The Poetical Works of the Rev. George Croly

Front matter

THE POETICAL WORKS OF THE REV. GEORGE CROLY, A.M. H.R.S.L. IN TWO VOLUMES. VOL. I. LONDON. HENRY COLBURN AND RICHARD BENTLEY, NEW BURLINGTON STREET. MDCCCXXX. LONDON': G. WOODFAU-, ANGEL COURT, SKI.VKCR STREET.

ADVERTISEMENT.

. The Poems in these volumes were written chiefly in the period between 1816 and 1823. The former part of the poem of " Paris in 181 5 " was writ ten immediately after a visit to that capital, while it was in possession of the Allies ; the latter part at some interval. The remaining poems were occa sional, and written as other and more important pursuits allowed. They are now collected, for the first time. Lonpon, 1830. a LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. GEMS. Page Pericles and Aspasia Vol. I. 253 The Genius of Death 256 Woman Contemplating a Household God 259 Leonidas 2 "1 Castor and Pollux 2C4 Cupid Breaking the Thunderbolt 265 4\ Faun 267 Cupid Carrying Provisions 2C9 Sappho 272 Diana 274 Genius Bound • 2.5 Bacchus on a Panther 277 Theseus 278 A Triton and Nereid 279 Atalanta 282 Silenus looking at a Goblet 283 Yenus Clipping the Wings of Cupid 285 Flora 287 The Education of Bacchus 289 Pindar CONTENTS OF THE FIRST VOLUME.

Preface

. The French Revolution was the most stupendous transaction of Europe since the Christian .ZEra ; and its close, in the year 1815, the most memorable of all triumphs, not simply as the display of great military skill, or noble national effort ; not as a splendid decision of the question of rival prowess on the greatest of its fields, but as a triumph of principle ; of good over evil ; of the spirit of peace and good-will over the spirit of war and darkness; of freedom over systematic and in satiable tyranny. The preternatural ambition, magnitude, and strength of the French empire, the suddenness and completeness b2

PREFACE.

. of its overthrow, and the immediate and involuntary connexion of the catastrophe, in the general mind, with the interference of more than human power, gave the war a character distinct from all the conflicts of na tions. It was in all its parts and principles a Sacred War. The first stone of the Revolution was laid in im~ piety. For the first time in Christian history a whole people was seen rejecting all knowledge of God, and following this tremendous abjuration to its consequence in hostility to his creatures. France rushed back into the wilderness of two thousand years, threw off her habits of religion and life, and, once more pagan and savage, poured down on the defences of the civilized world. She took for her policy and her faith the two terrors of our nature, war and annihilation, and stood in the centre of Europe, like a great embodying of evil, brandishing in one hand defiance against this world, and in the other against the world to come. Of all the conflicts of the earth, there was none in which the

PREFACE.

. V heart of man was so smitten down by utter hopeless ness, or in which he more instinctively looked to Hea ven; none in which victory was more attributed to its mercy, or defeat to its displeasure ; none in which the cause of Providence seemed to be so much bound up with the freedom of nations ; and none in which the final ruin and explosion seemed so much to scatter away the clouds that hang round the chain of destiny. The history, of the French Revolution was written " for our learning," and it forms a document of the highest importance to all who are to be taught by the experience of great public calamity. The project of Universal Reform was the ruin of the French throne. The nation rushed out with a giddy joy to drag this pregnant and towering mischief, the "fatale donum," within their walls.

In the ex travagance of the hour they broke down the old, con stitutional bulwarks, to give it entrance. The few, who, with tardy wisdom, dared to doubt, were perse cuted as impious ; and the day's triumph concluded in VI

PREFACE.

. weariness and wondering, in feasts and drunkenness, in insolent rejoicing and torpid security. . . . Ruit oceano nox, Involvens umbra magna terramque polumque, Myrmidonumque dolos : fusi per mcenia Teucri. The palace and the guardians of the established order slept, but there were others at that moment girding on the sword. Then came the tumult and the bloodshed. The ancient halls of the state were filled at the instant with strange faces and weapons. The temple was entered only for the murder of the priest ; liberty was deified, only to be trampled upon; the palace was thrown open only for the multitude to see the gentle and exhausted representative of the royal majesty of France perishing by its last altar. In France the instrument of revolution was simple and one, the Populace. Nothing but a passion for im probability could make us presume the friends of order to have commenced the contest with inferior genius or

PREFACE.

. VII conduct to those of their antagonists. Their leaders were men accustomed to the transaction of the higher affairs of the state, they had the mastery of the political, legal, and spiritual knowledge of France ; and their general body had all the literature, and manly accomplish ment of an advanced civilization ; those are powerful weapons. The revolutionists committed the perpetual blunders which belong to ferocity and ignorance. If the contest had been carried on in the legislature alone, rebellion must have perished at the first onset ; the rude ambition of the demagogues must have been rode over and beaten to the earth by the armed and disciplined intellect of that royal and noble knight hood. But the summoning of the populace put an end to all rational contest. The intellect that might save, was broken down by the furious passions that could only uproot and ruin.

Even the political discipline of the king's friends accelerated their overthrow, in a state of things too wild, headlong, and destroying, to be resisted by any thing less than a strength as ferocious

PREFACE.

. and irregular as its own. Nothing but madness could have been equal to withstand the shock of that unchained madness. When the old fastenings of the earth were loose, and the ground was tossing like waves under the foot, solidity and firmness were only the surer ruin. The history of the popular revolution hurries on. The first fury of democracy had cooled, but the decay of riot was supplied only by more systematic and remorseless execution. The " orb new risen ", which was to enlighten the world in the extinction of its old, legiti mate splendours, rose only the more fearful as it left its early belt of clouds and storms ; till in its meridian it plunged into central gloom, and looked down, a full disk of blood. The " Sovereign People ", established on its throne, instinctively chose murderers for its ministers ; Marat, Danton, and Robespierre, three heads that might have kept the gates of Tartarus. Then began the day of tri bulation. The king's blood was spilled ; and from that

PREFACE.

. IX hour the scaffold was red for years. France was de livered over to a reprobate mind, and she rushed out into a drunken prodigality of crime. She had no Sabbath, no Scripture, no Soul, no God. Yet she had one abomination more, to astonish the world, a crime to which even the darkness of heathenism had never stooped ; in the presence of mankind, by a solemn act of her people and her legis lature, she worshipped a public harlot. This was Religion in the hands of the populace ; their philo sophic government more cruel than tyranny, their philosophic religion more benighted than paganism. The guilt of France was now accomplished. She was suffered and spared no longer. The hope of freedom was torn from her. She was abandoned to the inflictions of a despotism, that, worse than the Egyp tian plague, smote her first-born from year to year.

An evil phantom of glory was sent before her, only to lead her deeper into the desert. Then, the final retri bution came. That spectral and ominous shape of

PREFACE.

. X military fame sank into the earth; and the infidel that had defied the Living God, was driven back with protracted defeat and misery, with innumerable wounds streaming in succession upon her, step after step strip ped of armour and spoils, and renown and courage, till at last the corpse was flung into the grave. The Jacobin Empire was no more. This was the dominion of the populace urged to its consummation. But the noblest contrast of the prosperity of a religious and loyal people was to be found by its side. Perhaps no nation has ever been so openly led by the hand into the highest place of glory, as England, from the commencement of this century. She had been forced into war only by the revolutionary ambition which pro claimed war against every civilized power. In her sta tion, war could not have been escaped.

It was enough for her to have stood upon the earth, to be plunged into a darkness, which came like night, overshadowing all its kingdoms. She went on, still protected. She was the only nation that, in the midst of universal

PREFACE.

. XI overthrow, never suffered a signal calamity in arms. She had the blessing of the prophet ; In the midst of her warfare, " Peace was within her walls, and plen teousness within her palaces." She purchased her warlike renown by no interruption of her native pursuits ; she did not lose a single step in science, in ac complished literature, in noble discovery, in munifi cent charity ; — while her walls were beleaguered with the warfare of the world, she held her gates open day and night to the exile and the fallen. Like an earthly providence, she " cared for all." In the very whirlwind of her wrath, she provided for the loftiest interests of man, — her fleets of war spread the Scriptures round the globe. To those who saw that time of the distress and perplexity of nations, men's hearts failing them for fear, and the mighty of the earth calling to the caves and mountains to hide them, — England, stately and unshaken, standing in a towering and solitary splendour which grew with the deepening of the storm, her hand stretched out unweariedly to save, and her serene eye fixed on Hea-

PREFACE.

ven, might have looked less like a being exposed to the common convulsion and decay, than the con scious minister and angel of a superior throne, a being beyond the touch of casualty, impassive and immortal. Paris, at all times a singular and striking city, had in the latter part of the year 1815 more objects for curiosity than it ever had before, or probably will ever have again. Its public places were crowded with all the armies of Europe. Every man of whom we had been conceiving portraits through the cloud and tumult of the war, was to be met face to face in the streets. The costumes and countenances of almost every tribe from the Atlantic to the Chinese Sea were to be seen at every step. Paris was the head-quarters of three monarchs, the greatest military powers of the world ; and was in the immediate possession of the British troops, the only army that had gone on from glory to glory without a shade between. The city was at that moment a camp, but a camp which

PREFACE.

. XIII contained the military and diplomatic mind of Europe —a camp of heroes and cabinets. Yet to those who might not feel interested by the displays of human magnificence, there were more stately contempla tions. It seemed as if a day of final retribution had commenced : they stood in view of the scaffold of Atheistic power ; Napoleon's glory had perished like a meteor ; and for that guilty, mystic, unreal splendour, had risen a broad light of truth and peace which, fed from sources beyond the reach of human passions, seemed destined to shine for ever. It was difficult to conceive that this stately summoning of the world's strength was for the mere purposes of parade. The impulse was so deep, universal, and ca pable of producing such permanent and mighty effects on the future, that it was natural to believe that Europe was not thus called up as from the grave, with the voice of " thunders and the trumpet ", to return to its old decay. The proceedings of the allied cabinets, and their

PREFACE.

. effect on the people of France and the earth, here assumed the rank of things to be felt through a long, perhaps through the latest, posterity. The removal of the pictures and antiques from the Museum took place at this time ; and, besides the excitement be longing to all changes affecting those incomparable memorials, was of the same train of circumstances which made the war and the triumph only a portion of the one great system of renovation, in which Pro vidence deigned to reveal its steps for securing justice and quiet to future man. The monuments, too, of the revolutionary period were still visible ; the reign of conspiracy, terror, and atheism, was marked by evidences still distinct and vivid ; and in Paris, at this memorable period, the traveller found himself at once in the midst of all that was mad and God-defying in the wildness of republican frenzy ; all that was rich and strange, in the gathered spoil and haughty me morials of the usurping empire ; and all that was glorious in the victory and magnificent power of esta-

PREFACE.

. XV blished monarchies. He stood beside the tomb of Europe, and was a witness of her resurrection. The present Poem sketches those aspects of Paris, as they successively occurred to the writer. The pubb'c buildings and chief points of exhibition are mentioned chiefly with reference to what interested him most in them — their connexion with the revolutionary history. In the description of a great city, there can be, of course, no regular and epic succession ; but in Paris some of the public monuments are visible only at peculiar hours, and some require peculiar hours to be seen to advantage, while some lie in the general track of travellers on their first hurried tour. All those links, but principally the last, have been used. He entered by the Mont Martre road at an early hour ; and the sketches are given nearly in the order in which the objects were seen. A few notes are subjoined for slight explanation to those who may not have visited Paris in 1815.

PREFACE.

. The occasional changes in the metre were adopted to avoid the monotony of a perpetual recurrence of the same measure. The diversity of the subjects in these pages seemed of itself to require diversity of metre. Pomps and processions are not easily told in the same cadence with massacre. The measure selected for a tragic poem must be different from that which is to represent the grace and gaieties of courts, the splendours . of religious festival, or the gentleness of rural life. No excellence of poetry has been per fectly able, in our most illustrious models, to resist the antagonist monotony of a thousand lines in the same stanza ; and perhaps no reader has ever struck upon even their slight intervening songs and wanderings of rhyme without feeling them like a sudden re lief. A reason perhaps equivalent to all those -with the Writer was, that the Poem was written at inter vals; and that, when it was at last put together, he shrank from the trouble of its further change.

" I had a thing to say But let it go : The sun is in the heaven, and the proud day, Attended with the pleasures of the world, Is all too wanton, and too full of gauds, To give me audience : — If the midnight bell Did, with his iron tongue and brazen mouth, Sound one unto the drowsy race of night ; Or if that thou could'st see me without eyes, Hear me without thine ears, and make reply Without a tongue, using conceit alone, Without ears, eyes, or harmful sound of words ; Then, in despite of brooded, watchful day, I would into thy bosom pour my thoughts." KING JOHN. VOL. I. C 1815.

PART I.

i. Welcome, thou glorious dawn ! Oh ! who would cling To sleep, and sleep's bewildered fantasies ; When he might see the rushing of thy wing, Spreading like clouds from some high sacrifice ; And hear thy trumpet bid the world arise. While the wan morn-star, in her watch-tower gray, Extinguishes her little lamp and flies. But lo ! the east is all one golden ray, And on his burning wheels out rolls the king of day c2 1815. li. Lovely— but lovelier still, when that bright morn Unfolds the vision of some first-seen land ; And, as the twilight clouds are upwards borne, Foreign the hills, the vales, the streams expand ; Charming the wanderer's foot suspense to stand, As, like a young creation, round him rise Its thousand shapes of soft, and bright, and grand ; All strange, all spell-touch'd ; ev'n the wild wind's sighs, The peasant's call, to him, romantic melodies ! in.

Yet who can feel it like the lucldess wight, In France's lumbering wains through midnight pent, With heavy lids that will not slumber quite, Stiff limbs and beating brow, and spirit spent ; When on the eastern hill's slow-gain'd ascent, The breeze first meets him from its bowers below, Streaming cool odours, living element ; And his clear'd eye sees mount and forest glow ; And the whole landscape lights its whole enchanted show. MONT-MARTRE. 3 IV. 'Tis dawn upon Mont Martre ' ! O'er the plain, In flake and spire, the sunbeam plunges deep, Bringing out shape, and shade, and summer-stain ; Like a retiring host the blue mists sweep. Looms on the farthest right Valerien's steep, Crown'd with its convent kindling in the day ; And swiftly sparkling from their bowery sleep, Like matin stars, around the horizon play Far village vanes, and domes and castle-turrets gray. v. 'Tis a rich scene ; and yet the richest charm That e'er cloth'd earth in beauty, lives not here.

Winds no green fence around the cultured farm ; No blossom'd hawthorn shields the cottage dear. The land is bright, and yet to thine how drear, Unrivall'd England ! — Well the thought may pine For those sweet fields where each, a little sphere, In shaded, sacred fruitfulness doth shine, And the heart higher beats that says, " This spot is mine." 1815. 4 VI. St. Cloud ! How stately from the green hill's side Shoots up thy Parian pile ! His transient hold, Who wore the iron crown of regicide ! He treads its halls no more — his hour is told. The circle widens ; Sevres bright and cold Peeps out in vestal beauty from her throne, Spared for Minerva's sake, when round her roll'd From yon high brow the Invader's fiery zone, Resistless, as can tell thy faded tow'rs, Meudon ! VII. A trumpet ! — at the sound Mont Martre's spread With martial crowds, a glittering, crimson tide, Pouring incessant from its sunbright head.

Part, that in splendour deepen down its side, In square, and line, and column wheeling wide To many a solemn touch of harmony. Part to the far champaign that clanging ride, Like eagles darting from their aery high, Like the rich-flashing lights of autumn's evening sky. MONT-MARTRE. 5 VIII. The British bands ! A power is in the sound, It speaks of freedom, valour, virtue nigh ; It calls up England upon foreign ground ! Far be from us the false philosophy That owns not country's nobly-partial tie ! The thoughts that like a second nature come In distance and in death to fix the eye On the heart's classic soil ; — by temple, tomb, By all love's names endear'd, — by all in one, our Home. IX. War has its mighty moments : — Heart of Man ! Have all thy pulses vigour for a thrill Prouder than through those gallant bosoms ran When first their standards waved above that hill ?

When first they strove their downward gaze to fill With the full grandeur of their glorious prize- Paris ! the name that from their cradle still Stung them in dreams ; now, glittering in their eyes, Now won — won by the Victory of Victories * ! 1815. X. For this had bled their battle round the world ; For this they round the world had come to war ; Some with the shatter'd ensign that unfurl'd Its lion-emblems to the Orient star ; And some, the blue Atlantic stemming far ; Ajid some, a matchless band, from swarthy Spain — With well-worn steel, and breasts of many a scar ; And all their plains to their last conquering plain Were sport, their trophies all to this proud trophy vain. XI. Lovely the stranger's land — the tawny meads, Track'd by the sleepy Seine's meanders blue ; The vintage ripening on its sloping beds, Like sheets of emeralds, dropping purple dew ; The forest belting with its waste of yew The chateau, lonely as the exile's tomb Where rests its lord ; the hill's exotic hue ; The umbraged roads, that from th' horizon come, Like arrows, to one point, where still broods morning's gloom.

MONT-IMARTRE. 7 XII. There sleep'st thou, Paris ! What profounder sleep Were thine, had matchless hearts not sieged thee round ! When those who sow'd in blood, in blood should reap, When the bold hunters from earth's farthest bound At length the tiger in his cavern found ; Then, not yon cloud that wraps thy giddy dream, But the red vapour of the bloody ground, Such as o'er Moscow hung, had caught the gleam ; The midnight fires of death, thy last, wdd, waking beam. XIII. The gale has come, — at once the fleecy haze Floats up, — then stands a purple canopy, Shading th' imperial city from the blaze. Glorious the vision ! tower and temple lie Beneath the morn, like waves of ivory, With many an azure streak and gush of green, As grove and garden on the dazzled eye Rise in successive beauty, and between " Flows into sudden light the long, slow, serpent Seine. 1815. 8 XIV.

For Paris now.— Now farewell hill and vale, And silence sweet, fresh blooms, and dewy sky ! Farewell the gentle moral of the gale, The wisdom written in the rose's dye ! I go to meet the wizard city's eye, That puts on splendour but to dim the soul. A thousand years of crime beneath me lie ! One glance ! — I stand as on a mighty mole, Around whose base not waves, but evil ages roll. xv. And ye enduring monuments that rise, In your calm grandeur, round this fortress-hill, Masses of solemn shade and orient dyes ! Are ye not each, as in that sea an isle, Sheltering the few and statelier memories, while The feeble pass like foam upon the wave ? I gaze not here on Greek or Gothic pile !— I see but emblems of the days that gave An impulse to the world, to empires throne or grave. MONT-MARTRE. 9 XVI. 'Twas a dark time, that on Valerien's brow Rear'd the sad refuge of that convent tower !

There mind was buried, wither'd beauty's glow, There passion lost its hope, but not its power ; Yet good was mix'd with ill; its midnight hour Heard prayers from haughty lips that then first pray'd; And woman who had wept her loveliest dower, There hid her broken heart in calm and shade, And turned her to His fold, who sought the lamb that stray 'd ! XVII. Earth had a burst of madness ; come, and gone, Like lightning from its cloud — a withering blaze. There stand its lonely halls, its Pantheon ; Then were those halls not lonely; — nights and days Roll'd o'er their thousands, pouring heaven's high praise, From more than pagan lips, to harlotry. Temple of many gods ! while One delays For wisdom deeply veil'd from human eye, To strike it into dust, till ev'n its memory die. 1815. 10 XVIII The emblem-circle 's wound.

The sunbeams flow Latest, yet loveliest, on St. Denis' wall. But is there not a brighter sun than now Vestures in gold that patriarch cathedral ? Is not earth's veil at length about to fall, As the slow shadows from that temple hoar ; And the true faith unfold her gates to all ; And man be glorious as he was before ; And earth be Paradise, till time shall be no more ? xix. The hour shall come ! — It is no mystic's trance, But true as He, who -wills, and it is done ! The hour shall come, — is come ! — Our feeble glance Ev'n now sees stooping from its clouds the throne Where One shall rule o'er earth— The Mighty One. Its kings his hallow'd viceroys — man's old stain Fast brightening from the spirit ; — war unknown ;— Till Death has died ! and, rushing from his chain, To heaven th' immortals rise, with angel plume and strain, XX.

Now, from the Mount ! — Through solid dust we sweep, Chok'd, crushing, struggling to wile back our sleep. The barrier's reach'd — out rolls the drowsy guard ; A scowl — a question — and the gate's unbarr'd. And this is Paris ! The postillion's thong Rings round a desert, as we bound along, Onward, still darker, doubly desolate, Winds o'er the shrinking head the dangerous strait. The light is lost ; in vain we peer our way Through the rank dimness of the Fauxbourg day ; In vain the wearied eyeball strains to scale That squalid height, half hovel and half jail: At every step the struggling vision bar Projections sudden, black, and angular, Streak'd with what once was gore, deep rent with shot, Marks of some conflict furious and — forgot ! At every step, from sewer and alley sail The crossing steams that make the senses quail, Defying breeze's breath and summer's glow, Charter'd to hold eternal mire below. 1815.

Grim loneliness !— and yet some blasted form Will start upon the sight, a human worm, Clung to the chapel's wall— the lank throat bare, The glance shot woeful from the tangled hair, The fleshless, outstretch'd arm, and ghastly cry, Half forcing, half repelling charity. Or, from the portal of the old hotel, Gleams on his post the victor-centinel, Briton or German, shooting round his ken, From its dark depth, a lion from his den. 'Tis light and air again : and lo ! the Seine, The Frenchman's boast, yon lazy, livid drain ! With bridges, shaking to the foot, o'erlaid, Booths for its barges, painted trees its shade. Yet here are living beings, and the soil Breeds its old growth of ribaldry and broil. A whirl of mire, the dingy cabriolet Makes the quick transit through the crowded way ; On spurs the courier, creaks the crazy wain, Dragg'd through its central mud by might and main, Around our way-laid wheels the paupers crowd, With every vileness of man's nature bow'd. The whole a mass of folly, woe, and strife, Of heated, rank, corrupting, reptile life : And, endless as their ouzy tide, the throng Roll on with endless clamour, curse, and song.

Fit for such tenants, low'r on either side The hovels where the gang less live than hide ; Story on story, savage stone on stone, Time-shatter'd, tempest-stain' d, less built than thrown. Sole empress of the portal, in full blow, The rouged grisette lays out her trade below, Ev'n in her rags a thing of wit and wile, Eye, hand, lip, tongue, all point, and press, and smile. Close by, in patch and print, the pedlar's stall Flutters its looser glories up the wall. Spot of corruption ! where the rabble rude Loiter round tinsel tomes, and figures nude ; Voltaire, and Lais, long alternate eyed. Till both the leper's soul and sous divide. 1815. 14 Above, 'tis desert, save where sight is scar d With the wild visage through the casement barr'd. But, venture on the darkness ; and within See the stern haunt of wretchedness and sin.

The door unhinged, for winter's bitterest air, The paper pane, the gapp'd and shaking stair, Winding in murkiness, as to the sty Of guilt forlorn, or base debauchery ; The chamber, tatter' d, melancholy, old, Yet large — where plunder might its midnights hold ; And in its foulest corner, from the day Sullen and shrunk, its lord, the Federe. Meagre the form, the visage swart and spare, Furrow'd with early vice and desperate care ■ Hollow the cheek, the eye ferocious guile, Yet gentle to his hard, habitual smile. His end on earth, to live the doubtful day, And glean the livre for the Sunday's play. Heavy that chamber's air ; the sunbeams fall Scatter'd and sickly on the naked wall ; Through the time-crusted casement scarcely shown The rafter'd roof, the floor of chilling stone, The crazy bed, the mirror that betrays Frameless, where vanity yet loves to gaze ; And still, the symbols of his darker trade, The musquet, robber-pistol, sabre blade, Hung rusting, where around the scanty fire His squalid offspring watch its brands expire.