Contents -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

Thomas Humphry Ward, ed. The English Poets. 1880–1918.rnVol. IV. The Nineteenth Century: Wordsworth to Rossetti

William Wordsworth (1770–1850)

A Poet’s Epitaph

ART thou a Statist in the van

Of public conflicts trained and bred?

—First learn to love one living man;

Then may’st thou think upon the dead.

A Lawyer art thou?—draw not nigh!

Go, carry to some fitter place

The keenness of that practised eye,

The hardness of that sallow face.

Art thou a Man of purple cheer?

A rosy Man, right plump to see?

Approach; yet, Doctor, not too near,

This grave no cushion is for thee.

Or art thou one of gallant pride,

A Soldier and no man of chaff?

Welcome!—but lay thy sword aside,

And lean upon a peasant’s staff.

Physician art thou? one all eyes,

Philosopher! a fingering slave,

One that would peep and botanize

Upon his mother’s grave?

Wrapt closely in thy sensual fleece,

O turn aside,—and take, I pray,

That he below may rest in peace,

Thy ever-dwindling soul, away!

A Moralist perchance appears;

Led, Heaven knows how! to this poor sod:

And he has neither eyes nor ears;

Himself his world, and his own God;

One to whose smooth-rubbed soul can cling

Nor form, nor feeling, great or small;

A reasoning, self-sufficing thing,

An intellectual All-in-all!

Shut close the door; press down the latch;

Sleep in thy intellectual crust;

Nor lose ten tickings of thy watch

Near this unprofitable dust.

But who is He, with modest looks,

And clad in homely russet brown?

He murmurs near the running brooks

A music sweeter than their own.

He is retired as noontide dew,

Or fountain in a noon-day grove;

And you must love him, ere to you

He will seem worthy of your love.

The outward shows of sky and earth,

Of hill and valley, he has viewed;

And impulses of deeper birth

Have come to him in solitude.

In common things that round us lie

Some random truths he can impart,—

The harvest of a quiet eye

That broods and sleeps on his own heart.

But he is weak; both Man and Boy,

Hath been an idler in the land;

Contented if he might enjoy

The things which others understand.

—Come hither in thy hour of strength;

Come, weak as is a breaking wave!

Here stretch thy body at full length;

Or build thy house upon this grave.