| When first, descending from the
moorlands, |
| I saw the stream of Yarrow glide |
| Along a bare and open valley, |
The Ettrick Shepherd was my guide.
|
| When last along its banks I wandered, |
| Through groves that had begun to shed |
| Their golden leaves upon the pathways, |
My steps the Border-minstrel led.
|
| The mighty Minstrel breathes no longer, |
| ’Mid mouldering ruins low he lies ; |
| And death upon the braes of Yarrow, |
Has closed the Shepherd-poet’s eyes :
|
| Nor has the rolling year twice
measured, |
| From sign to sign, its steadfast
course, |
| Since every mortal power of Coleridge |
Was frozen at its marvellous source ;
|
| The rapt One, of the godlike forehead, |
| The heaven-eyed creature sleeps in
earth : |
| And Lamb, the frolic and the gentle, |
Has vanished from his lonely hearth.
|
| Like clouds that rake the
mountain-summits, |
| Or waves that own no curbing hand, |
| How fast has brother followed brother, |
From sunshine to the sunless land !
|
| Yet I, whose lids from infant slumber |
| Were earlier raised, remain to hear |
| A timid voice, that asks in whispers, |
‘Who next will drop and disappear?’
|
| Our haughty life is crowned with
darkness, |
| Like London with its own black wreath, |
| On which with thee, O Crabbe !
forth-looking, |
I gazed from Hampstead’s breezy heath.
|
| As if but yesterday departed, |
| Thou too art gone before ; but why, |
| O’er ripe fruit, seasonably gathered, |
Should frail survivors heave a sigh ?
|
| Mourn rather for that holy spirit, |
| Sweet as the spring, as ocean deep ; |
| For her who, ere her summer faded, |
Has sunk into a breathless sleep.
|
| No more of old romantic sorrows, |
| For slaughtered youth or love-lorn maid
! |
| With sharper grief is Yarrow smitten, |
And Ettrick mourns with her their poet
dead.
|
| William
Wordsworth |
Classic Poems | James Hogg |
| |
|
[ Composed Upon Westminster Bridge September 3 ] [ Daffodils ] [ The Prelude ] [ Lucy ] [ Intimations of immortality ] [ The Solitary Reaper ] [ The world is too much with us ] [ My heart leaps up when I behold ] [ Milton ] [ Extempore Effusion upon the Death of James Hogg ] |
