Letitia Elizabeth Landon (L E L)
Poems published in Fisher's Drawing Room Scrap Books
These are multimedia productions, which are most often presented without the accompanying illustration. This I think unfortunate, so, as far as possible, I am showing them here complete.
THE ABBEY, NEAR MUSSOOREE.
THE SEAT OF J. C. GLEN, ESQ.
"On the brow of a rugged mountain, it is quite isolated from any other dwelling; and during the rainy season, when dense clouds are floating about, it has the appearance of an island in a sea of vapour."
Alone, alone, on the mountain brow,
The sky above, the earth below ;
Your comrades the clouds, with the driving rain
Bathing your roof ere it reach the plain.
Loud on its way, as a forest blast,
The eagle that dwells at your side sweeps past ;
Dark are its wings, and fierce its eye,
And its shadow falls o'er you in passing by.
White with the snow of a thousand years,
Tall in the distance the Chor appears ;
Hot though the sunshine kindle the air.
Still hath the winter a palace there.
Away to the south the Jumna takes
Its way through the melons' golden brakes,
Through gardens, cities, and crowded plains—
Little, methinks, on its course it gains.
Round are the woods of the ancient oak,
And pines that scorn at the woodman's stroke ;
And yet the axe is on its way,
Those stately trees in the dust to lay.
They have opened the quarries of lime and stone ;
There is nothing that man will leave alone :
He buildeth the house—he tilleth the soil ;
No place is free from care and toil.
Ye old and ye stately solitudes,
Where the white snow lies, and the eagle broods,
Where every sound but the wind was still ;
Or the voice of the torrent adown the hill.
Wo on our wretched and busy race.
That will not leave Nature a resting-place.
We roam over earth, we sail o'er the wave,
Till there is not a quiet spot but the grave.
From Fisher's Drawing Room Scrap Book, 1838
ABBEY AND HILLS, FROM NEAR MUSSOOREE.
Some idea of the precipitousness of the Landour and Mussooree ridges may be conceived from the following fact, witnessed by Lieut. G. F. White. A gentleman riding in the upper Landour road, was, by the sudden starting of his mule, precipitated, along with the animal, over the side of the hill : the traveller happening to lodge in a tree, fortunately escaped with little injury ; but the poor mule, after a few tremendous bounds, was lost sight of, and subsequently found, much mangled, more than a mile distant from the spot where the accident occurred.
ADMIRAL BENBOW.
The Admiral stood upon the deck,
Before a shot was thrown ;
Before him rode a Frenchman's fleet,
Behind him lay his own.
Six gallant ships upon the sea
Their stately shadows cast :
In all of them St. George's flag
Was waving at the mast
Dark was the shadow on the sea,
And dark upon the sky ;
In stillness like the coming storm,
The English fleet sailed by.
Our Admiral he gave the word—
Up rose the gallant crew ;
And far across the sounding seas
Their iron welcome threw.
The earthly thunder of the deep
Poured from the Breda's side ;
With welcome fiery as their own,
The Fleur-de-lis replied.
"Signal to form our battle-line !"
The English admiral said ;
At once above the rising smoke
The signal-flags are spread.
The wind sprung up—a hotter fire
Is carried o'er the flood ;
The deck whereon the seamen stand
Is slippery with blood.
The smoke that rises from the guns
Rolls on the heavy air,
So thick above 'twere vain to ask
If heaven itself be there.
The thunder growls along the deep,
The echoing waves reply ;
Yet, over all is heard the groan,
Deep, faint, of those who die.
The wind goes down—down drop the sails—
A while the conflict stops ;
A last chain-shot sweeps o'er the deck—
Our Admiral, he drops !
What careth he for life or wound ?—
The flowing blood they check :
Again, though helpless as a child,
They bear him to the deck.
With heavy eyes he looks around—
An angry man was he ;
He sees three English frigates lie
All idle on the sea.
" Out on the cowards !" muttered he,
Then turned to where beside,
The Ruby, his true consort, lay
A wreck upon the tide.
There is no time for thought or word,
The French are coming fast ;
Again the signal flag is hung
Unnoticed at his mast
A raking fire sweeps through her deck,
The Breda has resigned ;
For the first time her sails are spread,
And with the foe behind.
They take the dying Admiral,
They carry him ashore ;
They lay him on the bed of death
From whence he rose no more.
But not unhonoured is his name—
Recalled and honoured long ;
His name on many a song that speeds
The midnight watch along.
But for the cowards who could leave
The brave man to his doom,
Their's was the scorned memory,
And their's the nameless tomb.
They died—their long dishonour flung
Forever on the wave ;
Time brings no silence to the shame
Cast on the coward's grave.
From Fisher's Drawing Room Scrap Book, 1838
John Benbow was born at Shrewsbury in the year 1650, and brought up to the nautical profession on board a merchantman. In this service he so signalised himself in a desperate fight with a Sallee pirate in the Mediterranean, that King James II. promoted him at once to the command of a ship of war. William III. employed him in protecting our trade in the Channel, which he did with great effect. His valour and activity acquired for him the confidence of the nation; and being raised to the rank of Rear-Admiral, he sailed to the West Indies in search of the French fleet. In August, 1702, he fell in with Du Casse, the French admiral, and was so unfortunate as to have his leg carried away by a chain-shot, in a running-fight with the enemy's fleet. Being carried below, and proper dressings being applied, he caused himself to be again brought on deck, and continued the action. At this critical moment, he was basely deserted by several of the captains under his command, two of whom were afterwards tried by court-martial and condemned to be shot. Benbow, however, sunk gradually under the mental distress occasioned by this transaction and the bodily suffering from his wound, and expired at Jamaica on the 4th of November, 1702. The letter of his opponent, Du Casse, after the battle, is in the highest spirit of chivalry : "Sir, I had little hope on Monday last but to have supped in your cabin. It has pleased God to order it otherwise: l am thankful for it. As to those cowardly captains who deserted you, hang them up, for they richly deserve it. — Your's, Du CASSE."
ADMIRAL LORD COLLINGWOOD.
METHINKS it is a glorious thing,
To sail upon the deep ;
A thousand sailors under you,
Their watch and ward to keep :
To see your gallant battle-flag,
So scornfully unrolled,
As scarcely did the wild wind dare
To stir one crimson fold:
To watch the frigates scattered round,
Like birds upon the wing;
Yet know, they only wait your will—
It is a glorious thing.
Our Admiral stood on the deck,
And looked upon the sea;
He held the glass in his right hand,
And far and near looked he:
He could not see one hostile ship
Abroad upon the main ;
From east to west, from north to south,
It was his own domain.
" Good news is this for Old England,"
Forth may her merchants fare
Thick o'er the sea—no enemy
Will cross the pathway there.
A paleness came upon his cheek,
A shadow to his brow :
Alas, our good Lord Collingwood,
What is it ails him now!
Tears stand within the brave man's eyes,
Each softer pulse is stirred ;
It is the sickness at the heart,
Of hope too long deferred.
He's pining for his native seas,
And for his native shore :
All but his honour he would give,
To be at home once more.
He does not know his children's face,
His wife might pass him by,
He is so altered—did they meet,
With an unconscious eye :
He has been many years at sea,
He's worn with wind and wave :
He asks a little breathing space,
Between it and his grave:
He feels his breath come heavily,
His keen eye faint and dim;
It was a weary sacrifice,
That England asked of him.
He never saw his home again—
The deep voice of the gun,
The lowering of his battle-flag,
Told when his life was done.
His sailors walked the deck, and wept;
Around them howled the gale;
And far away two orphans knelt,
A widow's cheek grew pale.
Amid the many names that light
Our history's blazoned line,
I know not one, brave Collingwood,
That touches me like thine.
Fisher's Drawing Room Scrap Book, 1833
. . There is a brief but most affecting memoir of Lord Collingwood, in Fisher's National Portrait Gallery. Feeling every hour his health failing him, he repeatedly petitioned to be recalled—his services were too valuable, and he died in his " high command." I know nothing more touching than the affectionate regrets he expresses in his letters to his children, that they are growing up in ignorance of their father.
ETHINKS it is a glorious thing,
THE AFRICAN (or THE AFRICAN PRINCE)
It was a king in Africa,
He had an only son ;
And none of Europe's crowned kings
Could have a dearer one.
With good cane arrows five feet long,
And with a shining bow,
When but a boy, to the palm woods
Would that young hunter go.
And home he brought white ivory,
And many a spotted hide ;
When leopards fierce and beautiful
Beneath his arrows died.
Around his arms, around his brow,
A shining bar was rolled ;
It was to mark his royal blood,
He wore that bar of gold.
And often at his father's feet,
The evening he would pass;
When, weary of the hunt, he lay
Upon the scented grass.
Alas ! it was an evil day,
When such a thing could be;
When strangers, pale and terrible,
Came o'er the distant sea.
They found the young prince mid the woods,
The palm woods deep and dark :
That day his lion hunt was done,
They bore him to their bark.
They bound him in a narrow hold,
With others of his kind ;
For weeks did that accursed ship
Sail on before the wind.
Now shame upon the cruel wind,
And on the cruel sea,
That did not with some mighty storm,
Set those poor captives free :
Or, shame to those weak thoughts, so fain
To have their wilful way:
God knoweth what is best for all—
The winds and seas obey.
At length a lovely island rose
From out the ocean wave,
They took him to the market-place,
And sold him for a slave.
Some built them homes, and in the shade
Of flowered and fragrant trees,
They half forgot the palm-hid huts
They left far o'er the seas.
But he was born of nobler blood,
And was of nobler kind ;
And even unto death, his heart
For its own kindred pined.
There came to him a seraph child
With eyes of gentlest blue :
If there are angels in high heaven,
Earth has its angels too.
She cheered him with her holy words,
She soothed him with her tears ;
And pityingly she spoke with him
Of home and early years.
And when his heart was all subdued
By kindness into love,
She taught him from this weary earth
To look in faith above.
She told him how the Saviour died
For man upon the tree;
" He suffered," said the holy child,
"For you as well as me."
Sorrow and death have need of faith—
The African believed;
As rains fall fertile on the earth,
Those words his soul received.
He died in hope, as only those
Who die in Christ depart—
One blessed name within his lips,
One hope within his heart.
Fisher’s Drawing Room Scrap Book, 1832
AGNES
IT is his hand—it is his words—
Too well I know the scroll,
Whose style, whose order, and whose shape
Are treasured in my soul.
For months I only asked to see
One line of his, in vain ;
Alas ! its presence brings to me
But only added pain.
A fearful thing, the granted wish—
The very shape it takes,
By some strange mockery of our hope,
Another misery makes.
Day after day, the hour went by,
And never letter came ;
Or rather, every letter else
But that which bore his name.
I wearied Heaven with my prayers,
I wasted life with tears,
While every morning brought me hopes,
And every evening fears.
How often have I said to friends,
Who sought to warn or cheer,
And told the folly of a love,
So desperate and so dear.
How often have I said, I know
The madness of the dream,
That flings its fate on one frail bark,
Alone on life’s dark stream;
That knows one only hope on earth,
One hope in heaven above,
That asketh not for happiness,
And only asks for love.
I loved—must love him—that ’twas vain
To reason or to chide—
That life, unless it gave me him,
Could nothing give beside.
Ah! never till it loves, the heart
Is conscious of its powers ;
What knows the undeveloped spring
Of summer’s golden hours?
I saw him—and my inmost soul
Its stamp, his image, took ;
The passion of a lifetime sprang
Upon a single look.
A sudden and a strange delight
Seemed eager at my heart ;
A childlike pleasure, which to all
Its gladness must impart.
I found a thousand charms in life
Till then life never wore !
I marvelled, in my deep content,
I had been sad before.
I never knew what music was
Until his voice I heard ;
And never beat my heart so fast
As at his lightest word.
I would have rather been his slave
Than reigned alone his queen ;
He was my life—and wanting him
What would the world have been?
He shared the dream, or seemed to share—
Days, weeks, and months passed by.
Never more perfect happiness
Was seen beneath the sky.
We parted—not in doubt or fear—
I wondered he could part ;
And the first sense of misery
Awakened in my heart.
I listened till I heard his step
Pass from the closing door ;
The pang of death can but be like
The pang that then I bore.
Time measures many hours ; for me,
He measured long and slow;
I thought the night would never end,
The day would never go.
I took no other note of time,
Than when his letters came.
How often did I ask of them,
Ah ! does he feel the same?
A letter is an anxious thing,
Made up of hopes and fears ;
And still we question does it mean
More than at first appears.
It never satisfies the heart—
We ask for something more.
Alas ! we miss the loving eyes
That looked love’s truth before.
He ceased to write-—day after day
I waited, and in vain ;
Fears that were fancies turned to truth—
He never wrote again.
Words—what are words ?—I have no words
To tell of my despair.
If ever death was felt in life,
Look in my heart—’twas there.
The summer past—the autumn past—
For all a world so wide,
I would not live those hours again—
I would that I had died.
Again I saw the well-known hand,
How my heart beat to see !
And can such letter be from him,
And can such be to me?
I will not say, where are the words
That once I used to find?
He may be changed—he may be cold—
How can he be unkind ?
True love hath many enemies
Upon this weary earth,
Who cannot bear that others share
The light be giveth birth.
Doubts, fancies, fears, and jealousies,
These are the ghosts whose power
Scaring the spirit with affright,
Is on an absent hour.
There has been long and strange neglect,
And cold harsh words are here,
And yet an inward secret hope
Disputeth with my fear.
It is my deep entire love,
Fond, fervent, and alone,
Apart from all life’s lighter change
That answers for his own.
He cannot be so much beloved,
And yet not love again ;
Strong is the subtle sympathy
That bindeth such a chain.
My life is flung upon a cast,
To lose it were to die.
Ah! let me only hear his voice,
Ah ! let me meet his eye.
We then were happy—fancies, fears,
Will vanish when we meet;
I know that we shall meet again—
I know it will be sweet.
Thou lovest me-—I know thou dost—
Despite this cold changed line ;
The instinct strong in my own heart
Assureth me of thine.
Fisher's Drawing Room Scrap Book, 1839
AIREY FORCE.
Aye, underneath yon shadowy side,
I could be fain to fix my home;
Where dashes down the torrent's pride,
In sparkling wave, and silver foam.
No other sound is waking there,
But that perpetual voice, which seems
Like spirit music on the air,
An echo from the world of dreams.
They were more wise in other days;
Then turn'd the hermit to his cell,
And left a world where all betrays,
Apart with his own thoughts to dwell.
Content to curb the heart, to be
Indifferent, quiet, mournful, cold
With hopes turn'd into memory,
With feelings that had lost their hold.
Far better this, than such vain life
As is in crowded cities known;
Where care, repining, grief, and strife,
Make every passing hour their own.
There, by yon torrent's rushing wave,
I'd pass what yet of time remain'd;
And feel the quiet of the grave
Long ere that grave itself were gain'd.
From Fisher's Drawing Room Scrap Book 1834
THE AISLE OF TOMBS.
The interior of Chester-le-Street church, Durham, contains a singular collection of monuments, bearing effigies of the deceased ancestry of the Lumley family, from the time of Liulphus to the reign of Queen Elizabeth.
The quiet and the dullness
Of the aisle of tombs ;
The shadow and the stillness
A rosy light illumes
Like the memory of the past,
On the carved arms delaying,
On the marble pall
O'er the blood-red scutcheon playing
With a crimson fall,
Into sudden sunshine cast
Are the ancient warriors,
The warriors of olden time.
So with kindled heart we love them,
Dwelling on their fame,
So doth memory fling above them
Its shadow of a name ;
Noblest shadow flung on earth :
We remember many a story
Of the old chivalric day,
When the red cross, like a glory,
Shone above the fray ;
'Twas a glorious age gave birth
To the ancient warriors,
The warriors of olden time.
Though the sword no more be trusted
As it was of old ;
Tho' the shining spear be rusted,
And the right hand cold ;
They have left their fame behind,
Still a spirit from their slumbers
Rises true and brave ;
Asks the minstrel for his numbers,
Music from their grave :
Noble, gentle, valiant, kind,
Were the ancient warriors.
The warriors of olden time.
All their meaner part hath perished
In the earth at rest ;
And the present hour hath cherished
What of them was best.
What a knight should be we keep ;
For the present doth inherit
All the glories of the past ;
We retain what was its spirit,
While its dust to dust is cast,
All good angels guard the sleep
Of the ancient warriors,
The warriors of olden time
Fisher's Drawing Room Scrap Book, 1836
ANTIOCH.
This View of the City is taken from a burial-ground, called, in the picturesque phraseology of the East, "The City of the Dead." There was a vulture perched on one of the tombstones.
When the vulture on the wind
Mounted as in days of old,
Leaving hope and fear behind,
What did his dark flight behold !
Conquest, in its crimson car,
Reddening sword and broken spear,
Nations gathering to the war,
These were in his wide career.
When the thunder and his wing
Swept the startled earth below,
Did the flight prophetic bring
Omen of the world we know.
Vainly did the augur seek
In its path the will of heaven ;
Not to that fierce eye and beak,
Was the fated future given.
No, the future's depths were stirred
By the white wings of the dove ;
When the troubled earth first heard
Words of peace and words of love.
Now, far other hopes arise
Over life's enlarging day,
Science, commerce, enterprise,
Point to man his glorious way.
Where those distant deserts wind,
Even now an English band
Urge the triumphs of the mind
Through a wild and savage land.
Mind, and only mind, could gain
Such a conquest as they ask;
Stormy wind, and sandy plain,
Doubt and death attend the task.
They will make their gallant way,
Must achieve their glorious goal ;
It is night subdued by day,
'Tis the mastery of the soul.
Let the dark Euphrates bear
English keel and English sail;
Not alone o'er wind and air
Will the enterprise prevail :
But our flag will bear around,
Faith and knowledge, light and hope,
Empire with no other bound
Than the wide horizon's scope.
Honour to the generous band,
Bearing round our name and laws,
For the honour of our land,
For humanity's great cause.
Fisher's Drawing Room Scrap Book 1837
I allude to the voyage down the Euphrates. Conquest and commerce have been the two great principles of civilization. It is only of late years that we have seen the superiority of the sail over the sword. The expedition, whose advantages I have ventured above to prophesy, is in the noblest spirit of enlightened enterprise. We must take with us our knowledge ; and so disturb, and eventually destroy the darkness, mental and moral, too long gathered on the East. The generous earnestness of science, and the enthusiasm of enterprise, were nevermore nobly marked than in the concluding passage of Colonel Chesney's letter to the Admiralty, announcing the loss of the Tigris steamer :—
" We are, therefore, continuing our descent and survey to Bussarah, hoping not only to bring up the mail from India within the specified time, but also, if it pleases God to spare us, to demonstrate the speed, economy, and commercial advantages of the river Euphrates, provided the decision of ministers shall be, in the true spirit of Englishmen, to give it a fair trial, rather than abandon the Original purpose in consequence, of an unforeseen, and, as it is proved, an unavoidable calamity."
THE ASSAR MAHAL - RUINS NEAR AGRA
ALAS, o'er the palace in ruins,
Time has past with a terrible trace—
Yet still the vast shrine and the temple
Seem to speak of a mightier race
Than ours, which exists by the minute,
And builds but by contract and steam,
Till the spirit has no where to wander,
And the heart has no rest for its dream.
But here in the desolate palace,
So stedfast amid its decay,
With its vast halls and sculptures remaining,
The builder alone past away:
What visions arise up before us,
The infinite and the unknown,
Now hidden and vague as the meaning,
Concealed in each strangely carved stone!
Who knows but those mystical letters*
Might yield every secret of time—
Could the past be restored to the present,
Methinks 'twere a union sublime :
The past—dreaming, high and ideal,
The present—keen, selfish and wise,
'Twould be like the glorious old Grecian,
And again steal the fire from the skies.
We now make existence too actual,
'Twere better to float down the stream,
At the will of the wind and the current,
The best of our being a dream.
Alas, did I judge from experience,
Whatever the future may be,
I'd but ask of the past its illusions,
They were all that are precious to me.
* Most of the ancient buildings are covered with hieroglyphics.
Fisher's Drawing Room Scrap Book, 1833
THE ASTROLOGER
Alas ! for our ancient believings,
We have nothing now left to believe ;
The oracle, augur, and omen
No longer dismay and deceive.
All hush'd are the oaks of Dodona ;
No more on the winds of the north,
As it sways to and fro the huge branches,
The voice of the future comes forth.
No more o'er the flower-wreathed victim
The priest at the red altar bends :
No more on the flight of the vulture
The dark hour of victory depends.
The stars have forgotten their science,
Or we have forgotten its lore ;
In the rulers, the bright ones of midnight,
We question of fortune no more.
O folly ! to deem that far planets
Recorded the hour of our birth ;
Too glorious they are, and too lovely,
For the wo and the weakness of earth.
Now the science of fate is grown lowly,
We question of gipsies and cards ;
'Tis a question how much of the actual
The fate of the votary rewards.
'Tis the same in all ages ; the future
Still seems to the spirit its home ;
We are weary and worn with the present.
But happiness still is to come.
Fisher's Drawing Room Scrap Book, 1836
BAPTISMAL FONT
CATHEDRAL AT PALERMO
Princes and Kings upreared the mighty fane,
Through whose dim aisle a painted gleam is cast,
Rich with the purple and the violet rein,
That science through the burning furnace past—
An emblem how the soul shines forth at last,
So purified by trial on this earth,
To glory, radiant with immortal birth.
Sculptured the walls, for beauty unsurpassed.
Yet hither doth the peasant bring her child
To Him who on such offering hath smiled.
Said He not on the Mount, The child—the poor—
Are of the welcome ones at Heaven's high door.
From Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine.
Fisher’s Drawing Room Scrap Book 1841
BELVOIR CASTLE :
SEAT OF THE DUKE OF RUTLAND
INSCRIBED TO LADY EMMELINE STUART WORTLEY
‘Tis an old and stately castle,
In an old and stately wood ;
Thoughts and shadows gathered round it,
Of the ages it had stood.
But not of the ancient warriors,
Whose red banners swept its towers,
Nor of any lovely lady,
Blooming in its former bowers—
Think I now ;—but one as lovely,
And more gifted, haunts my line.
In the visions round yon castle
Is no fairer one than thine !
I can fancy thee in childhood
Wandering through each haunted scene,
Peopling the green glades around thee
With the thoughts of what had been ;
Asking of each leaf its lesson,
Of each midnight star its tale,
Till thy fancy caught revealings
From the music of the gale.
Yet, whence did thy lute inherit
All it knows of human grief?—
What dost thou know of the knowledge
On life's dark and daily leaf ?
In thy woman-hearted pages,
How much sympathy appears
With the sorrowful and real,
All that only speaks in tears !
Have those large bright eyes been darkened
By the shadows from below ?
Rather would I deem thee dreaming
Over grief thou canst not know.
But thou hast the poet's birthright,
In a heart too warm and true.
Wreath thy dark hair with the laurel—
On it rests the midnight dew !
Fisher's Drawing Room Scrap Book, 1837
is an old and stately castle,
BENARES
City of idol temples, and of shrines,
Where folly kneels to falsehood—how the pride
Of our humanity is here rebuked !
Man, that aspires to rule the very wind,
And make the sea confess his majesty ;
Whose intellect can fill a little scroll
With words that are immortal ; who can build
Cities, the mighty and the beautiful:
Yet man, this glorious creature, can debase
His spirit down, to worship wood and stone,
And hold the very beasts which bear his yoke,
And tremble at his eye, for sacred things.
With what unutterable humility
We should bow down, thou blessed Cross, to thee!
Seeing our vanity and foolishness,
When, to our own devices left, we frame
A shameful creed of craft and cruelty.
Fisher's Drawing Room Scrap Book, 1832
Benares may be called the Rome of Hindostan, being the sacred city, the centre of the Hindoo religion. Bishop Heber states, that " no Europeans live in the town, nor are any of the streets wide enough to admit a wheel carriage." The streets are crowded with " the sacred bulls devoted to Seeva, tame and familiar as mastiffs, walking lazily up and down, and lying across them. Monkeys sacred to Hunooman, the divine ape who conquered Ceylon, are in some parts of the town equally numerous, clinging to all the roofs, and putting their heads or hands into every fruiterer's or confectioner's shop, and snatching the food from the children at their meals. Fakirs' houses occur at every turn, adorned with idols, and sending out an unceasing tinkling of vinas, bugals, and other discordant instruments : while religious mendicants, of every Hindoo sect, offering every conceivable deformity, which chalk, disease, matted locks, distorted limbs, and disgusting attitudes of penance, can shew, literally line the principal streets." "The houses are painted of a deep red, and covered with paintings, in gaudy colours, of flower-pots, men, women, bulls, elephants, gods and goddesses, in all their many-headed, many-handed, many-weaponed varieties." " The number of temples is very great, mostly small, and stand like shrines in the angles of the streets. Many of them are entirely covered over with beautiful and elaborate carvings of flowers, animals, and palm branches, equalling in minuteness and richness the best specimens I have seen of Gothic or Grecian architecture." Tavernier mentions a belief of the Brahmins, whence the classic allegory of the golden, silver, brazen, and iron ages originated. " This holy city," say they, " was originally built of gold, but, for the sins of mankind, it was successively degraded to stone, brick, and clay."
BEVERLEY MINSTER
Built in far other times, those sculptured walls
Attest the faith which our forefathers felt,
Strong faith, whose visible presence yet remains ;
We pray with deeper reverence at a shrine
Hallowed by many prayers. For years, long years,
Years that make centuries—those dimlit aisles,
Where rainbows play, from coloured windows flung,
Have echoed to the voice of prayer and praise ;
With the last lights of evening flitting round,
Making a rosy atmosphere of hope.
The vesper hymn hath risen, bearing heaven,
But purified the many cares of earth.
How oft has music rocked those ancient towers,
When the deep bells were tolling ; as they rung,
The castle and the hamlet, high and low,
Obeyed the summons : earth grew near to God,
The piety of ages is around.
Many the heart that has before yon cross
Laid down the burden of its heavy cares,
And felt a joy that is not of this world.
There are both sympathy and warning here ;
Methinks as down we kneel by those old graves
The past will pray with us.
Fisher's Drawing Room Scrap Book, 1836
Beverley Minster is a remarkable example of Perpendicular Gothic style and is said to be the most impressive church in the UK that is not a cathedral. There has been a religious building on the spot since at least 700 AD, when St John of Beverly founded a monastery. A later church burned down in 1188, and the present building was started in 1220, though it took 200 years to complete.
It is said that the two towers on the West Front inspired Westminster Abbey.
BLACK LINN OF LINKLATER
"Toujours lui—lui partout."— Victor Hugo.
BUT of Himself, Him only speak these hills !
I do not see the sunshine on the vale,
I do not hear the low song of the wind
Singing as sings a child. Like fancies flung
Around the midnight pillow of a dream,
Dim pageantries shut out the real scene,
And call up one associate with Him.
I see the ancient master pale and worn,
Tho' on him shines the lovely southern heaven
And Naples greets him with festivity.
The Dying by the Dead :—for his great sake,
They have laid bare the city of the lost.
His own creations fill the silent streets ;
The Roman pavement rings with golden spurs,
The Highland plaid shades dark Italian eyes,
And the young king himself is Ivanhoe.
But there the old man sits—majestic—wan,
Himself a mighty vision of the past ;
The glorious mind has bowed beneath its toil ;
He does not hear his name on foreign lips
That thank him for a thousand happy hours.
He does not see the glittering groups that press
In wonder and in homage to his side ;
Death is beside his triumph
Fisher's Drawing Room Scrap Book, 1837
When Sir Waller Scott arrived at Naples, the picturesque imagination of the south was all alive to do him honour. Contrary to established etiquette, the king called upon him.
"Nice customs courtesy to great names."
A fete was then given in his honour, and Pompeii was chosen for its site. All the guests took some character from the Waverley novels. The deserted city echoed with music; lamps flung their light over walls so long unconscious of festivity. The city of the dead suited well the festival of the dying. Sir Walter was present, but unconscious; he sat wan. exhausted, and motionless,—" the centre of the glittering ring" formed by his own genius. The triumph had its usual moral—it came too late.
UT of Himself, Him only speak these hills !
THE BLACK-ROCK FORT AND LIGHTHOUSE
Thank God, thank God—the beacon light
Is breaking beautiful through night;
Urge the boat through the surge, once more
We are beside our English shore.
Oh ! weary nights and days to me
Have set and risen upon the sea;
I never wish to sail again
O'er the interminable main.
'Tis wonderful to see the sky
Hang out her guiding stars on high,
And mirror'd in the ocean fair,
As if another heaven were there.
And glorious is it thus to go,
The white foam dashing from the prow,
As our ship through the waves hath gone,
Mistress of all she looked upon.
But weary is it for the eye
To only meet the sea and sky;
And weary is it for the ear
But only winds and waves to hear.
I pined for leaves, I pined for flowers,
For meadows green, with driving showers ;
For all the sights and sounds of life,
Wherewith the air of earth is rife.
Farewell, wild waves, again I come
To England and my English home;
Thank God, thank God, the beacon light
Is breaking beautiful through night.
Fisher's Drawing Room Scrap Book, 1832
BONA, THE PIRATE'S SONG
To the mast nail our flag, it is dark as the grave,
Or the death which it bears while it sweeps o'er the wave;
Let our deck clear for action, our guns be prepared;
Be the boarding-axe sharpened, the scimetar bared:
Set the canisters ready, and then bring to me,
For the last of my duties, the powder-room key.
It shall never be lowered, the black flag we bear;
If the sea be denied us, we sweep through the air.
Unshared have we left our last victory's prey;
It is mine to divide it, and yours to obey:
There are shawls that might suit a sultana's white neck,
And pearls that are fair as the arms they will deck;
There are flasks which, unseal them, the air will disclose
Diametta's fair summers, the home of the rose.
I claim not a portion: I ask but as mine,
'Tis to drink to our victory— one cup of red wine.
Some fight, 'tis for riches some fight, 'tis for fame:
The first I despise, and the last is a name.
I fight, 'tis for vengeance! I love to see flow,
At the stroke of my sabre, the life of my foe.
I strike for the memory of long-vanished years;
I only shed blood where another shed tears.
I come, as the lightning comes red from above,
O'er the race that I loathe, to the battle I love.
Fisher's Drawing Room Scrap Book 1837
o the mast nail our flag, it is dark as the grave,
BORRO BOEDOOR
AN ancient temple of an ancient faith,
When man, to show the vanity of man,
Was left to his own fantasies. All life
Was conscious of a God ;—the sun, the wind,
The mighty ocean, and the distant stars,
Become his prototypes. At length there came
The great appointed hour; the Truth shone forth,
The living waters of the Gospel flowed,
And earth drank life and hope. The work is still
Gradual and incomplete ;—it is man's task,
And more his glorious privilege, to aid.
Our England is a living fountain now,
Whence flow the waves of life,— eternal life.
Oh, what a power and duty is our own !
'Tis ours to shed upon man's present day
The blessing of the future and the past.
How much of India yet in darkness lies !
We must dethrone the idol, and dispel
The shadows that but herald the true faith.—
We must give peace, love, charity, to earth ;
And from old superstitions, vain beliefs,
And false religions, realize the true :
So morning springs from out the depths of night.
Fisher's Drawing Room Scrap Book, 1836
N ancient temple of an ancient faith,
The temple of Borro Boedoor was in former days the most celebrated Budha temple in the Island of Java equally distinguished for its extent and its magnificence.
These remarkable ruins, representing in a high style of Indian architecture a number of small Hindoo sacred buildings with their several idols, so peculiarly combined as to form one place of worship, are engraved from a drawing forming part of the collection brought to England by Sir Alexander Johnstone, to shew the moral and political influence which the religion of Budha had exercised in former days, and still continues to exercise ; and the importance of instructing the two High-priests of Budha, (whose portraits are given in this volume,) whom he had brought over with him at the same time, in every branch of European science and literature, in order that they might, upon their return to Ceylon, be made use of as a powerful engine for enlightening those who professed their creed.
BOSCASTLE WATERFALL AND QUARRY
OH, gloomy quarry! thou dost hide in thee
The tower and shrine.
The city vast and grand and wonderful,
And strong, is thine.
Look at the mighty buildings of our land,
What once were they ?
Ere they rose fashioned by the cunning hand,
In proud array.
One fronts me now, a temple beautiful,
Touched by the light
Which has so much of heaven—the light of eve,
Golden and bright.
In dull relief against the cloudy sky
These turrets rise:
Our fine old Abbey, where the dust of kings,
Tranquilly lies.*
Winning the eye amid the crowded street,
To other thought,
Than that the haste, the noise, the changeful scene
Around me brought.
Mingling in air, the twin-born spires
So nobly stand:
They seem eternal, yet are they the work,
Man, of thy hand.
Yet, must they first have, in some quarry lain
Rude, shapeless, lone,
Until the mind of man inspired his hand
To work in stone.
Alas ! the contrast between us, and what
We can create;
That man should be so little in himself,
His works so great.
Fisher's Drawing Room Scrap Book, 1833
We talk of the beauties of nature, I must own I am more pleased with those of art. I know no spectacle more impressive than a great street in a great city,—take Piccadilly, for instance; the immense variety of faces that hurry past, each without interest in the other, for how rare it is to remark the greeting even of acquaintance ; indeed, you may often walk for days, and not meet a creature you know. The houses, with all their daily life—associations of comfort, force you to think how man's ingenuity has been exerted for man's pleasure. The shops, where every article is a triumph of ingenuity—some curious, some beautiful. The sweep of the Green Park: grass close beside the worn pavement,—the beautiful garden of Lord Coventry,—the royal gift destined for the solace of the blind and of the aged friend. Westminster Abbey rising in dim and dusky grandeur,—Westminster Abbey, where history becomes poetry, and whose illustrious dead are familiar to every memory. The many carriages, each like a grade in the complicated grades of society ; the wealth few pause to envy, the poverty still fewer pause to pity. The gradual closing in of night, whose empire is here disputed by the lamps linked in one long line of light,—each holding its imprisoned flame, and, last, the triumphal arch at Hyde Park, while the open space behind is shrouded in unbroken darkness.
H, gloomy quarry! thou dost hide in thee
CAFÉS IN DAMASCUS
“And Mahomet turned aside, and would not enter the fair city : ' It is,' said he, ' too delicious. '”
LANGUIDLY the night-wind bloweth
From the gardens round,
Where the clear Barrada floweth
With a lulling sound.
Not the lute note's sweet shiver
Can such music find,
As is on a wandering river,
On a wandering wind.
There the Moslem leaneth, dreaming
O'er the inward world,
While around the fragrant steaming
Of the smoke is curled.
Rising from the coffee berry,
Dark grape of the South;
Or the pipe of polished cherry,
With its amber mouth.
Cooled by passing through the water,
Gurgling as it flows—
Scented by the Summer's daughter,
June's impassioned rose.
By that rose's spirit haunted
Are the dreams that rise,
Of far lands, and lives enchanted,
And of deep black eyes.
Thus with some sweet dream's assistance,
Float they down life's stream;
Would to heaven our whole existence
Could be such a dream!
Fisher's Drawing Room Scrap Book, 1837
The Cafés of the kind illustrated in the plate are perhaps the greatest luxury that a stranger finds in Damascus. Gardens, kiosques, fountains, and groves are abundant around every Eastern capital; but Cafés on the very bosom of a rapid river, and bathed by its waves, are peculiar to this ancient city: they are formed so as to exclude the rays of the sun while they admit the breeze.
ANGUIDLY the night-wind bloweth
CALDRON SNOUT - WESTMORLAND
A PLACE of rugged rocks, adown whose sides
The mountain torrent rushes ; on whose crags
The raven builds her nest, and tells her young
Of former funeral feasts.
Long years have past since last I stood
Alone amid this mountain scene,
Unlike the future which I dreamed
How like my future it has been!
A cold gray sky o'erhung with clouds,
With showers in every passing shade,
How like the moral atmosphere
Whose gloom my horoscope has made !
I thought if yet my weary feet
Could rove my native hills again,
A world of feeling would revive,
Sweet feelings wasted, worn in vain.
My early hopes, my early joys,
I dreamed those valleys would restore;
I asked for childhood to return.
For childhood, which returns no more.
Surely the scene itself is changed!
There did not always rest as now
That shadow in the valley's depth,
That gloom upon the mountain brow.
Wild flowers within the chasms dwelt
Like treasures in some fairy hold,
And morning o'er the mountains shed
Her kindling world of vapory gold.
Another season of the year
Is now upon the earth and me;
Another spring will light these hills--
No other spring mine own may be:
I must retune my unstrung heart,
I must awake the sleeping tomb,
I must recall the loved and lost,
Ere spring again for me could bloom.
I've wandered, but it was in vain
In many a far and foreign clime.
Absence is not forgetfulness.
And distance cannot vanquish time.
One face was ever in my sight,
One voice was ever on my ear,
From all earth's loveliness I turned
To wish, Ah! that the dead were here!
Oh! weary wandering to no home,
Oh ! weary wandering alone,
I turn'd to childhood's once glad scenes
And found life's last illusion flown.
Ah ! those who left their childhood's scenes
For after years of toil and pain,
Who but bring back the breaking heart
Should never seek those scenes again.
Fisher's Drawing Room Scrap Book 1835
CAN YOU FORGET ME?
CAN you forget me ?—I who have so cherished
The veriest trifle that was memory's link ;
The roses that you gave me, although perished,
Were precious in my sight ; they made me think.
You took them in their scentless beauty stooping
From the warm shelter of the garden wall ;
Autumn, while into languid winter drooping,
Gave its last blossoms, opening but to fall.
Can you forget them ?
Can you forget me ? I am not relying
On plighted vows—alas ! I know their worth :
Man's faith to woman is a trifle, dying
Upon the very breath that gave it birth
But I remember hours of quiet gladness,
When, if the heart had truth, it spoke it then,
When thoughts would sometimes take a tone of sadness,
And then unconsciously grow glad again.
Can you forget them ?
Can you forget me ? My whole soul was blended ;
At least it sought to blend itself with thine ;
My life's whole purpose, winning thee, seemed ended;
Thou wert my heart's sweet home—my spirit's shrine.
Can you forget me?—when the firelight burning,
Flung sudden gleams around the quiet room,
How would thy words, to long past moments turning,
Trust me with thoughts soft as the shadowy gloom !
Can you forget them ?
There is no truth in love, whate'er its seeming,
And heaven itself could scarcely seem more
Sadly have I awakened from the dreaming,
Whose charmed slumber—false one !—was of you.
I gave mine inmost being to thy keeping—
I had no thought I did not seek to share ;
Feelings that hushed within my soul were sleeping,
Waked into voice, to trust them to thy care.
Can you forget them ?
Can you forget me ? This is vainly tasking
The faithless heart where I, alas ! am not.
Too well I know the idleness of asking—
The misery—of why am I forgot ?
The happy hours that I have passed while kneeling
Half slave, half child, to gaze upon thy face.
—But what to thee this passionate appealing—
Let my heart break—it is a common case.
You have forgotten me.
Fisher's Drawing Room Scrap Book 1838
AN you forget me ?—I who have so cherished
CAPTAIN COOK (or TO MY BROTHER)
Do you recall the fancies of many years ago,
When the pulse danced those light measures that again it cannot know
Ah ! we both of us are altered, and now we talk no more
Of all the old creations that haunted us of yore.
Then any favourite volume was a mine of long delight,
From whence we took our future, to fashion as we might.
We lived again its pages, we were its chiefs and kings,
As actual, but more pleasant, than what the day now brings.
It was an August evening, with sunset in the trees,
When home you brought his Voyages who found the fair South Seas.
We read it till the sunset amid the boughs grew dim ;
All other favourite heroes were nothing beside him.
For weeks he was our idol, we sailed with him at sea,
And the pond amid the willows the ocean seem'd to be.
The water-lilies growing beneath the morning smile,
We call'd the South Sea islands, each flower a different isle.
No golden lot that fortune could draw for human life,
To us seem'd like a sailor's, 'mid the storm and strife.
Our talk was of fair vessels that swept before the breeze,
And new discovered countries amid the Southern Seas.
Within that lonely garden what happy hours went by,
While we fancied that around us spread foreign sea and sky.
Ah ! the dreaming and the distant no longer haunt the mind;
We leave, in leaving childhood, life's fairy land behind.
There is not of that garden a single tree or flower ;
They have ploughed its long green grasses, and cut down the lime tree bower.
Where are the Guelder roses, whose silver used to bring,
With the gold of the laburnums, their tribute to the Spring !
They have vanished with the childhood that with their treasures played ;
The life that cometh after dwells in a darker shade.
Yet the name of that sea captain, it cannot but recall
How much we loved his dangers, and how we mourned his fall.
Fisher's Drawing Room Scrap Book 1838
o you recall the fancies of many years ago,
THE CARCLAZE TIN-MINE, CORNWALL
Those stately galleys cut the seas,
Their wings the mighty oars ;
And the sun set o'er their purple sails,
When touched those ships our shores.
They are from far Phoenicia,
Whose princely merchants sweep,
Like conquerors of the winds and waves,
Over the subject deep.
They have been east and west to seek
The wealth of the wide world ;
Mid Indian isles of gems and spice,
Those sails have been unfurled.
In Africa for ivory,
For the red gold in Spain;
Ours is a wild and barren isle,
Why do they cross the main ?
They come to find the precious ores,
That British mountains yield ;
To point to British enterprise,
Its future glorious field.
A savage race, yet from their trade
Rose England's commerce—now,
What land but knows her red-cross flag ?
What sea but knows her prow ?
Riches, and intellect, and peace,
Have marked the favoured strand:
God keep thee in prosperity,
My own sea-girdled land !
Fisher's Drawing Room Scrap Book, 1832
The produce of the Tin and Copper Mines early attracted the Phoenicians to our coast. Tin was then one of the precious metals, and used for personal adornment; and the barter must have been as profitable, as civilized people always made their dealings with savages. Knowledge usually turns ignorance to profit. The Carclaze Mine is reported to have been worked above four hundred yeas.
CARRICK-A-REDE
He dwelt amid the gloomy rocks,
A solitary man;
Around his home on every side,
The deep salt waters ran.
The distant ships sailed far away.
And o'er the moaning wave
The sea-birds swept, with pale white wings,
As phantoms haunt the grave :
'Twas dreary on an autumn night,
To hear the tempest sweep,
When gallant ships were perishing
Alone amid the deep.
He was a stranger to that shore,
A stranger he remained,
For to his heart, or hearth, or board,
None ever welcome gained.
Great must have been the misery
Of guilt upon his mind,
That thus could sever all the ties
Between him and his kind.
His step was slow, his words were few,
His brow was worn and wan ;
He dwelt among those gloomy rocks,
A solitary man.
Fisher's Drawing Room Scrap Book, 1832
The romantic anecdote, to which the above lines have reference, is a true one.—A manuscript journal of a Tour through the Western Islands of Scotland, and along the Northern Coast of Ireland, in 1746, contains the following passage :—
"Carrick-a-Reid is a great rock, cut off from the shore by a chasm of fearful depth, through which the sea, when vexed by angry winds, boileth with great fury. It is resorted to at this season of the year by fishers, for the taking of salmon, who sling themselves across the perilous gulf by means of a stout rope, or withe, as the name Carrick-a-Reid imports. I was told, that, all through the inclemency of last winter, there dwelled here a solitary stranger, of noble mien, in an unseemly hut, made by his own hands. The people, in speaking of the stranger, called him, from his aspect, 'The Man of Sorrow;' and 'tis not unlikely, poor gentleman, he was one of the rebels who fled out of Scotland."
In the second volume of "Wakefield's Ireland," a particular account of Carrick-a-Rede, its fishery, and "very extraordinary flying bridge," may be found.
CARTHAGE
"Early on the morning following, I walked to the site of the great Carthage,—of that town, at the sound of whose name mighty Rome herself had so often trembled,—of Carthage, the mistress of powerful and brave armies, of numerous fleets, and of the world's commerce, and to whom Africa, Spain, Sardinia, Corsica, Sicily, and Italy herself bowed in submission as to their sovereign—in short,—" Carthage, dives opum, studiisque asperrima belli :" I was prepared to see but few vestiges of its former grandeur, it had so often suffered from the devastating effects of war, that I knew many could not exist; but my heart sunk within me when ascending one of its hills, (from whose summit the eye embraces a view of the whole surrounding country to the edge of the sea.) I beheld nothing more than a few scattered and shapeless masses of masonry. The scene that once was animated by the presence of nearly a million of warlike inhabitants is now buried in the silence of the grave ; no living soul appearing, if we occasionally except a soldier going or returning from the fort, or the solitary and motionless figure of an Arab, watching his flocks from the summit of the fragment of some former palace or temple."—Sir G. Temple's Excursions in the Mediterranean.
Low it lieth—earth to earth—
And to which that earth gave birth—
Palace, market-street, and fane ;
Dust that never asks in vain,
Hath reclaimed its own again.
Dust, the wide world's king.
Where are now the glorious hours
Of a nation's gathered powers !
Like the setting of a star,
In the fathomless afar ;
Time's eternal wing
Hath around those ruins cast
The dark presence of the past.
Mind, what art thou ? dost thou not
Hold the vast earth for thy lot ?
In thy toil, how glorious !
What dost thou achieve for us,
Over all victorious !
God-like thou dost seem.
But the perishing still lurks
In thy most immortal works ;
Thou dost build thy home on sand,
And the palace-girdled strand
Fadeth like a dream.
Thy great victories only show
All is nothingness below
" The small dome in the centre belongs to the lesser set of cisterns ; on the left are the ruins of a palace or church ; and on the extreme left the remains of an ancient edifice, on which now stands Burj Sidi Boo-Saeed, or Fort St. Louis. To the right is seen part of the ancient Cothon, Halek el Wad, the lake of Tunis and the bay; and beyond these the Hammam 'l Enf, and the Boo-kurneen ; and in the distance the Jabel Zaghwan."— SIR G. TEMPLE'S JOURNAL.
ow it lieth—earth to earth—
THE CASTLE OF CHILLON
Fair lake, thy lovely and thy haunted shore
Hath only echoes for the poet's lute ;
None may tread there save with unsandalled foot,
Submissive to the great who went before,
Filled with the mighty memories of yore.
And yet how mournful are the records there-
Captivity, and exile, and despair,
Did they endure who now endure no more.
The patriot, the woman, and the bard,
Whose names thy winds and waters bear along ;
What did the world bestow for their reward
But suffering, sorrow, bitterness, and wrong ?—
Genius !—a hard and weary lot is thine—
The heart thy fuel—and the grave thy shrine.
Fisher's Drawing Room Scrap Book, 1838
The Castle of Chillon can never be viewed without exciting the noblest associations — those to which liberty and genius give birth. The names of Bonnivard, the martyr of freedom, and of Byron, her martyr and her laureate, have consecrated the scene. With the Prisoner of Chillon are connected feelings, no less in unison with the writer's early and deplored fate, than with the sublime and beautiful scenery around. The style of architecture of the Castle is that of the middle ages : its aspect is gloomy and low ; on one side is seen the delightful Clarens, and upon the other the town of Villeneuve. Amadeus IV., count of Savoy, was the founder of this state prison, about the year 1236. It resigned its military character in 1733, to receive and store agricultural produce. The early reformers of our religion were here cruelly incarcerated, in a range of cells that still remains entire ; and from a beam that passes across one of the dungeons, many of them were executed. Rings, for the fetters and the fettered, may yet be seen hanging from the staples in the wall, and the feet of Bonnivard have left their traces in the pavement. Close by this castle, Rousseau has fixed the catastrophe of his Heloise, in the rescue of one of her children, her Julia, from the water; the shock of which, and the illness produced by the immersion, caused her death.
THE CAVES OF ELEPHANTA
" These celebrated Caves are situated in the beautiful island of their own name. It is composed of two hills, with a narrow valley between them. Ascending the narrow path where the two hills are knit together, there lies below the superb prospect of the sea and the adjacent shores. Gradually an open space is gained, and we come suddenly on the grand entrance of a magnificent temple, whose huge massy columns seem to give support to the whole mountain which is above. The entrance into the temple, which is entirely hewn out of a stone resembling porphyry, is by two massy pillars forming three openings, under a steep rock overhung by reeds and wild shrubs."
What know we of them ? Nothing—there they stand,
Gloomy as night, inscrutible as fate.
Altars no more divine, and shrines which know
Nor priests, nor votaries, nor sacrifice ;
The stranger's wonder all their worship now.
And yet coeval as the native rock
Seem they with mother earth—immutable.
Time—tempest—warfare—ordinary decay,
Is not for these. The memory of man
Has lost their rise—although they are his work.
Two senses here are present ; one of Power,
And one of Nothingness ; doth it not mock
The mighty mind to see the meaner part,
The task it taught its hands, outlast itself?
The temple was a type, a thing of stone,
Built by laborious days which made up years ;
The creed which hallow'd it was of the soul ;
And yet the creed hath past—the temple stands.
The high beliefs which raised themselves to heaven ;
The general truths on which religions grow ;
The strong necessity of self-restraint ;
The needful comfort of some future hope
Than that whose promise only binds to-day,
And future fear, parent of many faiths :
Those vast desires, unquenchable, which sweep
Beyond the limits of our little world,
And know there is another by themselves ;
These constitute the spiritual of man.
'Tis they who elevate and who redeem,
By some great purpose, some on-looking end,
The mere brute exercise of common strength.
Yet these have left no trace. The mighty shrine,
Undeified, speaks force, and only force,
Man's meanest attribute.
Fisher's Drawing Room Scrap Book, 1835
It is impossible to help regretting the desecration of these Titanic temples. Better the imposing presence of any religion than of none. The utter desertion of these cavern shrines is even more extraordinary than their original erection. Architecture was the first wonder of the world. Alike gigantic — the pyramid, the temple, and the tomb are the written language of earth's earliest records. No details of builder or of building have come down to our distant day. Yet the principle in man's nature which led to their erection remains the same. We comprehend the motive of these mighty monuments. But in the Caves of Elephanta not a trace remains, to account for one of the most singular revolutions that ever took place in public opinion ; taking place, too, in a country where every thing is so immoveable. Strange, for the religion to remain the same, when its altars are deserted ! There are some mysteries, like the statue of Isis, from whose face science never lifts the veil.
THE CEDARS OF LEBANON
YE ancients of the earth, beneath whose shade
Swept the fierce banners of earth's mightiest kings,
When millions for a battle were arrayed,
And the sky darkened with the vulture's wings.
Long silence followed on the battle-cries;
First the bones whitened, then were seen no more;
The summer grasses sprang for summer skies,
And dim Tradition told no tales of yore.
The works of peace succeeded those first wars,
Men left the desert tents for marble walls;
Then rose the towers from whence they watched the stars,
And the vast wonders of their kingly halls.
And they are perished--those imperial towers
Read not amid the midnight stars their doom;
The pomp and art of all their glorious hours
Lie hidden in the sands that are their tomb.
And ye, ancestral trees! are somewhat shorn
Of the first strength that marked earth's earlier clime,
But still ye stand, stately and tempest-worn,
To show how Nature triumphs over Time.
Much have ye witnessed--but yet more remains,
The mind's great empire is but just begun;
The desert beauty of your distant plains,
Proclaim how much has yet been left undone.
Will not your giant columns yet behold
The world's old age, enlightened, calm, and free;
More glorious than the glories known of old—
The spirit's placid rule o'er land and sea.
All that the past has taught is not in vain—
Wisdom is garnered up from centuries gone:
Love, Hope, and Mind prepare a nobler reign
Than ye have known--Cedars of Lebanon!
Fisher's Drawing Room Scrap Book, 1838
BEIROUT AND LEBANON
Beirout, situated in a country rich, beautiful, adorned, and perfumed with orange, lemon, olive, palm, and mulberry trees, is one of the most interesting towns in Syria. The situation is exquisitely beautiful, the waters of the Levant reflecting the castles and minarets, and more faintly the distant range of the memorable Lebanon. The view from the Marina is not exceeded by any panoramic spectacle in the whole range of the Mediterranean coasts. The females in the foreground of the view, wear on the head the favourite ornament of Lebanon, the silver horn, carved with grotesque figures and characters, and adorned with false jewellery ; but it is hollow, to the height of a foot, placed upright on the head, and secured under the chin by a silken cord. In the foreground is the prickly pear, which grows with such rapidity, that if a single leaf be planted, in four years its produce is sufficient to fill a room. Here are some remains of the ancient city, granite columns of lam; dimensions, ruins of baths, and other fragments of a civilized and finished style, but the present town is encompassed by modern defences. The atmosphere is rendered cool and refreshing by the introduction of fountains and reservoirs within the walls, deriving their chief supply from the river that flows from Mount Lebanon.
CEMETERY OF THE SMOLENSKO CHURCH
THEY gather, with the summer in their hands,
The summer from their distant vallies bringing;
They gather round the church in pious bands,
With funeral array, and solemn singing.
The dead are their companions; many days
Have past since they were laid to their last slumber;
And in the hurry of life's crowded ways,
Small space has been for memory to cumber.
But now the past comes back again, and death
Asketh its mournful tribute of the living;
And memories that were garnered at the heart,
The treasures kept from busier hours are giving.
The mother kneeleth at a little tomb,
And sees one sweet face shining from beneath it;
She has brought all the early flowers that bloom,
In the small garden round their home, to wreath it.
Friend thinks on friend; and youth comes back again
To that one moment of awakened feeling;
And prayers, such prayers as never rise in vain,
Call down the heaven to which they are appealing.
It is a superstitious rite and old,
Yet having with all higher things connexion;
Prayers, tears, redeem a world so harsh and cold,
The future has its hope, the past its deep affection.
Fisher's Drawing Room Scrap Book 1837
A curious ceremony takes place yearly, when the Russians gather from all parts, to scatter flowers on the graves, and to mourn over the dead, and afterwards proceed to regale themselves with soup, fruit of all kinds, and wine; in many instances spreading their cloths on the very graves over which they had been bitterly mourning.
CHAPTER-HOUSE, FURNESS ABBEY
The following lines are a translation of an exquisite epistle addressed by St. Beuve to A. Fontenay. It applies very aptly to the fine old Abbey, whose ruins seem the very ideal of the poet's wish.
“Young friend, if, after struggles, toils, and many a passion past,
A vanquished one, who from his car has the worn harness cast ;
Or whether, drawing in your sail, the first rude wind has thrown
Your vessel in some quiet port, henceforth to be your own ;
Or either some unhappy love, which, lingering with you still,
For any further voyage in life has left you little will.
And from a path that charms you not — at the first step returning,
Like some pale lover during night, by some lone threshold mourning ;
Or whether, full of hope and truth, you share life's better part,
Of love unconscious ; though a man, a very child at heart.
“Dear friend, if it be your's to have in some deep vale a home,
Where you may dream of faith and fate, and all the great, to come.
If such a place of tranquil rest be to your future given,
Where every hour of solitude is consecrate to heaven,
Oh, leave it not ! let this vain life fret its few hours afar,
Where joy departs, and glory mocks the wide world's weary war
Let not its rude and angry tide with jarring torrent wake
The silence that the poplars love, of your own limpid lake.
“Ah, stay! live lonely on, and soon, the silence and the sound
Of music by the wandering winds, amid the reed-tops found ;
The colour which each various bough has on its various leaves,
The hue which the transparent wave from the bright morn receives ;
Or nearer, from your window seen, your garden's pleasant trees,
Your chamber and its daily walls — or even less than these :
All round will be your comforters, and, living but for you,
Will talk to you in wordless speech, a language soft and true.
Like some safe friend with drooping head, who utters not a word,
But yet has guessed your inmost thoughts, and with a look has heard.
Yes, solitude amid her depths has many a hidden balm
Guarded for those who leave her not, to strengthen and to calm.
“It has been long a dream of mine — a lonely one to dwell,
Where some old abbey's ruins hide a solitary cell ;
A gloomy room, with iron bars across the window placed,
And o'er the narrow panes of glass fantastic crossings traced ;
And green moss peeping forth amid the riven granite stone,
And the dim arches over-head with ivy overgrown."
Such is the dwelling, grey and old, which, in some world-worn mood,
The youthful poet dreamed would suit his future solitude.
If the old abbey be his search, he might seek far and near
Ere he would find a gothic cell more lorn and lone than here :
Long years have darkened into time since vespers here were rung,
And here has been no other dirge than what the winds have sung ;
And here the drooping ivy wreaths in ancient clusters fall,
And moss o'er each device hath grown upon the sculptured wall ;
Yet might he find some southern cell, where sweet wild flowers are creeping,
And old pear trees below the arch — their autumn leaves are weeping.
There might he heap the treasured things he mentions in his song,
Scrolls, crayons, folios, which have been familiar friends so long ;
A picture half effaced, (once dear), a lute, an oaken chair, >>>>
Black but inlaid with ivory, a lock of golden hair,
And letters dated years ago, and poems half complete,
In picturesque disorder flung, would make a dwelling meet
For the young poet anchorite, who from our world hath flown,
To build, in solitude and song, another of his own.
Fisher's Drawing Room Scrap Book 1835
"Un portrait effacé
"Que fut cher autrefois."
THE CHINESE PAGODA
WHENE'ER a person is a poet,
No matter what the pang may be;
Does not at once the public know it ?
Witness each newspaper we see.
"The parting look," "the bitter token,"
"The last despair," "the first distress;"
"The anguish of a heart that's broken—"
Do not these crowd the daily press ?
If then our misnamed "heartless city,"
Can so much sympathy bestow;
If there is so much public pity
For every kind of private woe ;
Why not for me ?—my care's more real
Than that of all this rhyming band;
Whose hearts and tears are all ideal,
A sort of joint-stock kept on hand.
I'm one of those, I do confess,
Whom pity greatly can console ;
To tell, is almost to redress,
Whate'er the "sorrow of my soul."
Now, I who thought the first* vexatious,
Despaired, and knew not what to do,
Abused the stars, called fate ungracious—
Here is a second Chinese view !
I sent to Messrs. Fisher, saying
The simple fact—I could not write ;
What was the use of my inveighing ?—
Back came the fatal scroll that night.
"But, madam, such a fine engraving,
The country, too, so little known!"
One's publisher there is no braving—
The plate was work'd, "the dye was thrown."
But what's impossible, can never,
By any hazard come to be,
It is impossible that ever
This place can furnish hints to me.
O Captain Elliot, what could make you
Forsake the Indian fanes of yore ?
And what in mercy's name could take you
To this most stupid Chinese shore ?
If in this world there is an object,
For pity which may stand alone,
It is a poet with no subject,
Or with a picture worse than none.
Fisher's Drawing Room Scrap Book, 1833
* Macao
If only Letitia had been able to access Wikipedia!
CHRISTMAS IN THE OLDEN TIME, 1650
You must come back, my brother,
For Christmas is so near,
And Christmas is the crowning time,
The purple of the year ;
He calls his court about him,
He is the fairy king,
Whose revel is at midnight
Within a charmed ring.
Christmas is coming, my brother dear,
And Christmas comes, my brother, but once a year.
The last leaf hath departed
From off the old oak tree,
But there is the wreath of misletoe
Where the green leaf used to be.
And we'll hang up the charmed coronal
Above the highest door,
And strangers all must pay the fine
Ere they tread the fairy floor.
Christmas is coming, my brother dear,
And Christmas comes, my brother, but once a year.
The trees are white with hoar-frost,
And snow is on the ground,
But there are yet some roses
Beside the casement found ;
And the terrace yet has myrtle ;
Both shall be saved for you ;
And you shall give them, my brother,
But I must not guess to who !
Christmas is coming, my brother dear,
And Christmas comes, my brother, but once a year.
The willow lake is frozen,
You will have such skaiting (sic) there ;
And the trees, like lovelorn maidens,
Hang down their glittering hair.
The holly's scarlet berries,
Amid the leaves appear ;
It is an elfin armoury,
With banner and with spear.
Christmas is coming, my brother dear,
And Christmas comes, my brother, but once a year.
We shall gather every evening
Beside the ancient hearth,
But one vacant place beside it,
Would darken all its mirth.
At any time but Christmas
We give you leave to roam,
But now come back, my brother,
You are so missed at home.
Christmas is coming, my brother dear,
And Christmas comes, my brother, but once a year.
Fisher's Drawing Room Scrap Book, 1836
"At Wycoller Hall the family usually kept open house the twelve days at Christmas. Their entertainment was, a large hall of curious ashler work, a long table, plenty of furmenty, like new milk, in a morning, made of husked wheat, boiled and roasted beef, with a fat goose, and a pudding, with plenty of good beer for dinner. A round about fireplace, surrounded with stone benches, where the young folks sat and cracked nuts, and diverted themselves, and in this manner the sons and daughters got matching without going much from home."— Family MS. of the Cunliffes.
THE CHURCH AT POLIGNAC
KNEEL down in yon chapel, but only one prayer
Should awaken the echoes its tall arches bear;
Pale mother, pray not for the child on the bed,
For the sake of the prisoner let matins be said;
Old man, though the shade of thy grave-stone be nigh,
Yet not for thyself raise thy voice to the sky;
Young maiden, there kneeling, with blush and with tear,
Name not the one name to thy spirit most dear.
The prayer for another, to Heaven addrest,
Comes back to the breather thrice blessing and blest.
Beside the damp marsh, rising sickly and cold,
Stand the bleak and stern walls of the dark prison hold;
There fallen and friendless, forlorn and opprest,
Are they--once the flattered, obeyed, and carest,
From the blessings that God gives the poorest exiled,
His wife is a widow, an orphan his child;
For years there the prisoner has wearily pined,
Apart from his country, apart from his kind;
Amid millions of freemen, one last lonely slave,
He knoweth the gloom, not the peace of the grave.
I plead not their errors, my heart's in the cause,
Which bows down the sword with the strength of the laws;
But France, while within her such memories live,
With her triumphs around, can afford to forgive.
Let Freedom, while raising her glorious brow,
Shake the tears from her laurels that darken there now,
Be the chain and the bar from yon prison removed,
Give the children their parent, the wife her beloved.
By the heart of the many is pardon assigned,
For, Mercy, thy cause is the cause of mankind.
Fisher's Drawing Room Scrap Book, 1837
Mr. DUNCOMBE, in his eloquent speech which first excited the sentiment I have faintly endeavoured to express above, after giving most painful details of the prisoners in that fortress, says, "I put it to the house and to the public, whether persecution like this be necessary to the ends of national justice ! The same feeling which prompted us on a former occasion to address our allies in the language of congratulation, should now induce us to advise the French people to temper triumph with clemency." Surely, the matter cannot be allowed to merge in that selfish carelessness with which we are too apt to regard the sufferings of others. Political enlightenment has yet many steps to make, while justice and vengeance are synonymous terms. But an appeal was never yet made in vain to the generous sympathies of "La Belle France."
[Written during the imprisonment of Prince Polignac and his colleagues, after the French Revolution of 1830.]
NEEL down in yon chapel, but only one prayer
CHURCH OF THE CARMELITE FRIARY
LONG years have fled away since last
I stood upon my native land,
And other longer years have past
Since here I raised a suppliant hand ;
And yet how oft the sacred shrine,
How oft the holy vesper song
Again in slumber have been mine,
Upon the night hour borne along ;
And wakened in the wanderer's mind
His early hope, and early fear,
All that my youth had left behind,
All that my youth held more than dear
Methinks it has not all been lost,
The influence of that holy fane ;
How often has its image crost,
And checked when other checks were vain.
Rage and revenge, and worldly care,
Have all been calmed and purified,
By memory of the childish prayer
I whispered at my mother's side.
Again I see the sunbeams fall
Upon the sculptured aisles' array;
Again the marble saints recall
The feelings of my earlier day.
Still be their holy presence given,
Still be their faith alive in me,
For he hath need to hope in heaven,
Whose home is on the stormy sea!
Fisher's Drawing Room Scrap Book, 1833
These lines refer to an anecdote told me by a young Naval Officer, respecting the capture of a piratical vessel, off the coast of Brazil, about eight years since. The crew consisted of a mixture of all nations, among whom there were two Irishmen and a Scotchman. They all fought with desperation, and several were killed in the action which took place between the boats of the English ship and the pirate. "I was made prize-master," said the gallant relater to me, " and amongst some papers which I found on board, was an unfinished letter in English, which made me lament the fate of the writer, who, no doubt, was one of the unfortunate trio of our fellow-subjects
on board. The Scotchman made his escape ; one of the Irishmen died of his wounds ; the other was hanged at Rio, and, from his demeanour at the place of execution, I have always considered him to be the writer of the letter which I found."
I was afterwards presented with the original letter. It appears to have been addressed to an early friend in the West Indies, and from it the following passage is extracted:
" Amid all the chances of warfare, and through the changes of desperate years, I have never forgotten that holy chapel where first I was taught to pray, and its memory has often come over me with a blessed and saving influence. Fortune has made me not only the sport of the elements, but the companion in arms of daring and
unprincipled men. I have been so familiar with scenes of murder, as scarcely to shudder at them ; to this my evil destiny has forced me, but, though compelled to be a sharer in them, my heart has never scoffed at its Maker, nor has my hand been raised but in self-defence; or, what was the same thing, in the duty I was obliged to perform—in which disobedience, or even hesitation, would have caused instant death.”
THE CHURCH OF ST. JOHN, AND THE
RUINS OF LAHNECK CASTLE.
FORMERLY BELONGING TO THE TEMPLARS
(or A RUINED CASTLE ON THE RHINE)
On the dark heights that overlook the Rhine,
Flinging long shadows on the watery plains,
Crown'd with gray towers, and girdled by the vine
How little of the warlike past remains !
The castle walls are shatter'd, and wild flowers
Usurp the crimson banner's former sign.
Where are the haughty Templars and their
powers
Their 'forts are perish'd—but not so their shrine
Like Memory veil'd, Tradition sits and tells
Her twilight histories of the olden time.
How few the records of those craggy dells
But what recall some sorrow or some crime.
Of Europe's childhood was the feudal age,
When the world's sceptre was the sword ; and
power,
Unfit for human weakness, wrong, and rage,
Knew not that curb which waits a wiser hour.
Ill suited empire with a human hand ;
Authority needs rule, restraint, and awe
Order and peace spread gradual through the land,
And force submits to a diviner law
A few great minds appear, and by their light
The many find their way ; truth after truth
Rise starlike on the depths of moral night,
Though even now is knowledge in its youth.
Still as those ancient heights, which only bore
The iron harvest of the sword and spear,
Are now with purple vineyards cover'd o'er,
While corn-fields fill the fertile valleys near
Our moral progress has a glorious scope,
Much has the past by thought and labour done
Knowledge and Peace pursue the steps of Hope,
Whose noblest victories are yet unwon.
Fisher's Drawing Room Scrap Book, 1838
n the dark heights that overlook the Rhine,
ONG years have fled away since last
THE CITY CHURCHYARD (SCENES IN LONDON IV)
I PRAY thee lay me not to rest
Among these mouldering bones;
Too heavily the earth is prest
By all these crowded stones.
Life is too gay—life is too near—
With all its pomp and toil;
I pray thee do not lay me here,
In such a world-struck soil.
The ceaseless roll of wheels would wake
The slumbers of the dead;
I cannot bear for life to make
Its pathway o'er my head.
The flags around are cold and drear,
They stand apart, alone;
And no one ever pauses here,
To sorrow for the gone.
No: lay me in the far green fields
The summer sunshine cheers;
And where the early wild flower yields
The tribute of its tears.
Where shadows the sepulchral yew,
Where droops the willow tree,
Where the long grass is filled with dew—
Oh! make such grave for me!
And passers-by, at evening's close,
Will pause beside the grave,
And moralize o'er the repose
They fear, and yet they crave.
Perhaps some kindly hand may bring
Its offering to the tomb;
And say, as fades the rose in spring,
So fadeth human bloom.
But here there is no kindly thought
To soothe, and to relieve;
No fancies and no flowers are brought,
That soften while they grieve.
Here Poesy and Love come not—
It is a world of stone;
The grave is bought—is closed—forgot!
And then life hurries on.
Sorrow and beauty—nature—love
Redeem man's common breath;
Ah! let them shed the grave above—
Give loveliness to death.
Fisher's Drawing Room Scrap Book, 1836
If there be one object more material, more revolting, more gloomy than another, it is a crowded churchyard in a city. It has neither sympathy nor memory. The pressed-down stones lie heavy upon the very heart. The sunshine cannot get at them for smoke. There is a crowd; and, like most crowds, there is no companionship. Sympathy is the softener of death, and memory of the loved and the lost is the earthly shadow of their immortality. But who turns aside amid those crowds that hurry through the thronged and noisy streets?--No one can love London better than I do; but never do I wish to be buried there. It is the best place in the world for a house, and the worst for a grave. An Irish patriot once candidly observed to me, "Give me London to live in; but let me die in green Ireland:"--now, this is precisely my opinion.
PRAY thee lay me not to rest
Well, Letitia was granted her wish - her grave is in modern-day Ghana.
THE CITY OF DELHI
Thou glorious city of the East, of old enchanted times,
When the fierce Genii swayed all Oriental climes,
I do not ask from history a record of thy fame,
A fairy page has stamped for me thy consecrated name.
I read it when the crimson sky came reddening thro' the trees,
The twilight is the only time to read such tales as these;
Like mosque, and minaret, and tower, the clouds were heaped on high,
I almost deemed fair Delhi rose, a city in the sky.
What sympathy I then bestowed upon her youthful king !
I fear I now should be less moved by actual suffering;
All sorrow has its selfishness ; tears harden as they flow,
And in our own we half forget to share in others' wo.
I can recall how well I seemed to know the princely tent,
Where painted silk, and painted plume, their gorgeous colours blent,
The conquests blazoned on the walls, the roof of carved stone,
And the rich light, that at midnight, over the dark woods shone.
The lovely princess, she who slept in that black marble tomb,
Her only pall, her raven hair, that swept in midnight gloom;
The depths of that enchanted sleep, had seemed the sleep of death
Save that her cheek retained its rose, her lip its rose-like breath.
Gone ! gone ! I think of them no more, unless when they are brought
As by this pictured city here, in some recalling thought;
Far other dreams are with me now, and yet, amid their pain,
I wish I were content to dream of fairy tales again.
Fisher's Drawing Room Scrap Book, 1832
Perhaps Sir Charles Morell, the real author of "The Tales of the Genii," may be but an Oriental Ossian ; I only know, when reading them I was truly "under the wand of the enchanter." The story of the Sultan Misnar and the Enchanters is the one to which the above verses allude. The youthful monarch had enough to do ; he had to rescue his throne from the usurpation of his brother, aided by the evil genii, and his mistress from an enchanted sleep, in a tomb of black marble. If an author could choose his destiny, he would only implore fortune to grant him youthful readers. The vivid feeling and the rich imagination of the young, lend their own freshness to the page ; and then we look back with such delight to half-forgotten volumes read beneath the old beech-tree, or in the oaken window-seat. What an Arabian poet says of those he loved in early days, I say, too, of all childhood's books, hopes, and feelings. The Arabian line runs thus — " We never meet with friends like the friends of our Youth—when we have lost them."
CLAVERHOUSE AT THE BATTLE OF BOTHWELL BRIG
He leads them on, the chief, the knight ;
Dark is his eye with fierce delight,
A calm and unrelenting joy,
Whose element is to destroy.
Down falls his soft and shining hair,
His face is as woman's fair ;
And that slight frame seems rather meant
For lady's bower than soldier's tent.
But on that kindled brow is wrought
The energy that is of thought,
The sternness and the strength that grow
In the high heart that beats below.
The golden spur is on his heel,
The spur his war-horse does not feel ;
The sun alone has gilt the brand,
Now bared in his unsparing hand.
But ere the sun go down again
That sword will wear a deeper stain
Sun and sword alike will go
Down o'er the dying and the foe.
Never yet hath failed that brand,
Never yet hath spared that hand ;
Where their mingled light is shed,
Are the fugitive or dead.
Though the grave were on his way,
Forward, would that soldier say ;
And upon his latest breath
Would be, "Victory or Death."
Fisher's Drawing Room Scrap Book, 1837
THE COLERAINE SALMON LEAP
I WAS dreaming that I went
Through the ocean element,
Like a conqueror on my way,
Shark and sword-fish were the prey ;
With a spear I smote the waves
Down amid the coral caves.
I have wakened,—let me go
Where the mountain torrents flow.
I will realize my dream
In the dashing of the stream ;
Pouring mid the summer woods
All the gathered winter floods ;
When the ice and when the snow
Melt into a sunny flow :
Mid the bright waves leaping forth
Comes the salmon from the north.
Let the meaner angler seek,
In the willow-hidden creek,
For the trout whose spotted side
Crimsons like a star the tide ;
Let him mid dark waters search
For the carp and for the perch ;
While the silver graylings shiver
Like bright arrows in a quiver.
Mine a nobler prey shall be,
Guest from yonder sounding sea,
Comes the salmon proud and strong,
Darting like a ray along.
For his lure, the artful fly
Does the peacock's plume supply ;
Royal bird, whose radiant wing
Suiteth with the river king.
See, he bears the line away,
Round him flies the snowy spray.
I have given him length and line,
One last struggle, he is mine.
Fling the green arbutus bough
On the glowing ashes now ;
Let the cup with red wine foam,—
I have brought the salmon home.
Fisher's Drawing Room Scrap Book, 1836
"So numerous are the fish frequenting this river, that the average amount is estimated at £1,000 per annum ; and on one, occasion 1,500 Salmon were taken at a single drag of the net.”—I, however, have only celebrated the exploits of a single fisher.
I remember a curious exploit of a gentleman, who went out in the morning to shoot, and shot a salmon ; in the afternoon to fish, and caught a hare. The fact was, there had been a flood, which had dashed a salmon on the banks, where a gun was the readiest means of despatching it. The same flood had swept away a hare, and the line furnished the means of its capture.
COLGONG ON THE GANGES
A lonely tomb, — and who within it sleepeth
None knows : old Time hath many secret things ;
But there her rosy tears the Evening weepeth,
And there the morn her early sunshine flings.
For ever glideth on that lovely river;
Laden with early wreaths the creepers twine,
While, like the arrows from a royal quiver,
Golden the glancing sunbeams o’er them shine.
Oh, outward world, how beautiful thy seeming!
How lavish in thy luxury! how fair!
A thousand blossoms light the thickets, teeming
With future glories for the kindling air.
Yet less the prodigal loveliness enchanteth,
With all the passing hours from summer win;
Less is the human spirit by it haunted
Than by some link that wakes the world within.
The Hindoo gathered of the purple flowers—
What needed he?—A garland for his head?—
Not so—he asketh from the summer hours
A tribute for the unforgotten dead.
And not in vain that fragrant wealth is scattered:
For lofty thoughts and noble, haunt the grave.
The selfish chain of actual life is shattered,
And higher thoughts higher existence crave.
It is the past that maketh the ideal,
Kindling the future with its onward ray,
And o’er a world that else would be too real,
Flinging the glory of the moral day.
Fisher's Drawing Room Scrap Book, 1839
Illustration from The Gallery of Engravings
The melancholy marking the Hindoo character is especially shown in the picturesque sites chosen for their tombs. Strangers will scatter flowers over the dust that, for them, has not even a name. The tomb on the summit of the rocks at Colgong is treated with that tender respect which in India is always the portion of the dead.—“These picturesque rocks, the occasional habitation of a Fakeer, occur at about a day’s journey below Jangbera, on the Ganges, in the midst of romantic and varied scenery. They are esteemed sacred by the Hindoo devotees, and have been sculptured with rude effigies of their gods.”
COLLEGIATE CHURCH, MANCHESTER
(or THE MINSTER)
DIM, thro' the sculptured aisles the sun-beam falls
More like a dream
Of some imagined beam,
Than actual daylight over mortal walls.
A strain of music like the rushing wind,
But deep and sweet
As when the waters meet,
In one mysterious harmony combined.
So swells the mighty organ, rich and full,
As if it were the soul
Which raised the glorious whole,
Of that fair building vast and wonderful.
Doth not the spirit feel its influence,
All vain and feverish care,
All thoughts that worldly are,
Strife, tumult, mirth, and fear are vanished hence.
The world is put aside, within the heart
Those hopes arise
Thrice sacred mysteries,
In which our earthly nature has no part.
Oh, Christian Fane, the soul expands in thee,
Thine altar and thy tomb
Speak of the hope and doom,
Which leads and cheers man to eternity.
Fisher's Drawing Room Scrap Book, 1833
CONISTON WATER
Thou lone and lovely water, would I were
A dweller by thy deepest solitude !
How weary am I of my present life,
Its falsehoods, and its fantasies—its nois,
And the unkindly hurry of the crowd,
‘Mid whom my days are numbered! I would watch
The tremulous vibration of the rays
The moon sends down to kiss thy quiet waves ;
And when they died, wish I could die like them,
Melting upon the still and silvery air :
Or when the autumn scatters the wan leaves
Like ghosts, I’d meditate above their fall,
And say “So perish all our earthly hopes.”
So is the heart left desolate and bare,
And on us falls the shadow of the tomb,
Before we rest within it—
Fisher's Drawing Room Scrap Book 1834
THE COOTUB MINAR, DELHI
" I HAVE forgotten," 'tis a common phrase
Said every hour, and said of every thing;
Objects of sight and hearing pass away,
As they had not impressed the eye nor ear:
Faces we loved, the voices we thought sweet,
Go from us utterly; the very heart
Remembers not its beatings; hopes, and fears,
In multitudes, leave not a trace behind.
One half of our existence is a blank;
A mighty empire hath forgetfulness !
History is but a page in the great past,
So few amid Time's records are unsealed.—
Here is a mighty tower : ere it was raised
Its builders must have had wealth, power, and time,
And a desire beyond the present hour.
Do not these mark a period and a state
Refined and civilized ? a people past
Through each first process of humanity ?
No dwellers these in tents, who only sought
A palm-tree and a well; and left behind
No sign, but a scant herbage. They who built
This lofty tower, which still defies decay,
Must have left many traces ; yet not so—
This tower is all, and that has long since lost
All evidence of former times and men,
It has not one tradition.
Fisher's Drawing Room Scrap Book, 1833
It is curious to observe the complete oblivion that has attended all man's greatest efforts; those which asked their immortality of brick and stone. Architecture is the earliest and the most forgetful of the sciences. The pyramids remain as eternal as the earth that bears them; but the name of their founder has long since perished. The work is mightier than its master. The least intellectual effort has a memory far more lasting than that shrined by temple or tower. To me this seems the triumph of mind over matter.
THE COQUETTE
She danced upon the waters,
Beneath the morning sun,
Of all old Ocean's daughters
The very fairest one.
An azure zone comprest her
Round her white and slender side,
For her gallant crew had drest her
Like a beauty and a bride.
She wore her trappings gayly,
As a lady ought to do,
And the waves which kissed her daily
Proud of their mistress grew.
They clung like lovers round her,
And bathed her airy feet ;
With white foam wreaths they bound her,
To grace her, and to greet.
She cut the blue wave, scorning
Our dull and common land ;
To the rosy airs of morning,
We saw her sails expand.
How graceful was their drooping
Ere the winds began to blow,
While the gay Coquette was stooping
To her clear green glass below !
How gallant was their sweeping,
While they swelled upon the air ;
As the winds were in their keeping,
And they knew they were so fair !
A shower of spray before her,
A silvery wake hehind,
A cloud of canvass o'er her,
She sprang before the wind.
She was so loved, the fairy,
Like a mistress or a child ;
For she was so trim and airy,
So buoyant and so wild.
And though so young a rover,
She knew what life could be ;
For she had wandered over
Full many a distant sea.
One night, 'twas in September,
A mist arose on high ;
Not the oldest could remember
Such a dense and darkened sky :
And small dusk birds came hovering
The gloomy waters o'er ;
The waves mocked their sweet sovereign,
And would obey no more.
There was no wind to move them,
So the sails were furled and fast,
And the gallant flag above them
Dropped down upon the mast.
All was still as if death's shallow
Were resting on the grave;
And the sea, like some dark meadow,
Had not one rippling wave :
When the sky was rent asunder
With a flood of crimson light,
And one single burst of thunder
Aroused the silent night.
'Twas the signal for their waking!
The angry winds arose,
Like giant captives breaking
The chain of forced repose.
Yet bravely did she greet them,
Those jarring winds and waves;
Ready with scorn to meet them,
They who had been her slaves.
She faced the angry heaven,
Our bold and fair Coquette ;
Her graceful sides are riven,
But she will brave it yet.
Like old oak of the forest,
Down comes the thundering mast
Her need is at the sorest,
She shudders in the blast
Hark to that low quick gushing
The hold has sprung a leak
On their prey the waves are rushing
The valiant one grows weak.
One cry, and all is quiet,
There is not sight nor sound;
Save the fierce gale at its riot,
And the angry waters round.
The morn may come with weeping,
And the storm may cease to blow;
But the fair Coquette is sleeping
A thousand fathoms low.
Fisher's Drawing Room Scrap Book, 1835
CORFU
Now, doth not summer's sunny smile
Sink soft o'er that Ionian isle,
While round the kindling waters sweep
The murmured music of the deep,
The many melodies that swell
From breaking wave and red-lipp'd shell?
Love mine ! how sweet it were to leave
This weary world of ours behind,
And borrow from the blushing eve
The wild wings of the wandering wind ?
Would we not flee away and find
Some lonely cave beside the shore ?
One, where a Nereid dwelt of yore,
And sheltered in its glistening bowers,
A love almost as fond as ours ?
A diamond spar incrusts the walls,
A rainbow light from crystal falls ;
And, musical amid the gloom,
A fountain's silvery showers illume
The further darkness, as with ray
And song it finds its sparkling way.
A natural lute and lamp — a tone,
A light, to wilder waves unknown.
The cave is curtain'd with the vine,
And inside wandering branches twine,
While from the large green leaves escape
The blooming clusters of the grape ; —
Fruit with such hyacinthine glow
As southern sunbeams only know.
We will not leave it, till the moon
Lalla with her languid look the sea ;
Sleep, shadow, silence for the noon,
But midnight Love to wake with thee.
When the sweet myrtle trees exhale
The odours of their blossoms pale,
And dim and purple colours steep
Those blossoms in their perfumed sleep ;
Where closed are the cicala's wings,
And no leaf stirs, nor wild bird sings,
Lull'd by the dusk air, warm and sweet ;
Then kneeling, dearest, at thy feet,
Thy face the only sight I see,
Thy voice the only sound I hear,
While midnight's moonlit mystery
Seems the full heart's enchanted sphere.
Then should thy own low whisper tell
Those ancient songs thou lov'st so well ;
Tales of old battles which are known
To me but from thy lip alone ;
Dearer than if the bard again
Could sound his own imperial strain.
Ah, folly ! of such dreaming hours,
That are not, that may not be ours.
Farewell ! thou far Ionian isle
That lighted for my love awhile,
A sweet enchantment formed to fade,
Of darker days my life is made ;
Embittering my reality
With dreams of all that may not be.
Such fairy fancies when they part,
But leave behind a withered heart ;
Dreaming o'er all it hath not known ;
Alas ! and is such heart mine own ?
Fisher's Drawing Room Scrap Book 1835
CORFU
O, Lovely isle ! that, like a child,
Art sleeping on the sea,
Amid whose hair the wind is wild,
And on whose cheek the sun has smiled,
As there it loved to be.
How fair thou art, how very fair,
A lone and lovely dream,
That sprung on the enchanted air,
A fairy likeness seems to wear,
A fairy world to seem,
Thou bringest to me a pleasant mood
Of fanciful delight :
To me thou art a solitude
Known only to the sea bird's brood.
And to the stars at night.
I should so like to have thee mine,
Mine own—my very own,
The shadows of thy sweeping vine,
Wherein the scarlet creepers twine,
Broken by me alone.
I would not have a footstep trace
Thy solitary shore:
No human voice—no human face
Should trouble my sweet resting place
With memories of yore.
I would forget the wretched years
Passed in this world of ours,
Where weary cares and feverish fears,
Ending alike in bitter tears,
Darken the heavy hours.
But I would dwell beside the sea,
And of the scattered shells
Ask, when they murmur mournfully,
What sorrow in the past may be,
Of which their music tells.
Winds, waves, and breathing shells are sad—
Methinks I should repine,
If their low tones were only glad,
‘Twould seem too much as if they had
No sympathy for mine.
Not long such fancies can beguile
Dreams of what cannot be ;
Gone is thy visionary smile,
And thou art but a distant isle
Upon a distant sea.
Fisher's Drawing Room Scrap book 1838
CORFU AND MANDUCHIO
The island of Corfu is situated at the entrance of the Adriatic Sea, and is the seat of government of the Septinsular Union. It has been immortalized by Homer, and is the imaginary theatre on which many of the fables of mythology were represented. The Venetians and Mussulmans have struggled, with a degree of ferocity disgraceful even to the sanguinary laws of war, for the possession of this spot, and its present independent position throws a species of ridicule upon the designs of the most powerful and resolute monarchs. The extreme length of the island does not exceed thirty-five miles, its greatest breadth is twelve, and its superficies covers about eighty square leagues. The population may be estimated at 6000 souls.
COTTAGE COURTSHIP
Now, out upon this smiling,
No smile shall meet his sight ;
And a word of gay reviling
Is all he'll hear to-night,
For he'll hold my smiles too lightly,
If he always sees me smile ;
He'll think they shine more brightly
When I have frowned awhile.
‘Tis not kindness keeps a lover,
He must feel the chain he wears ;
All the sweet enchantment's over,
When he has no anxious cares.
The heart would seem too common,
If he thought that heart his own ;
Ah ! the empire of a woman
Is still in the unknown.
Let change without a reason,
Make him never feel secure ;
For it is an April season
That a lover must endure.
They are all of them so faithless.
Their torment is your gain ;
Would you keep your own heart scathless,
Be the one to give the pain.
Fisher's Drawing Room Scrap Book 1835
COURT OF A TURKISH VILLA
NEAR DAMASCUS
In the midst a fountain,
Singeth day and night,
Each small wave a mirror
For the changing light.
Now the golden sunshine,
Softened by the boughs,
Which a doubtful passage
To the light allows:
Or the moon seems lingering near,
As she paused the words to hear
Of the tales Arabian,
The old Arabian Nights.
On the wind a murmur
Seems to float along,
Soft as is the music
Of remembered song.
Bringing at the moment
All that dwelt apart
In the lone recesses
Of the haunted heart.
So upon her twilight wings
Memory beareth graceful things,
From the tales Arabian,
From the old Arabian Nights.
I can see the garden
Treasured from the day,
Where the young Aladdin
Took his wondering way.
Pale the lamp was burning
Which the genie swayed;
Would that at this moment
I could have its aid !
All my fancies, now so vain,
I might with a wish obtain;
From the tales Arabian,
The old Arabian Nights.
Far away the island
Rises on the deep,
Where the fated Agib
Found the boy asleep.
Soon the old fond father
Came with songs and joy
Ah ! what bears he with him
But his murdered boy !
Still does Fate, in some dark shape,
Mock our efforts to escape,
As in the tales Arabian,
The old Arabian Nights.
Next a summer palace
Gleams with sudden light,
But the lovely Persian
Makes it yet more bright.
I can hear her singing
In the lonely tower,
Mournful — oh. how mournful !
Of a happier hour.
Still the same star rules above,
Sorrow still companions love,
As in the tales Arabian,
The old Arabian Nights.
Pleasantly these fancies
Haunt that fountain's fall.
Making its low music
Yet more musical.
Still around its waters
Are adventures told,
Wonderful as any
That I read of old.
Never will their charm depart,
Still a portion of the heart
Dwells with the tales Arabian,
The old Arabian Nights.
Fisher's Drawing Room Scrap Book, 1839
Illustration from The Gallery of Engravings
CROSSING THE CHOOR MOUNTAINS
He was the first that ever crossed
Those pale hills, with their snow,
Whose summits in the clouds are lost,
From whence the cold rills flow.
He stood—the pines at his right hand,
The eagle at his side;
He thought upon his English land,
And Solitude replied.
How strange it must have been to hear
Our own familiar tongue,
Bringing its home and childhood near
Those mountain-tops among.
Within that English traveller’s heart
What deep emotions stirred,
As talked their little band apart,
Each with an English word!
Were they familiar thoughts and fond—
Thoughts linked with early hours,
That scarcely give a look beyond
The present’s fruit and flowers,
That seem to pass like streams away,
And yet that leave behind
Music that many an after day
Will bring again to mind?
’Tis strange how often early years
Will unexpected rise,
And bring back soft and childlike tears
To cold and world-worn eyes.
Soft voices come upon the wind,
Old songs and early prayers,
And feel how much of good and kind
Our weary life still spares.
Or had he lofty thoughts and stern,
Of what before him lay;
Did his aspiring thoughts discern
Honours some future day,
Of science, aided by his toil—
Of knowledge, taught to roam—
Of all the rich and varied spoil
The traveller brings home?
He needed all—the hopes that guide—
The memories that cheer—
For after hours were at his side,
Of care, and pain, and fear.
His was a hard and weary lot,
His hour of wandering past;
Alas! for him awaited not
A welcome home at last.
Strange hands sustained his sinking head,
Strange steps were at his side,
Strange faces bent above the bed,
The bed whereon he died.
I cannot bear to think of this—
Death-lone on that far strange shore;
And yet the death-bed that was his
Awaiteth many more.
Our careless crowds too little think
Of those who work their will;
Of dangers from which we should shrink—
Of toils, while we are still.
Too late some vain regret may wake,
And pity then affords
For some young bold adventurer’s sake,
A few vain tears and words.
Fisher's Drawing Room Scrap Book, 1839
Lieutenant Moorcroft was the first European who has ever crossed the Choor Mountains. After many hardships and difficulties, he died at Andhko. The elevation of this mountain-pass above the level of the sea, is twelve thousand one hundred and forty-nine feet. During a considerable part of the year, the Choor is hoary with snow; and when moonlight falls upon the scene, an effect is produced as if floods of molten silver were poured over the surface. Moonlight in these regions assumes a novel charm. The rugged peaks, stern and chilling as they are, lose their awful character, and become brilliant as polished pearl; the trees, covered with icicles, seem formed of some rich spar; and the face of nature becoming wholly changed, presents the features of a world calm and tranquil, but still and deathlike.
Illustration taken from The Gallery of Engravings.
CROSSING THE RIVER TONSE BY A JHOOLA
Light is the bridge across the dark blue river,
Gracefully swinging, far more like a shadow
Flung from a cloud, than the work of man and labour.
Formed of twisted grasses, fragile is the structure—
Seems it as meant to bear no other burden
Than sunbeams and moonbeams, dreams, thoughts, and fancies.
Light is the line it traces on the water,
Light is the line it traces on the air—
Made to carry over yellow flowers from the champac.
Yet must it bear the weight of many burthens;
Winding around it passes the dark Hindoo—
Often does it bend, though it breaks not with its freightage.
Airy bridge! thou art of airy youth the symbol—
So does its hope bind the present and the future ;
So slight is the structure which its heart carries onwards.
Hope's fairy arches cross human life's dark river;
Frail the support—while over it there hastens
All the sweet beliefs that make the morning fair.
Soon the noontide comes, and the hurried hours grow busy
Morning has passed like a bright and sudden vision,
Day has other freightage than its blushes and its dews.
Slight as is the bridge, yet it can well sustain them ;
Hope carries on life's passage to the last,
Aiding in its labour, as it aided in its fancies.
Fisher's Drawing Room Scrap Book, 1839
The illustration below was taken from 'Views of India, chiefly amongst the Himalayan Mountains' by Lieut. George Francis White, edited by Letitia's friend, Emma Roberts.
The natives in this part of India perform the operation of crossing their rivers by means of the jhoola, or rope-bridge; holding on with the hands and feet, and making a loop of their bodies: but, for those unaccustomed to their exercises, there is a wooden slide attached to the rope. On the left bank of the Tonse, which is rather more elevated than the opposite one, a three-stranded rope is attached to a log of wood, secured among the rocks. The rope being stretched across the river, (which is here eighty yards in width) is passed between the prongs of a wooden fork, planted firmly in the ground; and being again divided into three strands, is secured to the trunk of a tree, steadied by a heavy weight. The slide, of hollowed wood, hangs like a moveable scale from the rope, having two handles, and a loop to which a thin cord is attached; by means of the latter, the two-handled chair, or slide, is drawn from the lower to the higher bank, the weight of the passenger being sufficient to accomplish the transit in the opposite direction.
CURRAGHMORE
Summer, shining summer,
Art thou bringing now
Colours to the red rose,
Green leaves to the bough,
Music to the singing birds,
And honey to the bee ;
Summer, shining summer,
Oh, welcome unto thee.
Now linger in our valley,
Oh, why should thou go forth,
To thaw the snow and icicles
Of the eternal North ?
Where wilt thou find a valley
More lovely for your home ?
Ah ! even now the shadows
Are lengthening as they come.
Well, Autumn, thou art welcome,
With sheaves of ripened corn,
The hunter's moon is shining,
The hills ring with his horn.
The grapes are dyed with purple,
The leaves are tinged with red,
And the green and golden plumage
Of the pheasant's wing is spread.
What ? snow upon the mountains !
Heap pine boughs on the hearth ;
Broach ye the crimson Malvoisie,
Let the old hall ring with mirth.
Fill the lattices with holly,
Let the lamps and torches blaze,
And let the ancient harper
Sing songs of other days.
Alas, thou gladsome Winter,
Thy festival is done,
Thy frost-work world of gossamer
Is melting in the sun.
Forth come the early violets,
Such pale blue in their eyes,
As if they caught their colour
From gazing on the skies.
And a green and tender verdure
Is on the hawthorn tree,
And a break of crimson promise
Shews what the rose will be.
The primrose clothes the meadow,
The birds are on the wing,
And a thousand flowers are waking
Beneath the feet of Spring.
Let the year pursue its changes,
Let the seasons fade and fall,
That valley has a welcome
And a beauty for them all.
Fisher's Drawing Room Scrap Book 1832
A Seat of the Marquis of Waterford.—The name signifies " the great plain," and the surrounding country is of singular beauty and fertility.