The Youth Of Nature

Raisd are the dripping oars     Silent the boat: the lake,     Lovely and soft as a dream,     Swims in the sheen of the moon.     The mountains stand at its head     Clear in the pure June night,     But the valleys are flooded with haze.     Rydal and Fairfield are there;     In the shadow Wordsworth lies dead.     So it is, so it will be for aye.     Nature is fresh as of old,     Is lovely: a mortal is dead.     The spots which recall him survive,     For he lent a new life to these hills.     The Pillar still broods oer the fields     Which border Ennerdale Lake,     And Egremont sleeps by the sea.     The gleam of The Evening Star     Twinkles on Grasmere no more,     But ruind and solemn and grey     The sheepfold of Michael survives,     And far to the south, the heath     Still blows in the Quantock coombs,     By the favourite waters of Ruth.     These survive: yet not without pain,     Pain and dejection to-night,     Can I feel that their Poet is gone.     He grew old in an age he condemnd.     He lookd on the rushing decay     Of the times which had shelterd his youth.     Felt the dissolving throes     Of a social order he lovd.     Outlivd his brethren, his peers.     And, like the Theban seer,     Died in his enemies day.     Cold bubbled the spring of Tilphusa,     Copais lay bright in the moon;     Helicon glassd in the lake     Its firs, and afar, rose the peaks     Of Parnassus, snowily clear:     Thebes was behind him in flames,     And the clang of arms in his ear,     When his awe-struck captors led     The Theban seer to the spring.     Tiresias drank and died.     Nor did reviving Thebes     See such a prophet again.     Well may we mourn, when the head     Of a sacred poet lies low     In an age which can rear them no more.     The complaining millions of men     Darken in labour and pain;     But he was a priest to us all     Of the wonder and bloom of the world,     Which we saw with his eyes, and were glad.     He is dead, and the fruit-bearing day     Of his race is past on the earth;     And darkness returns to our eyes.     For oh, is it you, is it you,     Moonlight, and shadow, and lake,     And mountains, that fill us with joy,     Or the Poet who sings you so well     Is it you, O Beauty, O Grace,     O Charm, O Romance, that we feel,     Or the voice which reveals what you are?     Are ye, like daylight and sun,     Shard and rejoicd in by all?     Or are ye immersd in the mass     Of matter, and hard to extract,     Or sunk at the core of the world     Too deep for the most to discern     Like stars in the deep of the sky,     Which arise on the glass of the sage,     But are lost when their watcher is gone.     They are here I heard, as men heard     In Mysian Ida the voice     Of the Mighty Mother, or Crete,     The murmur of Nature reply     Loveliness, Magic, and Grace,     They are here they are set in the world     They abide and the finest of souls     Has not been thrilld by them all,     Nor the dullest been dead to them quite.     The poet who sings them may die,     But they are immortal, and live,     For they are the life of the world.     Will ye not learn it, and know,     When ye mourn that a poet is dead,     That the singer was less than his themes,     Life, and Emotion, and I?     More than the singer are these.     Weak is the tremor of pain     That thrills in his mournfullest chord     To that which once ran through his soul.     Cold the elation of joy     In his gladdest, airiest song,     To that which of old in his youth     Filld him and made him divine.     Hardly his voice at its best     Gives us a sense of the awe,     The vastness, the grandeur, the gloom     Of the unlit gulph of himself.     Ye know not yourselves and your bards,     The clearest, the best, who have read     Most in themselves, have beheld     Less than they left unreveald.     Ye express not yourselves can ye make     With marble, with colour, with word,     What charmd you in others re-live?     Can thy pencil, O Artist, restore     The figure, the bloom of thy love,     As she was in her morning of spring?     Canst thou paint the ineffable smile     Of her eyes as they rested on thine?     Can the image of life have the glow,     The motion of life itself     Yourselves and your fellows ye know not and me     The Mateless, the One, will ye know?     Will ye scan me, and read me, and tell     Of the thoughts that ferment in my breast,     My longing, my sadness, my joy?     Will ye claim for your great ones the gift     To have renderd the gleam of my skies,     To have echoed the moan of my seas,     Utterd the voice of my hills?     When your great ones depart, will ye say     All things have sufferd a loss     Nature is hid in their grave?     Race after race, man after man,     Have dreamd that my secret was theirs,     Have thought that I livd but for them,     That they were my glory and joy.     They are dust, they are changd, they are gone.     I remain.