Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, MANUSCRIPT ENGLISH ELEGIACS ON MOUNTAIN-CLIMBING IN CUMBERLAND, by ALFRED DENNIS GODLEY


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

MANUSCRIPT ENGLISH ELEGIACS ON MOUNTAIN-CLIMBING IN CUMBERLAND, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: Vale of the north, farewell! Farewell, o pastoral valley
Last Line: Never a thought unblest darken the image of you.
Alternate Author Name(s): Godley, A. D.
Subject(s): Cumberland, England; Mountain Climbing


I

VALE of the North, farewell! farewell, O pastoral valley,
Set where the great fells stand seamed with thin grass in the snow,
Full of vernal sounds, of the wind and rain of the mountains,
Brown of the bracken above, green of the larches below;
Pleasant it was in the dale on a morning of April to wander,
There where the falling becks sweetest of melody made,
While with a larger air and a sea-born breath of the West wind
Over the fells came spring chequering sunshine and shade!

II

Pleasant it was in the dale but pleasanter yet on the hill-tops,
Far past torrent and tarn up on the pinnacles high,
Gripping the precipice-edge, essaying the treacherous snow-step,
Rain-drenched, rock-stained, bruised, wary of hand and of eye;
Theirs is the heart of the hills who fare in snow and in sunshine,
Threading a slippery path, skirting a rocky abyss,
Theirs is the pleasure of life, and the ultimate bliss of achievement;
Show me a sport on earth keener and cleaner than this!
Spirit and sense attuned to the joy austere of the mountains,
They with an eye made clear, they with a purified sight,
Guerdon of travail behold, transforming the scene of their travail,
Marvels of earth and sky spread for the gazer's delight:
See, on days of cloud, to a pinnacled outlook ascending,
Many a peak rise black out of its vapoury floor:
See, from the cleft where they climb, like a picture set in the gully,
Mere and mountain afar, measureless mountain and moor;
These [? Then], O wished-for sight! from the Pillar's summit beholding
Ocean and evening sky blending in infinite span,
Floating afar to the west in the radiant gold of the sunset
Many a league away gaze on the vision of Man.

III

All things pass in time: and the ancient pleasures desert us;
Zeal and zest grow cool, labour is over and done;
[Never, I think, shall I taste of the joys I have known;]
Never for us the crags or the rock-hung snowy recesses,
[Not on the pinnacled heights or the grim grey (pitch) (slope) of the gully,]
As in the spring days past, as in the holidays gone.
Dale of the North, farewell! for thus it is better to leave you,
Now ere our limbs grow weak, now ere our spirit is cold --
Better than lingering on, outstaying the warmth of our welcome,
Gaining no more from the crags all that they gave us of old!
Thus in seasons to come, in days of depression and weakness,
Here, we will say, we strove, here we were strong for the fray:
Others may roam these fells: none love them better than we did:
Others may scale those rocks: we were as active as they:
Thus, O torrent and ghyll, O desolate ledges of Scafell,
Comrades of bygone days teaching to bear and to do,
Thus in memory live with a glamour of strength and of springtime,
Never a thought unblest darken the image of you.





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