Six Centuries of English Poetry Part 7

THE SOLITARY REAPER.

Behold her, single in the field, Yon solitary highland la.s.s!

Reaping and singing by herself; Stop here, or gently pa.s.s!

Alone she cuts and binds the grain, And sings a melancholy strain; O listen! for the vale profound Is overflowing with the sound.

No nightingale did ever chaunt More welcome notes to weary bands Of travellers in some shady haunt Among Arabian sands: A voice so thrilling ne'er was heard In spring-time from a cuckoo-bird, Breaking the silence of the seas Among the farthest Hebrides.

Will no one tell me what she sings?-- Perhaps the plaintive numbers flow For old, unhappy, far-off things, And battles long ago: Or is it some more humble lay, Familiar matter of to-day?

Some natural sorrow, loss, or pain, That has been, or may be again?

Whate'er the theme, the maiden sang As if her song could have no ending; I saw her singing at her work, And o'er the sickle bending;-- I listened, motionless and still; And, as I mounted up the hill, The music in my heart I bore, Long after it was heard no more.

BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE.

WILLIAM WORDSWORTH was born at c.o.c.kermouth, a town in c.u.mberland, England, April 7, 1770. He went to school at Hawkshead, Lancas.h.i.+re, whence in his seventeenth year he was sent to St. John's College, Cambridge. In January, 1791, he took his degree at the University, but without having distinguished himself in any way. The next fifteen or sixteen months were spent in France, just then in the first wild hopes of the Revolution. "In the aspirations and hopes of the revolutionists he was an ardent sharer; he thought that the world's great age was beginning anew; and with all his soul he hailed so splendid an era. The ultimate degradation of that great movement by wild lawlessness, and then by most selfish ambition, alienated his sympathy for it." Towards the close of 1792 he returned to England, and pa.s.sed the subsequent time among his friends in London and elsewhere till he settled with his sister at Racedown, Dorsets.h.i.+re, in 1796. In the following year they removed to Alfoxden. It was during this period that he made the acquaintance of Coleridge. Wordsworth had already published (1793) two little volumes of poetry, ent.i.tled _Descriptive Sketches_ and _The Evening Walk_; but they showed little promise of the triumphs which were to crown his later life. In 1798 the first volume of the _Lyrical Ballads_ was published at Bristol, which purported to be the joint work of himself and Mr. Coleridge, but to which the latter contributed only "The Ancient Mariner" and two or three shorter poems. After some months spent in Germany, Wordsworth and his sister established themselves at Grasmere, in the lake country. In 1800 he published the second volume of the _Lyrical Ballads_, and in 1802 he married Mary Hutchinson. From 1799 to 1814 he was mainly busy with his great philosophical poem, to be called "The Recluse," "containing views of Man, Nature, and Society," of which "The Prelude" was to be the introduction and "The Excursion" the Second and main Part. He designed that his minor pieces should be so arranged in connection with this work as to "give them claim to be likened to the little cells, oratories, and sepulchral recesses, ordinarily included in Gothic churches." This plan, however, was never carried out, as of the First and Third Parts only one book was written, and it has never been published. From 1814 until his death Wordsworth lived serenely and quietly at Rydal Mount, making occasional excursions into Scotland and Wales, and a tour upon the continent. In 1843, upon the death of Southey, he was appointed Poet-Laureate. His life was a long one, of steady work and much happiness. He died April 23, 1850.

The distinguis.h.i.+ng feature of Wordsworth's poetry is well set forth in his own words:

"The moving accident is not my trade, To freeze the blood I have no ready arts; 'Tis my delight, alone in summer shade, To pipe a simple song for thinking hearts."

--_Hart-Leap Well, Part II._

"Every great poet," he said, "is a teacher; I wish either to be considered as a teacher or as nothing."

And he avowed that the purpose of his poetry was "to console the afflicted; to add suns.h.i.+ne to daylight by making the happy happier; to teach the young and the gracious of every age _to see, to think and feel_, and therefore to become more actively and securely virtuous."

"Love had he found in huts where poor men lie, His daily teachings had been woods and rills, The silence that is in the starry sky, The sleep that is among the lonely hills."

"Wordsworth," says John Campbell Shairp, "was the first who, both in theory and practice, shook off the trammels of the so-called poetic diction which had tyrannized over English poetry for more than a century. This diction of course exactly represented the half-courtly, half-cla.s.sical mode of thinking and feeling. As Wordsworth rebelled against this conventionality of spirit, so against the outward expression of it. The whole of the stock phrases and used-up metaphors he discarded, and returned to living language of natural feeling, as it is used by men, instead of the dead form of it which had got stereotyped in books. And just as in his subjects he had taken in from the waste much virgin soil, so in his diction he appropriated for poetic use a large amount of words, idioms, metaphors, till then by the poets disallowed. His shorter poems, both the earlier and the later, are, for the most part, very models of natural, powerful, and yet sensitive English; the language being, like a garment, woven out of, and transparent with, the thought."

=Other Poems to be Read:= We are Seven; The Pet Lamb; To a Highland Girl; Laodamia; Matthew; The Fountain; The Wis.h.i.+ng Gate; To the Small Celandine; "Three Years She Grew"; "She was a Phantom of Delight"; At the Grave of Burns.

REFERENCES: Shairp's _Studies in Poetry and Philosophy_; Hazlitt's _English Poets_; De Quincey's _Miscellaneous Works_; _Literature and Life_, by E. P. Whipple; _Wordsworth_ (English Men of Letters), by Goldwin Smith; _Yesterdays with Authors_, by James T. Fields; _Among My Books_, Second Series, by J. R. Lowell; Matthew Arnold's Introduction to the Poems of William Wordsworth.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge.

CHRISTABEL.

PART I.

'Tis the middle of night by the castle clock, And the owls have awaken'd the crowing c.o.c.k, Tu--whit!----Tu--whoo!

And hark, again! the crowing c.o.c.k, How drowsily it crew.

Sir Leoline, the Baron rich, Hath a toothless mastiff b.i.t.c.h; From her kennel beneath the rock She maketh answer to the clock, Four for the quarters, and twelve for the hour; Ever and aye, by s.h.i.+ne and shower, Sixteen short howls, not over loud; Some say, she sees my lady's shroud.

Is the night chilly and dark?

The night is chilly, but not dark.

The thin gray cloud is spread on high, It covers but not hides the sky.

The moon is behind, and at the full; And yet she looks both small and dull.

The night is chill, the cloud is gray: 'Tis a month before the month of May, And the Spring comes slowly up this way.

The lovely lady, Christabel, Whom her father loves so well, What makes her in the wood so late, A furlong from the castle gate?

She had dreams all yesternight Of her own betrothed knight; Dreams that made her moan and leap As on her bed she lay in sleep; And she in the midnight wood will pray For the weal of her lover that's far away.

She stole along, she nothing spoke, The sighs she heaved were soft and low, And naught was green upon the oak But moss and rarest mistletoe: She kneels beneath the huge oak tree, And in silence prayeth she.

The lady sprang up suddenly, The lovely lady, Christabel!

It moaned as near as near can be, But what it is she cannot tell.-- On the other side it seems to be Of the huge, broad-breasted, old oak tree.

The night is chill; the forest bare; Is it the wind that moaneth bleak?

There is not wind enough in the air To move away the ringlet curl From the lovely lady's cheek-- There is not wind enough to twirl The one red leaf, the last of its clan, That dances as often as dance it can, Hanging so light, and hanging so high, On the topmost twig that looks up at the sky.

Hush, beating heart of Christabel!

Jesu, Maria, s.h.i.+eld her well!

She folded her arms beneath her cloak, And stole to the other side of the oak.

What sees she there?

There she sees a damsel bright, Drest in a silken robe of white, That shadowy in the moonlight shone: The neck that made that white robe wan, Her stately neck and arms were bare; Her blue-vein'd feet unsandal'd were, And wildly glitter'd here and there, The gems entangled in her hair.

I guess, 'twas frightful there to see A lady so richly clad as she-- Beautiful exceedingly!

"Mary, mother, save me now!"

(Said Christabel,) "And who art thou?"

The lady strange made answer meet, And her voice was faint and sweet:-- "Have pity on my sore distress, I scarce can speak for weariness: Stretch forth thy hand, and have no fear!"

Said Christabel, "How camest thou here?"

And the lady, whose voice was faint and sweet, Did thus pursue her answer meet:-- "My sire is of a n.o.ble line, And my name is Geraldine: Five warriors seized me yestermorn, Me, even me, a maid forlorn: They choked my cries with force and fright, And tied me on a palfrey white.

The palfrey was as fleet as wind, And they rode furiously behind.

They spurred amain, their steeds were white: And once we cross'd the shade of night.

As sure as Heaven shall rescue me, I have no thought what men they be; Nor do I know how long it is (For I have lain entranced I wis) Since one, the tallest of the five, Took me from the palfrey's back, A weary woman, scarce alive.

Some mutter'd words his comrades spoke: He placed me underneath this oak; He swore they would return with haste; Whither they went I cannot tell-- I thought I heard, some minutes past, Sounds as of a castle bell.

Stretch forth thy hand" (thus ended she), "And help a wretched maid to flee."

Then Christabel stretch'd forth her hand And comforted fair Geraldine; "O well, bright dame! may you command The service of Sir Leoline; And gladly our stout chivalry Will he send forth and friends withal To guide and guard you safe and free Home to your n.o.ble father's hall."

She rose: and forth with steps they pa.s.s'd That strove to be, and were not, fast.

Her gracious stars the lady blest, And thus spake on sweet Christabel: "All our household are at rest, The hall is silent as the cell; Sir Leoline is weak in health, And may not well awaken'd be, But we will move as if in stealth, And I beseech your courtesy, This night, to share your couch with me."