Poems, 1799

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Title: Poems, 1799
Author: Robert Southey
Release Date: August, 2005 [EBook #8639]?[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]?[This file was first posted on July 29, 2003]
Edition: 10
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
? START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK POEMS, 1799 ***
Produced by Jonathan Ingram, Clytie Siddall, Charles Franks and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team
POEMS,
by
Robert Southey.
The better, please; the worse, displease; I ask no more.
SPENSER.
THE SECOND VOLUME.
CONTENTS.
THE VISION of THE MAID of ORLEANS.
Book 1
2?3
The Rose
The Complaints of the Poor
Metrical Letter
BALLADS.
The Cross Roads.
The Sailor who had served in the Slave Trade
Jaspar
Lord William
A Ballad shewing how an old woman rode double?and who rode before her
The Surgeon's Warning
The Victory
Henry the Hermit
ENGLISH ECLOGUES.
The Old Mansion House
The Grandmother's Tale
The Funeral
The Sailor's Mother
The Witch
The Ruined Cottage
The Vision
of
The Maid of Orleans.
Divinity hath oftentimes descended?Upon our slumbers, and the blessed troupes?Have, in the calme and quiet of the soule,?Conversed with us.
SHIRLEY. 'The Grateful Servant'
[Sidenote: The following Vision was originally printed as the ninth book of 'JOAN of ARC'. It is now adapted to the improved edition of that Poem.]
THE VISION OF THE MAID OF ORLEANS.
THE FIRST BOOK.
Orleans was hush'd in sleep. Stretch'd on her couch?The delegated Maiden lay: with toil?Exhausted and sore anguish, soon she closed?Her heavy eye-lids; not reposing then,?For busy Phantasy, in other scenes?Awakened. Whether that superior powers,?By wise permission, prompt the midnight dream,?Instructing so the passive [1] faculty;?Or that the soul, escaped its fleshly clog,?Flies free, and soars amid the invisible world,?And all things 'are' that [2] 'seem'.
Along a moor,?Barren, and wide, and drear, and desolate,?She roam'd a wanderer thro' the cheerless night.?Far thro' the silence of the unbroken plain?The bittern's boom was heard, hoarse, heavy, deep,?It made most fitting music to the scene.?Black clouds, driven fast before the stormy wind,?Swept shadowing; thro' their broken folds the moon?Struggled sometimes with transitory ray,?And made the moving darkness visible.?And now arrived beside a fenny lake?She stands: amid its stagnate waters, hoarse?The long sedge rustled to the gales of night.?An age-worn bark receives the Maid, impell'd?By powers unseen; then did the moon display?Where thro' the crazy vessel's yawning side?The muddy wave oozed in: a female guides,?And spreads the sail before the wind, that moan'd?As melancholy mournful to her ear,?As ever by the dungeon'd wretch was heard?Howling at evening round the embattled towers?Of that hell-house [3] of France, ere yet sublime?The almighty people from their tyrant's hand?Dash'd down the iron rod.
Intent the Maid?Gazed on the pilot's form, and as she gazed?Shiver'd, for wan her face was, and her eyes?Hollow, and her sunk cheeks were furrowed deep,?Channell'd by tears; a few grey locks hung down?Beneath her hood: then thro' the Maiden's veins?Chill crept the blood, for, as the night-breeze pass'd,?Lifting her tattcr'd mantle, coil'd around?She saw a serpent gnawing at her heart.
The plumeless bat with short shrill note flits by,?And the night-raven's scream came fitfully,?Borne on the hollow blast. Eager the Maid?Look'd to the shore, and now upon the bank?Leaps, joyful to escape, yet trembling still?In recollection.
There, a mouldering pile?Stretch'd its wide ruins, o'er the plain below?Casting a gloomy shade, save where the moon?Shone thro' its fretted windows: the dark Yew,?Withering with age, branched there its naked roots,?And there the melancholy Cypress rear'd?Its head; the earth was heav'd with many a mound,?And here and there a half-demolish'd tomb.
And now, amid the ruin's darkest shade,?The Virgin's eye beheld where pale blue flames?Rose wavering, now just gleaming from the earth,?And now in darkness drown'd. An aged man?Sat near, seated on what in long-past days?Had been some sculptur'd monument, now fallen?And half-obscured by moss, and gathered heaps?Of withered yew-leaves and earth-mouldering bones;?And shining in the ray was seen the track?Of slimy snail obscene. Composed his look,?His eye was large and rayless, and fix'd full?Upon the Maid; the blue flames on his face?Stream'd a pale light; his face was of the hue?Of death; his limbs were mantled in a shroud.
Then with a deep heart-terrifying voice,?Exclaim'd the