Elegiac Sonnets, and Other Poems, Volume 2, The Second Edition/Notes
QUOTATIONS, NOTES,
and EXPLANATIONS.
Line 1
Ill-omen'd bird, whose cries portentous float.
This Sonnet, first inserted in the novel called the Old Manor House, is founded on a superstition attributed (vide Bertram's Travels in America) to the Indians, who believe that the cry of this night hawk (Caprimulgus Americanus) portends some evil, and when they are at war, assert that it is never heard near their tents or habitations but to announce the death of some brave warrior of their tribe, or some other calamity.
First published in the same work.
Line 1
O'er faded heath-flowers spun, or thorny furze.
The web, charged with innumerable globules of bright dew, that is frequently on heaths and commons in autumnal mornings, can hardly have escaped the observation of any lover of nature.— The slender web of the field spider is again alluded to in Sonnet lxxvii.
First printed in the novel of "The Banished Man."
Written on the coast of Sussex during very tempestuous weather in December 1791, but first published in the novel of Montalbert.
Printed in the same work.
Line 11.
He has "no nice felicities that shrink."
"'Tis delicate felicity that shrinks
"When rocking winds are loud."
Walpole.
line 1.
Thee! "lucid arbiter 'twixt day and night."
Milton.
line 5.
"Wilt thou yet murmur at a misplaced leaf?"
From a story (I know not where told) of a fastidious being, who, on a bed of rose leaves, complained that his or her rest was destroyed because one of those leaves was doubled.
line 1.
"Sleep, that knits up the ravell'd sleeve of care."
Shakspeare.
Line 5.
Murmuring I hear
The hollow wind around the ancient towers.
These lines were written in a residence among ancient public buildings.
First published in the novel of Marchmont.
Line 5.
The base controul
Of petty despots in their pedant reign
Already hast thou felt;—
This was not addressed to my son, who suffered with many others in an event which will long be remembered by those parents who had sons at a certain public school, in 1793, but to another young man, not compelled as he was, in consequence of that dismission, to abandon the fairest prospects of his future life.
Line 1.
The almost imperceptible threads floating in the air, towards the end of Summer or Autumn, in a still evening, sometimes are so numerous as to be felt on the face and hands. It is on these that a minute species of spider convey themselves from place to place; sometimes rising with the wind to a great height in the air. Dr Lister, among other naturalists, remarked these insects. "To fly they cannot strictly be said, they being carried into the air by external force; but they can, in case the wind suffer them, steer their course, perhaps mount and descend at pleasure: and to the purpose of rowing themselves along in the air, it is observable that they ever take their flight backwards, that is, their head looking a contrary way like a sculler upon the Thames. It is scarcely credible to what height they will mount; which is yet precisely true, and a thing easily to be observed by one that shall fix his eye some time on any part of the heavens, the white web, at a vast distance, very distinctly appearing from the azure sky.—But this is in Autumn only, and that in very fair and calm weather."
From the Encyclop. Brit.
Dr Darwin, whose imagination so happily applies every object of Natural History to the purposes of Poetry, makes the Goddess of Botany thus direct her Sylphs—
"Thin clouds of Gossamer in air display,
"And hide the vale's chaste lily from the ray."
These filmy threads form a part of the equipage of Mab:
"Her waggon spokes are made of spiders' legs,
"The cover of the wings of grasshoppers,
"The traces of the smallest spider's web."
Oh! so light of foot
Will ne'er wear out the everlasting flint;
A lover may bestride the Gossamer
That idles in the wanton summer air,
And yet not fall—
TO THE GODDESS OF BOTANY.
seems to be a resource for the sick at heart—for those who, from sorrow or disgust, may without affectation say
"Society is nothing to one not sociable!"
and whose wearied eyes and languid spirits find relief and repose amid the shades of vegetable nature.— I cannot now turn to any other pursuit that for a moment soothes my wounded mind.
"Je pris gout a cette récreation des yeux, qui dans l'infortune, repose, amuse, distrait l'esprit, et suspend le sentiment des peines."
Thus speaks the singular, the unhappy Rousseau, when in his "Promenades" he enumerates the causes that drove him from the society of men, and occasioned his pursuing with renewed avidity the study of Botany. "I was," says he, "Forcé de m'abstenir de penser, de peur de penser a mes malheurs malgré moi; forcé de contenir les restes d'une imagination riante, mais languissante, que tant d'angoisses pourroient effaroucher a la fin—"
Without any pretensions to those talents which were in him so heavily taxed with that excessive irritability, too often, if not always the attendant on genius, it has been my misfortune to have endured real calamities that have disqualified me for finding any enjoyment in the pleasures and pursuits which occupy the generality of the world. I have been engaged in contending with persons whose cruelty has left so painful an impression on my mind, that I may well say
"Brillantes fleurs, émail des prés, ombrages frais, bosquets, verdure, venez purifier mon imagination de tous ces hideux objets!"
Perhaps, if any situation is more pitiable than that which compels us to wish to escape from the common business and forms of life, it is that where the sentiment is forcibly felt, while it cannot be indulged; and where the sufferer, chained down to the discharge of duties from which the wearied spirit recoils, feels like the wretched Lear, when Shakspeare makes him exclaim "Oh! I am bound upon a wheel of fire,
"Which my own tears do scald like melted lead."
TO THE INVISIBLE MOON.
I know not whether this is correctly expressed—I suspect that it is not.—What I mean, however, will surely be understood—I address the Moon when not visible at night in our hemisphere.
"The sun to me is dark,
"And silent as the Moon
"When she deserts the night,
"Hid in her secret interlunar cave."
Milton, Samps. Agon.
First printed in a publication for the use of young persons, called "Rambles Farther."
Line 6.
Where briony and woodbine fringe the trees.
Briony, Bryonia dioica, foliis palmatis, &c. White Briony, growing plentifully in woods and hedges, and twisting around taller plants.
Line 8.
"Murmur their fairy tunes in praise of flowers,"
A line taken, I believe, from a Poem called "Vacuna," printed in Dodsley's collection.
TO THE SHADE OF BURNS.
Whoever has tasted the charm of original genius so evident in the composition of this genuine Poet,
A Poet "of nature's own creation,"
cannot surely fail to lament his unhappy life, (latterly passed, as I have understood, in an employment to which such a mind as his must have been averse,) nor his premature death. For one, herself made the object of subscription, is it proper to add, that whoever has thus been delighted with the wild notes of the Scottish bard, must have a melancholy pleasure in relieving by their benevolence, the unfortunate family he has left?
Line 14.
"Enjoys the liberty it loved—"
Pope.
Line 1.
The upland shepherd, as reclined he lies.
Suggested by the recollection of having seen, some years since, on a beautiful evening of Summer, an engagement between two armed ships, from the high Down called the Beacon Hill, near Brighthelmstone.
Line 13.
Haply may'st thou one sorrowing vigil keep,
Where Pity and Remembrance bend and weep.
"Where melancholy friendship bends and weeps."
Gray.
First printed in a novel called "The Young Philosopher."
NEPENTHE.
Of what nature this Nepenthe was, has ever been a matter of doubt and dispute. See Wakefield's note to Pope's Odyssey, Book iv, verse 302.
But the passage here alluded to runs thus:
"Meanwhile with genial joy to warm the soul
Bright Helen mix'd a mirth-inspiring bowl,
Temper'd with drugs, of sovereign use t'assuage
The boiling bosom of tumultuous rage;
To clear the cloudy front of wrinkled care,
And dry the tearful sluices of despair;
Charm'd with that virtuous draught, th' exalted mind
All sense of woe delivers to the wind.
Tho' on the blazing pile his father lay,
Or a loved brother groan'd his life away,
Or darling son, oppress'd by ruffian force,
Fell breathless at his feet a mangled corse,
From morn to eve, impassive and serene,
The man entranced would view the deathful scene:
These drugs so friendly to the joys of life,
Bright Helen learn'd from Thone's imperial wife."
Milton thus speaks of it in Comus:
"Behold this cordial julep here,
That flames and dances in his crystal bounds!
Not that Nepenthe, which the wife of Thone
In Egypt gave to Jove-born Helena,
Is of such power as this to stir up joy,
To life so friendly, or so cool to thirst.
"I woke, she fled, and day brought back my night."
Milton.
"See misery living, hope and pleasure dead."
Sir Brook Boothby.
"Death seems prepared, yet still delays to strike."
Thomas Warton.
I have been told that I have incurred blame for having used in this short composition, terms that have become obnoxious to certain persons. Such remarks are hardly worth notice; and it is very little my ambition to obtain the suffrage of those who suffer party prejudice to influence their taste; or of those who desire that because they have themselves done it, every one else should be willing to sell their best birth-rights, the liberty of thought, and of expressing thought, for the promise of a mess of pottage.
It is surely not too much to say, that in a country like ours, where such immense sums are annually raised for the poor, there ought to be some regulation which should prevent any miserable deserted being from perishing through want, as too often happens to such objects as that on whose interment these stanzas were written.
It is somewhat remarkable that a circumstance exactly similar is the subject of a short poem called the Pauper's Funeral, in a volume lately published by Mr Southey.
This little poem, of which a sketch first appeared in blank verse in a poem called "The Emigrants," was suggested by the sight of the group it attempts to describe—a French lady and her children. The drawing from which the print is taken I owe to the taste and talents of a lady, whose pencil has bestowed the highest honor this little book can boast.
The Becca-fica seeks Italian groves,
No more a Wheat-ear—
From an idea that the Wheat-ear is the Becca-fica of Italy, which I doubt.
Page 34 Line 14.
An hero now, and now a sans culotte.
At that time little else was talked of.
Page 36. Line 1.
For tho' he plough the sea when others sleep,
He draws like Glendower spirits from the deep.
Glen. " I can call spirits from the vasty deep."
Hotsp. "But will they come when you do call for them?"
Shakspeare.
The spirits that animate the night voyages of the Sussex fishermen are often sunk in their kegs on any alarm from the Custom-House officers; and being attached to a buoy, the adventurers go out when the danger of detection is over, and draw them up. A coarse sort of white brandy which they call moonshine, is a principal article of this illegal commerce.
Page 45. Line 2.
His lisping children hail their sire's return.
"No children run to lisp their sire's return."
Gray.
Page 45. Line 6.
And the campaign concludes, perhaps, at Horsham!
At Horsham is the county jail.
Page 45. Line 10.
And soft celestial mercy, doubly blest.
"It is twice blessed,
"It blesseth him that gives and him that takes."
Shakspeare.
The singular scenery here attempted to be described, is almost the only part of this rock of stones worth seeing. On an high broken cliff hang the ruins of some very ancient building, which the people of the island call Bow and Arrow Castle, or Rufus' Castle. Beneath, but still high above the sea, are the half-fallen arches and pillars of an old church, and around are scattered the remains of tomb-stones, and almost obliterated memorials of the dead. These verses were written for, and first inserted in, a Novel, called Marchmont; and the close alludes to the circumstance of the story related in the Novel.
Supposed to have been written in the New Forest
in early Spring.
These are from the Novel of Marchmont.
Line 1.
As in the woods where leathery lichen weaves
Its wintry web among the sallow leaves.
Mosses and lichens are the first efforts of Nature to clothe the earth: as they decay, they form an earth that affords nourishment to the larger and more succulent vegetables: several species of lichen are found in the woods, springing up among the dead leaves, under the drip of forest trees; these, and the withered foliage of preceding years, afford shelter to the earliest wild flowers about the skirts of woods, and in hedge-rows and copses.
The Pile-wort (Ranuncula Ficaria ) and the Wood Anemone (Anemone Nemerosa ) or Windflower, blow in the woods and copses. Of this latter beautiful species there is in Oxfordshire a blue one, growing wild, (Anemone pratensis pedunculo involucrato, petalis apice reflexis foliis bipinnatisLin. Sp. Pl. 760.) It is found in Whichwood Forest, near Cornbury quarry. (Vide Flora Oxoniensis). I do not mention this by way of exhibiting botanical knowledge (so easy to possess in appearance) but because I never saw the Blue Anemone wild in any other place, and it is a flower of singular beauty and elegance.
Line 11.
Uncultured bells of azure Jacynths blow.
Hyacinthus non scriptus—a Hare-bell.
Line 12.
And the breeze-scenting Violet lurks below.
To the Violet there needs no note, it being like the nightingale and the rose, in constant requisition by the poets.
FROM THE FRENCH.
A free translation of a favourite French song.
"Un jour me demandoit Hortense
Ou se trouve le tendre amour?"
TO AN OLD TREE.
The philosophy of these few lines may not be very correct, since mosses are known to injure the stems and branches of trees to which they adhere; but the images of Poetry cannot always be exactly adjusted to objects of Natural History.
Line 4.
fronds of studded moss.
The foliage, if it may be so called, of this race of plants, is termed fronds; and their flowers, or fructification, assume the shapes of cups and shields; of those of this description, more particularly adhering to trees, is Lichen Pulmonarius; Lungwort Lichen, with shields; the Lichen Caperatus, with red cups; and many others which it would look like pedantry to enumerate.
Line 9.
The Woodbine and the Clematis are well known plants, ornamenting our hedge-rows in summer with fragrant flowers.
Line 12.
Nightshade, (Solanum Lignosum ) woody Nightshade, is one of the most beautiful of its tribe.
Page 59. Line 1.
The silver weed, whose corded fillets wove.
The silver weed, Convolvulus Major (Raii Syn. 275) or greater Bind-weed, which, however the beauty of the flowers may enliven the garden or the wilds, is so prejudicial to the gardener and farmer, that it is seen by them with dislike equal to the difficulty of extirpating it from the soil. Its cord-like stalks, plaited together, can hardly be forced from the branches round which they have twined themselves.
Late circumstances have given rise to many mournful histories like this, which may well be said to be founded in truth!I, who have been so sad a sufferer in this miserable contest, may well endeavour to associate myself with those who apply what powers they have to deprecate the horrors of war. Gracious God! will mankind never be reasonable enough to understand that all the miseries which our condition subjects us to, are light in comparison of what we bring upon ourselves by indulging the folly and wickedness of those who make nations destroy each other for their diversion, or to administer to their senseless ambition.
If the stroke of war
Fell certain on the guilty head, none else—
If they that make the cause might taste th' effect,
And drink themselves the bitter cup they mix;
Then might the Bard (the child of peace) delight
To twine fresh wreaths around the conqueror's brow;
Or haply strike his high-toned harp, to swell
The trumpet's martial sound, and bid them on
When Justice arms for vengeance; but, alas!
That undistinguishing and deathful storm
Beats heaviest on the exposed and innocent;
And they that stir its fury, while it raves,
Safe and at distance send their mandates forth
Unto the mortal ministers that wait
To do their bidding!Crowe.
I have in these stanzas, entitled the Forest Boy, attempted the measure so successfully adopted in one of the poems of a popular novel, and so happily imitated by Mr Southey in "Poor Mary."
This and the following poem were written (the first of them at my request, for a Novel) by a lady whose death in her thirty-sixth year was a subject of the deepest concern to all who knew her.
Would to God the last line which my regret on that loss, drew from me, had been prophetic—and that my heart had indeed been cold, instead of having suffered within the next twelve months after that line was written, a deprivation which has rendered my life a living death.
The Oak, and, in sheltered situations, the Beech, retain the leaves of the preceding year till the new foliage appears.
The return of the spring, which awakens many to new sentiments of pleasure, now serves only to remind me of past misery.
This sensation is common to the wretched—and too many poets have felt it in all its force.
"Zefiro torno, e'l bel tempo rimena,
"E i fiori, e l'erbe, sua dolce famiglia; &c. &c.
"Ma per me lasso!"—
Petrarch on the Death of Laura.
And these lines of Guarini have always been celebrated.
"O primavera gioventù dell' anno,
"Bella madre di fiori
"D'erbe novelle e di novelli amori;
"Tu torni ben, ma teco
"Non tornano i sereni
"E fortunati di, delle mie gioje;
"Tu torni ben, tu torni,
"Ma teco altro non torna
"Che del perduto mio caro tesoro,
"La rimembranza misera e dolente."
From the following sentence in Lord Bacon's Essays.
"Death is no such formidable enemy, since a man has so many champions about him that can win the combat of him—Revenge triumphs over Death; Love slights it; Honour courts it; dread of Disgrace chooses it; Grief flies to it; Fear anticipates it."
The Juniper and the Yew are almost the only trees that grow spontaneously on the highest chalky hills, and they are often ragged and stunted by the violence of the wind.
Some of the most elevated mounds of earth on these hills are sea-marks, and have formerly surrounded beacons; others are considered as memorials of the dead, and are called Saxon, Danish, or Roman, according to the systems of different observers.
Page 107. Line 6.
But the red flames of burning lime.
From eminences in those countries where lime is burnt as a manure, a chain of lime kilns for many miles may be sometimes seen, which blazing amid the doubtful darkness of an extensive landscape, have a fine effect.
Page 107. Line 7.
The Horseman's ghost.
Some years ago a strange notion prevailed among the people occasionally passing over one of the highest of the South Downs, that a man on horseback was often seen coming towards those who were returning from market on Saturday evening. This appearance, the noise of whose horse's feet they distinctly heard, vanished as soon as it came within an hundred yards of the passengers who often tried to meet it. At other times it was seen following them. They have stopped to let it approach, but it always melted into air. I have been present when a farmer not otherwise particularly weak or ignorant, said, that he had seen it, and distinctly heard the horse galloping towards him.
Page 108. Line 2.
Her silver pathway on the sea.
The bright lustre of the moon reflected from the sea, is almost as distinctly visible from the Downs as the moon itself; forming a long line of radiance from the horizon to the shore.
THE END.
Printed by R. Noble,
Shire-Lane.