Thomas Humphry Ward, ed. The English Poets. 1880–1918.rnVol. IV. The Nineteenth Century: Wordsworth to Rossetti
William Wordsworth (17701850)At the Grave of Burns
(Seven Years after his Death)
I
At thought of what I now behold:
As vapours breathed from dungeons cold
Strike pleasure dead,
So sadness comes from out the mould
Where Burns is laid.
And thou forbidden to appear?
As if it were thyself that ’s here
I shrink with pain;
And both my wishes and my fear
Alike are vain.
Dark thoughts!—they came, but not to stay;
With chastened feelings would I pay
The tribute due
To him, and aught that hides his clay
From mortal view.
He sang, his genius ‘glinted’ forth,
Rose like a star that touching earth,
For so it seems,
Doth glorify its humble birth
With matchless beams.
The struggling heart, where be they now?—
Full soon the Aspirant of the plough,
The prompt, the brave,
Slept, with the obscurest, in the low
And silent grave.
More deeply grieved, for He was gone
Whose light I hailed when first it shone,
And showed my youth
How Verse may build a princely throne
On humble truth.
Regret pursues and with it blends,—
Huge Criffel’s hoary top ascends
By Skiddaw seen,—
Neighbours we were, and loving friends
We might have been:
But heart with heart and mind with mind,
Where the main fibres are entwined,
Through Nature’s skill,
May even by contraries be joined
More closely still.
Thou ‘poor Inhabitant below,’
At this dread moment—even so—
Might we together
Have sate and talked where gowans blow,
Or on wild heather.
Within my reach; of knowledge graced
By fancy what a rich repast!
But why go on?—
Oh! spare to sweep, thou mournful blast,
His grave grass-grown.
(Not three weeks past the Stripling died,)
Lies gathered to his Father’s side,
Soul-moving sight!
Yet one to which is not denied
Some sad delight.
Hath early found among the dead,
Harboured where none can be misled,
Wronged, or distrest;
And surely here it may be said
That such are blest.
Checked oft-times in a devious race,
May He who halloweth the place
Where Man is laid
Receive thy Spirit in the embrace
For which it prayed!
Night fell I heard, or seemed to hear,
Music that sorrow comes not near,
A ritual hymn,
Chaunted in love that casts out fear
By Seraphim.