Souvenir of the George Borrow Celebration: Norwich, July 5th, 1913Hooper, James
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Souvenir of the George Borrow Celebration: Norwich, July 5th, 1913
Hooper, James
Authors, English -- 19th century -- Biography; Borrow, George, 1803-1881
The Bible was thy chart, the open sky
Thy roof and rafter
Often, and thou didst learn night's mystery;
Learning some tale from each poor passer-by,
Some gracious secret for the grand Hereafter.
Master of lore
Occult, and wanderer on the wildest shore.
3
What country was not trodden by thy feet,
Nor bared its bosom
And fragrance to the life it leapt to greet?
From field and upland or where waters meet
Was stolen, the virgin dew, the veiled blossom.
Its native tongue
On stranger lips, in every climate hung.
4
Pursuer of shy paths, all hunted things
All creatures lonely,
Gypsy and fox and hawk with slanted wings;
These drank with thee at the same cosmic springs,
These were thy teachers and thy playmates only.
Nature gave up
To them and thee alike, her hidden cup.
5
Who brought its glory back to cloistered Wales,
And wrung their treasure
From sacred books and dim sequestered vales?
Who found the gold in haunted heights and dales,
And showed a wondering world its pride and pleasure?
Divine and strong
Stood out the altar, with its flame of song.
6
Thy bardlike power, the passion of thy thirst
For something greater,
Awoke old Cymric melodies the first;
Till all the mountains into music burst,
And their lost glory crowned the recreator.
Outpoured as wine
Thy magic words made every shade a shrine.
7
Priest of the portals into the Unknown,
Taught by no college,
And free of every fountain but thine own;
A waif, an exile, by the breezes blown
Hither and thither to fresh fields of knowledge,
That giant form,
Fearless, and still no moment, rode the storm.
8
From land to land a pilgrim, yet at home
Where'er thy journey
Thou didst a dweller in the Eternal come;
The dust thy floor, the heaven of stars thy dome,
To break a lance for Truth in some new tourney.
With Nature blent
Art thou, and the wide world thy monument.
9
Thou gypsy of all time, no lot seems strange,
No life was sterile
To that free spirit, wrought by rugged change;
Thy heart found rest in strife, and did outrange
The farthest fancy, and woo the sorest peril.
Hardships and lack
Were comrades, and the milestones on thy track.
F. W. ORDE WARD.
GEORGE HENRY BORROW.
The time is ripe, and over ripe, for a commemorative celebration of
George Borrow in a city with which he was so long, and so intimately,
associated as he was with Norwich. His increasing fame as a foremost
literary man of the nineteenth century is amply witnessed to by the
various biographies of him, and the numerous appreciations of him by
writers of repute, and Mr. Clement Shorter's forthcoming "Life of Borrow"
will certainly add to the cult.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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