Chatsworth! thy stately mansion, and the pride Of thy domain, strange contrast do present To house and home in many a craggy rent Of the wild Peak; where new-born waters glide Through fields whose thrifty occupants abide 5 As in a dear and chosen banishment, With every semblance of entire content; So kind is simple Nature, fairly tried! Yet He whose heart in childhood gave her troth To pastoral dales, thin-set with modest farms, 10 May learn, if judgment strengthen with his growth, That, not for Fancy only, pomp hath charms; And, strenuous to protect from lawless harms The extremes of favoured life, may honour both. 1831 The Poems of 1831 included _The Primrose of the Rock_, a few Sonnets, and _Yarrow Revisited, and other Poems, composed during a tour in Scotland, and on the English Border, in the Autumn of 1831_.--ED. THE PRIMROSE OF THE ROCK Composed 1831.--Published 1835 [Written at Rydal Mount. The Rock stands on the right hand a little way leading up the middle road from Rydal to Grasmere. We have been in the habit of calling it the glow-worm rock from the number of glow-worms we have often seen hanging on it as described. The tuft of primrose has, I fear, been washed away by the heavy rains.--I.F.] One of the "Poems of the Imagination."--ED. A rock there is whose homely front[686] The passing traveller slights; Yet there the glow-worms hang their lamps, Like stars, at various heights; And one coy Primrose to that Rock 5 The vernal breeze invites. What hideous warfare hath been waged, What kingdoms overthrown, Since first I spied that Primrose-tuft And marked it for my own;[687] 10 A lasting link in Nature's chain From highest heaven let down! The flowers, still faithful to the stems, Their fellowship renew; The stems are faithful to the root, 15 That worketh out of view; And to the rock the root adheres In every fibre true. Close clings to earth the living rock, Though threatening still to fall; 20 The earth is constant to her sphere; And God upholds them all: So blooms this lonely Plant, nor dreads Her annual funeral. * * * * * Here closed the meditative strain; 25 But air breathed soft that day, The hoary mountain-heights were cheered, The sunny vale looked gay; And to the Primrose of the Rock I gave this after-lay. 30