[Page 135]

MONODY ON THE DEATH OF DR WARTON.

1 Oh! I should ill thy generous cares requite
2 Thou who didst first inspire my timid Muse,
3 Could I one tuneful tear to thee refuse,
4 Now that thine aged eyes are closed in night,
5 Kind Warton! Thou hast stroked my stripling head,
6 And sometimes, mingling soft reproof with praise,
7 My path hast best directed through the maze
8 Of thorny life: by thee my steps were led
9 To that romantic valley, high o'erhung
10 With sable woods, where many a minstrel rung
11 His bold harp to the sweeping waterfall;
12 Whilst Fancy loved around each form to call
13 That fill the poet's dream: to this retreat
14 Of Fancy, (won by whose enticing lay
15 I have forgot how sunk the summer's day),
16 Thou first did guide my not unwilling feet;
17 Meantime inspiring the gay breast of youth
18 With love of taste, of science, and of truth. [Page 136]
19 The first inciting sounds of human praise,
20 A parent's love excepted, came from thee;
21 And but for thee, perhaps, my boyish days
22 Had all passed idly, and whate'er in me
23 Now live of hope, been buried.
23 I was one,
24 Long bound by cold dejection's numbing chain,
25 As in a torpid trance, that deemed it vain
26 To struggle; nor my eyelids to the sun
27 Uplifted: but I heard thy cheering voice;
28 I shook my deadly slumber off; I gazed
29 Delighted 'round; awaked, inspired, amazed,
30 I marked another world, and in my choice
31 Lovelier, and decked with light! On fairy ground
32 Methought I buoyant trod, and heard the sound
33 As of enchanting melodies, that stole,
34 Stole gently, and entranced my captive soul.
35 Then all was life and hope! 'Twas thy first ray,
36 Sweet Fancy, on the heart; as when the day
37 Of Spring, along the melancholy tract
38 Of wintry Lapland, dawns; the cataract,
39 From ice dissolving on the silent side
40 Of some white precipice, with paly gleam
41 Descends, while the cold hills a slanting beam
42 Faint tinges: till, ascending in his pride,
43 The great Sun from the red horizon looks,
44 And wakes the tuneless birds, the stagnant brooks,
45 And sleeping lakes! So on my mind's cold night
46 The ray of Fancy shone, and gave delight
47 And hope past utterance.
47 Thy cheering voice,
48 O Warton! bade my silent heart rejoice,
49 And wake to love of nature; every breeze,
50 On Itchin's brink was melody; the trees[Page 137]
51 Waved in fresh beauty; and the wind and rain,
52 That shook the battlements of Wykeham's fane,
53 Not less delighted, when, with random pace,
54 I trod the cloistered aisles; and witness thou,
55 Catherine,
79 Catherine Hill.
upon whose foss-encircled brow
56 We met the morning, how I loved to trace
57 The prospect spread around; the rills below,
58 That shone irriguous in the gleaming plain;
59 The river's bend, where the dark barge went slow,
60 And the pale light on yonder time-worn fane!
80 St Cross Hospital.
61 So passed my days with new delight; mean time
62 To Learning's tender eye thou didst unfold
63 The classic page, and what high bards of old,
64 With solemn notes, and minstrelsy sublime,
65 Have chanted, we together heard; and thou,
66 Warton! wouldst bid me listen, till a tear
67 Sprang to mine eye: now the bold song we hear
68 Of Greece's sightless master-bard:
81 Homer.
the breast
69 Beats high; with stern Pelides to the plain
70 We rush; or o'er the corpse of Hector slain
71 Hang pitying; — and lo! where pale, oppressed
72 With age and grief, sad Priam comes;
82 See the last book.
with beard
73 All white he bows, kissing the hands besmeared
74 With his last hope's best blood!
74 The oaten reed
83 Theocritus.
75 Now from the mountain sounds; the sylvan Muse,
76 Reclined by the clear stream of Arethuse,
77 Wakes the Sicilian pipe; the sunny mead
78 Swarms with the bees, whose drowsy lullaby
79 Soothes the reclining ox with half-closed eye;
80 While in soft cadence to the madrigal,
81 From rock to rock the whispering waters fall! [Page 138]
82 But who is he,
84 [Μεγαλη μοιρα —] Soph.
that, by yon gloomy cave,
83 Bids heaven and earth bear witness to his woe!
84 And hark! how hollowly the ocean-wave
85 Echoes his plaint, and murmurs deep below!
86 Haste, let the tall ship stem the tossing tide,
87 That he may leave his cave, and hear no more
88 The Lemnian surges unrejoicing roar;
89 And be great Fate through the dark world thy guide,
90 Sad Philoctetes!
85 Philoctetes, see Sophocles. Youthful impressions on first reading it.
90 So Instruction bland,
91 With young-eyed Sympathy, went hand in hand
92 O'er classic fields; and let my heart confess
93 Its holier joy, when I essayed to climb
94 The lonely heights where Shakspeare sat sublime,
95 Lord of the mighty spell: around him press
96 Spirits and fairy-forms. He, ruling wide
97 His visionary world, bids terror fill
98 The shivering breast, or softer pity thrill
99 Ev'n to the inmost heart. Within me died
100 All thoughts of this low earth, and higher powers
101 Seemed in my soul to stir; till, strained too long,
102 The senses sunk.
102 Then, Ossian, thy wild song
103 Haply beguiled the unheeded midnight hours,
104 And, like the blast that swept Berrathron's towers,
105 Came pleasant and yet mournful to my soul!
106 See o'er the autumnal heath the gray mists roll!
107 Hark to the dim ghosts' faint and feeble cry,
108 As on the cloudy tempest they pass by!
109 Saw ye huge Loda's spectre-shape advance,
110 Through which the stars look pale!
110 Nor ceased the trance
111 Which bound the erring fancy, till dark night[Page 139]
112 Flew silent by, and at my window-grate
113 The morning bird sang loud: nor less delight
114 The spirit felt, when still and charmed I sate
115 Great Milton's solemn harmonies to hear,
116 That swell from the full chord, and strong and clear,
117 Beyond the tuneless couplets' weak control,
118 Their long-commingling diapason roll,
119 In varied sweetness.
119 Nor, amidst the choir
120 Of pealing minstrelsy, was thy own lyre,
121 Warton, unheard; — as Fancy poured the song,
122 The measured music flowed along,
123 Till all the heart and all the sense
124 Felt her divinest influence,
125 In throbbing sympathy: — Prepare the car,
86 See Warton's "Ode to Fancy."
126 And whirl us, goddess, to the war,
127 Where crimson banners fire the skies,
128 Where the mingled shouts arise,
129 Where the steed, with fetlock red,
130 Tramples the dying and the dead;
131 And amain, from side to side,
132 Death his pale horse is seen to ride!
133 Or rather, sweet enthusiast, lead
134 Our footsteps to the cowslip mead,
135 Where, as the magic spell is wound,
136 Dying music floats around: —
137 Or seek we some gray ruin's shade,
138 And pity the cold beggar,
87 Alluding to some pathetic lines in Warton's "Ode to Fancy."
laid
139 Beneath the ivy-rustling tower,
140 At the dreary midnight hour,
141 Scarce sheltered from the drifting snow;
142 While her dark locks the bleak winds blow[Page 140]
143 O'er her sleeping infant's cheek!
144 Then let the shrilling trumpet speak,
145 And pierce in louder tones the ear,
146 Till, while it peals, we seem to hear
147 The sounding march, as of the Theban's song;
88 See Warton's "Ode on West's Translation of Pindar."
148 And varied numbers, in their course,
149 With gathering fulness, and collected force,
150 Like the broad cataract, swell and sweep along!
151 Struck by the sounds, what wonder that I laid,
152 As thou, O Warton! didst the theme inspire,
153 My inexperienced hand upon the lyre,
154 And soon with transient touch faint music made,
155 As soon forgotten!
155 So I loved to lie
156 By the wild streams of elfin poesy,
157 Rapt in strange musings; but when life began,
158 I never roamed a visionary man;
159 For, taught by thee, I learned with sober eyes
160 To look on life's severe realities.
161 I never made (a dream-distempered thing)
162 Poor Fiction's realm my world; but to cold Truth
163 Subdued the vivid shapings of my youth.
164 Save when the drisly woods were murmuring,
165 Or some hard crosses had my spirit bowed;
166 Then I have left, unseen, the careless crowd,
167 And sought the dark sea roaring, or the steep
168 That braved the storm; or in the forest deep,
169 As all its gray leaves rustled, wooed the tone
170 Of the loved lyre, that, in my springtide gone,
171 Waked me to transport.
171 Eighteen summers now
172 Have smiled on Itchin's margin, since the time
173 When these delightful visions of our prime[Page 141]
174 Rose on my view in loveliness. And thou
175 Friend of my muse, in thy death-bed art cold,
176 Who, with the tenderest touches, didst unfold
177 The shrinking leaves of Fancy, else unseen
178 And shelterless: therefore to thee are due
179 Whate'er their summer sweetness; and I strew,
180 Sadly, such flowerets as on hillocks green,
181 Or mountain-slope, or hedge-row, yet my hand
182 May cull, with many a recollection bland,
183 And mingled sorrow, Warton, on thy tomb,
184 To whom, if bloom they boast, they owe their bloom!

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Title (in Source Edition): MONODY ON THE DEATH OF DR WARTON.
Author: William Lisle Bowles
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Genres: monody

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Bowles, William Lisle, 1762-1850. The Poetical Works of William Lisle Bowles, Vol. I. With Memoir, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes by George Gilfillan. Edinburgh: James Nichol, 9 North Bank Street..., 1855, pp. 135-141.  (Page images digitized from a copy held at the University of California Libraries.)

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