IN THE GROUNDS OF COLEORT ›N, THE SEAT OF SIR GEORGE BEAUMONT, BARI. LEICESTERSHIRE.
THE embowering rose, the acacia, and the pine
Will not unwillingly their place resign;
If but the cedar thrive that near them stands,
Planted by Beaumont's and by Wordsworth's hands.
One wooed the silent Art with studious pains,—
These groves have heard the other's pensive strains ;
Devoted thus, their spirits did unite
By interchange of knowledge and delight.
May Nature's kindliest power sustain the tree,
And love protect it from all injury !
And when its potent branches, wide out-thrown,
Darken the brow of this memorial stone,
Aud to a favourite resting-place invite,
For coolness grateful and a sober light;
Here may some Painter sit in future days,
Some future Poet meditate his lays;
Not mindless of that distant age renowned,
When inspiration hovered o'er this ground,
The haunt of him who sang how spear and shield
In civil conflict met on Bosworth Field;
And of that famous youth,21 full soon removed
From earth, perhaps by Shakspeare's self-approved,
Flether's associate, Jonson's friend beloved.
FOR A SEAT IN THE GROVES OF COLEORTON.
BENEATH yon eastern ridge, the craggy bound,
Rugged and high, of Charnwood's forest ground,
Stand yet, but, stranger! hidden from thy view,
The ivied ruins of forlorn Grace Dieu;
Erst a religious House, that day and night
With hymns resounded, and the chanted rite:
And when those rites had ceased, the spot gave birth
To honourable men of various worth :
There, on the margin of a streamlet wild,
Did Francis Beaumont sport, an eager child;
There, under shadow of the neighbouring rocks,
Sang youthful tales of shepherds and their flocks;
Unconscious prelude to heroic themes,
Heart-breaking tears, and melancholy dreams.
Of slighted love, and scorn, and jealous rage,
With which his genius shook the buskined stage.
Communities are lost, and empires die,—
And things of holy use unhallowed lie;
They perish ;--but the intellect can raise,
From airy words alone, a pile that ne'er decays.
"THESE tourists, Heaven preserve us! needs must live
A profitable life: some glance along,
Rapid and gay, as if the earth were air,
And they were butterflies to wheel about
Long as the summer lasted: some, as wise,
Upon the forehead of a jutting crag
Sit perched, with book and pencil on their knee,
And look and scribble, scribble on and look,
Until a man might travel twelve stout miles,
Or reap an acre of his neighbour's corn.
But, for that moping son of idleness-
Why can he tarry yonder?-In our churchyard
Is neither epitaph nor monument,
Tombstone nor name-only the turf we tread
And a few natural graves."
To Jane, his wife,
Thus spake the homely Priest of Ennerdale.
It was a July evening; and he sate
Upon the long stone seat beneath the eaves
Of his old cottage,—as it chanced, that day,
Employed in winter's work. Upon the stone
His wife sat near him, teasing matted wool,
While, from the twin cards toothed with glittering wire,
He fed the spindle of his youngest child,
Who turned her large round wheel in th' open air
With back and forward steps. Towards the field
In which the Parish Chapel stood alone,
Girt round with a bare ring of mossy wall,
While half an hour went by, the Priest had sent
Many a long look of wonder; and at last,
Risen from his seat, beside the snow-white ridge
Of carded wool which the old man had piled,
He laid his implements with gentle care,
Each in the other locked; and, down the path
Which from his cottage to the Church-yard led,
He took his way, impatient to accost
The Stranger, whom he saw still lingering there.
'T was one well known to him in former days, A shepherd-lad ;-who ere his sixteenth year Had left that calling, tempted to entrust
His expectations to the fickle winds
And perilous waters; with the mariners
A fellow-mariner, and so had fared
Through twenty seasons; but he had been reared
Among the mountains, and he in his heart.
Was half a shepherd on the stormy seas.
Oft in the piping shrouds had Leonard heard
The tones of waterfalls, and inland sounds
Of caves and trees-and when the regular wind
Between the tropics filled the steady sail,
And blew with the same breath through days and weeks, Lengthening invisibly its weary line
Along the cloudless main, he, in those hours
Of tiresome indolence, would often hang
Over the vessel's side, and gaze, and gaze ;
And, while the broad green wave and sparkling foam
Flashed round him images and hues that wrought
In union with the employment of his heart,
He, thus by feverish passion overcome,
Even with the organs of his bodily eye,
Below him, in the bosom of the deep,
Saw mountains; saw the forms of sheep that grazed
On verdant hills-with dwellings among trees,
And shepherds clad in the same country gray
Which he himself had worn. 23
From perils manifold, with some small wealth
Acquired by traffic in the Indian Isles,
To his parental home he is returned,
With a determined purpose to resume
The life which he lived there; both for the sake
Of many darling pleasures, and the love.
Which to an only Brother he has borne
In all his hardships, since that happy time.
When, whether it blew foul or fair, they twor
Were brother-shepherds on their native hills.
-They were the last of all their race and now,
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