Selected Poetry: Epistle to Augusta

Epistle to Augusta, published 1830

1 My sister! my sweet sister! if a name
2 Dearer and purer were, it should be thine.
3 Mountains and seas divide us, but I claim
4 No tears, but tenderness to answer mine:
5 Go where I will, to me thou art the same
6 A lov'd regret which I would not resign.
7 There yet are two things in my destiny--
8 A world to roam through, and a home with thee.

9 The first were nothing--had I still the last,
10 It were the haven of my happiness;
11 But other claims and other ties thou hast,
12 And mine is not the wish to make them less.
13 A strange doom is thy father's son's, and past
14 Recalling, as it lies beyond redress;
15 Revers'd for him our grandsire's fate of yore--
16 He had no rest at sea, nor I on shore.

17 If my inheritance of storms hath been
18 In other elements, and on the rocks
19 Of perils, overlook'd or unforeseen,
20 I have sustain'd my share of worldly shocks,
21 The fault was mine; nor do I seek to screen
22 My errors with defensive paradox;
23 I have been cunning in mine overthrow,
24 The careful pilot of my proper woe.

25 Mine were my faults, and mine be their reward.
26 My whole life was a contest, since the day
27 That gave me being, gave me that which marr'd
28 The gift--a fate, or will, that walk'd astray;
29 And I at times have found the struggle hard,
30 And thought of shaking off my bonds of clay:
31 But now I fain would for a time survive,
32 If but to see what next can well arrive.

33 Kingdoms and empires in my little day
34 I have outliv'd, and yet I am not old;
35 And when I look on this, the petty spray
36 Of my own years of trouble, which have roll'd
37 Like a wild bay of breakers, melts away:
38 Something--I know not what--does still uphold
39 A spirit of slight patience; not in vain,
40 Even for its own sake, do we purchase pain.

41 Perhaps the workings of defiance stir
42 Within me--or perhaps a cold despair,
43 Brought on when ills habitually recur,
44 Perhaps a kinder clime, or purer air
45 (For even to this may change of soul refer,
46 And with light armour we may learn to bear),
47 Have taught me a strange quiet, which was not
48 The chief companion of a calmer lot.

49 I feel almost at times as I have felt
50 In happy childhood; trees, and flowers, and brooks,
51 Which do remember me of where I dwelt
52 Ere my young mind was sacrific'd to books,
53 Come as of yore upon me, and can melt
54 My heart with recognition of their looks;
55 And even at moments I could think I see
56 Some living thing to love--but none like thee.

57 Here are the Alpine landscapes which create
58 A fund for contemplation; to admire
59 Is a brief feeling of a trivial date;
60 But something worthier do such scenes inspire:
61 Here to be lonely is not desolate,
62 For much I view which I could most desire,
63 And, above all, a lake I can behold
64 Lovelier, not dearer, than our own of old.

65 Oh that thou wert but with me!--but I grow
66 The fool of my own wishes, and forget
67 The solitude which I have vaunted so
68 Has lost its praise in this but one regret;
69 There may be others which I less may show;
70 I am not of the plaintive mood, and yet
71 I feel an ebb in my philosophy,
72 And the tide rising in my alter'd eye.

73 I did remind thee of our own dear Lake,
74 By the old Hall which may be mine no more.
75 Leman's is fair; but think not I forsake
76 The sweet remembrance of a dearer shore:
77 Sad havoc Time must with my memory make
78 Ere that or thou can fade these eyes before;
79 Though, like all things which I have lov'd, they are
80 Resign'd for ever, or divided far.

81 The world is all before me; I but ask
82 Of Nature that with which she will comply--
83 It is but in her summer's sun to bask,
84 To mingle with the quiet of her sky,
85 To see her gentle face without a mask,
86 And never gaze on it with apathy.
87 She was my early friend, and now shall be
88 My sister--till I look again on thee.

89 I can reduce all feelings but this one;
90 And that I would not; for at length I see
91 Such scenes as those wherein my life begun,
92 The earliest--even the only paths for me--
93 Had I but sooner learnt the crowd to shun,
94 I had been better than I now can be;
95 The passions which have torn me would have slept;
96 I had not suffer'd, and thou hadst not wept.

97 With false Ambition what had I to do?
98 Little with Love, and least of all with Fame;
99 And yet they came unsought, and with me grew,
100 And made me all which they can make--a name,
101 Yet this was not the end I did pursue;
102 Surely I once beheld a nobler aim.
103 But all is over--I am one the more
104 To baffled millions which have gone before.

105 And for the future, this world's future may
106 From me demand but little of my care;
107 I have outliv'd myself by many a day,
108 Having surviv'd so many things that were;
109 My years have been no slumber, but the prey
110 Of ceaseless vigils; for I had the share
111 Of life which might have fill'd a century,
112 Before its fourth in time had pass'd me by.

113 And for the remnant which may be to come
114 I am content; and for the past I feel
115 Not thankless, for within the crowded sum
116 Of struggles, happiness at times would steal,
117 And for the present, I would not benumb
118 My feelings further. Nor shall I conceal
119 That with all this I still can look around,
120 And worship Nature with a thought profound.

121 For thee, my own sweet sister, in thy heart
122 I know myself secure, as thou in mine;
123 We were and are--I am, even as thou art--
124 Beings who ne'er each other can resign;
125 It is the same, together or apart,
126 From life's commencement to its slow decline
127 We are entwin'd--let death come slow or fast,
128 The tie which bound the first endures the last!