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Beyond the sea, beyond the sea,
The swallow wanders fast and free:
Oh, happy bird! were I like thee,
I, too, would fly beyond the sea.
Beyond the sea, beyond the sea,
Are kindly hearts and social glee:
But here for me they may not be;
My heart is gone beyond the sea.
I dwell not now on what may be:
Night shadows o'er the scene:
But still my fancy wanders free
Through that which might have been.
Hippy: What can bid my heart-ache fly?
What can bid my heart-ache die?
What can all the ills dispel,
In my morbid frame that dwell?
The dinner-bell! the dinner-bell!
Both: Hark!—-along the tangled ground,
Loudly floats the pleasing sound!
Sportive Fauns to Dryads tell,
'Tis the cheerful dinner-bell!
The dinner-bell! the dinner-bell!
Childish fears, and sighs and tears
Still to us are strangers;
Why destroy the bud of joy
With ideal dangers?
Let the song of pleasure swell;
Care with us shall never dwell;
Let us still with smiles confess,
All our aim is happiness!
I press'd them down the sod beneath;
I placed one mossy stone above;
And twined the rose's fading wreath
Around the sepulchre of love.
Frail as thy love, the flowers were dead
Ere yet the evening sun was set:
But years shall see the cypress spread,
Immutable as my regret.
You grew a lovely roseate maiden,
And still our early love was strong;
Still with no care our days were laden,
They glided joyously along;
And I did love you very dearly,
How dearly words want power to show;
I thought your heart was touch'd as nearly;
But that was fifty years ago.
Then other lovers came around you,
Your beauty grew from year to year,
And many a splendid circle found you
The centre of its glimmering sphere.
I saw you then, first vows forsaking,
On rank and wealth your hand bestow;
O, then I thought my heart was breaking!—
But that was forty years ago.
And I lived on, to wed another:
No cause she gave me to repine;
And when I heard you were a mother,
I did not wish the children mine.
My own young flock, in fair progression,
Made up a pleasant Christmas row:
My joy in them was past expression;
But that was thirty years ago.
You grew a matron plump and comely,
You dwelt in fashion's brightest blaze;
My earthly lot was far more homely;
But I too had my festal days.
No merrier eyes have ever glisten'd
Around the hearth-stone's wintry glow,
Than when my youngest child was christen'd;
But that was twenty years ago.
Time pass'd. My eldest girl was married,
And I am now a grandsire gray;
One pet of four years old I've carried
Among the wild-flower'd meads to play.
In our old fields of childish pleasure,
Where now, as then, the cowslips blow,
She fills her basket's ample measure;
And that is not ten years ago.
But though first love's impassion'd blindness
Has pass'd away in colder light,
I still have thought of you with kindness,
And shall do, till our last good-night.
The ever-rolling silent hours
Will bring a time we shall not know,
When our young days of gathering flowers
Will be an hundred years ago.
The half-form'd speech of artless thought
That spoke a mind beyond thy years;
The song, the dance, by nature taught;
The sunny smiles, the transient tears;
The symmetry of face and form,
The eye with light and life replete;
The little heart so fondly warm,
The voice so musically sweet;
These, lost to hope, in memory yet
Around the hearts that lov'd thee cling,
Shadowing, with long and vain regret,
The too fair promise of thy spring.
I GAZE, where August's sunbeam falls
Along these grey and lonely walls,
Till in its light absorbed appears
The lapse of five-and-thirty years.
If change there be, I trace it not
In all this consecrated spot:
No new imprint of Ruin's march
On roofless wall and frameless arch:
The hilss, the woods, the fields, the stream,
Are basking in the self-same beam:
The fall, that turns the unseen mill
As then it murmured, murmurs still:
It seems, as if in one were cast
The present and the imaged past,
Spanning, as with bridge sublime,
That awful lapse of human time,
That gulph, unfathomably spread
Between the living and the dead.
For all too well my spirit feels
The only change this place reveals:
The sunbeams play, the breezes stir,
Unseen, unfelt, unheard by her,
Who, on that long-past August day,
First saw with me those ruins grey.
Whatever span the fates allow,
Ere I shall be as she is now,
Still in my bosom's inmost cell
Shall that deep-treasured memory dwell:
That, more than language can express,
Pure miracle of loveliness,
Whose voice so sweet, whose eyes so bright,
Were my soul's music, and its light,
In those blest days, when life was new,
And hope was false, but love was true.
The rich man's sins are hidden
In the pomp of wealth and station;
And escape the sight
Of the children of light,
Who are wise in their generation.
The rich man has a kitchen,
And cooks to dress his dinner;
The poor who would roast
To the baker's must post,
And thus becomes a sinner.
The rich man has a cellar,
And a ready butler by him;
The poor man must steer
For his pint of beer
Where the saint can't choose but to spy him.
The rich man's painted windows
Hide the concerts of the quality;
The poor can but share
A crack'd fiddle in the air,
Which offends all sound morality.
The rich man is invisible
In the crowd of his gay society;
But the poor man's delight
Is a sore in the sight,
And a stench in the nose of piety.
Unlike that lamp, its subtle fire
Burns, blasts, consumes its cell, the heart,
Till, one by one, hope, joy, desire,
Like dreams of shadowy smoke depart.
When hope, love, life itself, are only
Dust—spectral memories—dead and cold—
The unfed fire burns bright and lonely,
Like that undying lamp of old:
And by that drear illumination,
Till time its clay-built home has rent,
Thought broods on feeling's desolation
The soul is its own monument.
1 From Chaper XI ofCrotchet Castle (1831).
2 First published 1931, written in 1837.
3 Written, apparently, towards the end of TLP's life.
4 From The Three Doctors (first published in 1903, written before 1815).
5 From Palmyra and Other Poems (1812).
6 First published 1931, written in 1803.
7 This (untitled) poem, found among TLP's papers
after his death, was probably written circa 1807. Edith
Nicholls, TLP's grand-daughter, wrote of a young woman, Fanny Falkner,
whom TLP had loved:
"The two young people were engaged when she was eighteen, and he
was twenty-two. For a few months they were entirely happy in mutual
affection and sympathy. Their favourite place of meeting was the old
ruin of Newark Abbey. . . .
"The engagement was broken off in an unjustifiable manner by the
underhand interference of a third person, and the young lady, supposing
herself deserted, married another man, and died in the year 1808."
The word "regret" had a much stronger meaning in 1807 than it
now has.
Quiller-Couch included this poem in The Oxford Book of
English Verse (1919) as "The Grave of Love."
8 First published in 1875 and written, apparently, towards the end of TLP's life.
9 Written, apparently, towards the end of TLP's life, and first published in 1875.
10 Lord Broughton's eldest daughter, Julia, died in 1849.
11 from Chaper XV ofGryll Grange (1860).
12 Despite the opposition of the vicar of Chertsey, who objected to this poem (since it contains no mention of God); these verses were inscribed on the tombstone of Margaret Love Peacock, TLP's daughter, who died on 13 January, 1826 at the age of three.
13 Fairly self-explanatory.
14 Peacock's note: 'This is a correct copy of a little poem which has been often printed, and not quite accurately. It first appeared, many years ago, in the Globe and Traveller and was suggested by a speech in which Mr. Wilberforce, replying to an observation of Dr. Lushington, that "the Society for the Suppression of Vice meddled with the poor alone," said that "the offences of the poor came more under observation than those of the rich." '
15 The song sung by Mr Cypress (parodying Lord Byron) after dinner in chapter XI of Nightmare Abbey (1818).