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Title: The Poetical Works of Thomas Campbell
Author: Campbell, Thomas
Language: English
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_THE NEWBERY CLASSICS_
THE POETICAL WORKS
OF
THOMAS CAMPBELL
REPRINTED FROM THE EARLY EDITIONS
_WITH MEMOIR, EXPLANATORY NOTES, ETC._
[Illustration]
LONDON
GRIFFITH FARRAN & CO.
NEWBERY HOUSE, CHARING CROSS ROAD
_The Rights of Translation and of Reproduction are Reserved._
CONTENTS.
PAGE
PREFATORY MEMOIR ix
THE PLEASURES OF HOPE—
Part I. 1
Part II. 23
GERTRUDE OF WYOMING—
Part I. 41
Part II. 53
Part III. 61
O’CONNOR’S CHILD; OR, THE “FLOWER OF LOVE LIES BLEEDING” 73
THEODRIC; A DOMESTIC TALE 83
LOCHIEL’S WARNING 101
MISCELLANEOUS POEMS—
Battle of the Baltic 109
Ye Mariners of England: a Naval Ode 112
To the Rainbow 114
The Last Man 116
Valedictory Stanzas to J. P. Kemble, Esq., composed for a
Public Meeting, held June, 1817 119
A Dream 122
Lines Written at the Request of the Highland Society in
London, when met to Commemorate the 21st of March,
the Day of Victory in Egypt 125
Stanzas to the Memory of the Spanish Patriots latest Killed
in Resisting the Regency and the Duke of Angoulême 127
Song of the Greeks 129
Ode to Winter 131
Lines Spoken by Mr. * * *, at Drury Lane Theatre, on the
First Opening of the House after the death of the
Princess Charlotte, 1817 133
Lines on the Grave of a Suicide 135
The Turkish Lady 136
The Wounded Hussar 138
Lines Inscribed on the Monument lately finished by Mr.
Chantrey, which has been Erected by the Widow of
Admiral Sir G. Campbell, K.C.B., to the Memory of
her Husband 139
The Brave Roland 140
The Spectre Boat; a Ballad 142
The Lover to his Mistress on her Birth-day 144
Hohenlinden 145
Glenara 147
Lines on Receiving a Seal with the Campbell Crest, from K.
M—, before her Marriage 149
Gilderoy 151
Adelgitha 153
Absence 154
The Ritter Bann 155
The Harper 161
Song—To the Evening Star 162
Song—“Men of England” 163
The Maid’s Remonstrance 164
Song—“Drink ye to her” 165
Song—“When Napoleon was flying” 166
The Beech-Tree’s Petition 167
Song—“Earl March” 168
Love and Madness; an Elegy, written in 1795 169
Song—“Oh how hard it is to find” 172
Stanzas on the Threatened Invasion, 1803 173
Exile of Erin 174
Lord Ullin’s Daughter 176
Ode to the Memory of Burns 178
The Soldier’s Dream 181
Lines Written on Visiting a Scene in Argyleshire 182
Spanish Patriot’s Song 184
Verses on Marie Antoinette 186
Dirge of Wallace 188
Jemima, Rose, and Eleanore; three Celebrated Scottish
Beauties 190
The Death-Boat of Heligoland 192
Song—“When Love came first to Earth” 194
Lines on the Departure of Emigrants for New South Wales 195
Farewell to Love 199
Lines on a Picture of a Girl in the Attitude of Prayer, by
the artist Gruse, in the possession of Lady Stepney 200
Stanzas on the Battle of Navarino 202
Lines on Leaving a Scene in Bavaria 204
Stanzas to Painting 209
Drinking-Song of Munich 212
Lines on Revisiting a Scottish River 213
Lines on Revisiting Cathcart 215
The “Name Unknown;” in imitation of Klopstock 216
Song—“Withdraw not yet those lips and fingers” 217
Hallowed Ground 218
Caroline—Part I. 221
Caroline—Part II.—To the Evening Star 223
Field Flowers 225
Lines on the View from St Leonard’s 226
Lines on Poland 230
Lines on the Camp Hill, near Hastings 235
Lines written in a Blank Leaf of La Perouse’s Voyages 236
The Power of Russia 238
Reullura 241
Ode to the Germans 247
Florine 249
TRANSLATIONS—
Song of Hybrias the Cretan 253
Fragment from the Greek of Alcman 254
Martial Elegy from the Greek of Tyrtæus 255
Specimens of Translation from “Medea” 257
Speech of the Chorus in the same Tragedy, to dissuade Medea
from her Purpose of Putting her Children to Death, and
Flying for Protection to Athens 258
NOTES TO—
The Pleasures of Hope 265
Gertrude of Wyoming 269
O’Connor’s Child 285
Theodric 291
Lochiel 293
PREFATORY MEMOIR.
Thomas Campbell was born in Glasgow, July 27, 1777. He was of good
family, his father being the youngest son of a Highland laird, Campbell
of Kirnan, who could trace his descent from Gilespie le Camile, first
Norman lord of Lochawe. As was (and is) usual with the younger sons
of Scottish families of rank, Campbell’s father was destined for a
commercial career. He commenced it in Virginia, where he entered into
partnership with a kinsman, and returning with him to Scotland, carried
on the business in Glasgow, till the wars between Great Britain and her
American Colonies for a time seriously injured British commerce. After
incurring severe losses he at length gave up business altogether, and
retired into private life with diminished means and a large family.
Thomas, the poet, was the youngest of eleven children, and was born
after his father had retired. At eight years of age he was sent to the
Grammar School of Glasgow, and became the pupil of David Alison, who
soon detected the infant genius of his pupil. The boy worked hard for
his years, but his health was delicate, and, like Walter Scott, he had
to be sent away for the benefit of country air. Amidst the fields and
green lanes he regained health and strength, and returning to his studies
made rapid progress, especially in Greek. At twelve years old, he gained
prizes for his translations from the Greek poets.
In 1793 Campbell commenced the study of the law in the office of his
relative Mr. Alexander Campbell, a Writer to the Signet, of Glasgow;
but he soon abandoned it, and again devoted himself to more congenial
pursuits. About this time his _Lines on Marie Antoinette_ appeared in the
poet’s corner of a Glasgow paper; he had already won a prize for his poem
_On Description_ from the University.
In 1795 the failure of a Chancery suit still further reduced his father’s
income, and Campbell, eager to reduce the family expenses, sought and
obtained a tutorship in the family of a Mrs. Campbell of Sunipol, in the
Hebrides, for the summer months. The romantic beauty of his new home
strongly impressed the youthful poet, and it was whilst wandering on the
wild lonely shores of Mull, that the subject of his celebrated poem the
_Pleasures of Hope_ was suggested to him by his friend Mr. Hamilton Paul.
A rock on the isle, on which he often sat and mused, obtained and still
keeps the name of the “Poet’s Seat.”
In the autumn Campbell returned to his studies at the University, and
finally closed his academic career by winning two prizes—one for the
_Choephorcæ_ of Aristophanes, and the other for the _Chorus in the Medea_
of Euripides.
After quitting the University, he again became a tutor—this time in the
family of General Napier, who was greatly interested in the gifted young
man beneath his roof. It was during this residence in Argyleshire that he
wrote _Love and Madness_, and some other poems.
In 1798 the poet proceeded to Edinburgh, determined to try his fortune in
the Scottish metropolis. He had an introduction to Dr. Robert Anderson,
who, struck with his ability, recommended him to Mr. Mundell, the
publisher. Mr. Mundell at once gave him literary work, his first task
being to compile an abridgment of Bryan Edward’s _West Indies_. He also
obtained pupils, and thus managed to secure a comfortable livelihood.
But by degrees the love of poetry grew too strong for this routine of
industry, and he gradually devoted himself to the composition of the
_Pleasures of Hope_. Campbell’s life at this time must have been a very
happy one. He was enraptured with his task, and he had many and kind
friends in Edinburgh—amongst them was Francis (afterwards Lord) Jeffrey.
To his aunt Mrs. Campbell, and to his beautiful cousin Margaret, who
resided in Edinburgh, he used to read his verses, and was cheered and
encouraged by their applause.
When the poem was finished, Dr. Anderson took it to Mr. Mundell, who,
after some consideration, offered the poet £60 for it, an offer which was
accepted.
The poem appeared, and Campbell at once became famous. Everywhere it was
read and admired, and it secured to the Author a permanent reputation
at the age of twenty-one. The _Pleasures of Hope_ went through four
editions in a year. In the second edition several new and remarkably fine
passages were introduced.
In 1800 Campbell left Scotland in order to visit Germany. He landed at
Hamburg; and proceeded, after a short residence there, to Ratisbon,
which he reached only three days before the French took it, and was,
consequently, obliged to seek a refuge with the monks of the Benedictine
College; from the walls of which he beheld a cavalry charge made by the
German horse on the French under Grenier. The scenes of war through
which it was now his fate to pass, no doubt suggested his fine lyric of
_Hohenlinden_, though he was not a spectator of the fight (Dr. Beattie
tells us)—it occurred after he had left the scene of war.
The times were now so troubled that Campbell hastened homeward, the
moment he could obtain his passports. At Hamburg, where he remained for
a while, he wrote the _Exile of Erin_. From Hamburg he proceeded to
Altona, and thence to England. During his absence he had sent several
small poems to the _Morning Chronicle_, and on his return he was received
and welcomed cordially by its editor, Mr. Perry, who introduced him to
the best literary society in London. But from the natural enjoyment of
his popularity he was called by the tidings of his father’s death, and
he hurried at once to Edinburgh. Here he found that an absurd charge
of treason had been made against him, which, however, his own prompt
and manly demand of an investigation of his conduct at once quashed.
Moreover, his trunk, which had been seized on its way homewards, was
examined, and amongst his papers was found the glorious national lyric,
_Ye Mariners of England_, which he had written at Altona. The patriotic
feeling displayed in it at once assured the Sheriff of Edinburgh of the
poet’s innocence of the crime with which he was charged, and the affair
ended in the young poet’s character being entirely cleared.
From the period of his father’s death it became Campbell’s duty to
provide in a great measure for his widowed mother and his sister, and he
worked bravely and patiently for them at literary task-work.
In 1801 he visited London at Lord Minto’s invitation, and passed a season
of great gaiety in the midst of the literary celebrities of England. On
his return to Edinburgh he published _Lochiel_, and _Hohenlinden_, and
brought out the seventh edition of the _Pleasures of Hope_.
In 1802 Campbell married his cousin, Miss Matilda Sinclair, and went
shortly afterwards to reside at Sydenham, then a lovely and rather
aristocratic place,—where his memory was long cherished, and his dwelling
is even now pointed out to strangers.
Here he supported by his literary labour his mother, his wife,
and children; and was occupied and happy. He contributed to the
_Philosophical Magazine_, the _Star_ paper, and planned his _Specimens of
the British Poets_.
In 1805 Campbell received a pension of £200 from the Crown, which must
have greatly relieved the anxieties of a husband and father dependent
on so precarious a profession as literature. But he retained only half
for himself; the remainder he divided between his mother and sister; an
act of generosity which afterwards, we are told, led to his receiving a
handsome legacy of nearly £5,000 from a Highland cousin.
In 1809 _Gertrude of Wyoming_, _Lord Ullin’s Daughter_, and _The Battle
of the Baltic_ were published. Several prose works also appeared from
Campbell’s pen; in 1807, the _Annals of Great Britain from the Accession
of George III. to the Peace of Amiens_, was published anonymously in
Edinburgh. He wrote also a _Life of Petrarch_ in 1841, and edited
numerous works. In 1818, the long-planned _Specimens of the British
Poets_ was produced in London. After this publication, Campbell delivered
lectures at the Surrey Institution on English Poetry, and the public
pronounced him to be as elegant a critic as he was a fine poet. In a
pecuniary sense, everything he did prospered.
In 1824 _Theodric_ was published, which, however, obtained small favour
with the public. In fact a new style of poetry had superseded that of the
day when the _Pleasures of Hope_ won golden opinions; Scott had since
charmed the ear with his _Lay_ and his _Lady of the Lake_, and had been
in turn supplanted by the fiery muse of Byron, and—though not then fully
appreciated—the matchless melody and classic charm of Shelley. After the
productions of these great poets, the calm and unimpassioned _Theodric_
fell flat on the public ear; in fact there is no comparison between it
and the _Pleasures of Hope_.
As a lyric poet, Campbell, however, continued unrivalled, and would have
held his own place in our literature if he had never written more than
the _Mariners of England_ and _Hohenlinden_. Nor did the _Pleasures
of Hope_ lose its hold on public favour; it has retained it to this
day, except in a certain clique of critics. There are passages in it
which will ever have a strong hold on our sympathies; and which will be
remembered when the half intelligible utterances of our more modern times
shall only excite wonder and amusement.
In 1827 one of Campbell’s early day-dreams, that of being Lord Rector
of his own University, was gratified. He was chosen, though no less a
rival than Sir Walter Scott was in the field, and he filled the position
so well, and so much to the benefit of the University, that he was
re-elected the two following years.
In 1820 Colbourne offered him the editorship of the _New Monthly
Magazine_, which he accepted and retained till 1830, at a salary of £500
per annum. His sub-editor—a very efficient one—was Mr. Cyrus Redding.
In 1831 Campbell brought out the _Metropolitan Magazine_, editing it
himself.
Meantime much domestic affliction had fallen on him. He had lost a child,
and his dear wife died in 1828, a loss which greatly affected him. But he
made himself other strong interests besides domestic and literary ones.
The Poles and the Greeks had enlisted his most ardent sympathies, and had
the best aid of his pen. Moreover, he travelled in France and Germany,
and in 1834 as far as Algiers, from whence he wrote the _Letters from the
South_, published in the _Metropolitan Magazine_.
In 1838 he was presented to the Queen by the chief of his clan, the Duke
of Argyle, at the first levee held by the fair young Sovereign after her
accession to the throne. He had loyally offered her a present of his
works; the Queen accepted them, and graciously sent him in return her
picture. Campbell had been always a Liberal, but, like Leigh Hunt, he was
won by the gentle lady who held the sceptre to sincere loyalty to the
Crown.
Campbell moved to No. 8, Victoria Square, Pimlico, in 1840, and adopted,
as the sharer of his solitary home, his niece, Mary Campbell, whose
gentle ministrations soothed his declining years, and brightened the last
hours of his life.
In 1842 _The Pilgrim of Glencoe_ was published, but it was not well
received, and the aged poet began to perceive that it was time to lay by
his pen; that he spoke to a generation he could not charm. Nevertheless
his age was honoured and prosperous. His works produced nearly £700 a
year, and his means exceeded altogether £1000 per annum. But he fancied
he should prefer a cheaper residence than London, and in compliance with
the aged poet’s fancy, his niece accompanied him to Boulogne, where they
settled, at 5, Rue Petit St. Jean.
Here he remained in a varying state of health till 1844, when he became
seriously ill, and the physician, Dr. Allatt, gave no hopes of his
recovery. His faithful and beloved friend, Dr. Beattie—by whom a charming
memoir of the poet has been since published—came to him, and did his best
to soothe the last moments of the dying poet.
His death-bed was truly Christian. Some of his last words were “Come, let
us sing praises to Christ,” “Let us pray for one another.”
On the 15th of June 1844, his spirit passed calmly, without a struggle,
to a better world.
The body of the poet was brought to England, and on the 3rd of July
buried in Westminster Abbey, near the centre of the Poet’s Corner. His
funeral was attended by numerous friends and admirers, amongst whom were
his chief, the Duke of Argyle, and Sir Robert Peel, then premier.
Thus closed the life of one of the most popular poets of the beginning
of our century. Prosperous in its public phase—very sad and sorely tried
in its domestic one. He had refined taste and pleasing manners; and
no reproach rests upon his private or public character. In his youth
he was singularly beautiful in person. Leigh Hunt tells us (in his
autobiography) that Campbell’s face and person were rather on a small
scale, “his features regular, his eye lively and penetrating, and when he
spoke, dimples played about his mouth, which, nevertheless, had something
restrained and close in it. Some gentle Puritan seemed to have crossed
the breed, and to have left a stamp on his face, such as we often see in
the female Scotch face rather than the male.”
No poet, except Shakespeare, has been so frequently quoted as Campbell.
Many of his lines have become proverbs:—“Coming events cast their shadows
before,” “’Tis distance lends enchantment to the view,” &c., &c., are
as familiar to us as household words. “His verses” says a writer in
_Chambers’s Papers for the People_, “cannot be mistaken for those of any
other English poet—his odes do not resemble those of Dryden, Collins,
or Gray—they stand alone.... Scott said, ‘he could imitate all the
modern poets but Tom Campbell,’ he could not imitate him because his
peculiarity was more in the matter than the manner.” High praise this!
Byron said that he believed Campbell wrote so little poetry because he
was afraid of comparison with his early and famous poem: we have not the
volume to quote the exact words. We are rather inclined to think that
the true reason why he gave us no more poems than we possess at present
was, not only that his taste was exceedingly refined and fastidious—he
would not admit many charming minor poems into his collected works—but
that, like Goldsmith, his time was much occupied by task-work for the
publishers; and as he would not suffer hastily written lines to appear,
or any which he had not carefully polished, the quantity he produced was
necessarily small. We are told in _Notes and Queries_ that he took some
pains (returning to the house where he had written it for the purpose)
to substitute a single word which he believed would be an improvement on
another in his _Stanzas to Florine_! Consequently, his poems must have
occupied time and thought beyond what we may imagine from their length,
and his leisure could not have been great. It would have been better,
perhaps, if more voluminous poets had imitated his reticence, and given
us quality rather than quantity.
Campbell was a pleasant companion, and when he pleased could (we have
Byron’s authority for it) talk delightfully; but he was occasionally
absent and silent. His poetry is much admired by foreigners. Madame de
Staël was enraptured with the _Pleasures of Hope_, and Goethe was a warm
admirer of the Poet.
His domestic character was excellent, and his family sorrows—of which
this is no place to speak—were borne by him with patient courage.
His _Life_, admirably given us by his friend Dr. Beattie,[1] is well
worth reading as a record of Genius, aided by patient perseverance,
struggling with difficulties, and vanquishing them; and to it, for fuller
and far more interesting details, we refer the readers of this brief
Prefatory Memoir.
To this collection of his poems we have added his _Lines on Marie
Antoinette_, the _Dirge of Wallace_, and one or two other poems,
published in the _New Monthly Magazine_.
[1] _Life and Letters of Campbell_, by Dr. Beattie.
THE PLEASURES OF HOPE.
PART I.
ANALYSIS OF PART I.
The Poem opens with a comparison between the beauty of remote objects in
a landscape, and those ideal scenes of felicity which the imagination
delights to contemplate ... the influence of anticipation upon the other
passions is next delineated ... an allusion is made to the well-known
fiction in Pagan tradition, that, when all the guardian deities of
mankind abandoned the world, Hope alone was left behind ... the
consolations of this passion in situations of distress ... the seaman
on his watch ... the soldier marching into battle ... allusion to the
interesting adventures of Byron.
The inspiration of Hope, as it actuates the efforts of genius, whether
in the department of science, or of taste ... domestic felicity, how
intimately connected with views of future happiness ... picture of a
mother watching her infant when asleep ... pictures of the prisoner, the
maniac, and the wanderer.
From the consolations of individual misery, a transition is made to
prospects of political improvement in the future state of society ... the
wide field that is yet open for the progress of humanising arts among
uncivilised nations ... from these views of amelioration of society,
and the extension of liberty and truth over despotic and barbarous
countries, by a melancholy contrast of ideas, we are led to reflect upon
the hard fate of a brave people recently conspicuous in their struggles
for independence[2] ... description of the capture of Warsaw, of the
last contest of the oppressors and the oppressed, and the massacre
of the Polish patriots at the bridge of Prague ... apostrophe to the
self-interested enemies of human improvement ... the wrongs of Africa ...
the barbarous policy of Europeans in India ... prophecy in the Hindoo
mythology of the expected descent of the Deity to redress the miseries of
their race, and to take vengeance on the violators of justice and mercy.
[2] The Poles. This Poem first appeared in 1799.
PLEASURES OF HOPE. PART I.
At summer eve, when Heaven’s ethereal bow
Spans with bright arch the glittering hills below,
Why to yon mountain turns the musing eye,
Whose sunbright summit mingles with the sky?
Why do those cliffs of shadowy tint appear
More sweet than all the landscape smiling near?—
’Tis distance lends enchantment to the view,
And robes the mountain in its azure hue.
Thus, with delight we linger to survey
The promised joys of life’s unmeasured way;
Thus, from afar, each dim-discovered scene
More pleasing seems than all the past hath been;
And every form, that Fancy can repair
From dark oblivion, glows divinely there.
What potent spirit guides the raptured eye
To pierce the shades of dim futurity?
Can Wisdom lend, with all her heavenly power,
The pledge of Joy’s anticipated hour?
Ah, no! she darkly sees the fate of man—
Her dim horizon bounded to a span;
Or, if she hold an image to the view,
’Tis Nature pictured too severely true.
With thee, sweet HOPE! resides the heavenly light,
That pours remotest rapture on the sight:
Thine is the charm of life’s bewildered way,
That calls each slumbering passion into play.
Waked by thy touch, I see the sister band,
On tiptoe watching, start at thy command,
And fly where’er thy mandate bids them steer,
To Pleasure’s path, or Glory’s bright career.
Primeval HOPE, the Aönian Muses say,
When Man and Nature mourned their first decay;
When every form of death, and every woe,
Shot from malignant stars to earth below,
When Murder bared her arm, and rampant War
Yoked the red dragons of her iron car,
When Peace and Mercy, banished from the plain,
Sprung on the viewless winds to heaven again;
All all forsook the friendless guilty mind,
But HOPE, the charmer, lingered still behind.
Thus, while Elijah’s burning wheels prepare
From Carmel’s heights to sweep the fields of air.[3]
The prophet’s mantle, ere his flight began,
Dropt on the world—a sacred gift to man.
Auspicious HOPE! in thy sweet garden grow
Wreaths for each toil, a charm for every woe;
Won by their sweets, in Nature’s languid hour,
The way-worn pilgrim seeks thy summer bower;
There, as the wild bee murmurs on the wing,
What peaceful dreams thy handmaid spirits bring!
What viewless forms the Æolian organ play,
And sweep the furrowed lines of anxious thought away.
Angel of life! thy glittering wings explore
Earth’s loneliest bounds, and Ocean’s wildest shore.
Lo! to the wintry winds the pilot yields
His bark careering o’er unfathomed fields;
Now on Atlantic waves he rides afar,
Where Andes, giant of the western star,
With meteor-standard to the winds unfurled,
Looks from his throne of clouds o’er half the world!
Now far he sweeps, where scarce a summer smiles,
On Behring’s rocks, or Greenland’s naked isles:
Cold on his midnight watch the breezes blow,
From wastes that slumber in eternal snow;
And waft, across the wave’s tumultuous roar,
The wolf’s long howl from Oonalaska’s shore.
Poor child of danger, nursling of the storm,
Sad are the woes that wreck thy manly form!
Rocks, waves, and winds, the shattered bark delay;
Thy heart is sad, thy home is far away.
But HOPE can here her moonlight vigils keep,
And sing to charm the spirit of the deep:
Swift as yon streamer lights the starry pole,
Her visions warm the watchman’s pensive soul;
His native hills that rise in happier climes,
The grot that heard his song of other times,
His cottage home, his bark of slender sail,
His glassy lake, and broomwood-blossomed vale,
Rush on his thought; he sweeps before the wind,
Treads the loved shore he sighed to leave behind;
Meets at each step a friend’s familiar face,
And flies at last to Helen’s long embrace;
Wipes from her cheek the rapture-speaking tear,
And clasps, with many a sigh, his children dear!
While, long neglected, but at length caressed,
His faithful dog salutes the smiling guest,
Points to the master’s eyes (where’er they roam)
His wistful face, and whines a welcome home.
Friend of the brave! in peril’s darkest hour,
Intrepid Virtue looks to thee for power;
To thee the heart its trembling homage yields,
On stormy floods, and carnage-covered fields,
When front to front the bannered hosts combine,
Halt ere they close, and form the dreadful line.
When all is still on Death’s devoted soil,
The march-worn soldier mingles for the toil;
As rings his glittering tube, he lifts on high
The dauntless brow, and spirit-speaking eye,
Hails in his heart the triumph yet to come,
And hears thy stormy music in the drum!
And such thy strength-inspiring aid that bore
The hardy Byron to his native shore—[4]
In horrid climes, where Chiloe’s tempests sweep
Tumultuous murmurs o’er the troubled deep,
’Twas his to mourn Misfortune’s rudest shock,
Scourged by the winds, and cradled on the rock,
To wake each joyless morn, and search again
The famished haunts of solitary men;
Whose race, unyielding as their native storm,
Know not a trace of Nature but the form;
Yet, at thy call, the hardy tar pursued,
Pale, but intrepid—sad, but unsubdued,
Pierced the deep woods, and hailing from afar
The moon’s pale planet and the northern star,
Paused at each dreary cry, unheard before,
Hyænas in the wild, and mermaids on the shore;
Till, led by thee o’er many a cliff sublime,
He found a warmer world, a milder clime,
A home to rest, a shelter to defend,
Peace and repose, a Briton and a friend![5]
Congenial HOPE! thy passion-kindling power,
How bright, how strong, in youth’s untroubled hour!
On yon proud height, with Genius hand in hand,
I see thee light, and wave thy golden wand.
“Go, child of Heaven! (thy wingèd words proclaim)
’Tis thine to search the boundless fields of fame?
Lo! Newton, priest of nature, shines afar,
Scans the wide world, and numbers every star!
Wilt thou, with him, mysterious rites apply,
And watch the shrine with wonder-beaming eye!
Yes, thou shalt mark, with magic art profound,
The speed of light, the circling march of sound;
With Franklin grasp the lightning’s fiery wing,
Or yield the lyre of Heaven another string.[6]
“The Swedish sage[7] admires, in yonder bowers,
His winged insects, and his rosy flowers;
Calls from their woodland haunts the savage train
With sounding horn, and counts them on the plain—
So once, at Heaven’s command, the wanderers came
To Eden’s shade, and heard their various name.
“Far from the world, in yon sequestered clime,
Slow pass the sons of Wisdom more sublime;
Calm as the fields of Heaven his sapient eye
The loved Athenian lifts to realms on high,
Admiring Plato, on his spotless page,
Stamps the bright dictates of the Father sage:[8]
‘Shall nature bound to earth’s diurnal span
The fire of God, the immortal soul of man?’
“Turn, child of Heaven, thy rapture-lightened eye
To Wisdom’s walks, the sacred Nine are nigh:
Hark! from bright spires that gild the Delphian height,
From streams that wander in eternal light,
Ranged on their hill, Harmonia’s daughters swell
The mingling tones of horn, and harp, and shell;
Deep from his vaults, the Loxian murmurs flow,[9]
And Pythia’s awful organ peals below.
“Beloved of Heaven! the smiling Muse shall shed
Her moonlight halo on thy beauteous head;
Shall swell thy heart to rapture unconfined,
And breathe a holy madness o’er thy mind.
I see thee roam her guardian power beneath,
And talk with spirits on the midnight heath;
Enquire of guilty wanderers whence they came,
And ask each blood-stained form his earthly name;
Then weave in rapid verse the deeds they tell,
And read the trembling world the tales of hell.
“When Venus, throned in clouds of rosy hue,
Flings from her golden urn the vesper dew,
And bids fond man her glimmering noon employ,
Sacred to love, and walks of tender joy;
A milder mood the goddess shall recall,
And soft as dew thy tones of music fall;
While Beauty’s deeply-pictured smiles impart
A pang more dear than pleasure to the heart—
Warm as thy sighs shall flow the Lesbian strain,
And plead in Beauty’s ear, nor plead in vain.
“Or wilt thou Orphean hymns more sacred deem,
And steep thy song in Mercy’s mellow stream;
To pensive drops the radiant eye beguile—
For Beauty’s tears are lovelier than her smile;—
On Nature’s throbbing anguish pour relief
And teach impassioned souls the joy of grief?
“Yes; to thy tongue shall seraph words be given,
And power on earth to plead the cause of Heaven;
The proud, the cold untroubled heart of stone,
That never mused on sorrow but its own,
Unlocks a generous store at thy command,
Like Horeb’s rocks beneath the prophet’s hand.[10]
The living lumber of his kindred earth,
Charmed into soul, receives a second birth,
Feels thy dread power another heart afford,
Whose passion-touched harmonious strings accord
True as the circling spheres to Nature’s plan;
And man, the brother, lives the friend of man.
“Bright as the pillar rose at Heaven’s command,
When Israel marched along the desert land,
Blazed through the night on lonely wilds afar,
And told the path,—a never-setting star:
So, heavenly Genius, in thy course divine,
HOPE is thy star, her light is ever thine.”
Propitious Power! when rankling cares annoy
The sacred home of Hymenean joy;
When doomed to Poverty’s sequestered dell,
The wedded pair of love and virtue dwell,
Unpitied by the world, unknown to fame,
Their woes, their wishes, and their hearts the same—
Oh, there, prophetic HOPE! thy smile bestow,
And chase the pangs that worth should never know—
There, as the parent deals his scanty store
To friendless babes, and weeps to give no more,
Tell, that his manly race shall yet assuage
Their father’s wrongs, and shield his latter age.
What though for him no Hybla sweets distil,
Nor bloomy vines wave purple on the hill;
Tell, that when silent years have passed away,
That when his eye grows dim, his tresses grey,
These busy hands a lovelier cot shall build,
And deck with fairer flowers his little field,
And call from Heaven propitious dews to breathe
Arcadian beauty on the barren heath;
Tell, that while Love’s spontaneous smile endears
The days of peace, the sabbath of his years,
Health shall prolong to many a festive hour
The social pleasures of his humble bower.
Lo! at the couch where infant beauty sleeps,
Her silent watch the mournful mother keeps;
She, while the lovely babe unconscious lies,
Smiles on her slumbering child with pensive eyes,
And weaves a song of melancholy joy—
“Sleep, image of thy father, sleep, my boy:
No lingering hour of sorrow shall be thine;
No sigh that rends thy father’s heart and mine;
Bright as his manly sire the son shall be
In form and soul; but, ah! more blest than he!
Thy fame, thy worth, thy filial love, at last,
Shall soothe his aching heart for all the past—
With many a smile my solitude repay,
And chase the world’s ungenerous scorn away.
“And say, when summoned from the world and thee,
I lay my head beneath the willow tree,
Wilt _thou_, sweet mourner! at my stone appear,
And soothe my parted spirit lingering near?
Oh, wilt thou come, at evening hour to shed
The tears of Memory o’er my narrow bed;
With aching temples on thy hand reclined,
Muse on the last farewell I leave behind,
Breathe a deep sigh to winds that murmur low,
And think on all my love, and all my woe?”
So speaks affection, ere the infant eye
Can look regard, or brighten in reply;
But when the cherub lip hath learnt to claim
A mother’s ear by that endearing name;
Soon as the playful innocent can prove
A tear of pity, or a smile of love,
Or cons his murmuring task beneath her care,
Or lisps with holy look his evening prayer,
Or gazing, mutely pensive, sits to hear
The mournful ballad warbled in his ear;
How fondly looks admiring HOPE the while,
At every artless tear, and every smile!
How glows the joyous parent to descry
A guileless bosom, true to sympathy!
Where is the troubled heart, consigned to share
Tumultuous toils, or solitary care,
Unblest by visionary thoughts that stray
To count the joys of Fortune’s better day!
Lo, nature, life, and liberty relume
The dim-eyed tenant of the dungeon gloom,
A long-lost friend, or hapless child restored,
Smiles at his blazing hearth and social board;
Warm from his heart the tears of rapture flow,
And virtue triumphs o’er remembered woe.
Chide not his peace, proud Reason! nor destroy
The shadowy forms of uncreated joy,
That urge the lingering tide of life, and pour
Spontaneous slumber on his midnight hour.
Hark! the wild maniac sings, to chide the gale
That wafts so slow her lover’s distant sail;
She, sad spectatress, on the wintry shore
Watched the rude surge his shroudless corse that bore,
Knew the pale form, and, shrieking in amaze,
Clasped her cold hands, and fixed her maddening gaze
Poor widowed wretch! ’twas there she wept in vain,
Till Memory fled her agonizing brain;—
But Mercy gave, to charm the sense of woe,
Ideal peace, that truth could ne’er bestow;
Warm on her heart the joys of Fancy beam,
And aimless HOPE delights her darkest dream.
Oft when yon moon has climbed the midnight sky,
And the lone sea-bird wakes its wildest cry,
Piled on the steep, her blazing faggots burn
To hail the bark that never can return;
And still she waits, but scarce forbears to weep
That constant love can linger on the deep.
And, mark the wretch, whose wanderings never knew
The world’s regard, that soothes, though half untrue,
Whose erring heart the lash of sorrow bore,
But found not pity when it erred no more.
Yon friendless man, at whose dejected eye
The unfeeling proud one looks—and passes by,
Condemned on Penury’s barren path to roam,
Scorned by the world, and left without a home—
Even he, at evening, should he chance to stray
Down by the hamlet’s hawthorn-scented way,
Where, round the cot’s romantic glade, are seen
The blossomed bean-field, and the sloping green,
Leans o’er its humble gate, and thinks the while—
Oh! that for me some home like this would smile,
Some hamlet shade, to yield my sickly form
Health in the breeze, and shelter in the storm!
There should my hand no stinted boon assign
To wretched hearts with sorrow such as mine!—
That generous wish can soothe unpitied care,
And HOPE half mingles with the poor man’s prayer.
HOPE! when I mourn, with sympathising mind,
The wrongs of fate, the woes of human kind,
Thy blissful omens bid my spirit see
The boundless fields of rapture yet to be;
I watch the wheels of Nature’s mazy plan,
And learn the future by the past of man.
Come, bright Improvement! on the car of Time,
And rule the spacious world from clime to clime,
Thy handmaid arts shall every wild explore,
Trace every wave, and culture every shore.
On Erie’s banks, where tigers steal along,
And the dread Indian chaunts a dismal song,
Where human fiends on midnight errands walk,
And bathe in brains the murderous tomahawk,
There shall the flocks on thymy pasture stray,
And shepherds dance at Summer’s opening day;
Each wandering genius of the lonely glen
Shall start to view the glittering haunts of men,
And silence watch, on woodland heights around,
The village curfew as it tolls profound.
In Lybian groves, where damnèd rites are done,
That bathe the rocks in blood, and veil the sun,
Truth shall arrest the murderous arm profane,
Wild Obi flies[11]—the veil is rent in twain.
Where barbarous hordes on Scythian mountains roam
Truth, Mercy, Freedom, yet shall find a home;
Where’er degraded Nature bleeds and pines,
From Guinea’s coast to Sibir’s[12] dreary mines,
Truth shall pervade the unfathomed darkness there,
And light the dreadful features of despair.
Hark! the stern captive spurns his heavy load,
And asks the image back that Heaven bestowed!
Fierce in his eye the fire of valour burns,
And, as the slave departs, the man returns.
Oh! sacred Truth! thy triumph ceased awhile,
And HOPE, thy sister, ceased with thee to smile,
When leagued Oppression poured to Northern wars
Her whiskered pandoors and her fierce hussars,
Waved her dread standard to the breeze of morn,
Pealed her loud drum, and twanged her trumpet horn;
Tumultuous horror brooded o’er her van,
Presaging wrath to Poland—and to man![13]
Warsaw’s last champion from her height surveyed,
Wide o’er the fields, a waste of ruin laid,—
“Oh! Heaven!” he cried, “my bleeding country save!—
Is there no hand on high to shield the brave?
Yet, though destruction sweep those lovely plains,
Rise, fellow-men! our country yet remains!
By that dread name, we wave the sword on high!
And swear for her to live!—with her to die!”
He said, and on the rampart-heights arrayed
His trusty warriors, few, but undismayed;
Firm-paced and slow, a horrid front they form,
Still as the breeze, but dreadful as the storm;
Low murmuring sounds along their banners fly,
Revenge, or death,—the watch-word and reply;
Then pealed the notes, omnipotent to charm,
And the loud tocsin tolled their last alarm!—
In vain, alas! in vain, ye gallant few!
From rank to rank your volleyed thunder flew:—
Oh, bloodiest picture in the book of Time,
Sarmatia fell, unwept, without a crime;
Found not a generous friend, a pitying foe,
Strength in her arms, nor mercy in her woe!
Dropped from her nerveless grasp the shattered spear,
Closed her bright eye, and curbed her high career;—
HOPE, for a season, bade the world farewell,
And Freedom shrieked—as KOSCIUSKO fell!
The sun went down, nor ceased the carnage there,
Tumultuous murder shook the midnight air—
On Prague’s proud arch the fires of ruin glow,
His blood-dyed waters murmuring far below;
The storm prevails, the rampart yields a way,
Bursts the wide cry of horror and dismay!
Hark! as the smouldering piles with thunder fall,
A thousand shrieks for hopeless mercy call!
Earth shook—red meteors flashed along the sky,
And conscious Nature shuddered at the cry!
Oh! righteous Heaven! ere Freedom found a grave,
Why slept the sword, omnipotent to save?
Where was thine arm, O Vengeance! where thy rod,
That smote the foes of Zion and of God;
That crushed proud Ammon, when his iron car
Was yoked in wrath, and thundered from afar?
Where was the storm that slumbered till the host
Of blood-stained Pharaoh left their trembling coast;
Then bade the deep in wild commotion flow,
And heaved an ocean on their march below?
Departed spirits of the mighty dead!
Ye that at Marathon and Leuctra bled!
Friends of the world! restore your swords to man,
Fight in his sacred cause, and lead the van!
Yet for Sarmatia’s tears of blood atone,
And make her arm puissant as your own!
Oh! once again to Freedom’s cause return
The patriot TELL—the BRUCE OF BANNOCKBURN!
Yes! thy proud lords, unpitied land I shall see
That man hath yet a soul—and dare be free!
A little while, along thy saddening plains,
The starless night of Desolation reigns;
Truth shall restore the light by Nature given,
And, like Prometheus, bring the fire of Heaven!
Prone to the dust Oppression shall be hurled,
Her name, her nature, withered from the world!
Ye that the rising morn invidious mark,
And hate the light—because your deeds are dark;
Ye that expanding truth invidious view,
And think, or wish, the song of HOPE untrue;
Perhaps your little hands presume to span
The march of Genius, and the powers of man;
Perhaps ye watch, at Pride’s unhallowed shrine,
Her victims, newly slain, and thus divine:—
“Here shall thy triumph, Genius, cease, and here
Truth, Science, Virtue, close your short career.”
Tyrants! in vain ye trace the wizard ring;
In vain ye limit Mind’s unwearied spring:
What! can ye lull the wingèd winds asleep,
Arrest the rolling world, or chain the deep?
No!—the wild wave contemns your sceptred hand.
It rolled not back when Canute gave command!
Man! can thy doom no brighter soul allow?
Still must thou live a blot on Nature’s brow?
Shall War’s polluted banner ne’er be furled?
Shall crimes and tyrants cease but with the world?
What! are thy triumphs, sacred Truth, belied?
Why then hath Plato lived—or Sidney died?—
Ye fond adorers of departed fame,
Who warm at Scipio’s worth, or Tully’s name!
Ye that, in fancied vision, can admire
The sword of Brutus, and the Theban lyre!
Rapt in historic ardour, who adore
Each classic haunt, and well-remembered shore.
Where Valour tuned, amid her chosen throng,
The Thracian trumpet and the Spartan song;
Or, wandering thence, behold the later charms
Of England’s glory, and Helvetia’s arms!
See Roman fire in Hampden’s bosom swell,
And fate and freedom in the shaft of Tell!
Say, ye fond zealots to the worth of yore,
Hath Valour left the world—to live no more?
No more shall Brutus bid a tyrant die,
And sternly smile with vengeance in his eye?
Hampden no more, when suffering Freedom calls,
Encounter Fate, and triumph as he falls?
Nor Tell disclose, through peril and alarm,
The might that slumbers in a peasant’s arm?
Yes! in that generous cause, for ever strong,
The patriot’s virtue and the poet’s song,
Still, as the tide of ages rolls away,
Shall charm the world, unconscious of decay!
Yes! there are hearts, prophetic HOPE may trust,
That slumber yet in uncreated dust,
Ordained to fire the adoring sons of earth
With every charm of wisdom and of worth;
Ordained to light, with intellectual day,
The mazy wheels of Nature as they play,
Or, warm with Fancy’s energy, to glow,
And rival all but Shakspeare’s name below!
And say, supernal Powers! who deeply scan
Heaven’s dark decrees, unfathomed yet by man,
When shall the world call down, to cleanse her shame,
That embryo spirit, yet without a name,—
That friend of Nature, whose avenging hands
Shall burst the Lybian’s adamantine bands?
Who, sternly marking on his native soil
The blood, the tears, the anguish, and the toil,
Shall bid each righteous heart exult, to see
Peace to the slave, and vengeance on the free!
Yet, yet, degraded men! the expected day
That breaks your bitter cup, is far away;
Trade, wealth, and fashion, ask you still to bleed,
And holy men give Scripture for the deed;
Scourged, and debased, no Briton stoops to save
A wretch, a coward; yes, because a slave!—
Eternal Nature! when thy giant hand
Had heaved the floods, and fixed the trembling land,
When life sprung startling at thy plastic call,
Endless her forms, and man the lord of all!
Say, was that lordly form inspired by thee,
To wear eternal chains and bow the knee?
Was man ordained the slave of man to toil,
Yoked with the brutes, and fettered to the soil;
Weighed in a tyrant’s balance with his gold?
No!—Nature stamped us in a heavenly mould!
She bade no wretch his thankless labour urge,
Nor, trembling, take the pittance and the scourge!
No homeless Lybian, on the stormy deep,
To call upon his country’s name, and weep!—
Lo! once in triumph, on his boundless plain,
The quivered chief of Congo loved to reign;
With fires proportioned to his native sky,
Strength in his arm, and lightning in his eye;
Scoured with wild feet his sun-illumined zone,
The spear, the lion, and the woods his own!
Or led the combat, bold without a plan,
An artless savage, but a fearless man!
The plunderer came!—alas! no glory smiles
For Congo’s chief on yonder Indian isles;
For ever fallen! no son of Nature now,
With Freedom chartered on his manly brow!
Faint, bleeding, bound, he weeps the night away,
And when the sea-wind wafts the dewless day,
Starts, with a bursting heart, for evermore
To curse the sun that lights their guilty shore!
The shrill horn blew;[14] at that alarum knell
His guardian angel took a last farewell!
That funeral dirge to darkness hath resigned
The fiery grandeur of a generous mind!
Poor fettered man! I hear thee whispering low
Unhallowed vows to Guilt, the child of Woe!
Friendless thy heart; and canst thou harbour there
A wish but death—a passion but despair!
The widowed Indian, when her lord expires,
Mounts the dread pile, and braves the funeral fires!
So falls the heart at Thraldom’s bitter sigh!
So Virtue dies, the spouse of Liberty!
But not to Lybia’s barren climes alone,
To Chili, or the wild Siberian zone,
Belong the wretched heart and haggard eye,
Degraded worth, and poor misfortune’s sigh!—
Ye orient realms, where Ganges’ waters run!
Prolific fields! dominions of the sun!
How long your tribes have trembled and obeyed!
How long was Timour’s iron sceptre swayed,[15]
Whose marshalled hosts, the lions of the plain,
From Scythia’s northern mountains to the main,
Raged o’er your plundered shrines and altars bare,
With blazing torch and gory scimitar,—
Stunned with the cries of death each gentle gale,
And bathed in blood the verdure of the vale!
Yet could no pangs the immortal spirit tame,
When Brahma’s children perished for his name;
The martyr smiled beneath avenging power,
And braved the tyrant in his torturing hour!
When Europe sought your subject realms to gain,
And stretched her giant sceptre o’er the main,
Taught her proud barks the winding way to shape,
And braved the stormy spirit of the Cape;[16]
Children of Brahma! then was Mercy nigh
To wash the stain of blood’s eternal dye?
Did Peace descend, to triumph and to save,
When freeborn Britons crossed the Indian wave?
Ah, no!—to more than Rome’s ambition true,
The Nurse of Freedom gave it not to you!
She the bold route of Europe’s guilt began,
And, in the march of nations, led the van!
Rich in the gems of India’s gaudy zone,
And plunder piled from kingdoms not their own,
Degenerate trade! thy minions could despise
The heart-born anguish of a thousand cries;
Could lock, with impious hands, their teeming store,
While famished nations died along the shore:[17]
Could mock the groans of fellow-men, and bear
The curse of kingdoms peopled with despair;
Could stamp disgrace on man’s polluted name,
And barter, with their gold, eternal shame!
But hark! as bowed to earth the Brahmin kneels,
From heavenly climes propitious thunder peals!
Of India’s fate her guardian spirits tell,
Prophetic murmurs breathing on the shell,
And solemn sounds that awe the listening mind,
Roll on the azure paths of every wind.
“Foes of mankind! (her guardian spirits say,)
Revolving ages bring the bitter day,
When Heaven’s unerring arm shall fall on you,
And blood for blood these Indian plains bedew;
Nine times have Brahma’s wheels of lightning hurled
His awful presence o’er the alarmèd world;[17]
Nine times hath Guilt, through all his giant frame,
Convulsive trembled, as the Mighty came;
Nine times hath suffering Mercy spared in vain—
But Heaven shall burst her starry gates again!
He comes! dread Brahma shakes the sunless sky
With murmuring wrath, and thunders from on high,
Heaven’s fiery horse, beneath his warrior form,
Paws the light clouds, and gallops on the storm!
Wide waves his flickering sword; his bright arms glow
Like summer suns, and light the world below!
Earth, and her trembling isles in Ocean’s bed,
Are shook; and Nature rocks beneath his tread!
“To pour redress on India’s injured realm,
The oppressor to dethrone, the proud to whelm;
To chase destruction from her plundered shore
With arts and arms that triumphed once before,
The tenth Avatar comes! at Heaven’s command
Shall Seriswattee[18] wave her hallowed wand!
And Camdeo[19] bright, and Ganesa[20] sublime,
Shall bless with joy their own propitious clime!—
Come, Heavenly Powers! primeval peace restore!
Love!—Mercy!—Wisdom!—rule for evermore!”
END OF THE FIRST PART.
[3] An error of the poet’s: Elijah did not ascend from Carmel, but from
the eastern side of Jordan.—(See 2 KINGS ii. 7-11.)
[4] See Narrative of Byron’s Shipwreck.—Notes at end of Volume.
[5] _A Briton and a friend._—Don Patricio Gedd, a Scotch physician in one
of the Spanish settlements, hospitably relieved Byron and his wretched
associates, of which the commodore speaks in the warmest terms of
gratitude.
[6] The seven strings of Apollo’s harp were the symbolical representation
of the seven planets. Herschell, by discovering an eighth, might be said
to add another string to the instrument.
[7] Linnæus, the famous Swedish Botanist.
[8] Socrates.
[9] _Deep from his vaults, the Loxian murmurs flow._—Loxias is the name
frequently given to Apollo by Greek writers; it is met with more than
once in the Chœphoræ of Æschylus.
[10] EXODUS xvii. 3, 5, 6.
[11] The superstition of the African savages.—See Notes.
[12] Siberia.—See Notes.
[13] See Notes.
[14] The negroes in the West Indies were summoned to their work by a
shell or horn.
[15] See Notes.
[16] See the description of the Cape of Good Hope, translated from
Camoens by Mickle.
[17] See Notes at the end of the volume.
[18] The oriental Minerva.
[19] The god of Love.
[20] Ganesa answers to Janus.
THE PLEASURES OF HOPE.
PART II.
ANALYSIS OF PART II
Apostrophe to the power of Love ... its intimate connection with
generous and social Sensibility ... allusion to that beautiful passage
in the beginning of the book of Genesis, which represents the happiness
of Paradise itself incomplete, till love was superadded to its other
blessings ... the dreams of future felicity which a lively imagination
is apt to cherish, when Hope is animated by refined attachment ... this
disposition to combine, in one imaginary scene of residence, all that
is pleasing in our estimate of happiness, compared to the skill of the
great artist who personified perfect beauty, in the picture of Venus, by
an assemblage of the most beautiful features he could find ... a summer
and winter evening described, as they may be supposed to arise in the
mind of one who wishes, with enthusiasm, for the union of friendship and
retirement.
Hope and imagination inseparable agents ... even in those contemplative
moments when our imagination wanders beyond the boundaries of this world,
our minds are not unattended with an impression that we shall some day
have a wider and distinct prospect of the universe, instead of the
partial glimpse we now enjoy.
The last and most sublime influence of Hope is the concluding topic
of the poem ... the predominance of a belief in a future state over
the terrors attendant on dissolution ... the baneful influence of that
sceptical philosophy which bars us from such comforts ... allusion to the
fate of a suicide ... episode of Conrad and Ellenore ... conclusion.
PLEASURES OF HOPE. PART II.
In joyous youth, what soul hath never known
Thought, feeling, taste, harmonious to its own?
Who hath not paused while Beauty’s pensive eye
Asked from his heart the homage of a sigh?
Who hath not owned, with rapture-smitten frame,
The power of grace, the magic of a name?
There be, perhaps, who barren hearts avow,
Cold as the rocks on Torneo’s hoary brow;
There be, whose loveless wisdom never failed,
In self-adoring pride securely mailed:—
But, triumph not, ye peace-enamoured few!
Fire, Nature, Genius, never dwelt with you!
For you no fancy consecrates the scene
Where rapture uttered vows, and wept between;
’Tis yours, unmoved, to sever and to meet;
No pledge is sacred, and no home is sweet!
Who that would ask a heart to dulness wed,
The waveless calm, the slumber of the dead?
No; the wild bliss of Nature needs alloy,
And fear and sorrow fan the fire of joy!
And say, without our hopes, without our fears,
Without the home that plighted love endears,
Without the smile from partial beauty won,
Oh! what were man?—a world without a sun.
Till Hymen brought his love-delighted hour,
There dwelt no joy in Eden’s rosy bower!
In vain the viewless seraph lingering there,
At starry midnight charmed the silent air:
In vain the wild bird carolled on the steep,
To hail the sun, slow wheeling from the deep;
In vain, to soothe, the solitary shade,
Aërial notes in mingling measure played;
The summer wind that shook the spangled tree,
The whispering wave, the murmur of the bee;—
Still slowly passed the melancholy day,
And still the stranger wist not where to stray.
The world was sad!—the garden was a wild!
And man, the hermit, sighed—till woman smiled!
True, the sad power to generous hearts may bring
Delirious anguish on his fiery wing;
Barred from delight by Fate’s untimely hand,
By wealthless lot, or pitiless command;
Or doomed to gaze on beauties that adorn
The smile of triumph or the frown of scorn;
While Memory watches o’er the sad review,
Of joys that faded like the morning dew;
Peace may depart—and life and nature seem
A barren path, a wildness, and a dream!
But can the noble mind for ever brood,
The willing victim of a weary mood,
On heartless cares that squander life away,
And cloud young Genius brightening into day?—
Shame to the coward thought that e’er betrayed
The noon of manhood to a myrtle shade![21]—
If HOPE’S creative spirit cannot raise
One trophy sacred to thy future days,
Scorn the dull crowd that haunt the gloomy shrine
Of hopeless love to murmur and repine!
But, should a sigh of milder mood express
Thy heart-warm wishes, true to happiness,
Should Heaven’s fair harbinger delight to pour
Her blissful visions on thy pensive hour,
No tear to blot thy memory’s pictured page
No fears but such as fancy can assuage;
Though thy wild heart some hapless hour may miss
The peaceful tenor of unvaried bliss,
(For love pursues an ever-devious race,
True to the winding lineaments of grace;)
Yet still may hope her talisman employ
To snatch from Heaven anticipated joy,
And all her kindred energies impart
That burn the brightest in the purest heart.
When first the Rhodian’s mimic art arrayed
The queen of Beauty in her Cyprian shade,
The happy master mingled on his piece
Each look that charmed him in the fair of Greece.
To faultless nature true, he stole a grace
From every finer form and sweeter face;
And as he sojourned on the Ægean isles,
Woo’d all their love, and treasured all their smiles;
Then glowed the tints, pure, precious, and refined,
And mortal charms seemed heavenly when combined
Love on the picture smiled! Expression poured
Her mingling spirit there—and Greece adored!
So thy fair hand, enamoured Fancy! gleans
The treasured pictures of a thousand scenes;
Thy pencil traces on the lover’s thought
Some cottage-home, from towns and toil remote,
Where love and lore may claim alternate hours,
With Peace embosom’d in Idalian bowers!
Remote from busy Life’s bewildered way,
O’er all his heart shall Taste and Beauty sway!
Free on the sunny slope, or winding shore,
With hermit steps to wander and adore!
There shall he love, when genial morn appears,
Like pensive Beauty smiling in her tears,
To watch the brightening roses of the sky,
And muse on Nature with a poet’s eye!—
And when the sun’s last splendour lights the deep,
The woods and waves, and murmuring winds asleep;
When fairy harps the Hesperian planet hail,
And the lone cuckoo sighs along the vale,
His path shall be where streamy mountains swell
Their shadowy grandeur o’er the narrow dell,
Where mouldering piles and forests intervene,
Mingling with darker tints the living green:
No circling hills his ravished eye to bound,
Heaven, Earth, and Ocean, blazing all around.
The moon is up—the watch-tower dimly burns—
And down the vale his sober step returns;
But pauses oft, as winding rocks convey
The still sweet fall of music far away;
And oft he lingers from his home a while
To watch the dying notes!—and start, and smile!
Let Winter come! let polar spirits sweep
The darkening world, and tempest-troubled deep!
Though boundless snows the withered heath deform
And the dim sun scarce wanders through the storm,
Yet shall the smile of social love repay,
With mental light, the melancholy day!
And, when its short and sullen noon is o’er,
The ice-chained waters slumbering on the shore,
How bright the faggots in his little hall
Blaze on the hearth, and warm the pictured wall!
How blest he names, in Love’s familiar tone,
The kind, fair friend, by nature marked his own;
And, in the waveless mirror of his mind,
Views the fleet years of pleasure left behind,
Since Anna’s empire o’er his heart began!
Since first he called her his before the holy man!
Trim the gay taper in his rustic dome,
And light the wintry paradise of home!
And let the half-uncurtained window hail
Some way-worn man benighted in the vale!
Now, while the moaning night-wind rages high,
As sweep the shot-stars down the troubled sky,
While fiery hosts in Heaven’s wide circle play,
And bathe in lurid light the milky-way,
Safe from the storm, the meteor, and the shower,
Some pleasing page shall charm the solemn hour—
With pathos shall command, with wit beguile,
A generous tear of anguish, or a smile—
Thy woes, Arion![22] and thy simple tale,
O’er all the heart shall triumph and prevail!
Charmed as they read the verse too sadly true,
How gallant Albert, and his weary crew,
Heaved all their guns, their foundering bark to save,
And toiled—and shrieked—and perished on the wave!
Yes, at the dead of night, by Lonna’s steep,
The seaman’s cry was heard along the deep;
There, on his funeral waters, dark and wild,
The dying father blessed his darling child!
“Oh! Mercy, shield her innocence,” he cried,
Spent on the prayer his bursting heart, and died!
Or they will learn how generous worth sublimes
The robber Moor,[23] and pleads for all his crimes!
How poor Amelia kissed, with many a tear,
His hand blood-stained, but ever, ever dear!
Hung on the tortured bosom of her lord,
And wept and prayed perdition from his sword!
Nor sought in vain! at that heart-piercing cry
The strings of Nature cracked with agony!
He, with delirious laugh, the dagger hurled,
And burst the ties that bound him to the world!
Turn from his dying words, that smite with steel
The shuddering thoughts, or wind them on the wheel—
Turn to the gentler melodies that suit
Thalia’s harp, or Pan’s Arcadian lute;
Or, down the stream of Truth’s historic page,
From clime to clime descend, from age to age!
Yet there, perhaps, may darker scenes obtrude
Than Fancy fashions in her wildest mood;
There shall he pause with horrent brow, to rate
What millions died—that Cæsar might be great![24]
Or learn the fate that bleeding thousands bore,
Marched by their Charles[25] to Dneiper’s swampy shore;
Faint in his wounds, and shivering in the blast,
The Swedish soldier sunk—and groaned his last!
File after file the stormy showers benumb,
Freeze every standard-sheet, and hush the drum!
Horseman and horse confessed the bitter pang,
And arms and warriors fell with hollow clang!
Yet, ere he sunk in Nature’s last repose,
Ere life’s warm torrent to the fountain froze,
The dying man to Sweden turned his eye,
Thought of his home, and closed it with a sigh!
Imperial Pride looked sullen on his plight,
And Charles beheld—nor shuddered at the sight!
Above, below, in Ocean, Earth, and Sky,
Thy fairy worlds, Imagination, lie,
And HOPE attends, companion of the way,
Thy dream by night, thy visions of the day!
In yonder pensile orb, and every sphere
That gems the starry girdle of the year;
In those unmeasured worlds, she bids thee tell,
Pure from their God, created millions dwell,
Whose names and natures, unrevealed below,
We yet shall learn, and wonder as we know;
For, as Iona’s saint,[26] a giant form,
Throned on her towers, conversing with the storm
(When o’er each Runic altar, weed-entwined,
The vesper clock tolls mournful to the wind,)
Counts every wave-worn isle, and mountain hoar
From Kilda to the green Ierne’s shore;
So, when thy pure and renovated mind
This perishable dust hath left behind,
Thy seraph eye shall count the starry train,
Like distant isles embosomed in the main;
Rapt to the shrine where motion first began,
And light and life in mingling torrent ran;
From whence each bright rotundity was hurled,
The throne of God,—the centre of the world!
Oh! vainly wise, the moral Muse hath sung
That suasive HOPE hath but a Syren tongue!
True; she may sport with life’s untutored day,
Nor heed the solace of its last decay,
The guileless heart her happy mansion spurn,
And part, like Ajut—never to return![27]
But yet, methinks, when Wisdom shall assuage
The grief and passions of our greener age,
Though dull the close of life, and far away
Each flower that hailed the dawning of the day;
Yet o’er her lovely hopes, that once were dear,
The time-taught spirit, pensive, not severe,
With milder griefs her aged eye shall fill,
And weep their falsehood, though she love them still!
Thus, with forgiving tears, and reconciled,
The king of Judah mourned his rebel child!
Musing on days, when yet the guiltless boy
Smiled on his sire, and filled his heart with joy!
My Absalom! the voice of Nature cried:
Oh! that for thee thy father could have died!
For bloody was the deed, and rashly done,
That slew my Absalom!—my son!—my son!
Unfading HOPE! when life’s last embers burn,
When soul to soul, and dust to dust return!
Heaven to thy charge resigns the awful hour!
Oh! then, thy kingdom comes! Immortal Power!
What though each spark of earth-born rapture fly
The quivering lip, pale cheek, and closing eye!
Bright to the soul thy seraph hands convey
The morning dream of life’s eternal day—
Then, then, the triumph and the trance begin,
And all the phœnix spirit burns within!
Oh! deep-enchanting prelude to repose,
The dawn of bliss, the twilight of our woes!
Yet half I hear the panting spirit sigh,
It is a dread and awful thing to die!
Mysterious worlds, untravelled by the sun!
Where Time’s far-wandering tide has never run,
From your unfathomed shades, and viewless spheres,
A warning comes, unheard by other ears.
’Tis Heaven’s commanding trumpet, long and loud,
Like Sinai’s thunder, pealing from the cloud!
While Nature hears, with terror-mingled trust,
The shock that hurls her fabric to the dust;
And, like the trembling Hebrew, when he trod
The roaring waves, and call’d upon his God,
With mortal terrors clouds immortal bliss,
And shrieks, and hovers o’er the dark abyss!
Daughter of Faith, awake, arise, illume
The dread unknown, the chaos of the tomb;
Melt, and dispel, ye spectre-doubts, that roll
Cimmerian darkness on the parting soul!
Fly, like the moon-eyed herald of dismay,
Chased on his night-steed by the star of day.
The strife is o’er—the pangs of Nature close,
And life’s last rapture triumphs o’er her woes.
Hark! as the spirit eyes, with eagle gaze,
The noon of Heaven undazzled by the blaze,
On heavenly winds that waft her to the sky,
Float the sweet tones of star-born melody;
Wild as that hallowed anthem sent to hail
Bethlehem’s shepherds in the lonely vale,
When Jordan hushed his waves, and midnight still
Watched on the holy towers of Zion hill!
Soul of the just! companion of the dead!
Where is thy home, and whither art thou fled?
Back to its heavenly source thy being goes,
Swift as the comet wheels to whence he rose;
Doomed on his airy path a while to burn,
And doomed, like thee, to travel, and return.—
Hark! from the world’s exploding centre driven,
With sounds that shook the firmament of Heaven,
Careers the fiery giant, fast and far,
On bickering wheels, and adamantine car;
From planet whirled to planet more remote,
He visits realms beyond the reach of thought,
But wheeling homeward, when his course is run,
Curbs the red yoke, and mingles with the sun!
So hath the traveller of earth unfurled
Her trembling wings, emerging from the world;
And o’er the path by mortal never trod,
Sprung to her source, the bosom of her God!
Oh! lives there, Heaven! beneath thy dread expanse,
One hopeless, dark idolater of Chance,
Content to feed, with pleasures unrefined,
The lukewarm passions of a lowly mind;
Who, mouldering earthward, ’reft of every trust,
In joyless union wedded to the dust,
Could all his parting energy dismiss,
And call this barren world sufficient bliss?—
There live, alas! of heaven-directed mien,
Of cultured soul, and sapient eye serene,
Who hail thee, Man! the pilgrim of a day,
Spouse of the worm, and brother of the clay,
Frail as the leaf in Autumn’s yellow bower,
Dust in the wind, or dew upon the flower;
A friendless slave, a child without a sire,
Whose mortal life and momentary fire,
Lights to the grave his chance-created form,
As ocean-wrecks illuminate the storm;
And, when the gun’s tremendous flash is o’er,
To night and silence sink for evermore!—
Are these the pompous tidings ye proclaim,
Lights of the world, and demi-gods of Fame?
Is this your triumph—this your proud applause,
Children of Truth, and champions of her cause?
For this hath Science searched, on weary wing,
By shore and sea—each mute and living thing!
Launched with Iberia’s pilot[28] from the steep,
To worlds unknown, and isles beyond the deep?
Or round the cope her living chariot driven,
And wheeled in triumph through the signs of Heaven?
Oh! star-eyed Science, hast thou wandered there,
To waft us home the message of despair?
Then bind the palm, thy sage’s brow to suit,
Of blasted leaf, and death-distilling fruit!
Ah me! the laurelled wreath that Murder rears,
Blood-nursed, and watered by the widow’s tears,
Seems not so foul, so tainted, and so dread,
As waves the night-shade round the sceptic’s head.
What is the bigot’s torch, the tyrant’s chain?
I smile on death, if heavenward HOPE remain!
But, if the warring winds of Nature’s strife
Be all the faithless charter of my life,
If Chance awaked, inexorable power,
This frail and feverish being of an hour;
Doomed o’er the world’s precarious scene to sweep,
Swift as the tempest travels on the deep,
To know Delight but by her parting smile,
And toil, and wish, and weep a little while;
Then melt, ye elements, that formed in vain
This troubled pulse, and visionary brain!
Fade, ye wild flowers, memorials of my doom,
And sink, ye stars, that light me to the tomb!
Truth, ever lovely,—since the world began,
The foe of tyrants, and the friend of man,—
How can thy words from balmy slumber start
Reposing Virtue, pillowed on the heart!
Yet, if thy voice the note of thunder rolled,
And that were true which Nature never told,
Let Wisdom smile not on her conquered field;
No rapture dawns, no treasure is revealed!
Oh! let her read, nor loudly, nor elate,
The doom that bars us from a better fate;
But, sad as angels for the good man’s sin,
Weep to record, and blush to give it in!
And well may Doubt, the mother of Dismay,
Pause at her martyr’s tomb, and read the lay.
Down by the wilds of yon deserted vale
It darkly hints a melancholy tale!
There, as the homeless madman sits alone,
In hollow winds he hears a spirit moan!
And there, they say, a wizard orgie crowds,
When the Moon lights her watch-tower in the clouds.
Poor lost Alonzo! Fate’s neglected child!
Mild be the doom of Heaven—as thou wert mild!
For oh! thy heart in holy mould was cast,
And all thy deeds were blameless, but the last.
Poor lost Alonzo! still I seem to hear
The clod that struck thy hollow-sounding bier!
When Friendship paid, in speechless sorrow drowned,
Thy midnight rites, but not on hallowed ground!
Cease, every joy, to glimmer on my mind,
But leave—oh! leave the light of HOPE behind!
What though my wingèd hours of bliss have been,
Like angel-visits, few and far between,
Her musing mood shall every pang appease,
And charm—when pleasures lose the power to please!
Yes; let each rapture, dear to Nature, flee:
Close not the light of Fortune’s stormy sea—
Mirth, Music, Friendship, Love’s propitious smile,
Chase every care, and charm a little while,
Ecstatic throbs the fluttering heart employ,
And all her strings are harmonised to joy!—
But why so short is Love’s delighted hour?
Why fades the dew on Beauty’s sweetest flower?
Why can no hymnèd charm of music heal
The sleepless woes impassioned spirits feel?
Can Fancy’s fairy hands no veil create,
To hide the sad realities of fate?—
No! not the quaint remark, the sapient rule,
Nor all the pride of Wisdom’s worldly school,
Have power to soothe, unaided and alone,
The heart that vibrates to a feeling tone!
When stepdame Nature every bliss recalls,
Fleet as the meteor o’er the desert falls;
When, ’reft of all, yon widowed sire appears
A lonely hermit in the vale of years;
Say, can the world one joyous thought bestow
To Friendship, weeping at the couch of Woe?
No! but a brighter soothes the last adieu,—
Souls of impassioned mould, she speaks to you!
Weep not, she says, at Nature’s transient pain,
Congenial spirits part to meet again!
What plaintive sobs thy filial spirit drew,
What sorrow choked thy long and last adieu,—
Daughter of Conrad! when he heard his knell,
And bade his country and his child farewell!
Doomed the long isles of Sydney-cove to see,
The martyr of his crimes, but true to thee.
Thrice the sad father tore thee from his heart,
And thrice returned, to bless thee, and to part;
Thrice from his trembling lips he murmured low
The plaint that owned unutterable woe;
Till Faith, prevailing o’er his sullen doom,
As bursts the morn on night’s unfathomed gloom,
Lured his dim eye to deathless hopes sublime,
Beyond the realms of Nature and of Time!
“And weep not thus,” he cried, “young Ellenore,
My bosom bleeds, but soon shall bleed no more!
Short shall this half-extinguished spirit burn,
And soon these limbs to kindred dust return!
But not, my child, with life’s precarious fire,
The immortal ties of Nature shall expire;
These shall resist the triumph of decay,
When time is o’er, and worlds have passed away!
Cold in the dust this perished heart may lie,
But that which warmed it once shall never die!
That spark unburied in its mortal frame,
With living light, eternal, and the same,
Shall beam on Joy’s interminable years,
Unveiled by darkness—unassuaged by tears!
“Yet, on the barren shore and stormy deep,
One tedious watch is Conrad doomed to weep;
But when I gain the home without a friend,
And press the uneasy couch where none attend,
This last embrace, still cherished in my heart,
Shall calm the struggling spirit ere it part;
Thy darling form shall seem to hover nigh,
And hush the groan of life’s last agony!
“Farewell! when strangers lift thy father’s bier,
And place my nameless stone without a tear;
When each returning pledge hath told my child
That Conrad’s tomb is on the desert piled;
And when the dream of troubled Fancy sees
Its lonely rank grass waving in the breeze;
Who then will soothe thy grief, when mine is o’er?
Who will protect thee, helpless Ellenore?
Shall secret scenes thy filial sorrows hide,
Scorned by the world, to factious guilt allied?
Ah! no; methinks the generous and the good
Will woo thee from the shades of solitude!
O’er friendless grief compassion shall awake,
And smile on innocence, for Mercy’s sake!”
Inspiring thought of rapture yet to be,
The tears of Love were hopeless, but for thee!
If in that frame no deathless spirit dwell,
If that faint murmur be the last farewell,
If Fate unite the faithful but to part,
Why is their memory sacred to the heart?
Why does the brother of my childhood seem
Restored a while in every pleasing dream?
Why do I joy the lonely spot to view,
By artless friendship blessed when life was new?
Eternal HOPE! when yonder spheres sublime
Pealed their first notes to sound the march of Time,
Thy joyous youth began—but not to fade.—
When all the sister planets have decayed;
When wrapt in fire the realms of ether glow,
And Heaven’s last thunder shakes the world below;
Thou, undismayed, shalt o’er the ruins smile,
And light thy torch at Nature’s funeral pile.
[21] “Sacred to Venus is the myrtle shade.”—_Dryden._
[22] Falconer, who calls himself Arion in “The Shipwreck” (Canto III.)
[23] See Schiller’s tragedy of “The Robbers,” Scene 5.
[24] The carnage occasioned by the wars of Julius Cæsar has been usually
estimated at two millions of men.
[25] Charles XII., of Sweden.—See Notes.
[26] See Notes.
[27] See “Rambler.”
[28] Columbus.
GERTRUDE OF WYOMING.
ADVERTISEMENT.
Most of the popular histories of England, as well as of the American war,
give an authentic account of the desolation of Wyoming, in Pennsylvania,
which took place in 1778, by an incursion of the Indians. The Scenery
and Incidents of the following Poem are connected with that event.
The testimonies of historians and travellers concur in describing the
infant colony as one of the happiest spots of human existence, for the
hospitable and innocent manners of the inhabitants, the beauty of the
country, and the luxuriant fertility of the soil and climate. In an
evil hour, the junction of European with Indian arms, converted this
terrestrial paradise into a frightful waste. Mr. ISAAC WELD informs
us, that the ruins of many of the villages, perforated with balls, and
bearing marks of conflagration, were still preserved by the recent
inhabitants, when he travelled through America in 1796.
GERTRUDE OF WYOMING. PART I.
I.
On Susquehana’s side, fair Wyoming!
Although the wild-flower on thy ruined wall
And roofless homes, a sad remembrance bring
Of what thy gentle people did befall;
Yet thou wert once the loveliest land of all
That see the Atlantic wave their morn restore.
Sweet land! may I thy lost delights recall,
And paint thy Gertrude in her bowers of yore,
Whose beauty was the love of Pennsylvania’s shore!
II.
Delightful Wyoming! beneath thy skies,
The happy shepherd swains had nought to do
But feed their flocks on green declivities,
Or skim perchance thy lake with light canoe,
From morn till evening’s sweeter pastime grew,
With timbrel, when beneath the forests brown,
Thy lovely maidens would the dance renew;
And aye those sunny mountains half-way down
Would echo flageolet from some romantic town.
III.
Then, where of Indian hills the daylight takes
His leave, how might you the flamingo see
Disporting like a meteor on the lakes—
And playful squirrel on his nut-grown tree:
And every sound of life was full of glee,
From merry mock-bird’s song,[29] or hum of men;
While hearkening, fearing nought their revelry,
The wild-deer arched his neck from glades, and then
Unhunted, sought his woods and wilderness again.
IV.
And scarce had Wyoming of war or crime
Heard, but in transatlantic story rung,
For here the exile met from every clime,
And spoke in friendship every distant tongue:
Men from the blood of warring Europe sprung,
Were but divided by the running brook;
And happy where no Rhenish trumpet sung,
On plains no sieging mine’s volcano shook,
The blue-eyed German changed his sword to pruning-hook.
V.
Nor far some Andalusian saraband
Would sound to many a native roundelay—
But who is he that yet a dearer land
Remembers over hills and far away?
Green Albin![30] what though he no more survey
Thy ships at anchor on the quiet shore,
Thy pellochs[31] rolling from the mountain bay,
Thy lone sepulchral cairn upon the moor,
And distant isles that hear the loud Corbrechtan roar![32]
VI.
Alas! poor Caledonia’s mountaineer,
That want’s stern edict e’er, and feudal grief,
Had forced him from a home he loved so dear!
Yet found he here a home, and glad relief,
And plied the beverage from his own fair sheaf,
That fired his Highland blood with mickle glee:
And England sent her men, of men the chief,
Who taught those sires of Empire yet to be,
To plant the tree of life,—to plant fair Freedom’s tree!
VII.
Here was not mingled in the city’s pomp
Of life’s extremes the grandeur and the gloom;
Judgment awoke not here her dismal tromp,
Nor sealed in blood a fellow-creature’s doom,
Nor mourned the captive in a living tomb.
One venerable man, beloved of all,
Sufficed, where innocence was yet in bloom,
To sway the strife, that seldom might befall:
And Albert was their judge in patriarchal hall.
VIII.
How reverend was the look, serenely aged,
He bore, this gentle Pennsylvanian sire,
Where all but kindly fervours were assuaged,
Undimmed by weakness’ shade, or turbid ire!
And though, amidst the calm of thought entire,
Some high and haughty features might betray
A soul impetuous once, ’twas earthly fire
That fled composure’s intellectual ray,
As Etna’s fires grow dim before the rising day.
IX.
I boast no song in magic wonders rife,
But yet, oh, Nature! is there nought to prize,
Familiar in thy bosom scenes of life?
And dwells in daylight truth’s salubrious skies
No form with which the soul may sympathise?—
Young, innocent, on whose sweet forehead mild
The parted ringlet shone in simplest guise,
An inmate in the home of Albert smiled,
Or blest his noonday walk—she was his only child.
X.
The rose of England bloomed on Gertrude’s cheek—
What though these shades had seen her birth, her sire
A Briton’s independence taught to seek
Far western worlds; and there his household fire
The light of social love did long inspire,
And many a halcyon day he lived to see
Unbroken but by one misfortune dire,
When fate had reft his mutual heart—but she
Was gone—and Gertrude climbed a widowed father’s knee.
XI.
A loved bequest,—and I may half impart—
To them that feel the strong paternal tie,
How like a new existence to his heart
That living flower uprose beneath his eye,
Dear as she was from cherub infancy,
From hours when she would round his garden play,
To time when as the ripening years went by,
Her lovely mind could culture well repay,
And more engaging grew; from pleasing day to day.
XII.
I may not paint those thousand infant charms;
(Unconscious fascination, undesigned!)
The orison repeated in his arms,
For God to bless her sire and all mankind;
The book, the bosom on his knee reclined,
Or how sweet fairy-lore he heard her con,
(The playmate ere the teacher of her mind:)
All uncompanioned else her heart had gone
Till now, in Gertrude’s eyes, their ninth blue summer shone.
XIII.
And summer was the tide, and sweet the hour,
When sire and daughter saw, with fleet descent,
An Indian from his bark approach their bower,
Of buskined limb, and swarthy lineament;[33]
The red wild feathers on his brow were blent,
And bracelets bound the arm that helped to light
A boy, who seemed, as he beside him went,
Of Christian vesture, and complexion bright,
Led by his dusky guide, like morning brought by night.
XIV.
Yet pensive seemed the boy for one so young—
The dimple from his polished cheek had fled;
When, leaning on his forest-bow unstrung,
The Oneyda warrior to the planter said,
And laid his hand upon the stripling’s head,
“Peace be to thee! my words this belt[34] approve;
The paths of peace my steps have hither led:[33]
This little nursling, take him to thy love,
And shield the bird unfledged, since gone the parent dove.
XV.
“Christian! I am the foeman of thy foe;
Our wampum league thy brethren did embrace:[33]
Upon the Michigan, three moons ago,
We launched our pirogues for the bison chase,
And with the Hurons planted for a space,
With true and faithful hands, the olive-stalk;
But snakes are in the bosoms of their race,
And though they held with us a friendly talk,
The hollow peace-tree fell beneath their tomahawk.
XVI.
“It was encamping on the lake’s far port,
A cry of Areouski[35] broke our sleep,
Where stormed an ambushed foe thy nation’s fort,
And rapid, rapid whoops came o’er the deep;
But long thy country’s war-sign on the steep
Appeared through ghastly intervals of light,
And deathfully their thunders seemed to sweep,
Till utter darkness swallowed up the sight,
As if a shower of blood had quenched the fiery fight.
XVII.
“It slept—it rose again—on high their tower
Sprung upwards like a torch to light the skies
Then down again it rained an ember shower,
And louder lamentations heard we rise:
As when the evil Manitou[36] that dries
The Ohio woods, consumes them in his ire,
In vain the desolated panther flies,
And howls amidst his wilderness of fire:
Alas! too late, we reached and smote those Hurons dire!
XVIII.
“But as the fox beneath the nobler hound,
So died their warriors by our battle-brand;
And from the tree we, with her child, unbound
A lonely mother of the Christian land:—
Her lord—the captain of the British band—
Amidst the slaughter of his soldiers lay.
Scarce knew the widow our delivering hand;
Upon her child she sobbed, and swooned away,
Or shrieked unto the God to whom the Christians pray.
XIX.
“Our virgins fed her with their kindly bowls
Of fever-balm and sweet sagamité:[37]
But she was journeying to the land of souls,
And lifted up her dying head to pray
That we should bid an ancient friend convey
Her orphan to his home of England’s shore;—
And take, she said, this token far away,
To one that will remember us of yore,
When he beholds the ring that Waldegrave’s Julia wore.
XX.
“And I, the eagle of my tribe,[38] have rushed
With this lorn dove.”—A sage’s self-command
Had quelled the tears from Albert’s heart that gushed;
But yet his cheek—his agitated hand—
That showered upon the stranger of the land
No common boon, in grief but ill beguiled
A soul that was not wont to be unmanned;
“And stay,” he cried, “dear pilgrim of the wild,
Preserver of my old, my boon companion’s child!—
XXI.
“Child of a race whose name my bosom warms,
On earth’s remotest bounds how welcome here?
Whose mother oft, a child, has filled these arms,
Young as thyself, and innocently dear,
Whose grandsire was my early life’s compeer.
Ah, happiest home of England’s happy clime!
How beautiful e’en now thy scenes appear,
As in the noon and sunshine of my prime!
How gone like yesterday these thrice ten years of time!
XXII.
“And, Julia! when thou wert like Gertrude now,
Can I forget thee, favourite child of yore?
Or thought I, in thy father’s house, when thou
Wert lightest hearted on his festive floor,
And first of all at his hospitable door
To meet and kiss me at my journey’s end?
But where was I when Waldegrave was no more?
And thou didst pale thy gentle head extend
In woes, that e’en the tribe of deserts was thy friend?”
XXIII.
He said—and strained unto his heart the boy;—
Far differently, the mute Oneyda took[39]
His calumet of peace, and cup of joy;[40]
As monumental bronze unchanged his look;
A soul that pity touched, but never shook;
Trained from his tree-rocked cradle[41] to his bier
The fierce extremes of good and ill to brook
Impassive[39]—fearing but the shame of fear—
A stoic of the woods—a man without a tear.
XXIV.
Yet deem not goodness on the savage stock
Of Outalissi’s heart disdained to grow;
As lives the oak unwithered on the rock
By storms above, and barrenness below;
He scorned his own, who felt another’s woe:
And ere the wolf-skin on his back he flung,
Or laced his moccasins,[42] in act to go,
A song of parting to the boy he sung,
Who slept on Albert’s couch, nor heard his friendly tongue.
XXV.
“Sleep, wearied one! and in the dreaming land
Shouldst thou to-morrow with thy mother meet.[39]
Oh! tell her spirit, that the white man’s hand
Hath plucked the thorns of sorrow from thy feet;
While I in lonely wilderness shall greet
Thy little foot-prints—or by traces know
The fountain, where at noon I thought it sweet
To feed thee with the quarry of my bow,
And poured the lotus-horn,[43] or slew the mountain roe.
XXVI.
“Adieu! sweet scion of the rising sun!
But should affliction’s storms thy blossom mock
Then come again—my own adopted one!
And I will graft thee on a noble stock:
The crocodile, the condor of the rock,[44]
Shall be the pastime of thy sylvan wars;
And I will teach thee, in the battle’s shock,
To pay with Huron blood thy father’s scars,
And gratulate his soul rejoicing in the stars!”
XXVII.
So finished he the rhyme (howe’er uncouth)
That true to nature’s fervid feelings ran;
(And song is but the eloquence of truth:)
Then forth uprose that lone way-faring man;[44]
But dauntless he, nor chart, nor journey’s plan
In woods required, whose trainèd eye was keen
As eagle of the wilderness, to scan
His path, by mountain, swamp, or deep ravine,
Or ken far friendly huts on good savannahs green.
XXVIII.
Old Albert saw him from the valley’s side—
His pirogue launched—his pilgrimage begun—
Far, like the red-bird’s wing he seemed to glide;
Then dived, and vanished in the woodlands dun.
Oft, to that spot by tender memory won,
Would Albert climb the promontory’s height,
If but a dim sail glimmered in the sun;
But never more, to bless his longing sight,
Was Outalissi hailed, with bark and plumage bright.
[29] See Notes at the end of the Volume.
[30] Scotland.
[31] The Gaelic appellation for the porpoise.
[32] A great whirlpool near the island of Jura.—See Notes.
[33] See Notes at the end of the Volume.
[34] The wampum, offered in token of amity.—See Notes.
[35] The Indian God of War.
[36] Spirit.—See Notes.
[37] A kind of soup.—See Notes.
[38] The Indians are distinguished both personally and by tribes by the
name of particular animals, whose qualities they affect to resemble,
either for cunning, strength, swiftness, or other qualities:—as the
eagle, the serpent, the fox, or bear.—See Notes.
[39] See Notes at the end of the Volume.
[40] _Calumet of peace._—The calumet is the Indian name for the
ornamented pipe of friendship, which they smoke as a pledge of amity.—See
Notes.
[41] _Tree-rocked cradle._—The Indian mothers suspend their children in
their cradles from the boughs of trees, and let them be rocked by the
wind.—See Notes.
[42] Moccasins are a sort of Indian buskin.
[43] From a flower shaped like a horn, which Chateaubriand presumes to be
of the lotus kind, the Indians in their travels through the desert often
find a draught of dew purer than any other water.
[44] See Notes.
GERTRUDE OF WYOMING. PART II.
I.
A valley from the river shore withdrawn
Was Albert’s home, two quiet woods between,
Whose lofty verdure overlooked his lawn;
And waters to their resting-place serene
Came freshening, and reflecting all the scene:
(A mirror in the depth of flowery shelves;)
So sweet a spot of earth, you might (I ween)
Have guessed some congregation of the elves,
To sport by summer moons, had shaped it for themselves.
II.
Yet wanted not the eye far scope to muse,
Nor vistas opened by the wandering stream;
Both were at evening Allegany views
Through ridges burning in her western beam,
Lake after lake interminably gleam:
And past those settlers’ haunts the eye might roam
Where earth’s unliving silence all would seem;
Save where on rocks the beaver built his dome,
Or buffalo remote lowed far from human home.
III.
But silent not that adverse eastern path,
Which saw Aurora’s hills the horizon crown;
There was the river heard, in bed of wrath
(A precipice of foam from mountains brown),
Like tumults heard from some far distant town;
But softening in approach he left his gloom,
And murmured pleasantly, and laid him down
To kiss those easy curving banks of bloom,
That lent the windward air an exquisite perfume.
IV.
It seemed as if those scenes sweet influence had
On Gertrude’s soul, and kindness like their own
Inspired those eyes affectionate and glad,
That seemed to love whate’er they looked upon
Whether with Hebe’s mirth her features shone,
Or if a shade more pleasing them o’ercast,
(As if for heavenly musing meant alone;)
Yet so becomingly the expression past,
That each succeeding look was lovelier than the last.
V.
Nor, guess I, was that Pennsylvanian home,
With all its picturesque and balmy grace,
And fields that were a luxury to roam,
Lost on the soul that looked from such a face!
Enthusiast of the woods! when years apace
Had bound thy lovely waist with woman’s zone,
The sunrise path, at morn, I see thee trace
To hills with high magnolia overgrown,
And joy to breathe the groves, romantic and alone.
VI.
The sunrise drew her thoughts to Europe forth,
That thus apostrophised its viewless scene:
“Land of my father’s love, my mother’s birth!
The home of kindred I have never seen!
We know not other—oceans are between:
Yet say! far friendly hearts, from whence we came,
Of us does oft remembrance intervene?
My mother sure—my sire a thought may claim;—
But Gertrude is to you an unregarded name.
VII.
“And yet, loved England! when thy name I trace
In many a pilgrim’s tale and poet’s song,
How can I choose but wish for one embrace
Of them, the dear unknown, to whom belong
My mother’s looks,—perhaps her likeness strong?
Oh, parent! with what reverential awe,
From features of thine own related throng,
An image of thy face my soul could draw!
And see thee once again whom I too shortly saw!”
VIII.
Yet deem not Gertrude sighed for foreign joy;
To soothe a father’s couch her only care,
And keep his reverend head from all annoy:
For this, methinks, her homeward steps repair,
Soon as the morning wreath had bound her hair;
While yet the wild deer trod in spangling dew,
While boatmen carolled to the fresh-blown air,
And woods a horizontal shadow threw,
And early fox appeared in momentary view.
IX.
Apart there was a deep untrodden grot,
Where oft the reading hours sweet Gertrude wore.
Tradition had not named its lonely spot;
But here (methinks) might India’s sons explore
Their fathers’ dust,[45] or lift, perchance of yore,
Their voice to the great Spirit:—rocks sublime
To human art a sportive semblance bore,
And yellow lichens coloured all the clime,
Like moonlight battlements, and towers decayed by time.
X.
But high in amphitheatre above,
His arms the everlasting aloes threw:
Breathed but an air of heaven, and all the grove
As if with instinct living spirit grew,
Rolling its verdant gulfs of every hue;
And now suspended was the pleasing din,
Now from a murmur faint it swelled anew,
Like the first note of organ heard within
Cathedral aisles,—ere yet its symphony begin.
XI.
It was in this lone valley she would charm
The lingering noon, where flowers a couch had strewn;
Her cheek reclining, and her snowy arm
On hillock by the palm-tree half o’ergrown:
And aye that volume on her lap is thrown,
Which every heart of human mould endears;
With Shakespeare’s self she speaks and smiles alone,
And no intruding visitation fears,
To shame the unconscious laugh, or stop her sweetest tears.
XII.
And nought within the grove was heard or seen
But stock-doves ’plaining through its gloom profound,
Or winglet of the fairy humming bird,
Like atoms of the rainbow fluttering round;
When, lo! there entered to its inmost ground
A youth, the stranger of a distant land;
He was, to wit, for eastern mountains bound;
But late the equator suns his cheek had tanned,
And California’s gales his roving bosom fanned.
XIII.
A steed, whose rein hung loosely o’er his arm,
He led dismounted; ere his leisure pace,
Amid the brown leaves, could her ear alarm,
Close he had come, and worshipped for a space
Those downcast features:—she her lovely face
Uplift on one, whose lineaments and frame
Were youth and manhood’s intermingled grace:
Iberian seemed his boot—his robe the same,
And well the Spanish plume his lofty looks became.
XIV.
For Albert’s home he sought—her finger fair
Has pointed where the father’s mansion stood.
Returning from the copse he soon was there
And soon has Gertrude hied from dark green wood
Nor joyless, by the converse, understood
Between the man of age and pilgrim young
That gay congeniality of mood,
And early liking from acquaintance sprung;
Full fluently conversed their guest in England’s tongue.
XV.
And well could he his pilgrimage of taste
Unfold,—and much they loved his fervid strain,
While he each fair variety retraced
Of climes, and manners, o’er the eastern main.
Now happy Switzer’s hills,—romantic Spain,—
Gay lilied fields of France,—or, more refined,
The soft Ausonia’s monumental reign;
Nor less each rural image he designed
Than all the city’s pomp and home of human kind.
XVI.
Anon some wilder portraiture he draws;
Of Nature’s savage glories he would speak,—
The loneliness of earth that overawes,—
Where resting by some tomb of old Cacique,
The llama-driver on Peruvia’s peak,
Nor living voice nor motion marks around;
But storks that to the boundless forest shriek,
Or wild-cane arch high flung o’er gulf profound,[46]
That fluctuates when the storms of El Dorado sound.
XVII.
Pleased with his guest, the good man still would ply
Each earnest question, and his converse court;
But Gertrude, as she eyed him, knew not why
A strange and troubling wonder stopt her short.
“In England thou hast been,—and, by report,
An orphan’s name,” quoth Albert, “may’st have known.
Sad tale!—when latest fell our frontier fort,—
One innocent—one soldier’s child—alone
Was spared, and brought to me, who loved him as my own.
XVIII.
“Young Henry Waldegrave! three delightful years
These very walls his infant sports did see;
But most I loved him when his parting tears
Alternately bedewed my child and me:
His sorest parting, Gertrude, was from thee;
Nor half its grief his little heart could hold:
By kindred he was sent for o’er the sea,
They tore him from us when but twelve years old,
And scarcely for his loss have I been yet consoled!”
XIX.
His face the wanderer hid—but could not hide
A tear, a smile, upon his cheek that dwell;—
“And speak! mysterious stranger!” Gertrude cried,
“It is!—it is!—I knew—I knew him well!
’Tis Waldegrave’s self, of Waldegrave come to tell!”
A burst of joy the father’s lips declare;
But Gertrude speechless on his bosom fell:
At once his open arms embraced the pair,
Was never group more blest, in this wide world of care.
XX.
“And will ye pardon then,” replied the youth,
“Your Waldegrave’s feignèd name, and false attire?
I durst not in the neighbourhood, in truth,
The very fortunes of your house inquire;
Lest one that knew me might some tidings dire
Impart, and I my weakness all betray;
For had I lost my Gertrude and my sire,
I meant but o’er your tombs to weep a day,
Unknown I meant to weep, unknown to pass away.
XXI.
“But here ye live,—ye bloom,—in each dear face,
The changing hand of time I may not blame;
For there, it hath but shed more reverend grace,
And here of beauty perfected the frame:
And well I know your hearts are still the same—
They could not change—ye look the very way,
As when an orphan first to you I came.
And have ye heard of my poor guide, I pray?
Nay, wherefore weep ye, friends, on such a joyous day?”
XXII.
“And art thou here? or is it but a dream?
And wilt thou, Waldegrave, wilt thou, leave us more?”—
“No, never! thou that yet dost lovelier seem
Than aught on earth—than e’en thyself of yore—
I will not part thee from thy father’s shore;
But we shall cherish him with mutual arms,
And hand in hand again the path explore,
Which every ray of young remembrance warms,
While thou shalt be my own, with all thy truth and charms!”
XXIII.
At morn, as if beneath a galaxy
Of over-arching groves in blossoms white,
Where all was odorous scent and harmony,
And gladness to the heart, nerve, ear, and sight:
There, if, oh, gentle Love! I read aright
The utterance that sealed thy sacred bond,
’Twas listening to these accents of delight,
She hid upon his breast those eyes, beyond
Expression’s power to paint, all languishingly fond—
XXIV.
“Flower of my life, so lovely, and so lone!
Whom I would rather in this desert meet,
Scorning, and scorned by fortune’s power, than own
Her pomp and splendours lavished at my feet!
Turn not from me thy breath, more exquisite
Than odours cast on heaven’s own shrine—to please—
Give me thy love, than luxury more sweet,
And more than all the wealth that loads the breeze,
When Coromandel’s ships return from Indian seas.”
XXV.
Then would that home admit them—happier far
Than grandeur’s most magnificent saloon,
While, here and there, a solitary star
Flushed in the darkening firmament of June,
And silence brought the soul-felt hour, full soon
Ineffable, which I may not portray;
For never did the hymenean moon
A paradise of hearts more sacred sway,
In all that slept beneath her soft voluptuous ray.
[45] It is a custom of the Indian tribes to visit the tombs of their
ancestors in the cultivated parts of America, who have been buried for
upwards of a century.
[46] The bridges over narrow streams in many parts of Spanish America are
said to be built of cane, which, however strong to support the passenger,
are yet waved in the agitation of the storm, and frequently add to the
effect of a mountainous and picturesque scenery.
GERTRUDE OF WYOMING. PART III.
I.
O love! in such a wilderness as this,
Where transport and security entwine,
Here is the empire of thy perfect bliss,
And here thou art a god indeed divine.
Here shall no forms abridge, no hours confine
The views, the walks, that boundless joy inspire!
Roll on, ye days of raptured influence, shine!
Nor, blind with ecstasy’s celestial fire,
Shall love behold the spark of earth-born time expire.
II.
Three little moons, how short! amidst the grove
And pastoral savannahs they consume!
While she, beside her buskined youth to rove,
Delights, in fancifully wild costume,
Her lovely brow to shade with Indian plume;
And forth in hunter-seeming vest they fare;
But not to chase the deer in forest gloom;
’Tis but the breath of heaven—the blessed air—
And interchange of hearts unknown, unseen to share.
III.
What though the sportive dog oft round them note,
Or fawn, or wild bird bursting on the wing;
Yet who in love’s own presence, would devote
To death those gentle throats that wake the spring,
Or writhing from the brook its victim bring?
No!—nor let fear one little warbler rouse;
But, fed by Gertrude’s hand, still let them sing,
Acquaintance of her path, amidst the boughs,
That shade e’en now her love, and witnessed first her vows.
IV.
Now labyrinths, which but themselves can pierce,
Methinks, conduct them to some pleasant ground,
Where welcome hills shut out the universe,
And pines their lawny walk encompass round;
There, if a pause delicious converse found,
’Twas but when o’er each heart the idea stole,
(Perchance a while in joy’s oblivion drowned)
That come what may, while life’s glad pulses roll,
Indissolubly thus should soul be knit to soul.
V.
And in the visions of romantic youth,
What years of endless bliss are yet to flow!
But, mortal pleasure, what art thou in truth?
The torrent’s smoothness, ere it dash below!
And must I change my song? and must I show,
Sweet Wyoming! the day when thou wert doomed,
Guiltless, to mourn thy loveliest bowers laid low!
When where of yesterday a garden bloomed,
Death overspread his pall, and blackening ashes gloomed!
VI.
Sad was the year, by proud oppression driven,
When Transatlantic Liberty arose,
Not in the sunshine and the smile of heaven,
But wrapt in whirlwinds, and begirt with woes,
Amidst the strife of fratricidal foes;
Her birth star was the light of burning plains;[47]
Her baptism is the weight of blood that flows
From kindred hearts—the blood of British veins—
And famine tracks her steps, and pestilential pains.
VII.
Yet, ere the storm of death had raged remote,
Or siege unseen in heaven reflects its beams,
Who now each dreadful circumstance shall note,
That fills pale Gertrude’s thoughts, and nightly dreams?
Dismal to her the forge of battle gleams
Portentous light! and music’s voice is dumb;
Save where the fife its shrill reveillè screams,
Or midnight streets re-echo to the drum,
That speaks of maddening strife, and bloodstained fields to come.
VIII.
It was in truth a momentary pang;
Yet how comprising myriad shapes of woe!
First when in Gertrude’s ear the summons rang,
A husband to the battle doomed to go!
“Nay meet not thou,” she cries, “thy kindred foe!
But peaceful let us seek fair England’s strand!”
“Ah, Gertrude! thy belovèd heart, I know,
Would feel like mine, the stigmatising brand!
Could I forsake the cause of Freedom’s holy band!
IX.
“But shame—but flight—a recreant’s name to prove,
To hide in exile ignominious fears;
Say, e’en if this I brooked,—the public love
Thy father’s bosom to his home endears:
And how could I his few remaining years,
My Gertrude, sever from so dear a child?”
So, day by day, her boding heart he cheers;
At last that heart to hope is half beguiled,
And, pale through tears suppressed, the mournful beauty smiled.
X.
Night came,—and in their lighted bower, full late,
The joy of converse had endured—when, hark!
Abrupt and loud a summons shook their gate;
And heedless of the dog’s obstreperous bark,
A form has rushed amidst them from the dark,
And spread his arms,—and fell upon the floor:
Of aged strength his limbs retained the mark;
But desolate he looked, and famished poor,
As ever shipwrecked wretch lone left on desert shore.
XI.
Uprisen, each wondering brow is knit and arched:
A spirit from the dead they deem him first:
To speak he tries; but quivering, pale, and parched,
From lips, as by some powerless dream accursed,
Emotions unintelligible burst;
And long his filmed eye is red and dim;
At length the pity-proffered cup his thirst
Had half assuaged, and nerved his shuddering limb,
When Albert’s hand he grasped;—but Albert knew not him—
XII.
“And hast thou then forgot,” he cried, forlorn,
And eyed the group with half indignant air,
“Oh! hast thou, Christian chief, forgot the morn
When I with thee the cup of peace did share?
Then stately was this head, and dark this hair
That now is white as Appalachia’s snow;
But, if the weight of fifteen years’ despair,
And age hath bowed me, and the torturing foe,
Bring me my boy—and he will his deliverer know!”
XIII.
It was not long, with eyes and heart of flame,
Ere Henry to his loved Oneyda flew:
“Bless thee, my guide!”—but backward, as he came,
The chief his old bewildered head withdrew,
And grasped his arm, and looked and looked him through.
’Twas strange—nor could the group a smile control—
The long, the doubtful scrutiny to view:—
At last delight o’er all his features stole,
“It is—my own,” he cried, and clasped him to his soul.
XIV.
“Yes! thou recall’st my pride of years, for then
The bowstring of my spirit was not slack,
When, spite of woods, and floods, and ambushed men,
I bore thee like the quiver on my back,
Fleet as the whirlwind hurries on the rack;
Nor foeman then, nor cougar’s[48] crouch I feared,
For I was strong as mountain cataract:
And dost thou not remember how we cheered,
Upon the last hill top, when white men’s huts appeared?
XV.
“Then welcome be my death song, and my death!
Since I have seen thee, and again embraced.”
And longer had he spent his toil-worn breath;
But with affectionate and eager haste,
Was every arm outstretched around their guest,
To welcome and to bless his aged head.
Soon was the hospitable banquet placed;
And Gertrude’s lovely hands a balsam shed
On wounds with fevered joy that more profusely bled.
XVI.
“But this is not a time,”—he started up,
And smote his breast with woe-denouncing hand—
“This is no time to fill the joyous cup,
The Mammoth comes,—the foe,—the Monster Brandt,[49]
With all his howling desolating band;—
These eyes have seen their blade and burning pine
Awake at once, and silence half your land.
Red is the cup they drink; but not with wine:
Awake, and watch to-night, or see no morning shine!
XVII.
“Scorning to wield the hatchet for his bribe,
’Gainst Brandt himself I went to battle forth:[50]
Accursed Brandt! he left of all my tribe
Nor man, nor child, nor thing of living birth:
No! not the dog, that watched my household hearth,
Escaped that night of blood, upon our plains!
All perished!—I alone am left on earth!
To whom nor relative nor blood remains,
No!—not a kindred drop that runs in human veins![50]
XVIII.
“But go!—and rouse your warriors;—for, if right
These old bewildered eyes could guess, by signs
Of striped and starrèd banners, on yon height
Of eastern cedars, o’er the creek of pines—
Some fort embattled by your country shines:
Deep roars the innavigable gulf below
Its squarèd rock, and palisaded lines.
Go! seek the light its warlike beacons show;
Whilst I in ambush wait for vengeance, and the foe!”
XIX.
Scarce had he uttered—when Heaven’s verge extreme
Reverberates the bomb’s descending star,—
And sounds that mingled laugh,—and shout,—and scream,—
To freeze the blood, in one discordant jar,
Rung to the pealing thunderbolts of war.
Whoop after whoop with rack the ear assailed;
As if unearthly fiends had burst their bar;
While rapidly the marksman’s shot prevailed:—
And aye, as if for death, some lonely trumpet wailed.
XX.
Then looked they to the hills, where fire o’erhung
The bandit groups, in one Vesuvian glare;
Or swept, far seen, the tower, whose clock unrung,
Told legible that midnight of despair.
She faints,—she falters not,—the heroic fair,—
As he the sword and plume in haste arrayed.
One short embrace—he clasped his dearest care—
But hark! what nearer war-drum shakes the glade?
Joy, joy! Columbia’s friends are trampling through the shade!
XXI.
Then came of every race the mingled swarm,
Far rung the groves and gleamed the midnight grass,
With flambeau, javelin, and naked arm,
As warriors wheeled their culverins of brass,
Sprung from the woods, a bold athletic mass,
Whom virtue fires, and liberty combines:
And first the wild Moravian yagers pass,
His plumed host the dark Iberian joins—
And Scotia’s sword beneath the Highland thistle shines.
XXII.
And in, the buskined hunters of the deer,
To Albert’s home, with shout and cymbal throng:—
Roused by their warlike pomp, and mirth, and cheer,
Old Outalissi woke his battle song,
And, beating with his war-club cadence strong,
Tells how his deep-stung indignation smarts,
Of them that wrapt his house in flames, ere long,
To whet a dagger on their stony hearts,
And smile avenged ere yet his eagle spirit parts.
XXIII.
Calm, opposite the Christian father rose,
Pale on his venerable brow its rays
Of martyr light the conflagration throws;
One hand upon his lovely child he lays,
And one the uncovered crowd to silence sways;
While, though the battle flash is faster driven,—
Unawed, with eye unstartled by the blaze,
He for his bleeding country prays to Heaven,—
Prays that the men of blood themselves may be forgiven.
XXIV.
Short time is now for gratulating speech:
And yet, beloved Gertrude, ere began
Thy country’s flight, yon distant towers to reach,
Looked not on thee the rudest partisan
With brow relaxed to love? And murmurs ran,
As round and round their willing ranks they drew,
From beauty’s sight to shield the hostile van.
Grateful, on them a placid look she threw,
Nor wept, but as she bade her mother’s grave adieu!
XXV.
Past was the flight, and welcome seemed the tower,
That like a giant standard-bearer frowned
Defiance on the roving Indian power.
Beneath, each bold and promontory mound
With embrasure embossed, and armour crowned,
And arrowy frieze, and wedgèd ravelin,
Wove like a diadem its tracery round
The lofty summit of that mountain green;
Here stood secure the group, and eyed a distant scene,—
XXVI.
A scene of death! where fires beneath the sun,
And blended arms, and white pavilions glow;
And for the business of destruction done
Its requiem the war-horn seemed to blow:
There sad spectatress of her country’s woe!
The lovely Gertrude, safe from present harm,
Had laid her cheek, and clasped her hands of snow
On Waldegrave’s shoulder, half within his arm
Enclosed, that felt her heart, and hushed its wild alarm!
XXVII.
But short that contemplation—sad and short
The pause to bid each much-loved scene adieu!
Beneath the very shadow of the fort,
Where friendly swords were drawn, and banners flew,
Ah! who could deem that foot of Indian crew
Was near?—yet there, with lust of murderous deeds,
Gleamed like a basilisk, from woods in view,
The ambushed foeman’s eye—his volley speeds,
And Albert—Albert—falls! the dear old father bleeds!
XXVIII.
And tranced in giddy horror Gertrude swooned;
Yet, while she clasps him lifeless to her zone,
Say, burst they, borrowed from her father’s wound,
These drops?—Oh, God! the life-blood is her own!
And faltering, on her Waldegrave’s bosom thrown—
“Weep not, O Love!” she cries, “to see me bleed—
Thee, Gertrude’s sad survivor, thee alone
Heaven’s peace commiserate; for scarce I heed
These wounds; yet thee to leave is death, is death indeed.
XXIX.
“Clasp me a little longer on the brink
Of fate! while I can feel thy dear caress:
And when this heart hath ceased to beat—oh! think,
And let it mitigate thy woe’s excess,
That thou hast been to me all tenderness,
And friend to more than human friendship just.
Oh! by that retrospect of happiness,
And by the hopes of an immortal trust,
God shall assuage thy pangs—when I am laid in dust!
XXX.
“Go, Henry, go not back, when I depart,
The scene thy bursting tears too deep will move,
Where my dear father took thee to his heart,
And Gertrude thought it ecstasy to rove
With thee, as with an angel, through the grove
Of peace, imagining her lot was cast
In heaven; for ours was not like earthly love.
And must this parting be our very last?
No! I shall love thee still, when death itself is past.
XXXI.
“Half could I bear, methinks, to leave this earth,—
And thee, more loved than aught beneath the sun,
If I had lived to smile but on the birth
Of one dear pledge;—but shall there then be none,
In future times—no gentle little one,
To clasp thy neck, and look, resembling me?
Yet seems it, e’en while life’s last pulses run,
A sweetness in the cup of death to be,
Lord of my bosom’s love! to die beholding thee!”
XXXII.
Hushed were his Gertrude’s lips! but still their bland
And beautiful expression seemed to melt
With love that could not die! and still his hand
She presses to the heart no more that felt.
Ah, heart! where once each fond affection dwelt,
And features yet that spoke a soul more fair.
Mute, gazing, agonising as he knelt,—
Of them that stood encircling his despair,
He heard some friendly words; but knew not what they were.
XXXIII.
For now, to mourn their judge and child, arrives
A faithful band. With solemn rites between,
’Twas sung, how they were lovely in their lives,
And in their deaths had not divided been.
Touched by the music, and the melting scene,
Was scarce one tearless eye amidst the crowd:—
Stern warriors, resting on their swords, were seen
To veil their eyes, as passed each much-loved shroud—
While woman’s softer soul in woe dissolved aloud.
XXXIV.
Then mournfully the parting bugle bid
Its farewell, o’er the grave of worth and truth;
Prone to the dust, afflicted Waldegrave hid
His face on earth;—him watched, in gloomy ruth,
His woodland guide: but words had none to soothe
The grief that knew not consolation’s name:
Casting his Indian mantle o’er the youth,
He watched, beneath its folds, each burst that came
Convulsive, ague-like, across his shuddering frame!
XXXV.
“And I could weep;”—the Oneyda chief
His descant wildly thus begun:
“But that I may not stain with grief
The death-song of my father’s son,
Or bow this head in woe!
For by my wrongs, and by my wrath!
To morrow Areouski’s breath
(That fires yon heaven with storms of death),
Shall light us to the foe:
And we shall share, my Christian boy!
The foeman’s blood, the avenger’s joy!
XXXVI.
“But thee, my flower, whose breath was given
By milder genii o’er the deep,
The spirits of the white man’s heaven
Forbid not thee to weep:—
Nor will the Christian host,
Nor will thy father’s spirit grieve,
To see thee, on the battle’s eve,
Lamenting, take a mournful leave
Of her who loved thee most:
She was the rainbow to thy sight!
Thy sun—thy heaven—of lost delight!
XXXVII.
“To-morrow let us do or die!
But when the bolt of death is hurled,
Ah! whither then with thee to fly,
Shall Outalissi roam the world?
Seek we thy once-loved home?
The hand is gone that cropt its flowers:
Unheard their clock repeats its hours!
Cold is the hearth within their bowers!
And should we thither roam,
Its echoes, and its empty tread,
Would sound like voices from the dead!
XXXVIII.
“Or shall we cross yon mountains blue,
Whose streams my kindred nation quaffed?
And by my side, in battle true,
A thousand warriors drew the shaft?
Ah! there in desolation cold
The desert serpent dwells alone,
Where grass o’ergrows each mouldering bone,
And stones themselves to ruin grown,
Like me, are death-like old.
Then seek we not their camp,—for there—
The silence dwells of my despair!
XXXIX.
“But hark, the trump!—to-morrow thou
In glory’s fires shalt dry thy tears:
E’en from the land of shadows now
My father’s awful ghost appears,
Amidst the clouds that round us roll;
He bids my soul for battle thirst—
He bids me dry the last—the first—
The only tears that ever burst
From Outalissi’s soul;
Because I may not stain with grief
The death-song of an Indian chief!”
[47] Alluding to the miseries that attended the American civil war.
[48] Cougar, the American tiger.
[49] Imaginary leader of those Mohawks, and other savages, who laid waste
this part of Pennsylvania.—See Notes.
[50] See Notes.
O’CONNOR’S CHILD; OR, THE “FLOWER OF LOVE LIES BLEEDING.”
O’CONNOR’S CHILD; OR, THE “FLOWER OF LOVE LIES BLEEDING.”
I.
Oh! once the harp of Innisfail[51]
Was strung full high to notes of gladness;
But yet it often told a tale
Of more prevailing sadness.
Sad was the note, and wild its fall,
As winds that moan at night forlorn
Along the isles of Fion-Gall,
When, for O’Connor’s child to mourn,
The harper told, how lone, how far
From any mansion’s twinkling star,
From any path of social men,
Or voice, but from the fox’s den,
The lady in the desert dwelt;
And yet no wrongs, no fear she felt:
Say, why should dwell in place so wild,
O’Connor’s pale and lovely child?
II.
Sweet lady! she no more inspires
Green Erin’s hearts with beauty’s power,
As, in the palace of her sires,
She bloomed a peerless flower.
Gone from her hand and bosom, gone,
The royal brooch, the jewelled ring,
That o’er her dazzling whiteness shone,
Like dews on lilies of the spring.
Yet why, though fallen her brother’s kerne,[52]
Beneath De Bourgo’s battle stern,
While yet in Leinster unexplored,
Her friends survive the English sword;
Why lingers she from Erin’s host,
So far on Galway’s shipwrecked coast;
Why wanders she a huntress wild—
O’Connor’s pale and lovely child?
III.
And fixed on empty space, why burn
Her eyes with momentary wildness;
And wherefore do they then return
To more than woman’s mildness?
Dishevelled are her raven locks;
On Connocht Moran’s name she calls;
And oft amidst the lonely rocks
She sings sweet madrigals.
Placed in the foxglove and the moss,
Behold a parted warrior’s cross!
That is the spot where, evermore,
The lady, at her shieling[53] door,
Enjoys that, in communion sweet,
The living and the dead can meet:
For, lo! to love-lorn fantasy,
The hero of her heart is nigh.
IV.
Bright as the bow that spans the storm,
In Erin’s yellow[54] vesture clad,
A son of light—a lovely form,
He comes and makes her glad;
Now on the grass-green turf he sits,
His tasselled horn beside him laid;
Now o’er the hills in chase he flits,
The hunter and the deer a shade!
Sweet mourner! those are shadows vain
That cross the twilight of her brain;
Yet she will tell you she is blest,
Of Connocht Moran’s tomb possessed,
More richly than in Aghrim’s bower,
When bards high praised her beauty’s power,
And kneeling pages offered up
The morat[55] in a golden cup.
V.
“A hero’s bride! this desert bower,
It ill befits thy gentle breeding:
And wherefore dost thou love this flower
To call—‘My love lies bleeding?’”
“This purple flower my tears have nursed;
A hero’s blood supplied its bloom:
I love it, for it was the first
That grew on Connocht Moran’s tomb.
Oh! hearken, stranger, to my voice!
This desert mansion is my choice!
And blest, though fatal, be the star
That led me to its wilds afar:
For here these pathless mountains free
Gave shelter to my love and me;
And every rock and every stone
Bear witness that he was my own.
VI.
“O’Connor’s child, I was the bud
Of Erin’s royal tree of glory;
But woe to them that wrapt in blood
The tissue of my story!
Still as I clasp my burning brain,
A death-scene rushes on my sight;
It rises o’er and o’er again,
The bloody feud—the fatal night,
When chafing Connocht Moran’s scorn,
They called my hero basely born;
And bade him choose a meaner bride
Than from O’Connor’s house of pride.
Their tribe, they said, their high degree,
Was sung in Tara’s psaltery;[56]
Witness their Eath’s victorious brand,[57]
And Cathal of the bloody hand;
Glory (they said) and power and honour
Were in the mansion of O’Connor:
But he, my loved one, bore in field
A meaner crest upon his shield.
VII.
“Ah, brothers! what did it avail,
That fiercely and triumphantly
Ye fought the English of the pale,
And stemmed De Bourgo’s chivalry?[58]
And what was it to love and me,
That barons by your standard rode;
Or beal-fires[59] for your jubilee,
Upon a hundred mountains glowed?
What though the lords of tower and dome
From Shannon to the North Sea foam,—
Thought ye your iron hands of pride
Could break the knot that love had tied?
No:—let the eagle change his plume,
The leaf its hue, the flower its bloom;
But ties around this heart were spun,
That could not, would not, be undone!
VIII.
“At bleating of the wild watch-fold
Thus sang my love—‘Oh, come with me:
Our bark is on the lake, behold
Our steeds are fastened to the tree,
Come far from Castle Connor’s clans—
Come with thy belted forestere,
And I, beside the lake of swans,
Shall hunt for thee the fallow-deer;
And build thy hut, and bring thee home
The wild-fowl and the honey-comb;
And berries from the wood provide,
And play my clarshech[60] by thy side.
Then come, my love!’—How could I stay?
Our nimble stag-hounds tracked the way,
And I pursued, by moonless skies,
The light of Connocht Moran’s eyes.
IX.
“And fast and far, before the star
Of day-spring, rushed we through the glade,
And saw at dawn the lofty bawn[61]
Of Castle Connor fade.
Sweet was to us the hermitage
Of this unploughed, untrodden shore;
Like birds all joyous from the cage,
For man’s neglect we loved it more.
And well he knew, my huntsman dear,
To search the game with hawk and spear;
While I, his evening food to dress,
Would sing to him in happiness.
But, oh, that midnight of despair!
When I was doomed to rend my hair:
The night, to me, of shrieking sorrow!
The night, to him, that had no morrow!
X.
“When all was hushed, at eventide,
I heard the baying of their beagle:
‘Be hushed!’ my Connocht Moran cried,
‘’Tis but the screaming of the eagle.’
Alas! t’was not the eyrie’s sound;
Their bloody bands had tracked us out;
Up-listening starts our couchant hound,
And, hark! again, that nearer shout
Brings faster on the murderers.
Spare—spare him—Brazil—Desmond fierce!
In vain—no voice the adder charms;
Their weapons crossed my sheltering arms:
Another’s sword has laid him low.
Another’s and another’s;
And every hand that dealt the blow—
Ah me! it was a brother’s!
Yes, when his moanings died away,
Their iron hands had dug the clay,
And o’er his burial turf they trod,
And I beheld—Oh God! Oh God!
His life-blood oozing from the sod!
XI.
“Warm in his death-wounds sepulchred,
Alas! my warrior’s spirit brave.
Nor mass nor ulla-lulla[62] heard,
Lamenting, soothe his grave.
Dragged to their hated mansion back,
How long in thraldom’s grasp I lay,
I knew not, for my soul was black,
And knew no change of night or day.
One night of horror round me grew;
Or if I saw, or felt, or knew,
’Twas but when those grim visages,
The angry brothers of my race,
Glared on each eye-ball’s aching throb,
And checked my bosom’s power to sob,
Or when my heart with pulses drear,
Beat like a death-watch to my ear.
XII.
“But Heaven, at last, my soul’s eclipse
Did with a vision bright inspire:
I woke and felt upon my lips
A prophetess’s fire.
Thrice in the east a war-drum beat,
I heard the Saxon’s trumpet sound,
And ranged, as to the judgment-seat,
My guilty, trembling brothers round.
Clad in the helm and shield they came;
For now De Bourgo’s sword and flame
Had ravaged Ulster’s boundaries,
And lighted up the midnight skies.
The standard of O’Connor’s sway
Was in the turret where I lay;
That standard with so dire a look,
As ghastly shone the moon and pale,
I gave, that every bosom shook
Beneath its iron mail.
XIII.
“‘And go!’ I cried, ‘the combat seek,
Ye hearts that unappallèd bore
The anguish of a sister’s shriek,
Go!—and return no more!
For sooner guilt the ordeal brand
Shall gasp unhurt, than ye shall hold
The banner with victorious hand,
Beneath a sister’s curse unrolled.’
O stranger! by my country’s loss!
And by my love! and by the cross!
I swear I never could have spoke
The curse that severed nature’s yoke,
But that a spirit o’er me stood,
And fired me with the wrathful mood;
And frenzy to my heart was given,
To speak the malison of heaven.[63]
XIV.
“They would have crossed themselves, all mute;
They would have prayed to burst the spell;
But at the stamping of my foot,
Each hand down powerless fell!
‘And go to Athunree!’[64] I cried,
‘High lift the banner of your pride!
But know that where its sheet unrolls,
The weight of blood is on your souls!
Go where the havoc of your kerne
Shall float as high as mountain fern!
Men shall no more your mansion know;
The nettles on your hearth shall grow!
Dead, as the green oblivious flood
That mantles by your walls, shall be
The glory of O’Connor’s blood:
Away! away to Athunree!
Where, downward when the sun shall fall,
The raven’s wing shall be your pall!
And not a vassal shall unlace
The vizor from your dying face!’
XV.
A bolt that overhung our dome
Suspended till my curse was given,
Soon as it passed these lips of foam,
Pealed in the blood-red heaven.
Dire was the look that o’er their backs
The angry parting brothers threw:
But now, behold! like cataracts,
Come down the hills in view
O’Connor’s plumèd partisans,
Thrice ten Kilnagorvian clans
Were marching to their doom:
A sudden storm their plumage tossed,
A flash of lightning o’er them crossed,
And all again was gloom!
XVI.
“Stranger! I fled the home of grief,
At Connocht Moran’s tomb to fall;
I found the helmet of my chief,
His bow still hanging on our wall,
And took it down, and vowed to rove
This desert place a huntress bold;
Nor would I change my buried love
For any heart of living mould.
No! for I am a hero’s child;
I’ll hunt my quarry in the wild;
And still my home this mansion make,
Of all unheeded and unheeding,
And cherish, for my warrior’s sake—
‘The flower of love lies bleeding.’”
[51] The ancient name of Ireland.
[52] The plural of kern—an Irish foot soldier.
[53] A rude hut, or cabin.
[54] Yellow, dyed from saffron, was the favourite colour of the ancient
Irish.
[55] A drink made of the juice of mulberry mixed with honey.
[56] See Notes.
[57] Eath O’Connor defeated the English.
[58] See Notes.
[59] Fires lighted in honour of the sun on the hill tops by the
Irish.—See Notes.
[60] The Irish harp.—See Notes.
[61] Fortification—See Notes.
[62] The Irish wail for the dead.
[63] See Notes.
[64] An important battle was fought here, August 10, 1315, which decided
the subjection of Ireland.—See Notes.
THEODRIC; A DOMESTIC TALE.
THEODRIC; A DOMESTIC TALE.
’Twas sunset, and the “Ranz des Vaches” was sung,
And lights were o’er the Helvetian mountains flung,
That gave the glacier tops their richest glow,[65]
And tinged the lakes like molten gold below.
Warmth flushed the wonted regions of the storm,
Where, Phœnix-like, you saw the eagle’s form,
That high in Heaven’s vermilion wheeled and soared.
Woods nearer frowned, and cataracts dashed and roared,
From heights browsed by the bounding bouquetin;[65]
Herds tinkling roamed the long-drawn vales between,
And hamlets glittered white, and gardens flourished green.
’Twas transport to inhale the bright sweet air!
The mountain-bee was revelling in its glare,
And roving with his minstrelsy across
The scented wild weeds, and enamelled moss.[65]
Earth’s features so harmoniously were linked,
She seemed one great glad form, with life instinct,
That felt Heaven’s ardent breath, and smiled below
Its flush of love, with consentaneous glow.
A Gothic church was near; the spot around
Was beautiful, even though sepulchral ground;
For there nor yew nor cypress spread their gloom,
But roses blossomed by each rustic tomb.
Amidst them one of spotless marble shone—
A maiden’s grave—and ’twas inscribed thereon,
That young and loved she died whose dust was there:
“Yes,” said my comrade, “young she died, and fair!
Grace formed her, and the soul of gladness played
Once in the blue eyes of that mountain-maid:
Her fingers witched the chords they passed along,
And her lips seemed to kiss the soul in song:
Yet wooed, and worshipped as she was, till few
Aspired to hope, ’twas sadly, strangely true,
That heart, the martyr of its fondness, burned
And died of love that could not be returned.
“Her father dwelt where yonder castle shines
O’er clustering trees and terrace-mantling vines.
As gay as ever, the laburnum’s pride
Waves o’er each walk where she was wont to glide,—
And still the garden whence she graced her brow,
As lovely blooms, though trod by strangers now.
How oft from yonder window o’er the lake,
Her song of wild Helvetian swell and shake
Has made the rudest fisher bend his ear,
And rest enchanted on his oar to hear!
Thus bright, accomplished, spirited, and bland,
Well-born, and wealthy for that simple land,
Why had no gallant native youth the art
To win so warm—so exquisite a heart?
She, midst these rocks inspired with feelings strong
By mountain-freedom—music—fancy—song,
Herself descended from the brave in arms,
And conscious of romance-inspiring charms,
Dreamt of Heroic beings; hoped to find
Some extant spirit of chivalric kind;
And scorning wealth, looked cold e’en on the claim
Of manly worth, that lacked the wreath of fame.
“Her younger brother, sixteen summers old,
And much her likeness both in mind and mould,
Had gone, poor boy! in soldiership to shine,
And bore an Austrian banner on the Rhine.
’Twas when, alas! our Empire’s evil star
Shed all the plagues, without the pride, of war;
When patriots bled, and bitterer anguish crossed
Our brave, to die in battles foully lost.
The youth wrote home the rout of many a day;
Yet still he said, and still with truth could say,
One corps had ever made a valiant stand,—
The corps in which he served—Theodric’s band.
_His_ fame, forgotten chief, is now gone by,
Eclipsed by brighter orbs in glory’s sky;
Yet once it shone, and veterans, when they show
Our fields of battle twenty years ago,
Will tell you feats his small brigade performed,
In charges nobly faced and trenches stormed.
Time was, when songs were chanted to his fame,
And soldiers loved the march that bore his name:
The zeal of martial hearts was at his call,
And that Helvetian, Udolph’s, most of all.
’Twas touching, when the storm of war blew wild,
To see a blooming boy,—almost a child,—
Spur fearless at his leader’s words and signs,
Brave death in reconnoitring hostile lines,
And speed each task, and tell each message clear,
In scenes where war-trained men were stunned with fear.
“Theodric praised him, and they wept for joy
In yonder house,—when letters from the boy
Thanked Heaven for life, and more, to use his phrase,
Than twenty lives—his own Commander’s praise.
Then followed glowing pages, blazoning forth
The fancied image of his Leader’s worth,
With such hyperbolés of youthful style
As made his parents dry their tears and smile:
But differently far his words impressed
A wondering sister’s well-believing breast;—
She caught the illusion, blest Theodric’s name,
And wildly magnified his worth and fame;
Rejoicing life’s reality contained
One, heretofore, her fancy had but feigned,
Whose love could make her proud;—and time and chance
To passion raised that day-dream of Romance.
“Once, when with hasty charge of horse and man
Our arrière-guard had checked the Gallic van,
Theodric, visiting the outposts, found
His Udolph wounded, weltering on the ground:—
Sore crushed,—half-swooning, half-upraised, he lay,
And bent his brow, fair boy! and grasped the clay.
His fate moved e’en the common soldier’s ruth—
Theodric succoured him; nor left the youth
To vulgar hands, but brought him to his tent,
And lent what aid a brother would have lent.
“Meanwhile, to save his kindred half the smart
The war-gazette’s dread blood-roll might impart,
He wrote the event to them; and soon could tell
Of pains assuaged and symptoms auguring well,
And last of all, prognosticating cure,
Enclosed the leech’s vouching signature.
“Their answers, on whose pages you might note
That tears had fallen, whilst trembling fingers wrote,
Gave boundless thanks for benefits conferred,
Of which the boy, in secret, sent them word,
Whose memory Time, they said, would never blot;
But which the giver had himself forgot
“In time, the stripling, vigorous and healed,
Resumed his barb and banner in the field,
And bore himself right soldier-like, till now
The third campaign had manlier bronzed his brow,
When peace, though but a scanty pause for breath,—
A curtain-drop between the acts of death,—
A check in frantic war’s unfinished game,
Yet dearly bought, and direly welcome, came.
The camp broke up, and Udolph left his chief
As with a son’s or younger brother’s grief:
But journeying home, how rapt his spirits rose!
How light his footsteps crushed St. Gothard’s snows!
How dear seemed e’en the waste and wild Shreckhorn,
Though wrapt in clouds, and frowning as in scorn
Upon a downward world of pastoral charms;
Where, by the very smell of dairy-farms,
And fragrance from the mountain-herbage blown,
Blindfold his native hills he could have known![66]
“His coming down yon lake,—his boat in view
Of windows where love’s fluttering kerchief flew,—
The arms spread out for him—the tears that burst,
(’Twas Julia’s, ’twas his sister’s, met him first:)—
Their pride to see war’s medal at his breast,
And all their rapture’s greeting, may be guessed.
“Ere long, his bosom triumphed to unfold
A gift he meant their gayest room to hold,—
The picture of a friend in warlike dress;
And who it was he first bade Julia guess.
‘Yes,’ she replied, ‘’twas he, methought in sleep,
When you were wounded, told me not to weep.’
The painting long in that sweet mansion drew
Regards its living semblance little knew.
“Meanwhile Theodric, who had years before
Learnt England’s tongue, and loved her classic lore,
A glad enthusiast now explored the land,
Where Nature, Freedom, Art, smile hand in hand:
Her women fair; her men robust for toil;
Her vigorous souls, high-cultured as her soil;
Her towns, where civic independence flings
The gauntlet down to senates, courts, and kings;
Her works of art, resembling magic’s powers,
Her mighty fleets, and learning’s beauteous bowers.—
These he had visited, with wonder’s smile,
And scarce endured to quit so fair an isle.
But how our fates from unmomentous things
May rise, like rivers out of little springs!
A trivial chance postponed his parting day,
And public tidings caused, in that delay,
An English jubilee. ’Twas a glorious sight;
At eve, stupendous London, clad in light,
Poured out triumphant multitudes to gaze;
Youth, age, wealth, penury, smiling in the blaze;
The illumined atmosphere was warm and bland,
And Beauty’s groups, the fairest of the land,
Conspicuous, as in some wide festive room,
In open chariots passed with pearl and plume.
Amidst them he remarked a lovelier mien
Than e’er his thoughts had shaped, or eyes had seen;
The throng detained her till he reined his steed,
And, ere the beauty passed, had time to read
The motto and the arms her carriage bore.
Led by that clue, he left not England’s shore
Till he had known her: and to know her well
Prolonged, exalted, bound, enchantment’s spell;
For with affections warm, intense, refined,
She mixed such calm and holy strength of mind,
That, like Heaven’s image in the smiling brook,
Celestial peace was pictured in her look.
Hers was the brow, in trials unperplexed,
That cheered the sad, and tranquillised the vexed;
She studied not the meanest to eclipse,
And yet the wisest listened to her lips;
She sang not, knew not Music’s magic skill,
But yet her voice had tones that swayed the will.
He sought—he won her—and resolved to make
His future home in England for her sake.
“Yet, ere they wedded, matters of concern
To Cæsar’s court commanded his return,
A season’s space,—and on his Alpine way,
He reached those bowers, that rang with joy that day:
The boy was half beside himself,—the sire,
All frankness, honour, and Helvetian fire,
Of speedy parting would not hear him speak;
And tears bedewed and brightened Julia’s cheek.
“Thus, loth to wound their hospitable pride,
A month he promised with them to abide;
As blithe he trode the mountain-sward as they,
And felt his joy make e’en the young more gay.
How jocund was their breakfast-parlour fanned
By yon blue water’s breath,—their walks how bland!
Fair Julia seemed her brother’s softened sprite—
A gem reflecting Nature’s purest light,—
And with her graceful wit there was inwrought
A wildly sweet unworldliness of thought,
That almost child-like to his kindness drew,
And twin with Udolph in his friendship grew.
But did his thoughts to love one moment range?—
No! he who had loved Constance could not change!
Besides, till grief betrayed her undesigned,
The unlikely thought could scarcely reach his mind,
That eyes so young on years like his should beam
Unwooed devotion back for pure esteem.
“True, she sang to his very soul, and brought
Those trains before him of luxuriant thought
Which only Music’s heaven-born art can bring,
To sweep across the mind with angel wing.
Once, as he smiled amidst that waking trance,
She paused o’ercome: he thought it might be chance,
And, when his first suspicions dimly stole
Rebuked them back like phantoms from his soul.
But when he saw his caution gave her pain,
And kindness brought suspense’s rack again,
Faith, honour, friendship, bound him to unmask
Truths which her timid fondness feared to ask.
“And yet with gracefully ingenuous power
Her spirit met the explanatory hour;—
Even conscious beauty brightened in her eyes,
That told she knew their love no vulgar prize;
And pride, like that of one more woman-grown,
Enlarged her mien, enriched her voice’s tone.
’Twas then she struck the keys, and music made
That mocked all skill her hand had e’er displayed:
Inspired and warbling, rapt from things around,
She looked the very Muse of magic sound,
Painting in sound the forms of joy and woe,
Until the mind’s eye saw them melt and glow.
Her closing strain composed and calm she played,
And sang no words to give its pathos aid;
But grief seemed lingering in its lengthened swell,
And like so many tears the trickling touches fell.
Of Constance then she heard Theodric speak,
And steadfast smoothness still possessed her cheek;
But when he told her how he oft had planned
Of old a journey to their mountain land,
That might have brought him hither years before,
‘Ah! then,’ she cried, ‘you knew not England’s shore;
And, had you come,—and wherefore did you not?’
‘Yes,’ he replied, ‘it would have changed our lot!’
Then burst her tears through pride’s restraining bands,
And with her handkerchief, and both her hands,
She hid her face and wept.—Contrition stung
Theodric for the tears his words had wrung.
‘But no,’ she cried, ‘unsay not what you’ve said,
Nor grudge one prop on which my pride is stayed;
To think I could have merited your faith,
Shall be my solace even unto death?’—
‘Julia,’ Theodric said, with purposed look
Of firmness, ‘my reply deserved rebuke;
But by your pure and sacred peace of mind,
And by the dignity of womankind,
Swear that when I am gone you’ll do your best
To chase this dream of fondness from your breast.’
“The abrupt appeal electrified her thought;—
She looked to Heaven, as if its aid she sought,
Dried hastily the tear-drops from her cheek,
And signified the vow she could not speak.
“Ere long he communed with her mother mild:
‘Alas!’ she said, ‘I warned—conjured my child,
And grieved for this affection from the first,
But like fatality it has been nursed;
For when her filled eyes on your picture fixed,
And when your name in all she spoke was mixed,
’Twas hard to chide an over-grateful mind!
Then each attempt a likelier choice to find
Made only fresh-rejected suitors grieve,
And Udolph’s pride—perhaps her own—believe
That could she meet, she might enchant e’en you.
You came.—I augured the event, ’tis true,
But how was Udolph’s mother to exclude
The guest that claimed our boundless gratitude?
And that unconscious you had cast a spell
On Julia’s peace, my pride refused to tell:
Yet in my child’s illusion I have seen,
Believe me well, how blameless you have been:
Nor can it cancel, howsoe’er it end,
Our debt of friendship to our boy’s best friend.’
At night he parted with the aged pair;
At early morn rose Julia to prepare
The last repast her hands for him should make,
And Udolph to convoy him o’er the lake.
The parting was to her such bitter grief,
That of her own accord she made it brief;
But, lingering at her window, long surveyed
His boat’s last glimpses melting into shade.
“Theodric sped to Austria, and achieved
His journey’s object. Much was he relieved
When Udolph’s letters told that Julia’s mind
Had borne his loss firm, tranquil, and resigned.
He took the Rhenish route to England, high
Elate with hopes, fulfilled their ecstacy,
And interchanged with Constance’s own breath
The sweet eternal vows that bound their faith.
“To paint that being to a grovelling mind
Were like portraying pictures to the blind.
’Twas needful e’en infectiously to feel
Her temper’s fond and firm and gladsome zeal,
To share existence with her, and to gain
Sparks from her love’s electrifying chain,
Of that pure pride, which lessening to her breast
Life’s ills, gave all its joys a treble zest,
Before the mind completely understood
That mighty truth—how happy are the good!—
“E’en when her light forsook him, it bequeathed
Ennobling sorrow; and her memory breathed
A sweetness that survived her living days
As odorous scents outlast the censer’s blaze.
“Or if a trouble dimmed their golden joy,
’Twas outward dross, and not infused alloy:
_Their home_ knew but affection’s looks and speech—
A little Heaven, above dissension’s reach.
But midst her kindred there was strife and gall;
Save one congenial sister, they were all
Such foils to her bright intellect and grace,
As if she had engrossed the virtue of her race.
Her nature strove the unnatural feuds to heal,
Her wisdom made the weak to her appeal;
And though the wounds she cured were soon unclosed,
Unwearied still her kindness interposed.
“Oft on those errands though she went, in vain,
And home, a blank without her, gave him pain,
He bore her absence for its pious end.—
But public grief his spirit came to bend;
For war laid waste his native land once more,
And German honour bled at every pore.
Oh! were he there, he thought, to rally back
One broken band, or perish in the wrack!
Nor think that Constance sought to move or melt
His purpose: like herself she spoke and felt:—
‘Your fame is mine, and I will bear all woe
Except its loss!—but with you let me go
To arm you for, to embrace you from the fight;
Harm will not reach me—hazards will delight!’
He knew those hazards better; one campaign
In England he conjured her to remain,
And she expressed assent, although her heart
In secret had resolved _they_ should not part.
“How oft the wisest on misfortune’s shelves
Are wrecked by errors most unlike themselves!
_That_ little fault, _that_ fraud of love’s romance,
_That_ plan’s concealment, wrought their whole mischance.
_He_ knew it not preparing to embark,
But felt extinct his comfort’s latest spark,
When, midst those numbered days, she made repair
Again to kindred worthless of her care.
’Tis true she said the tidings she would write
Would make her absence on his heart sit light;
But, haplessly, revealed not yet her plan,
And left him in his home a lonely man.
“Thus damped in thoughts, he mused upon the past:
’Twas long since he had heard from Udolph last,
And deep misgivings on his spirit fell,
That all with Udolph’s household was not well.
’Twas that too true prophetic mood of fear
That augurs griefs inevitably near,
Yet makes them not less startling to the mind,
When come. Least looked-for then of human kind,
His Udolph (’twas, he thought at first, his sprite)
With mournful joy that morn surprised his sight.
How changed was Udolph! Scarce Theodric durst
Inquire his tidings,—he revealed the worst.
‘At first,’ he said, ‘as Julia bade me tell,
She bore her fate high-mindedly and well,
Resolved from common eyes her grief to hide,
And from the world’s compassion saved our pride;
But still her health gave way to secret woe,
And long she pined—for broken hearts die slow!
Her reason went, but came returning, like
The warning of her death-hour—soon to strike;
And all for which she now, poor sufferer! sighs,
Is once to see Theodric ere she dies.
Why should I come to tell you this caprice?
Forgive me! for my mind has lost its peace.
I blame myself, and ne’er shall cease to blame,
That my insane ambition for the name
Of brother to Theodric, founded all
Those high-built hopes that crushed her by their fall.
I made her slight a mother’s counsel sage,
But now my parents droop with grief and age;
And though my sister’s eyes mean no rebuke,
They overwhelm me with their dying look.
The journey’s long, but you are full of ruth;
And she who shares your heart, and knows its truth,
Has faith in your affection, far above
The fear of a poor dying object’s love.’
‘She has, my Udolph,’ he replied, ‘’tis true;
And oft we talk of Julia—oft of you.’
Their converse came abruptly to a close;
For scarce could each his troubled looks compose,
When visitants, to Constance near akin
(In all but traits of soul), were ushered in.
They brought not her, nor midst their kindred band
The sister who alone, like her, was bland;
But said—and smiled to see it gave him pain—
That Constance would a fortnight yet remain.
Vexed by their tidings, and the haughty view
They cast on Udolph as the youth withdrew,
Theodric blamed his Constance’s intent.—
The demons went, and left him as they went,
To read, when they were gone beyond recall,
A note from her loved hand, explaining all.
She said, that with their house she only staid
That parting peace might with them all be made;
But prayed for love to share his foreign life,
And shun all future chance of kindred strife.
He wrote with speed, his soul’s consent to say:
The letter missed her on her homeward way.
In six hours Constance was within his arms:
Moved, flushed, unlike her wonted calm of charms,
And breathless—with uplifted hands outspread—
Burst into tears upon his neck, and said,—
‘I knew that those who brought your message laughed
With poison of their own to point the shaft;
And this my one kind sister thought, yet loth
Confessed she feared ’twas true you had been wroth.
But here you are, and smile on me: my pain
Is gone, and Constance is herself again.’
His ecstasy, it may be guessed, was much:
Yet pain’s extreme and pleasure’s seemed to touch.
What pride! embracing beauty’s perfect mould;
What terror! lest his few rash words, mistold,
Had agonised her pulse to fever’s heat:
But calmed again so soon it healthful beat,
And such sweet tones were in her voice’s sound,
Composed herself, she breathed composure round.
“Fair being! with what sympathetic grace
She heard, bewailed, and pleaded Julia’s case;
Implored he would her dying wish attend,
‘And go,’ she said, ‘to-morrow with your friend;
I’ll wait for your return on England’s shore,
And then we’ll cross the deep, and part no more.’
“To-morrow both his soul’s compassion drew
To Julia’s call, and Constance urged anew
That not to heed her now would be to bind
A load of pain for life upon his mind.
He went with Udolph—from his Constance went—
Stifling, alas! a dark presentiment
Some ailment lurked, e’en whilst she smiled, to mock
His fears of harm from yester-morning’s shock.
Meanwhile a faithful page he singled out,
To watch at home, and follow straight his route,
If aught of threatened change her health should show:
With Udolph then he reached the house of woe.
“That winter’s eve how darkly Nature’s brow
Scowled on the scenes it lights so lovely now!
The tempest, raging o’er the realms of ice,
Shook fragments from the rifted precipice;
And whilst their falling echoed to the wind,
The wolf’s long howl in dismal discord joined,
While white yon water’s foam was raised in clouds
That whirled like spirits wailing in their shrouds:
Without was Nature’s elemental din—
And beauty died, and friendship wept, within!
“Sweet Julia, though her fate was finished half,
Still knew him—smiled on him with feeble laugh—
And blessed him, till she drew her latest sigh!
But lo! while Udolph’s bursts of agony,
And age’s tremulous wailings, round him rose,
What accents pierced him deeper yet than those?
’Twas tidings by his English messenger,
Of Constance—brief and terrible they were.
She still was living when the page set out
From home, but whether now was left in doubt.
Poor Julia! saw he then thy death’s relief—
Stunned into stupor more than wrung with grief?
It was not strange; for in the human breast
Two master-passions cannot co-exist,
And that alarm which now usurped his brain
Shut out not only peace, but other pain.
’Twas fancying Constance underneath the shroud
That covered Julia made him first weep loud,
And tear himself away from them that wept.
Fast hurrying homeward, night nor day he slept,
Till, launched at sea, he dreamt that his soul’s saint
Clung to him on a bridge of ice, pale, faint,
O’er cataracts of blood. Awake, he blessed
The shore; nor hope left utterly his breast,
Till reaching home, terrific omen! there
The straw-laid street preluded his despair—
The servant’s look—the table that revealed
His letter sent to Constance last, still sealed—
Though speech and hearing left him, told too clear
That he had now to suffer—not to fear.
He felt as if he ne’er should cease to feel—
A wretch live-broken on misfortune’s wheel;
Her death’s cause—he might make his peace with Heaven,
Absolved from guilt, but never self-forgiven.
“The ocean has its ebbings—so has grief;
’Twas vent to anguish, if ’twas not relief,
To lay his brow e’en on her death-cold cheek.
Then first he heard her one kind sister speak:
She bade him, in the name of Heaven, forbear
With self-reproach to deepen his despair:
‘’Twas blame,’ she said, ‘I shudder to relate,
But none of yours, that caused our darling’s fate;
Her mother (must I call her such?) foresaw,
Should Constance leave the land, she would withdraw
Our House’s charm against the world’s neglect—
The only gem that drew it some respect.
Hence, when you went, she came and vainly spoke
To change her purpose—grew incensed, and broke
With execrations from her kneeling child.
Start not! your angel from her knee rose mild,
Feared that she should not long the scene outlive,
Yet bade e’en you the unnatural one forgive.
Till then her ailment had been slight or none;
But fast she drooped, and fatal pains came on:
Foreseeing their event, she dictated
And signed these words for you.’ The letter said—
“‘Theodric, this is destiny above
Our power to baffle; bear it then, my love!
Rave not to learn the usage I have borne,
For one true sister left me not forlorn;
And though you’re absent in another land,
Sent from me by my own well-meant command,
Your soul, I know, as firm is knit to mine
As these clasped hands in blessing you now join:
Shape not imagined horrors in my fate—
E’en now my sufferings are not very great;
And when your grief’s first transports shall subside
I call upon your strength of soul and pride
To pay my memory, if ’tis worth the debt,
Love’s glorying tribute—not forlorn regret:
I charge my name with power to conjure up
Reflection’s balmy, not its bitter cup.
My pardoning angel, at the gates of Heaven,
Shall look not more regard than you have given
To me; and our life’s union has been clad
In smiles of bliss as sweet as life e’er had.
Shall gloom be from such bright remembrance cast?
Shall bitterness outflow from sweetness past?
No! imaged in the sanctuary of your breast,
There let me smile, amidst high thoughts at rest;
And let contentment on your spirit shine,
As if its peace were still a part of mine:
For if you war not proudly with your pain,
For you I shall have worse than lived in vain.
But I conjure your manliness to bear
My loss with noble spirit—not despair:
I ask you by our love to promise this,
And kiss these words, where I have left a kiss,—
The latest from my living lips for yours.’—
“Words that will solace him while life endures:
For though his spirit from affliction’s surge
Could ne’er to life, as life had been, emerge,
Yet still that mind whose harmony elate
Rang sweetness, e’en beneath the crush of fate,—
That mind in whose regard all things were placed
In views that softened them, or lights that graced,
That soul’s example could not but dispense
A portion of its own blessed influence;
Invoking him to peace, and that self-sway
Which Fortune cannot give, nor take away:
And though he mourned her long, ’twas with such woe
As if her spirit watched him still below.”
[65] See Notes at the end of the Volume.
[66] See Notes at the end of the Volume.
LOCHIEL’S WARNING.
LOCHIEL’S WARNING.[67]
WIZARD—LOCHIEL.
WIZARD.
Lochiel, Lochiel! beware of the day
When the Lowlands shall meet thee in battle array!
For a field of the dead rushes red on my sight,
And the clans of Culloden are scattered in fight.
They rally, they bleed, for their kingdom and crown;
Woe, woe to the riders that trample them down!
Proud Cumberland prances, insulting the slain,
And their hoof-beaten bosoms are trod to the plain.
But hark! through the fast-flashing lightning of war,
What steed to the desert flies frantic and far?
’Tis thine, oh Glenullin! whose bride shall await,
Like a love-lighted watch-fire, all night at the gate.
A steed comes at morning: no rider is there;
But its bridle is red with the sign of despair.
Weep, Albin![68] to death and captivity led!
O weep! but thy tears cannot number the dead:
For a merciless sword on Culloden shall wave,
Culloden! that reeks with the blood of the brave.
LOCHIEL.
Go, preach to the coward, thou death-telling seer!
Or, if gory Culloden so dreadful appear,
Draw, dotard, around thy old wavering sight,
This mantle, to cover the phantoms of fright.
WIZARD.
Ha! laugh’st thou, Lochiel, my vision to scorn?
Proud bird of the mountain, thy plume shall be torn!
Say, rushed the bold eagle exultingly forth,
From his home, in the dark rolling clouds of the north?
Lo! the death-shot of foemen outspeeding, he rode
Companionless, bearing destruction abroad;
But down let him stoop from his havoc on high!
Ah! home let him speed,—for the spoiler is nigh.
Why flames the far summit? Why shoot to the blast
Those embers, like stars from the firmament cast?
’Tis the fire-shower of ruin, all dreadfully driven
From his eyrie, that beacons the darkness of heaven.
Oh, crested Lochiel! the peerless in might,
Whose banners arise on the battlement’s height,
Heaven’s fire is around thee, to blast and to burn;
Return to thy dwelling! all lonely return!
For the blackness of ashes shall mark where it stood,
And a wild mother scream o’er her famishing brood.
LOCHIEL.
False Wizard, avaunt! I have marshalled my clan,
Their swords are a thousand, their bosoms are one!
They are true to the last of their blood and their breath,
And like reapers descend to the harvest of death.
Then welcome be Cumberland’s steed to the shock!
Let him dash his proud foam like a wave on the rock!
But woe to his kindred, and woe to his cause,
When Albin her claymore indignantly draws;
When her bonneted chieftains to victory crowd,
Clanronald the dauntless, and Moray the proud,
All plaided and plumed in their tartan array——
WIZARD.
——Lochiel, Lochiel! beware of the day;
For, dark and despairing, my sight I may seal,
But man cannot cover what God would reveal;
’Tis the sunset of life gives me mystical lore,
And coming events cast their shadows before.
I tell thee, Culloden’s dread echoes shall ring
With the bloodhounds that bark for thy fugitive king.
Lo! anointed by Heaven with the vials of wrath,
Behold, where he[69] flies on his desolate path!
Now in darkness and billows, he sweeps from my sight:
Rise, rise! ye wild tempests, and cover his flight!
’Tis finished. Their thunders are hushed on the moors:
Culloden is lost, and my country deplores.
But where is the iron-bound prisoner? Where?
For the red eye of battle is shut in despair.
Say, mounts he the ocean-wave, banished forlorn,
Like a limb from his country cast bleeding and torn?
Ah no! for a darker departure is near;
The war-drum is muffled, and black is the bier;
His death-bell is tolling: oh! mercy dispel
Yon sight, that it freezes my spirit to tell!
Life flutters convulsed in his quivering limbs,
And his blood-streaming nostril in agony swims.
Accursed be the faggots, that blaze at his feet,
Where his heart shall be thrown, ere it ceases to beat,
With the smoke of its ashes to poison the gale——
LOCHIEL.
——Down, soothless insulter! I trust not the tale:
For never shall Albin a destiny meet,
So black with dishonour, so foul with retreat.
Though my perishing ranks should be strewed in their gore,
Like ocean-weeds heaped on the surf-beaten shore,
Lochiel, untainted by flight or by chains,
While the kindling of life in his bosom remains,
Shall victor exult, or in death be laid low,
With his back to the field, and his feet to the foe!
And leaving in battle no blot on his name,
Look proudly to Heaven from the death-bed of fame
[67] See Notes at the end of the Volume.
[68] The Gaelic appellation of Scotland,—more particularly the Highlands.
[69] Charles Edward Stuart.
MISCELLANEOUS POEMS.
BATTLE OF THE BALTIC.
I.
Of Nelson and the North,
Sing the glorious day’s renown,
When to battle fierce came forth
All the might of Denmark’s crown,
And her arms along the deep proudly shone;
By each gun the lighted brand,
In a bold determined hand,
And the Prince of all the land
Led them on.
II.
Like leviathans afloat,
Lay their bulwarks on the brine;
While the sign of battle flew
On the lofty British line:
It was ten of April morn by the chime;
As they drifted on their path,
There was silence deep as death;
And the boldest held his breath,
For a time.
III.
But the might of England flushed
To anticipate the scene;
And her van the fleeter rushed
O’er the deadly space between.
“Hearts of oak!” our captain cried; when each gun
From its adamantine lips
Spread a death-shade round the ships,
Like the hurricane eclipse
Of the sun.
IV.
Again! again! again!
And the havoc did not slack,
Till a feeble cheer the Dane
To our cheering sent us back;—
Their shots along the deep slowly boom:—
Then ceased—and all is wail,
As they strike the shattered sail;
Or, in conflagration pale,
Light the gloom.
V.
Out spoke the victor then,
As he hailed them o’er the wave;
“Ye are brothers! ye are men!
And we conquer but to save:—
So peace instead of death let us bring;
But yield, proud foe, thy fleet,
With the crews, at England’s feet,
And make submission meet
To our King.”
VI.
Then Denmark blessed our chief,
That he gave her wounds repose;
And the sounds of joy and grief
From her people wildly rose,
As death withdrew his shades from the day.
While the sun looked smiling bright
O’er a wide and woeful sight,
Where the fires of funeral light
Died away.
VII.
Now joy, Old England, raise!
For the tidings of thy might,
By the festal cities’ blaze,
While the wine-cup shines in light;
And yet amidst that joy and uproar,
Let us think of them that sleep,
Full many a fathom deep,
By thy wild and stormy steep.
Elsinore!
VIII.
Brave hearts! to Britain’s pride
Once so faithful and so true,
On the deck of fame that died;—
With the gallant good Riou:[70]
Soft sigh the winds of Heaven o’er their grave!
While the billow mournful rolls
And the mermaid’s song condoles,
Singing glory to the souls
Of the brave!
[70] Captain Riou, justly entitled the gallant and the good, by Lord
Nelson when he wrote home his despatches.
YE MARINERS OF ENGLAND: A NAVAL ODE.
I.
Ye Mariners of England!
That guard our native seas;
Whose flag has braved, a thousand years,
The battle and the breeze!
Your glorious standard launch again
To meet another foe!
And sweep through the deep,
While the stormy tempests blow;
While the battle rages loud and long,
And the stormy tempests blow.
II.
The spirits of your fathers
Shall start from every wave!—
For the deck it was their field of fame,
And Ocean was their grave:
Where Blake and mighty Nelson fell,
Your manly hearts shall glow,
As ye sweep through the deep,
While the stormy tempests blow;
While the battle rages loud and long,
And the stormy tempests blow.
III.
Britannia needs no bulwark,
No towers along the steep;
Her march is o’er the mountain-waves,
Her home is on the deep.
With thunders from her native oak,
She quells the floods below,—
As they roar on the shore,
When the stormy tempests blow:
When the battle rages loud and long,
And the stormy tempests blow.
IV.
The meteor flag of England
Shall yet terrific burn;
Till danger’s troubled night depart,
And the star of peace return.
Then, then, ye ocean-warriors!
Our song and feast shall flow
To the fame of your name,
When the storm has ceased to blow;
When the fiery fight is heard no more,
And the storm has ceased to blow.
TO THE RAINBOW.
Triumphal arch, that fill’st the sky
When storms prepare to part,
I ask not proud Philosophy
To teach me what thou art—
Still seem as to my childhood’s sight,
A midway station given
For happy spirits to alight
Betwixt the earth and heaven.
Can all that Optics teach, unfold
Thy form to please me so,
As when I dreamt of gems and gold
Hid in thy radiant bow?
When Science from Creation’s face
Enchantment’s veil withdraws,
What lovely visions yield their place
To cold material laws!
And yet, fair bow, no fabling dreams,
But words of the Most High,
Have told why first thy robe of beams
Was woven in the sky.
When o’er the green undeluged earth
Heaven’s covenant thou didst shine,
How came the world’s grey fathers forth
To watch thy sacred sign.
And when its yellow lustre smiled
O’er mountains yet untrod,
Each mother held aloft her child
To bless the bow of God.
Methinks, thy jubilee to keep,
The first made anthem rang
On earth delivered from the deep,
And the first poet sang.
Nor ever shall the Muse’s eye
Unraptured greet thy beam:
Theme of primeval prophecy,
Be still the poet’s theme!
The earth to thee her incense yields,
The lark thy welcome sings,
When glittering in the freshened fields
The snowy mushroom springs.
How glorious is thy girdle cast
O’er mountain, tower, and town,
Or mirrored in the ocean vast,
A thousand fathoms down!
As fresh in yon horizon dark,
As young thy beauties seem,
As when the eagle from the ark
First sported in thy beam
For, faithful to its sacred page,
Heaven still rebuilds thy span,
Nor lets the type grow pale with age
That first spoke peace to man.
THE LAST MAN.
All worldly shapes shall melt in gloom,
The Sun himself must die,
Before this mortal shall assume
Its Immortality!
I saw a vision in my sleep,
That gave my spirit strength to sweep
Adown the gulph of Time!
I saw the last of human mould,
That shall Creation’s death behold,
As Adam saw her prime!
The Sun’s eye had a sickly glare,
The Earth with age was wan,
The skeletons of nations were
Around that lonely man!
Some had expired in fight,—the brands
Still rested in their bony hands;
In plague and famine some!
Earth’s cities had no sound nor tread;
And ships were drifting with the dead
To shores where all was dumb!
Yet, prophet-like, that lone one stood
With dauntless words and high,
That shook the sere leaves from the wood
As if a storm passed by,
Saying, “We are twins in death, proud Sun,
Thy face is cold, thy race is run,
’Tis Mercy bids thee go.
For thou ten thousand thousand years
Hast seen the tide of human tears,
That shall no longer flow.
“What though beneath thee man put forth
His pomp, his pride, his skill;
And arts that made fire, flood, and earth,
The vassals of his will;—
Yet mourn I not thy parted sway,
Thou dim discrownèd king of day:
For all those trophied arts
And triumphs that beneath thee sprang,
Healed not a passion or a pang
Entailed on human hearts.
“Go, let oblivion’s curtain fall
Upon the stage of men,
Nor with thy rising beams recall
Life’s tragedy again.
Its piteous pageants bring not back,
Nor waken flesh, upon the rack
Of pain anew to writhe;
Stretched in disease’s shapes abhorred,
Or mown in battle by the sword,
Like grass beneath the scythe.
“E’en I am weary in yon skies
To watch thy fading fire;
Test of all sumless agonies,
Behold not me expire.
My lips that speak thy dirge of death—
Their rounded gasp and gurgling breath
To see thou shalt not boast.
The eclipse of Nature spreads my pall,—
The majesty of Darkness shall
Receive my parting ghost!
“This spirit shall return to Him
That gave its heavenly spark;
Yet think not, Sun, it shall be dim
When thou thyself art dark!
No! it shall live again, and shine
In bliss unknown to beams of thine,
By Him recalled to breath,
Who captive led captivity,
Who robbed the grave of Victory,—
And took the sting from Death!
“Go, Sun, while Mercy holds me up
On Nature’s awful waste
To drink this last and bitter cup
Of grief that man shall taste—
Go, tell the night that hides thy face,
Thou saw’st the last of Adam’s race,
On Earth’s sepulchral clod,
The darkening universe defy
To quench his Immortality,
Or shake his trust in God!”
VALEDICTORY STANZAS To J. P. KEMBLE, ESQ. COMPOSED FOR A PUBLIC MEETING,
_Held June, 1817_.
Pride of the British stage,
A long and last adieu!
Whose image brought the heroic age
Revived to Fancy’s view
Like fields refreshed with dewy light
When the sun smiles his last
Thy parting presence makes more bright
Our memory of the past;
And memory conjures feelings up
That wine or music need not swell,
As high we lift the festal cup
To Kemble—fare thee well!
His was the spell o’er hearts
Which only Acting lends,—
The youngest of the sister Arts,
Where all their beauty blends:
For ill can Poetry express
Full many a tone of thought sublime,
And Painting, mute and motionless,
Steals but a glance of time.
But by the mighty actor brought,
Illusion’s perfect triumphs come,—
Verse ceases to be airy thought,
And Sculpture to be dumb.
Time may again revive,
But ne’er eclipse the charm,
When Cato spoke in him alive,
Or Hotspur kindled warm.
What soul was not resigned entire
To the deep sorrows of the Moor,—
What English heart was not on fire
With him at Agincourt?
And yet a Majesty possessed
His transport’s most impetuous tone,
And to each passion of his breast
The Graces gave their zone.
High were the task—too high,
Ye conscious bosoms here!
In words to paint your memory
Of Kemble and of Lear;
But who forgets that white discrownèd head,
Those bursts of Reason’s half-extinguished glare—
Those tears upon Cordelia’s bosom shed,
In doubt more touching than despair,
If ’twas reality he felt?
Had Shakespeare’s self amidst you been,
Friends, he had seen you melt,
And triumphed to have seen!
And there was many an hour
Of blended kindred fame,
When Siddons’ auxiliar power
And sister magic came.
Together at the Muse’s side
The tragic paragons had grown—
They were the children of her pride,
The columns of her throne,
And undivided favour ran
From heart to heart in their applause,
Save for the gallantry of man,
In lovelier woman’s cause.
Fair as some classic dome,
Robust and richly graced,
Your Kemble’s spirit was the home
Of genius and of taste:—
Taste like the silent dial’s power,
That when supernal light is given,
Can measure inspiration’s hour
And tell its height in Heaven.
At once ennobled and correct,
His mind surveyed the tragic page,
And what the actor could effect,
The scholar could presage.
These were his traits of worth:—
And must we lose them now!
And shall the scene no more show forth
His sternly pleasing brow!
Alas, the moral brings a tear!—
’Tis all a transient hour below;
And we that would detain thee here,
Ourselves as fleetly go!
Yet shall our latest age
This parting scene review:—
Pride of the British stage,
A long and last adieu!
A DREAM.
Well may sleep present us fictions,
Since our waking moments teem
With such fanciful convictions
As make life itself a dream.
Half our daylight faith’s a fable;
Sleep disports with shadows too
Seeming in their turn as stable
As the world we wake to view.
Ne’er by day did Reason’s mint
Give my thoughts a clearer print
Of assured reality,
Than was left by Phantasy,
Stamped and coloured on my sprite,
In a dream of yesternight.
In a bark, methought, lone steering,
I was cast on Ocean’s strife;
This, ’twas whispered in my hearing,
Meant the sea of life.
Sad regrets from past existence
Came, like gales of chilling breath;
Shadowed in the forward distance
Lay the land of Death.
Now seeming more, now less remote,
On that dim-seen shore, methought,
I beheld two hands a space
Slow unshroud a spectre’s face;
And my flesh’s hair upstood,—
’Twas mine own similitude.
But my soul revived at seeing
Ocean, like an emerald spark,
Kindle, while an air-dropt being
Smiling steered my bark.
Heaven-like—yet he looked as human
As supernal beauty can,
More compassionate than woman
Lordly more than man.
And as some sweet clarion’s breath
Stirs the soldier’s scorn of death—
So his accents bade me brook
The spectre’s eyes of icy look,
Till it shut them—turned its head,
Like a beaten foe, and fled.
“Types not this,” I said, “fair spirit!
That my death-hour is not come?
Say, what days shall I inherit?—
Tell my soul their sum.”
“No,” he said, “yon phantom’s aspect,
Trust me, would appal thee worse,
Held in clearly measured prospect:—
Ask not for a curse!
Make not, for I overhear
Thine unspoken thoughts as clear
As thy mortal ear could catch
The close-brought tickings of a watch—
Make not the untold request
That’s now revolving in thy breast.
“’Tis to live again, remeasuring
Youth’s years, like a scene rehearsed,
In thy second life-time treasuring
Knowledge from the first.
Hast thou felt, poor self-deceiver!
Life’s career so void of pain,
As to wish its fitful fever
New begun again?
Could experience, ten times thine,
Pain from Being disentwine—
Threads by Fate together spun?
Could thy flight Heaven’s lightning shun?
No, nor could thy foresight’s glance
’Scape the myriad shafts of Chance.
“Would’st thou bear again Love’s trouble—
Friendship’s death-dissevered ties;
Toil to grasp or miss the bubble
Of Ambition’s prize?
Say thy life’s new guided action
Flowed from Virtue’s fairest springs—
Still would Envy and Detraction
Double not their stings?
Worth itself is but a charter
To be mankind’s distinguished martyr.”
I caught the moral, and cried, “Hail!
Spirit! let us onward sail,
Envying, fearing, hating none—
Guardian Spirit, steer me on!”
LINES WRITTEN AT THE REQUEST OF THE HIGHLAND SOCIETY IN LONDON, WHEN MET
TO COMMEMORATE THE 21ST OF MARCH, THE DAY OF VICTORY IN EGYPT.
Pledge to the much-loved land that gave us birth!
Invincible romantic Scotia’s shore!
Pledge to the memory of her parted worth!
And first, amidst the brave, remember Moore!
And be it deemed not wrong that name to give,
In festive hours, which prompts the patriot’s sigh!
Who would not envy such as Moore to live?
And died he not as heroes wish to die?
Yes, though too soon attaining glory’s goal,
To us his bright career too short was given;
Yet in a mighty cause his phœnix soul
Rose on the flames of victory to Heaven!
How oft (if beats in subjugated Spain
One patriot heart) in secret shall it mourn
For him!—How oft on far Corunna’s plain
Shall British exiles weep upon his urn!
Peace to the mighty dead!—our bosom thanks
In sprightlier strains the living may inspire!
Joy to the chiefs that lead old Scotia’s ranks,
Of Roman garb and more than Roman fire!
Triumphant be the thistle still unfurled,
Dear symbol wild! on Freedom’s hills it grows,
Where Fingal stemmed the tyrants of the world,
And Roman eagles found unconquered foes!
Joy to the band[71] this day on Egypt’s coast,
Whose valour tamed proud France’s tricolor,
And wrenched the banner from her bravest host,
Baptised Invincible in Austria’s gore!
Joy for the day on red Vimeira’s strand,
When, bayonet to bayonet opposed,
First of Britannia’s host her Highland band
Gave but the death-shot once, and foremost closed!
Is there a son of generous England here
Or fervid Erin?—he with us shall join,
To pray that in eternal union dear,
The rose, the shamrock, and the thistle twine!
Types of a race who shall the invader scorn,
As rocks resist the billows round their shore;
Types of a race who shall to time unborn
Their country leave unconquered as of yore!
[71] The 42nd Regiment.
STANZAS TO THE MEMORY OF THE SPANISH PATRIOTS LATEST KILLED IN RESISTING
THE REGENCY AND THE DUKE OF ANGOULEME.
Brave men who at the Trocadero fell—
Beside your cannons conquered not, though slain,
There is a victory in dying well
For Freedom,—and ye have not died in vain,
For come what may, there shall be hearts in Spain
To honour, ay embrace your martyred lot,
Cursing the Bigot’s and the Bourbon’s chain,
And looking on your graves, though trophied not,
As holier, hallowed ground than priests could make the spot!
What though your cause be baffled—freemen cast
In dungeons—dragged to death, or forced to flee;
Hope is not withered in affliction’s blast—
The patriot’s blood’s the seed of Freedom’s tree;
And short your orgies of revenge shall be,
Cowled Demons of the Inquisitorial cell!
Earth shudders at your victory,—for ye
Are worse than common fiends from Heaven that fell,
The baser, ranker sprung, _Autochthones_ of Hell!
Go to your bloody rites again—bring back
The hall of horrors and the assessor’s pen,
Recording answers shrieked upon the rack;
Smile o’er the gaspings of spine-broken men;—
Preach, perpetrate damnation in your den;—
Then let your altars, ye blasphemers! peal
With thanks to Heaven, that let you loose again,
To practise deeds with torturing fire and steel
No eye may search—no tongue may challenge or reveal!
Yet laugh not in your carnival of crime
Too proudly, ye oppressors!—Spain was free,
Her soil has felt the foot-prints, and her clime
Been winnowed by the wings of Liberty;
And these even parting scatter as they flee
Thoughts—influences, to live in hearts unborn,
Opinions that shall wrench the prison-key
From Persecution—show her mask off-torn,
And tramp her bloated head beneath the foot of Scorn.
Glory to them that die in this great cause!
Kings, Bigots, can inflict no brand of shame,
Or shape of death, to shroud them from applause:—
No!—manglers of the martyr’s earthly frame!
Your hangmen fingers cannot touch his fame.
Still in your prostrate land there shall be some
Proud hearts, the shrines of Freedom’s vestal flame.
Long trains of ill may pass unheeded, dumb,
But vengeance is behind, and justice is to come.
SONG OF THE GREEKS.
Again to the battle, Achaians!
Our hearts bid the tyrants defiance;
Our land, the first garden of Liberty’s tree—
It has been, and shall yet be the land of the free:
For the cross of our faith is replanted,
The pale dying crescent is daunted,
And we march that the foot-prints of Mahomet’s slaves
May be washed out in blood from our forefathers’ graves.
Their spirits are hovering o’er us,
And the sword shall to glory restore us.
Ah! what though no succour advances,
Nor Christendom’s chivalrous lances
Are stretched in our aid—be the combat our own!
And we’ll perish or conquer more proudly alone;
For we’ve sworn by our Country’s assaulters,
By the virgins they’ve dragged from our altars,
By our massacred patriots, our children in chains,
By our heroes of old and their blood in our veins.
That living, we shall be victorious,
Or that dying, our deaths shall be glorious.
A breath of submission we breathe not;
The sword that we’ve drawn we will sheathe not!
Its scabbard is left where our martyrs are laid,
And the vengeance of ages has whetted its blade.
Earth may hide—waves engulph—fire consume us,
But they shall not to slavery doom us:
If they rule, it shall be o’er our ashes and graves;
But we’ve smote them already with fire on the waves,
And new triumphs on land are before us,
To the charge!—Heaven’s banner is o’er us.
This day shall ye blush for its story,
Or brighten your lives with its glory.
Our women, oh, say, shall they shriek in despair,
Or embrace us from conquest with wreaths in their hair?
Accursed may his memory blacken,
If a coward there be that would slacken
Till we’ve trampled the turban and shown ourselves worth
Being sprung from and named for the godlike of earth.
Strike home, and the world shall revere us
As heroes descended from heroes.
Old Greece lightens up with emotion
Her inlands, her isles of the Ocean;
Fanes rebuilt and fair towns shall with jubilee ring,
And the Nine shall new-hallow their Helicon’s spring:
Our hearths shall be kindled in gladness,
That were cold and extinguished in sadness;
Whilst our maidens shall dance with their white-waving arms,
Singing joy to the brave that delivered their charms,
When the blood of yon Mussulman cravens
Shall have purpled the beaks of our ravens.
ODE TO WINTER.
When first the fiery-mantled sun
His heavenly race began to run;
Round the earth and ocean blue,
His children four the Seasons flew.
First, in green apparel dancing,
The young Spring smiled with angel grace;
Rosy Summer next advancing,
Rushed into her sire’s embrace:—
Her bright-haired sire, who bade her keep
For ever nearest to his smiles,
On Calpe’s olive-shaded steep,
On India’s citron-covered isles:
More remote and buxom-brown,
The Queen of vintage bowed before his throne;
A rich pomegranate gemmed her crown,
A ripe sheaf bound her zone.
But howling Winter fled afar,
To hills that prop the polar star,
And loves on deer-borne car to ride,
With barren darkness by his side,
Round the shore where loud Lofoden
Whirls to death the roaring whale,
Round the hall where Runic Odin
Howls his war-song to the gale;
Save when adown the ravaged globe
He travels on his native storm,
Deflowering Nature’s grassy robe,
And trampling on her faded form:—
Till light’s returning lord assume
The shaft that drives him to his polar field,
Of power to pierce his raven plume
And crystal-covered shield.
Oh, sire of storms! whose savage ear
The Lapland drum delights to hear,
When frenzy with her blood-shot eye
Implores thy dreadful deity,
Archangel! power of desolation!
Fast descending as thou art,
Say, hath mortal invocation
Spells to touch thy stony heart?
Then, sullen Winter, hear my prayer,
And gently rule the ruined year;
Nor chill the wanderer’s bosom bare,
Nor freeze the wretch’s falling tear;—
To shuddering Want’s unmantled bed
Thy horror-breathing agues cease to lead,
And gently on the orphan head
Of innocence descend.
But chiefly spare, O, king of clouds!
The sailor on his airy shrouds;
When wrecks and beacons strew the steep,
And spectres walk along the deep.
Milder yet thy snowy breezes
Pour on yonder tented shores,
Where the Rhine’s broad billow freezes,
Or the dark-brown Danube roars.
Oh, winds of Winter! list ye there
To many a deep and dying groan;
Or start, ye demons of the midnight air,
At shrieks and thunders louder than your own.
Alas! ev’n your unhallowed breath
May spare the victim fallen low;
But man will ask no truce to death,—
No bounds to human woe.[72]
[72] This ode was written in Germany, at the close of 1800, before the
conclusion of hostilities.
LINES SPOKEN BY MR. * * *, AT DRURY-LANE THEATRE, ON THE FIRST OPENING OF
THE HOUSE AFTER THE DEATH OF THE PRINCESS CHARLOTTE, 1817.
Britons! although our task is but to show
The scenes and passions of fictitious woe,
Think not we come this night without a part
In that deep sorrow of the public heart,
Which like a shade hath darkened every place,
And moistened with a tear the manliest face!
The bell is scarcely hushed in Windsor’s piles,
That tolled a requiem from the solemn aisles,
For her, the royal flower, low laid in dust,
That was your fairest hope, your fondest trust.
Unconscious of the doom, we dreamt, alas!
That e’en these walls, ere many months should pass,
Which but return sad accents for her now,
Perhaps had witnessed her benignant brow,
Cheered by the voice you would have raised on high,
In bursts of British love and loyalty.
But, Britain! now thy chief, thy people mourn,
And Claremont’s home of love is left forlorn:—
There, where the happiest of the happy dwelt,
The ’scutcheon glooms, and royalty hath felt
A wound that every bosom feels its own,—
The blessing of a father’s heart o’erthrown—
The most beloved and most devoted bride
Torn from an agonizèd husband’s side,
Who “long as Memory holds her seat” shall view
That speechless, more than spoken last adieu,
When the fixed eye long looked connubial faith,
And beamed affection in the trance of death.
Sad was the pomp that yesternight beheld,
As with the mourner’s heart the anthem swelled;
While torch succeeding torch illumed each high
And bannered arch of England’s chivalry.
The rich plumed canopy, the gorgeous pall,
The sacred march, and sable-vested wall,—
These were not rites of inexpressive show,
But hallowed as the types of real woe!
Daughter of England! for a nation’s sighs.
A nation’s heart went with thine obsequies!—
And oft shall time revert a look of grief
On thine existence, beautiful and brief.
Fair spirit! send thy blessing from above
On realms where thou art canonised by love!
Give to a father’s, husband’s bleeding mind,
The peace that angels lend to human kind,
To us who in thy loved remembrance feel
A sorrowing, but a soul-ennobling zeal—
A loyalty that touches all the best
And loftiest principles of England’s breast!
Still may thy name speak concord from the tomb—
Still in the Muse’s breath thy memory bloom!
They shall describe thy life—thy form portray;
But all the love that mourns thee swept away,
’Tis not in language or expressive arts
To paint—yet feel it, Britons in your hearts!
LINES ON THE GRAVE OF A SUICIDE.
By strangers left upon a lonely shore,
Unknown, unhonoured, was the friendless dead,
For child to weep, or widow to deplore,
There never came to his unburied head:—
All from his dreary habitation fled.
Nor will the lanterned fisherman at eve
Launch on that water by the witches’ tower,
Where hellebore and hemlock seem to weave
Round its dark vaults a melancholy bower,
For spirits of the dead at night’s enchanted hour.
They dread to meet thee, poor unfortunate!
Whose crime it was, on life’s unfinished road
To feel the stepdame buffetings of fate,
And render back thy being’s heavy load.
Ah! once, perhaps, the social passions glowed
In thy devoted bosom—and the hand
That smote its kindred heart, might yet be prone
To deeds of mercy. Who may understand
Thy many woes, poor suicide, unknown?—
He who thy being gave shall judge of thee alone.
THE TURKISH LADY.
’Twas the hour when rites unholy
Called each Paynim voice to prayer,
And the star that faded slowly
Left to dews the freshened air.
Day her sultry fires had wasted,
Calm and sweet the moonlight rose;
E’en a captive spirit tasted
Half oblivion of his woes.
Then ’twas from an Emir’s palace
Came an Eastern lady bright:
She, in spite of tyrants jealous,
Saw and loved an English knight.
“Tell me, captive, why in anguish
Foes have dragged thee here to dwell,
Where poor Christians as they languish
Hear no sound of Sabbath bell?”
“’Twas on Transylvania’s Bannat,
When the Crescent shone afar,
Like a pale disastrous planet
O’er the purple tide of war—
“In that day of desolation,
Lady, I was captive made;
Bleeding for my Christian nation
By the walls of high Belgrade.”
“Captive! could the brightest jewel
From my turban set thee free?”
“Lady no!—the gift were cruel,
Ransomed, yet if reft of thee.”
“Say, fair princess! would it grieve thee
Christian climes should we behold?”
“Nay, bold knight! I would not leave thee
Were thy ransom paid in gold!”
Now in heaven’s blue expansion
Rose the midnight star to view,
When to quit her father’s mansion
Thrice she wept, and bade adieu!
“Fly we then, while none discover!
Tyrant barks, in vain ye ride!”
Soon at Rhodes the British lover
Clasped his blooming Eastern bride.
THE WOUNDED HUSSAR.
Alone to the banks of the dark-rolling Danube
Fair Adelaide hied when the battle was o’er:—
“Oh, whither,” she cried, “hast thou wandered, my lover?
Or here dost thou welter and bleed on the shore?
“What voice did I hear? ’twas my Henry that sighed!”
All mournful she hastened, nor wandered she far,
When bleeding, and low, on the heath she descried,
By the light of the moon, her poor wounded Hussar!
From his bosom that heaved, the last torrent was streaming,
And pale was his visage, deep marked with a scar!
And dim was that eye, once expressively beaming,
That melted in love, and that kindled in war!
How smit was poor Adelaide’s heart at the sight!
How bitter she wept o’er the victim of war!
“Hast thou come, my fond Love, this last sorrowful night,
To cheer the lone heart of your wounded Hussar?”
“Thou shalt live,” she replied, “Heaven’s mercy relieving
Each anguishing wound, shall forbid me to mourn!”
“Ah, no! the last pang of my bosom is heaving!
No light of the morn shall to Henry return!
“Thou charmer of life, ever tender and true!
Ye babes of my love, that await me afar!”
His faltering tongue scarce could murmur adieu,
When he sunk in her arms—the poor wounded Hussar!
LINES INSCRIBED ON THE MONUMENT LATELY FINISHED BY MR. CHANTREY, WHICH
HAS BEEN ERECTED BY THE WIDOW OF ADMIRAL SIR G. CAMPBELL K.C.B., TO THE
MEMORY OF HER HUSBAND.
To him, whose loyal, brave, and gentle heart,
Fulfilled the hero’s and the patriot’s part,—
Whose charity, like that which Paul enjoined,
Was warm, beneficent, and unconfined,—
This stone is reared: to public duty true,
The seaman’s friend, the father of his crew—
Mild in reproof, sagacious in command,
He spread fraternal zeal throughout his band,
And led each arm to act, each heart to feel,
What British valour owes to Britain’s weal.
These were his public virtues:—but to trace
His private life’s fair purity and grace,
To paint the traits that drew affection strong
From friends, an ample and an ardent throng,
And, more, to speak his memory’s grateful claim
On her who mourns him most, and bears his name—
O’ercomes the trembling hand of widowed grief,
O’ercomes the heart, unconscious of relief
Save in religion’s high and holy trust,
Whilst placing their memorial o’er his dust.
THE BRAVE ROLAND.[73]
The brave Roland!—the brave Roland!—
False tidings reached the Rhenish strand
That he had fallen in fight;
And thy faithful, bosom swooned with pain,
O loveliest maiden of Allémayne!
For the loss of thine own true knight.
But why so rash has she ta’en the veil,
In yon Nonnenwerder’s cloisters pale?
For her vow had scarce been sworn,
And the fatal mantle o’er her flung,
When the Drachenfells to a trumpet rung—
’Twas her own dear warrior’s horn!
Woe! woe! each heart shall bleed—shall break!
She would have hung upon his neck,
Had he come but yester-even;
And he had clasped those peerless charms
That shall never, never fill his arms,
Or meet him but in heaven.
Yet Roland the brave—Roland the true—
He could not bid that spot adieu;
It was dear still ’midst his woes;
For he loved to breathe the neighbouring air,
And to think she blessed him in her prayer,
When the Halleluiah rose.
There’s yet one window of that pile,
Which he built above the Nun’s green isle;
Thence sad and oft looked he
(When the chant and organ sounded slow)
On the mansion of his love below,
For herself he might not see.
She died!—He sought the battle plain;
Her image filled his dying brain,
When he fell and wished to fall:
And her name was in his latest sigh,
When Roland, the flower of chivalry,
Expired at Roncevall.
[73] The tradition which forms the substance of these stanzas is
still preserved in Germany. An ancient tower on a height, called the
Rolandseck, a few miles above Bonn on the Rhine, is shown as the
habitation which Roland built in sight of a nunnery, into which his
mistress had retired, on having heard an unfounded account of his death.
Whatever may be thought of the credibility of the legend, its scenery
must be recollected with pleasure by every one who has visited the
romantic landscape of the Drachenfells, the Rolandseck, and the beautiful
adjacent islet of the Rhine, where a nunnery still stands.
THE SPECTRE BOAT. A BALLAD.
Light rued false Ferdinand to leave a lovely maid forlorn,
Who broke her heart and died to hide her blushing cheek from scorn.
One night he dreamt he wooed her in their wonted bower of love,
Where the flowers sprang thick around them, and the birds sang sweet
above.
But the scene was swiftly changed into a churchyard’s dismal view,
And her lips grew black beneath his kiss, from love’s delicious hue.
What more he dreamt, he told to none; but, shuddering, pale, and dumb,
Looked out upon the waves, like one that knew his hour was come.
’Twas now the dead watch of the night—the helm was lashed a-lee,
And the ship rode where Mount Ætna lights the deep Levantine sea;
When beneath its glare a boat came, rowed by a woman in her shroud,
Who, with eyes that made our blood run cold, stood up and spoke aloud:—
“Come, Traitor, down, for whom my ghost still wanders unforgiven!
Come down, false Ferdinand, for whom I broke my peace with heaven!”—
It was vain to hold the victim, for he plunged to meet her call,
Like the bird that shrieks and flutters in the gazing serpent’s thrall.
You may guess the boldest mariner shrunk daunted from the sight,
For the spectre and her winding-sheet shone blue with hideous light;
Like a fiery wheel the boat spun with the waving of her hand,
And round they went, and down they went, as the cock crew from the land.
THE LOVER TO HIS MISTRESS ON HER BIRTH-DAY.
If any white-winged Power above
My joys and griefs survey,
The day when thou wert born, my love—
He surely blessed that day.
I laughed (till taught by thee) when told
Of Beauty’s magic powers,
That ripened life’s dull ore to gold,
And changed its weeds to flowers.
My mind had lovely shapes portrayed,
But thought I earth had one
Could make e’en Fancy’s visions fade
Like stars before the sun?
I gazed, and felt upon my lips
The unfinished accents hang:
One moment’s bliss, one burning kiss,
To rapture changed each pang.
And though as swift as lightning’s flash
Those trancèd moments flew,
Not all the waves of time shall wash
Their memory from my view.
But duly shall my raptured song,
And gladly shall my eyes
Still bless this day’s return, as long
As thou shalt see it rise.
HOHENLINDEN.
On Linden, when the sun was low,
All bloodless lay the untrodden snow,
And dark as winter was the flow
Of Iser, rolling rapidly.
But Linden saw another sight,
When the drum beat, at dead of night,
Commanding fires of death to light
The darkness of her scenery.
By torch and trumpet fast arrayed,
Each horseman drew his battle blade,
And furious every charger neighed,
To join the dreadful revelry.
Then shook the hills with thunder riven,
Then rushed the steed to battle driven,
And louder than the bolts of heaven,
Far flashed the red artillery.
But redder yet that light shall glow
On Linden’s hills of stainèd snow,
And bloodier yet the torrent flow
Of Iser, rolling rapidly.
’Tis morn, but scarce yon level sun
Can pierce the war-clouds, rolling dun,
Where furious Frank, and fiery Hun,
Shout in their sulph’rous canopy.
The combat deepens. On, ye brave,
Who rush to glory, or the grave!
Wave, Munich! all thy banners wave,
And charge with all thy chivalry!
Few, few, shall part where many meet!
The snow shall be their winding-sheet,
And every turf beneath their feet
Shall be a soldier’s sepulchre.
GLENARA.
O heard ye yon pibroch sound sad in the gale,
Where a band cometh slowly with weeping and wail?
’Tis the chief of Glenara[74] laments for his dear;
And her sire, and the people, are called to her bier.
Glenara came first with the mourners and shroud;
Her kinsmen they followed, but mourned not aloud:
Their plaids all their bosoms were folded around:
They marched all in silence,—they looked on the ground.
In silence they reached over mountain and moor,
To a heath, where the oak-tree grew lonely and hoar;
“Now here let us place the grey stone of her cairn:
Why speak ye no word!”—said Glenara the stern.
“And tell me, I charge you! ye clan of my spouse,
Why fold ye your mantles, why cloud ye your brows?”
So spake the rude chieftain:—no answer is made,
But each mantle unfolding a dagger displayed.
“I dreamt of my lady, I dreamt of her shroud,”
Cried a voice from the kinsmen, all wrathful and loud;
“And empty that shroud, and that coffin did seem:
Glenara! Glenara! now read me my dream!”
O! pale grew the cheek of that chieftain, I ween,
When the shroud was unclosed, and no lady was seen;
When a voice from the kinsmen spoke louder in scorn,
’Twas the youth who had loved the fair Ellen of Lorn:
“I dreamt of my lady, I dreamt of her grief,
I dreamt that her lord was a barbarous chief:
On a rock of the ocean fair Ellen did seem;
Glenara! Glenara! now read me my dream!”
In dust, low the traitor has knelt to the ground,
And the desert revealed where his lady was found;
From a rock of the ocean that beauty is borne—
Now joy to the house of fair Ellen of Lorn!
[74] Maclean of Duart.
LINES ON RECEIVING A SEAL WITH THE CAMPBELL CREST, FROM K. M——, BEFORE
HER MARRIAGE.
This wax returns not back more fair
The impression of the gift you send,
Than stamped upon my thoughts I bear
The image of your worth, my friend!
We are not friends of yesterday;—
But poet’s fancies are a little
Disposed to heat and cool (they say),—
By turns impressible and brittle.
Well! should its frailty e’er condemn
My heart to prize or please you less,
_Your_ type is still the sealing gem,
And _mine_ the waxen brittleness.
What transcripts of my weal and woe
This little signet yet may lock,—
What utterances to friend or foe,
In reason’s calm or passion’s shock!
What scenes of life’s yet curtained page
May own its confidential die,
Whose stamp awaits the unwritten page,
And feelings of futurity!
Yet wheresoe’er my pen I lift
To date the epistolary sheet,
The blest occasion of the gift
Shall make its recollection sweet;
Sent when the star that rules your fates
Hath reached its influence most benign—
When every heart congratulates,
And none more cordially than mine.
So speed my song—marked with the crest
That erst the adventurous Norman[75] wore,
Who won the Lady of the West,
The daughter of Macaillain Mor.
Crest of my sires! whose blood it sealed
With glory in the strife of swords,
Ne’er may the scroll that bears it yield
Degenerate thoughts or faithless words!
Yet little might I prize the stone,
If it but typed the feudal tree
From whence a scattered leaf, I’m blown
In Fortune’s mutability.
No!—but it tells me of a heart,
Allied by friendship’s living tie;
A prize beyond the herald’s art—
Our soul-sprung consanguinity!
Katherine! to many an hour of mine
Light wings and sunshine you have lent;
And so adieu, and still be thine
The all-in-all of life—Content!
[75] A Norman leader, Gilliespie le Camile, in the service of the king of
Scotland, married the heiress of Lochaw in the twelfth century, and from
him the Campbells are sprung.
GILDEROY.
The last, the fatal hour is come,
That bears my love from me;
I hear the dead note of the drum,
I mark the gallows’ tree!
The bell has tolled; it shakes my heart;
The trumpet speaks thy name;
And must my Gilderoy depart
To bear a death of shame?
No bosom trembles for thy doom;
No mourner wipes a tear;
The gallows’ foot is all thy tomb,
The sledge is all thy bier.
Oh, Gilderoy! bethought we then
So soon, so sad to part,
When first in Roslin’s lovely glen
You triumphed o’er my heart?
Your locks they glittered to the sheen,
Your hunter garb was trim;
And graceful was the ribbon green
That bound your manly limb!
Ah! little thought I to deplore
Those limbs in fetters bound;
Or hear, upon the scaffold floor,
The midnight hammer sound.
Ye cruel, cruel, that combined
The guiltless to pursue;
My Gilderoy was ever kind,
He could not injure you!
A long adieu! but where shall fly
Thy widow all forlorn,
When every mean and cruel eye
Regards my woe with scorn?
Yes! they will mock thy widow’s tears,
And hate thine orphan boy;
Alas! his infant beauty wears
The form of Gilderoy.
Then will I seek the dreary mound
That wraps thy mouldering clay,
And weep and linger on the ground,
And sigh my heart away.
ADELGITHA.
The ordeal’s fatal trumpet sounded,
And sad pale Adelgitha came,
When forth a valiant champion bounded,
And slew the slanderer of her fame.
She wept, delivered from her danger;
But when he knelt to claim her glove—
“Seek not,” she cried, “oh! gallant stranger,
For hapless Adelgitha’s love.
“For he is in a foreign far land
Whose arm should now have set me free
And I must wear the willow garland
For him that’s dead, or false to me.”
“Nay! say not that his faith is tainted!”
He raised his vizor—At the sight
She fell into his arms and fainted;
It was indeed her own true knight!
ABSENCE.
’Tis not the loss of love’s assurance,
It is not doubting what thou art,
But ’tis the too, too long endurance
Of absence, that afflicts my heart.
The fondest thoughts two hearts can cherish,
When each is lonely doomed to weep,
Are fruits on desert isles that perish,
Or riches buried in the deep.
What though, untouched by jealous madness,
Our bosom’s peace may fall to wreck;
The undoubting heart, that breaks with sadness,
Is but more slowly doomed to break.
Absence! is not the soul torn by it
From more than light, or life, or breath?
’Tis Lethe’s gloom, but not its quiet,—
The pain without the peace of death!
THE RITTER BANN.
The Ritter Bann from Hungary
Came back renowned in arms,
But scorning jousts of chivalry
And love and ladies’ charms.
While other knights held revels, he
Was wrapt in thoughts of gloom,
And in Vienna’s hostelrie
Slow paced his lonely room.
There entered one whose face he knew,—
Whose voice, he was aware,
He oft at mass had listened to,
In the holy house of prayer.
’Twas the Abbot of St. James’s monks,
A fresh and fair old man:
His reverend air arrested even
The gloomy Ritter Bann.
But seeing with him an ancient dame
Come clad in Scotch attire,
The Ritter’s colour went and came,
And loud he spoke in ire.
“Ha! nurse of her that was my bane,
Name not her name to me;
I wish it blotted from my brain:
Art poor?—take alms, and flee.”
“Sir Knight,” the Abbot interposed,
“This case your ear demands;”
And the crone cried, with a cross enclosed
In both her trembling hands:—
“Remember, each his sentence waits;
And he that shall rebut
Sweet Mercy’s suit, on him the gates
Of Mercy shall be shut.
“You wedded, undispensed by Church,
Your cousin Jane in Spring;
In Autumn, when you went to search
For churchmen’s pardoning,
“Her house denounced your marriage-band,
Betrothed her to De Grey,
And the ring you put upon her hand
Was wrenched by force away.
“Then wept your Jane upon my neck,
Crying, ‘Help me, nurse, to flee
To my Howel Bann’s Glamorgan hills;’
But word arrived—ah me!—
“You were not there; and ’twas their threat,
By foul means or by fair,
To-morrow morning was to set
The seal on her despair.
“I had a son, a sea-boy, in
A ship at Hartland Bay;
By his aid from her cruel kin
I bore my bird away.
“To Scotland from the Devon’s
Green myrtle shores we fled;
And the Hand that sent the ravens
To Elijah, gave us bread.
“She wrote you by my son, but he
From England sent us word
You had gone into some far countrie,
In grief and gloom he heard.
“For they that wronged you, to elude
Your wrath, defamed my child;
And you—ay, blush, Sir, as you should—
Believed, and were beguiled.
“To die but at your feet, she vowed
To roam the world; and we
Would both have sped and begged our bread,
But so it might not be.
“For when the snow-storm beat our roof,
She bore a boy, Sir Bann,
Who grew as fair your likeness proof
As child e’er grew like man.
“’Twas smiling on that babe one morn
While heath bloomed on the moor,
Her beauty struck young Lord Kinghorn
As he hunted past our door.
‘She shunned him, but he raved of Jane,
And roused his mother’s pride;
Who came to us in high disdain,—
‘And where’s the face,’ she cried,
“‘Has witched my boy to wish for one
So wretched for his wife?—
Dost love thy husband? Know, my son
Has sworn to seek his life.’
“Her anger sore dismayed us,
For our mite was wearing scant,
And unless that dame would aid us,
There was none to aid our want.
“So I told her, weeping bitterly,
What all our woes had been;
And though she was a stern ladie,
The tears stood in her een.
“And she housed us both, when, cheerfully,
My child to her had sworn,
That even if made a widow, she
Would never wed Kinghorn.”——
Here paused the nurse, and then began
The Abbot, standing by:—
“Three months ago a wounded man
To our abbey came to die.
“He heard me long, with ghastly eyes
And hand obdurate clenched,
Speak of the worm that never dies,
And the fire that is not quenched.
“At last by what this scroll attests
He left atonement brief,
For years of anguish to the breasts
His guilt had wrung with grief.
“‘There lived,’ he said, ‘a fair young dame
Beneath my mother’s roof;
I loved her, but against my flame
Her purity was proof.
“‘I feigned repentance, friendship pure:
That mood she did not check,
But let her husband’s miniature
Be copied from her neck.
“‘As means to search him, my deceit
Took care to him was borne
Nought but his picture’s counterfeit,
And Jane’s reported scorn.
“‘The treachery took: she waited wild;
My slave came back and lied
Whate’er I wished; she clasped her child,
And swooned, and all but died.
“‘I felt her tears for years and years
Quench not my flame, but stir;
The very hate I bore her mate
Increased my love for her.
“‘Fame told us of his glory, while
Joy flushed the face of Jane;
And while she blessed his name, her smile
Struck fire into my brain.
“‘No fears could damp; I reached the camp,
Sought out its champion;
And if my broad-sword failed at last,
’Twas long and well laid on.
“‘This wound’s my meed, my name’s Kinghorn,
My foe’s the Ritter Bann.’——
The wafer to his lips was borne,
And we shrived the dying man.
“He died not till you went to fight
The Turks at Warradein;
But I see my tale has changed you pale.”—
The Abbot went for wine;
And brought a little page who poured
It out, and knelt and smiled:—
The stunned knight saw himself restored
To childhood in his child;
And stooped and caught him to his breast,
Laughed loud and wept anon,
And with a shower of kisses pressed
The darling little one.
“And where went Jane?”—“To a nunnery, Sir—
Look not again so pale—
Kinghorn’s old dame grew harsh to her.”—
“And has she ta’en the veil?”—
“Sit down, Sir,” said the priest, “I bar
Rash words.”—They sat all three,
And the boy played with the knight’s broad star,
As he kept him on his knee.
“Think ere you ask her dwelling-place,”
The Abbot further said;
“Time draws a veil o’er beauty’s face
More deep than cloister’s shade.
“Grief may have made her what you can
Scarce love perhaps for life.”
“Hush, Abbot,” cried the Ritter Bann,
“Or tell me where’s my wife.”
The priest undid two doors that hid
The inn’s adjacent room,
And there a lovely woman stood,
Tears bathed her beauty’s bloom.
One moment may with bliss repay
Unnumbered hours of pain;
Such was the throb and mutual sob
Of the Knight embracing Jane.
THE HARPER.
On the green banks of Shannon, when Sheelah was nigh,
No blithe Irish lad was so happy as I;
No harp like my own could so cheerily play,
And wherever I went was my poor dog Tray.
When at last I was forced from my Sheelah to part,
She said (while the sorrow was big at her heart),
“Oh! remember your Sheelah when far, far away;
And be kind, my dear Pat, to our poor dog Tray.”
Poor dog! he was faithful and kind, to be sure,
And he constantly loved me, although I was poor;
When the sour-looking folks sent me heartless away,
I had always a friend in my poor dog Tray.
When the road was so dark, and the night was so cold,
And Pat and his dog were grown weary and old,
How snugly we slept in my old coat of grey,
And he licked me for kindness—my poor dog Tray.
Though my wallet was scant, I remembered his case,
Nor refused my last crust to his pitiful face;
But he died at my feet on a cold winter day,
And I played a sad lament for my poor dog Tray.
Where now shall I go, poor, forsaken, and blind
Can I find one to guide me, so faithful, and kind;
To my sweet native village, so far, far away,
I can never more return with my poor dog Tray.
SONG TO THE EVENING STAR.
Star that bringest home the bee,
And sett’st the weary labourer free!
If any star shed peace, ’tis thou,
That send’st it from above,
Appearing when Heaven’s breath and brow
Are sweet as hers we love.
Come to the luxuriant skies,
Whilst the landscape’s odours rise,
Whilst far-off lowing herds are heard,
And songs, when toil is done,
From cottages whose smoke unstirred
Curls yellow in the sun.
Star of love’s soft interviews,
Parted lovers on thee muse;
Their remembrancer in Heaven
Of thrilling vows thou art,
Too delicious to be riven
By absence from the heart.
SONG. “MEN OF ENGLAND.”
Men of England! who inherit
Rights that cost your sires their blood!
Men whose undegenerate spirit
Has been proved on land and flood:—
By the foes ye’ve fought uncounted,
By the glorious deeds ye’ve done,
Trophies captured—breaches mounted,
Navies conquered—kingdoms won!
Yet, remember, England gathers
Hence but fruitless wreaths of fame,
If the patriotism of your fathers
Glow not in your hearts the same.
What are monuments of bravery,
Where no public virtues bloom?
What avail in lands of slavery,
Trophied temples, arch, and tomb?
Pageants!—Let the world revere us
For our people’s rights and laws,
And the breasts of civic heroes
Bared in Freedom’s holy cause.
Yours are Hampden’s, Russell’s glory,
Sydney’s matchless shade is yours,—
Martyrs in heroic story,
Worth a hundred Agincourts!
We’re the sons of sires that baffled
Crowned and mitred tyranny:—
They defied the field and scaffold
For their birthrights—so will we!
THE MAID’S REMONSTRANCE.
Never wedding, ever wooing,
Still a love-lorn heart pursuing,
Read you not the wrong you’re doing
In my cheek’s pale hue?
All my life with sorrow strewing,
Wed, or cease to woo.
Rivals banished, bosoms plighted,
Still our days are disunited;
Now the lamp of hope is lighted,
Now half quenched appears,
Damped, and wavering, and benighted,
Midst my sighs and tears.
Charms you call your dearest blessing,
Lips that thrill at your caressing,
Eyes a mutual soul confessing,
Soon you’ll make them grow
Dim, and worthless your possessing
Not with age, but woe!
SONG.
Drink ye to her that each loves best.
And if you nurse a flame
That’s told but to her mutual breast,
We will not ask her name.
Enough, while memory tranced and glad
Paints silently the fair,
That each should dream of joys he’s had,
Or yet may hope to share.
Yet far, far hence be jest or boast
From hallowed thoughts so dear;
But drink to them that we love most,
As they would love to hear.
SONG.
When Napoleon was flying
From the field of Waterloo,
A British soldier dying
To his brother bade adieu!
“And take,” he said, “this token
To the maid that owns my faith,
With the words that I have spoken
In affection’s latest breath.”
Sore mourned the brother’s heart,
When the youth beside him fell;
But the trumpet warned to part,
And they took a sad farewell.
There was many a friend to lose him,
For that gallant soldier sighed;
But the maiden of his bosom
Wept when all their tears were dried.
THE BEECH-TREE’S PETITION.
O leave this barren spot to me!
Spare, woodman, spare the beechen tree
Though bush or floweret never grow
My dark unwarming shade below;
Nor summer bird perfume the dew
Of rosy blush, or yellow hue;
Nor fruits of autumn, blossom-born,
My green and glossy leaves adorn;
Nor murmuring tribes from me derive
The ambrosial amber of the hive;
Yet leave this barren spot to me:
Spare, woodman, spare the beechen tree!
Thrice twenty summers I have seen
The sky grow bright, the forest green;
And many a wintry wind have stood
In bloomless, fruitless solitude,
Since childhood in my pleasant bower
First spent its sweet and sportive hour.
Since youthful lovers in my shade
Their vows of truth and rapture made;
And on my trunk’s surviving frame
Carved many a long-forgotten name.
Oh! by the sighs of gentle sound,
First breathed upon this sacred ground,
By all that Love has whispered here,
Or Beauty heard with ravished ear;
As Love’s own altar honour me:
Spare woodman, spare the beechen tree!
SONG.
Earl March looked on his dying child,
And smit with grief to view her—
“The youth,” he cried, “whom I exiled,
Shall be restored to woo her.”
She’s at the window many an hour
His coming to discover;
And her love looked up to Ellen’s bower,
And she looked on her lover—
But ah! so pale, he knew her not,
Though her smile on him was dwelling.
“And am I then forgot—forgot?”—
It broke the heart of Ellen.
In vain he weeps, in vain he sighs,
Her cheek is cold as ashes;
Nor love’s own kiss shall wake those eyes
To lift their silken lashes.
LOVE AND MADNESS. AN ELEGY. WRITTEN IN 1795.
Hark! from the battlements of yonder tower[76]
The solemn bell has tolled the midnight hour!
Roused from drear visions of distempered sleep,
Poor Broderick[77] wakes—in solitude to weep!
“Cease, Memory, cease,” the friendless mourner cried,
“To probe the bosom too severely tried!
Oh! ever cease, my pensive thoughts, to stray
Through the bright fields of Fortune’s better day
When youthful Hope, the music of the mind,
Tuned all its charms, and Errington was kind!
“Yet, can I cease, while glows this trembling frame,
In sighs to speak thy melancholy name?
I hear thy spirit wail in every storm!
In midnight shades I view thy passing form!
Pale as in that sad hour when doomed to feel,
Deep in thy perjured heart, the bloody steel!
“Demons of Vengeance! ye at whose command
I grasped the sword with more than woman’s hand.
Say ye, did Pity’s trembling voice control,
Or horror damp the purpose of my soul?
No! my wild heart sat smiling o’er the plan,
Till Hate fulfilled what baffled Love began!
“Yes; let the clay-cold breast that never knew
One tender pang to generous Nature true,
Half-mingling pity with the gall of scorn,
Condemn this heart, that bled in love forlorn!
“And ye, proud fair, whose soul no gladness warms,
Save Rapture’s homage to your conscious charms!
Delighted idols of a gaudy train,
Ill can your blunter feelings guess the pain,
When the fond faithful heart, inspired to prove
Friendship refined, the calm delight of love,
Feels all its tender strings with anguish torn,
And bleeds at perjured Pride’s inhuman scorn!
“Say, then, did pitying Heaven condemn the deed,
When Vengeance bade thee, faithless lover! bleed?
Long had I watched thy dark foreboding brow,
What time thy bosom scorned its dearest vow!
Sad, though I wept the friend, the lover changed,
Still thy cold look was scornful and estranged,
Till from thy pity, love, and shelter thrown,
I wandered hopeless, friendless, and alone!
“Oh! righteous Heaven! ’twas then my tortured soul
First gave to wrath unlimited control!
Adieu the silent look! the streaming eye!
The murmured plaint! the deep heart-heaving sigh
Long-slumbering Vengeance wakes to better deeds;
He shrieks, he falls, the perjured lover bleeds!
Now the last laugh of agony is o’er,
And pale in blood he sleeps, to wake no more!
“’Tis done! the flame of hate no longer burns
Nature relents, but, ah! too late returns!
Why does my soul this gush of fondness feel?
Trembling and faint, I drop the guilty steel!
Cold on my heart the hand of terror lies,
And shades of horror close my languid eyes!
“Oh!’twas a deed of Murder’s deepest grain,
Could Broderick’s soul so true to wrath remain?
A friend long true, a once fond lover fell!—
Where Love was fostered could not Pity dwell?
“Unhappy youth! while yon pale crescent glows
To watch on silent nature’s deep repose,
Thy sleepless spirit, breathing from the tomb,
Foretells my fate, and summons me to come!
Once more I see thy sheeted spectre stand,
Roll the dim eye, and wave the paly hand!
“Soon may this fluttering spark of vital flame
Forsake its languid melancholy frame!
Soon may these eyes their trembling lustre close,
Welcome the dreamless night of long repose!
Soon may this woe-worn spirit seek the bourne
Where, lulled to slumber, Grief forgets to mourn!”
[76] Warwick Castle.
[77] Miss Broderick: she murdered her lover, Errington.—See Campbell’s
“Life and Letters,” by Dr. Beattie.
SONG.
Oh, how hard it is to find
The one just suited to our mind;
And if that one should be
False, unkind, or found too late,
What can we do but sigh at fate,
And sing, Woe’s me—Woe’s me!
Love’s a boundless burning waste,
Where Bliss’s stream we seldom taste,
And still more seldom flee
Suspense’s thorns, Suspicion’s stings;
Yet somehow Love a something brings
That’s sweet—e’en when we sigh, “Woe’s me!”
STANZAS ON THE THREATENED INVASION 1803.
Our bosoms we’ll bare for the glorious strife,
And our oath is recorded on high,
To prevail in the cause that is dearer than life,
Or crushed in its ruins to die!
Then rise, fellow freemen, and stretch the right hand,
And swear to prevail in your dear native land!
’Tis the home we hold sacred is laid to our trust—
God bless the green Isle of the brave!
Should a conqueror tread on our forefathers’ dust,
It would rouse the old dead from their grave!
Then rise, fellow freemen, and stretch the right hand,
And swear to prevail in your dear native land!
In a Briton’s sweet home shall a spoiler abide,
Profaning its loves and its charms?
Shall a Frenchman insult the loved fair at our side?
To arms! oh, my Country, to arms!
Then rise, fellow freemen, and stretch the right hand,
And swear to prevail in your dear native land!
Shall a tyrant enslave us, my countrymen!—No!
His head to the sword shall be given—
A death-bed repentance be taught the proud foe,
And his blood be an offering to Heaven!
Then rise, fellow freemen, and stretch the right hand,
And swear to prevail in your dear native land!
EXILE OF ERIN.[78]
There came to the beach a poor Exile of Erin,
The dew on his thin robe was heavy and chill:
For his country he sighed, when at twilight repairing
To wander alone by the wind-beaten hill.
But the day-star attracted his eye’s sad devotion,
For it rose o’er his own native isle of the ocean,
Where once in the fire of his youthful emotion,
He sang the bold anthem of “Erin go bragh!”[79]
“Sad is my fate!” said the heart-broken stranger;
“The wild deer and wolf to a covert can flee,
But I have no refuge from famine and danger,
A home and a country remain not to me.
Never again, in the green sunny bowers,
Where my forefathers lived, shall I spend the sweet hours,
Or cover my harp with the wild-woven flowers,
And strike to the numbers of ‘Erin go bragh!’
“Erin, my country! though sad and forsaken,
In dreams I revisit the sea-beaten shore;
But, alas! in a far foreign land I awaken,
And sigh for the friends who can meet me no more!
Oh cruel fate! wilt thou never replace me
In a mansion of peace—where no perils can chase me?
Never again shall my brothers embrace me?
They die to defend me, or live to deplore!
“Where is my cabin-door, fast by the wild-wood?
Sisters and sire! did ye weep for its fall?
Where is the mother that looked on my childhood?
And where is the bosom-friend, dearer than all?
Oh! my sad heart! long abandoned by pleasure,
Why did it doat on a fast-fading treasure?
Tears, like the rain-drop, may fall without measure,
But rapture and beauty they cannot recall.
“Yet all its sad recollections suppressing,
One dying wish my lone bosom can draw:
Erin! an exile bequeaths thee his blessing!
Land of my forefathers! ‘Erin go bragh!’
Buried and cold, when my heart stills her motion,
Green be thy fields,—sweetest isle of the ocean!
And thy harp-striking bards sing aloud with devotion,—
Erin mavournin[80]—Erin go bragh!’”
[78] Anthony McCann, exiled for being implicated in the Irish Rebellion
of 1798. Campbell met him at Hamburg.
[79] Ireland for ever.
[80] Ireland my darling.
LORD ULLIN’S DAUGHTER.
A chieftain to the Highlands bound,
Cries, “Boatman, do not tarry!
And I’ll give thee a silver pound,
To row us o’er the ferry.”
“Now who be ye, would cross Lochgyle,
This dark and stormy water?”
“O, I’m the chief of Ulva’s isle,
And this Lord Ullin’s daughter.
“And fast before her father’s men
Three days we’ve fled together,
For should he find us in the glen,
My blood would stain the heather.
“His horsemen hard behind us ride;
Should they our steps discover,
Then who will cheer my bonny bride
When they have slain her lover?”
Outspoke the hardy Highland wight
“I’ll go, my chief—I’m ready;
It is not for your silver bright,
But for your winsome lady:
“And by my word! the bonny bird
In danger shall not tarry;
So though the waves are raging white,
I’ll row you o’er the ferry.”
By this the storm grew loud apace,
The water-wraith was shrieking;[81]
And in the scowl of heaven each face
Grew dark as they were speaking.
But still as wilder blew the wind,
And as the night grew drearer,
Adown the glen rode armèd men,
Their trampling sounded nearer.
“O haste thee, haste!” the lady cries,
“Though tempests round us gather;
I’ll meet the raging of the skies,
But not an angry father.”
The boat has left a stormy land,
A stormy sea before her,—
When, oh! too strong for human hand,
The tempest gathered o’er her.
And still they rowed amidst the roar
Of waters fast prevailing:
Lord Ullin reached that fatal shore,
His wrath was changed to wailing.
For sore dismayed, through storm and shade,
His child he did discover:
One lovely hand she stretched for aid,
And one was round her lover.
“Come back! come back!” he cried in grief,
“Across this stormy water:
And I’ll forgive your Highland chief,
My daughter!—oh my daughter!”
Twas vain: the loud waves lashed the shore,
Return or aid preventing:
The waters wild went o’er his child—
And he was left lamenting.
[81] The evil spirit of the waters.
ODE TO THE MEMORY OF BURNS.
Soul of the Poet! wheresoe’er,
Reclaimed from earth, thy genius plume
Her wings of immortality:
Suspend thy harp in happier sphere,
And with thine influence illume
The gladness of our jubilee.
And fly like fiends from secret spell,
Discord and strife, at BURNS’S name,
Exorcised by his memory;
For he was chief of bards that swell
The heart with songs of social flame,
And high delicious revelry.
And Love’s own strain to him was given,
To warble all its ecstasies
With Pythian words unsought, unwilled—
Love, the surviving gift of Heaven,
The choicest sweet of Paradise,
In life’s else bitter cup distilled.
Who that has melted o’er his lay
To Mary’s soul, in Heaven above,
But pictured sees, in fancy strong,
The landscape and the livelong day
That smiled upon their mutual love?
Who that has felt forgets the song?
Nor skilled one flame alone to fan:
His country’s high-souled peasantry
What patriot-pride he taught!—how much
To weigh the inborn worth of man!
And rustic life and poverty
Grow beautiful beneath his touch.
Him, in his clay-built cot,[82] the muse
Entranced, and showed him all the forms
Of fairy-light and wizard gloom
(That only gifted Poet views),
The Genii of the floods and storms,
And martial shades from Glory’s tomb.
On Bannock-field what thoughts arouse
The swain whom BURNS’S song inspires?
Beat not his Caledonian veins,
As o’er the heroic turf he ploughs,
With all the spirit of his sires,
And all their scorn of death and chains?
And see the Scottish exile tanned
By many a far and foreign clime,
Bend o’er his home-born verse, and weep
In memory of his native land,
With love that scorns the lapse of time,
And ties that stretch beyond the deep.
Encamped by Indian rivers wild,
The soldier resting on his arms,
In BURNS’S carol sweet recalls
The scenes that blessed him when a child,
And glows and gladdens at the charms
Of Scotia’s woods and waterfalls.
O deem not, midst this worldly strife,
An idle art the Poet brings:
Let high Philosophy control
And sages calm the stream of life,
’Tis he refines its fountain-springs,
The nobler passions of the soul.
It is the muse that consecrates
The native banner of the brave,
Unfurling at the trumpet’s breath,
Rose, thistle, harp; ’tis she elates
To sweep the field or ride the wave,
A sunburst in the storm of death.
And thou, young hero, when thy pall
Is crossed with mournful sword and plume,
When public grief begins to fade,
And only tears of kindred fall,
Who but the Bard shall dress thy tomb,
And greet with fame thy gallant shade?
Such was the soldier—BURNS, forgive
That sorrows of mine own intrude
In strains to thy great memory due.
In verse like thine, oh! could he live,
The friend I mourned—the brave, the good—
Edward that died at Waterloo![83]
Farewell, high chief of Scottish song!
That couldst alternately impart
Wisdom and rapture in thy page,
And brand each vice with satire strong,
Whose lines are mottoes of the heart,
Whose truths electrify the sage.
Farewell! and ne’er may Envy dare
To wring one baleful poison drop
From the crushed laurels of thy bust:
But while the lark sings sweet in air,
Still may the grateful pilgrim stop,
To bless the spot that holds thy dust.
[82] Burns was born in a clay cottage, which his father had built with
his own hands.
[83] Major Edward Hodge, of the 7th Hussars, who fell at the head of his
squadron in the attack of the Polish Lancers.
THE SOLDIER’S DREAM.
Our bugles sang truce—for the night-cloud had lowered,
And the sentinel stars set their watch in the sky;
And thousands had sunk on the ground overpowered,
The weary to sleep, and the wounded to die.
When reposing that night on my pallet of straw,
By the wolf-scaring faggot that guarded the slain,
At the dead of the night a sweet vision I saw,
And thrice ere the morning I dreamt it again.
Methought from the battle-field’s dreadful array,
Far, far I had roamed on a desolate track:
’Twas Autumn,—and sunshine arose on the way
To the home of my fathers, that welcomed me back.
I flew to the pleasant fields traversed so oft
In life’s morning march, when my bosom was young
I heard my own mountain-goats bleating aloft,
And knew the sweet strain that the corn-reapers sung.
Then pledged we the wine-cup, and fondly I swore,
From my home and my weeping friends never to part
My little ones kissed me a thousand times o’er,
And my wife sobbed aloud in her fulness of heart,
Stay, stay with us,—rest, thou art weary and worn;
And fain was their war-broken soldier to stay;—
But sorrow returned with the dawning of morn,
And the voice in my dreaming ear melted away.
LINES WRITTEN ON VISITING A SCENE IN ARGYLESHIRE.
At the silence of twilight’s contemplative hour,
I have mused in a sorrowful mood,
On the wind-shaken weeds that embosom the bower,
Where the home of my forefathers stood.[84]
All ruined and wild is their roofless abode,
And lonely the dark raven’s sheltering tree:
And travelled by few is the grass-covered road,
Where the hunter of deer and the warrior trode
To his hills that encircle the sea.
Yet wandering, I found on my ruinous walk,
By the dial-stone agèd and green,
One rose of the wilderness left on its stalk,
To mark where a garden had been
Like a brotherless hermit, the last of its race,
All wild in the silence of nature, it drew,
From each wandering sun-beam, a lonely embrace,
For the night-weed and thorn overshadowed the place,
Where the flower of my forefathers grew.
Sweet bud of the wilderness! emblem of all
That remains in this desolate heart!
The fabric of bliss to its centre may fall,
But patience shall never depart!
Though the wilds of enchantment, all vernal and bright,
In the days of delusion by fancy combined
With the vanishing phantoms of love and delight,
Abandon my soul, like a dream of the night,
And leave but a desert behind.
Be hushed, my dark spirit! for wisdom condemns
When the faint and the feeble deplore;
Be strong as the rock of the ocean that stems
A thousand wild waves on the shore!
Through the perils of chance, and the scowl of disdain,
May thy front be unaltered, thy courage elate!
Yea! even the name I have worshipped in vain
Shall awake not the sigh of remembrance again:
To bear is to conquer our fate.
[84] Kirnan.
SPANISH PATRIOT’S SONG.
How rings each sparkling Spanish brand,
There’s music in its rattle;
And gay, as for a saraband,
We gird us for the battle.
Follow, follow!
To the glorious revelry,
When the sabres bristle,
And the death-shots whistle.
Of rights for which our swords outspring,
Shall Angoulême bereave us?
We’ve plucked a bird of nobler wing—
The eagle could not brave us.
Follow, follow!
Shake the Spanish blade, and sing—
France shall ne’er enslave us:
Tyrants shall not brave us.
Shall yonder rag, the Bourbon’s flag,
White emblem of his liver,
For Spain the proud be Freedom’s shroud?
Oh, never, never, never.
Follow, follow!
Follow to the fight, and sing—
Liberty for ever:
Ever, ever, ever.
Thrice welcome hero of the hilt,
We laugh to see his standard;
Here let his miscreant blood be spilt
Where braver men’s was squandered.
Follow, follow!
If the laureled tricolor
Durst not over-flaunt us,
Shall yon lily daunt us?
No! ere they quell our valour’s veins,
They’ll upward to their fountains
Turn back the rivers on our plains,
And trample flat our mountains.
Follow, follow!
Shake the Spanish blade, and sing—
France shall ne’er enslave us:
Tyrants shall not brave us.
VERSES ON MARIE ANTOINETTE.[85]
Behold where Gallia’s captive queen,
With steady eye and look serene,
In life’s last awful—awful scene,
Slow leaves her sad captivity.
Hark! the shrill horn that rends the sky
Bespeaks thy ready murder nigh,
The long parade of death I spy,
And leave my lone captivity.
Farewell, ye mansions of despair,
Scenes of my sad sequestered care.
The balm of bleeding war is near.
Adieu, my lone captivity.
To purer mansions in the sky,
Fair Hope directs my grief-worn eye,
Where sorrow’s child no more shall sigh
Amid her lone captivity.
Adieu, ye babes whose infant bloom
Beneath oppression’s lawless doom,
Pines in the solitary gloom
Of undeserved captivity.
O Power benign that rul’st on high,
Cast down, cast down a pitying eye;
Shed consolation from the sky,
To soothe their sad captivity.
Now virtue’s sure reward to prove,
I seek empyreal realms above,
To meet my long-departed love;
Adieu my lone captivity.
[85] These lines were published in a leading Glasgow newspaper in 1792.
DIRGE OF WALLACE.
They lighted the tapers at dead of night,
And chanted their holiest hymn,
But her brow and her bosom were damp with affright,
Her eye was all sleepless and dim.
And the lady of Elderslie wept for her lord,
When a deathwatch beat in her lonely room,
When her curtain had shook of its own accord,
And the raven had flapped at her window board,
To tell of her warrior’s doom.
Now sing the death-song and loudly pray
For the soul of my knight so dear,
And call me a widow this wretched day,
Since the warning of God is here.
For a nightmare rides on my strangled sleep—
The lord of my bosom is doomed to die;
His valorous heart they have wounded deep,
And the blood-red tears shall his country weep,
For Wallace of Elderslie.
Yet knew not his country that ominous hour,
Ere the loud matin bell was rung,
That a trumpet of death on an English tower
Had the dirge of her champion sung.
When his dungeon light looked dim and red
On the high-born blood of a martyr slain,
No anthem was sung at his holy death-bed;
No weeping was there when his bosom bled,
And his heart was rent in twain.
Oh! it was not thus when his ashen spear
Was true to that knight forlorn,
And hosts of a thousand were scattered like deer,
At the sound of the hunter’s horn!
When he strode o’er the wreck of each well-fought field,
With the yellow-haired chiefs of his native land;
For his lance was not shivered on helmet or shield,
And the sword that seemed fit for archangel to wield,
Was light in his terrible hand.
But bleeding and bound though “the Wallace wight,”
For his much-loved country die,
The bugle ne’er sung to a braver knight
Than Wallace of Elderslie.
But the day of his glory shall never depart,
His head unentombed shall with glory be palmed,
From its blood-streaming altar his spirit shall start;
Though the raven has fed on his mouldering heart—
A nobler was never embalmed.
JEMIMA, ROSE, AND ELEANORE; THREE CELEBRATED SCOTTISH BEAUTIES.
Adieu! Romance’s heroines—
Give me the nymphs who this good hour
May charm me, not in Fiction’s scenes,
But teach me Beauty’s living power.
My harp that has been mute too long
Shall sleep at Beauty’s name no more,
So but your smiles reward my song—
Jemima, Rose, and Eleanore.
In whose benignant eyes are beaming
The rays of purity and truth;
Such as we fancy woman’s seeming
In the creation’s golden youth.
The more I look upon thy grace,
Rosina, I could look the more;
But for Jemima’s witching face,
And the sweet smile of Eleanore.
Had I been Lawrence, kings had wanted
Their portraits, till I painted yours;
And these had future hearts enchanted,
When this poor verse no more endures.
I would have left the Congress faces,
A dull-eyed diplomatic corps,
Till I had grouped you as the Graces—
Jemima, Rose, and Eleanore.
The Catholic bids fair saints befriend him,
Your poet’s heart is Catholic too;
His rosary shall be flowers ye send him,
His saints’ days when he visits you.
And my sere laurels for my duty,
Miraculous at your touch would rise;
Could I give verse one trait of beauty
Like that which glads me from your eyes.
Unsealed by you these lips have spoken,
Disused to song for many a day,
Ye’ve tuned a harp whose strings were broken,
And warmed a heart of callous clay;
So when my fancy next refuses
To twine for you a garland more,
Come back again and be my Muses—
Jemima, Rose, and Eleanore.
THE DEATH-BOAT OF HELIGOLAND
Can restlessness reach the cold sepulchred head?—
Ay, the quick have their sleep-walkers, so have the dead
There are brains, though they moulder, that dream in the tomb,
And that maddening forehear the last trumpet of doom,
Till their corses start sheeted to revel on earth,
Making horror more deep by the semblance of mirth:
By the glare of new-lighted volcanoes they dance,
Or at mid-sea appal the chilled mariner’s glance.
Such I wot, was the band of cadaverous smile
Seen ploughing the night-surge of Heligo’s isle.
The foam of the Baltic had sparkled like fire,
And the red moon looked down with an aspect of ire;
But her beams on a sudden grew sick-like and grey,
And the mews that had slept clanged and shrieked far away
And the buoys and the beacons extinguished their light,
As the boat of the stony-eyed dead came in sight,
High bounding from billow to billow; each form
Had its shroud like a plaid flying loose to the storm;
With an oar in each pulseless and icy-cold hand,
Fast they ploughed, by the lee-shore of Heligoland,
Such breakers as boat of the living ne’er crossed;
Now surf-sunk for minutes again they uptossed,
And with livid lips shouted reply o’er the flood
To the challenging watchman that curdled his blood—
“We are dead—we are bound from our graces in the west,
First to Hecla, and then to——” Unmeet was the rest
For man’s ear. The old abbey bell thundered its clang,
And their eyes gleamed with phosphorous light as it rang
Ere they vanished, they stopped, and gazed silently grim,
Till the eye could define them, garb, feature and limb
Now who were those roamers?—of gallows or wheel
Bore they marks, or the mangling anatomist’s steel?
No, by magistrates’ chains ’mid their grave-clothes you saw,
They were felons too proud to have perished by law;
But a ribbon that hung where a rope should have been,
’Twas the badge of their faction, its hue was not green,
Showed them men who had trampled and tortured and driven
To rebellion the fairest Isle breathed on by Heaven,—
Men whose heirs would yet finish the tyrannous task,
If the Truth and the Time had not dragged off their mask.
They parted—but not till the sight might discern
A scutcheon distinct at their pinnace’s stern,
Where letters emblazoned in blood-coloured flame,
Named their faction—I blot not my page with its name.
SONG.
When Love came first to Earth, the SPRING
Spread rose-beds to receive him
And back he vowed his flight he’d wing
To Heaven, if she should leave him.
But SPRING departing, saw his faith
Pledged to the next new comer—
He revelled in the warmer breath
And richer bowers of SUMMER.
Then sportive AUTUMN claimed by rights
An Archer for her lover,
And even in WINTER’S dark, cold nights
A charm he could discover.
Her routs and balls, and fireside joy,
For this time were his reasons—
In short, Young Love’s a gallant boy,
That likes all times and seasons.
LINES ON THE DEPARTURE OF EMIGRANTS FOR NEW SOUTH WALES.
On England’s shore I saw a pensive band,
With sails unfurled for earth’s remotest strand,
Like children parting from a mother, shed
Tears for the home that could not yield them bread,
Grief marked each face receding from the view,
’Twas grief to nature honourably true.
And long, poor wanderers o’er the ecliptic deep,
The song that names but home shall bid you weep;
Oft shall ye fold your flocks by stars above
In that far world, and miss the stars ye love;
Oft, when its tuneless birds scream round forlorn,
Regret the lark that gladdens England’s morn,
And, giving England’s names to distant scenes,
Lament that earth’s extension intervenes.
But cloud not yet too long, industrious train,
Your solid good with sorrow nursed in vain:
For has the heart no interest yet as bland
As that which binds us to our native land?
The deep-drawn wish, when children crown our hearth,
To hear the cherub-chorus of their mirth,
Undamped by dread that want may e’er unhouse,
Or servile misery knit those smiling brows:
The pride to rear an independent shed,
And give the lips we love unborrowed bread;
To see a world, from shadowy forests won,
In youthful beauty wedded to the sun;
To skirt our home with harvests widely sown,
And call the blooming landscape all our own,
Our children’s heritage, in prospect long.
These are the hopes, high-minded hopes and strong,
That beckon England’s wanderers o’er the brine,
To realms where foreign constellations shine;
Where streams from undiscovered fountains roll,
And winds shall fan them from th’ Antarctic pole,
And what though doomed to shores so far apart
From England’s home, that e’en the home-sick heart
Quails, thinking, ere that gulf can be recrossed,
How large a space of fleeting life is lost:
Yet there, by time, their bosoms shall be changed,
And strangers once shall cease to sigh estranged,
But jocund in the year’s long sunshine roam,
That yields their sickle twice its harvest-home.
There, marking o’er his farm’s expanding ring
New fleeces whiten and new fruits upspring,
The grey-haired swain, his grandchild sporting round,
Shall walk at eve his little empire’s bound,
Emblazed with ruby vintage, ripening corn,
And verdant rampart of Acacian thorn,
While, mingling with the scent his pipe exhales,
The orange-grove’s and fig-tree’s breath prevails;
Survey with pride beyond a monarch’s spoil,
His honest arm’s own subjugated soil;
And summing all the blessings God has given,
Put up his patriarchal prayer to Heaven,
That when his bones shall here repose in peace,
The scions of his love may still increase,
And o’er a land where life has ample room,
In health and plenty innocently bloom.
Delightful land, in wildness e’en benign,
The glorious past is ours, the future thine!
As in a cradled Hercules, we trace
The lines of empire in thine infant face.
What nations in thy wide horizon’s span
Shall teem on tracts untrodden yet by man!
What spacious cities with their spires shall gleam
Where now the panther laps a lonely stream,
And all but brute or reptile life is dumb!
Land of the free! thy kingdom is to come,
Of states, with laws from Gothic bondage burst,
And creeds by chartered priesthood’s unaccurst;
Of navies, hoisting their emblazoned flags,
Where shipless seas now wash unbeaconed crags;
Of hosts reviewed in dazzling files and squares,
Their pennoned trumpets breathing native airs,—
For minstrels thou shalt have of native fire,
And maids to sing the songs themselves inspire:—
Our very speech, methinks, in after time,
Shall catch th’ Ionian blandness of thy clime;
And whilst the light and luxury of thy skies
Give brighter smiles to beauteous woman’s eyes,
The Arts, whose soul is love, shall all spontaneous rise.
Untracked in deserts lies the marble mine,
Undug the ore that midst thy roofs shall shine;
Unborn the hands—but born they are to be—
Fair Australasia, that shall give to thee
Proud temple-domes, with galleries winding high,
So vast in space, so just in symmetry,
They widen to the contemplating eye,
With colonnaded aisles in long array,
And windows that enrich the flood of day
O’er tesselated pavements, pictures fair,
And nichèd statues breathing golden air.
Nor there, whilst all that’s seen bids Fancy swell,
Shall Music’s voice refuse to seal the spell;
But choral hymns shall wake enchantment round,
And organs yield their tempests of sweet sound.
Meanwhile, ere Arts triumphant reach their goal,
How blest the years of pastoral life shall roll!
E’en should some wayward hour the settler’s mind
Brood sad on scenes for ever left behind,
Yet not a pang that England’s name imparts,
Shall touch a fibre of his children’s hearts;
Bound to that native land by nature’s bond,
Full little shall their wishes rove beyond
Its mountains blue, and melon-skirted streams,
Since childhood loved and dreamt of in their dreams.
How many a name, to us uncouthly wild,
Shall thrill that region’s patriotic child,
And bring as sweet thoughts o’er his bosom’s chords,
As aught that’s named in song to us affords!
Dear shall that river’s margin be to him,
Where sportive first he bathed his boyish limb,
Or petted birds, still brighter than their bowers,
Or twined his tame young kangaroo with flowers.
But more magnetic yet to memory
Shall be the sacred spot, still blooming nigh,
The bower of love, where first his bosom burned,
And smiling passion saw its smile returned.
Go forth and prosper then, emprizing band:
May He, who in the hollow of his hand
The ocean holds, and rules the whirlwind’s sweep,
Assuage its wrath, and guide you on the deep!
FAREWELL TO LOVE.
I had a heart that doated once in passion’s boundless pain,
And though the tyrant I abjured, I could not break his chain;
But now that Fancy’s fire is quenched, and ne’er can burn anew,
I’ve bid to Love, for all my life, adieu! adieu! adieu!
I’ve known, if ever mortal knew, the spells of Beauty’s thrall,
And if my song has told them not, my soul has felt them all;
But Passion robs my peace no more, and Beauty’s witching sway
Is now to me a star that’s fall’n—a dream that’s passed away.
Hail! welcome tide of life, when no tumultuous billows roll,
How wondrous to myself appears this halcyon calm of soul!
The wearied bird blown o’er the deep would sooner quit its shore,
Than I would cross the gulf again that time has brought me o’er.
Why say the Angels feel the flame?—Oh, spirits of the skies!
Can love like ours, that doats on dust, in heavenly bosoms rise?—
Ah no; the hearts that best have felt its power, the best can tell,
That peace on earth itself begins, when Love has bid farewell.
LINES ON A PICTURE OF A GIRL IN THE ATTITUDE OF PRAYER, BY THE ARTIST
GRUSE, IN THE POSSESSION OF LADY STEPNEY.
Was man e’er doomed that beauty made
By mimic art should haunt him?
Like Orpheus, I adore a shade,
And doat upon a phantom.
Thou maid that in my inmost thought
Art fancifully sainted,
Why liv’st thou not—why art thou nought
But canvass sweetly painted?
Whose looks seem lifted to the skies,
Too pure for love of mortals—
As if they drew angelic eyes
To greet thee at heaven’s portals.
Yet loveliness has here no grace,
Abstracted or ideal—
Art ne’er but from a living face
Drew looks so seeming real.
What wert thou, maid?—thy life—thy name
Oblivion hides in mystery;
Though from thy face my heart could frame
A long romantic history.
Transported to thy time I seem,
Though dust thy coffin covers—
And hear the songs, in fancy’s dream,
Of thy devoted lovers.
How witching must have been thy breath—
How sweet the living charmer—
Whose very semblance after death
Can make the heart grow warmer!
Adieu, the charms that vainly move
My soul in their possession—
That prompt my lips to speak of love,
Yet rob them of expression.
Yet thee, dear picture, to have praised
Was but a poet’s duty;
And shame to him that ever gazed
Impassive on thy beauty.
STANZAS ON THE BATTLE OF NAVARINO.
Hearts of oak that have bravely delivered the brave,
And uplifted old Greece from the brink of the grave,
’Twas the helpless to help, and the hopeless to save,
That your thunderbolts swept o’er the brine;
And as long as yon sun shall look down on the wave
The light of your glory shall shine.
For the guerdon ye sought with your bloodshed and toil,
Was it slaves, or dominion, or rapine, or spoil?
No! your lofty emprize was to fetter and foil
The uprooter of Greece’s domain!
When he tore the last remnant of food from her soil,
Till her famished sank pale as the slain!
Yet, Navarin’s heroes! does Christendom breed
The base hearts that will question the fame of your deed
Are they men?—let ineffable scorn be their meed,
And oblivion shadow their graves!—
Are they women?—to Turkish serails let them speed!
And be mothers of Mussulman slaves.
Abettors of massacre! dare ye deplore
That the death-shriek is silenced on Hellas’s shore?
That the mother aghast sees her offspring no more
By the hand of Infanticide grasped?
And that stretched on yon billows distained by their gore
Missolonghi’s assassins have gasped?
Prouder scene never hallowed war’s pomp to the mind,
Than when Christendom’s pennons wooed social the wind,
And the flower of her brave for the combat combined,
Their watch-word, humanity’s vow;—
Not a sea-boy that fought in that cause, but mankind
Owes a garland to honour his brow!
Nor grudge, by our side, that to conquer or fall,
Came the hardy rude Russ, and the high-mettled Gaul;
For whose was the genius, that planned at its call,
Where the whirlwind of battle should roll?
All were brave! but the star of success over all
Was the light of our Codrington’s soul.
That star of the day-spring, regenerate Greek!
Dimmed the Saracen’s moon, and struck pallid his cheek;
In its first flushing morning thy Muses shall speak
When their lore and their lutes they reclaim:
And the first of their songs from Parnassus’s peak
Shall be “_Glory to Codrington’s name!_”
LINES ON LEAVING A SCENE IN BAVARIA.
Adieu the woods and waters’ side
Imperial Danube’s rich domain!
Adieu the grotto, wild and wide,
The rocks abrupt, and grassy plain!
For pallid Autumn once again
Hath swelled each torrent of the hill;
Her clouds collect, her shadows sail,
And watery winds that sweep the vale,
Grow loud and louder still.
But not the storm, dethroning fast
Yon monarch oak of massy pile;
Nor river roaring to the blast
Around its dark and desert isle;
Nor church-bell[86] tolling to beguile
The cloud-born thunder passing by,
Can sound in discord to my soul:
Roll on, ye mighty waters, roll!
And rage, thou darkened sky!
Thy blossoms now no longer bright;
Thy withered woods no longer green
Yet, Eldurn shore, with dark delight
I visit thy unlovely scene!
For many a sunset hour serene
My steps have trod thy mellow dew;
When his green light the fire-fly gave,
When Cynthia from the distant wave
Her twilight anchor drew,
And ploughed, as with a swelling sail,
The billowy clouds and starry sea:
Then while thy hermit nightingale
Sang on his fragrant apple-tree,—
Romantic, solitary, free,
The visitant of Eldurn’s shore,
On such a moonlight mountain strayed
As echoed to the music made
By Druid harps of yore.
Around thy savage hills of oak,
Around thy waters bright and blue,
No hunter’s horn the silence broke,
No dying shriek thine echo knew;
But safe, sweet Eldurn woods, to you
The wounded wild deer ever ran.
Whose myrtle bound their grassy cave,
Whose very rocks a shelter gave
From blood-pursuing man.
Oh heart effusions, that arose
From nightly wanderings cherished here;
To him who flies from many woes,
Even homeless deserts can be dear!
The last and solitary cheer
Of those that own no earthly home,
Say—is it not, ye banished race,
In such a loved and lonely place
Companionless to roam?
Yes! I have loved thy wild abode,
Unknown, unploughed, untrodden shore;
Where scarce the woodman finds a road,
And scarce the fisher plies an oar:
For man’s neglect I love thee more;
That art nor avarice intrude
To tame thy torrent’s thunder-shock,
Or prune thy vintage of the rock
Magnificently rude.
Unheeded spreads thy blossomed bud
Its milky bosom to the bee;
Unheeded falls along the flood
desolate and aged tree.
Forsaken scene, how like to thee
The fate of unbefriended Worth!
Like thine her fruit dishonoured falls,
Like thee in solitude she calls
A thousand treasures forth.
O! silent spirit of the place,
If, lingering with the ruined year,
Thy hoary form and awful face
I yet might watch and worship here!
Thy storm were music to mine ear,
Thy wildest walk a shelter given
Sublimer thoughts on earth to find,
And share, with no unhallowed mind,
The majesty of heaven.
What though the bosom friends of Fate,—
Prosperity’s unweanèd brood,—
Thy consolations cannot rate,
O self-dependent solitude!
Yet with a spirit unsubdued,
Though darkened by the clouds of Care,
To worship thy congenial gloom,
A pilgrim to the Prophet’s tomb
Misfortune shall repair.
On her the world hath never smiled
Or looked but with accusing eye;
All-silent goddess of the wild,
To thee that misanthrope shall fly!
I hear her deep soliloquy,
I mark her proud but ravaged form,
As stern she wraps her mantle round,
And bids, on winter’s bleakest ground,
Defiance to the storm.
Peace to her banished heart, at last,
In thy dominions shall descend,
And, strong as beechwood in the blast,
Her spirit shall refuse to bend;
Enduring life without a friend,
The world and falsehood left behind,
Thy votary shall bear elate
(Triumphant o’er opposing Fate),
Her dark inspirèd mind.
But dost thou, Folly, mock the muse
A wanderer’s mountain walk to sing,
Who shuns a warring world, nor wooes
The vulture cover of its wing?
Then fly, thou cowering, shivering thing,
Back to the fostering world beguiled
To waste in self-consuming strife
The loveless brotherhood of life,
Reviling and reviled!
Away, thou lover of the race
That hither chased yon weeping deer!
If Nature’s all majestic face
More pitiless than man’s appear;
Or if the wild winds seem more drear
Than man’s cold charities below,
Behold around his peopled plains,
Where’er the social savage reigns,
Exuberance of woe!
His art and honours wouldst thou seek
Embossed on grandeur’s giant walls?
Or hear his moral thunders speak
Where senates light their airy halls,
Where man his brother man enthralls;
Or sends his whirlwind warrants forth
To rouse the slumbering fiends of war,
To dye the blood-warm waves afar,
And desolate the earth?
From clime to clime pursue the scene,
And mark in all thy spacious way,
Where’er the tyrant man has been,
There Peace, the cherub, cannot stay;
In wilds and woodlands far away
She builds her solitary bower,
Where only anchorites have trod,
Or friendless men, to worship God,
Have wandered for an hour.
In such a far forsaken vale,—
And such, sweet Eldurn vale, is thine,—
Afflicted nature shall inhale
Heaven-borrowed thoughts and joys divine:
No longer wish, no more repine
For man’s neglect or woman’s scorn;—
Then wed thee to an exile’s lot,
For if the world hath loved thee not,
Its absence may be borne.
[86] In Catholic countries you often hear the church bells rung to
propitiate Heaven during thunder storms.
STANZAS TO PAINTING.
O thou by whose expressive art
Her perfect image Nature sees
In union with the Graces start,
And sweeter by reflection please!
In whose creative hand the hues
Fresh from yon orient rainbow shine;
I bless thee, Promethéan Muse!
And call thee brightest of the Nine!
Possessing more than vocal power,
Persuasive more than poet’s tongue;
Whose lineage, in a raptured hour,[87]
From Love, the Sire of Nature, sprung.
Does Hope her high possession meet?
Is joy triumphant, sorrow flown?
Sweet is the trance, the tremor sweet,
When all we love is all our own.
But oh! thou pulse of pleasure dear,
Slow throbbing, cold, I feel thee part;
Lone absence plants a pang severe,
Or death inflicts a keener dart.
Then for a beam of joy to light
In memory’s sad and wakeful eye!
Or banish from the noon of night
Her dreams of deeper agony.
Shall Song its witching cadence roll?
Yea, even the tenderest air repeat,
That breathed when soul was knit to soul,
And heart to heart responsive beat?
What visions rise! to charm, to melt!
The lost, the loved, the dead are near!
Oh, hush that strain too deeply felt!
And cease that solace too severe!
But thou serenely silent art!
By heaven and love wast taught to lend
A milder solace to the heart,
The sacred image of a friend.
All is not lost! if, yet possest,
To me that sweet memorial shine:—
If close and closer to my breast
I hold that idol all divine.
Or, gazing through luxurious tears,
Melt o’er the loved departed form,
Till death’s cold bosom half appears
With life, and speech, and spirit warm.
She looks! she lives! this trancèd hour,
Her bright eye seems a purer gem
Than sparkles on the throne of power,
Or glories wealthy diadem.
Yes, Genius, yes! thy mimic aid
A treasure to my soul has given,
Where beauty’s canonisèd shade
Smiles in the sainted hues of heaven
No spectre forms of pleasure fled,
Thy softening, sweetening tints restore;
For thou canst give us back the dead,
E’en in the loveliest looks they wore.
Then blest be Nature’s guardian Muse,
Whose hand her perished grace redeems!
Whose tablet of a thousand hues
The mirror of creation seems.
From Love began thy high descent;
And lovers, charmed by gifts of thine,
Shall bless thee mutely eloquent;
And call thee brightest of the Nine!
[87] Alluding to the well-known tradition respecting the origin of
painting, that it arose from a young Corinthian female tracing the shadow
of her lovers profile on the wall, as he lay asleep.
DRINKING-SONG OF MUNICH.
Sweet Iser! were thy sunny realm
And flowery gardens mine,
Thy waters I would shade with elm
To prop the tender vine;
My golden flagons I would fill
With rosy draughts from every hill;
And under every myrtle bower,
My gay companions should prolong
The laugh, the revel, and the song,
To many an idle hour.
Like rivers crimsoned with the beam
Of yonder planet bright,
Our balmy cups should ever stream
Profusion of delight;
No care should touch the mellow heart,
And sad or sober none depart;
For wine can triumph over woe,
And Love and Bacchus, brother powers,
Could build in Iser’s sunny bowers
A paradise below.
LINES ON REVISITING A SCOTTISH RIVER.
And call they this Improvement?—to have changed,
My native Clyde, thy once romantic shore,
Where Nature’s face is banished and estranged,
And Heaven reflected in thy wave no more;
Whose banks, that sweetened May-day’s breath before,
Lie sere and leafless now in summer’s beam,
With sooty exhalations covered o’er;
And for the daisied green sward, down thy stream
Unsightly brick-lanes smoke, and clanking engines gleam.
Speak not to me of swarms the scene sustains;
One heart free tasting Nature’s breath and bloom
Is worth a thousand slaves to Mammon’s gains.
But whither goes that wealth, and gladd’ning whom?
See, left but life enough and breathing-room
The hunger and the hope of life to feel,
Yon pale Mechanic bending o’er his loom,
And Childhood’s self as at Ixion’s wheel,
From morn till midnight tasked to earn its little meal.
Is this Improvement?—where the human breed
Degenerates as they swarm and overflow,
Till Toil grows cheaper than the trodden weed,
And man competes with man, like foe with foe,
Till Death, that thins them, scarce seems public woe?
Improvement!—smiles it in the poor man’s eyes,
Or blooms it on the cheek of Labour?—No—
To gorge a few with Trade’s precarious prize,
We banish rural life, and breathe unwholesome skies.
Nor call that evil slight; God has not given
This passion to the heart of man in vain,
For Earth’s green face, th’ untainted air of Heaven,
And all the bliss of Nature’s rustic reign.
For not alone our frame imbibes a stain
From fœtid skies; the spirit’s healthy pride
Fades in their gloom—And therefore I complain,
That thou no more through pastoral scenes shouldst glide,
My Wallace’s own stream, and once romantic Clyde!
LINES ON REVISITING CATHCART.
Oh! scenes of my childhood, and dear to my heart
Ye green waving woods on the margin of Cart,
How blest in the morning of life I have strayed,
By the stream of the vale and the grass-covered glade!
Then, then every rapture was young and sincere,
Ere the sunshine of bliss was bedimmed by a tear,
And a sweeter delight every scene seemed to lend,
That the mansion of peace was the house of a friend.
Now the scenes of my childhood and dear to my heart,
All pensive I visit, and sigh to depart;
Their flowers seem to languish, their beauty to cease,
For a _stranger_ inhabits the mansion of peace.
But hushed be the sigh that untimely complains,
While Friendship and all its enchantment remains,
While it blooms like the flower of a winterless clime,
Untainted by chance, unabated by time.
THE “NAME UNKNOWN;” IN IMITATION OF KLOPSTOCK.
Prophetic pencil! wilt thou trace
A faithful image of the face,
Or wilt thou write the “Name Unknown,”
Ordained to bless my charmèd soul,
And all my future fate control,
Unrivalled and alone?
Delicious Idol of my thought!
Though sylph or spirit hath not taught
My boding heart thy precious name;
Yet musing on my distant fate,
To charms unseen I consecrate
A visionary flame
Thy rosy blush, thy meaning eye,
Thy virgin voice of melody,
Are ever present to my heart;
Thy murmured vows shall yet be mine,
My thrilling hand shall meet with thine,
And never, never part!
Then fly, my days, on rapid wing,
Till Love the viewless treasure bring;
While I, like conscious Athens, own
A power in mystic silence sealed,
A guardian angel unrevealed,
And bless the “Name Unknown!”
SONG.
Withdraw not yet those lips and fingers,
Whose touch to mine is rapture’s spell;
Life’s joy for us a moment lingers,
And death seems in the word—farewell.
The hour that bids us part and go,
It sounds not yet,—oh! no, no, no!
Time, whilst I gaze upon thy sweetness,
Flies like a courser nigh the goal;
To-morrow where shall be his fleetness,
When thou art parted from my soul?
Our hearts shall beat, our tears shall flow,
But not together,—no, no, no!
HALLOWED GROUND.
What’s hallowed ground? Has earth a clod
Its Maker meant not should be trod
By man, the image of his God,
Erect and free,
Unscourged by superstition’s rod
To bow the knee?
That’s hallowed ground—where mourned and missed
The lips repose our love has kissed;—
But where’s their memory’s mansion? Is’t
Yon churchyard’s bowers?
No! in ourselves their souls exist,
A part of ours.
A kiss can consecrate the ground
Where mated hearts are mutual bound:
The spot where love’s first links were wound,
That ne’er are riven,
Is hallowed down to earth’s profound,
And up to Heaven!
For time makes all but true love old;
The burning thoughts that then were told
Run molten still in memory’s mould;
And will not cool,
Until the heart itself be cold
In Lethe’s pool.
What hallows ground where heroes sleep?
’Tis not the sculptured piles you heap!
In dews that heavens far distant weep
Their turf may bloom;
Or Genii twine beneath the deep
Their coral tomb.
But strew his ashes to the wind
Whose sword or voice has served mankind—
And is he dead, whose glorious mind
Lifts thine on high?—
To live in hearts we leave behind,
Is not to die.
Is’t death to fall for Freedom’s right?
He’s dead alone that lacks her light!
And murder sullies in Heaven’s sight
The sword he draws:—
What can alone ennoble fight?
A noble cause!
Give that! and welcome war to brace
Her drums! and rend Heaven’s reeking space!
The colours planted face to face,
The charging cheer,
Though Death’s pale horse lead on the chase,
Shall still be dear.
And place our trophies where men kneel
To Heaven!—but Heaven rebukes my zeal!
The cause of Truth and Human weal,
O God above!
Transfer it from the sword’s appeal
To Peace and Love.
Peace, Love! the cherubim that join
Their spread wings o’er Devotion’s shrine—
Prayers sound in vain, and temples shine,
Where they are not—
The heart alone can make divine
Religion’s spot.
To incantations dost thou trust,
And pompous rites in domes august?
See mouldering stones and metal’s rust
Belie the vaunt,
That man can bless one pile of dust
With chime or chaunt.
The ticking wood-worm mocks thee, man!
Thy temples—creeds themselves grow wan!
But there’s a dome of nobler span,
A temple given
Thy faith, that bigots dare not ban—
Its space is Heaven!
Its roof star-pictured Nature’s ceiling,
Where trancing the rapt spirit’s feeling,
And God himself to man revealing
The harmonious spheres
Make music, though unheard their pealing
By mortal ears.
Fair stars! are not your beings pure?
Can sin, can death your worlds obscure?
Else why so swell the thoughts at your
Aspect above?
Ye must be Heaven’s that make us sure
Of heavenly love!
And in your harmony sublime
I read the doom of distant time;
That man’s regenerate soul from crime
Shall yet be drawn,
And reason on his mortal clime
Immortal dawn.
What’s hallowed ground? ’Tis what gives birth
To sacred thoughts in souls of worth!—
Peace! Independence! Truth! go forth
Earth’s compass round;
And your high priesthood shall make earth
_All hallowed ground_.
CAROLINE.
PART I.
I’ll bid the hyacinth to blow,
I’ll teach my grotto green to be;
And sing my true love all below
The holly bower and myrtle tree.
There all his wild-wood sweets to bring,
The sweet South wind shall wander by,
And with the music of his wing
Delight my rustling canopy.
Come to my close and clustering bower
Thou spirit of a milder clime,
Fresh with the dews of fruit and flower,
Of mountain heath, and moory thyme.
With all thy rural echoes come,
Sweet comrade of the rosy day,
Wafting the wild bee’s gentle hum,
Or cuckoo’s plaintive roundelay.
Where’er thy morning breath has played,
Whatever isles of ocean fanned,
Come to my blossom-woven shade,
Thou wandering wind of fairy-land.
For sure from some enchanted isle,
Where Heaven and Love their sabbath hold,
Where pure and happy spirits smile,
Of beauty’s fairest, brightest mould:
From some green Eden of the deep,
Where Pleasure’s sigh alone is heaved,
Where tears of rapture lovers weep,
Endeared, undoubting, undeceived;
From some sweet paradise afar,
Thy music wanders, distant, lost—
Where Nature lights her leading star,
And love is never, never crossed.
Oh gentle gale of Eden bowers,
If back thy rosy feet should roam,
To revel with the cloudless Hours
In Nature’s more propitious home.
Name to thy loved Elysian groves,
That o’er enchanted spirits twine,
A fairer form than cherub loves,
And let the name be CAROLINE.
CAROLINE.
PART II.
TO THE EVENING STAR.
Gem of the crimson-coloured Even,
Companion of retiring day,
Why at the closing gates of Heaven,
Belovèd star dost thou delay?
So fair thy pensile beauty burns,
When soft the tear of twilight flows;
So due thy plighted love returns,
To chambers brighter than the rose,
To Peace, to Pleasure, and to Love,
So kind a star thou seem’st to be,
Sure some enamoured orb above
Descends and burns to meet with thee.
Thine is the breathing, blushing hour,
When all unheavenly passions fly,
Chased by the soul-subduing power
Of Love’s delicious witchery.
O! sacred to the fall of day,
Queen of propitious stars appear,
And early rise and long delay,
When Caroline herself is here!
Shine on her chosen green resort,
Whose trees the sunward summit crown,
And wanton flowers that well may court
An angel’s feet to tread them down.
Shine on her sweetly-scented road,
Thou star of evening’s purple dome,
That lead’st the nightingale abroad,
And guid’st the pilgrim to his home.
Shine, where my charmer’s sweeter breath
Embalms the soft exhaling dew,
Where dying winds a sigh bequeath
To kiss the cheek of rosy hue.
Where, winnowed by the gentle air,
Her silken tresses darkly flow,
And fall upon her brow so fair,
Like shadows on the mountain snow.
Thus, ever thus, at day’s decline,
In converse sweet, to wander far,
O bring with thee my Caroline,
And thou shalt be my ruling star!
FIELD FLOWERS.
Ye field flowers! the gardens eclipse you ’tis true,
Yet, wildings of nature I dote upon you,
For ye waft me to summers of old,
When the earth teemed around me with faery delight,
And when daisies and buttercups gladdened my sight,
Like treasures of silver and gold.
I love you for lulling me back into dreams
Of the blue Highland mountains and echoing streams,
And of birchen glades breathing their balm,
While the deer was seen glancing in sunshine remote,
And the deep mellow crush of the wood-pigeon’s note,
Made music that sweetened the calm.
Not a pastoral song has a pleasanter tune
Than ye speak to my heart, little wildings of June:
Of old ruinous castles ye tell,
Where I thought it delightful your beauties to find,
When the magic of Nature first breathed on my mind,
And your blossoms were part of her spell.
E’en now what affections the violet awakes;
What loved little islands twice seen in their lakes,
Can the wild water-lily restore;
What landscapes I read in the primrose’s looks,
And what pictures of pebbled and minnowy brooks
In the vetches that tangled their shore.
Earth’s cultureless buds, to my heart ye were dear,
Ere the fever of passion, or ague of fear
Had scathed my existence’s bloom;
Once I welcome you more in life’s passionless stage,
With the visions of youth to revisit my age,
And I wish you to grow on my tomb.
LINES ON THE VIEW FROM ST. LEONARD’S.
Hail to thy face and odours, glorious Sea!
’Twere thanklessness in me to bless thee not,
Great beauteous Being! in whose breath and smile
My heart beats calmer, and my very mind
Inhales salubrious thoughts. How welcomer
Thy murmurs than the murmurs of the world!
Though like the world thou fluctuatest, thy din
To me is peace, thy restlessness repose.
E’en gladly I exchange yon spring-green lanes
With all the darling field-flowers in their prime,
And gardens haunted by the nightingales’
Long trills and gushing ecstacies of song
For these wild headlands and the sea-mew’s clang—
With thee beneath my windows, pleasant Sea,
I long not to o’erlook earth’s fairest glades
And green savannahs—Earth has not a plain
So boundless or so beautiful as thine;
The eagle’s vision cannot take it in:
The lightning’s wing too weak to sweep its space
Sinks half-way o’er it like a wearied bird:
It is the mirror of the stars, where all
Their hosts within the concave firmament,
Gay marching to the music of the spheres,
Can see themselves at once.
Nor on the stage
Of rural landscape are there lights and shades
Of more harmonious dance and play than thine.
How vividly this moment brightens forth,
Between grey parallel and leaden breadths.
A belt of hues that stripes thee many a league,
Flushed like the rainbow, or the ringdove’s neck,
And giving to the glancing sea-bird’s wing
The semblance of a meteor.
Mighty sea!
Cameleon-like thou changest, but there’s love
In all thy change, and constant sympathy
With yonder Sky—thy Mistress; from her brow
Thou tak’st thy moods and wear’st her colours on
Thy faithful bosom; morning’s milky white,
Noon’s sapphire, or the saffron glow of eve;
And all thy balmier hours, fair Element,
Have such divine complexion—crispèd smiles,
Luxuriant heavings, and sweet whisperings,
That little is the wonder Love’s own Queen
From thee of old was fabled to have sprung—
Creation’s common! which no human power
Can parcel or enclose; the lordliest floods
And cataracts that the tiny hands of man
Can tame, conduct, or bound, are drops of dew
To thee that couldst subdue the Earth itself,
And brook’st commandment from the Heavens alone
For marshalling thy waves—
Yet, potent sea!
How placidly thy moist lips speak e’en now
Along yon sparkling shingles. Who can be
So fanciless as to feel no gratitude
That power and grandeur can be so serene,
Soothing the home-bound navy’s peaceful way,
And rocking e’en the fisher’s little bark
As gently as a mother rocks her child?—
The inhabitants of other worlds behold
Our orb more lucid for thy spacious share
On earth’s rotundity; and is he not
A blind worm in the dust, great Deep, the man
Who sees not or who seeing has no joy
In thy magnificence? What though thou art
Unconscious and material, thou canst reach
The inmost immaterial mind’s recess,
And with thy tints and motion stir its chords
To music, like the light on Memnon’s lyre!
The Spirit of the Universe in thee
Is visible; thou hast in thee the life—
The eternal, graceful, and majestic life—
Of nature and the natural human heart
Is therefore bound to thee with holy love.
Earth has her gorgeous towns; the earth-circling sea
Has spires and mansions more amusive still—
Men’s volant homes that measure liquid space
On wheel or wing. The chariot of the land
With pained and panting steeds and clouds of dust
Has no sight-gladdening motion like these fair
Careerers with the foam beneath their bows,
Whose streaming ensigns charm the waves by day
Whose carols and whose watch-bells cheer the night,
Moored as they cast the shadows of their masts
In long array, or hither flit and yond
Mysteriously with slow and crossing lights,
Like spirits on the darkness of the deep.
There is a magnet-like attraction in
These waters to the imaginative power
That links the viewless with the visible,
And pictures things unseen. To realms beyond
Yon highway of the world my fancy flies,
When by her tall and triple mast we know
Some noble voyager that has to woo
The trade-winds and to stem the ecliptic surge.
The coral groves—the shores of conch and pearl,
Where she will cast her anchor and reflect
Her cabin-window lights on warmer waves,
And under planets brighter than our own:
The nights of palmy isles, that she will see
Lit boundless by the fire-fly—all the smells
Of tropic fruits that will regale her—all
The pomp of nature, and the inspiriting
Varieties of life she has to greet,
Come swarming o’er the meditative mind.
True, to the dream of Fancy, Ocean has
His darker hints; but where’s the element
That chequers not its usefulness to man.
With casual terror? Scathes not Earth sometimes
Her children with Tartarean fires, or shakes
Their shrieking cities, and, with one last clang
Of bells for their own ruin, strews them flat
As riddled ashes—silent as the grave?
Walks not Contagion on the Air itself?
I should—old Ocean’s Saturnalian days
And roaring nights of revelry and sport
With wreck and human woe—be loth to sing;
For they are few and all their ills weigh light
Against his sacred usefulness, that bids
Our pensile globe revolve in purer air.
Here Morn and Eve with blushing thanks receive
Their fresh’ning dews, gay fluttering breezes cool
Their wings to fan the brow of fevered climes,
And here the Spring dips down her emerald urn
For showers to glad the earth.
Old Ocean was
Infinity of ages ere we breathed
Existence—and he will be beautiful
When all the living world that sees him now
Shall roll unconscious dust around the sun.
Quelling from age to age the vital throb
In human hearts, Death shall not subjugate
The pulse that swells in _his_ stupendous breast,
Or interdict his minstrelsy to sound
In thund’ring concert with the quiring winds;
But long as Man to parent Nature owns
Instinctive homage, and in times beyond
The power of thought to reach, bard after bard
Shall sing thy glory, BEATIFIC SEA!
LINES ON POLAND.
And have I lived to see thee sword in hand
Uprise again immortal Polish Land!—
Whose flag brings more than chivalry to mind,
And leaves the tri-color in shade behind;—
A theme for uninspirèd lips too strong;
That swells my heart beyond the power of song:—
Majestic men, whose deeds have dazzled faith,
Ah! yet your fate’s suspense arrests my breath;
Whilst, envying bosoms bared to shot and steel,
I feel the more that fruitlessly I feel.
Poles! with what indignation I endure
Th’ half-pitying servile mouths that call you poor;
Poor! is it England mocks you with her grief,
That hates, but dares not chide, th’ _Imperial Thief_?
France with her soul beneath a Bourbon’s thrall,
And Germany that has no soul at all,—
States quailing at the giant overgrown,
Whom dauntless Poland grapples with alone?
No, ye are rich in fame e’en whilst ye bleed:
_We_ cannot aid you—_we_ are poor indeed!
In Fate’s defiance—in the world’s great eye,
Poland has won her Immortality!
The Butcher, should he reach her bosom now,
Could tear not Glory’s garland from her brow;
Wreathed, filleted, the victim falls renowned,
And all her ashes would be holy ground!
But turn, my soul, from presages so dark:
Great Poland’s spirit is a deathless spark
That’s fanned by Heaven to mock the Tyrant’s rage:
She, like the eagle, will renew her age,
And fresh historic plumes of Fame put on,—
Another Athens after Marathon,—
Where eloquence shall fulmine, arts refine,
Bright as her arms that now in battle shine.
Come—should the heavenly shock my life destroy
And shut its flood-gates with excess of joy;
Come but the day when Poland’s fight is won—
And on my grave-stone shine the morrow’s sun—
The day that sees Warsaw’s cathedral glow
With endless ensigns ravished from the foe,—
Her women lifting their fair hands with thanks,
Her pious warriors kneeling in their ranks,
The scutcheoned walls of high heraldic boast,
The odorous altar’s elevated host,
The organ sounding through the aisle’s long glooms,
The mighty dead seen sculptured o’er their tombs;
(John, Europe’s saviour—Poniatowski’s fair
Resemblance—Kosciusko’s shall be there;)
The tapered pomp—the halleluiah’s swell,
Shall o’er the soul’s devotion cast a spell,
Till visions cross the rapt enthusiast’s glance,
And all the scene becomes a waking trance.
Should Fate put far—far off that glorious scene,
And gulfs of havoc interpose between,
Imagine not, ye men of every clime,
Who act, or by your sufferance share the crime—
Your brother Abel’s blood shall vainly plead
Against the “_deep damnation_” of the deed.
Germans ye view its horror and disgrace
With cold phosphoric eyes and phlegm of face.
Is Allemagne profound in science, lore,
And minstrel art?—her shame is but the more
To doze and dream by governments oppressed,
The spirit of a book-worm in each breast.
Well can ye mouth fair Freedom’s classic line,
And talk of Constitutions o’er your wine:
But all your vows to break the tyrant’s yoke
Expire in Bacchanalian song and smoke:
Heavens! can no ray of foresight pierce the leads
And mystic metaphysics of your heads,
To show the self-same grave, Oppression delves
For Poland’s rights, is yawning for yourselves!
See, whilst the Pole, the vanguard aid of France,
Has vaulted on his barb and couched the lance,
France turns from her abandoned friends afresh,[88]
And soothes the Bear that prowls for patriot flesh,
Buys, ignominious purchase! short repose,
With dying curses and the groans of those
That served, and loved, and put in her their trust.
Frenchmen! the dead accuse you from the dust—
Brows laurelled—bosoms marked with many a scar
For France—that wore her Legion’s noblest star,
Cast dumb reproaches from the field of Death
On Gallic honour; and this broken faith
Has robbed you more of Fame—the life of life,—
Than twenty battles lost in glorious strife!
And what of England—Is she steeped so low
In poverty, crest-fallen, and palsied so,
That we must sit much wroth, but timorous more,
With murder knocking at our neighbour’s door!—
Not murder masked and cloaked with hidden knife,
Whose owner owes the gallows life for life;
But _Public Murder!_—that with pomp and gaud,
And royal scorn of Justice walks abroad
To wring more tears and blood than e’er were wrung
By all the culprits Justice ever hung!
We read the diademed Assassin’s vaunt,
And wince, and wish we had not hearts to pant
With useless indignation—sigh, and frown,
But have not hearts to throw the gauntlet down.
If but a doubt hung o’er the grounds of fray,
Or trivial rapine stopped the world’s highway;
Were this some common strife of States embroiled;—
Britannia on the spoiler and the spoiled
Might calmly look, and, asking time to breathe,
Still honourably wear her olive wreath
But this is Darkness combating with Light:
Earth’s adverse Principles for empire fight:
Oppression, that has belted half the globe,
Far as his knout could reach or dagger probe,
Holds reeking o’er our brother freemen slain
That dagger—shakes it at us in disdain;
Talks big to Freedom’s states of Poland’s thrall,
And, trampling one, contemns them one and all.
My Country! colours not thy once proud brow
At this effront?—Hast thou not fleets enow
With Glory’s streamer, lofty as the lark,
Gay fluttering o’er each thunder-bearing bark,
To warm th’ Insulter’s seas with barb’rous blood,
And interdict his flag from Ocean’s flood?
E’en now far off the sea-cliff, where I sing,
I see, my Country, and my Patriot King!
Your ensign glad the deep. Becalmed and slow
A war-ship rides; while Heaven’s prismatic bow
Uprisen behind her on th’ horizon’s base, }
Shines flushing through the tackle, shrouds, and stays, }
And wraps her giant form in one majestic blaze. }
My soul accepts the omen; Fancy’s eye
Has sometimes a veracious augury:
The Rainbow types Heaven’s promise to my sight;
The Ship, Britannia’s interposing Might!
But if there should be none to aid you, Poles,
Ye’ll but to prouder pitch wind up your souls,
Above example, pity, praise or blame,
To sow and reap a boundless field of Fame.
Ask aid no more from Nations that forget
Your championship—old Europe’s mighty debt.
Though Poland (Lazarus-like) has burst the gloom,
She rises not a beggar from the tomb:
In Fortune’s frown, on Danger’s giddiest brink,
Despair and Poland’s name must never link.
All ills have bounds—plague, whirlwind, fire, and flood:
E’en power can spill but bounded sums of blood.
States caring not what freedom’s price may be,
May late or soon, but must at last be free;
For body-killing tyrants cannot kill
The public soul—the hereditary will
That downward as from sire to son it goes,
By shifting bosoms more intensely glows:
Its heir-loom is the heart, and slaughtered men
Fight fiercer in their orphans o’er again.
Poland recasts—though rich in heroes old,—
Her men in more and more heroic mould:
Her Eagle-ensign best among mankind
Become, and types her eagle-strength of mind:
Her praise upon my faltering lips expires:
Resume it, younger bards, and nobler lyres!
[88] The fact ought to be universally known, that France was indebted to
Poland for not being invaded by Russia. When the Duke Constantine fled
from Warsaw, he left papers behind him proving that the Russians, after
the Parisian events in July, meant to have marched towards Paris, if the
Polish insurrection had not prevented them.
LINES ON THE CAMP HILL, NEAR HASTINGS.
In the deep blue of eve,
Ere the twinkling of stars had begun,
Or the lark took his leave
Of the skies and the sweet setting sun,
I climbed to yon heights,
Where the Norman encamped him of old,[89]
With his bowmen and knights,
And his banner all burnished with gold.
At the Conqueror’s side
There his minstrelsy sat harp in hand,
In pavilion wide;
And they chaunted the deeds of Roland.
Still the ramparted ground
With a vision my fancy inspires,
And I hear the trump sound,
As it marshalled our Chivalry’s sires.
On each turf of that mead
Stood the captors of England’s domains,
That ennobled her breed
And high-mettled the blood of her veins.
Over hauberk and helm
As the sun’s setting splendour was thrown,
Thence they looked o’er a realm—
And to-morrow beheld it their own.
[89] What is called the East Hill at Hastings is crowned with the works
of an ancient camp; and it is more than probable it was the spot which
William I. occupied between his landing, and the battle which gave him
England’s crown. It is a strong position: the works are easily traced.
LINES WRITTEN IN A BLANK LEAF OF LA PEROUSE’S VOYAGES.
Loved Voyager! whose pages had a zest
More sweet than fiction to my wond’ring breast,
When, rapt in fancy, many a boyish day
I tracked his wanderings o’er the watery way,
Roamed round the Aleutian isles in waking dreams,
Or plucked the _fleur-de-lys_ by Jesso’s streams—
Or gladly leaped on that far Tartar strand,
Where Europe’s anchor ne’er had bit the sand,
Where scarce a roving wild tribe crossed the plain,
Or human voice broke nature’s silent reign;
But vast and grassy deserts feed the bear,
And sweeping deer-herds dread no hunter’s snare.
Such young delight his real records brought,
His truth so touched romantic springs of thought,
That all my after-life—his fate and fame
Entwined romance with La Perouse’s name.
Fair were his ships, expert his gallant crews,
And glorious was th’ emprize of La Perouse,—
Humanely glorious! Men will weep for him,
When many a guilty martial fame is dim:
He ploughed the deep to bind no captive’s chain—
Pursued no rapine—strewed no wreck with slain,
And, save that in the deep themselves lie low,
His heroes plucked no wreath from human woe.
’Twas his the earth’s remotest bounds to scan,
Conciliating with gifts barbaric man—
Enrich the world’s contemporaneous mind,
And amplify the picture of mankind.
Far on the vast Pacific—midst those isles,
O’er which the earliest morn of Asia smiles,
He sounded and gave charts to many a shore
And gulf of Ocean new to nautic lore;
Yet he that led Discovery o’er the wave,
Still finds himself an undiscovered grave.
He came not back,—Conjecture’s cheek grew pale,
Year after year—in no propitious gale,
His lilied banner held its homeward way,
And Science saddened at her martyr’s stay.
An age elapsed—no wreck told where or when
The chief went down with all his gallant men,
Or whether by the storm and wild sea flood
He perished, or by wilder men of blood—
The shudd’ring Fancy only guess’d his doom,
And Doubt to Sorrow gave but deeper gloom.
An age elapsed—when men were dead or grey,
Whose hearts had mourned him in their youthful day
Fame traced on Mannicōlo’s shore at last
The boiling surge had mounted o’er his mast.
The islesmen told of some surviving men,
But Christian eyes beheld them ne’er again.
Sad bourne of all his toils—with all his band—
To sleep, wrecked, shroudless, on a savage strand!
Yet what is all that fires a hero’s scorn
Of death?—the hope to live in hearts unborn:
Life to the brave is not its fleeting breath,
But worth—foretasting fame, that follows death.
That worth had La Perouse—that meed he won;
He sleeps—his life’s long stormy watch is done.
In the great deep, whose boundaries and space
He measured, Fate ordained his resting-place;
But bade his fame, like th’ Ocean rolling o’er
His relics—visit every earthly shore.
Fair Science on that Ocean’s azure robe,
Still writes his name in picturing the globe,
And paints—(what fairer wreath could Glory twine?)
His watery course—a world-encircling line.
THE POWER OF RUSSIA.
So all this gallant blood has gushed in vain!
And Poland by the Northern Condor’s beak
And talons torn, lies prostrated again.
O, British patriots, that were wont to speak
Once loudly on this theme, now hushed or meek!
O, heartless men of Europe—Goth and Gaul!
Cold, adder-deaf to Poland’s dying shriek;—
That saw the world’s last land of heroes fall—
The brand of burning shame is on you all—all—all!
But this is not the drama’s closing act;
Its tragic curtain must uprise anew.
Nations, mute accessaries to the fact!
That Upas-tree of power, whose fostering dew
Was Polish blood, has yet to cast o’er you
The lengthening shadow of its head elate—
A deadly shadow, darkening nature’s hue.
To all that’s hallowed, righteous, pure, and great,
Wo! wo! when they are reached by Russia’s withering hate.
Russia, that on his throne of adamant,
Consults what nation’s breast shall next be gored:
He on Polonia’s Golgotha will plant
His standard fresh; and, horde succeeding horde,
On patriot tomb-stones he will whet the sword,
For more stupendous slaughters of the free.
Then Europe’s realms, when their best blood is poured,
Shall miss thee, Poland! as they bend the knee,
All—all in grief, but none in glory likening thee.
Why smote ye not the giant whilst he reeled?
O, fair occasion, gone for ever by!
To have locked his lances in their northern field,
Innocuous as the phantom chivalry
That flames and hurtles from yon boreal sky!
Now wave thy pennon, Russia, o’er the land
Once Poland; build thy bristling castles high;
Dig dungeon’s deep; for Poland’s wrested brand
Is now a weapon new to widen thy command—
An awful width! Norwegian woods shall build
His fleets; the Swede his vassal, and the Dane:
The glebe of fifty kingdoms shall be tilled
To feed his dazzling, desolating train,
Camped sumless, ’twixt the Black and Baltic main:
Brute hosts, I own; but Sparta could not write,
And Rome, half-barbarous, bound Achaia’s chain:
So Russia’s spirit, midst Sclavonic night,
Burns with a fire more dread than all your polished light.
But Russia’s limbs (so blinded statesmen say)
Are crude, and too colossal to cohere.
O, lamentable weakness! reckoning weak
The stripling Titan, strengthening year by year.
What implement lacks he for war’s career,
That grows on earth, or in its floods and mines,
(Eighth sharer of the inhabitable sphere)
Whom Persia bows to, China ill confines,
And India’s homage waits, when Albion’s star declines?
But time will teach the Russ, e’en conquering
Has handmaid arts: ay, ay, the Russ will woo
All sciences that speed Bellona’s car,
All murder’s tactic arts, and win them too;
But never holier Muses shall imbue
His breast, that’s made of nature’s basest clay:
The sabre, knout, and dungeon’s vapour blue
His laws and ethics: far from him away
Are all the lovely nine that breath but freedom’s day.
Say, e’en his serfs, half humanised, should learn
Their human rights,—will Mars put out his flame
In Russian bosoms? no, he’ll bid them burn
A thousand years for nought but martial fame,
Like Romans:—yet forgive me, Roman name!
Rome could impart what Russia never can;
Proud civic rights to salve submission’s shame.
Our strife is coming; but in freedom’s van
The Polish Eagle’s fall is big with fate to man.
Proud bird of old! Mohammed’s moon recoiled
Before thy swoop: had we been timely bold,
That swoop, still free, had stunned the Russ, and foiled
Earth’s new oppressors, as it foiled her old.
Now thy majestic eyes are shut and cold:
And colder still Polonia’s children find
The sympathetic hands, that we outhold.
But, Poles, when we are gone, the world will mind,
Ye bore the brunt of fate, and bled for humankind.
So hallowedly have ye fulfilled your part,
My pride repudiates e’en the sigh that blends
With Poland’s name—name written on my heart.
My heroes, my grief-consecrated friends!
Your sorrow, in nobility, transcends
Your conqueror’s joy: his cheek may blush; but shame
Can tinge not yours, though exile’s tear descends;
Nor would ye change your conscience, cause and name,
For his, with all his wealth, and all his felon fame.
Thee, Niemciewitz,[90] whose song of stirring power
The Czar forbids to sound in Polish lands;
Thee, Czartoryski, in thy banished bower,
The patricide, who in thy palace stands,
May envy; proudly may Polonia’s bands
Throw down their swords at Europe’s feet in scorn,
Saying—“Russia, from the metal of these brands
Shall forge the fetters of your sons unborn;
Our setting star is your misfortune’s rising morn.”
[90] This venerable man, the most popular and influential of Polish
poets, and president of the Academy of Warsaw, was in London when this
poem was written; he was seventy-four years old; but his noble spirit was
rather mellowed than decayed by age. He was the friend of Fox, Kosciusko,
and Washington. Rich in anecdote like Franklin, he bore also a striking
resemblance to him in countenance.
REULLURA.[91]
Star of the morn and eve,
Reullura shone like thee,
And well for her might Aodh grieve,
The dark-attired Culdee.[92]
Peace to their shades! the pure Culdees
Were Albyn’s earliest priests of God,
Ere yet an island of her seas
By foot of Saxon monk was trod,
Long ere her churchmen by bigotry
Were barred from holy wedlock’s tie.
’Twas then that Aodh, famed afar,
In Iona preached the word with power,
And Reullura, beauty’s star,
Was the partner of his bower.
But, Aodh, the roof lies low,
And the thistle-down waves bleaching,
And the bat flits to and fro
Where the Gael once heard thy preaching,
And fall’n is each columned aisle
Where the chiefs and the people knelt.
’Twas near that temple’s goodly pile
That honoured of men they dwelt.
For Aodh was wise in the sacred law,
And bright Reullura’s eyes oft saw
The veil of fate uplifted.
Alas, with what visions of awe
Her soul in that hour was gifted—
When pale in the temple and faint,
With Aodh she stood alone
By the statue of an aged Saint!
Fair sculptured was the stone,
It bore a crucifix;
Fame said it once had graced
A Christian temple, which the Picts
In the Britons’ land laid waste:
The Pictish men, by St. Columb taught,
Had hither the holy relic brought.
Reullura eyed the statue’s face,
And cried, “It is he shall come,
Even he in this very place,
To avenge my martyrdom.
“For, woe to the Gael people!
Ulvfagre is on the main,
And Iona shall look from tower and steeple
On the coming ships of the Dane;
And, dames and daughters, shall all your locks
With the spoiler’s grasp entwine?
No! some shall have shelter in caves and rocks,
And the deep sea shall be mine.
Baffled by me shall the Dane return,
And here shall his torch in the temple burn,
Until that holy man shall plough
The waves from Innisfail.[93]
His sail is on the deep e’en now,
And swells to the southern gale.”
“Ah! knowest thou not, my bride,”
The holy Aodh said,
“That the Saint whose form we stand beside
Has for ages slept with the dead?”
“He liveth, he liveth,” she said again,
“For the span of his life tenfold extends
Beyond the wonted years of men.
He sits by the graves of well-loved friends
That died ere thy grandsire’s grandsire’s birth;
The oak is decayed with old age on earth,
Whose acorn-seed had been planted by him;
And his parents remember the day of dread
When the sun on the cross looked dim,
And the graves gave up their dead.
“Yet preaching from clime to clime,
He hath roamed the earth for ages,
And hither he shall come in time
When the wrath of the heathen rages,
In time a remnant from the sword—
Ah! but a remnant to deliver;
Yet, bless’d be the name of the Lord!
His martyrs shall go into bliss for ever.
Lochlin,[94] appalled, shall put up her steel,
And thou shalt embark on the bounding keel;
Safe shalt thou pass through her hundred ships,
With the Saint and a remnant of the Gael,
And the Lord will instruct thy lips
To preach in Innisfail.”
The sun, now about to set,
Was burning o’er Tiriee,
And no gathering cry rose yet
O’er the isles of Albyn’s sea,
Whilst Reullura saw far rowers dip
Their oars beneath the sun,
And the phantom of many a Danish ship,
Where ship there yet was none.
And the shield of alarm[95] was dumb,
Nor did their warning till midnight come,
When watch-fires burst from across the mair
From Rona and Uist and Skye,
To tell that the ships of the Dane
And the red-haired slayers were nigh.
Our islesmen arose from slumbers,
And buckled on their arms;
But few, alas! were their numbers
To Lochlin’s mailèd swarms.
And the blade of the bloody Norse
Has filled the shores of the Gael
With many a floating corse,
And with many a woman’s wail.
They have lighted the islands with ruin’s torch,
And the holy men of Iona’s church
In the temple of God lay slain;
All but Aodh, the last Culdee,
But bound with many an iron chain,
Bound in that church was he.
And where is Aodh’s bride?
Rocks of the ocean flood!
Plunged she not from your heights in pride,
And mocked the men of blood?
Then Ulvfagre and his bands
In the temple lighted their banquet up,
And the print of their blood-red hands
Was left on the altar cup.
’Twas then that the Norseman to Aodh said,
“Tell where thy church’s treasure’s laid,
Or I’ll hew thee limb from limb.”
As he spoke the bell struck three,
And every torch grew dim
That lighted their revelry.
But the torches again burnt bright,
And brighter than before,
When an aged man of majestic height
Entered the temple door.
Hushed was the revellers’ sound,
They were struck as mute as the dead,
And their hearts were appalled by the very sound
Of his footstep’s measured tread.
Nor word was spoken by one beholder,
While he flung his white robe back on his shoulder
And stretching his arm—as eath
Unriveted Aodh’s bands,
As if the gyves had been a wreath
Of willows in his hands.
All saw the stranger’s similitude
To the ancient statue’s form;
The Saint before his own image stood,
And grasped Ulvfagre’s arm.
Then uprose the Danes at last to deliver
Their chief, and shouting with one accord,
They drew the shaft from its rattling quiver,
They lifted the spear and sword,
And levelled their spears in rows.
But down went axes and spears and bows,
When the Saint with his crosier signed,
The archer’s hand on the string was stopt,
And down, like reeds laid flat by the wind,
Their lifted weapons dropt.
The Saint then gave a signal mute,
And though Ulvfagre willed it not,
He came and stood at the statue’s foot,
Spell-riveted to the spot,
Till hands invisible shook the wall,
And the tottering image was dashed
Down from its lofty pedestal.
On Ulvfagre’s helm it crashed—
Helmet, and skull, and flesh, and brain,
It crushed as millstone crushes the grain.
Then spoke the Saint, whilst all and each
Of the Heathen trembled round,
And the pauses amidst his speech
Were as awful as the sound:
“Go back, ye wolves, to your dens,” he cried,
“And tell the nations abroad,
How the fiercest of your herd has died
That slaughtered the flock of God.
Gather him bone by bone,
And take with you o’er the flood
The fragments of that avenging stone
That drank his heathen blood.
These are the spoils from Iona’s sack,
The only spoils ye shall carry back;
For the hand that uplifteth spear or sword
Shall be withered by palsy’s shock,
And I come in the name of the Lord
To deliver a remnant of his flock.”
A remnant was called together,
A doleful remnant of the Gael,
And the Saint in the ship that had brought him hither
Took the mourners to Innisfail.
Unscathed they left Iona’s strand,
When the opal morn first flushed the sky,
For the Norse dropt spear, and bow and brand,
And looked on them silently;
Safe from their hiding places came
Orphans and mothers, child and dame:
But alas! when the search for Reullura spread,
No answering voice was given,
For the sea had gone o’er her lovely head,
And her spirit was in Heaven.
[91] Reullura, in Gaelic, signifies “beautiful star.”
[92] The Culdees were the primitive clergy of Scotland, and apparently
her only clergy from the sixth to the eleventh century. They were of
Irish origin, and their monastery on the island of Iona, or Icolmkill,
was the seminary of Christianity in North Britain. Presbyterian writers
have wished to prove them to have been a sort of Presbyters, strangers
to the Roman Church and Episcopacy. It seems to be established that
they were not enemies to Episcopacy;—but that they were not slavishly
subjected to Rome like the clergy of later periods, appears by their
resisting the Papal ordonnances respecting the celibacy of religious
men, on which account they were ultimately displaced by the Scottish
sovereigns to make way for more Popish canons.
[93] Ireland.
[94] Denmark.
[95] Striking the shield was an ancient mode of convocation to war among
the Gael.
ODE TO THE GERMANS.
The Spirit of Britannia
Invokes across the main,
Her sister Allemania
To burst the Tyrant’s chain:
By our kindred blood she cries,
Rise, Allemanians, rise,
And hallowed thrice the band
Of our kindred hearts shall be,
When your land shall be the land
Of the free—of the free!
With Freedom’s lion-banner
Britannia rules the waves;
Whilst your BROAD STONE OF HONOUR[96]
Is still the camp of slaves.
For shame, for glory’s sake,
Wake, Allemanians, wake,
And the tyrants now that whelm
Half the world, shall quail and flee,
When your realm shall be the realm
Of the free—of the free!
MARS owes to you his thunder[97]
That shakes the battle-field,
Yet to break your bonds asunder
No martial bolt has pealed
Shall the laurelled land of art
Wear shackles on her heart?
No! the clock ye framed to tell
By its sound, the march of time;
Let it clang oppression’s knell
O’er your clime—o’er your clime!
The press’s magic letters,
That blessing ye brought forth,—
Behold! it lies in fetters
On the soil that gave it birth:
But the trumpet must be heard,
And the charger must be spurred;
For you father Armin’s Sprite
Calls down from heaven, that ye
Shall gird you for the fight,
And be free!—and be free!
[96] “Ehrenbreitstein” signifies, in German, “_the broad stone of
honour_.”
[97] Gunpowder.
FLORINE.[98]
Could I bring back lost youth again,
And be what I have been,
I’d court you in a gallant strain,
My young and fair Florine.
But mine’s the chilling age that chides
Devoted rapture’s glow,
And Love—that conquers all besides—
Finds Time a conquering foe.
Farewell! we’re severed by our fate,
As far as night from noon;
You came into the world too late,
And I depart so soon.
[98] Florine was the beautiful Miss O’Bryen. She married Mr. Huntley
Gordon—Scott’s amanuensis for the MS of the Waverley Novels—and died soon
after her wedding.
TRANSLATIONS.
SONG OF HYBRIAS THE CRETAN.
My wealth’s a burly spear and brand,
And a right good shield of hides untanned,
Which on my arm I buckle:
With these I plough, I reap, I sow,
With these I make the sweet vintage flow,
And all around me truckle.
But your wights that take no pride to wield
A massy spear and well-made shield,
Nor joy to draw the sword:
Oh, I bring those heartless, hapless drones,
Down in a trice on their marrow-bones,
To call me King and Lord.
FRAGMENT FROM THE GREEK OF ALCMAN.
The mountain summits sleep: glens, cliffs and caves,
Are silent—all the black earth’s reptile brood—
The bees—the wild beasts of the mountain wood:
In depths beneath the dark red ocean’s waves
Its monsters rest, whilst wrapt in bower and spray
Each bird is hushed that stretched its pinions to the day.
MARTIAL ELEGY FROM THE GREEK OF TYRTÆUS.
How glorious fall the valiant, sword in hand,
In front of battle for their native land!
But oh! what ills await the wretch that yields,
A recreant outcast from his country’s fields!
The mother whom he loves shall quit her home,
An agèd father at his side shall roam;
His little ones shall weeping with him go,
And a young wife participate his woe;
While scorned and scowled upon by every face,
They pine for food, and beg from place to place.
Stain of his breed! dishonouring manhood’s form,
All ills shall cleave to him:—Affliction’s storm
Shall blind him wandering in the vale of years,
Till, lost to all but ignominious fears,
He shall not blush to leave a recreant’s name.
And children, like himself, inured to shame.
But we will combat for our father’s land,
And we will drain the life-blood where we stand
To save our children:—fight ye side by side,
And serried close, ye men of youthful pride,
Disdaining fear, and deeming light the cost
Of life itself in glorious battle lost.
Leave not our sires to stem the unequal fight,
Whose limbs are nerved no more with buoyant might;
Nor lagging backward, let the younger breast
Permit the man of age (a sight unblessed)
To welter in the combat’s foremost thrust,
His hoary head dishevelled in the dust,
And venerable bosom bleeding bare.
But youth’s fair form, though fallen, is ever fair
And beautiful in death the boy appears,
The hero boy, that dies in blooming years:
In man’s regret he lives, and woman’s tears,
More sacred than in life, and lovelier far,
For having perished in the front of war.
SPECIMENS OF TRANSLATION FROM “MEDEA.”
Σκαιους δε λεγων κουδέν τι σοφους
Τους προσθε βροτους ουκ αν αμαρτοις.
“Medea,” v. 194. p. 33. Glasg. edit.
Tell me, ye bards, whose skill sublime
First charmed the ear of youthful Time,
With numbers wrapt in heavenly fire,
Who bade delighted echo swell
The trembling transports of the lyre,
The murmur of the shell—
Why to the burst of Joy alone
Accords sweet Music’s soothing tone?
Why can no bard, with magic strain,
In slumbers steep the heart of pain?
While varied tones obey your sweep,
The mild, the plaintive, and the deep.
Bends not despairing Grief to hear
Your golden lute, with ravished ear?
Oh! has your sweetest shell no power to bind
The fiercer pangs that shake the mind,
And lull the wrath at whose command
Murder bares her gory hand?
When flushed with joy, the rosy throng
Weave the light dance, ye swell the song!
Cease, ye vain warblers! cease to charm
The breast with other raptures warm!
Cease! till your hand with magic strain
In slumbers steep the heart of pain!
SPEECH OF THE CHORUS IN THE SAME TRAGEDY, TO DISSUADE MEDEA FROM HER
PURPOSE OF PUTTING HER CHILDREN TO DEATH, AND FLYING FOR PROTECTION TO
ATHENS.
O haggard queen! to Athens dost thou guide
Thy glowing chariot, steeped in kindred gore;
Or seek to hide thy damnèd parricide
Where Peace and Mercy dwell for evermore?
The land where Truth, pure, precious, and sublime,
Woos the deep silence of sequestered bowers,
And warriors, matchless since the first of time,
Rear their bright banners o’er unconquered towers!
Where joyous youth, to Music’s mellow strain,
Twines in the dance with nymphs for ever fair,
While Spring eternal on the lilied plain,
Waves amber radiance through the fields of air.
The tuneful Nine (so sacred legends tell)
First waked their heavenly lyre these scenes among;
Still in your greenwood bowers they love to dwell,
Still in your vales they swell the choral song!
But there the tuneful, chaste, Pierian fair,
The guardian nymphs of green Parnassus, now
Sprung from Harmonia, while her graceful hair
Waved in bright auburn o’er her polished brow!
ANTISTROPHE I.
Where silent vales, and glades of green array,
The murmuring wreaths of cool Cephisus lave,
There, as the muse hath sung, at noon of day,
The Queen of Beauty bowed to taste the wave;
And blest the stream, and breathed across the land
The soft sweet gale that fans yon summer bowers;
And there the sister Loves, a smiling band,
Crowned with the fragrant wreaths of rosy flowers!
“And go,” she cries, “in yonder valleys rove,
With Beauty’s torch the solemn scenes illume;
Wake in each eye the radiant light of Love,
Breathe on each cheek young Passion’s tender bloom!
“Entwine, with myrtle chains, your soft control,
To sway the hearts of Freedom’s darling kind!
With glowing charms enrapture Wisdom’s soul,
And mould to grace ethereal Virtue’s mind.”
STROPHE II.
The land where Heaven’s own hallowed waters play,
Where friendship binds the generous and the good,
Say, shall it hail thee from thy frantic way,
Unholy woman! with thy hands embrued
In thine own children’s gore? Oh! ere they bleed,
Let Nature’s voice thy ruthless heart appal!
Pause at the bold, irrevocable deed—
The mother strikes—the guiltless babes shall fall!
Think what remorse thy maddening thoughts shall sting,
When dying pangs their gentle bosoms tear!
Where shalt thou sink, when lingering echoes ring
The screams of horror in thy tortured ear?
No! let thy bosom melt to Pity’s cry,—
In dust we kneel—by sacred Heaven implore—
O! stop thy lifted arm, ere yet they die,
Nor dip thy horrid hands in infant gore!
ANTISTROPHE II.
Say, how shalt thou that barbarous soul assume,
Undamped by horror at the daring plan?
Hast thou a heart to work thy children’s doom?
Or hands to finish what thy wrath began?
When o’er each babe you look a last adieu,
And gaze on Innocence that smiles asleep,
Shall no fond feeling beat to Nature true,
Charm thee to pensive thought—and bid thee weep?
When the young suppliants clasp their parent dear,
Heave the deep sob, and pour the artless prayer,—
Ay! thou shall melt;—and many a heart-shed tear
Gush o’er the hardened features of despair!
Nature shall throb in every tender string,—
Thy trembling heart the ruffian’s task deny;—
Thy horror-smitten hands afar shall fling
The blade, undrenched in blood’s eternal dye.
CHORUS.
Hallowed Earth! with indignation
Mark, oh mark, the murderous deed!
Radiant eye of wide creation,
Watch the damnèd parricide!
Yet, ere Colchia’s rugged daughter
Perpetrate the dire design,
And consign to kindred slaughter
Children of thy golden line!
Shall thy hand, with murder gory,
Cause immortal blood to flow!
Sun of Heaven!—arrayed in glory
Rise, forbid, avert the blow!
In the vales of placid gladness
Let no rueful maniac range;
Chase afar the fiend of Madness,
Wrest the dagger from Revenge!
Say, hast thou, with kind protection,
Reared thy smiling race in vain,
Fostering Nature’s fond affection,
Tender cares, and pleasing pain?
Hast thou, on the troubled ocean,
Braved the tempest loud and strong,
Where the waves, in wild commotion,
Roar Cyanean rocks among?
Didst thou roam the paths of danger,
Hymenean joys to prove?
Spare, O sanguinary stranger,
Pledges of thy sacred love!
Shall not Heaven, with indignation,
Watch thee o’er the barbarous deed?
Shalt thou cleanse, with expiation,
Monstrous, murderous parricide?
THE PILGRIM OF GLENCOE.[99]
The sunset sheds a horizontal smile
O’er Highland frith and Hebridean isle,
While, gay with gambols of its finny shoals,
The glancing wave rejoices as it rolls
With streamered busses, that distinctly shine
All downward, pictured in the glassy brine;
Whose crews, with faces brightening in the sun,
Keep measure with their oars, and all in one
Strike up th’ old Gaelic song.—Sweep, rowers, sweep!
The fisher’s glorious spoils are in the deep.
Day sinks—but twilight owes the traveller soon,
To reach his bourne, a round unclouded moon,
Bespeaking long undarkened hours of time;
False hope—the Scots are stedfast—not their clime.
A war-worn soldier from the western land,
Seeks Cona’s vale by Ballihoula’s strand;
The vale by eagle-haunted cliffs o’erhung,
Where Fingal fought and Ossian’s harp was strung.—
Our veteran’s forehead, bronzed on sultry plains,
Had stood the brunt of thirty fought campaigns;
He well could vouch the sad romance of wars,
And count the dates of battles by his scars;
For he had served where o’er and o’er again
Britannia’s oriflamme had lit the plain
Of glory—and victorious stamped her name
On Oudenarde’s and Blenheim’s fields of fame.
Nine times in battlefield his blood had streamed,
Yet vivid still his veteran blue eye gleamed;
Full well he bore his knapsack—unoppressed—
And marched with soldier-like erected crest:
Nor sign of ev’n loquacious age he wore,
Save when he told his life’s adventures o’er;
Some tired of these; for terms to him were dear
Too tactical by far for vulgar ear;
As when he talked of rampart and ravine,
And trenches fenced with gabion and fascine—
But when his theme possessed him all and whole,
He scorned proud puzzling words and warmed the soul;
Hushed groups hung on his lips with fond surprise,
That sketched old scenes—like pictures to their eyes:—
The wide war-plain, with banners glowing bright,
And bayonets to the farthest stretch of sight;
The pause, more dreadful than the peal to come
From volleys blazing at the beat of drum—
Till all the field of thundering lines became
Two level and confronted sheets of flame.
Then to the charge, when Marlbro’s hot pursuit
Trode France’s gilded lilies underfoot;
He came and kindled—and with martial lung
Would chant the very march their trumpets sung.—
The old soldier hoped, ere evening’s light should fail,
To reach a home, south-east of Cona’s vale;
But looking at Bennevis, capped with snow,
He saw its mists come curling down below,
And spread white darkness o’er the sunset glow;—
Fast rolling like tempestuous Ocean’s spray,
Or clouds from troops in battle’s fiery day—
So dense, his quarry ’scaped the falcon’s sight,
The owl alone exulted, hating light.
Benighted thus our pilgrim groped his ground,
Half ’twixt the river’s and the cataract’s sound.
At last a sheep-dog’s bark informed his ear
Some human habitation might be near;
Anon sheep-bleatings rose from rock to rock,—
’Twas Luath hounding to their fold the flock.
Ere long the cock’s obstreperous clarion rang,
And next, a maid’s sweet voice, that spinning sang:
At last amidst the greensward (gladsome sight!)
A cottage stood, with straw roof golden bright.
He knocked, was welcomed in; none asked his name,
Nor whither he was bound, nor whence he came;
But he was beckoned to the stranger’s seat,
Right side the chimney fire of blazing peat.
Blest Hospitality makes not her home
In wallèd parks and castellated dome;
She flies the city’s needy greedy crowd,
And shuns still more the mansions of the proud;—
The balm of savage or of simple life,
A wild flower cut by culture’s polished knife!
The house, no common sordid shieling cot,
Spoke inmates of a comfortable lot.
The Jacobite white rose festooned their door;
The windows sashed and glazed, the oaken floor,
The chimney graced with antlers of the deer,
The rafters hung with meat for winter cheer,
And all the mansion indicated plain
Its master a superior shepherd swain.
Their supper came—the table soon was spread
With eggs and milk and cheese and barley bread.
The family were three—a father hoar,
Whose age you’d guess at seventy years or more,
His son looked fifty—cheerful like her lord,
His comely wife presided at the board;
All three had that peculiar courteous grace
Which marks the meanest of the Highland race;
Warm hearts that burn alike in weal and woe,
As if the north wind fanned their bosoms’ glow!
But wide unlike their souls: old Norman’s eye
Was proudly savage ev’n in courtesy.
His sinewy shoulders—each, though aged and lean,
Broad as the curled Herculean head between,
His scornful lip, his eyes of yellow fire,
And nostrils that dilated quick with ire.
With ever downward-slanting shaggy brows,
Marked the old lion you would dread to rouse.
Norman, in truth, had led his earlier life
In raids of red revenge and feudal strife;
Religious duty in revenge he saw,
Proud Honour’s right and Nature’s honest law.
First in the charge and foremost in pursuit,
Long-breathed, deep-chested, and in speed of foot
A match for stags—still fleeter when the prey
Was man, in persecution’s evil day;
Cheered to that chase by brutal bold Dundee,
No Highland hound had lapped more blood than he.
Oft had he changed the covenanter’s breath
From howls of psalmody to howls of death:
And though long bound to peace, it irked him still
His dirk had ne’er one hated foe to kill.
Yet Norman had fierce virtues, that would mock
Cold-blooded tories of the modern stock,
Who starve the breadless poor with fraud and cant;—
He slew and saved them from the pangs of want.
Nor was his solitary lawless charm
Mere dauntlessness of soul and strength of arm;
He had his moods of kindness now and then,
And feasted ev’n well-mannered lowland men
Who blew not up his Jacobitish flame,
Nor prefaced with “pretender” Charles’s name.
Fierce, but by sense and kindness not unwon,
He loved, respected ev’n his wiser son;
And brooked from him expostulations sage,
When all advisers else were spurned with rage.
Far happier times had moulded Ronald’s mind,
By nature too of more sagacious kind.
His breadth of brow, and Roman shape of chin,
Squared well with the firm man that reigned within.
Contemning strife as childishness, he stood
With neighbours on kind terms of neighbourhood,
And whilst his father’s anger nought availed,
_His_ rational remonstrance never failed.
Full skilfully he managed farm and fold,
Wrote, ciphered, profitably bought and sold:
And, blessed with pastoral leisure, deeply took
Delight to be informed, by speech or book,
Of that wide world beyond his mountain home,
Where oft his curious fancy loved to roam.
Oft while his faithful dog ran round his flock,
He read long hours when summer warmed the rock:
Guests who could tell him aught were welcomed warm,
Even pedlars’ news had to his mind a charm;
That like an intellectual magnet-stone
Drew truth from judgments simpler than his own.
His soul’s proud instinct sought not to enjoy
Romantic fictions, like a minstrel boy;
Truth, standing on her solid square, from youth
He worshipped—stern uncompromising truth.
His goddess kindlier smiled on him, to find
A votary of her light in land so blind;
She bade majestic History unroll
Broad views of public welfare to his soul,
Until he looked on clannish feuds and foes
With scorn, as on the wars of kites and crows;
Whilst doubts assailed him, o’er and o’er again,
If men were made for kings or kings for men.
At last, to Norman’s horror and dismay,
He flat denied the Stuarts’ right to sway.
No blow-pipe ever whitened furnace fire,
Quick as these words lit up his father’s ire;
Who envied even old Abraham for his faith,
Ordained to put his only son to death.
He started up—in such a mood of soul
The white bear bites his showman’s stirring pole;
He danced too, and brought out, with snarl and howl,
“O Dia! Dia! and Dioul! Dioul!”[100]
But sense foils fury—as the blowing whale
Spouts, bleeds, and dyes the waves without avail—
Wears out the cable’s length that makes him fast,
But, worn himself, comes up harpooned at last—
E’en so, devoid of sense, succumbs at length
Mere strength of zeal to intellectual strength.
His son’s close logic so perplexed his pate,
Th’ old hero rather shunned than sought debate;
Exhausting his vocabulary’s store
Of oaths and nicknames, he could say no more,
But tapp’d his mull,[101] rolled mutely in his chair,
Or only whistled Killiecrankie’s air.
Witch legends Ronald scorned—ghost, kelpie, wraith,
And all the trumpery of vulgar faith;
Grave matrons ev’n were shocked to hear him slight
Authenticated facts of second-sight—
Yet never flinched his mockery to confound
The brutal superstition reigning round.
Reserved himself, still Ronald loved to scan
Men’s natures—and he liked th’ old hearty man;
So did the partner of his heart and life—
_Who_ pleased her Ronald, ne’er displeased his wife.
His sense, ’tis true, compared with Norman’s son,
Was commonplace—his tales too long outspun:
Yet Allan Campbell’s sympathizing mind
Had held large intercourse with human kind;
Seen much, and gaily, graphically drew
The men of every country, clime, and hue;
Nor ever stooped, though soldier-like his strain,
To ribaldry of mirth or oath profane.
All went harmonious till the guest began
To talk about his kindred, chief and clan,
And, with his own biography engrossed,
Marked not the changed demeanour of each host;
Nor how old choleric Norman’s cheek became
Flushed at the Campbell and Breadalbane name.
Assigning, heedless of impending harm,
Their stedfast silence to his story’s charm,
He touched a subject perilous to touch—
Saying, “’Midst this well-known vale I wondered much
To lose my way. In boyhood, long ago,
I roamed and loved each pathway of Glencoe;
Trapped leverets, plucked wild berries on its braes,
And fished along its banks long summer days.
But times grew stormy—bitter feuds arose,
Our clan was merciless to prostrate foes.
I never palliated my chieftain’s blame,
But mourned the sin, and reddened for the shame
Of that foul morn (Heaven blot it from the year!)
Whose shapes and shrieks still haunt my dreaming ear.
What could I do? a serf—Glenlyon’s page,
A soldier sworn at nineteen years of age;
T’ have breathed one grieved remonstrance to our chief,
The pit or gallows[102] would have cured my grief.
Forced, passive as the musket in my hand,
I marched—when, feigning royalty’s command,
Against the clan Macdonald, Stairs’s lord
Sent forth exterminating fire and sword;
And troops at midnight through the vale defiled,
Enjoined to slaughter woman, man, and child.
My clansmen many a year had cause to dread
The curse that day entailed upon their head;
Glenlyon’s self confessed the avenging spell—
I saw it light on him.
“It so befell:—
A soldier from our ranks to death was brought,
By sentence deemed too dreadful for his fault;
All was prepared—the coffin and the cart
Stood near twelve muskets, levelled at his heart.
The chief, whose breast for ruth had still some room,
Obtained reprieve a day before his doom;—
But of the awarded boon surmised no breath.
The sufferer knelt, blindfolded, waiting death,—
And met it. Though Glenlyon had desired
The musketeers to watch before they fired;
If from his pocket they should see he drew
A handkerchief—their volley should ensue;
But if he held a paper in its place,
It should be hailed the sign of pardoning grace:—
He, in a fatal moment’s absent fit,
Drew forth the handkerchief, and not the writ;
Wept o’er the corpse, and wrung his hands in woe,
Crying ‘Here’s thy curse again—Glencoe! Glencoe!’”
Though thus his guest spoke feelings just and clear,
The cabin’s patriarch lent impatient ear;
Wroth that, beneath his roof, a living man
Should boast the swine-blood of the Campbell clan,
He hastened to the door—called out his son
To follow; walked a space, and thus begun:—
“You have not, Ronald, at this day to learn
The oath I took beside my father’s cairn,
When you were but a babe a twelvemonth born;
Sworn on my dirk—by all that’s sacred, sworn
To be revenged for blood that cries to Heaven—
Blood unforgiveable, and unforgiven:
But never power, _since then_, have I possessed
To plant my dagger in a Campbell’s breast.
Now, here’s a self-accusing partisan,
Steeped in the slaughter of Macdonald’s clan;
I scorn his civil speech and sweet-lipped show
Of pity—he is still our house’s foe:
I’ll perjure not myself—but sacrifice
The caitiff ere to-morrow’s sun arise.
Stand! hear me—you’re my son, the deed is just;
And if I say—it must be done—it must:
A debt of honour which my clansmen crave,
Their very dead demand it from the grave.”
Conjuring then their ghosts, he humbly prayed
Their patience till the blood-debt should be paid.
But Ronald stopped him.—“Sir, Sir, do not dim
Your honour by a moment’s angry whim;
Your soul’s too just and generous, were you cool,
To act at once the assassin and the fool.
Bring me the men on whom revenge is due,
And I will dirk them willingly as you!
But all the real authors of that black
Old deed are gone—you cannot bring them back.
And this poor guest, ’tis palpable to judge,
In all his life ne’er bore our clan a grudge;
Dragged when a boy against his will to share
That massacre, he loathed the foul affair.
Think, if your hardened heart be conscience-proof,
To stab a stranger underneath your roof!
One who has broken bread within your gate—
Reflect—before reflection comes too late,—
Such ugly consequences there may be
As judge and jury, rope and gallows-tree.
The days of dirking snugly are gone by,
Where could you hide the body privily,
When search is made for’t?”
“Plunge it in yon flood,
That Campbells crimsoned with our kindred blood.”
“Ay, but the corpse may float—”
“Pshaw! dead men tell
No tales—nor will it float if leaded well.
I am determined!”—What could Ronald do?
No house within ear-reach of his halloo,
Though that would but have published household shame
He temporized with wrath he could not tame,
And said, “Come in, till night put off the deed,
And ask a few more questions ere he bleed.”
They entered; Norman with portentous air
Strode to a nook behind the stranger’s chair,
And, speaking nought, sat grimly in the shade,
With dagger in his clutch beneath his plaid.
His son’s own plaid, should Norman pounce his prey,
Was coiled thick round his arm, to turn away
Or blunt the dirk. He purposed leaving free
The door, and giving Allan time to flee,
Whilst he should wrestle with (no safe emprise)
His father’s maniac strength and giant size.
Meanwhile he could nowise communicate
The impending peril to his anxious mate;
But she, convinced no trifling matter now
Disturbed the wonted calm of Ronald’s brow,
Divined too well the cause of gloom that lowered,
And sat with speechless terror overpowered.
Her face was pale, so lately blithe and bland,
The stocking knitting-wire shook in her hand.
But Ronald and the guest resumed their thread
Of converse, still its theme that day of dread.
“Much,” said the veteran, “much as I bemoan
That deed, when half a hundred years have flown,
Still on one circumstance I can reflect
That mitigates the dreadful retrospect.
A mother with her child before us flew,
I had the hideous mandate to pursue;
But swift of foot, outspeeding bloodier men,
I chased, o’ertook her in the winding glen,
And showed her palpitating, where to save
Herself and infant in a secret cave;
Nor left them till I saw that they could mock
Pursuit and search within that sheltering rock.”
“Heavens!” Ronald cried, in accents gladly wild,
“That woman was my mother—I the child!
Of you unknown by name she late and air,[103]
Spoke, wept, and ever blessed you in her prayer,
Ev’n to her death; describing you withal
A well-looked florid youth, blue-eyed and tall.”
They rose, exchanged embrace: the old lion then
Upstarted, metamorphosed, from his den;
Saying, “Come and make thy home with us for life,
Heaven-sent preserver of my child and wife.
I fear thou’rt poor, that Hanoverian thing
Rewards his soldiers ill.”—“God save the king!”
With hand upon his heart, old Allan said,
“I wear his uniform, I eat his bread,
And whilst I’ve tooth to bite a cartridge, all
For him and Britain’s fame I’ll stand or fall.”
“Bravo!” cried Ronald. “I commend your zeal,”
Quoth Norman, “and I see your heart is leal;
But I have prayed my soul may never thrive
If thou shouldst leave this house of ours alive.
Nor shalt thou; in this home protract thy breath
Of easy life, nor leave it till thy death.”
...
The following morn arose serene as glass,
And red Bennevis shone like molten brass;
While sunrise opened flowers with gentle force,
The guest and Ronald walked in long discourse.
“Words fail me,” Allan said, “to thank aright
Your father’s kindness shown me yesternight;
Yet scarce I’d wish my latest days to spend
A fireside fixture with the dearest friend:
Besides, I’ve but a fortnight’s furlough now,
To reach Macallin More,[104] beyond Lochawe.
I’d fain memorialize the powers that be,
To deign remembrance of my wounds and me;
My life-long service never bore the brand
Of sentence—lash—disgrace or reprimand.
And so I’ve written, though in meagre style,
A long petition to his Grace Argyle;
I mean, on reaching Innerara’s shore,
To leave it safe within his castle door.”
“Nay,” Ronald said, “the letter that you bear
Entrust it to no lying varlet’s care;
But say a soldier of King George demands
Access, to leave it in the Duke’s own hands.
But show me, first, the epistle to your chief,
’Tis nought, unless succinctly clear and brief;
Great men have no great patience when they read,
And long petitions spoil the cause they plead.”
That day saw Ronald from the field full soon
Return; and when they all had dined at noon,
He conned th’ old man’s memorial—lopped its length,
And gave it style, simplicity, and strength;
’Twas finished in an hour—and in the next
Transcribed by Allan in perspicuous text.
At evening, he and Ronald shared once more
A long and pleasant walk by Cona’s shore.
“I’d press you,” quoth his host—(“I need not say
How warmly) ever more with us to stay;
But Charles intends, ’tis said, in these same parts
To try the fealty of our Highland hearts.
’Tis my belief, that he and all his line
Have—saving to be hanged—no right divine;
From whose mad enterprise can only flow
To thousands slaughter, and to myriads woe.
Yet have they stirred my father’s spirit sore,
He flints his pistols—whets his old claymore—
And longs as ardently to join the fray
As boy to dance who hears the bagpipe play.
Though calm one day, the next, disdaining rule,
He’d gore your red coat like an angry bull:
I told him, and he owned it might be so,
Your tempers never could in concert flow.
But ‘Mark,’ he added, ‘Ronald! from our door
Let not this guest depart forlorn and poor;
Let not your souls the niggardness evince
Of lowland pedlar, or of German prince;
He gave you life—then feed him as you’d feed
Your very father were he cast in need.’
He gave—you’ll find it by your bed to-night,
A leathern purse of crowns, all sterling bright:
You see I do you kindness not by stealth.
My wife—no advocate of squandering wealth—
Vows that it would be parricide, or worse,
Should we neglect you—here’s a silken purse,
Some golden pieces through the network shine,
’Tis proffered to you from her heart and mine.
But come I no foolish delicacy, no!
We own, but cannot cancel what we owe—
This sum shall duly reach you once a year.”
Poor Allan’s furrowed face, and flowing tear,
Confessed sensations which he could not speak,
Old Norman bade him farewell kindly meek.
At morn, the smiling dame rejoiced to pack
With viands full th’ old soldier’s havresack.
He feared not hungry grass[105] with such a load,
And Ronald saw him miles upon his road.
A march of three days brought him to Lochfyne.
Argyle, struck with his manly look benign,
And feeling interest in the veteran’s lot,
Created him a sergeant on the spot—
An invalid, to serve not—but with pay
(A mighty sum to him), twelve-pence a day.
“But have you heard not,” said Macallin More,
“Charles Stuart’s landed on Eriska’s shore,
And Jacobites are arming?”—“What! indeed!
Arrived! then I’m no more an invalid;
My new-got halbert I must straight employ
In battle.”—“As you please, old gallant boy:
Your grey hairs well might plead excuse, ’tis true,
But now’s the time we want such men as you.”
In brief, at Innerara Allan stayed,
And joined the banners of Argyle’s brigade.
Meanwhile, th’ old choleric shepherd of Glencoe
Spurned all advice, and girt himself to go.
What was’t to him that foes would poind their fold,
Their lease, their very beds beneath them sold!
And firmly to his text he would have kept,
Though Ronald argued and his daughter wept.
But ’midst the impotence of tears and prayer,
Chance snatched them from proscription and despair
Old Norman’s blood was headward wont to mount
Too rapid from his heart’s impetuous fount;
And one day, whilst the German rats he cursed,
An artery in his wise sensorium burst.
The lancet saved him: but how changed, alas,
From him who fought at Killiecrankie’s pass!
Tame as a spaniel, timid as a child,
He muttered incoherent words and smiled;
He wept at kindness, rolled a vacant eye,
And laughed full often when he meant to cry.
Poor man! whilst in this lamentable state,
Came Allan back one morning to his gate,
Hale and unburdened by the woes of eild,
And fresh with credit from Culloden’s field.
’Twas feared at first, the sight of him might touch
The old Macdonald’s morbid mind too much;
But no! though Norman knew him and disclosed,
Ev’n rallying memory, he was still composed;
Asked all particulars of the fatal fight,
And only heaved a sigh for Charles’s flight;
Then said, with but one moment’s pride of air,
“_It might not have been so had I been there!_”
Few days elapsed till he reposed beneath
His grey cairn, on the wild and lonely heath;
Son, friends, and kindred of his dust took leave,
And Allan, with the crape bound round his sleeve.
Old Allan now hung up his sergeant’s sword,
And sat, a guest for life, at Ronald’s board.
He waked no longer at the barrack’s drum,
Yet still you’d see, when peep of day was come,
Th’ erect tall red-coat, walking pastures round,
Or delving with his spade the garden ground,
Of cheerful temper, habits strict and sage,
He reached, enjoyed a patriarchal age—
Loved to the last by the Macdonalds. Near
Their house, his stone was placed with many a tear;
And Ronald’s self, in stoic virtue brave,
Scorned not to weep at Allan Campbell’s grave.
[99] I received the substance of the tradition on which this poem is
founded, in the first instance, from a friend in London, who wrote to
Matthew N. Macdonald, Esq., of Edinburgh. He had the kindness to send
me a circumstantial account of the tradition; and that gentleman’s
knowledge of the Highlands, as well as his particular acquaintance with
the district of Glencoe, leave me no doubt of the incident having really
happened. I have not departed from the main facts of the tradition as
reported to me by Mr. Macdonald; only I have endeavoured to colour the
personages of the story, and to make them as distinctive as possible.
[100] God and the Devil—a favourite ejaculation of Highland saints.
[101] Snuff-horn.
[102] To hang their vassals, or starve them to death in a dungeon, was a
privilege of the Highland chiefs who had hereditary jurisdictions.
[103] Scotch for late and early.
[104] The Duke of Argyle.
[105] When the hospitable Highlanders load a parting guest with
provisions, they tell him he will need them, as he has to go over a great
deal of _hungry grass_.
NOTES.
NOTES TO THE PLEASURES OF HOPE.
PART I.
NOTE TO PAGE 7.
_And such thy strength-inspiring aid that bore_
_The hardy Byron to his native shore._
The following picture of his own distress, given by Byron in his simple
and interesting narrative, justifies the description in page 7.
After relating the barbarity of the Indian cacique to his child, he
proceeds thus:—“A day or two after we put to sea again, and crossed the
great bay I mentioned we had been at the bottom of when we first hauled
away to the westward. The land here was very low and sandy, and something
like the mouth of a river which discharged itself into the sea, and which
had been taken no notice of by us before, as it was so shallow that the
Indians were obliged to take everything out of their canoes, and carry
them over land. We rowed up the river four or five leagues, and then
took into a branch of it that ran first to the eastward, and then to
the northward: here it became much narrower, and the stream excessively
rapid, so that we gained but little way, though we wrought very hard. At
night we landed upon its banks, and had a most uncomfortable lodging,
it being a perfect swamp, and we had nothing to cover us, though it
rained excessively. The Indians were little better off than we, as there
was no wood here to make their wigwams; so that all they could do was
to prop up the bark, which they carry in the bottom of their canoes,
and shelter themselves as well as they could to the leeward of it.
Knowing the difficulties they had to encounter here, they had provided
themselves with some seal; but we had not a morsel to eat, after the
heavy fatigues of the day, excepting a sort of root we saw the Indians
make use of, which was very disagreeable to the taste. We laboured all
next day against the stream, and fared as we had done the day before.
The next day brought us to the carrying place. Here was plenty of wood,
but nothing to be got for sustenance. We passed this night, as we had
frequently done, under a tree; but what we suffered at this time is not
easy to be expressed. I had been three days at the oar without any kind
of nourishment except the wretched root above mentioned. I had no shirt,
for it had rotted off by bits. All my clothes consisted of a short grieko
(something like a bear-skin), a piece of red cloth which had once been a
waistcoat, and a ragged pair of trowsers, without shoes or stockings.”
NOTE TO PAGE 14.
_Wild Obi flies._
Among the negroes of the West Indies, Obi, or Obiah, is the name of a
magical power, which is believed by them to affect the object of its
malignity with dismal calamities. Such a belief must undoubtedly have
been deduced from the superstitious mythology of their kinsmen on the
coast of Africa. I have, therefore, personified Obi as the evil spirit of
the African, although the history of the African tribes mentions the evil
spirits of their religious creed by a different appellation.
NOTE TO PAGE 14.
_Sibir’s dreary mines._
Mr. Bell, of Antermony, in his “Travels through Siberia,” informs us that
the name of the country is universally pronounced “Sibir” by the Russians.
NOTE TO PAGE 14.
_Presaging wrath to Poland—and to man!_
The history of the partition of Poland, of the massacre in the suburbs
of Warsaw, and on the bridge of Prague, the triumphant entry of Suwarrow
into the Polish capital, and the insult offered to human nature, by the
blasphemous thanks offered up to Heaven, for victories obtained over men
fighting in the sacred cause of liberty, by murderers and oppressors, are
events generally known.
NOTE TO PAGE 19.
_How long was Timour’s iron sceptre swayed?_
To elucidate this passage, I shall subjoin a quotation from the preface
to “Letters from a Hindoo Rajah,” by Eliza Hamilton, a work of elegance
and celebrity:—
“The impostor of Mecca had established, as one of the principles of his
doctrine, the merit of extending it either by persuasion, or the sword,
to all parts of the earth. How steadily this injunction was adhered to by
his followers, and with what success it was pursued, is well known to all
who are in the least conversant in history.
“The same overwhelming torrent which had inundated the greater part
of Africa, burst its way into the very heart of Europe, and covering
many kingdoms of Asia, with unbounded desolation, directed its baneful
course to the flourishing provinces of Hindostan. Here these fierce and
hardy adventurers, whose only improvement had been in the science of
destruction, who added the fury of fanaticism to the ravages of war,
found the great end of their conquest opposed by objects which neither
the ardour of their persevering zeal, nor savage barbarity, could
surmount. Multitudes were sacrificed by the cruel hand of religious
persecution, and whole countries were deluged in blood, in the vain hope,
that by the destruction of a part, the remainder might be persuaded, or
terrified, into the profession of Mahomedism. But all these sanguinary
efforts were ineffectual; and at length, being fully convinced, that
though they might extirpate, they could never hope to convert, any number
of the Hindoos, they relinquished the impracticable idea with which they
had entered upon their career of conquest, and contented themselves with
the acquirement of the civil dominion and almost universal empire of
Hindostan.”
NOTE TO PAGE 20.
_While famished nations died along the shore._
The following account of British conduct, and its consequences, in
Bengal, will afford a sufficient idea of the fact alluded to in this
passage.
After describing the monopoly of salt, betel nut, and tobacco, the
historian proceeds thus:—“Money in this current came but by drops; it
could not quench the thirst of those who waited in India to receive
it. An expedient, such as it was, remained to quicken its pace. The
natives could live with little salt, but could not want food. Some of
the agents saw themselves well situated for collecting the rice into
stores; they did so. They knew the Gentoos would rather die than violate
the principles of their religion by eating flesh. The alternative would
therefore be between giving what they had, or dying. The inhabitants
sunk;—they that cultivated the land, and saw the harvest at the disposal
of others, planted in doubt—scarcity ensued. Then the monopoly was easier
managed—sickness ensued. In some districts the languid living left the
bodies of their numerous dead unburied.”—_Short History of the English
Transactions in the East Indies_, page 145.
NOTE TO PAGE 20.
_Nine times have Brahma’s wheels of lightning hurled_
_His awful presence o’er the alarmèd world._
Among the sublime fictions of the Hindoo mythology, it is one article of
belief, that the Deity Brahma has descended nine times upon the world in
various forms, and that he is yet to appear a tenth time, in the figure
of a warrior upon a white horse, to cut off all incorrigible offenders.
“Avatar” is the word used to express his descent.
PART II.
NOTE TO PAGE 31.
_Or learn the fate that bleeding thousands bore,_
_Marched by their Charles to Dneiper’s swampy shore._
“In this extremity,” says the biographer of Charles XII. of Sweden,
speaking of his military exploits before the battle of Pultowa, “the
memorable winter of 1709, which was still more remarkable in that part
of Europe than in France, destroyed numbers of his troops; for Charles
resolved to brave the seasons as he had done his enemies, and ventured to
make long marches during this mortal cold. It was in one of these marches
that two thousand men fell down dead with cold before his eyes.”
NOTE TO PAGE 32.
_As Iona’s saint._
The natives of the island of Iona have an opinion, that on certain
evenings every year the tutelary saint Columba is seen on the top of the
church spires counting the surrounding islands, to see that they have not
been sunk by the power of witchcraft.
NOTES TO GERTRUDE OF WYOMING.
PART I.
NOTE TO PAGE 45.
_From merry mock-bird’s song._
“The mocking-bird is of the form, but larger than the thrush; and the
colours are a mixture of black, white, and grey. What is said of the
nightingale by its greatest admirers, is what may with more propriety
apply to this bird, who, in a natural state, sings with very superior
taste. Towards evening I have heard one begin softly, reserving its
breath to swell certain notes, which, by this means, had a most
astonishing effect. A gentleman in London had one of these birds for six
years. During the space of a minute he was heard to imitate the woodlark,
chaffinch, blackbird, thrush, and sparrow. In this country (America) I
have frequently known the mocking-birds so engaged in this mimicry, that
it was with much difficulty I could ever obtain an opportunity of hearing
their own natural note. Some go so far as to say, that they have neither
peculiar notes, nor favourite imitations. This may be denied. Their few
natural notes resemble those of the (European) nightingale. Their song,
however, has a greater compass and volume than the nightingale, and they
have the faculty of varying all intermediate notes in a manner which is
truly delightful.”—Ashe’s _Travels in America_, vol. ii. p. 73.
NOTE TO PAGE 46.
_And distant isles that hear the loud Corbrechtan roar!_
The Corybrechtan, or Corbrechtan, is a whirlpool on the western coast
of Scotland, near the island of Jura, which is heard at a prodigious
distance. Its name signifies the whirlpool of the Prince of Denmark; and
there is a tradition that a Danish prince once undertook, for a wager,
to cast anchor in it. He is said to have used woollen instead of hempen
ropes, for greater strength, but perished in the attempt. On the shores
of Argyleshire, I have often listened with great delight to the sound of
this vortex, at the distance of many leagues. When the weather is calm,
and the adjacent sea is scarcely heard on these picturesque shores,
its sound, which is like the sound of innumerable chariots, creates a
magnificent and fine effect.
NOTE TO PAGE 48.
_Of buskined limb, and swarthy lineament._
“In the Indian tribes there is a great similarity in their colour,
stature, &c. They are all, except the Snake Indians, tall in stature,
straight, and robust. It is very seldom they are deformed, which has
given rise to the supposition that they put to death their deformed
children. Their skin is of a copper colour; their eyes large, bright,
black, and sparkling, indicative of a subtile and discerning mind: their
hair is of the same colour, and prone to be long, seldom or never curled.
Their teeth are large and white; I never observed any decayed among them,
which makes their breath as sweet as the air they inhale.”—_Travels
through America by Capts. Lewis and Clarke, in 1804-5-6._
NOTE TO PAGE 48.
_Peace be to thee! my words this belt approve._
“The Indians of North America accompany every formal address to
strangers, with whom they form or recognise a treaty of amity, with a
present of a string, or belt, of wampum. ‘Wampum,’ says Cadwalladar
Colden, ‘is made of the large whelk shell, _Buccinum_, and shaped like
long beads: it is the current money of the Indians.’”—_History of the
five Indian Nations_, p. 34. New York edition.
NOTE TO PAGE 48.
_The paths of peace my steps have hither led._
In relating an interview of Mohawk Indians with the Governor of New York,
Colden quotes the following passage as a specimen of their metaphorical
manner:—“Where shall I seek the chair of peace? where shall I find it but
upon our path? and whither doth our path lead us but unto this house?”
NOTE TO PAGE 48.
_Our wampum league thy brethren did embrace._
“When they solicit the alliance, offensive or defensive, of a whole
nation, they send an embassy with a large belt of wampum and a bloody
hatchet, inviting them to come and drink the blood of their enemies.
The wampum made use of on these and other occasions, before their
acquaintance with the Europeans, was nothing but small shells which they
picked up by the seacoasts, and on the banks of the lakes; and now it is
nothing but a kind of cylindrical beads, made of shells, white and black,
which are esteemed among them as silver and gold are among us. The black
they call the most valuable, and both together are their greatest riches
and ornaments; these among them answering all the end that money does
amongst us. They have the art of stringing, twisting, and interweaving
them into their belts, collars, blankets, and mocassins, &c., in ten
thousand different sizes, forms, and figures, so as to be ornaments
for every part of dress, and expressive to them of all their important
transactions. They dye the wampum of various colours and shades, and
mix and dispose them with great ingenuity and order, and so as to be
significant among themselves of almost every thing they please; so that
by these their words are kept, and their thoughts communicated to one
another, as ours are by writing. The belts that pass from one nation to
another in all treaties, declarations, and important transactions, are
very carefully preserved in the cabins of their chiefs, and serve not
only as a kind of record or history, but as a public treasure.”—Major
Rogers’ _Account of North America_.
NOTE TO PAGE 49.
_As when the evil Manitou._
“It is certain the Indians acknowledge one Supreme Being, or Giver of
Life, who presides over all things; that is, the Great Spirit; and they
look up to him as the source of good, from whence no evil can proceed.
They also believe in a bad Spirit, to whom they ascribe great power; and
suppose that through his power all the evils which befall mankind are
inflicted. To him, therefore, they pray in their distresses, begging that
he would either avert their troubles, or moderate them when they are no
longer avoidable.
“They hold also that there are good Spirits of a lower degree, who have
their particular departments, in which they are constantly contributing
to the happiness of mortals. These they suppose to preside over all the
extraordinary productions of Nature, such as those lakes, rivers, and
mountains that are of an uncommon magnitude; and likewise the beasts,
birds, fishes, and even vegetables or stones, that exceed the rest
of their species in size or singularity.”—Clarke’s _Travels among the
Indians_.
The Supreme Spirit of good is called by the Indians “Kitchi Manitou”; and
the Spirit of evil, “Matchi Manitou.”
NOTE TO PAGE 50.
_Fever-balm and sweet sagamité._
The fever-balm is a medicine used by these tribes; it is a decoction of
a bush called the Fever Tree. Sagamité is a kind of soup administered to
their sick.
NOTE TO PAGE 50.
_And I, the eagle of my tribe, have rushed with this lorn dove._
The testimony of all travellers among the American Indians who mention
their hieroglyphics, authorises me in putting this figurative language in
the mouth of Outalissi. The dove is among them, as elsewhere, an emblem
of meekness; and the eagle, that of a bold, noble, and liberal mind.
When the Indians speak of a warrior who soars above the multitude in
person and endowments, they say, “he is like the eagle, who destroys his
enemies, and gives protection and abundance to the weak of his own tribe.”
NOTE TO PAGE 51.
_Far differently, the mute Oneyda took, &c._
“They are extremely circumspect and deliberate in every word and action;
nothing hurries them into any intemperate wrath, but that inveteracy to
their enemies which is rooted in every Indian’s breast. In all other
instances they are cool and deliberate, taking care to suppress the
emotions of the heart. If an Indian has discovered that a friend of his
is in danger of being cut off by a lurking enemy, he does not tell him of
his danger in direct terms as though he were in fear, but he first coolly
asks him which way he is going that day, and having his answer, with the
same indifference tells him that he has been informed that a noxious
beast lies on the route he is going. This hint proves sufficient, and his
friend avoids the danger with as much caution as though every design and
motion of his enemy had been pointed out to him.
“If an Indian has been engaged for several days in the chase, and by
accident continued long without food, when he arrives at the hut of a
friend, where he knows that his wants will be immediately supplied, he
takes care not to show the least symptoms of impatience, or betray the
extreme hunger that he is tortured with; but on being invited in, sits
contentedly down and smokes his pipe with as much composure as if his
appetite was cloyed and he was perfectly at ease. He does the same if
among strangers. This custom is strictly adhered to by every tribe, as
they esteem it a proof of fortitude, and think the reverse would entitle
them to the appellation of old women.
“If you tell an Indian that his children have greatly signalised
themselves against an enemy, have taken many scalps, and brought home
many prisoners, he does not appear to feel any strong emotions of
pleasure on the occasion; his answer generally is,—they have ‘done well,’
and he makes but very little enquiry about the matter; on the contrary,
if you inform him that his children are slain or taken prisoners, he
makes no complaints: he only replies, ‘It is unfortunate:’—and for
some time asks no questions about how it happened.”—Lewis and Clarke’s
_Travels_.
NOTE TO PAGE 51.
_His calumet of peace, &c._
“Nor is the calumet of less importance or less revered than the wampum
in many transactions relative both to peace and war. The bowl of this
pipe is made of a kind of soft red stone, which is easily wrought and
hollowed out; the stem is of cane, alder, or some kind of light wood,
painted with different colours, and decorated with the heads, tails,
and feathers of the most beautiful birds. The use of the calumet is to
smoke either tobacco or some bark, leaf, or herb, which they often use
instead of it, when they enter into an alliance or any serious occasion
or solemn engagements; this being among them the most sacred oath that
can be taken, the violation of which is esteemed most infamous, and
deserving of severe punishment from Heaven. When they treat of war, the
whole pipe and all its ornaments are red: sometimes it is red only on one
side, and by the disposition of the feathers, &c., one acquainted with
their customs will know at first sight what the nation who presents it
intends or desires. Smoking the calumet is also a religious ceremony on
some occasions, and in all treaties is considered as a witness between
the parties, or rather as an instrument by which they invoke the sun and
moon to witness their sincerity, and to be as it were a guarantee of the
treaty between them. This custom of the Indians, though to appearance
somewhat ridiculous, is not without its reasons; for as they find that
smoking tends to disperse the vapours of the brain, to raise the spirits,
and to qualify them for thinking and judging properly, they introduced it
into their councils, where, after their resolves, the pipe was considered
as a seal of their decrees, and as a pledge of their performance thereof,
it was sent to those they were consulting, in alliance or treaty with;—so
that smoking among them at the same pipe, is equivalent to our drinking
together and out of the same cup.”—Major Rogers’ _Account of North
America_, 1766.
“The lighted calumet is also used among them for a purpose still more
interesting than the expression of social friendship. The austere
manners of the Indians forbid any appearance of gallantry between the
sexes in day-time; but at night the young lover goes a calumetting, as
his courtship is called. As these people live in a state of equality,
and without fear of internal violence or theft in their own tribes,
they leave their doors open by night as well as by day. The lover takes
advantage of this liberty, lights his calumet, enters the cabin of his
mistress, and gently presents it to her. If she extinguishes it, she
admits his addresses; but if she suffer it to burn unnoticed, he retires
with a disappointed and throbbing heart.”—Ashe’s _Travels_.
NOTE TO PAGE 51.
_Trained from his tree-rocked cradle to his bier._
“An Indian child, as soon as he is born, is swathed with clothes, or
skins; and being laid on his back, is bound down on a piece of thick
board, spread over with soft moss. The board is somewhat larger and
broader than the child, and bent pieces of wood, like pieces of hoops,
are placed over its face to protect it, so that if the machine were
suffered to fall, the child probably would not be injured. When the women
have any business to transact at home, they hang the board on a tree, if
there be one at hand, and set them a swinging from side to side, like a
pendulum, in order to exercise the children.”—Weld, vol. ii. p. 246.
NOTE TO PAGE 51.
_The fierce extremes of good and ill to brook_
_Impassive—_
Of the active as well as passive fortitude of the Indian character, the
following is an instance related by Adair in his “Travels”:—
“A party of the Senekah Indians came to war against the Katahba, bitter
enemies to each other.—In the woods the former discovered a sprightly
warrior belonging to the latter, hunting in their usual light dress:
on his perceiving them, he sprang off for a hollow rock four or five
miles distance, as they intercepted him from running homeward. He was
so extremely swift and skilful with the gun, as to kill seven of them
in the running fight before they were able to surround and take him.
They carried him to their country in sad triumph, but though he had
filled them with uncommon grief and shame for the loss of so many of
their kindred, yet the love of martial virtue induced them to treat
him, during their long journey, with a great deal more civility than if
he had acted the part of a coward. The women and children, when they
met him at their several towns, beat him and whipped him in as severe a
manner as the occasion required, according to their law of justice, and
at last he was formally condemned to die by the fiery torture.—It might
reasonably be imagined that what he had for some time gone through, by
being fed with a scanty hand, a tedious march, lying at night on the bare
ground, exposed to the changes of the weather, with his arms and legs
extended in a pair of rough stocks, and suffering such punishment on his
entering into their hostile towns, as a prelude to those sharp torments
for which he was destined, would have so impaired his health and affected
his imagination, as to have sent him to his long sleep, out of the way
of any more sufferings.—Probably this would have been the case with the
major part of white people under similar circumstances; but I never knew
this with any of the Indians: and this cool-headed, brave warrior, did
not deviate from their rough lessons of martial virtue, but acted his
part so well as to surprise and sorely vex his numerous enemies:—for when
they were taking him, unpinioned, in their wild parade, to the place
of torture, which lay near to a river, he suddenly dashed down those
who stood in his way, sprang off, and plunged into the water, swimming
underneath like an otter, only rising to take breath, till he reached
the opposite shore. He now ascended the steep bank, but though he had
good reason to be in a hurry, as many of the enemy were in the water,
and others running, very like bloodhounds, in pursuit of him, and the
bullets flying around him from the time he took to the river, yet his
heart did not allow him to leave them abruptly, without taking leave in
a formal manner, in return for the extraordinary favours they had done,
and intended to do him. After slapping a part of his body, in defiance
to them,” continues the author, “he put up the shrill war-whoop, as his
last salute, till some more convenient opportunity offered, and darted
off in the manner of a beast broke loose from its torturing enemies. He
continued his speed, so as to run by about midnight of the same day as
far as his eager pursuers were two days in reaching. There he rested
till he happily discovered five of those Indians who had pursued him:—he
lay hid a little way off their camp, till they were sound asleep. Every
circumstance of his situation occurred to him, and inspired him with
heroism. He was naked, torn, and hungry, and his enraged enemies were
come up with him;—but there was now every thing to relieve his wants,
and a fair opportunity to save his life, and get great honour and sweet
revenge by cutting them off. Resolution, a convenient spot, and sudden
surprise, would effect the main object of all his wishes and hopes. He
accordingly creeped, took one of their tomahawks, and killed them all on
the spot,—clothed himself, took a choice gun, and as much ammunition and
provisions as he could well carry in a running march. He set off afresh
with a light heart, and did not sleep for several successive nights,
only when he reclined, as usual, a little before day, with his back to a
tree. As it were by instinct, when he found he was free from the pursuing
enemy, he made directly to the very place where he had killed seven of
his enemies and was taken by them for the fiery torture. He digged them
up, burnt their bodies to ashes, and went home in safety with singular
triumph. Other pursuing enemies came, on the evening of the second day,
to the camp of their dead people, when the sight gave them a greater
shock than they had ever known before. In their chilled war-council they
concluded, that as he had done such surprising things in his defence
before he was captivated, and since that in his naked condition, and
now was well-armed, if they continued the pursuit he would spoil them
all, for he surely was an enemy wizard,—and therefore they returned
home.”—Adair’s _General Observations on the American Indians_, p. 394.
“It is surprising,” says the same author, “to see the long continued
speed of the Indians. Though some of us have often run the swiftest of
them out of sight for about the distance of twelve miles, yet afterwards,
without any seeming toil, they would stretch on, leave us out of sight,
and outwind any horse.”—_Ibid._ p. 318.
“If an Indian were driven out into the extensive woods, with only a
knife and a tomahawk, or a small hatchet, it is not to be doubted but he
would fatten even where a wolf would starve. He would soon collect fire
by rubbing two dry pieces of wood together, make a bark hut, earthen
vessels, and a bow and arrows; then kill wild game, fish, fresh-water
tortoises, gather a plentiful variety of vegetables, and live in
affluence.”—_Ibid._ p. 410.
NOTE TO PAGE 51.
_Sleep, wearied one! and in the dreaming land_
_Shouldst thou to-morrow with thy mother meet._
“There is nothing,” says Charlevoix, “in which these barbarians carry
their superstitions farther, than in what regards dreams; but they vary
greatly in their manner of explaining themselves on this point. Sometimes
it is the reasonable soul which ranges abroad, while the sensitive
continues to animate the body. Sometimes it is the familiar genius who
gives salutary counsel with respect to what is going to happen. Sometimes
it is a visit made by the soul of the object of which he dreams. But in
whatever manner the dream is conceived, it is always looked upon as a
thing sacred, and as the most ordinary way in which the gods make known
their will to men. Filled with this idea, they cannot conceive how we
should pay no regard to them. For the most part they look upon them
either as a desire of the soul, inspired by some genius, or an order
from him, and in consequence of this principle they hold it a religious
duty to obey them. An Indian having dreamt of having a finger cut off,
had it really cut off as soon as he awoke, having first prepared himself
for this important action by a feast. Another having dreamt of being a
prisoner, and in the hands of his enemies, was much at a loss what to do.
He consulted the jugglers, and by their advice caused himself to be tied
to a post, and burnt in several parts of the body.”—Charlevoix’s _Journal
of a Voyage to North America_.
NOTE TO PAGE 52.
_The crocodile, the condor of the rock._
“The alligator, or American crocodile, when full grown,” says Bertram,
“is a very large and terrible creature, and of prodigious strength,
activity, and swiftness in the water. I have seen them twenty feet in
length, and some are supposed to be twenty-two or twenty-three feet
in length. Their body is as large as that of a horse, their shape
usually resembles that of a lizard, which is flat, or cuneiform, being
compressed on each side, and gradually diminishing from the abdomen to
the extremity, which, with the whole body, is covered with horny plates,
of squamæ, impenetrable when on the body of the live animal, even to
a rifle-ball, except about their head, and just behind their forelegs
or arms, where, it is said, they are only vulnerable. The head of a
full-grown one is about three feet, and the mouth opens nearly the same
length. Their eyes are small in proportion, and seem sunk in the head, by
means of the prominency of the brows; the nostrils are large, inflated,
and prominent on the top, so that the head on the water resembles, at a
distance, a great chunk of wood floating about: only the upper jaw moves,
which they raise almost perpendicular, so as to form a right angle with
the lower one. In the fore-part of the upper jaw, on each side, just
under the nostrils, are two very large, thick, strong teeth, or tusks,
not very sharp, but rather the shape of a cone: these are as white as
the finest polished ivory, and are not covered by any skin or lips, but
always in sight, which gives the creature a frightful appearance; in
the lower jaw are holes opposite to these teeth to receive them; when
they clap their jaws together, it causes a surprising noise, like that
which is made by forcing a heavy plank with violence upon the ground,
and may be heard at a great distance.—But what is yet more surprising to
a stranger, is the incredibly loud and terrifying roar which they are
capable of making, especially in breeding-time. It most resembles very
heavy distant thunder, not only shaking the air and waters, but causing
the earth to tremble; and when hundreds are roaring at the same time,
you can scarcely be persuaded but that the whole globe is violently
and dangerously agitated. An old champion, who is, perhaps, absolute
sovereign of a little lake or lagoon (when fifty less than himself are
obliged to content themselves with swelling and roaring in little coves
round about), darts forth from the reedy coverts, all at once, on the
surface of the waters in a right line, at first seemingly as rapid as
lightning, but gradually more slowly, until he arrives at the centre of
the lake, where he stops. He now swells himself by drawing in wind and
water through his mouth, which causes a loud sonorous rattling in the
throat for near a minute; but it is immediately forced out again through
his mouth and nostrils with a loud noise, brandishing his tail in the
air, and the vapour running from his nostrils like smoke. At other times,
when swoln to an extent ready to burst, his head and tail lifted up, he
spins or twirls round on the surface of the water. He acts his part like
an Indian chief, when rehearsing his feats of war.”—Bertram’s _Travels in
North America_.
NOTE TO PAGE 52.
_Then forth uprose that lone way-faring man._
“They discover an amazing sagacity, and acquire, with the greatest
readiness, any thing that depends upon the attention of the mind. By
experience, and an acute observation, they attain many perfections to
which Americans are strangers. For instance, they will cross a forest
or a plain, which is two hundred miles in breadth, so as to reach, with
great exactness, the point at which they intend to arrive, keeping,
during the whole of that space, in a direct line, without any material
deviations; and this they will do with the same ease, let the weather
be fair or cloudy. With equal acuteness they will point to that part of
the heavens the sun is in, though it be intercepted by clouds or fogs.
Besides this, they are able to pursue, with incredible facility, the
traces of man or beast, either on leaves or grass; and on this account
it is with great difficulty they escape discovery. They are indebted for
these talents not only to nature, but to an extraordinary command of
the intellectual qualities, which can only be acquired by an unremitted
attention, and by long experience. They are, in general, very happy in a
retentive memory. They can recapitulate every particular that has been
treated of in council, and remember the exact time when they were held.
Their belts of wampum preserve the substance of the treaties they have
concluded with the neighbouring tribes for ages back, to which they will
appeal and refer with as much perspicuity and readiness as Europeans can
to their written records.
“The Indians are totally unskilled in geography, as well as all the other
sciences, and yet they draw on their birch-bark very exact charts or maps
of the countries they are acquainted with. The latitude and longitude
only are wanting to make them tolerably complete.
“Their sole knowledge in astronomy consists in being able to point out
the polar star, by which they regulate their course when they travel in
the night.
“They reckon the distance of places not by miles or leagues, but by
a day’s journey, which, according to the best calculation I could
make, appears to be about twenty English miles. These they also divide
into halves and quarters, and will demonstrate them in their maps
with great exactness by the hieroglyphics just mentioned, when they
regulate in council their war-parties, or their most distant hunting
excursions.”—Lewis and Clarke’s _Travels_.
“Some of the French missionaries have supposed that the Indians are
guided by instinct, and have pretended that Indian children can find
their way through a forest as easily as a person of maturer years; but
this is a most absurd notion. It is unquestionably by a close attention
to the growth of the trees, and position of the sun, that they find their
way. On the northern side of a tree there is generally the most moss; and
the bark on that side, in general, differs from that on the opposite one.
The branches towards the south are, for the most part, more luxuriant
than those on the other sides of trees, and several other distinctions
also subsist between the northern and southern sides, conspicuous to
Indians, being taught from their infancy to attend to them, which a
common observer would, perhaps, never notice. Being accustomed from their
infancy likewise to pay great attention to the position of the sun, they
learn to make the most accurate allowance for its apparent motion from
one part of the heavens to another; and in every part of the day they
will point to the part of the heavens where it is, although the sky be
obscured by clouds or mists.
“An instance of their dexterity in finding their way through an unknown
country came under my observation when I was at Staunton, situated behind
the Blue Mountains, Virginia. A number of the Creek nation had arrived
at that town on their way to Philadelphia, whither they were going upon
some affairs of importance, and had stopped there for the night. In the
morning, some circumstance or other, which could not be learned, induced
one half of the Indians to set off without their companions, who did not
follow until some hours afterwards. When these last were ready to pursue
their journey, several of the towns-people mounted their horses to escort
them part of the way. They proceeded along the high road for some miles,
but, all at once, hastily turning aside into the woods, though there
was no path, the Indians advanced confidently forward. The people who
accompanied them, surprised at this movement, informed them that they
were quitting the road to Philadelphia, and expressed their fear lest
they should miss their companions who had gone on before. They answered
that they knew better, that the way through the woods was the shortest
to Philadelphia, and that they knew very well that their companions
had entered the wood at the very place where they did. Curiosity led
some of the horsemen to go on; and to their astonishment, for there was
apparently no track, they overtook the other Indians in the thickest
part of the wood. But what appeared most singular was, that the route
which they took was found, on examining a map, to be as direct for
Philadelphia as if they had taken the bearings by a mariner’s compass.
From others of their nation, who had been at Philadelphia at a former
period, they had probably learned the exact direction of that city from
their villages, and had never lost sight of it, although they had already
travelled three hundred miles through the woods, and had upwards of four
hundred miles more to go before they could reach the place of their
destination.—Of the exactness with which they can find out a strange
place to which they have been once directed by their own people, a
striking example is furnished, I think, by Mr. Jefferson, in his account
of the Indian graves in Virginia. These graves are nothing more than
large mounds of earth in the woods, which, on being opened, are found
to contain skeletons in an erect posture: the Indian mode of sepulture
has been too often described to remain unknown to you. But to come to my
story. A party of Indians that were passing on to some of the sea-ports
on the Atlantic, just as the Creeks, above mentioned, were going to
Philadelphia, were observed, all on a sudden, to quit the straight road
by which they were proceeding, and without asking any questions, to
strike through the woods, in a direct line, to one of these graves, which
lay at the distance of some miles from the road. Now very near a century
must have passed over since the part of Virginia, in which this grave was
situated, had been inhabited by Indians, and these Indian travellers, who
were to visit it by themselves, had unquestionably never been in that
part of the country before: they must have found their way to it simply
from the description of its situation, that had been handed down to them
by tradition.”—Weld’s _Travels in North America_, vol. ii.
PART III.
NOTE TO PAGE 65.
_The Mammoth comes._
That I am justified in making the Indian chief allude to the mammoth as
an emblem of terror and destruction, will be seen by the authority quoted
below. Speaking of the mammoth, or big buffalo, Mr. Jefferson states,
that a tradition is preserved among the Indians of that animal still
existing in the northern parts of America:—
“A delegation of warriors from the Delaware tribe having visited the
governor of Virginia during the revolution, on matters of business,
the governor asked them some questions relative to their country, and,
among others, what they knew or had heard of the animal whose bones were
found at the Salt-licks, on the Ohio. Their chief speaker immediately
put himself into an attitude of oratory, and with a pomp suited to what
he conceived the elevation of his subject, informed him, that it was a
tradition handed down from their fathers, that in ancient times a herd
of these tremendous animals came to the Bick-bone-licks, and began a
universal destruction of the bear, deer, elk, buffalo, and other animals
which had been created for the use of the Indians. That the Great Man
above looking down and seeing this, was so enraged, that he seized his
lightning, descended on the earth, seated himself on a neighbouring
mountain, on a rock, of which his seat and the prints of his feet are
still to be seen, and hurled his bolts among them, till the whole were
slaughtered, except the big bull, who, presenting his forehead to the
shafts, shook them off as they fell, but missing one, at length it
wounded him in the side, whereon, springing round, he bounded over the
Ohio, over the Wabash, the Illinois, and finally over the great lakes,
where he is living at this day.”—Jefferson’s _Notes on Virginia_.
NOTE TO PAGE 65.
_Scorning to wield the hatchet for his bribe,_
_’Gainst Brandt himself I went to battle forth._
I took the character of Brandt in the poem of “Gertrude” from the common
Histories of England, all of which represented him as a bloody and bad
man (even among savages), and chief agent in the horrible desolation of
Wyoming. Some years after this poem appeared, the son of Brandt, a most
interesting and intelligent youth, came over to England, and I formed
an acquaintance with him, on which I still look back with pleasure. He
appealed to my sense of honour and justice, on his own part and on that
of his sister, to retract the unfair aspersions which, unconscious of its
unfairness, I had cast on his father’s memory.
He then referred me to documents which completely satisfied me that the
common accounts of Brandt’s cruelties at Wyoming, which I had found in
books of Travels and in Adolphus’s and similar Histories of England, were
gross errors, and that, in point of fact, Brandt was not even present at
that scene of desolation.
It is, unhappily, to Britons and Anglo-Americans that we must refer the
chief blame in this horrible business. I published a letter expressing
this belief in the _New Monthly Magazine_, in the year 1822, to which
I must refer the reader—if he has any curiosity on the subject—for an
antidote to my fanciful description of Brandt. Among other expressions to
young Brandt, I made use of the following words:—“Had I learnt all this
of your father when I was writing my poem, he should not have figured in
it as the hero of mischief.” It was but bare justice to say thus much of
a Mohawk Indian, who spoke English eloquently, and was thought capable
of having written a history of the Six Nations. I ascertained also that
he often strove to mitigate the cruelty of Indian warfare. The name of
Brandt, therefore, remains in my poem a pure and declared character of
fiction.
NOTE TO PAGE 65.
_To whom nor relative nor blood remains._
_No!—not a kindred drop that runs in human veins!_
Every one who recollects the specimen of Indian eloquence given in
the speech of Logan, a Mingo chief, to the Governor of Virginia, will
perceive that I have attempted to paraphrase its concluding and most
striking expression:—“There runs not a drop of my blood in the veins of
any living creature.” The similar salutation of the fictitious personage
in my story, and the real Indian orator, makes it surely allowable to
borrow such an expression; and if it appears, as it cannot but appear,
to less advantage than in the original, I beg the reader to reflect
how difficult it is to transpose such exquisitely simple words without
sacrificing a portion of their effect.
In the spring of 1774, a robbery and murder were committed on an
inhabitant of the frontiers of Virginia, by two Indians of the Shawanee
tribe. The neighbouring whites, according to their custom, undertook to
punish this outrage in a summary manner. Colonel Cresap, a man infamous
for the many murders he had committed on those much injured people,
collected a party and proceeded down the Kanaway in quest of vengeance;
unfortunately a canoe with women and children, with one man only, was
seen coming from the opposite shore unarmed, and unsuspecting an attack
from the whites. Cresap and his party concealed themselves on the bank
of the river, and the moment the canoe reached the shore, singled out
their objects, and at one fire killed every person in it. This happened
to be the family of Logan, who had long been distinguished as a friend to
the whites. This unworthy return provoked his vengeance; he accordingly
signalised himself in the war which ensued. In the autumn of the same
year a decisive battle was fought at the mouth of the great Kanaway, in
which the collected forces of the Shawanees, Mingoes, and Delawares,
were defeated by a detachment of the Virginian militia. The Indians sued
for peace. Logan, however, disdained to be seen among the suppliants;
but lest the sincerity of a treaty should be disturbed, from which so
distinguished a chief abstracted himself, he sent, by a messenger, the
following speech to be delivered to Lord Dunmore:—
“I appeal to any white man if ever he entered Logan’s cabin hungry, and
he gave him not to eat; if ever he came cold and hungry, and he clothed
him not. During the course of the last long and bloody war Logan
remained idle in his cabin, an advocate for peace. Such was my love for
the whites, that my countrymen pointed as they passed, and said, ‘Logan
is the friend of white men.’ I have even thought to have lived with you
but for the injuries of one man. Colonel Cresap, the last spring, in cold
blood, murdered all the relations of Logan, even my women and children.
“There runs not a drop of my blood in the veins of any living
creature:—this called on me for revenge. I have fought for it. I have
killed many. I have fully glutted my vengeance.—For my country I rejoice
at the beams of peace;—but do not harbour a thought that mine is the joy
of fear. Logan never felt fear. He will not turn on his heel to save his
life.—Who is there to mourn for Logan? not one!”—Jefferson’s _Notes on
Virginia_.
NOTES TO O’CONNOR’S CHILD.
NOTE TO PAGE 77.
_Their tribe, they said, their high degree,_
_Was sung in Tara’s psaltery._
The pride of the Irish in ancestry was so great, that one of the O’Neals
being told that Barrett of Castlemone had been there only 400 years, he
replied,—that he hated the clown as if he had come there but yesterday.
Tara was the place of assemblage and feasting of the petty princes of
Ireland. Very splendid and fabulous descriptions are given by the Irish
historians of the pomp and luxury of those meetings. The psaltery of Tara
was the grand national register of Ireland. The grand epoch of political
eminence in the early history of the Irish is the reign of their great
and favourite monarch Ollam Fodlah, who reigned, according to Keating,
about 950 years before the Christian era. Under him was instituted the
great Fes at Tara, which it is pretended was a triennial convention of
the states, or a parliament; the members of which were the Druids, and
other learned men who represented the people in that assembly. Very
minute accounts are given by Irish annalists of the magnificence and
order of these entertainments; from which, if credible, we might collect
the earliest traces of heraldry that occur in history. To preserve order
and regularity in the great number and variety of the members who met
on such occasions, the Irish historians inform us that when the banquet
was ready to be served up, the shield-bearers of the princes, and other
members of the convention, delivered in their shields and targets, which
were readily distinguished by the coats of arms emblazoned upon them.
These were arranged by the grand marshal and principal herald, and hung
upon the walls on the right side of the table; and upon entering the
apartments, each member took his seat under his respective shield or
target, without the slightest disturbance. The concluding days of the
meeting, it is allowed by the Irish antiquaries, were spent in very free
excess of conviviality; but the first six, they say, were devoted to
the examination and settlement of the annals of the kingdom. These were
publicly rehearsed. When they had passed the approbation of the assembly,
they were transcribed into the authentic chronicles of the nation, which
was called the Register, or Psalter of Tara.
Colonel Vallancy gives a translation of an old Irish fragment, found in
Trinity College, Dublin, in which the palace of the above assembly is
thus described as it existed in the reign of Cormac:—
“In the reign of Cormac, the palace of Tara was nine hundred feet
square; the diameter of the surrounding rath, seven dice or casts of a
dart; it contained one hundred and fifty apartments; one hundred and
fifty dormitories, or sleeping-rooms for guards, and sixty men in each:
the height was twenty-seven cubits; there were one hundred and fifty
common drinking-horns, twelve doors, and one thousand guests daily,
besides princes, orators, and men of science, engravers of gold and
silver, carvers, modelers, and nobles.” The Irish description of the
banqueting-hall is thus translated: “Twelve stalls or divisions in each
wing; sixteen attendants on each side, and two to each table; one hundred
guests in all.”
NOTE TO PAGE 78.
_And stemmed De Bourgo’s chivalry._
The house of O’Connor had a right to boast of their victories over the
English. It was a chief of the O’Connor race who gave a check to the
English champion De Courcy, so famous for his personal strength, and
for cleaving a helmet at one blow of his sword, in the presence of the
kings of France and England, when the French champion declined the combat
with him. Though ultimately conquered by the English under De Bourgo,
the O’Connors had also humbled the pride of that name on a memorable
occasion: viz., when Walter De Bourgo, an ancestor of that De Bourgo who
won the battle of Athunree, had become so insolent as to make excessive
demands upon the territories of Connaught, and to bid defiance to all
the rights and properties reserved by the Irish chiefs, Aeth O’Connor, a
near descendant of the famous Cathal, surnamed of the bloody hand, rose
against the usurper, and defeated the English so severely, that their
general died of chagrin after the battle.
NOTE TO PAGE 78.
_Or beal-fires for your jubilee._
The month of May is to this day called “Mi Beal tiennie,” _i.e._, the
month of Beal’s fire, in the original language of Ireland, and hence I
believe the name of the Beltan festival in the Highlands. These fires
were lighted on the summits of mountains (the Irish antiquaries say) in
honour of the sun; and are supposed, by those conjecturing gentlemen,
to prove the origin of the Irish from some nation who worshipped Baal
or Belus. Many hills in Ireland still retain the name of “Cnoc Greine,”
_i.e._, the hill of the sun; and on all are to be seen the ruins of
druidical altars.
NOTE TO PAGE 78.
_And play my clarshech by thy side._
The clarshech, or harp, the principal musical instrument of the Hibernian
bards, does not appear to be of Irish origin, nor indigenous to any of
the British islands.—The Britons undoubtedly were not acquainted with
it during the residence of the Romans in their country, as in all their
coins, on which musical instruments are represented, we see only the
Roman lyre, and not the British Teylin, or harp.
NOTE TO PAGE 79.
_And saw at dawn the lofty bawn._
“Bawn,” from the Teutonic “Bawen”—to construct and secure with branches
of trees, was so called because the primitive Celtic fortification was
made by digging a ditch, throwing up a rampart, and on the latter fixing
stakes, which were interlaced with boughs of trees. This word is used by
Spenser; but it is inaccurately called by Mr. Todd, his annotator, an
eminence.
NOTE TO PAGE 81.
_To speak the malison of heaven._
If the wrath which I have ascribed to the heroine of this little
piece should seem to exhibit her character as too unnaturally stript
of patriotic and domestic affections, I must beg leave to plead the
authority of Corneille in the representation of a similar passion: I
allude to the denunciation of Camilla, in the tragedy of Horace. When
Horace, accompanied by a soldier bearing the three swords of the Curiatii
meets his sister, and invites her to congratulate him on his victory,
she expresses only her grief, which he attributes at first only to her
feelings for the loss of her two brothers; but when she bursts forth into
reproaches against him as the murderer of her lover, the last of the
Curiatii, he exclaims:—
“O Ciel! qui vit jamais une pareille rage:
Crois-tu donc que je sois insensible à l’outrage,
Que je souffre en mon sang ce mortel déshonneur!
Aime, Aime cette mort qui fait notre bonheur.
Et préfère du moins au souvenir d’un homme
Ce que doit ta naissance aux intérêts de Rome.”
At the mention of Rome, Camille breaks out into this apostrophe:—
“Rome, l’unique objet de mon ressentiment!
Rome, à qui vient ton bras d’immoler mon amant!
Rome, qui t’a vu naître et que ton cœur adore!
Rome, enfin, que je haïs, parce qu’elle t’honore!
Puissent tous ses voisins, ensemble conjurés,
Sapper ses fondemens encore mal assurés;
Et, si ce n’est assez de toute l’Italie,
Que l’Orient, contre elle, à l’Occident s’allie!
Que cent peuples unis, des bouts de l’univers
Passent, pour la détruire, et les monts et les mers;
Qu’elle-même sur soi renverse ses murailles,
Et de ses propres mains déchire ses entrailles;
Que le courroux du Ciel, allumé par mes vœux,
Fasse pleuvoir sur elle un déluge de feux!
Puissai-je de mes yeux y voir tomber ce foudre,
Voir ses maisons en cendre, et tes lauriers en poudre;
Voir le dernier Romain à son dernier soupir,
Moi seule en être cause, et mourir de plaisir!”
NOTE TO PAGE 81.
_“And go to Athunree!” I cried._
In the reign of Edward the Second, the Irish presented to Pope John
the Twenty-second a memorial of their sufferings under the English, of
which the language exhibits all the strength of despair:—“Ever since the
English,” say they, “first appeared upon our coasts, they entered our
territories under a certain specious pretence of charity, and external
hypocritical show of religion, endeavouring at the same time, by every
artifice malice could suggest, to extirpate us root and branch, and
without any other right than that of the strongest; they have so far
succeeded by base fraudulence, and cunning, that they have forced us
to quit our fair and ample habitations and inheritances, and to take
refuge like wild beasts in the mountains, the woods, and the morasses
of the country;—nor even can the caverns and dens protect us against
their insatiable avarice. They pursue us even into these frightful
abodes; endeavouring to dispossess us of the wild uncultivated rocks, and
arrogate to themselves the PROPERTY OF EVERY PLACE on which we can stamp
the figure of our feet.”
The greatest effort ever made by the ancient Irish to regain their
native independence, was made at the time when they called over the
brother of Robert Bruce from Scotland. William de Bourgo, brother to the
Earl of Ulster, and Richard de Bermingham, were sent against the main
body of the native insurgents, who were headed rather than commanded by
Felim O’Connor. The important battle, which decided the subjection of
Ireland, took place on the 10th of August, 1315. It was the bloodiest
that ever was fought between the two nations, and continued throughout
the whole day, from the rising to the setting sun. The Irish fought with
inferior discipline, but with great enthusiasm. They lost ten thousand
men, among whom were twenty-nine chiefs of Connaught. Tradition states
that after this terrible day, the O’Connor family, like the Fabian, were
so nearly exterminated, that throughout all Connaught not one of the name
remained, except Felim’s brother, who was capable of bearing arms.
NOTES TO THEODRIC.
NOTE TO PAGE 85.
_That gave the glacier tops their richest glow._
The sight of the glaciers of Switzerland, I am told, has often
disappointed travellers who had perused the accounts of their splendour
and sublimity given by Bourrit and other describers of Swiss scenery.
Possibly Bourrit, who had spent his life in an enamoured familiarity with
the beauties of Nature in Switzerland, may have leaned to the romantic
side of description. One can pardon a man for a sort of idolatry of
those imposing objects of Nature which heighten our ideas of the bounty
of Nature or Providence, when we reflect that the glaciers—those seas
of ice—are not only sublime, but useful: they are the inexhaustible
reservoirs which supply the principal rivers of Europe; and their annual
melting is in proportion to the summer heat which dries up those rivers
and makes them need that supply.
That the picturesque grandeur of the glaciers should sometimes disappoint
the traveller, will not seem surprising to any one who has been much in
a mountainous country, and recollects that the beauty of Nature in such
countries is not only variable, but capriciously dependent on the weather
and sunshine. There are about four hundred different glaciers,[106]
according to the computation of M. Bourrit, between Mont Blanc and the
frontiers of the Tyrol. The full effect of the most lofty and picturesque
of them can, of course, only be produced by the richest and warmest
light of the atmosphere; and the very heat which illuminates them must
have a changing influence on many of their appearances. I imagine it
is owing to this circumstance, namely, the casualty and changeableness
of the appearance of some of the glaciers, that the impressions made
by them on the minds of other and more transient travellers have been
less enchanting than those described by M. Bourrit. On one occasion M.
Bourrit seems even to speak of a past phenomenon, and certainly one
which no other spectator attests in the same terms, when he says that
there once existed between the Kandel Steig and Lauterbrun, “a passage
amidst singular glaciers, sometimes resembling magical towns of ice, with
pilasters, pyramids, columns, and obelisks, reflecting to the sun the
most brilliant hues of the finest gems.”
M. Bourrit’s description of the Glacier of the Rhone is quite
enchanting:—“To form an idea,” he says, “of this superb spectacle, figure
in your mind a scaffolding of transparent ice, filling a space of two
miles, rising to the clouds, and darting flashes of light like the sun.
Nor were the several parts less magnificent and surprising. One might
see, as it were, the streets and buildings of a city, erected in the
form of an amphitheatre, and embellished with pieces of water, cascades,
and torrents. The effects were as prodigious as the immensity and the
height;—the most beautiful azure—the most splendid white—the regular
appearance of a thousand pyramids of ice, are more easy to be imagined
than described.”—Bourrit, iii. 163.
[106] Occupying, if taken together, a surface of 130 square leagues.
NOTE TO PAGE 85.
_From heights browsed by the bounding bouquetin._
Laborde, in his “Tableau de la Suisse,” gives a curious account of this
animal, the wild sharp cry and elastic movements of which must heighten
the picturesque appearance of its haunts:—“Nature,” says Laborde, “has
destined it to mountains covered with snow: if it is not exposed to keen
cold, it becomes blind. Its agility in leaping much surpasses that of the
chamois, and would appear incredible to those who have not seen it. There
is not a mountain so high or steep to which it will not trust itself,
provided it has room to place its feet; it can scramble along the highest
wall, if its surface be rugged.”
NOTE TO PAGE 85.
_Enamelled Moss._
The moss of Switzerland, as well as that of the Tyrol, is remarkable for
a bright smoothness approaching to the appearance of enamel.
NOTE TO PAGE 88.
_How dear seemed e’en the waste and wild Shreckhorn._
The “Schreckhorn” means in German, the _Peak of Terror_.
NOTE TO PAGE 88.
_Blindfold his native hills he could have known!_
I have here availed myself of a striking expression of the Emperor
Napoleon respecting his recollections of Corsica, which is recorded in
Las Cases’s “History of the Emperor’s Abode at St. Helena.”
NOTES TO LOCHIEL.
NOTE TO PAGE 103.
Lochiel, the chief of the warlike clan of the Camerons, and descended
from ancestors distinguished in their narrow sphere for great personal
prowess, was a man worthy of a better cause and fate than that in which
he embarked,—the enterprise of the Stuarts in 1745. His memory is still
fondly cherished among the Highlanders, by the appellation of the
“_gentle Lochiel_;” for he was famed for his social virtues as much as
his martial and magnanimous (though mistaken) loyalty. His influence was
so important among the Highland chiefs that it depended on his joining
with his clan whether the standard of Charles should be raised or not in
1745. Lochiel was himself too wise a man to be blind to the consequences
of so hopeless an enterprise, but his sensibility to the point of honour
overruled his wisdom. Charles appealed to his loyalty, and he could not
brook the reproaches of his Prince. When Charles landed at Borrodale,
Lochiel went to meet him, but on his way, called at his brother’s house
(Cameron of Fassafern), and told him on what errand he was going; adding,
however, that he meant to dissuade the Prince from his enterprise.
Fassafern advised him in that case to communicate his mind by letter to
Charles. “No,” said Lochiel, “I think it due to my Prince to give him my
reasons in person for refusing to join his standard.”—“Brother,” replied
Fassafern, “I know you better than you know yourself: if the Prince
once sets his eyes on you, he will make you do what he pleases.” The
interview accordingly took place; and Lochiel, with many arguments, but
in vain, pressed the Pretender to return to France, and reserve himself
and his friends for a more favourable occasion, as he had come, by his
own acknowledgment, without arms, or money, or adherents: or, at all
events, to remain concealed till his friends should meet and deliberate
what was best to be done. Charles, whose mind was wound up to the utmost
impatience, paid no regard to this proposal, but answered, “that he was
determined to put all to the hazard.” “In a few days,” said he, “I will
erect the royal standard, and proclaim to the people of Great Britain
that Charles Stuart is come over to claim the crown of his ancestors, and
to win it, or perish in the attempt. Lochiel, who my father has often
told me was our firmest friend, may stay at home, and learn from the
newspapers the fate of his Prince.”—“No,” said Lochiel, “I will share
the fate of my Prince, and so shall every man over whom nature or fortune
hath given me any power.”
The other chieftains who followed Charles embraced his cause with no
better hopes. It engages our sympathy most strongly in their behalf, that
no motive, but their fear to be reproached with cowardice or disloyalty,
impelled them to the hopeless adventure. Of this we have an example
in the interview of Prince Charles with Clanronald, another leading
chieftain in the rebel army.
“Charles,” says Home, “almost reduced to despair, in his discourse with
Boisdale, addressed the two Highlanders with great emotion, and, summing
up his arguments for taking arms, conjured them to assist their Prince,
their countryman, in his utmost need. Clanronald and his friend, though
well inclined to the cause, positively refused, and told him that to
take up arms without concert or support was to pull down certain ruin on
their own heads. Charles persisted, argued, and implored. During this
conversation (they were on shipboard) the parties walked backward and
forward on the deck; a Highlander stood near them, armed at all points,
as was then the fashion of his country. He was a younger brother of
Kinloch Moidart, and had come off to the ship to enquire for news, not
knowing who was aboard. When he gathered from their discourse that the
stranger was the Prince of Wales; when he heard his chief and his brother
refuse to take arms with their Prince; his colour went and came, his eyes
sparkled, he shifted his place, and grasped his sword. Charles observed
his demeanour, and turning briskly to him, called out, ‘Will you assist
me?’—‘I will, I will,’ said Ronald: ‘though no other man in the Highlands
should draw a sword, I am ready to die for you!’ Charles, with a
profusion of thanks to his champion, said, he wished all the Highlanders
were like him. Without farther deliberation, the two Macdonalds declared
that they would also join, and use their utmost endeavours to engage
their countrymen to take arms.”—Home’s _History of the Rebellion of 1745_.
* * * * *
An account of the second sight, in Irish called “Taish,” is thus given in
Martin’s “Description of the Western Isles of Scotland,” p. 3-11:—
“The second sight is a singular faculty of seeing an otherwise invisible
object, without any previous means used by the person who sees it for
that end. The vision makes such a lively impression upon the seers, that
they neither see nor think of anything else except the vision as long as
it continues; and then they appear pensive or jovial according to the
object which was represented to them.
“At the sight of a vision the eyelids of the person are erected, and
the eyes continue staring until the object vanish. This is obvious to
others who are standing by when the persons happen to see a vision; and
occurred more than once to my own observation, and to others that were
with me.
“There is one in Skye, of whom his acquaintance observed, that when he
sees a vision the inner parts of his eyelids turn so far upwards, that,
after the object disappears, he must draw them down with his fingers, and
sometimes employs others to draw them down, which he finds to be much the
easier way.
“This faculty of the second sight does not lineally descend in a family,
as some have imagined; for I know several parents who are endowed
with it, and their children are not; and _vice versa_. Neither is it
acquired by any previous compact. And after strict enquiry, I could
never learn from any among them, that this faculty was communicable to
any whatsoever. The seer knows neither the object, time, nor place of a
vision before it appears; and the same object is often seen by different
persons living at a considerable distance from one another. The true
way of judging as to the time and circumstances is by observation; for
several persons of judgment who are without this faculty are more capable
to judge of the design of a vision than a novice that is a seer. If an
object appears in the day or night, it will come to pass sooner or later
accordingly.
“If an object is seen early in a morning, which is not frequent, it will
be accomplished in a few hours afterwards; if at noon it will probably
be accomplished that very day; if in the evening perhaps that night; if
after candles be lighted, it will be accomplished that night; the latter
always an accomplishment by weeks, months, and sometimes years, according
to the time of the night the vision is seen.
“When a shroud is seen about one, it is a sure prognostic of death. The
time is judged according to the height of it about the person; for if
it is not seen above the middle, death is not to be expected for the
space of a year, and perhaps some months longer: and as it is frequently
seen to ascend higher towards the head, death is concluded to be at hand
within a few days, if not hours, as daily experience confirms. Examples
of this kind were shown me, when the person of whom the observations were
then made was in perfect health.
“It is ordinary with them to see houses, gardens, and trees in
places void of all these, and this in process of time is wont to be
accomplished; as at Mogslot, in the Isle of Skye, where there were but a
few sorry low houses thatched with straw; yet in a few years the vision,
which appeared often, was accomplished by the building of several good
houses in the very spot represented to the seers, and by the planting of
orchards there.
“To see a spark of fire is a forerunner of a dead child, to be seen in
the arms of those persons; of which there are several instances. To see a
seat empty at the time of sitting in it, is a presage of that person’s
death quickly after it.
“When a novice, or one that has lately obtained the second sight, sees
a vision in the night-time without doors, and comes near a fire he
presently falls into a swoon.
“Some find themselves as it were in a crowd of people, having a corpse,
which they carry along with them; and after such visions the seers come
in sweating, and describe the vision that appeared. If there be any of
their acquaintance among them, they give an account of their names, as
also of the bearers; but they know nothing concerning the corpse.”
Horses and cows (according to the same credulous author) have certainly
sometimes the same faculty; and he endeavours to prove it by the signs of
fear which the animals exhibit when second-sighted persons see visions in
the same place.
“The seers,” he continues, “are generally illiterate and well-meaning
people and altogether void of design: nor could I ever learn that any
of them ever made the least gain by it; neither is it reputable among
them to have that faculty. Besides, the people of the Isles are not
so credulous as to believe implicitly before the thing predicted is
accomplished; but when it is actually accomplished afterwards, it is not
in their power to deny it, without offering violence to their own sense
and reason. Besides, if the seers were deceivers, can it be reasonable
to imagine that all the islanders who have not the second sight should
combine together, and offer violence to their understandings and
senses, to enforce themselves to believe a lie from age to age? There
are several persons among them whose title and education raise them
above the suspicion of concurring with an impostor, merely to gratify
an illiterate, contemptible set of persons; nor can reasonable persons
believe that children, horses, and cows, should be pre-engaged in a
combination in favour of second sight.”
THE END.
MORRISON AND GIBB, PRINTERS, EDINBURGH.
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