BOOK NINTH

Even as a river,— partly ( it might seem )

Yielding to old remembrances, and swayed

In part by fear to shape a way direct,

That would engulph him soon in the ravenous sea —

Turns, and will measure back his course, far back,

Seeking the very regions which he crossed

In his first outset; so have we, my Friend!

Turned and returned with intricate delay.

Or as a traveller, who has gained the brow

Of some aerial Down, while there he halts

For breathing-time, is tempted to review

The region left behind him; and, if aught

Deserving notice have escaped regard,

Or been regarded with too careless eye,

Strives, from that height, with one and yet one more

Last look, to make the best amends he may:

So have we lingered. Now we start afresh

With courage, and new hope risen on our toil

Fair greetings to this shapeless eagerness,

Whene'er it comes! needful in work so long,

Thrice needful to the argument which now

Awaits us! Oh, how much unlike the past!

Free as a colt at pasture on the hill,

I ranged at large, through London's wide domain,

Month after month . Obscurely did I live,

Not seeking frequent intercourse with men,

By literature, or elegance, or rank,

Distinguished. Scarcely was a year thus spent

Ere I forsook the crowded solitude,

With less regret for its luxurious pomp,

And all the nicely-guarded shows of art,

Than for the humble book-stalls in the streets,

Exposed to eye and hand where'er I turned.

France lured me forth; the realm that I had crossed

So lately , journeying toward the snow-clad Alps.

But now, relinquishing the scrip and staff,

And all enjoyment which the summer sun

Sheds round the steps of those who meet the day

With motion constant as his own, I went

Prepared to sojourn in a pleasant town,

Washed by the current of the stately Loire.

Through Paris lay my readiest course, and there

Sojourning a few days, I visited,

In haste, each spot of old or recent fame,

The latter chiefly; from the field of Mars

Down to the suburbs of St. Antony,

And from Mont Martyr southward to the Dome

Of Geneviève . In both her clamorous Halls,

The National Synod and the Jacobins,

I saw the Revolutionary Power

Toss like a ship at anchor, rocked by storms;

The Arcades I traversed, in the Palace huge

Of Orléans; coasted round and round the line

Of Tavern, Brothel, Gaming-house, and Shop,

Great rendezvous of worst and best, the walk

Of all who had a purpose, or had not;

I stared and listened, with a stranger's ears,

To Hawkers and Haranguers, hubbub wild!

And hissing Factionists with ardent eyes,

In knots, or pairs, or single. Not a look

Hope takes, or Doubt or Fear is forced to wear,

But seemed there present; and I scanned them all,

Watched every gesture uncontrollable,

Of anger, and vexation, and despite,

All side by side, and struggling face to face,

With gaiety and dissolute idleness.

Where silent zephyrs sported with the dust

Of the Bastille, I sate in the open sun,

And from the rubbish gathered up a stone,

And pocketed the relic, in the guise

Of an enthusiast; yet, in honest truth,

I looked for something that I could not find,

Affecting more emotion than I felt;

For‘ tis most certain, that these various sights,

However potent their first shock, with me

Appeared to recompense the traveller's pains

Less than the painted Magdalene of Le Brun,

A beauty exquisitely wrought, with hair

Dishevelled, gleaming eyes, and rueful cheek

Pale and bedropped with everflowing tears.

But hence to my more permanent abode

I hasten; there, by novelties in speech,

Domestic manners, customs, gestures, looks,

And all the attire of ordinary life,

Attention was engrossed; and, thus amused,

I stood,‘ mid those concussions, unconcerned,

Tranquil almost, and careless as a flower

Glassed in a green-house, or a parlour shrub

That spreads its leaves in unmolested peace,

While every bush and tree, the country through,

Is shaking to the roots: indifference this

Which may seem strange: but I was unprepared

With needful knowledge, had abruptly passed

Into a theatre, whose stage was filled

And busy with an action far advanced.

Like others, I had skimmed, and sometimes read

With care, the master pamphlets of the day;

Nor wanted such half-insight as grew wild

Upon that meagre soil, helped out by talk

And public news; but having never seen

A chronicle that might suffice to show

Whence the main organs of the public power

Had sprung, their transmigrations, when and how

Accomplished, giving thus unto events

A form and body; all things were to me

Loose and disjointed, and the affections left

Without a vital interest. At that time,

Moreover, the first storm was overblown,

And the strong hand of outward violence

Locked up in quiet. For myself, I fear

Now in connection with so great a theme

To speak ( as I must be compelled to do )

Of one so unimportant; night by night

Did I frequent the formal haunts of men,

Whom, in the city, privilege of birth

Sequestered from the rest, societies

Polished in arts, and in punctilio versed;

Whence, and from deeper causes, all discourse

Of good and evil of the time was shunned

With scrupulous care; but these restrictions soon

Proved tedious, and I gradually withdrew

Into a noisier world, and thus ere long

Became a patriot; and my heart was all

Given to the people, and my love was theirs.

A band of military Officers,

Then stationed in the city, were the chief

Of my associates: some of these wore swords

That had been seasoned in the wars, and all

Were men well-born; the chivalry of France.

In age and temper differing, they had yet

One spirit ruling in each heart; alike

( Save only one, hereafter to be named )

Were bent upon undoing what was done:

This was their rest and only hope; therewith

No fear had they of bad becoming worse,

For worst to them was come; nor would have stirred,

Or deemed it worth a moment's thought to stir,

In any thing, save only as the act

Looked thitherward. One, reckoning by years,

Was in the prime of manhood, and erewhile

He had sate lord in many tender hearts;

Though heedless of such honours now, and changed:

His temper was quite mastered by the times,

And they had blighted him, had eaten away

The beauty of his person, doing wrong

Alike to body and to mind: his port,

Which once had been erect and open, now

Was stooping and contracted, and a face,

Endowed by Nature with her fairest gifts

Of symmetry and light and bloom, expressed,

As much as any that was ever seen,

A ravage out of season, made by thoughts

Unhealthy and vexatious. With the hour,

That from the press of Paris duly brought

Its freight of public news, the fever came,

A punctual visitant, to shake this man,

Disarmed his voice and fanned his yellow cheek

Into a thousand colours; while he read,

Or mused, his sword was haunted by his touch

Continually, like an uneasy place

In his own body.‘ Twas in truth an hour

Of universal ferment; mildest men

Were agitated; and commotions, strife

Of passion and opinion, filled the walls

Of peaceful houses with unquiet sounds.

The soil of common life, was, at that time,

Too hot to tread upon. Oft said I then,

And not then only, “What a mockery this

Of history, the past and that to come!

Now do I feel how all men are deceived,

Reading of nations and their works, in faith,

Faith given to vanity and emptiness;

Oh! laughter for the page that would reflect

To future times the face of what now is!”

The land all swarmed with passion, like a plain

Devoured by locusts,— Carra, Gorsas,— add

A hundred other names, forgotten now,

Nor to be heard of more; yet, they were powers,

Like earthquakes, shocks repeated day by day,

And felt through every nook of town and field.

Such was the state of things. Meanwhile the chief

Of my associates stood prepared for flight

To augment the band of emigrants in arms

Upon the borders of the Rhine, and leagued

With foreign foes mustered for instant war.

This was their undisguised intent, and they

Were waiting with the whole of their desires

The moment to depart.

An Englishman,

Born in a land whose very name appeared

To license some unruliness of mind;

A stranger, with youth's further privilege,

And the indulgence that a half-learnt speech

Wins from the courteous; I, who had been else

Shunned and not tolerated, freely lived

With these defenders of the Crown, and talked,

And heard their notions; nor did they disdain

The wish to bring me over to their cause.

But though untaught by thinking or by books

To reason well of polity or law,

And nice distinctions, then on every tongue,

Of natural rights and civil; and to acts

Of nations and their passing interests,

( If with unworldly ends and aims compared )

Almost indifferent, even the historian's tale

Prizing but little otherwise than I prized

Tales of the poets, as it made the heart

Beat high, and filled the fancy with fair forms,

Old heroes and their sufferings and their deeds;

Yet in the regal sceptre, and the pomp

Of orders and degrees, I nothing found

Then, or had ever, even in crudest youth,

That dazzled me, but rather what I mourned

And ill could brook, beholding that the best

Ruled not, and feeling that they ought to rule.

For, born in a poor district, and which yet

Retaineth more of ancient homeliness,

Than any other nook of English ground,

It was my fortune scarcely to have seen,

Through the whole tenor of my school-day time,

The face of one, who, whether boy or man,

Was vested with attention or respect

Through claims of wealth or blood; nor was it least

Of many benefits, in later years

Derived from academic institutes

And rules, that they held something up to view

Of a Republic, where all stood thus far

Upon equal ground; that we were brothers all

In honour, as in one community,

Scholars and gentlemen; where, furthermore,

Distinction open lay to all that came,

And wealth and titles were in less esteem

Than talents, worth, and prosperous industry.

Add unto this, subservience from the first

To presences of God's mysterious power

Made manifest in Nature's sovereignty,

And fellowship with venerable books,

To sanction the proud workings of the soul,

And mountain liberty. It could not be

But that one tutored thus should look with awe

Upon the faculties of man, receive

Gladly the highest promises, and hail,

As best, the government of equal rights

And individual worth. And hence, O Friend!

If at the first great outbreak I rejoiced

Less than might well befit my youth, the cause

In part lay here, that unto me the events

Seemed nothing out of nature's certain course,

A gift that was come rather late than soon.

No wonder, then, if advocates like these,

Inflamed by passion, blind with prejudice,

And stung with injury, at this riper day,

Were impotent to make my hopes put on

The shape of theirs, my understanding bend

In honour to their honour: zeal, which yet

Had slumbered, now in opposition burst

Forth like a Polar summer: every word

They uttered was a dart, by counter-winds

Blown back upon themselves; their reason seemed

Confusion-stricken by a higher power

Than human understanding, their discourse

Maimed, spiritless; and, in their weakness strong,

I triumphed.

Meantime, day by day, the roads

Were crowded with the bravest youth of France,

And all the promptest of her spirits, linked

In gallant soldiership, and posting on

To meet the war upon her frontier bounds.

Yet at this very moment do tears start

Into mine eyes: I do not say I weep —

I wept not then,— but tears have dimmed my sight,

In memory of the farewells of that time,

Domestic severings, female fortitude

At dearest separation, patriot love

And self-devotion, and terrestrial hope,

Encouraged with a martyr's confidence;

Even files of strangers merely seen but once,

And for a moment, men from far with sound

Of music, martial tunes, and banners spread,

Entering the city, here and there a face,

Or person singled out among the rest,

Yet still a stranger and beloved as such;

Even by these passing spectacles my heart

Was oftentimes uplifted, and they seemed

Arguments sent from Heaven to prove the cause

Good, pure, which no one could stand up against,

Who was not lost, abandoned, selfish, proud,

Mean, miserable, wilfully depraved,

Hater perverse of equity and truth.

Among that band of Officers was one,

Already hinted at, of other mould —

A patriot, thence rejected by the rest,

And with an oriental loathing spurned,

As of a different caste. A meeker man

Than this lived never, nor a more benign,

Meek though enthusiastic. Injuries

Made him more gracious, and his nature then

Did breathe its sweetness out most sensibly,

As aromatic flowers on Alpine turf,

When foot hath crushed them. He through the events

Of that great change wandered in perfect faith,

As through a book, an old romance, or tale

Of Fairy, or some dream of actions wrought

Behind the summer clouds. By birth he ranked

With the most noble, but unto the poor

Among mankind he was in service bound,

As by some tie invisible, oaths professed

To a religious order. Man he loved

As man; and, to the mean and the obscure,

And all the homely in their homely works,

Transferred a courtesy which had no air

Of condescension; but did rather seem

A passion and a gallantry, like that

Which he, a soldier, in his idler day

Had paid to woman: somewhat vain he was,

Or seemed so, yet it was not vanity,

But fondness, and a kind of radiant joy

Diffused around him, while he was intent

On works of love or freedom, or revolved

Complacently the progress of a cause,

Whereof he was a part: yet this was meek

And placid, and took nothing from the man

That was delightful. Oft in solitude

With him did I discourse about the end

Of civil government, and its wisest forms;

Of ancient loyalty, and chartered rights,

Custom and habit, novelty and change;

Of self-respect, and virtue in the few

For patrimonial honour set apart,

And ignorance in the labouring multitude.

For he, to all intolerance indisposed,

Balanced these contemplations in his mind;

And I, who at that time was scarcely dipped

Into the turmoil, bore a sounder judgment

Than later days allowed; carried about me,

With less alloy to its integrity,

The experience of past ages, as, through help

Of books and common life, it makes sure way

To youthful minds, by objects over near

Not pressed upon, nor dazzled or misled

By struggling with the crowd for present ends.

But though not deaf, nor obstinate to find

Error without excuse upon the side

Of them who strove against us, more delight

We took, and let this freely be confessed,

In painting to ourselves the miseries

Of royal courts, and that voluptuous life

Unfeeling, where the man who is of soul

The meanest thrives the most; where dignity,

True personal dignity, abideth not;

A light, a cruel, and vain world cut off

From the natural inlets of just sentiment,

From lowly sympathy and chastening truth;

Where good and evil interchange their names,

And thirst for bloody spoils abroad is paired

With vice at home. We added dearest themes —

Man and his noble nature, as it is

The gift which God has placed within his power,

His blind desires and steady faculties

Capable of clear truth, the one to break

Bondage, the other to build liberty

On firm foundations, making social life,

Through knowledge spreading and imperishable,

As just in regulation, and as pure

As individual in the wise and good.

We summoned up the honourable deeds

Of ancient Story, thought of each bright spot,

That would be found in all recorded time,

Of truth preserved and error passed away;

Of single spirits that catch the flame from Heaven,

And how the multitudes of men will feed

And fan each other; thought of sects, how keen

They are to put the appropriate nature on,

Triumphant over every obstacle

Of custom, language, country, love, or hate,

And what they do and suffer for their creed;

How far they travel, and how long endure;

How quickly mighty Nations have been formed,

From least beginnings; how, together locked

By new opinions, scattered tribes have made

One body, spreading wide as clouds in heaven.

To aspirations then of our own minds

Did we appeal; and, finally, beheld

A living confirmation of the whole

Before us, in a people from the depth

Of shameful imbecility uprisen,

Fresh as the morning star. Elate we looked

Upon their virtues; saw, in rudest men,

Self-sacrifice the firmest; generous love,

And continence of mind, and sense of right,

Uppermost in the midst of fiercest strife.

Oh, sweet it is, in academic groves,

Or such retirement, Friend! as we have known

In the green dales beside our Rotha's stream,

Greta, or Derwent, or some nameless rill,

To ruminate, with interchange of talk,

On rational liberty, and hope in man,

Justice and peace. But far more sweet such toil —

Toil, say I, for it leads to thoughts abstruse —

If nature then be standing on the brink

Of some great trial, and we hear the voice

Of one devoted, one whom circumstance

Hath called upon to embody his deep sense

In action, give it outwardly a shape,

And that of benediction, to the world.

Then doubt is not, and truth is more than truth,—

A hope it is, and a desire; a creed

Of zeal, by an authority Divine

Sanctioned, of danger, difficulty, or death.

Such conversation, under Attic shades,

Did Dion hold with Plato; ripened thus

For a Deliverer's glorious task,— and such

He, on that ministry already bound,

Held with Eudemus and Timonides,

Surrounded by adventurers in arms,

When those two vessels with their daring freight,

For the Sicilian Tyrant's overthrow,

Sailed from Zacynthus,— philosophic war,

Led by Philosophers. With harder fate,

Though like ambition, such was he, O Friend!

Of whom I speak. So Beaupuis ( let the name

Stand near the worthiest of Antiquity )

Fashioned his life; and many a long discourse,

With like persuasion honoured, we maintained:

He, on his part, accoutred for the worst.

He perished fighting, in supreme command,

Upon the borders of the unhappy Loire,

For liberty, against deluded men,

His fellow country-men; and yet most blessed

In this, that he the fate of later times

Lived not to see, nor what we now behold,

Who have as ardent hearts as he had then.

Along that very Loire, with festal mirth

Resounding at all hours, and innocent yet

Of civil slaughter, was our frequent walk;

Or in wide forests of continuous shade,

Lofty and over-arched, with open space

Beneath the trees, clear footing many a mile —

A solemn region. Oft amid those haunts,

From earnest dialogues I slipped in thought,

And let remembrance steal to other times,

When, o'er those interwoven roots, moss-clad,

And smooth as marble or a waveless sea,

Some Hermit, from his cell forth-strayed, might pace

In sylvan meditation undisturbed;

As on the pavement of a Gothic church

Walks a lone Monk, when service hath expired,

In peace and silence. But if e'er was heard,—

Heard, though unseen,— a devious traveller,

Retiring or approaching from afar

With speed and echoes loud of trampling hoofs

From the hard floor reverberated, then

It was Angelica thundering through the woods

Upon her palfrey, or that gentle maid

Erminia, fugitive as fair as she.

Sometimes methought I saw a pair of knights

Joust underneath the trees, that as in storm

Rocked high above their heads; anon, the din

Of boisterous merriment, and music's roar,

In sudden proclamation, burst from haunt

Of Satyrs in some viewless glade, with dance

Rejoicing o'er a female in the midst,

A mortal beauty, their unhappy thrall.

The width of those huge forests, unto me

A novel scene, did often in this way

Master my fancy while I wandered on

With that revered companion. And sometimes —

When to a convent in a meadow green,

By a brook-side, we came, a roofless pile,

And not by reverential touch of Time

Dismantled, but by violence abrupt —

In spite of those heart-bracing colloquies,

In spite of real fervour, and of that

Less genuine and wrought up within myself —

I could not but bewail a wrong so harsh,

And for the Matin-bell to sound no more

Grieved, and the twilight taper, and the cross

High on the topmost pinnacle, a sign

( How welcome to the weary traveller's eyes! )

Of hospitality and peaceful rest.

And when the partner of those varied walks

Pointed upon occasion to the site

Of Romorentin, home of ancient kings,

To the imperial edifice of Blois,

Or to that rural castle, name now slipped

From my remembrance, where a lady lodged,

By the first Francis wooed, and bound to him

In chains of mutual passion, from the tower,

As a tradition of the country tells,

Practised to commune with her royal knight

By cressets and love-beacons, intercourse

‘ Twixt her high-seated residence and his

Far off at Chambord on the plain beneath;

Even here, though less than with the peaceful house

Religious,‘ mid those frequent monuments

Of Kings, their vices and their better deeds,

Imagination, potent to inflame

At times with virtuous wrath and noble scorn,

Did also often mitigate the force

Of civic prejudice, the bigotry,

So call it, of a youthful patriot's mind;

And on these spots with many gleams I looked

Of chivalrous delight. Yet not the less,

Hatred of absolute rule, where will of one

Is law for all, and of that barren pride

In them who, by immunities unjust,

Between the sovereign and the people stand,

His helper and not theirs, laid stronger hold

Daily upon me, mixed with pity too

And love; for where hope is, there love will be

For the abject multitude. And when we chanced

One day to meet a hunger-bitten girl,

Who crept along fitting her languid gait

Unto a heifer's motion, by a cord

Tied to her arm, and picking thus from the lane

Its sustenance, while the girl with pallid hands

Was busy knitting in a heartless mood

Of solitude, and at the sight my friend

In agitation said, “‘ Tis against‘ that’

That we are fighting,” I with him believed

That a benignant spirit was abroad

Which might not be withstood, that poverty

Abject as this would in a little time

Be found no more, that we should see the earth

Unthwarted in her wish to recompense

The meek, the lowly, patient child of toil,

All institutes for ever blotted out

That legalised exclusion, empty pomp

Abolished, sensual state and cruel power,

Whether by edict of the one or few;

And finally, as sum and crown of all,

Should see the people having a strong hand

In framing their own laws; whence better days

To all mankind. But, these things set apart,

Was not this single confidence enough

To animate the mind that ever turned

A thought to human welfare? That henceforth

Captivity by mandate without law

Should cease; and open accusation lead

To sentence in the hearing of the world,

And open punishment, if not the air

Be free to breathe in, and the heart of man

Dread nothing. From this height I shall not stoop

To humbler matter that detained us oft

In thought or conversation, public acts,

And public persons, and emotions wrought

Within the breast, as ever-varying winds

Of record or report swept over us;

But I might here, instead, repeat a tale,

Told by my Patriot friend, of sad events,

That prove to what low depth had struck the roots,

How widely spread the boughs, of that old tree

Which, as a deadly mischief, and a foul

And black dishonour, France was weary of.

Oh, happy time of youthful lovers, ( thus

The story might begin ). Oh, balmy time,

In which a love-knot, on a lady's brow,

Is fairer than the fairest star in Heaven!

So might — and with that prelude did begin

The record; and, in faithful verse, was given

The doleful sequel.

But our little bark

On a strong river boldly hath been launched;

And from the driving current should we turn

To loiter wilfully within a creek,

Howe'er attractive, Fellow voyager!

Would'st thou not chide? Yet deem not my pains lost:

For Vaudracour and Julia ( so were named

The ill-fated pair ) in that plain tale will draw

Tears from the hearts of others, when their own

Shall beat no more. Thou, also, there may'st read,

At leisure, how the enamoured youth was driven,

By public power abased, to fatal crime,

Nature's rebellion against monstrous law;

How, between heart and heart, oppression thrust

Her mandates, severing whom true love had joined,

Harassing both; until he sank and pressed

The couch his fate had made for him; supine,

Save when the stings of viperous remorse,

Trying their strength, enforced him to start up,

Aghast and prayerless. Into a deep wood

He fled, to shun the haunts of human kind;

There dwelt, weakened in spirit more and more;

Nor could the voice of Freedom, which through France

Full speedily resounded, public hope,

Or personal memory of his own worst wrongs,

Rouse him; but, hidden in those gloomy shades,

His days he wasted,— an imbecile mind.