(In Memoriam : William Greenip (rural postman), a close observer of nature: obiit, November 1st at Keswick.)

GOD sometimes fills a poor man’s patient heart
    With his own reverent love and constant care
    For all the things He hath created fair,—
Birds, flowers, the wings that fly, the fins that dart,—
And therewithal by Nature’s winsome art 
    Leads him to heights of philosophic air
    Where clamour dies, Heaven’s ether is so rare,
And bids him walk with gentleness apart.
Friend! such wert thou: the Newlands valley dew,
    The star o’er Grisedale’s purple head that shone,
        Were not more silent, but each stream and glade,
Each bird that flashed, all dusky moths that flew,
    All flowers held commune with thee.  Thou art gone:
        And Nature mourns the tender heart she made.

(English Lakes Visitor and Keswick Guardian, 22 November 1890, p. 4)

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Dear girl, of all the shells to-morrow’s tide
        Shall from the bounteous ocean cast ashore,
Though each some sweet congratulation bore,
One shell must needs be added, one beside
All others to be cherished!  It will hide
Within its whispering gallery at the core
A jewel for thine ear; sought out the more,
Lest oceanwards ungathered it may slide
For Aphrodite’s keeping.  Happy girl,
Upon whose brow the eighteenth March has set
Grace and sweet bloom, be wise, the god of Love
Works even of friendship sorrow.  Pure the pearl
I offer for your birthday coronet:
Pearl is but pain with rainbow overwove.

(Sonnets Round the Coast, p. 119)

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The monument that we unveil to-day consists of a simple monolithic block of Borrowdale stone, rough and unhewn as it came from the quarry.  It is of the type of the standing stones of Galloway, which are the earliest Christian monuments of the Celtic people now extant.  This form has been chosen as linking us here with that land across the Solway, whence Ruskin’s fore-elders came.  Upon one side is incised a simple Chi-Rho, enclosed in a circle after the fashion of those earliest crosses, with the following inscription beneath from Deucalion, Lecture xii., par. 40:—'The Spirit of God is around you in the air you breathe—His Glory in the light that you see, and in the fruitfulness of the earth and the joy of His creatures, He has written for you day by day His revelation, as He has granted you day by day your daily bread.’ (p. 215)

It may serve to perpetuate to passers by one of the messages of the Teacher, and the cross above it may strike a keynote which, at any rate, I find ringing up from so much that Ruskin wrote, and from all of his daily life I knew or have heard of. (p. 216)

On the other side of the monolith, facing the lake and the scene which Ruskin once described to a friend of mine “as one of the three most beautiful scenes in Europe,” we have a medallion in bronze, the careful work of Signor Lucchesi, representing Ruskin not as the old man and invalid of later days, but as he was in his prime, at the time I knew him best, at Oxford, in the early seventies.  The head is in profile; a crown of wild olive is seen in the background of the panel, which is dished or hollowed to give the profile high relief, and Ruskin’s favourite motto, “To-day,” is introduced among the olive leaves in the background over the head.  Above the portrait is the name “John Ruskin,” beneath are his dates 1819 to 1900.  Beneath these again is incised the inscription, ‘The first thing that I remember as an event in life was being taken by my nurse to the brow of Friar’s Crag, Derwentwater.’ (p. 216)

The lettering has been designed and drawn by Ruskin’s biographer, Mr. Collingwood, and was so designed to indicate that particular dot and dash style of drawing which was a favourite method with the Master.  We have to thank Mr. Bromley, the stone cutter, for his care in selecting the block, and his nephew for his cutting of the letters as well. (p. 217)

The monument in its simplicity and sincerity has at any rate the merit of telling its own story, and of being devoid of any unnecessary ornament.  It is of the stone of the country, and placed here on this grassy knoll among the trees, seems to be a natural part of the surroundings, and can in no way, either by colour or by scale, incur the charge of being vulgar or intrusive or a blot upon the scene.  It grows out of the ground. (p. 217)

It is erected by leave of the Lord of the Manor here, in the neighbourhood of a scene so dear and memorable to John Ruskin, in entire accordance with his teaching.  He has told us that ‘whenever the conduct or writings of any individual have been directed or inspired by Nature, Nature should be entrusted with their monument’; and again, ‘that since all monuments to individuals are to a certain extant triumphant, they must not be placed where Nature has no elevation of character.’ (p. 217)

The elevated nature of this scene will not be called in question.  And this simple memorial has been placed by friends and lovers of John Ruskin here to shew our gratitude for that servant of God and of the people whose eyes were opened here first to the wonder of creation and the beauty of God’s handiwork; and in the full belief that the scene will lose nothing of natural dignity and power to impress by the memory of how it was able, in the year 1824, to impress and inspire John Ruskin. (pp. 217-218)

(Ruskin and the English Lakes, pp. 207-218)

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 [English Prize verse]

Midnight is past – the pouring rain
  Drives hitting on the window pane
        The west wind fiercely blows;
No cats, or Tabby, black or white^*
  Have left the warm hearthstones tonight
        To soil their dainty toes.

The rain has ceased; with sharp quick cries
  Around the house a swallow flies,
        And tells us dawn is here;
Then slowly from the dripping trees
  Voice answers voice, and by degrees
        Birds twitter everywhere.

Night’s mantle slips, and now again
  The south wind turns the steeple vane
        And light awhile is grey;
Then sudden in the dawning East
  A long cloud lights its rose flushed breast
        And ushers in Today.

Up rose the sun, and wondrous bright
  Bathed bluff Northampton’s hills in light
        Streamed up each opening vale
Peered through the triple window’d spire
  Set the school chapel all on fire
        And made the dawning pale.

But soon each tiny burning-glass
  That hung on tree, on bud, on grass
        Its spirit power would win;
And tired of catching solar rays
  Rises to Heaven in purple haze
        Like Eastern fabled Djinn.

It wraps from sight the distant wood
  Steals up the vale & o’er the flood,
        Where swimmers are at play,
Then passes by the cricket field,
  Where boys are met to win or yield,
        For ’tis a match today.

It fades, and leaden clouds on high,
  Portending thunder, fill the sky;
        Hush’d are the blackbirds songs,
The late-come swifts now skim the ground,
  To seek the gnats that there are found,
        In wavy buzzing throngs.

But see the long imprisoned sun,
  Bursts from amid the cloudlets dun,
        And bids the blackbirds sing;
Now snow-white fleecy clouds are seen
  Passing their mirage o’er the green,
        In shadows that they fling.

We stroll; the erst so dark green wheat
  Shines white & wan about our feet
        Washed by the heavy rains.
Corncrakes are busy in the grass
  And larks spring up as on we pass
        To carol evening strains.

Yon old green wall is bright with trails
  Of frosted silver, where the snails
        Have passed along, last night;
See this huge caterpillar track
  His way with undulating back,
        Now swollen, now slim and slight.

That nettle bed is all alive
  With hairy shapes that grow and thrive
        And die with wings at last.
Scarce said, as if to verify
  My words, a shattered butterfly
        An orange-tip flew past.

Then on through meads whose king-cups pour
  About our feet their golden store,
        The dust of fairy-land.
And may-flies rising as we walk
  With galaxy wings, from stalk to stalk
        Flit on – a lazy band.

We paused, ’neath chestnut trees, whose flowers
  Like cressets hung in faery bowers,
        Gleamed in the evening light;
When from the topmost boughs of all
  Two cuckoos flew, without a call
        Nor wishing us goodnight.

Here myriad emerald coated things,
  With tiny ever-sparkling wings
        Creep up each grassy blade
There lady-birds sit ruby bright
  And spiders, scarlet spots of light,
        Fleck here & there the shade.

Then Home – the Eastern sky’s aglow,
  Its huge clouds move majestic, slow,
        Illumined from the West;
But sudden all their glory flies,
  The life of light within them dies
        The sun has sunk to rest.
                                                                                                Uppingham. 1 June 1869

* Alluding to the cats that prowl about the School House wall at night.

[Unpublished poem, written when Hardwicke was 17 and at Uppingham School.  It has been transcribed from RR/1/7, Catherine Rawnsley’s Commonplace Book, held in the Rawnsley Archives]

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