A BARD'S-EYE VIEW OF WALES.

By a Hermit Poet.

WALES, though abandoned to the tourist by the modern poet, forms an attractive subject for a contemplative poem.

The contemplatist, in the following poem, is supposed to be an ambitious student, who has retired in disappointment from the race of literary emulation, not from having been outstripped, he having never run, but in indignant disgust at the venality and sycophancy of both umpires and competitors; in plain terms, at the shameless conspiracy between critics and writers, between the book-seller liege lord, and his feudal vassal, the bookmaker, sworn-pen, hand, and soul, to the service of his master, in the cause of Mammon instead of fame!

Our wanderer of Wales having devoted his soul to literature, (not the bibliopolist,) having endured that sort of death to the world which perhaps is requisite to the zealot, or rather bigot, in that species of devotion, to prepare him by martyrdom for his crown, is represented as waking, too late, to the discovery that he has so died in vain! that renouncement of its aims,that estrangement from its ties, that unsocial solitude, that loneliness of long mental preparation, the sadness and the sickness of "hope deferred," all-all have been endured in vain-that for him there is no crown-or rather that it is become no longer a distinctive mark of the mind-royal, (even if one legitimate heir of fame survive) that its gold is tarnished, its gems stolen, mock ones substituted; that it is ready for every head, and any head whose emptiness, a mock wreath of paper laurel, (fac-simile of the true evergreen of Apollo,) may encircle, and lastly that it is conferred by the idol, fashion, set up on the deserted pedestal of honorable fame.

Convinced that there no longer exists any arena in England for fair literary ambition, he is drawn as forswearing his life-long pursuit, and even all mental exercise, with a sort of horror. Fuit fama!

Such a "sad historian" for the "pensive plain," has been drawn (from life or fancy matters not) to excuse some out-pourings that might seem too intense for the inspiration of mere scenery, but not for its effects on a mind, as it were, amalgamating itself with nature and solitude.

A BARD'S-EYE VIEW OF WALES.

INDUCTION.

"Woe to the fame-smit mind Fame leaves afar,
Curs'd with 'immortal longings,' heaves to die,
Astounding woe! as if a new-found star,
The midnight prize of Galileo's eye,

Should shoot down heaven, and vanish utterly.

Some of the following stanzas form a poetical preface to the Welsh Decameron, now in course of publication.

Woe, woe to him, his golden world to find
The mere mock-star of Autumn's vapoury sky;
Death, death to me, to see my world, this mind,
For ever die-die all-nor leave a wreck behind!'"

II.

Thus spoke ambition blighted, in a form

That blight's long pain had withered more than years;
Like some lone sea-side tree which brine and storm
Bows like old age, and like an Autumn sears.
The speaker stood-and as the sea-wrath's tears
Before, behind, dead sands cut off that tree,
So did his fate, his mind, from its compeers,
Lonely remote 'mid boors and mountains he,
Behind life's utter waste,-before oblivion's sea.

III.

Fame's martyr! yet for fame had never striven;
He loathed mock-triumph, he disdained a strife,
Where not to swift or strong the prize is given,
Where bays are bought, eternities so rife,
That those fierce yearnings for immortal life,
Which made a Milton mark a madman now;
Such fashion's fiat, with her feeble fife,

Mocking fame's clarion; so he bound his brow

With night-shade, far preferred to her vile varnished bough.

1V.

Back to his boyhood's dream, "heaven-kissing" Wales,
He came but burning with fame's baffled lust,
As hell's pale truant+ Eden, walked its vales,-
So to some blue lake which he left when first
The sun above the misty mountains burst,
Fainting at noon, comes back a wounded deer;
But as he stoops to quench his dying thirst,

It grows all troubled with his blood and tear,

No more green pictured banks, no more blue depths appear.

V.

But souls that rage in populous city pent,'
Green quietness restores to sad serene,
So there he lingered, drearily content,
Shortly to be as if he ne'er had been-
One added atom to the subterrene
Dust of the mortal desert-mental dust;
Yea, pleased into a soil so grand, so green,

Which charmed his best of life, and soothed its worst,

To melt, and be a spring-bank for the first

Lamb there to sun its snow, kneel softlier to be nurst.

"Now lighted on a heaven-kissing hill."-SHAKSPEARE.

+"Thrice changed with pale ire, envy, and despair."-MILTON.

VI.

Thus early anchored, life's short voyage lost,
And mind dismantled, ev'n despair grew mild;
And, as a far-bound ship by tempest's crost,
Drops its vast wings, and to some rock-cove wild
A little boat tows stilly-so beguiled,

A child's meek mind to peace, that tossing mind;
(Thy tongue-thy prattling innocence, my child!)
So found he peace, who port must never find,

And for that sweet "small voice" fame's trumpet-tongue resigned.

VII.

Yet as the clouds of broken thunder-storms

Come flying o'er the sun which broke them, still
A mighty shade moves as they move-deforms

The landscape-blots the blue-where flashed the rill,
Black forests seem to hang the distant hill;

So when his mind despair's old shadows swept,
Heaven shared the darkness, and all earth its chill!

By ruins, rocks, and cairns, he vigils kept,

There met the long-lost muse whose curse he wept,

In whose deep dream he youth's life's whole bright day o'erslept.

VIII.

"Behold your work," he cried, "this mourning mind
You led to moonlit, left to moonless, wood;
Betrayed to pity-left to loathe mankind-
Betrothed to fame, and left with solitude;
Left o'er its living burial here to brood;

Oh, go-go, now; sick, savage, sad, life weary,

I need no flowers to strew this Lethe's sand,

You've turned my day to moonlight-made a fairy

Vision of all my world, dim, solitary

Ah! where is thine? where fame's bright resurrectionary?"

IX.

The poet's mind "his kingdom" poets call;

Sad king, black kingdom, when fame leaves it lone,
Dumb as the death whose shadows stretch o'er all-

A spell-bound king on a benighted throne !+

Ev'n she who bound the Muse his dear soul's own;

No more to sweet sleep sings him like a bride,

But comes, as to th' enchanted prince, half stone,

With his black pedestal, the hag that tied,

With thoughts keen as her whips,-how he to life has died!

"My mind to me a kingdom is."-Old Song.

Alluding to the tale of the Prince of the Black Isles, in the Arabian Nights, petrified to his throne of black marble by enchantment, and scourged by his queen, the sorceress who enchanted him.

X

Then as a madman, with his shaken chains,
Her thorn, the bleeding-bosomed nightingale,
He would make music of his very pains.

Fond fool! for whom? a world that scorns the tale,
A happy world! deaf, deaf as to that pale
Madman in dark, the thronged and sunny street;
But poetry is suffering's voice, whose wail

Asks not an audience, or finds audience meet
In night and mountains-such ev'n his wild seat,
A moonlight carnedd 'neath its silver winding-sheet.

XI.

He made vain monument to the forgotten!
Lost labour, leaving what you hide unknown-
Whether some hero's bones, or felon's, rotten :
Enough in your rude pyramids of stone

Is here to build some glorious memory's throne;
So, this lone mind's lost labours, seen of none,
(Moon-tinted piles of thought to mountains grown ;)
Fame-sunn'd, perchance, some worthier work had done
Now-like your grey heaps glooming in the sun,
No monument shall leave or worse-an evil one!

XII.

For who can tell with what revulsion dread
Check'd minds rush roaring in their back career!
The dammed-up river drowns the field it fed,-
Where are its cowslips? 'neath those mud-drifts drear,

·

So the mind's force, which might a temple rear

To God and virtue, and fair fame uncheck'd,

Check'd-hell ward burns! work deeds of death and fear,
And deep damnation, while the retrospect

Of high aims lost but aids the fierce effect,

As bravest vessels beat most fearfully when wreck❜d.

XIII.

Now, conscious of his mind's mortality,

Off, all her gauds, for fame's long day designed,

He stripped, he burned, and let her death-like lie,
Naked and grim-a very corpse of mind!

Such apathy hope's farewell left behind;
Yet rolling his sad eyes on all the sweet

Flowers of the mountains, for those robes resigned,

In bitter mockery of those meant to meet

Heaven's eye, he strewed these on her winding-sheet.—

END OF THE INDUCTION.

• Stones were thrown by passers-by on the graves of malefactors, in abhorrence; and piled over those of fallen heroes in honour.

NO. XV.

Y

A BARD'S-EYE VIEW OF WALES.

'NEATH the rock-fortress of the "Snowy Neck,"*
Grim blood-stained nurse of such white memory—
I stand;-like little life-boat to a wreck,
My child comes bounding o'er the moat to me;
Shews the pale glitter of the moonlight sea
Thro' hanging arch and green clefts ruinous;

I smile with him, but think despair! with thee;
Mingling (as sick men dream) soft childhood thus,

My sweet brief charge, with that "white memory and grey nurse!"

II.

Sepulchral towers, but for that screech-owl dumb,
Eternal-looking as your marble base

This rock upon this mountain-yet become
The blind bat's home, thou meanest dwelling-place,
Less value now, tho' ruin greenly grace,

And stars with mock-lamps hang your skeleton,
Ruins which mocked at ruin! as I pace

Your halls they seem my home-fame's ever gone,
Oblivion's home,-and mine who dared oblivion!

III.

Proud lonely mind, sick hollow heart enfolding,
As thorns and emptiness these walls! confess,
Happier the hut one little taper holding,
Than these in all their pomp and loneliness,
And lofty lamps that show how comfortless!
True-gentle boy-that up-turned smile of thine
Beams yet, one taper on my wilderness;

For all that warms life's noon, gilds life's decline,
Fame, fortune, friends, hopes human or divine,
At last, what do I find? this little hand in mine!

IV.

Vain hold a rugged father's breast and child,
Is as a sea-cliff, where one tree of spring,

Chance-sown, with th' orchard's beauty paints it wild,
Blushes its little time of blossoming,

Down far from its bleak breast its fruit to fling,

And leave that naked to its storm and stone

My boy-my fruit-flower-pleasantest brief thing!
So, with thy pink and white, wilt thou be gone-

This hand will leave this hand, to shake in age alone.

* Twr Bronwen, the ancient name of Harlech castle. Bronwen (literally "the white-breasted") was sister to a duke of Cornwall, afterwards king of Britain, and gave her name to it, or rather to the ancient fortress that preceded the present.