whisper as they wave, Some future blessings he may yet enjoy. And as above him sail the silver clouds,
660 He follows them in thought to distant climes, Where, far from the cold policy of this, Dividing him from her he fondly loves, He, in some island of the southern sea,9 May haply build his cane-constructed bower
665 Beneath the bread-fruit, or aspiring palm, With long green foliage rippling in the gale. Oh! let him cherish his ideal bliss? For what is life, when Hope has ceas'd to strew Her fragile flowers along its thorny way?
670 And sad and gloomy are his days, who lives Of Hope abandon'd!
Just beneath the rock Where Beachy overpeers the channel wave,
9. An allusion to the visionary delights of the fertility of their country gives them, produces the newly discovered islands [Polynesia], where it was grossest vices; and a degree of corruption that late at first believed men lived in a state of simplicity navigators think will end in the extirpation of the and happiness; but where, as later enquiries have whole people in a few years [Smith's note]. ascertained, that exemption from toil, which the
.
BEACHY HEAD / 65
Within a cavern mined by wintry tides Dwelt one,1 who long disgusted with the world
675 And all its ways, appear'd to suffer life Rather than live; the soul-reviving gale, Fanning the bean-field, or the thymy? heath, abounding in thyme Had not for many summers breathed on him; And nothing mark'd to him the season's change,
6so Save that more gently rose the placid sea, And that the birds which winter on the coast Gave place to other migrants; save that the fog, Hovering no more above the beetling cliffs Betray'd not then the little careless sheep2
685 On the brink grazing, while their headlong fall Near the lone Hermit's flint-surrounded home, Claim'd unavailing pity; for his heart Was feelingly alive to all that breath'd; And outraged as he was, in sanguine youth,
690 By human crimes, he still acutely felt For human misery.
Wandering on the beach, He learn'd to augur from the clouds of heaven, And from the changing colours of the sea, And sullen murmurs of the hollow cliffs,
695 Or the dark porpoises,3 that near the shore Gambol'd and sported on the level brine When tempests were approaching: then at night He listen'd to the wind; and as it drove The billows with o'erwhelming vehemence
7oo He, starting from his rugged couch, went forth And hazarding a life, too valueless, He waded thro' the waves, with plank or pole Towards where the mariner in conflict dread Was buffeting for life the roaring surge;
705 And now just seen, now lost in foaming gulphs, The dismal gleaming of the clouded moon Shew'd the dire peril. Often he had snatch'd From the wild billows, some unhappy man Who liv'd to bless the hermit of the rocks.
710 But if his generous cares were all in vain, And with slow swell the tide of morning bore Some blue swol'n cor'se? to land; the pale recluse corpse Dug in the chalk a sepulchre?above Where the dank sea-wrack0 mark'd the utmost tide, refuse from the sea
1. In a cavern almost immediately under the cliff called Beachy Head, there lived, as the people of the country believed, a man of the name of Darby, who for many years had no other abode than this cave, and subsisted almost entirely on shell-fish. He had often administered assistance to shipwrecked mariners; but venturing into the sea on this charitable mission during a violent equinoctial storm, he himself perished. As it is above thirty years since I heard this tradition of Parson Darby (for so I think he was called): it may now perhaps be forgotten [Smith's note].
2. Sometimes in thick weather the sheep feeding on the summit of the cliff, miss their footing, and are killed by the fall [Smith's note]. 3. Dark porpoises. Del-phimts phoccena [Smith's note].
.
66 / MARY ROBINSON
715 And with his prayers perform'd the obsequies For the poor helpless stranger.
One dark night The equinoctial wind blew south by west, Fierce on the shore;?the bellowing cliffs were shook Even to their stony base, and fragments fell
720 Flashing and thundering on the angry flood. At day-break, anxious for the lonely man, His cave the mountain shepherds visited, Tho' sand and banks of weeds had choak'd their way. ? He was not in it; but his drowned cor'se
725 By the waves wafted, near his former home Receiv'd the rites of burial. Those who read Chisel'd within the rock, these mournful lines, Memorials of his sufferings, did not grieve, That dying in the cause of charity
730 His spirit, from its earthly bondage freed, Had to some better region fled for ever.
1806 1807
MARY ROBINSON 1 757??1800
Mary Robinson, whom the Dictionary of National Biography, at the beginning of a long entry, describes as 'actress, author, and mistress of George, Prince of Wales,' lived a more sensational life than any other poet of the period, Byron and Shelley included. Her father was a Bristol whaler, her mother a woman of 'genteel background' who, after her husband deserted the family, ran a school for girls. At fifteen Mary was married to Thomas Robinson, an articled law clerk who seemed a good match but quickly proved a gambler and libertine; he was arrested for debt, and Mary and her infant daughter spent a year with him in debtors' prison, where, to pass the time, she began writing poetry. Her first pieces appeared in a two-volume Poems published under the patronage of the duchess of Devonshire in 1775.
In December 1776, accepting a long-standing invitation of David Garrick, the actor-manager of the Drury Lane theater, Robinson made her stage debut as Juliet, and for the next four years she was constantly before the
