Sydney Dobell
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POETICAL WORKS SYDNEY DOBELL. THE POETICAL WORKS OF SYDNEY DOBELL. ' The flashes of the fire Are fire, that which was soul is spirit still. And shall not die,' WITH INTRODUCTORY NOTICE AND MEMOIR JOHN NICHOL, M.A. OXON. LL.D. PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH LITERATURE IN THE UNIVERSITY OF GLASGOW. VOL. L LONDON: SMITH, ELDER, & CO., .15 WATERLOO PLACE. 1875. CONTENTS THE FIRST VOLUME. K>W<CX PAGE MEMOIR ix THE ROMAN {A Dramatic Poem) 3 MLSCELLANEOUS POEMS : A MUSING ON A VICTORY (1847) .... 189 ISABEL . ^ . 194 To A CATHEDRAL TOWER, ON THE EVENING OF THE THIRTY-FIFTH ANNIVERSARY OF WATERLOO . 197 CRAZED .....,.,, 201 THE SNOWDROP IN THE SNOW .... 213 THE HARPS OF HEAVEN 217 SONNETS ON THE WAR (The Crimean Stniggle) L'AVENIR ........ 225 THE ARMY SURGEON 226 THE WOUNDED 227 THE WOUNDED 22S VI CONTENTS. SONNETS ON THE WNR—continued PAGE VOX POPULI 229 CZAR NICHOLAS 230 CAVALRY CHARGE AT BALACLAVA. 231 HOME, IN WAR-TIME . 232 WARNING 233 AMERICA 234 AMERICA 235 A STATESMAN 236 POLAND. ITALY. HUNGARY .... 237 JERUSALEM 238 AUSTRIAN ALLIANCE 239 CHILDLESS 240 THE COMMON GRAVE 241 ESSE ET POSSE 242 GOOD-NIGHT IN WAR-TIME 243 ENGLAND IN TIME OF WAR: DESOLATE 247 THE MARKET-WIFE'S SONG 249 THE LITTLE GIRL'S SONG 252 ' HE IS SAFE' 256 THE SODGER'S LASSIE 258 LADY CONSTANCE 261 How's MY BOY 265 FAREWELL 267 THE MILKMAID'S SONG 272 CONTENTS. VU ENGLAND IN TIME OF ^NAK—continued. PAGK THE GERMAN LEGION . 278 A HEALTH TO THE QUEEN 282 WOE IS ME 286 THE YOUNG MAN'S SONG 288 DEAD-MAID'S-POOL ........ 294 THE SAILOR'S RETURN 303 THE WIDOW'S LULLABY 305 THE GABERLUNZIE'S WALK 309 LIBERTY TO M. LE DIPLOMATE 314 AN EVENING DREAM 315 IN WAR-TIME. A Psalm of the Heart . 325 A SHOWER IN WAR-TIME 331 IN WAR-TIME. A Prayer of the Understanding . 342 A HERO'S GRAVE 346 IN WAR-TIME. An Aspiration of the Spirit . 353 HOME, WOUNDED , 359 A NUPTIAL EVE (Keith of Ravelston) . 371 THE MOTHER'S LESSON 374 ALONE 385 FAREWELL 386 SLEEPING AND WAKING 390 'HE LOVES AND HE RIDES AWAY' .... 391 THE CAPTAIN'S WIFE 398 GRASS FROM THE BATTLE-FIELD .... 403 AFLOAT AND ASHORE ....... 418 THE GHOST'S RETURN 421 VlII CONTENTS. ENGLAND IN TIME OF WAK—continued. PAGE DAFT JEAN 423 THE RECRUIT'S BALL 426 FOR CHARITY'S SAKE 428 WIND 430 ' WHEN THE RAIN IS ON THE ROOF ' . 432 THE BOTANIST'S VISION 441 THE ORPHAN'S SONG . 442 TOMMY'S DEAD 448 SHE TOUCHES A SAD STRING OF SOFT RECALL ' . 453 IN MEMORIAM. THE POET whose work is for the first time, in a proxi mately complete form, brought before the public, has been removed from us under circumstances which de volve on those who were privileged with his com panionship the duty of endeavouring to supplement the somewhat fragmentary impressions of his career. Mr. Sydney Dobell died on August 2 2, in his fifty-first year ; his literary fame was achieved before his thirtieth; his literary labours may be said to have well nigh closed with his thirty-fifth. Two longer poems and a volume of minor pieces, making the greater bulk of what he has left behind him, are the product of comparative youth, but bear the stamp of an original and singularly subtle mind, and exhibit sufficient power to continue to affect the thoughts and sympathies of his contemporaries. Passing in his prime, he has yet lived through fifteen years of enforced silence—his brilliant promise having been cruelly curtailed by physical disaster—into a new atmosphere of the rapidly shifting cloud-strata of nineteenth century criticism. ' Pre terit dies diem.' Every decade has its standards, idols, aversions and neglects. The PreraphaeUte has succeeded X IN IIEMORIAM. to the so-called Spasmodic, as the Spasmodic flashed for a season across the Tennysonian, as the Tennysonian superseded the Byronic school. This is not the place to attempt to estimate the import of these changes in the history of Art; but they testify to the shortness of our memories. Our wish is to be permitted briefly to direct attention to some of the attributes of a character which, more steadfast than fashions, stronger than suffering, and superior to the frustration of unselfish ambitions, has left to all within the range of its influence a noble example of an English life. Sydney Dobell was born on April 5,1824, at Cranbrook, in Kent, the eldest son of the descendant of an old Sussex family distinguished on the Cavalier side when Charles was king. From both sides of his ancestry he inherited literary and speculative tastes, manifested during his early years, spent at Peckham Rye, near London, by the compo sition of some precocious juvenile verses. His mother was a daughter of Samuel Thompson, a well-known political reformer in the early part of the century, and advocate of a new union of Christians on a comprehensive basis. His father was John Dobell, author of a pamphlet on Government, who subsequently settled as a wine merchant at Cheltenham. In his twelfth year the family removed to Gloucestershire, and the poet maintained with various degrees of activity till his-death his connec tion with the calling and the district. In practical illus tration of a theory like that carried out with results in some respects similar by the elder Mill, he was, with four other sons and five daughters, educated by private IN MEMORIAM. XI tutors, and by his own study, pursued with a zeal already excessive, entirely at home, and was never sent to school or University. To this fact he makes an interesting refer ence in the course of some frequently humorous verses on Cheltenham College, which date from his eighteenth year. They profess to have been discovered in an ancient manuscript, and copy, with imperfect success, the spelling of Chaucer, but they evince the passion for nature which is one of the most easily appreciable charms of his maturest work : ' Little in human schules have I beene ; My coUedge is all carpeted with greene, And archfed with a roof of spangled blue, My Hippocrene is the early dewe, My seate turf-piled is dight with faery sheene, My table some old stone no handes did hewe, Or twisted roote of cake or classicke beech. My servitor, the sweetly spoken breeze, Strange unwritte books doth bringe me one by one. Well pleased I make and take my own degree, Master of many arts no schule can teach; My colledge hath no termes. Its doctors are Righte eloquent sweet flow'res and whisperinge trees, Whereof the winde takes counselle ; everie star That discourseth all nighte with silent speeche ; Greye reverende hilles with foreheads bare with age. Great stormes that argue sterfllie each with each When woods chant anthems, and a streame or two For work-day rausicke.' Home education undoubtedly fosters the precocious forms of genius j but in absence of social checks it too often permits originality to degenerate into eccentricity. To the circumstances of the poet's early training may be traced many peculiarities of a mind never sufficiently XU IN MF.MORIAM. influenced by the contact and friction of its equals. Innate benevolence of nature (tu^vi'a) prevented this isolation in Mr. Dobell's case from manifesting itself as a moral, but it remained an intellectual, defect. He lived more for those around him than for himself, but he lived mentally to a great extent by himself; for though he gave much he received little, and found it hard to descend from the heights among which, even in boyhood, in solitary night-watches, he loved to lose himself, to the beaten paths of meaner life. He had all the reverence for superior wisdom which belongs to wisdom, but to ordinary criticism he remained singularly unamenable. In 1844 he married Emily, daughter of George Fordham, of Odsey House, Cambridgeshire—whose family is one of the oldest in that county—a lady to whom in his sixteenth year he had been engaged; for thirty years his constant companion in * the quiet wood land ways,' The early years of their wedded life were divided between residence at Cheltenham, where Sydney continued to superintend his father's business, and some pleasant country places among the hills, the chief of which were Hucclecote on the Via Arminia and Cox- home House, their home for five summers in the valley of Charlton iCings. This period, as that which preceded it, was marked by the composition of many minor pieces, in some of which he appeared as a zealous politician and ardent reformer, and by the progress of his first considerable work. The charm of Mr. Dobell's manner had in his youth at Cheltenham attracted the attention of the most culti- IN MEMORIAM. XUl vated men in the neighbourhood and some distinguished strangers; among these Thomas Campbell visited him and admired his powers of conversation. A meeting with Mr. Stansfeld and Mr. George Dawson at Coxhome is said to have originated the society of the ' Friends of Italy.' The poet's enthusiasm for the Italian cause, with the various fluctuations of which he continued to be intimately acquainted, never abated; it remained —as evinced by one of his latest fragments entitled ' Mentana'—amid many changes of opinion, a link be tween his earlier and later politics. The outcome of this sentiment, his first published poem ' The Roman,' written among the Cotswolds, and inspired by the stirring events which have since proved prophetic of the liberation of the Peninsula, appeared in 1850.