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  William Wordsworth's poem "Picture of Daniel in the Lions' Den, at Hamilton Palace"  
                 
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© National Museums of Scotland / RCAHMS 		  The great English Romantic poet William Wordsworth visited Hamilton Palace and saw the Long Gallery in 1801, en-route with the Rush family to attend the wedding of their daughter Laura to Basil Montagu in Glasgow.

Thirty years later, Wordsworth returned to Scotland to visit Sir Walter Scott, at Scott's urging. His extensive tour resulted in Yarrow Revisited, and Other Poems, which contains these reflections on Rubens' painting and its setting.

Yarrow Revisited was published in 1835 and sold better than any of Wordsworth's previous single-title volumes.

PICTURE OF DANIEL IN THE LIONS' DEN, AT HAMILTON PALACE

Amid a fertile region green with wood
And fresh with rivers, well did it become
The ducal Owner, in his palace-home
To naturalise this tawny Lion brood;
Children of Art, that claim strange brotherhood
(Couched in their den) with those that roam at large
Over the burning wilderness, and charge
The wind with terror while they roar for food.
Satiate are these; and stilled to eye and ear;
Hence, while we gaze, a more enduring fear!
Yet is the Prophet calm, nor would the cave
Daunt him - if his Companions, now bedrowsed
Outstretched and listless, were by hunger roused:
Man placed him here, and God, he knows, can save.

 
                 
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  [ related links ]              
    Click for further informationDetail of Rubens engraving     Click for further informationEntry in 1643 Palace inventory  
                 
             
                 
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