Life and Remains of John Clare Part 28

Impartial Monitor, no dream of fear, No dread of treason for a royal crime, Deters thee from thy purpose: everywhere Thy power is shown: thou art arch-emperor here: Thou soil'st the very crowns with stains and rust; On royal robes thy havoc doth appear; The little moth, to thy proud summons just, Dares scarlet pomp to scorn, and eats it into dust.

Old shadows of magnificence, where now-- Where now and what your grandeur? Come and see Busts broken and thrown down, with wreathless brow, Walls stained with colours, not of paint, but thee.

Moss, lichens, ferns, and lonely elder tree; That upon ruins gladly climb to bloom, And add a beauty where't is vain to be, Like to the soft moonlight in a prison's gloom, Or lovely maid in youth death-smitten for the tomb.

Pride may build palaces and splendid halls; Power may display its victories and be brave; The eye finds weakest spots in strongest walls, And meets no strength that can out-wear the grave.

Nature, thy handmaid and imperial slave, The pomp of splendour's finery never heeds: Kings reign and die: pride may no respite crave; Nature in barrenness ne'er mourns thy deeds: Graves, poor and rich alike, she overruns with weeds.

In thy proud eye, imperial Arbiter, An insect small to prize appeareth man; His pomp and honours have o'er thee no spell, To win thy purpose from the little span Allotted unto life in Nature's plan; Trifles to him thy favour can engage; High he looks up, and soon his race is run; While the small daisy upon Nature's page, On which he sets his foot, gains endless heritage.

Look at the farces played in every age By puny empires, vaunting vain display, And blush to read the historian's fulsome page, Where kings are wors.h.i.+pped like to G.o.ds in clay.

Their pride the earth disdained and swept away, By thee, a shadow, worsted of their all-- Legions of soldiers, battle's dread array-- Kings' speeches--golden bribes--nought saved their fall; All 'neath thy feet are laid, thy robe their funeral pall.

How feeble and how vain, compared to thine, The glittering pageantry of earthly kings, Though in their little light they would outs.h.i.+ne Thy splendid sun: yet soon thy vengeance flings Its gloom around their crowns, poor puny things.

What then remains of all that great hath been?

A tattered state, that as a mockery clings To greatness, and concludes the idle scene-- In life how mighty thought, and found in death how mean.

Thus Athens lingers on, a nest of slaves, And Babylon's an almost doubted name: Thou with thy finger writ'st upon their graves, On one obscurity, the other shame.

The richest greatness or the proudest fame Thy sport concludeth as a farce at last: They were and would be, but are not the same: Tyrants, that made all subject where they pa.s.sed, Become a common jest for laughter at the last.

Here where I stand thy voice breathes from the ground A buried tale of sixteen hundred years, And many a Roman fragment, littered round, In each new-rooted mole-hill reappears.

Ah! what is fame, that honour so reveres?

And what is Victory's laurel-crowned event When thy unmasked intolerance interferes?

A Caesar's deeds are left to banishment, Indebted e'en to moles to show us where he went.

A mighty poet them, and every line Thy grand conception traces is sublime: No language doth thy G.o.d-like works confine; Thy voice is earth's grand polyglot, O Time!

Known of all tongues, and read in every clime, Changes of language make no change in thee: Thy works have worsted centuries of their prime, Yet new editions every day we see-- Ruin thy moral theme, its end eternity.

A satirist, too, thy pen is deadly keen; Thou turnest things that once did wonder claim To jests ridiculous and memories mean;-- The Egyptian pyramids, without a name, Stand monuments to chaos, not to fame-- Stone jests of kings which thou in sport did'st save, As towering satires of pride's living shame-- Beacons to prove thy overbearing wave Will make all fame at last become its owner's grave.

Mighty survivors! Thou shalt see the hour When all the grandeur that the earth contains-- Its pomp, its splendour, and its hollow power-- Shall waste like water from its weakened veins, And not a shadow or a myth remain-- When names and fames of which the earth is full, And books, with all their knowledge urged in vain-- When dead and living shall be void and null, And Nature's pillow be at last a human skull.

E'en temples raised to wors.h.i.+p and to prayer, Sacred from ruin in all eyes but thine, Are laid as level, and are left as bare, As spots with no pretensions to resign; Nor lives one relic that was deemed divine.

By thee, great sacrilegious Shade, all, all Are swept away, and common weeds enshrine That place of tombs and memories prodigal-- Itself a tomb at last, the record of its fall.

All then shall mingle fellows.h.i.+p with one, And earth be strewn with wrecks of human things, When tombs are broken up and memory's gone Of proud aspiring mortals, crowned as kings, Mere insects, sporting upon waxen wings That melt at thy all-mastering energy; And, when there's nought to govern, thy fame springs To new existence, conquered, yet to be An uncrowned partner still of dread eternity.

'T is done, o'erpowering Vision! And no more My simple numbers chronicle thy fame; 'T is gone: the spirit of my voice is o'er, Adventuring praises to thy mighty name.

To thee an atom am I, and in shame I shrink from these aspirings to my doom; For all the world contains to praise or blame Is but a garden hastening out of bloom To fill up Nature's wreck-mere rubbish for the tomb.

Imperial Moralist! Thy every page, Like grand prophetic visions, doth instal Truth for all creeds. The savage, saint, and sage In unison may answer to thy call.

Thy voice as universal, speaks to all; It tells us what all were and are to be; That evil deeds will evil hearts enthral, And G.o.d the just maintain the grand decree, That whoso righteous lives shall win eternity.

TO JOHN MILTON

"From his honoured Friend, William Davenant."

[This poem appeared in the "Sheffield Iris" of May the 16th, 1826, with this introductory note:--

"The following stanzas are supposed to have been addressed to Milton by his friend and contemporary, Sir William Davenant. We cannot vouch for their authenticity, but for their excellency we can. They have been communicated to us by the late editor of the 'Iris,' who received them from Mr. John Clare, the ingenious poet of Northamptons.h.i.+re."]

Poet of mighty power, I fain Would court the muse that honoured thee, And, like Elisha's spirit, gain A part of thy intensity; And share the mantle which she flung Around thee, when thy lyre was strung.

Though faction's scorn at first did shun, With coldness, thy inspired song, Though clouds of malice pa.s.s'd thy sun, They could not hide it long; Its brightness soon exhaled away Dark night, and gained eternal day.

The critics' wrath did darkly frown Upon thy muse's mighty lay; But blasts that break the blossom down Do only stir the bay; And thine shall flourish, green and long, In the eternity of song.

Thy genius saw, in quiet mood, Gilt fas.h.i.+on's follies pa.s.s thee by, And, like the monarch of the wood, Tower'd o'er it to the sky; Where thou could'st sing of other spheres, And feel the fame of future years.

Though bitter sneers and stinging scorns Did throng the muse's dangerous way, Thy powers were past such little thorns, They gave thee no dismay; The scoffer's insult pa.s.s'd thee by.

Thou smild'st and mad'st him no reply.

Envy will gnaw its heart away To see thy genius gather root; And as its flowers their sweets display Scorn's malice shall be mute; Hornets that summer warmed to fly, Shall at the death of summer die.

Though friendly praise hath but its hour, And little praise with thee hath been; The bay may lose its summer flower, But still its leaves are green; And thine, whose buds are on the shoot, Shall only fade to change to fruit.

Fame lives not in the breath of words, In public praises' hue and cry; The music of these summer birds Is silent in a winter sky, When thine shall live and flourish on, O'er wrecks where crowds of fames are gone.

The ivy shuns the city wall, When busy-clamorous crowds intrude, And climbs the desolated hall In silent solitude; The time-worn arch, the fallen dome, Are roots for its eternal home.

The bard his glory ne'er receives Where summer's common flowers are seen, But winter finds it when she leaves The laurel only green; And time, from that eternal tree, Shall weave a wreath to honour thee.

Nought but thy ashes shall expire; Thy genius, at thy obsequies, Shall kindle up its living fire And light the muse's skies; Ay, it shall rise, and s.h.i.+ne, and be A sun in song's posterity.

THE BIRDS AND ST. VALENTINE

Sorrow came with downcast eyes, And stole the lyre of love away.

VAN DYK.

[From ACKERMANN'S "Juvenile Forget-me-not"]

Some two or three weeks before Valentine's day, Sir Winter grew kind, and, minded to play, Shook hands with Miss Flora, and woo'd her to spare A few pretty snowdrops to stick in his hair, Intending for truth, as he said, to resign His throne to Miss Spring and her priest Valentine; Which trifle he asked for before he set forth, To remind him of all when he got in the North; And this is the reason that snowdrops appear 'Mid the cold of the Winter, so soon in the year.

Flora complied, and, the instant she heard, Flew away with the news to each bachelor bird, Who in raptures half moved on Love's errand to start, Their songs muttered over to get them by heart: Nay, the Mavis at once sung aloud in his glee, And looked for a spot where love's dwelling should be; And ever since then, both in garden and grove, The Mavis tunes first a short ditty to love, While all the young gentlemen birds that were near Fell to tr.i.m.m.i.n.g their jackets anew for the year: One and all they determined to seek for a mate, And thought it a folly for seasons to wait, So even agreed, before Valentine's day, To join hearts in love; but the ladies said, Nay!

Yet each one consented at once to resign Her heart unto Hymen on St. Valentine; While Winter, who only pretended to go, Lapt himself out of sight in some hillocks of snow, That behind all the rest 'neath the wood hedges lay So close that the sun could not drive them away: Yet the gentlemen birds on their love errands flew, Thinking all Flora told them was nothing but true, Till out Winter came, and his frowns in a trice Turned the lady birds' hearts all as hardened as ice.

In vain might the gentles in love sue and plead-- They heard, but not once did they notice or heed: From Winter they crept, who, in tyranny proud, Yoked his horses of storms to his coach of a cloud; For on Valentine's morn he was raving so high, Lady Spring for the life of her durst not come nigh; While Flora's gay feet were so numbed with the snow That she could not put on her best slippers to go.

Then the Spring she fell ill, and, her health to regain, On a sunbeam rode back to her South once again; And, as both were the bridesmaids, their teasing delay Made the lady birds put off their weddings till May.

Some sighed their excuses, and feared to catch cold; And the Redcap, in mantle all bordered with gold, Sore feared that the weather would spoil her fine clothes, And nought but complaints through the forest arose.

So St. Valentine came on his journey alone In the coach of the Morn, for he'd none of his own, And put on his ca.s.sock and band, and went in To the temple of Hymen, the rites to begin, Where the Mavis Thrush waited along with his bride, Nor in the whole place was a lady beside.

The gentlemen they came alone to the saint, And instead of being married, each made a complaint Of Sir Winter, whose folly had caused the delay, And forced Love to put off the wedding till May; So the priest shook his head, and unrobed to be gone, As he had no day for his leisure but one.