Thou gentle Bard, on whose internal sight
Genius has pour’d her many-coloured light;
With whom the loveliest of the Virtues dwell,
Waving their halcyon plumes around thy cell,
Though fortune, blind to merit, fail to throw
One gaudy trophy on thy pensive brow,
Conscious of worth, thy high, and free-born soul
Disdains to court her insolent controul.
Though yet proud fame no sunny glance has shed
On the low roof, that screens thy modest head,
The same exalted spirit scorns to wail
Her echoes silent in thy lonely vale.
Yet, while one votary of the Muses blames
The unjust neglect of those capricious dames,
O! may she stimulate that noble pride,
Which rather seeks in humblest roof to hide
Talents, which Nature’s bounty lavish gave,
Than, courting Fortune’s smile, commence her slave;
Than climb Parnassus’ steep and dangerous ways,
Than drop the rose of Peace to grasp the bays.
Thy quiet steps my fancy loves to trace
Through walks of savage, or of gentle grace;
And, pleas’d, she finds the scenes, that gave thee birth,
Types of thy lot, thy talents, and thy worth.
As conscious Memory, with reverted glance,
Roves the long-known and mountainous expanse,
At once her pencil’s faithful traits restore
The windy tracts of Tideswell’s naked moor;
Stretch’d on vast hills, that in wide range prevail,
Bleak, stony, bare, monotonous, and pale.
Far on the waste, in noon-tide’s sultry rays,
The frequent lime-kiln flings the umber’d blaze.
Its suffocating smoke incessant breathes,
Shrouding the sun in black convolving wreaths;
And oft, with sullied ashes heapt around,
Sinks the dark mine, and blots the pallid ground.
In vain warm Spring demands her mantle green,
No sheltering hedges vivify the scene;
O’er its grey breast no undulating trees
Wave their bright foliage to the lively breeze,
But from the moor the rude, stone walls disjoin,
With angle sharp, and long unvarying line,
Each cheerless field, where, slowly wandering, feed
The lonely cow, and melancholy steed;
Expos’d abide the Summer’s sultry breath,
And wintry storm, that yells along the heath.
At length benigner mountains meet our eyes,
Whose shrubby heights, in rounder grace, arise;
And, from their first steep summit, pleas’d we throw
Our eager glances on the depths below,
As sinks abrupt the sylvan Monsaldale
From the fierce sun-beam, and the howling gale.
Behold, in front, the lucid river spread
The bankless waters o’er the sunny mead;
As of his broad, and sheety shallows proud,
Shine, the clear mirrour of the passing cloud;
Then, to the left, along the valley glide,
With soft meander, and in narrower tide,
Through banks, where thick the spreading alders grow,
And glassy waves reflect each pendent bough.
Refreshing sweets the breathing hay-cocks yield,
Richly that tuft the long and narrow field,
As graceful, to the right, it curves away
Round the green cliffs, with scatter’d ash-trees gay.
Cliffs, whose smooth breast, above the shadow’d stream,
Swells to the sun, and yellows in his beam;
While on the opposing shore dwarf foliage hides,
Sombrous and soft, the mountain’s lofty sides,
Throwing its latest fringe upon the flood
That laves the concave of the shrubby wood,
Till down low rocks, disparted, moss’d, and steep,
In broken streams the frothing waters leap,
Then through the mazes of the rambling dale
Silent they lapse, or rush with tuneful wail.
The self-taught Edwin, in his lowly state,
Feels this sweet glen an emblem of his fate;
For as it stands, in beauty rich and rare,
By wild hills neighbour’d, healthy, bleak, and bare,
So, midst unletter’d hinds, as rude as those,
He, pensive Minstrel of the mountains, rose;
Who, like devoted Chatterton, was born
In Nature’s triumph and in Fortune’s scorn,
With kindred talents, but with happier mind,
By prudence guarded, as by taste refined;
Whom Industry preserves from woes severe,
Which ill the noble spirit knows to bear;
Saves from those pains that Wealth’s mean sons deride,
Dependent hopes, and heart-corroding pride,
When, for wish’d amity, and ow’d respect,
It meets the chilling scorn of base neglect;
The stingy patron’s contumelious aid,
The taunt of Envy, studious to upbraid,
All, all the ills, by which the proud are known
To crush the talents, that eclipse their own.
Be thine the mercies, EDWIN, which reward
E’en manual labour to the enlighten’d Bard,
Energic health; and, in rare union join’d,
The melting heart, and philosophic mind!
Genius is thine;—before his solar state,
O! fly ye mists of inauspicious fate!
His are the floods of cloudless day, that show
The charms that Nature, Knowledge, Art bestow.
Has he not given thee wealth, which shames the toys
Fortune bestows, and vanity enjoys?
Toys of the groveling soul, empower’d to seize
On the soft splendours of luxurious ease;
Whom yet, with scorn, discerning eyes behold
Pleas’d with life’s tinsel, reckless of its gold;
Gold, richer far than paves Golconda’s mine,
The genuine wealth of intellect divine,
That buys, disdaining Fortune’s bounded plain,
Creative Mind’s illimitable reign.
And if, in that vast range, my Muse’s powers
Lure thy pleas’d tarriance in her cypress bowers,
Ah! should’st thou feel, that real sweets belong
To the pale florets of her pensive song,
The thought that they have sooth’d thy toils, shall dwell
Warm with the heart-felt joys, that Fame’s bright meed excel.