The Visions of England Part 22

For though the years their golden round O'er all the lavish region roll, And realm on realm, from pole to pole, In one beneath thy stars be bound: The far-off centuries as they flow, No whiter name than this shall know!

--O larger England o'er the wave, Larger, not greater, yet!--With joy Of generous hearts ye hail'd the Boy Who bow'd before the sacred grave, With Love's fair freight across the sea Sped from the Fatherland to thee!

And Freedom on that Empire-throne Blest in his Mother's rule revered, On popular love a kingdom rear'd, And rooted in the years unknown,-- Land rich in old Experience' store And holy legacies of yore,

And youth eternal, ever-new,-- From the high heaven look'd out:--and saw This other later realm of Law, Of that old household first-born true, And lord of half a world!--and smiled Upon the nations reconciled.

The date prefixed is that of the visit which the Prince of Wales paid to the tomb of Was.h.i.+ngton: carrying home thence, as one of the most distinguished of his hosts said, 'an unwritten treaty of amity and alliance.'

Mount Vernon on the Potomac, named after the Admiral, was the family seat of Augustine, father to George Was.h.i.+ngton, and the residence of the latter from 1752. But all his early years also had been spent in that neighbourhood, in those country pursuits which formed his ideal of life: and thither, on resigning his commission as Commander-in-Chief, he retired in 1785; devoting himself to farming and gardening with all the strenuousness and devoted pa.s.sion of a Roman of Vergil's type. And there (Dec. 1799) was he buried.

_Not eager_; When the ill-feeling between England and America deepened after 1765, Was.h.i.+ngton 'was less eager than some others in declaring or declaiming against the mother country;' (Mahon: _Hist_. ch. lii).

_Ripe to wed with Liberty_; See _Appendix_ G.

_And to the end_; See Petrarch's beautiful lines: _Trionfo della Morte_, cap. I.

_Due to the Liberator_; Compare the epitaph by Ennius on Scipio:

Hic est ille situs, cui nemo civi' neque hostis Quivit pro factis reddere opis pretium.

History, it may be said with reasonable confidence, records no hero more unselfish, no one less stained with human error and frailty, than George Was.h.i.+ngton.

_The years unknown_; It is to Odin, whatever date be thereby signified, that our royal genealogy runs back.

SANDRINGHAM

1871

In the drear November gloom And the long December night, There were omens of affright, And prophecies of doom; And the golden lamp of life burn'd spectre-dim, Till Love could hardly mark The little sapphire spark That only made the dark More dark and grim.

There not around alone Watch'd sister, brother, wife, And she who gave him life, White as if wrought in stone Unheard, invisible, by the bed of death Stood eager millions by; And as the hour drew nigh, Dreading to see him die, Held their breath.

Where'er in world-wide skies The Lion-Banner burns, A common impulse turns All hearts to where he lies:-- For as a babe the heir of that great throne Is weak and motionless; And they feel the deep distress On wife and mother press, As 'twere their own.

O! not the thought of race From Asian Odin drawn In History's mythic dawn, Nor what we downward trace, --Plantagenet, York, Edward, Elizabeth,-- Heroic names approved,-- The blood of the people moved; But that, 'mongst those he loved, He fought with death.

And if the Reason said ''Gainst Nature's law and death Prayer is but idle breath,'-- Yet Faith was undismayed, Arm'd with the deeper insight of the heart:-- Nor can the wisest say What other laws may sway The world's apparent way, Known but in part.

Nor knew we on that life What burdens may be cast; What issues wide and vast Dependent on that strife:-- This only:--'Twas the son of those we loved!

That in his Mother's hand Peace set her golden wand; 'Mid heaving realms, one land Law-ruled, unmoved.

--He fought, and we with him!

And other Powers were by, Courage, and Science high, Grappling the spectre grim On the battle-field of quiet Sandringham: And force of perfect Love, And the will of One above, Chased Death's dark squadrons off, And overcame.

--O soul, to life restored And love, and wider aim Than private care can claim, --And from Death's unsheath'd sword!

By suffering and by safety dearer made:-- O may the life new-found Through life be wisdom-crown'd,-- Till in the common ground Thou too art laid!

A DORSET IDYL

_HARCOMBE NEAR LYME_

September: 1878

Before me with one happy heave Of golden green the hillside curves, Where slowly, smoothly, rounding swerves The shadow of each perfect tree, By slanting shafts of eve Flame-fringed and bathed in pale transparency.

And that long ridge that crowns the hill Stands fir-dark 'gainst the falling rays; Above, a waft of pearly haze Lies on the sapphire field of air, So radiant and so still As though a star-cloud took its station there.

Up wold and wild the valley goes, 'Mid heath and mounded slopes of oak, And light ash-thicket, where the smoke Wreathes high in evening's air serene, Floating in white repose O'er the blue reek of cottage-hearths unseen.

Another landscape at my feet Unfolds its nearer grace the while, Where gorses gleam with golden smile; Where Inula lifts a russet head The shepherd's spikenard sweet; And closing Centaury points her rosy red.

One light cicada's simmering cry, Survivor of the summer heat, Chimes faint; the robin, shrill and sweet, Pipes from green holly; whilst from far The rookery croaks reply, Hoa.r.s.e, deep, as veterans readying for war.

--Grief on a happier future dwells; The happy present haunts the past; And those old minstrels who outlast Our looser-textured webs of song, Nursed in h.e.l.lenic dells, Sicilian, or Italian, hither throng.

Why care if Turk and Tartar fume, Barbarian 'gainst barbarian set, Or how our politic prophets fret, When on this tapestry-thyme and heath, Fresh work of Nature's loom, Thus, thus, we can diffuse ourselves, and breathe

Autumnal sparkling freshness?--while The page by some bless'd miracle saved When Goth and Frank 'gainst h.e.l.las raved.

Paints how the wanderer-chief divine, s.n.a.t.c.h'd from Circaean guile, Led by Nausicaa past Athene's shrine,

In that delicious garden sate Where summer link'd to summer glows, Grapes ever ripe, and rose on rose; And all the wonders of thy tale --O greatest of the great-- Whose splendour ne'er can fade, nor beauty fail!

Or by the city of G.o.d above In rose-red meadows, where the day Eternal burns, the bless'd ones stray; The harp lets loose its silver showers From the dark incense-grove; And happiness blooms forth with all her flowers.

O Theban strain,--remote and pure, Voice of the higher soul, that shames Our downward, dry, material aims, The b.e.s.t.i.a.l creed of earth-to-earth,-- Owning with insight sure The signs that speak of Man's celestial birth!

Or white Colonos here through green Green Dorset winds his holy vale, Where the divine deep nightingale Heaps note on note and love on love, In ivy thick unseen, While G.o.ddesses with Dionysos rove.

Another music then we hear, A cry from the Sicilian dell, 'Here 'mid sweet grapes and laurel dwell; Slips by from wood-girt Aetna's dome Snow-cold the stream and clear:-- Hither to me, come, Galataea, come!'

--Voices and dreams long fled and gone!

And other echoes make reply, The low Maenalian melody ''Twas in our garth, a twelve-year child, I saw thee, little one, Pick the red fruit that to thy fancy smiled,

'Thee and thy mother: I, your guide:'-- O sweet magician! Happy heart!

Content with that unrivall'd art,-- The soul of grace in music shrined,-- And notes of modest pride, To sing the life he loved to all mankind!

There, shading pine and torrent-song Breathe midday slumber, sudden, sweet; Deep meadows woo the wayward feet; In giant elm the ring-doves moan; There, peace secure from wrong, The life that keeps its promise, there, alone!

--O loftier than the wordy strife That floats o'er capitals; the chase Of florid pleasure; the blind race Of gold for gold by gamblers run, This fair Vergilian life, Where heaven and we and nature are at one!

On that deep soil great Rome was sown; Our England her foundations laid:-- Hence, while the nations, change-dismay'd, To tyrant or to quack repair, A healthier heart we own, And the plant Man grows stronger than elsewhere.