Poem by Walter Savage Landor

To Wordsworth

Those who have laid the harp aside
  And turn'd to idler things,
From very restlessness have tried
  The loose and dusty strings.
And, catching back some favourite strain,
Run with it o'er the chords again.

But Memory is not a Muse,
  O Wordsworth! though 'tis said
They all descend from her, and use
  To haunt her fountain-head:
That other men should work for me
In the rich mines of Poesie,
Pleases me better than the toil
  Of smoothing under hardened hand,
With Attic emery and oil,
  The shining point for Wisdom's wand,
Like those thou temperest 'mid the rills
Descending from thy native hills.

Without his governance, in vain
  Manhood is strong, and Youth is bold
If oftentimes the o'er-piled strain
  Clogs in the furnace, and grows cold
Beneath his pinions deep and frore,
And swells and melts and flows no more,
That is because the heat beneath
  Pants in its cavern poorly fed.
Life springs not from the couch of Death,
  Nor Muse nor Grace can raise the dead;
Unturn'd then let the mass remain,
Intractable to sun or rain.

A marsh, where only flat leaves lie,
And showing but the broken sky,
Too surely is the sweetest lay
That wins the ear and wastes the day,
Where youthful Fancy pouts alone
And lets not Wisdom touch her zone.

He who would build his fame up high,
The rule and plummet must apply,
Nor say, 'I'll do what I have plann'd,'
Before he try if loam or sand
Be still remaining in the place
Delved for each polisht pillar's base.
With skilful eye and fit device
Thou raisest every edifice,
Whether in sheltered vale it stand
Or overlook the Dardan strand,
Amid the cypresses that mourn
Laodameia's love forlorn.

We both have run o'er half the space
Listed for mortal's earthly race;
We both have crost life's fervid line,
And other stars before us shine:
May they be bright and prosperous
As those that have been stars for us!
Our course by Milton's light was sped,
And Shakespeare shining overhead:
Chatting on deck was Dryden too,
The Bacon of the rhyming crew;
None ever crost our mystic sea
More richly stored with thought than he;
Tho' never tender nor sublime,
He wrestles with and conquers Time.
To learn my lore on Chaucer's knee,
I left much prouder company;
Thee gentle Spenser fondly led,
But me he mostly sent to bed.

I wish them every joy above
That highly blessed spirits prove,
Save one: and that too shall be theirs,
But after many rolling years,
When 'mid their light thy light appears.

1. Past Ruin'd Ilion Helen Lives
2. Rose Aylmer
3. The Poet Who Sleeps
4. Idle Words
5. Of Clementina

Percy Shelley To Wordsworth ("Poet of Nature, thou hast wept to know")

Print

1215 Views

Last Poems

To Russian version