IX
"PAUSE, COURTEOUS SPIRIT!—BALBI
SUPPLICATES"[A]
Published 1810[B]
Pause, courteous Spirit!—Balbi supplicates
That Thou, with no reluctant voice, for him
Here laid in mortal darkness, wouldst prefer
A prayer to the Redeemer of the world.
This to the dead by sacred right belongs; 5
All else is nothing.—Did occasion suit
To tell his worth, the marble of this tomb
Would ill suffice: for Plato's lore sublime,
And all the wisdom of the Stagyrite,
Enriched and beautified his studious mind: 10
With Archimedes also he conversed
As with a chosen friend; nor did he leave
Those laureat wreaths ungathered which the Nymphs
Twine near their loved Permessus.[1]—Finally,
Himself above each lower thought uplifting, 15
His ears he closed to listen to the songs[2]
Which Sion's Kings did consecrate of old;
And his Permessus found on Lebanon.[3]
A blessèd Man! who of protracted days
Made not, as thousands do, a vulgar sleep; 20
But truly did He live his life. Urbino,
Take pride in him!—O Passenger, farewell!
I have been unable to obtain any definite information in
reference to the persons commemorated in these epitaphs by
Chiabrera: Francesco Ceni, Titus, Ambrosio Salinero, Roberto
Dati, Lelius, Francesco Pozzobonnelli, and Balbi. Mr. W.
M. Rossetti writes to me that he "supposes all the men named
by Chiabrera to be such as enjoyed a certain local and temporary
reputation, which has hardly passed down to any sort of posterity,
and certainly not to the ordinary English reader."
Chiabrera was born at Savona on the 8th of June 1552, and
educated at Rome. He entered the service of Cardinal Cornaro,
married in his 50th year, lived to the age of 85, and died
October 14, 1637. His poetical faculty showed itself late.
"Having commenced to read the Greek writers at home, he
conceived a great admiration for Pindar, and strove successfully
to imitate him. He was not less happy in catching the naïve
and pleasant spirit of Anacreon; his canzonetti being distinguished
for their ease and elegance, while his Lettere Famigliari
was the first attempt to introduce the poetical epistle into
Italian Literature. He wrote also several epics, bucolics, and
dramatic poems. His Opere appeared at Venice, in 6 vols., in
1768."
Wordsworth says of him, in his Essay on Epitaphs, where
translations of two of those Epitaphs of Chiabrera first appeared
(see The Friend, February 22, 1810, and notes to The Excursion)—"His
life was long, and every part of it bore appropriate
fruits. Urbino, his birth-place, might be proud of him, and
the passenger who was entreated to pray for his soul has a wish
breathed for his welfare.... The Epitaphs of Chiabrera are
twenty-nine in number, and all of them, save two, upon men
probably little known at this day in their own country, and
scarcely at all beyond the limits of it; and the reader is
generally made acquainted with the moral and intellectual
excellence which distinguished them by a brief history of the
course of their lives, or a selection of events and circumstances,
and thus they are individualized; but in the two other instances,
namely, in those of Tasso and Raphael, he enters into no
particulars, but contents himself with four lines expressing one
sentiment, upon the principle laid down in the former part of
this discourse, when the subject of the epitaph is a man of
prime note...."
Compare the poem Musings near Aquapendente. In reference
to the places referred to in these Epitaphs of Chiabrera, it
may be mentioned that Savona (Epitaphs III., IV., V., VII., VIII.)
is a town in the Genovese territory; Permessus (Epitaphs V.
and IX.) a river of Bœotia, rising in Mount Helicon and flowing
round it, hence sacred to the Muses; and that the fountain
of Hippocrene—also referred to in Epitaph V.—was not far
distant. Sebeto (Epitaph VII.), now cape Faro, is a Sicilian
promontory.—Ed.
VARIANTS:
FOOTNOTES:
1810
As indicated in the editorial note to the poems belonging to
the year 1809, those of 1810 were mainly sonnets, suggested
by the events occurring on the Continent of Europe, and the
patriotic efforts of the Spaniards to resist Napoleon. I have
assigned the two referring to Flamininus, entitled On a
Celebrated Event in Ancient History, to the same year. They
were first published in 1815, and seem to have been due to
the same impulse which led Wordsworth to write the "Sonnets
dedicated to Liberty."—Ed.
"AH! WHERE IS PALAFOX? NOR TONGUE
NOR PEN"
Composed 1810.—Published 1815
All the sonnets of 1810 were "dedicated to Liberty." In
every edition this poem had for its title the date 1810.—Ed.
Ah! where is Palafox? Nor tongue nor pen
Reports of him, his dwelling or his grave!
Does yet the unheard-of vessel ride the wave?
Or is she swallowed up, remote from ken
Of pitying human-nature? Once again 5
Methinks that we shall hail thee, Champion brave,
Redeemed to baffle that imperial Slave,
And through all Europe cheer desponding men
With new-born hope. Unbounded is the might
Of martyrdom, and fortitude, and right. 10
Hark, how thy Country triumphs!—Smilingly
The Eternal looks upon her sword that gleams,
Like his own lightning, over mountains high,
On rampart, and the banks of all her streams.
See notes to sonnets (pp. 223 and 229).—Ed.
"IN DUE OBSERVANCE OF AN ANCIENT
RITE"
Composed 1810.—Published 1815
In due observance of an ancient rite,
The rude Biscayans, when their children lie
Dead in the sinless time of infancy,
Attire the peaceful corse in vestments white;
And, in like sign of cloudless triumph bright, 5
They bind the unoffending creature's brows
With happy garlands of the pure white rose:
Then do[1] a festal company unite
In choral song; and, while the uplifted cross
Of Jesus goes before, the child is borne 10
Uncovered to his grave: 'tis closed,—her loss
The Mother then mourns, as she needs must mourn;
But soon, through Christian faith, is grief subdued;[2]
And joy returns, to brighten fortitude.[3]
VARIANTS:
FEELINGS OF A NOBLE BISCAYAN AT ONE
OF THOSE FUNERALS, 1810
Composed 1810.—Published 1815
Yet, yet, Biscayans! we must meet our Foes
With firmer soul, yet labour to regain
Our ancient freedom; else 'twere worse than vain
To gather round the bier these festal shows.
A garland fashioned of the pure white rose 5
Becomes not one whose father is a slave:
Oh, bear the infant covered to his grave!
These venerable mountains now enclose
A people sunk in apathy and fear.
If this endure, farewell, for us, all good! 10
The awful light of heavenly innocence
Will fail to illuminate the infant's bier;
And guilt and shame, from which is no defence,
Descend on all that issues from our blood.
ON A CELEBRATED EVENT IN ANCIENT
HISTORY
Composed 1810.—Published 1815
A Roman Master stands on Grecian ground,
And to the people at the Isthmian Games
Assembled, He, by a herald's voice, proclaims[1]
The Liberty of Greece:—the words rebound
Until all voices in one voice are drowned; 5
Glad acclamation by which air was[2] rent!
And birds, high flying in the element,
Dropped[3] to the earth, astonished at the sound!
Yet were the thoughtful grieved; and still that voice
Haunts, with sad echoes, musing Fancy's ear:[4] 10
Ah! that a Conqueror's words[5] should be so dear:
Ah! that a boon could shed such rapturous joys!
A gift of that which is not to be given
By all the blended powers of Earth and Heaven.
This "Roman Master" "on Grecian ground" was T.
Quintius Flamininus, one of the ablest and noblest of the
Roman generals (230-174 B.C.). He was successful against
Philip of Macedon, overran Thessaly in 198, and conquered the
Macedonian army in 197, defeating Philip at Cynoscephalæ.
He concluded a peace with the vanquished. "In the spring of
196, the Roman commission arrived in Greece to arrange,
conjointly with Flamininus, the affairs of the country: they also
brought with them the terms on which a definite peace was to
be concluded with Philip.... The Ætolians exerted themselves
to excite suspicions among the Greeks as to the sincerity of the
Romans in their dealings with them. Flamininus, however,
insisted upon immediate compliance with the terms of the
peace.... In this summer, the Isthmian games were celebrated
at Corinth, and thousands from all parts of Greece flocked
thither. Flamininus, accompanied by the ten commissioners,
entered the assembly, and, at his command, a herald, in name
of the Roman Senate, proclaimed the freedom and independence
of Greece. The joy and enthusiasm at this unexpected declaration
was beyond all description: the throngs of people that
crowded around Flamininus to catch a sight of their liberator or
touch his garment were so enormous, that even his life was
endangered." (Smith's Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography:
Art. Flamininus, No. 4.)—Ed.
VARIANTS:
UPON THE SAME EVENT
Composed (probably) 1810.—Published 1815
When, far and wide, swift as the beams of morn
The tidings passed of servitude repealed,
And of that joy which shook the Isthmian Field,
The rough Ætolians smiled with bitter scorn.
"'Tis known," cried they, "that he, who would adorn
His envied temples with the Isthmian crown, 6
Must either win, through effort of his own,
The prize, or be content to see it worn
By more deserving brows.—Yet so ye prop,
Sons of the brave who fought at Marathon, 10
Your feeble spirits! Greece her head hath bowed,
As if the wreath of liberty thereon
Would fix itself as smoothly as a cloud,
Which, at Jove's will, descends on Pelion's top."
The Ætolians were the only Greeks that entertained suspicion
of the Roman designs from the first. When Flamininus was
wintering in Phocis in 196, and an insurrection broke out at
Opus, some of the citizens had called in the aid of the Ætolians
against the Macedonian garrison; but the gates of the city were
not opened to admit the Ætolian volunteers till Flamininus
arrived. Then in the battle at the heights of Cynoscephalæ,
where the Macedonian army was routed, the Ætolian contingent,
which had helped Flamininus, claimed the sole credit of the
victory; and wished no truce made with Philip, as they were
bent on the destruction of the Macedonian power. The Ætolians
aimed subsequently at exciting suspicion against the sincerity of
Flamininus. In the second sonnet, Wordsworth's sympathy
seems to have been with the Ætolians, as much as it was with
the Swiss and the Tyrolese in their attitude to Buonaparte. But
Flamininus was not a Napoleon.—Ed.
THE OAK OF GUERNICA
Composed 1810.—Published 1815
The ancient oak of Guernica, says Laborde in his account of
Biscay, is a most venerable natural monument. Ferdinand
and Isabella, in the year 1476, after hearing mass in the
church of Santa Maria de la Antigua, repaired to this tree,
under which they swore to the Biscayans to maintain their
fueros (privileges). What other interest belongs to it in
the minds of this people will appear from the following
SUPPOSED ADDRESS TO THE SAME. 1810
Oak of Guernica! Tree of holier power
Than that which in Dodona did enshrine
(So faith too fondly deemed) a voice divine
Heard from the depths of its aërial bower—
How canst thou flourish at this blighting hour? 5
What hope, what joy can sunshine bring to thee,
Or the soft breezes from the Atlantic sea,
The dews of morn, or April's tender shower?
Stroke merciful and welcome would that be
Which should extend thy branches on the ground, 10
If never more within their shady round
Those lofty-minded Lawgivers shall meet,
Peasant and lord, in their appointed seat,
Guardians of Biscay's ancient liberty.
Prophetic power was believed to reside within the grove
which surrounded the temple of Jupiter near Dodona, in Epirus,
and oracles were given forth from the boughs of the sacred oak.—Ed.
INDIGNATION OF A HIGH-MINDED
SPANIARD, 1810
Composed 1810.—Published 1815
We can endure that He should waste our lands,
Despoil our temples, and by sword and flame
Return us to the dust from which we came;
Such food a Tyrant's appetite demands:
And we can brook the thought that by his hands 5
Spain may be overpowered, and he possess,
For his delight, a solemn wilderness
Where all the brave lie dead. But, when of bands
Which he will break for us he dares to speak,
Of benefits, and of a future day 10
When our enlightened minds shall bless his sway;
Then, the strained heart of fortitude proves weak;
Our groans, our blushes, our pale cheeks declare
That he has power to inflict what we lack strength to bear.
Compare the two sonnets On a Celebrated Event in Ancient
History (pp. 242-44). The following note to the last line of
this sonnet occurs in Professor Reed's American edition of the
Poems:—"The student of English poetry will call to mind
Cowley's impassioned expression of the indignation of a Briton
under the depression of disasters somewhat similar.
Let rather Roman come again,
Or Saxon, Norman, or the Dane:
In all the bonds we ever bore,
We grieved, we sighed, we wept, we never blushed before."
See Cowley's Discourse on the Government of Oliver Cromwell.—Ed.
"AVAUNT ALL SPECIOUS PLIANCY OF
MIND"
Composed 1810.—Published 1815
Avaunt all specious pliancy of mind
In men of low degree, all smooth pretence!
I better like a blunt indifference,
And self-respecting slowness, disinclined
To win me at first sight: and be there joined 5
Patience and temperance with this high reserve,
Honour that knows the path and will not swerve;
Affections, which, if put to proof, are kind;
And piety towards God. Such men of old
Were England's native growth; and, throughout Spain,
(Thanks to high God) forests of such remain:[1] 11
Then for that Country let our hopes be bold;
For matched with these shall policy prove vain,
Her arts, her strength, her iron, and her gold.
VARIANTS:
"O'ERWEENING STATESMEN HAVE FULL
LONG RELIED"
Composed 1810.—Published 1815
In all the editions this poem has for its title the date 1810.—Ed.
O'erweening Statesmen have full long relied
On fleets and armies, and external wealth:
But from within proceeds a Nation's health;
Which shall not fail, though poor men cleave with pride
To the paternal floor; or turn aside, 5
In the thronged city, from the walks of gain,
As being all unworthy to detain
A Soul by contemplation sanctified.
There are who cannot languish in this strife,
Spaniards of every rank, by whom the good 10
Of such high course was felt and understood;
Who to their Country's cause have bound a life
Erewhile, by solemn consecration, given
To labour, and to prayer, to nature, and to heaven.[A]
FOOTNOTES:
THE FRENCH AND THE SPANISH
GUERILLAS
Composed 1810.—Published 1815
Hunger, and sultry heat, and nipping blast
From bleak hill-top, and length of march by night
Through heavy swamp, or over snow-clad height—
These hardships ill-sustained, these dangers past,
The roving Spanish Bands are reached at last, 5
Charged, and dispersed like foam: but as a flight
Of scattered quails by signs do reunite,
So these,—and, heard of once again, are chased
With combinations of long-practised art
And newly-kindled hope; but they are fled— 10
Gone are they, viewless as the buried dead:
Where now?—Their sword is at the Foeman's heart!
And thus from year to year his walk they thwart,
And hang like dreams around his guilty bed.
See the note appended to the sonnet entitled Spanish
Guerillas (p. 254).—Ed.
MATERNAL GRIEF
Composed 1810.—Published 1842
[This was in part an overflow from the Solitary's description
of his own and his wife's feelings upon the decease of their
children. (See Excursion, book 3rd.)—I. F.]
One of the "Poems founded on the Affections."—Ed.
Departed Child! I could forget thee once
Though at my bosom nursed; this woeful gain
Thy dissolution brings, that in my soul
Is present and perpetually abides
A shadow, never, never to be displaced 5
By the returning substance, seen or touched,
Seen by mine eyes, or clasped in my embrace.
Absence and death how differ they! and how
Shall I admit that nothing can restore
What one short sigh so easily removed?— 10
Death, life, and sleep, reality and thought,
Assist me, God, their boundaries to know,
O teach me calm submission to thy Will!
The Child she mourned had overstepped the pale
Of Infancy, but still did breathe the air 15
That sanctifies its confines, and partook
Reflected beams of that celestial light[A]
To all the Little-ones on sinful earth
Not unvouchsafed—a light that warmed and cheered
Those several qualities of heart and mind 20
Which, in her own blest nature, rooted deep,
Daily before the Mother's watchful eye,
And not hers only, their peculiar charms
Unfolded,—beauty, for its present self,
And for its promises to future years, 25
With not unfrequent rapture fondly hailed.
Have you espied upon a dewy lawn
A pair of Leverets each provoking each
To a continuance of their fearless sport,
Two separate Creatures in their several gifts 30
Abounding, but so fashioned that, in all
That Nature prompts them to display, their looks,
Their starts of motion and their fits of rest,
An undistinguishable style appears
And character of gladness, as if Spring 35
Lodged in their innocent bosoms, and the spirit
Of the rejoicing morning were their own?
Such union, in the lovely Girl maintained
And her twin Brother, had the parent seen,
Ere, pouncing like a ravenous bird of prey, 40
Death in a moment parted them, and left
The Mother, in her turns of anguish, worse
Than desolate; for oft-times from the sound
Of the survivor's sweetest voice (dear child,
He knew it not) and from his happiest looks, 45
Did she extract the food of self-reproach,
As one that lived ungrateful for the stay
By Heaven afforded to uphold her maimed
And tottering spirit. And full oft the Boy,
Now first acquainted with distress and grief, 50
Shrunk from his Mother's presence, shunned with fear
Her sad approach, and stole away to find,
In his known haunts of joy where'er he might,
A more congenial object. But, as time
Softened her pangs and reconciled the child 55
To what he saw, he gradually returned,
Like a scared Bird encouraged to renew
A broken intercourse; and, while his eyes
Were yet with pensive fear and gentle awe
Turned upon her who bore him, she would stoop 60
To imprint a kiss that lacked not power to spread
Faint colour over both their pallid cheeks,
And stilled his tremulous lip. Thus they were calmed
And cheered; and now together breathe fresh air
In open fields; and when the glare of day 65
Is gone, and twilight to the Mother's wish
Befriends the observance, readily they join
In walks whose boundary is the lost One's grave,
Which he with flowers hath planted, finding there
Amusement, where the Mother does not miss 70
Dear consolation, kneeling on the turf
In prayer, yet blending with that solemn rite
Of pious faith the vanities of grief;
For such, by pitying Angels and by Spirits
Transferred to regions upon which the clouds 75
Of our weak nature rest not, must be deemed
Those willing tears, and unforbidden sighs,
And all those tokens of a cherished sorrow,
Which, soothed and sweetened by the grace of Heaven
As now it is, seems to her own fond heart, 80
Immortal as the love that gave it being.
FOOTNOTES:
1811
In the spring of 1811 Wordsworth left Allan Bank, to reside
for two years in the Rectory, Grasmere. A small fragment on
his daughter Catherine, the Epistle to Sir George Beaumont, Bart.,
from the south-west coast of Cumberland, the lines To the Poet,
John Dyer, and four sonnets (mainly suggested by the events
of the year in Spain) comprise all the poems belonging to
1811.—Ed.
CHARACTERISTICS OF A CHILD THREE
YEARS OLD
Composed 1811.—Published 1815
[Written at Allanbank, Grasmere. Picture of my daughter,
Catherine, who died the year after.—I. F.]
Classed among the "Poems referring to the Period of Childhood."—Ed.
Loving she is, and tractable, though wild;
And Innocence hath privilege in her
To dignify arch looks and laughing eyes;
And feats of cunning; and the pretty round
Of trespasses, affected to provoke 5
Mock-chastisement and partnership in play.
And, as a faggot sparkles on the hearth,
Not less if unattended and alone
Than when both young and old sit gathered round
And take delight in its activity; 10
Even so this happy Creature of herself
Is all-sufficient; solitude to her
Is blithe society, who fills the air
With gladness and involuntary songs.
Light are her sallies as the tripping fawn's 15
Forth-startled from the fern where she lay couched;
Unthought-of, unexpected, as the stir
Of the soft breeze ruffling the meadow-flowers,
Or from before it chasing wantonly
The many-coloured images imprest 20
Upon the bosom of a placid lake.
On February 28, 1810, Dorothy Wordsworth wrote to Lady
Beaumont, "Catherine is the only funny child in the family;
the rest of the children are lively, but Catherine is comical in
every look and motion. Thomas perpetually forces a tender
smile by his simplicity, but Catherine makes you laugh outright,
though she can hardly say a dozen words, and she joins in the
laugh, as if sensible of the drollery of her appearance."—Ed.
SPANISH GUERILLAS, 1811
Composed 1811.—Published 1815
Classed among the "Sonnets dedicated to Liberty."—Ed.