,
Neighbours in mortality.
And, should I live through sun and rain
Seven widowed years without my Jane,
O Sexton, do not then remove her,
Let one grave hold the Loved and Lover!



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1845
Thou, old Grey-beard! ...
1800
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1799 Contents
Main Contents



The Danish Boy

A Fragment

Composed 1799.—Published 1800

The Poem


[Written in Germany, 1799. It was entirely a fancy; but intended as a prelude to a ballad-poem never written.—I. F.]


In the editions of 1800-1832 this poem was called A Fragment. From 1836 onwards it was named The Danish Boy. A Fragment. It was one of the "Poems of the Fancy." —Ed.





The Poem


stanza text variant footnote line number
I Between two sister moorland rills
There is a spot that seems to lie
Sacred to flowerets of the hills,
And sacred to the sky.
And in this smooth and open dell
There is a tempest-stricken tree;
A corner-stone by lightning cut,
The last stone of a lonely hut;
And in this dell you see
A thing no storm can e'er destroy,
The shadow of a Danish Boy.






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II In clouds above, the lark is heard,
But drops not here to earth for rest;
Within this lonesome nook the bird
Did never build her nest.
No beast, no bird hath here his home;
Bees, wafted on the breezy air,
Pass high above those fragrant bells
To other flowers:—to other dells
Their burthens do they bear;
The Danish Boy walks here alone:
The lovely dell is all his own.
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III A Spirit of noon-day is he;
Yet seems a form of flesh and blood;
Nor piping shepherd shall he be,
Nor herd-boy of the wood.
A regal vest of fur he wears,
In colour like a raven's wing;
It fears not rain, nor wind, nor dew;
But in the storm 'tis fresh and blue
As budding pines in spring;
His helmet has a vernal grace,
Fresh as the bloom upon his face.
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IV A harp is from his shoulder slung;
Resting the harp upon his knee;
To words of a forgotten tongue,
He suits its melody.
Of flocks upon the neighbouring hill
He is the darling and the joy;
And often, when no cause appears,
The mountain-ponies prick their ears,
—They hear the Danish Boy,
While in the dell he sings alone
Beside the tree and corner-stone.


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V There sits he; in his face you spy
No trace of a ferocious air,
Nor ever was a cloudless sky
So steady or so fair.
The lovely Danish Boy is blest
And happy in his flowery cove:
From bloody deeds his thoughts are far;
And yet he warbles songs of war,
That seem like songs of love,
For calm and gentle is his mien;
Like a dead Boy he is serene.



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Variant 1:
 
1836
... a cottage hut;
 1800
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Variant 2:
 
1827
He sings his blithest and his best;
 1800
She sings, regardless of her rest,
 1820
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Variant 3:
 
1827
But in ...
1800
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Variant 4:
 
1820
... his ...
 1800
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Variant 5:
 
1827
The bees borne on ...
 1800
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Variant 6:
 
1827
Nor ever linger there.
1800
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Variant 7:
 
1836
He seems ...
1800
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Variant 8:
 
1802
A piping Shepherd he might be,
A Herd-boy of the wood.

1800
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Variant 9:
 
1802
... nor ...
 1800
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Variant 10:
 
1836
He rests the harp upon his knee,
And there in a forgotten tongue
He warbles melody.


1800
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Variant 11:
 
1827
Of flocks and herds both far and near
 1800
Of flocks upon the neighbouring hills
 1802
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Variant 12:
 
1845
... sits ...
 1800
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Variant 13:
 
When near this blasted tree you pass,
Two sods are plainly to be seen
Close at its root, and each with grass
Is cover'd fresh and green.
Like turf upon a new-made grave
These two green sods together lie,
Nor heat, nor cold, nor rain, nor wind
Can these two sods together bind,
Nor sun, nor earth, nor sky,
But side by side the two are laid,
As if just sever'd by the spade.
This stanza occurs only in the edition of 1800.

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Variant 14:
 
1815
They seem ...
 1800
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Footnote A:
 These Stanzas were designed to introduce a Ballad upon the Story of a Danish Prince who had fled from Battle, and, for the sake of the valuables about him, was murdered by the Inhabitant of a Cottage in which he had taken refuge. The House fell under a curse, and the Spirit of the Youth, it was believed, haunted the Valley where the crime had been committed.— W. W. 1827.

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1799 Contents
Main Contents



Lucy Gray; or, Solitude

Composed 1799.—Published 1800

The Poem


[Written at Goslar, in Germany, in 1799. It was founded on a circumstance told me by my sister, of a little girl, who, not far from Halifax in Yorkshire, was bewildered in a snow storm. Her footsteps were tracked by her parents to the middle of a lock of a canal, and no other vestige of her, backward or forward, could be traced. The body, however, was found in the canal. The way in which the incident was treated, and the spiritualizing of the character, might furnish hints for contrasting the imaginative influences, which I have endeavoured to throw over common life, with Crabbe's matter-of-fact style of handling subjects of the same kind. This is not spoken to his disparagement, far from it; but to direct the attention of thoughtful readers into whose hands these notes may fall, to a comparison that may enlarge the circle of their sensibilities, and tend to produce in them a catholic judgment.—I. F.]


One of the "Poems referring to the Period of Childhood."—Ed.





The Poem


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Oft I had heard of Lucy Gray:
And, when I crossed the wild,
I chanced to see at break of day
The solitary child.

No mate, no comrade Lucy knew;
She dwelt on a wide moor,
—The sweetest thing that ever grew
Beside a human door!

You yet may spy the fawn at play,
The hare upon the green;
But the sweet face of Lucy Gray
Will never more be seen.

"To-night will be a stormy night—
You to the town must go;
And take a lantern, Child, to light
Your mother through the snow."

"That, Father! will I gladly do:
'Tis scarcely afternoon—
The minster-clock has just struck two,
And yonder is the moon!"

At this the Father raised his hook,
And snapped a faggot-band;
He plied his work;—and Lucy took
The lantern in her hand.

Not blither is the mountain roe:
With many a wanton stroke
Her feet disperse the powdery snow,
That rises up like smoke.

The storm came on before its time:
She wandered up and down;
And many a hill did Lucy climb
But never reached the town.

The wretched parents all that night
Went shouting far and wide;
But there was neither sound nor sight
To serve them for a guide.

At day-break on a hill they stood
That overlooked the moor;
And thence they saw the bridge of wood,
A furlong from their door.

They wept—and, turning homeward, cried,
"In heaven we all shall meet;"
—When in the snow the mother spied
The print of Lucy's feet.

Then downwards from the steep hill's edge
They tracked the footmarks small;
And through the broken hawthorn hedge,
And by the long stone-wall;

And then an open field they crossed:
The marks were still the same;
They tracked them on, nor ever lost;
And to the bridge they came.

They followed from the snowy bank
Those footmarks, one by one,
Into the middle of the plank;
And further there were none!

—Yet some maintain that to this day
She is a living child;
That you may see sweet Lucy Gray
Upon the lonesome wild.

O'er rough and smooth she trips along,
And never looks behind;
And sings a solitary song
That whistles in the wind.



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