No More Learning

DIRGE

Mourn, Shepherd, near thy old grey stone;
Thou Angler, by the silent flood;
And mourn when thou art all alone, 35
Thou Woodman, in the distant wood!

Thou one blind Sailor, rich in joy
Though blind, thy tunes in sadness hum;
And mourn, thou poor half-witted Boy!
Born deaf, and living deaf and dumb. 40

Thou drooping sick Man, bless the Guide
Who checked or turned thy headstrong youth,
As he before had sanctified
Thy infancy with heavenly truth.

Ye Striplings, light of heart and gay, 45
Bold settlers on some foreign shore,
Give, when your thoughts are turned this way,
A sigh to him whom we deplore.

For us who here in funeral strain
With one accord our voices raise, 50
Let sorrow overcharged with pain
Be lost in thankfulness and praise.

And when our hearts shall feel a sting
From ill we meet or good we miss,
May touches of his memory bring 55
Fond healing, like a mother's kiss.


BY THE SIDE OF THE GRAVE SOME YEARS AFTER

Long time his pulse hath ceased to beat;
But benefits, his gift, we trace--
Expressed in every eye we meet
Round this dear Vale, his native place. 60

To stately Hall and Cottage rude
Flowed from his life what still they hold,
Light pleasures, every day, renewed;
And blessings half a century old.

Oh true of heart, of spirit gay, 65
Thy faults, where not already gone
From memory, prolong their stay
For charity's sweet sake alone.

Such solace find we for our loss;
And what beyond this thought we crave 70
Comes in the promise from the Cross,
Shining upon thy happy grave.



To this poem, when first published in the "Poems of Early and Late
Years" (1842), Wordsworth appended the note, "See, upon the subject of
the three foregoing pieces, 'The Fountain' [p. 91], etc. etc. in the
fifth volume of the Author's Poems.
" He thus connects it with the poems
referring to Matthew in such a way that it may be said to belong to that
series; and, while he assigned it to the year 1798, both in the edition
of 1845, and in that of 1849-50, it is quite possible that it was
written in 1799. "The village school" was the Grammar School of
Hawkshead, where Wordsworth spent his boyhood; and the schoolmaster was
the Rev. William Taylor, M. A. , Emmanuel College, Cambridge, who was the
third of the four masters who taught in it during Wordsworth's residence
there. He was master from 1782 to 1786. Just before his death he sent
for the upper boys of the school (amongst whom was Wordsworth), and
calling them into his room, took leave of them with a solemn blessing.
This farewell doubtless suggested the lines:

'the blessing which to you
Our common Friend and Father sent. '

Mr. Taylor was buried in Cartmell Churchyard. In 'The Prelude',
Wordsworth writes of him as "an honoured teacher of my youth;" and there
describes, with some minuteness, a visit to his grave. (See book x. l.
532. ) It will be seen, however, from the Fenwick note to 'Matthew', that
the Hawkshead Schoolmaster, like the Wanderer in 'The Excursion', was
"made up of several both of his class and men of other occupations;" but
of the four masters who taught Wordsworth at Hawkshead--Peake,
Christian, Taylor, and Bowman--Taylor was far the ablest, the most
interesting, and the most beloved by the boys, and it was doubtless the
memory of this man that gave rise to the above poem, and the four which
follow it. He was but thirty-two years old when he died, 12th June,
1786.