* * * * *
TO MR. MURRAY.
“December 25. 1815.
“I send some lines, written some time ago, and intended as an opening to ‘The Siege of Corinth.’ I had forgotten them, and am not sure that they had not better be left out now:—on that, you and your Synod can determine. Yours,” &c.
* * * * *
The following are the lines alluded to in this note. They are written in the loosest form of that rambling style of metre which his admiration of Mr. Coleridge’s “Christabel” led him, at this time, to adopt; and he judged rightly, perhaps, in omitting them as the opening of his poem. They are, however, too full of spirit and character to be lost. Though breathing the thick atmosphere of Piccadilly when he wrote them, it is plain that his fancy was far away, among the sunny hills and vales of Greece; and their contrast with the tame life he was leading at the moment, but gave to his recollections a fresher spring and force.
“In the year since Jesus
died for men,
Eighteen hundred years and
ten,
We were a gallant company,
Riding o’er land, and
sailing o’er sea.
Oh! but we went merrily!
We forded the river, and clomb
the high hill,
Never our steeds for a day
stood still;
Whether we lay in the cave
or the shed,
Our sleep fell soft on the
hardest bed;
Whether we couch’d in
our rough capote,
On the rougher plank of our
gliding boat,
Or stretch’d on the
beach, or our saddles spread
As a pillow beneath the resting
head,
Fresh we woke upon the morrow:
All our thoughts
and words had scope,
We had health,
and we had hope,
Toil and travel, but no sorrow.
We were of all tongues and
creeds;—
Some were those who counted
beads,
Some of mosque, and some of
church,
And some, or I
mis-say, of neither;
Yet through the wide world
might ye search
Nor find a mother
crew nor blither.
“But some are dead,
and some are gone,
And some are scatter’d
and alone,
And some are rebels on the
hills[89]
That look along
Epirus’ valleys
Where Freedom
still at moments rallies,
And pays in blood Oppression’s
ills:
And some are in
a far countree,
And some all restlessly at
home;
But never more,
oh! never, we
Shall meet to revel and to
roam.
But those hardy days flew
cheerily;
And when they now fall drearily,
My thoughts, like swallows,
skim the main
And bear my spirit back again
Over the earth, and through
the air,
A wild bird, and a wanderer.
’Tis this that ever
wakes my strain,
And oft, too oft, implores
again
The few who may endure my
lay,
To follow me so far away.
“Stranger—wilt
thou follow now,
And sit with me on Acro-Corinth’s
brow?”