An angry wind in the half-furled shrouds
    Laughed loud with a fiendish glee
And a pitying moon through the storm rent clouds
    Looked down on a surging sea.

Slowly but surely the huge ship keeled
    So slow that the iron tongue
Of the deck bell struck that one deep note pealed
    Then motionless, voiceless, hung.

A downward plunge like a wounded whale
    All sudden, unseen, scarce a scream,
Only the voice of the growling gale
    And the snort of the wave-choked steam.

A moment fraught with the bitterest throes
    Of death neath the ravenous wave
Another, five hundred spirits arose
    Each, from its watery grave.

One plunge, and five hundred mothers were left
    To weep for five hundred sons,
And a navy, queen of the seas was reft,
    Of her loudest thundering guns.

The sailor lad dreamed, as he swung in his sleep
    Of his home and his mother’s love
And he finished the dream ’twixt the restless deep
    And the shuddering stars above.

Down went the ship with her ghastly freight
    To the depths of a darker night
Nothing to show of her fearful fate
    But the loss of a lantern light.

Fathom on fathom, the huge hulk sank
    Like a guilty thing, while a sail
Or a splintered bar or a parted plank
    Sped up with its terrible tale.

Fathom on fathom, a shivering shock
    The snap of an iron mast
A clanging on chains on a wave worn rock
    And the dead are at rest at last.

There though all else be convulsed betide
    Pent up in their iron tomb
They’ll sleep side by side whatever betide
    In peace till the call of doom.

No yew trees shadow their bones as they lie
    But giant sea-ferns instead
And the finny sea monsters gather to pry
    Unscared at the fresh-come dead.

They fell not in fight, fury-flushed with the din
    Of the glorious battle cry
They heard but the roar as the waves rushed in
    And death was their victory.

Weep England, weep, thou mayest labour give
    Fresh voice to far greater guns
But never again to thy need will hie
    The least of thy silent sons.

[HMS Captain sank on 7 September 1870 due to faults in its design and construction that made it unstable.  Almost 500 men were lost.  Hardwicke composed this poem on hearing the news.  It is one of his unpublished early poems and can be found in the Notebook RR/1/7 in the Rawnsley Archives.]

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But the chief beauty of the prospect from above the Arnside Park wood was the wonder of flying gleam and purple shadow upon the hills out west.  Far beyond Cartmell fells the eye ranged on to Walney Scar and Coniston Old Man, and following the rampart of the hills northward to the east, saw clear Wetherlam, Crinkle Crags, Bowfell, Scafell, the Pikes, and an indistinguishable mass of lilac blue and deep cobalt where Helvellyn melted into High Street and High Street faded into the Pennine range. (p. 34)

We were soon in the park itself, lily-scent filling the air and lily leaves “for ever”; but not till one rummaged through the leafage did one find the tender stalk with its silver veles; and many more seemed to be in bud than in full flower.  It was not to be wondered at, for the past fortnight, as the keeper assured me, people had been picking hard from morn to night, “and the warst o’ t’ job is, they’re so greedy.  Our Maister ’ull likely close t’wood next year, for though he is glad folk should come and gether, he can’t abide all this basket wark.” (pp. 34-5)

“I see we are bidden pluck in moderation.”

“Ay, ay, but when you see a party of lasses coming in, each with two girt baskets on their arm, or as I fund last week, a man with a girt sack full upo’ his back, theer’s noe modration at all aboot it, ye knaw.  But you’re likely a foreigner,” he said, “and theer’s yon spot still ungethered if you’ll be content wi’ buds, and they’re the best far and away, for they come out i’ watter and lasts fer days and days, when tudder is blown and oaver.” (p. 35)

I had lost my friend—lily gatherers cannot possibly keep together—but guided by the keeper, I was soon at the place.  Impenetrable as the thicket had seemed, one did just as the keeper had done, crouched and turned one’s back to briar and oak scrub, and pushed oneself bravely unblinded and untorn to the lily sanctuary.  Through the twilight came shafts of sun, through the openings of the golden leafage shone the far-off sands in patches of opal and light.  A thrush sang his heart out as I kneeled on that scented green-tufted carpet, and plucked my hands full to my heart’s content.  Then on through a mazy wilderness where each lily bed called one, with its shining while pearls, now to this side, now to that, till tired out with the actual gathering, one straightened one’s back and leaned against a Scotch fir and looked out over a clearing enamelled with the gold rockrose, to the creeks that were filling with blue water, and to the far-away white line of the incoming tide. (pp. 35-6)

Thence by well-made paths walled up to heaven with hazel bowers, we went towards the outlet of the Park wood that leads to New Barn Farm.  A watcher asked to see my ticket as I passed, and told me much of the ways of the wild lily gatherers and their ideas of what gathering “in moderation” meant.  “It’s not my business, you know, sir, but I’ve often thowt that it is cruel to pick them the way they do.  Never no thought of anybody coming after them, and folks as pays a shilling has as much right to see the flowers to-day as they hed as paid to see ’em a week ago.  The agent used to put on sixpence, now he has to put on a shilling, and it’s my belief that he’ll have to end in making it half-a-crown, and all because them as comes is so terble greedy they don’t know, poor things, when they have got eneuf.” (p. 36)

I showed him, somewhat shamefacedly, my bunch. “Is that moderation?” said I.

“Lor, sir, you hevn’t picked nowhere near moderation, as we count moderation in lilies at Arnside, you know.”

And I went home relieved.  Past New Barn Farm with its kindly hostess, and its pleasant cup of tea for the tired lily-picker, away over the hard sands and the seaweed of the promontory, with marvellous distant vision of cobalt hills mingling with the golden opal of the far-shining sands, and the cries of stint and knot and plover at my side. (pp. 36-7)

The cuckoo called from the hill, and the curlew called from the sky, and the seagull called from the deep.  But there were other deeps and other heavens that held their winged messengers of joy, and I doubt if a heart ever heard clearer the call to praise than the heart of the man with his handful of lilies, who trudged that day homeward from the lily woodland by the western sea. (p. 37)

(Round the Lake Country, pp. 25-37)

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Up now through broken boulders, wet with perpetual mist, slippery with sodden leaf of russet gold, up till a double wych elm, or two elms bound in sisterly embrace—as if they had in fear clutched one another as they stood in awe upon the torrent’s brink, is gained; there in shelter of a huge rock, emerald-coated, silver-shining with the spray, we shelter from the drenching water-dust and see another view of glorious Lodore.  See and hear, for while the milk-white waters flash and swirl around the ebon boulders in mid-fall, we hear the tall upstanding cliffs make echo to their voice—such sound as he who hears can never quite forget.  We climb again up by a slippery path only fit for a goat’s foot, helped by impending branches, helped more by the thought that yonder one will gain not only the noblest view of the waterfall, but a far outlook over the wide-watered vale to grey-blue western hills, beyond which booms the sea that gave us, on the wings of the wind, all this majesty of sound and motion. (p. 185)

In this hurricane, the salt of that ocean is on one’s lips, and if its actual murmurs and the ‘scents of the infinite sea’ are denied us, at least by proxy they are ours.  For as we slowly win our way upward the scent of Lodore fills the air, even as its sound fills our ears.  Not the kind of paper-mill scent one knows so well within the locks or by the back-waters of the Thames, but scent born of mountain springs and fellside tarns and peaty meadows—scents as delicate as they are subtle. (pp. 185-186)

We have gained our vantage point for sight and sound.  The huge rocks appear like leviathans bobbing their noses through the foam.  A tree trunk has fallen, and seems to have been caught and held by the mouth of some vast hippopotamus, who rejoices as the torrent dashes over his vast back.  And the sound is not of bellowing behemoth or snorting river-horse.  No; but such sound as seems to bring all worlds to unison.  Shut your eyes, lean, and listen; you may hear a mighty army tramping by, you may hear the clashing of innumerable bells, you may hear the blare of trumpets, you may hear the shouting of a festal multitude, and ever beneath the deepest harmonies the tattoo of the thundering river-god, the drum-drum-drumming of Lodore. (p. 186)….

We turned for home; a patch of blue sky shone momentarily above the purple hollow of sound and foam.  And though still ‘the forest cracked, the waters curled,’ a sunbeam showered radiance as it flew by moaning woodland and by silent crag.  In the Great Wood all colours of purple, amber, rose, and amethyst leapt out at the passing of that gleam.  One could not but compare the marvellous and changeful effects of light and colour to those that, in some enchanted land of mystery, the coloured fires of the wizard of the pantomime calls forth, for our children’s amazement. (p. 188)

Now all near was dark, while far ahead the witchery of the golden woodland grew.  Now Walla Crag stood purple grey, now shone in lucent silver powdered with larch-tree gold, whilst ever on beyond the woody lane, Skiddaw, as blue as solid cobalt, rose calmly up into a wandering storm-white sky.  And yet for all this witchery of colour, for all this magic transformation scene, one vision stayed—that far-off wreath of quiet snow,—snow that had turned on nearer view to scent and sound, to light and life and laughter, to power and impassioned loveliness, there in the resonant chasm of Lodore. (p. 188)

(Lake Country Sketches, pp. 176-188)

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Scarce has the sun, in rosy-jewelled might,
        Sunk, when thy double gems with sweet surprise
Spring from the dusky waters, and the eyes
Of mariners bless thee all the weary night.
Oh, never stars in heaven with more delight
Were hailed, than these wave-risen!  Lo, outflies
A roseate gleam and into darkness dies,
Then, thro’ the tempest, flashes into white.
So, heart, must thou, in dangerous waters set,
Flash from the lamp of truth its many hues,
With pause alternate, thro’ the trembling dark—
Thy light, such light as care-worn faces, wet
With sad salt water, cannot fail but choose
To steer by, when for home they sail their bark.

(Sonnets Round the Coast, p. 87)

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