IN LALEHAM CHURCHYARD

‘ Twas at this season, year by year,

The singer who lies songless here

Was wont to woo a less austere,

Less deep repose,

Where Rotha to Winandermere

Unresting flows,—

Flows through a land where torrents call

To far-off torrents as they fall,

And mountains in their cloudy pall

Keep ghostly state,

And Nature makes majestical

Man's lowliest fate.

There,‘ mid the August glow, still came

He of the twice-illustrious name,

The loud impertinence of fame

Not loth to flee —

Not loth with brooks and fells to claim

Fraternity.

Linked with his happy youthful lot,

Is Loughrigg, then, at last forgot?

Nor silent peak nor dalesman's cot

Looks on his grave.

Lulled by the Thames he sleeps, and not

By Rotha's wave.

‘ Tis fittest thus! for though with skill

He sang of beck and tarn and ghyll,

The deep, authentic mountain-thrill

Ne'er shook his page!

Somewhat of worldling mingled still

With bard and sage.

And‘ twere less meet for him to lie

Guarded by summits lone and high

That traffic with the eternal sky

And hear, unawed,

The everlasting fingers ply

The loom of God,

Than, in this hamlet of the plain,

A less sublime repose to gain,

Where Nature, genial and urbane,

To man defers,

Yielding to us the right to reign,

Which yet is hers.

And nigh to where his bones abide,

The Thames with its unruffled tide

Seems like his genius typified,—

Its strength, its grace,

Its lucid gleam, its sober pride,

Its tranquil pace.

But ah! not his the eventual fate

Which doth the journeying wave await —

Doomed to resign its limpid state

And quickly grow

Turbid as passion, dark as hate,

And wide as woe.

Rather, it may be, over-much

He shunned the common stain and smutch,

From soilure of ignoble touch

Too grandly free,

Too loftily secure in such

Cold purity.

But he preserved from chance control

The fortress of his‘ stablisht soul;

In all things sought to see the Whole;

Brooked no disguise;

And set his heart upon the goal,

Not on the prize.

With those Elect he shall survive

Who seem not to compete or strive,

Yet with the foremost still arrive,

Prevailing still:

Spirits with whom the stars connive

To work their will.

And ye, the baffled many, who,

Dejected, from afar off view

The easily victorious few

Of calm renown,—

Have ye not your sad glory too,

And mournful crown?

Great is the facile conqueror;

Yet haply he, who, wounded sore,

Breathless, unhorsed, all covered o'er

With blood and sweat,

Sinks foiled, but fighting evermore,—

Is greater yet.