But, hark! a rap comes gently to the door;

Jenny, wha kens the meaning o' the same,

Tells how a neibor lad came o'er the moor,

To do some errands, and convoy her hame.

The wily mother sees the conscious flame

Sparkle in Jenny's e'e, and flush her cheek;

Wi' heart-struck anxious care inquires his name,

While Jenny hafflins is afraid to speak;

Weel pleased the mother hears, it's nae wild worthless rake.

Wi' kindly welcome Jenny brings him ben;{15}

A strappin' youth; he takes the mother's eye;

Blythe Jenny sees the visit's no ill ta'en;

The father cracks of horses, pleughs, and kye.{16}

The youngster's artless heart o'erflows wi' joy,

But, blate and lathefu', scarce can weel behave;

The mother, wi' a woman's wiles, can spy

What makes the youth sae bashfu' an' sae grave;

Weel pleased to think her bairn's respected like the lave.

O happy love! where love like this is found!

O heart-felt raptures! bliss beyond compare!

I've paced much this weary, mortal round,

And sage experience bids me this declare:--

If Heaven a draught of heavenly pleasure spare,

One cordial in this melancholy vale,

'Tis when a youthful, loving, modest pair,

In other's arms breathe out the tender tale,

Beneath the milk-white thorn that scents the evening gale!

Is there, in human form, that bears a heart,

A wretch, a villain, lost to love and truth,

That can, with studied, sly, ensnaring art,

Betray sweet Jenny's unsuspecting youth?

Curse on his perjured arts! dissembling smooth!

Are honor, virtue, conscience, all exiled?

Is there no pity, no relenting ruth,

Points to the parents fondling o'er their child?

Then paints the ruined maid, and their distraction wild!

But now the supper crowns their simple board,--

The halesome parritch, chief o' Scotia's food:

The sowpe their only hawkie{17} does afford,

That 'yont the hallan snugly chows her cood;

The dame brings forth in complimental mood,

To grace the lad, her weel-hained kebbuck, fell,

An' aft he's prest, an' aft he ca's it guid;

The frugal wifie, garrulous, will tell

How 'twas a towmond auld, sin' lint was i' the bell.{18}

The cheerfu' supper done, wi' serious face,

They, round the ingle, form a circle wide;

The sire turns o'er, wi' patriarchal grace,

The big ha'-Bible,{19} ance his father's pride;

His bonnet{20} rev'rently is laid aside,

His lyart haffets wearing thin an' bare;

Those strains that once did sweet in Zion glide,

He wales a portion with judicious care;

And "Let us worship God!" he says, with solemn air.

They chant their artless notes in simple guise;

They tune their hearts, by far the noblest aim:

Perhaps "Dundee's" wild warbling measures rise,

Or plaintive "Martyrs," worthy of the name,

Or noble "Elgin" beets{21} the heavenward flame,

The sweetest far of Scotia's holy lays:

Compared with these, Italian trills are tame,

The tickled ears no heart-felt raptures raise;

Nae unison hae they with our Creator's praise.

The priest-like father reads the sacred page,

How Abram was the friend of God on high;

Or Moses bade eternal warfare wage

With Amalek's ungracious progeny;

Or how the royal bard did groaning lie

Beneath the stroke of Heaven's avenging ire;

Or Job's pathetic plaint, and wailing cry;

Or rapt Isaiah's wild, seraphic fire;

Or other holy seers that tune the sacred lyre.

Perhaps the Christian volume is the theme,

How guiltless blood for guilty man was shed;

How He, who bore in Heaven the second name,

Had not on earth whereon to lay His head:

How His first followers and servants sped;

The precepts sage they wrote to many a land:

How he, who lone in Patmos banished,

Saw in the sun a mighty angel stand;

And heard great Babylon's doom pronounced by Heaven's command.

Then kneeling down, to Heaven's Eternal King,

The saint, the father, and the husband prays:

Hope "springs exulting on triumphant wing,"{22}

That thus they all shall meet in future days:

There ever bask in uncreated rays,

No more to sigh, or shed the bitter tear,

Together hymning their Creator's praise,

In such society, yet still more dear;

While circling time moves round in an eternal sphere.

Compared with this, how poor Religion's pride,

In all the pomp of method and of art,

When men display to congregations wide

Devotion's every grace, except the heart!

The Power, incensed, the pageant will desert,

The pompous strain, the sacerdotal stole{23};

But, haply, in some cottage far apart,

May hear, well pleased, the language of the soul;

And in His book of life the inmates poor enroll.

Then homeward all take off their several way;

The youngling cottagers retire to rest:

The parent-pair their secret homage pay,

And proffer up to Heaven the warm request,

That He, who stills the raven's clamorous nest,

And decks the lily fair in flowery pride,

Would, in the way His wisdom sees the best,

For them and for their little ones provide;

But, chiefly, in their hearts with grace divine preside.

From scenes like these old Scotia's grandeur springs,

That makes her loved at home, revered abroad:

Princes and lords are but the breath of kings;

"An honest man's the noblest work of God:"{24}

And certes, in fair virtue's heavenly road,

The cottage leaves the palace far behind;

What is a lordling's pomp?--a cumbrous load,

Disguising oft the wretch of human kind,

Studied in arts of hell, in wickedness refined!

O Scotia! my dear, my native soil!

For whom my warmest wish to Heaven is sent,

Long may thy hardy sons of rustic toil

Be blest with health, and peace, and sweet content!

And, oh, may Heaven their simple lives prevent

From luxury's contagion, weak and vile!

Then, howe'er crowns and coronets be rent,

A virtuous populace may rise the while,

And stand a wall of fire around their much-loved isle.

O Thou! who poured the patriotic tide

That streamed thro' Wallace's{25} undaunted heart,

Who dared to nobly stem tyrannic pride,

Or nobly die, the second glorious part,

(The patriot's God peculiarly Thou art,

His friend, inspirer, guardian, and reward!)

O never, never, Scotia's realm desert;

But still the patriot, and the patriot-bard,

In bright succession raise, her ornament and guard!

NOTES.

This poem, composed in 1785, is written partly in the Scottish dialect,

partly in English. The livelier passages are in the poet's vernacular;

the loftier or more solemn parts in the language of books. This

distinction was doubtless made because Burns disliked to treat his

higher themes in a merely colloquial manner, fearing to belittle them by

so doing. The household described was probably that of the poet's own

father; it was at least a typical Scotch peasant's household, with which

no one was more familiar. Gilbert Burns, in a letter to Dr. Currie,

says: "Although the 'Cotter' in the Saturday Night, is an exact copy of

my father in his manners, his family devotions, and exhortations, yet

the other parts of the description do not apply to our family. None of

us ever went 'At service out amang the neibors roun'.' Instead of our

depositing our 'sair-won penny-fee' with our parents, my father labored

hard, and lived with the most rigid economy, that he might be able to

keep his children at home."

The influence of Gray and Goldsmith is very apparent in more than one

passage in this poem.

"Robert had frequently remarked to me," said his brother, "that there

was something particularly venerable in the phrase, 'Let us worship

God,' used by a decent, sober head of a family introducing family

worship. To this sentiment of the author, the world is indebted for 'The

Cotter's Saturday Night.' The hint of the plan and title of the poem is

taken from Ferguson's 'Farmer's Ingle.'"

1. =Cotter.= "One who inhabits a cot, or cottage, dependent on a

farm."--_Jamieson._

2. =R. Aiken.= A friend with whom Burns had been brought into contact

during the Old and New Light Controversy.

3. See Gray's "Elegy in a Country Churchyard," eighth stanza.

4. =lays.= Songs; probably from the same root as the German _lied_. The

word was originally applied to a form of elegiac French poetry, much

imitated by the English.

5. =train.= A favorite word with the poets at this time. Goldsmith uses it

no fewer than six times in the "Deserted Village." The original meaning

is something drawn along; from Lat. _traho_, to draw.

6. =sugh.= Also spelled _sough_. Whistling sound, murmur. Derived from the

same root as sigh, for which word it is used by Burns in his lines, "On

the Battle of Sherriffmuir":

"My heart for fear gae sough for sough

To hear the thuds," etc.

7. Compare with Gray's "Elegy," line 3:

"The ploughman homeward plods his weary way."

8. Toil was perhaps pronounced _tile_, thus properly rhyming with

_beguile_. Johnson, in "London," says:

"On all thy hours security shall smile,

And bless thine evening walk and morning toil."

9. =bairns.= From A.-S. _bearns_, children.

10. =ca'.= Drive, follow. Probably not from the same root as our common

word _call_. Kingsley uses it in this sense in the line:

"Go, Mary, go, and call the cattle home."

11. =neibor.= Neighboring. Milton, in "Comus," uses the expressions: "Some

neighbor woodman," "some neighbor villager"; and Shakespeare says: "A

neighbor thicket" ("Love's Labour Lost"), and "neighbor room"

("Hamlet").

12. =deposit.= Pronounced here _dep´o-zit_.

13. =penny-fee.= Fee, wages, from A.-S. _feoh_, cattle. "Cattle," says

Bosworth, "was the first kind of property; and, by bartering, this word

came to signify money in general." So, too, the word _penny_ is from

A.-S. _penig_, Icelandic _peningr_, cattle. The word _penny_, as in this

country the word _dollar_, is used indefinitely for _money_.

14. Observe that in quoting the words of the Cotter the poet partially

drops the Ayrshire dialect and uses a purer English.

15. =ben.= Within. The inner part of the house; from O. E. _binnan_,

within. Its opposite is _but_, the outside of the house.

16. =kye.= Cattle, from O.-E. _cu_, or _kie_. _Kine_ is derived from the

same root, and probably _cow_.

17. =hawkie.= This word, says Hales, "denotes, properly, a cow with a

white face. So, in Northumberland, _bawsand_ was used of an animal with

a white spot on its forehead, and _crummie_ of a cow with crooked

horns."

18. =sin' lint was i' the bell.= Since flax was in bloom. That is, the

cheese was a year old last flax-blossoming time.

19. =ha'-Bible.= The hall Bible--the Bible kept in the best room.

20. =bonnet.= This word in Scotch denotes a man's head-covering. In early

English it was used in the same sense.

21. =beets.= Feeds,--that is, gives fuel to the flame.

"It warms me, it charms me,

To mention but her name;

It heats me, it beets me,

And sets me a' on flame."

--_Burns's Epistle to Davie, a brother poet._

The word is probably from A.-S. _betan_, to better, to mend; from which,

also, we have the words _beat_, to excel, _better_, _best_, etc.

22. Burns refers the reader to Pope's "Windsor Forest" for this

quotation. He probably had in mind the line in the "Essay on Man":

"Hope springs eternal in the human breast."

23. =sacerdotal stole.= A long, narrow scarf with fringed ends, and

richly embroidered, worn by the clergy upon special occasions.

=Sacerdotal=, from Lat. _sacerdos_, a priest. =Stole=, from Lat. _stola_, a

long dress worn by Roman women over their tunic and fastened with a

girdle.

24. Pope's "Essay on Man," Epistle iv, line 247.

25. William Wallace (1270-1305), the Scotch national hero was, like

Burns, a native of Ayrshire.

VOCABULARY.

=aft=, often.

=amaist=, almost.

=amang=, among.

=ance=, once.

=auld=, old.

=belyve=, by and by.

=blate=, bashful.

=blinkin=, gleaming.

=blythe=, happy.

=braw=, brave, fine.

=cannie=, easy.

=carking=, fretting.

=certes=, certain.

=chows=, chews.

=claes=, clothes.

=convoy=, accompany.

=cracks=, talks.

=craws=, crows.

=drapping=, dropping.

=eydent=, diligent.

=fell=, tasty.

=flichterin=, fluttering.

=frae=, from.

=gang=, go.

=gars=, makes.

=guid=, good.

=hae=, have.

=haffets=, temples.

=hafflins=, half.

=halesome=, wholesome.

=hallan=, partition wall.

=hameward=, homeward.

=ingle=, fire.

=jauk=, trifle.

=kebbuck=, cheese.

=kens=, understands.

=lathefu'=, shy.

=lave=, the rest.

=lyart=, gray.

=miry=, muddy, dusty.

=moil=, labor.

=nae=, no.

=parritch=, porridge.

=pleugh=, plough.

=rin=, run.

=sair-won=, hard-earned.

=sowpe=, milk.

=spiers=, inquires.

=stacher=, stagger.

=strappin'=, strapping, stout.

=tentie=, attentively.

=towmond=, twelvemonth.

=uncos=, unknown things, new.

=wales=, chooses.

=wee bit=, little.

=weel=, well.

=wee things=, little folks.

=weel-hained=, well-kept.

=wiles=, knowledge.

=wily=, knowing.

=youngling=, youthful.

=younkers=, youngsters, children.

='yont=, on the other side of.

TO A MOUNTAIN DAISY.

ON TURNING ONE DOWN WITH THE PLOUGH, IN APRIL, 1786.

Wee, modest, crimson-tippéd flow'r,

Thou's met me in an evil hour;

For I maun crush amang the stoure

Thy slender stem.

To spare thee now is past my power,

Thou bonnie gem.

Alas! it's no thy neibor sweet,

The bonnie lark, companion meet!

Bending thee 'mang the dewy weet

Wi' spreckled breast,

When upward springing, blythe to greet

The purpling east.

Cauld blew the bitter-biting north

Upon thy early humble birth;

Yet cheerfully thou glinted forth

Amid the storm,

Scarce reared above the parent earth

Thy tender form.

The flaunting flowers our gardens yield,

High sheltering woods an' wa's maun shield;

But thou, beneath the random bield

O' clod or stane,

Adorns the histie stibble-field,

Unseen, alane.

There, in thy scanty mantle clad,

Thy snawie bosom sunward spread,

Thou lifts thy unassuming head

In humble guise:

But now the share uptears thy bed,

And low thou lies!

Such is the fate of artless maid,

Sweet flow'ret of the rural shade!

By love's simplicity betrayed,

And guileless trust,

Till she, like thee, all soiled, is laid

Low i' the dust.

Such is the fate of simple bard,

On life's rough ocean luckless starred!

Unskilful he to note the card

Of prudent lore,

Till billows rage, and gales blow hard,

And whelm him o'er!

Such fate to suffering worth is given,

Who long with wants and woes has striven,

By human pride or cunning driven

To misery's brink,

Till, wrenched of every stay but Heaven,

He, ruined, sink!

Even thou who mourn'st the Daisy's fate,

That fate is thine--no distant date;

Stern Ruin's ploughshare drives, elate,

Full on thy bloom,

Till crushed beneath the furrow's weight,

Shall be thy doom.

VOCABULARY.

=bield=, protection.

=blythe=, happy.

=bonnie=, pretty.

=card=, compass.

=glinted=, passed quickly.

=histie=, barren.

=maun=, must.

=spreckled=, speckled.

=stibble=, stubble.

=stoure=, dust.

=weet=, wetness.

=wrenched=, deprived.

FOR A' THAT, AND A' THAT.

Is there, for honest poverty,

That hangs his head, and a' that?{1}

The coward slave, we pass him by,

We dare be poor for a' that!

For a' that, and a' that,

Our toils obscure, and a' that;

The rank is but the guinea's stamp,{2}

The man's the gowd{3} for a' that!

What though on hamely fare we dine,

Wear hoddin gray, and a' that;

Gie fools their silks, and knaves their wine,

A man's a man for a' that!

For a' that, and a' that,

Their tinsel show, and a' that;

The honest man, though e'er sae poor,

Is king o' men for a' that!

Ye see yon birkie,{4} ca'd a lord,

Wha struts, and stares, and a' that;

Though hundreds worship at his word,

He's but a coof{5} for a' that;

For a' that, and a' that,

His riband, star, and a' that;

The man of independent mind,

He looks and laughs at a' that.

A prince can mak a belted knight,

A marquis, duke, and a' that;

But an honest man's aboon{6} his might,

Guid faith, he maunna fa'{7} that!

For a' that, and a' that,

Their dignities, and a' that;

The pith o' sense, and pride o' worth,

Are higher ranks than a' that!

Then let us pray that come it may--

As come it will for a' that--

That sense and worth, o'er a' the earth,

May bear the gree,{8} and a' that.

For a' that, and a' that,

It's coming yet, for a' that,

That man to man, the warld o'er,

Shall brothers be for a' that!

NOTES.

1. Is there anything in honest poverty to cause one to hang his head,

etc.?

2. Explain lines 7 and 8 fully.

3. =gowd=, gold.

4. =birkie=, fellow.

5. =coof=, fool.

6. =aboon his might=, above his power.

7. =maunna fa'=, may not get.

8. =gree=, palm, supremacy.

"Burns was not only the poet of love, but also of the new excitement

about man. Himself poor, he sang the poor. Neither poverty nor low birth

made a man the worse--the man was 'a man for a' that.'"--_Stopford

Brooke._

BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE.

ROBERT BURNS was born in Ayrshire, Scotland, in 1759. His childhood and

youth were spent in poverty on his father's farm, where he learned to

plough, reap, mow, and thresh in the barn, but where opportunities for

education were such only as Scottish peasants know. In 1784 his father

died, and he attempted to manage a farm of his own at Mossgiel. The

experiment proving to be a failure, he resolved to leave Scotland, and

secured an appointment to a clerkship in Jamaica. Just before the time

set for his departure, he learned of the success of a volume of his

poems which had just been published at Kilmarnock; and, instead of

departing for the West Indies, he made a visit to Edinburgh. He was

welcomed by the best society, and received at once into the literary

circles of the Scottish capital. "His name and fame flashed like

sunshine over the land: the shepherd on the hill, the maiden at her

wheel, learned his songs by heart, and the first scholars of Scotland

courted his acquaintance." A second edition of his poems was published

in 1787, and with the proceeds--about $2500--he took a farm at

Ellisland, in Nithsdale. But his habits were such that he made sad

failure a second time in the experiment of farming; and, after two years

of mismanagement, to eke out his scanty income he accepted an

appointment as exciseman. In 1791, "unfortunately both for his health

and for his reputation," he removed to Dumfries, where, five years

later, he died.

"While the Shakespeares and Miltons roll on like mighty rivers through

the country of Thought, bearing fleets of traffickers and assiduous

pearl-fishers on their waves, this little Valclusa Fountain will also

arrest our eye; for this also is of Nature's own and most cunning

workmanship, bursts from the depths of the earth, with a full gushing

current, into the light of day; and often will the traveller turn aside

to drink of its clear waters, and muse among its rocks and

pines."--_Carlyle._

"Burns is not the poet's poet, which Shelley no doubt meant to be, or

the philosopher's poet, which Wordsworth, in spite of himself, is. He is

the poet of homely human nature, not half so homely or prosaic as it

seems. His genius, in a manner all its own, associates itself with the

fortunes, experiences, memorable moments, of human beings whose

humanity is their sole patrimony; to whom 'liberty and whatever, like

liberty, has the power

To raise a man above the brute,

And mak him ken himsel,'

is their portion in life; for whom the great epochs and

never-to-be-forgotten phases of existence are those which are occasioned

by emotions inseparable from the consciousness of existence. For the

great majority of his readers, and therefore for the mass of human

beings, the sympathy which exists between him and them is sympathy

relative to their strongest and deepest feelings, and this is sympathy

out of which personal affection naturally springs, and in the strength

of which it cannot but grow strong."--_John Service._

"Burns was not like Shakespeare in the range of his genius, but there is

something of the same magnanimity, directness, and unaffected character

about him. With but little of Shakespeare's imagination or inventive

power, he had the same life of mind; within the narrow circle of

personal feeling or domestic incidents, the pulse of his poetry flows as

healthily and vigorously. He had an eye to see, a heart to feel,--no

more. His pictures of good fellowship, of social life, of quaint humor,

are equal to anything; they come up to nature, and they cannot go beyond

it."--_Hazlitt._

"His is that language of the heart

In which the answering heart would speak,

Thought, word, that bids the warm tear start,

Or the smile light the cheek.

"And his that music to whose tone

The common pulse of man keeps time,

In cot or castle's mirth or moan,

In cold or sunny clime."

--_Fitz-Greene Halleck._

=Other Poems to be Read:= Bannockburn; Auld Lang Syne; Tam O' Shanter; To

a Mouse; The Jolly Beggars; Ye Banks and Braes of Bonnie Doon; Highland

Mary; Address to the Deil; To Mary in Heaven.

REFERENCES: Carlyle's Essay on _Robert Burns_; _Burns_ (English Men of

Letters), by J. C. Shairp; Hazlitt's _English Poets_.

William Cowper.

BOADICEA.

When the British warrior queen,

Bleeding from the Roman rods,

Sought, with an indignant mien,

Counsel from her country's gods,

Sage beneath the spreading oak

Sat the Druid, hoary chief;

Every burning word he spoke

Full of rage, and full of grief.

"Princess! if our aged eyes

Weep upon thy matchless wrongs,

'Tis because resentment ties

All the terrors of our tongues.

"Rome shall perish--write that word

In the blood that she has spilt;

Perish, hopeless and abhorr'd,

Deep in ruin as in guilt.

"Rome, for empire far renown'd,

Tramples on a thousand states;

Soon her pride shall kiss the ground,--

Hark, the Gaul is at her gates!

"Other Romans shall arise,

Heedless of a soldier's name;

Sounds, not arms,{1} shall win the prize;

Harmony the path to fame.

"Then the progeny that springs

From the forests of our land,

Arm'd with thunder, clad with wings,{2}

Shall a wider world command.

"Regions Cæsar never knew

Thy posterity shall sway;

Where his eagles never flew

None invincible as they."{3}

Such the bard's prophetic words,

Pregnant with celestial fire,

Bending as he swept the chords

Of his sweet but awful lyre.

She, with all the monarch's pride,

Felt them in her bosom glow,

Rush'd to battle, fought and died;

Dying, hurled them{4} at the foe.

Ruffians, pitiless as proud,

Heaven awards the vengeance due;

Empire is on us bestowed,

Shame and ruin wait for you.{5}

NOTES.

Boadicea was queen of the Iceni, a powerful and warlike tribe of

Britons, about the middle of the first century. Upon the death of her

husband, Prasutagus, her kingdom was seized by the Romans, and she

herself, for some real or imaginary offence, was publicly scourged.

During the absence of the Roman governor from that part of England,

Boadicea raised an immense army, burned the city of London, and put

70,000 Romans to the sword. She afterwards, with 230,000 troops, met the

Roman army, under Suetonius, in the field, and although the Romans could

muster only 10,000 soldiers, the British army was defeated, and the

queen, in despair, ended her own life by taking poison.

In this poem, Cowper represents the queen as, soon after her shameful

treatment by the Romans, seeking counsel from one of the native priests.

The Druid prophesies the destruction of Rome and the future greatness of

Britain.

1. =Sounds, not arms.= Does the poet allude to the cultivation of oratory

and poetry among the Romans and the neglect of military affairs?

2. =Arm'd with thunder, clad with wings.= What do these expressions mean?

To what do they refer?

3. Explain the prophecy included in this stanza.

4. =hurled them.= Hurled what?

5. This stanza, evidently a part of the imprecation which Boadicea

"hurled" at her enemies, ought to be enclosed with quotation marks, but

in most versions of the poem it appears without them.

ON THE RECEIPT OF MY MOTHER'S PICTURE.

Oh, that those lips had language! Life has passed

With me but roughly since I heard thee last.

Those lips are thine--thy own sweet smile I see,

The same that oft in childhood solaced me;

Voice only fails, else how distinct they say,

"Grieve not, my child, chase all thy fears away!"

The meek intelligence of those dear eyes

(Blessed be the art that can immortalize,

The art that baffles Time's tyrannic claim

To quench it) here shines on me still the same.

Faithful remembrancer of one so dear,

O welcome guest, though unexpected here!

Who bidst me honor with an artless song,

Affectionate, a mother lost so long,

I will obey, not willingly alone,

But gladly, as the precept were her own:

And, while that face renews my filial grief,

Fancy shall weave a charm for my relief,

Shall steep{1} me in Elysian reverie,{2}

A momentary dream that thou art she.

My mother! when I learnt{3} that thou wast dead,

Say, wast thou conscious of the tears I shed?

Hovered thy spirit o'er thy sorrowing son,

Wretch even then, life's journey just begun?

Perhaps thou gavest me, though unfelt, a kiss;

Perhaps a tear, if souls can weep in bliss.

Ah! that maternal smile! It answers--Yes.

I heard the bell tolled on thy burial day,

I saw the hearse that bore thee slow away,

And, turning from my nursery window, drew

A long, long sigh, and wept a last adieu!

But was it such?--It was.--Where thou art gone

Adieus and farewells are a sound unknown.

May I but meet thee on that peaceful shore,

The parting word shall pass my lips no more!

The maidens, grieved themselves at my concern,{4}

Oft gave me promise of thy quick return.

What ardently I wished I long believed,

And, disappointed still, was still deceived.

By expectation every day beguiled,

Dupe of _to-morrow_ even from a child.

Thus many a sad to-morrow came and went,

Till, all my stock of infant sorrow spent,

I learned at last submission to my lot;

But, though I less deplored thee, ne'er forgot.

Where once we dwelt our name is heard no more,

Children not thine have trod my nursery floor;

And where the gardener Robin, day by day,

Drew me to school along the public way,

Delighted with my bauble coach, and wrapped

In scarlet mantle warm, and velvet capped,

'Tis now become a history little known,

That once we called the pastoral house our own.

Short-lived possession! but the record fair

That memory keeps, of all thy kindness there,

Still outlives many a storm that has effaced

A thousand other themes less deeply traced.{5}

Thy nightly visits to my chamber made,

That thou mightst know me safe and warmly laid;

Thy morning bounties ere I left my home,

The biscuit, or confectionary plum;{6}

The fragrant waters on my cheek bestowed

By thy own hand, till fresh they shone and glowed;

All this, and more endearing still than all,

Thy constant flow of love, that knew no fall,

Ne'er roughened by those cataracts and brakes

That humor interposed too often makes;{7}

All this still legible in memory's page,

And still to be so to my latest age,

Adds joy to duty, makes me glad to pay

Such honors to thee as my numbers may;

Perhaps a frail memorial, but sincere,

Not scorned in heaven, though little noticed here.

Could Time, his flight reversed, restore the hours,

When, playing with thy vesture's tissued flowers,

The violet, the pink, and jessamine,

I pricked them into paper with a pin

(And thou wast happier than myself the while,

Wouldst softly speak, and stroke my head and smile),

Could those few pleasant days again appear,

Might one wish bring them, would I wish them here?

I would not trust my heart--the dear delight

Seems so to be desired, perhaps I might.--

But no--what here we call our life is such

So little to be loved, and thou so much,

That I should ill requite thee to constrain

Thy unbound spirit into bonds again.

Thou, as a gallant bark{8} from Albion's coast

(The storms all weathered and the ocean crossed)

Shoots into port at some well-havened isle,

Where spices breathe, and brighter seasons smile,

There sits quiescent on the floods that show

Her beauteous form reflected clear below,

While airs impregnated with incense play

Around her, fanning light her streamers gay;

So thou, with sails how swift! hast reached the shore,

"Where tempests never beat nor billows roar."{9}

And thy loved consort on the dangerous tide

Of life long since has anchored by thy side.

But me, scarce hoping to attain that rest,

Always from port withheld, always distressed--

Me howling blasts drive devious, tempest tost,

Sails ripped, seams opening wide, and compass lost,

And day by day some current's thwarting force,

Sets me more distant from a prosperous course.

Yet, oh, the thought that thou art safe, and he!

That thought is joy, arrive what may to me.

My boast is not, that I deduce my birth

From loins enthroned and rulers of the earth;

But higher far my proud pretensions rise--

The son of parents passed into the skies!

And now, farewell--Time unrevoked has run

His wonted course, yet what I wished is done.

By contemplation's help, not sought in vain,

I seem to have lived my childhood o'er again;

To have renewed the joys that once were mine,

Without the sin of violating thine:

And, while the wings of Fancy still are free,

And I can view this mimic show of thee,{10}

Time has but half succeeded in his theft--

Thyself removed, thy power to soothe me left.

NOTES.

This, one of the most exquisite poems in the language, was written by

Cowper in "the last glimmering of the evening light," before his mind

was wholly overwhelmed by the final attack of insanity. "Every line is

instinct with a profound and chastened feeling, to which it would be

difficult to find a parallel. There is not a phrase, not a word, which

jars upon the most susceptible ear, not a tinge of exaggeration, not a

touch that is excessive. The fact that he who gave forth these supreme

utterances of filial love was old himself when he did it, brings into

the relationship a strange, tender equality which is marvellously

touching."

1. =steep.= Imbue. From Ger. _stippen_. From the same root as _dip_, with

the letter _s_ prefixed.

2. =Elysian reverie.= Heavenly meditation. See note on Elysium, page 79.

3. =when I learnt.= Cowper was only six years old when his mother died.

4. =concern.= Distress, anxiety.

5. Nearly fifty years after his mother's death, Cowper wrote: "I can

truly say that not a week passes (perhaps I might with equal veracity

say a day) in which I do not think of her; such was the impression her

tenderness made upon me, though the opportunity she had for showing it

was so short."

6. =plum.= Perhaps the gravest fault in this poem is the frequent

intermixture, as in these two lines, of trivial thoughts and

circumstances with those of a more noble character.

7. Explain the metaphor which the poet attempts to carry through these

three lines. =Brakes= = _breaks_, interruptions. What is the meaning of

_humor_?

8. =as a gallant bark.= Observe the beauty of the simile in these twelve

lines, also of the simile which follows.

9. Probably misquoted from "The Dispensary," by Samuel Garth

(1670-1719):

"To die is landing on some silent shore,

Where billows never break nor tempests roar."

10. =this mimic show.= Explain the meaning of this expression.

EPITAPH ON A HARE.

Here lies, whom hound did ne'er pursue,

Nor swifter greyhound follow,

Whose foot ne'er tainted morning dew,

Nor ear heard huntsman's halloo;

Old Tiney, surliest of his kind,

Who, nursed with tender care,

And to domestic bounds confined,

Was still a wild Jack hare.

Though duly from my hand he took

His pittance every night,

He did it with a jealous look,

And, when he could, would bite.

His diet was of wheaten bread,

And milk, and oats, and straw;

Thistles, or lettuces instead,

With sand to scour his maw.

On twigs of hawthorn he regaled,

On pippins' russet peel,

And, when his juicy salads failed,

Sliced carrot pleased him well.

A Turkey carpet was his lawn,

Whereon he loved to bound,

To skip and gambol like a fawn,

And swing his rump around.

His frisking was at evening hours,

For then he lost his fear,

But most before approaching showers,

Or when a storm drew near.

Eight years and five round-rolling moons

He thus saw steal away,

Dozing out all his idle noons,

And every night at play.

I kept him for his humor's sake,

For he would oft beguile

My heart of thoughts that made it ache,

And force me to a smile.

But now beneath this walnut shade

He finds his long last home,

And waits, in snug concealment laid,

Till gentler Puss shall come.

He, still more agèd, feels the shocks

From which no care can save,

And, partner once of Tiney's box,

Must soon partake his grave.

BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE.

WILLIAM COWPER was born at Great Berkhamstead, November 26, 1731. His

father was the rector of the parish, and his mother was Ann Donne of the

family of the famous John Donne. Cowper was educated at a private school

and afterwards at Westminster. It was intended that he should follow the

profession of law, and, after the completion of his studies at

Westminster, he entered the Middle Temple and was articled to a

solicitor. At the age of twenty-two, through the influence of his uncle,

Major Cowper, he was appointed to two clerkships in the House of Lords.

The excitement brought on by this occurrence, together with an unhappy

love affair, induced an attack of insanity, from which he suffered for

more than a year. In 1773 he suffered from a second attack of insanity,

which continued for sixteen months. It was not until 1780, when in his

fiftieth year, that he began really to write poetry. His first volume

was published in 1782, and comprised, besides several shorter pieces,

the three poems, "Conversation," "Retirement," and "Table Talk." His

second volume appeared in 1785, and contained "The Task," "Tirocinium,"

and the ballad of "John Gilpin," which had already become famous through

the recitations of one Henderson, an actor. Cowper's translation of

Homer was completed and published in 1791. From that time until his

death in 1800 he suffered from hopeless dejection, regarding himself as

an object of divine wrath, a condemned and forsaken outcast.

Cowper was not a great poet; but he was the first to abandon the

mechanical versification and conventional phrases of the artificial

poets, to find inspiration and guidance in nature. It may be said that

he lacked creative power; but he possessed a quickness of thought, a

depth of feeling, and a certain manliness and sincerity, which lifted

him above the level of the ordinary versifiers of his time.

=Other Poems to be Read:= The Castaway; John Gilpin; The Task; The Loss of

the Royal George.

REFERENCES: Southey's _Life of William Cowper_; _Cowper_ (English Men of

Letters), by Goldwin Smith; Hazlitt's _English Poets_; Macaulay's Essay

on _Moore's Life of Byron_; _Life of Cowper_, in the "Globe Edition" of

his works.

Oliver Goldsmith.

THREE PICTURES FROM "THE DESERTED VILLAGE."

Sweet was the sound, when oft at evening's close

Up yonder hill the village murmur rose.

There as I pass'd, with careless steps and slow,

The mingling notes came soften'd from below:

The swain responsive as the milkmaid sung,

The sober herd that low'd to meet their young,

The noisy geese that gabbled o'er the pool,

The playful children just let loose from school,

The watch-dog's voice that bay'd the whispering wind,

And the loud laugh that spoke the vacant mind--

These all in sweet confusion sought the shade,

And fill'd each pause the nightingale had made.

But now the sounds of population fail,

No cheerful murmurs fluctuate in the gale,

No busy steps the grass-grown footway tread,

For all the bloomy flush of life is fled--

All but yon widow'd, solitary thing,

That feebly bends beside the plashy spring;

She, wretched matron--forc'd in age, for bread,

To strip the brook with mantling cresses spread,

To pick her wintry faggot from the thorn,

To seek her nightly shed, and weep till morn--

She only left of all the harmless train,

The sad historian of the pensive plain!

Near yonder copse, where once the garden smiled,

And still where many a garden-flower grows wild;

There, where a few torn shrubs the place disclose,

The village preacher's{1} modest mansion rose.

A man he was to all the country dear,

And passing{2} rich with forty pounds{3} a year;

Remote from towns he ran his godly race,

Nor e'er had changed, nor wished to change, his place;

Unpractised he to fawn, or seek for power,

By doctrines fashioned to the varying hour;

Far other aims his heart had learned to prize,

More skilled to raise the wretched than to rise.

His house was known to all the vagrant train;

He chid their wanderings, but relieved their pain:

The long-remembered beggar was his guest,

Whose beard descending swept his aged breast;

The ruined spendthrift, now no longer proud,

Claimed kindred there, and had his claims allowed;

The broken soldier,{4} kindly bade to stay,

Sat by his fire, and talked the night away,

Wept o'er his wounds or, tales of sorrow done,

Shouldered his crutch and showed how fields were won.

Pleased with his guests, the good man learned to glow,

And quite forgot their vices in their woe;

Careless their merits or their faults to scan,

His pity gave ere charity began.

Thus to relieve the wretched was his pride,

And e'en his failings leaned to virtue's side;

But in his duty prompt at every call,

He watched and wept, he prayed and felt for all;

And, as a bird each fond endearment tries

To tempt its new-fledged offspring to the skies,

He tried each art, reproved each dull delay,

Allured to brighter worlds, and led the way.

Beside the bed where parting life was laid,

And sorrow, guilt, and pain by turns dismayed,

The reverend champion stood. At his control

Despair and anguish fled the struggling soul;

Comfort came down the trembling wretch to raise,

And his last faltering accents whispered praise.

At church, with meek and unaffected grace,

His looks adorned the venerable place:

Truth from his lips prevailed with double sway,

And fools who came to scoff remained to pray.

The service past, around the pious man,

With steady zeal, each honest rustic ran;

Even children followed with endearing wile,

And plucked his gown to share the good man's smile.

His ready smile a parent's warmth expressed;

Their welfare pleased him, and their cares distressed;

To them his heart, his love, his griefs were given,

But all his serious thoughts had rest in heaven.

As some tall cliff that lifts its awful form,

Swells from the vale, and midway leaves the storm,

Though round its breast the rolling clouds are spread,

Eternal sunshine settles on its head.{5}

Beside yon straggling fence that skirts the way,

With blossomed furze unprofitably gay,

There in his noisy mansion,{6} skilled to rule,

The village master taught his little school.

A man severe he was, and stern to view;

I knew him well, and every truant knew;

Well had the boding{7} tremblers learned to trace

The day's disasters in his morning face;

Full well they laughed with counterfeited glee

At all his jokes, for many a joke had he;

Full well the busy whisper circling round

Conveyed the dismal tidings when he frowned.

Yet he was kind, or, if severe in aught,

The love he bore to learning was in fault;

The village{8} all declared how much he knew;

'Twas certain he could write, and cipher too;

Lands he could measure, terms and tides{9} presage,

And e'en the story ran that he could gauge:{10}

In arguing, too, the parson owned his skill;

For e'en though vanquished, he could argue still;

While words of learned length and thundering sound

Amazed the gazing rustics ranged around;

And still they gazed, and still the wonder grew

That one small head could carry all he knew.

But past is all his fame. The very spot

Where many a time he triumphed is forgot.

NOTES.

1. =The village preacher.=--"This picture of the village pastor," says

Irving, "which was taken in part from the character of his father,

embodied likewise the recollections of his brother Henry; for the

natures of the father and son seem to have been identical. . . . To us

the whole character seems traced as it were in an expiatory spirit; as

if, conscious of his own wandering restlessness, he sought to humble

himself at the shrine of excellence which he had not been able to

practise."

2. =passing rich.= Exceedingly rich. The word is a common one among the

poets. "Is she not passing fair?" (Shakespeare, "Two Gentlemen of

Verona," Act iv, sc. 4); "How passing sweet is solitude" (Cowper,

"Retirement").

3. =forty pounds.= In his dedication of "The Traveller," Goldsmith refers

to his brother Henry as "a man who, despising fame and fortune, has

retired early to happiness and obscurity, with an income of forty pounds

a year."

4. =broken soldier.= See "The Soldier's Dream," Campbell.

"And fain was their war-broken soldier to stay!"

5. The simile included in these four lines, says Lord Lytton, is

translated almost literally from a poem by the Abbé de Chaulieu, who

died in 1720. "Every one must own," adds he, "that, in copying,

Goldsmith wonderfully improved the original."

6. =The village master.=--The portrait here drawn of the village

schoolmaster is from Goldsmith's own teacher, Thomas Byrne, with whom he

was placed when six years old. "Byrne had been educated for a

pedagogue," says Irving, "but had enlisted in the army, served abroad

during the wars of Queen Anne's time, and risen to the rank of

quartermaster of a regiment in Spain. At the return of peace, having no

longer exercise for the sword, he resumed the ferule, and drilled the

urchin populace of Lissoy.

"There are certain whimsical traits in the character of Byrne, not given

in the foregoing sketch. He was fond of talking of his vagabond

wanderings in foreign lands, and had brought with him from the wars a

world of campaigning stories of which he was generally the hero, and

which he would deal forth to his wondering scholars when he ought to

have been teaching them their lessons. These travellers' tales had a

powerful effect upon the vivid imagination of Goldsmith, and awakened an

unconquerable passion for wandering and seeking adventure.

"Byrne was, moreover, of a romantic vein, and exceedingly superstitious.

He was deeply versed in the fairy superstitions which abound in Ireland,

all which he professed implicitly to believe. Under his tuition

Goldsmith soon became almost as great a proficient in fairy lore."

=noisy mansion.= The old-time school-room was a noisy place, the pupils

studying their lessons aloud, and but little care being taken to secure

quietness at any time.

7. =boding.= Foreboding; seeing that which is about to happen. From A.-S.

_bodian_, to announce, to foretell.

8. =village.= Villagers.

9. =terms and tides.= Times and seasons. =presage.= Foreknow. From Lat.

_pre_, before, and _sagio_, to perceive.

10. =gauge.= Measure liquids. The humor in this and in some other

expressions in these verses is too apparent to require comment.

BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE.

OLIVER GOLDSMITH was born at Pallas, county of Longford, Ireland, on the

10th of November, 1728. He was educated at Trinity College, Dublin, and

afterwards studied medicine at Edinburgh and at Leyden. After travelling

on foot through portions of Western Europe, he made his way to London,

where he was in turn assistant to a chemist, usher in a school at

Peckham, and literary hack for one of the leading monthly publications.

He afterwards contributed many articles, both in prose and poetry, to

the leading periodicals of the time. He wrote "The Traveller" in 1764,

and "The Deserted Village" and _The Vicar of Wakefield_ in 1770. He died

in his chambers in Brick Court, London, April 4, 1774. For a full

account of his life, read Macaulay's Essay on Oliver Goldsmith.

"The naturalness and ease of Goldsmith's poetry," says Edward Dowden,

"are those of an accomplished craftsman. His verse, which flows towards

the close of the period with such a gentle yet steady advance, is not

less elaborated than that of Pope; and Goldsmith conceived his verse

more in paragraphs than in couplets. His artless words were, each one,

delicately chosen; his simple constructions were studiously sought." And

Sir Walter Scott said of him: "It would be difficult to point out one

among the English poets less likely to be excelled in his own style.

Possessing much of Pope's versification without the monotonous structure

of his lines; rising sometimes to the swell and fulness of Dryden,

without his inflections; delicate and masterly in his descriptions;

graceful in one of the greatest graces of poetry, its transitions; alike

successful in his sportive or grave, his playful or melancholy mood; he

may long bid defiance to the numerous competitors whom the friendship or

flattery of the present age is so hastily arraying against him."

=Other Poems to be Read:= The Traveller; the rest of The Deserted Village;

Retaliation.

REFERENCES: Irving's _Life of Goldsmith_; Forster's _Life and Times of

Oliver Goldsmith_; Macaulay's Essay on _Goldsmith_; Thackeray's _English

Humorists of the Eighteenth Century_; De Quincey's _Eighteenth Century_;

Hazlitt's _English Poets_; _Goldsmith_ (English Men of Letters), by

William Black.

Thomas Gray.

THE BARD.

I. 1.

"Ruin seize thee, ruthless King!

Confusion on thy banners wait;

Tho' fanned by Conquest's crimson wing,{1}

They mock the air with idle state.{2}

Helm, nor hauberk's{3} twisted mail,

Nor e'en thy virtues, Tyrant, shall avail

To save thy secret soul from nightly fears,

From Cambria's{4} curse, from Cambria's tears!"

Such were the sounds that o'er the crested pride

Of the first Edward scattered wild dismay,

As down the steep of Snowdon's{5} shaggy side

He wound with toilsome march his long array.

Stout Gloster{6} stood aghast in speechless trance:

"To arms!" cried Mortimer,{7} and couched his quivering lance.

I. 2.

On a rock{8} whose haughty brow

Frowns o'er cold Conway's foaming flood,

Robed in the sable garb of woe,

With haggard eyes the poet stood,

(Loose his beard, and hoary hair

Streamed, like a meteor, to the troubled air{9})

And with a master's hand, and prophet's fire,

Struck the deep sorrows of his lyre.{10}

"Hark, how each giant-oak, and desert cave,

Sighs to the torrent's awful voice beneath!

O'er thee, oh King! their hundred arms they wave,

Revenge on thee in hoarser murmurs breathe;

Vocal no more, since Cambria's fatal day,

To high-born Hoel's{11} harp, or soft Llewellyn's lay.

I. 3.

"Cold is Cadwallo's tongue,

That hushed the stormy main:{12}

Brave Urien sleeps upon his craggy bed:

Mountains, ye mourn in vain

Modred, whose magic song

Made huge Plinlimmon{13} bow his cloud-topt head.

On dreary Arvon's shore{14} they lie,

Smeared with gore, and ghastly pale:

Far, far aloof th' affrighted ravens sail;

The famished eagle{15} screams, and passes by.

Dear lost companions of my tuneful art,

Dear as the light that visits these sad eyes,

Dear as the ruddy drops that warm my heart,{16}

Ye died amidst your dying country's cries--

No more I weep. They do not sleep.

On yonder cliffs, a griesly band,

I see them sit,{17} they linger yet,

Avengers of their native land:

With me in dreadful harmony they join,

And weave with bloody hands the tissue of thy line.

II. 1.

"Weave the warp, and weave the woof,{18}

The winding sheet of Edward's race.

Give ample room, and verge enough

The characters of hell to trace.

Mark the year, and mark the night,

When Severn shall re-echo with affright

The shrieks of death, thro' Berkley's roof that ring,

Shrieks of an agonizing king!{19}

She-wolf of France,{20} with unrelenting fangs,

That tear'st the bowels of thy mangled mate,

From thee be born, who o'er thy country hangs

The scourge of heaven.{21} What terrors round him wait!

Amazement in his van, with Flight combined,

And Sorrow's faded form, and Solitude behind.

II. 2.

"Mighty victor, mighty lord!

Low on his funeral couch he lies!{22}

No pitying heart, no eye, afford

A tear to grace his obsequies.

Is the sable warrior{23} fled?

Thy son is gone. He rests among the dead.

The swarm, that in thy noontide beam were born,

Gone to salute the rising morn.

Fair laughs the morn, and soft the zephyr blows,{24}

While proudly riding o'er the azure realm

In gallant trim the gilded vessel goes;

Youth on the prow, and Pleasure at the helm;

Regardless of the sweeping whirlwind's sway,

That, hushed in grim repose, expects his evening prey.

II. 3.

"Fill high the sparkling bowl,

The rich repast prepare;

Reft of a crown, he yet may share the feast:

Close by the regal chair

Fell Thirst and Famine scowl{25}

A baleful smile upon their baffled guest.

Heard ye the din of battle{26} bray,

Lance to lance, and horse to horse?

Long years of havoc urge their destined course,

And thro' the kindred squadrons mow their way.

Ye towers of Julius,{27} London's lasting shame,

With many a foul and midnight murder fed,

Revere his consort's faith, his father's fame,

And spare the meek usurper's{28} holy head.

Above, below, the rose of snow,

Twined with her blushing foe,{29} we spread:

The bristled boar{30} in infant-gore

Wallows beneath the thorny shade.

Now, brothers, bending o'er the accursed loom,

Stamp we our vengeance deep, and ratify his doom.

III. 1.

"Edward,{31} lo! to sudden fate

(Weave we the woof. The thread is spun.)

Half of thy heart{32} we consecrate.

(The web is wove. The work is done.)

Stay, oh stay! nor thus forlorn

Leave me unblessed, unpitied, here to mourn:

In yon bright track, that fires the western skies,

They melt, they vanish from my eyes.

But oh! what solemn scenes on Snowdon's height

Descending slow their glittering skirts unroll?

Visions of glory, spare my aching sight!{33}

Ye unborn ages, crowd not on my soul!

No more our long-lost Arthur we bewail.

All hail, ye genuine kings, Britannia's issue, hail!

III. 2.

"Girt with many a baron bold

Sublime their starry fronts they rear;

And gorgeous dames, and statesmen old

In bearded majesty, appear.

In the midst a form divine!{34}

Her eye proclaims her of the Briton-line;

Her lion-port, her awe-commanding face,{35}

Attempered sweet to virgin-grace.

What strings symphonious tremble in the air,

What strains of vocal transport round her play.

Hear from the grave, great Taliessin,{36} hear;

They breathe a soul to animate thy clay.

Bright Rapture calls, and soaring as she sings,

Waves in the eye of heaven her many-colored wings.

III. 3.

"The verse adorn again

Fierce War, and faithful Love,{37}

And Truth severe, by fairy Fiction drest.

In buskined measures{38} move

Pale Grief, and pleasing Pain,

With Horror, tyrant of the throbbing breast.

A voice, as of the cherub-choir,

Gales from blooming Eden bear;

And distant warblings lessen on my ear,

That lost in long futurity expire.

Fond,{39} impious man, think'st thou yon sanguine cloud,

Raised by thy breath, has quenched the orb of day?

To-morrow he repairs{40} the golden flood,

And warms the nations with redoubled ray.

Enough for me; with joy I see

The different doom our fates assign.

Be thine despair, and sceptred care;

To triumph, and to die, are mine."

He spoke, and headlong from the mountain's height

Deep in the roaring tide he plunged to endless night.

NOTES.

This poem was published in 1757. "It is founded," says Gray, "on a

tradition current in Wales that Edward I., when he completed the

conquest of that country, ordered all the bards that fell into his hands

to be put to death." The argument is as follows: "The army of Edward I.,

as they march through a deep valley, and approach Mount Snowdon, are

suddenly stopped by the appearance of a venerable figure seated on the

summit of an inaccessible rock, who, with a voice more than human,

reproaches the king with all the desolation and misery which he had

brought on his country; foretells the misfortunes of the Norman race,

and with prophetic spirit declares that all his cruelty shall never

extinguish the noble ardor of poetic genius in this island; and that men

shall never be wanting to celebrate true virtue and valor in immortal

strains, to expose vice and infamous pleasure, and boldly censure

tyranny and oppression. His song ended, he precipitates himself from the

mountain, and is swallowed up by the river that rolls at its feet."

The tradition upon which the poem is said to be founded, if it ever had

any existence, is in great part mythical. Edward I. did indeed conquer

Wales, but there is no evidence that he massacred or even persecuted the

Welsh bards. A hundred years after his time their number and influence

had not been diminished.

This poem is a good example of an English ode constructed strictly after

Greek models. It will be observed that it is written, not in uniform

stanzas, but in three uniform parts, each of which contains three

stanzas. The first of these parts is called the _Strophe_, or Turn; the

second, the _Antistrophe_, or Counter-turn; the third, the _Epode_, or

After-song. The origin of these terms may be traced to the use of the

ode as an important part of the entertainment presented in the ancient

Greek theatre. The Strophe was sung while the chorus moved from one side

of the orchestra to the other; the Antistrophe while the reversed

movement was being made; and the Epodos after the singers had returned

to their original position. The accurate perception of harmony and the

relationship between the different parts of the choral ode, which

enabled the Greeks to enter thoroughly into its enjoyment, is unknown

among moderns. Hence, there have been but few attempts in the English

language to construct odes strictly after the Greek model. Most of our

odes are poems relating to themes of greater or less varying length, and

divided into many irregular stanzas of varying lengths and metres. Such

are Dryden's "Alexander's Feast," Keats's "Ode to a Nightingale," and

Wordsworth's "Ode on the Intimations of Immortality," all of which are

odes in form and style, although differing from their Greek prototype

and from one another. Of all English poets, none have worked so

thoroughly on the ancient model as Gray, although to Congreve must be

given the honor of being the first to attempt this species of English

composition.

1. =crimson wing.= Explain the meaning of this line.

2. Compare this line with Shakespeare, "King John," Act v, sc. 1:

"Mocking the air with colors idly spread."

3. =hauberk.= From A.-S. _heals_, the neck, and _beorgan_, to protect.

"The hauberk was a texture of steel ringlets, or rings interwoven,

forming a coat of mail that sat close to the body, and adapted itself to

every motion."--_Gray._

4. =Cambria.= Wales. An ancient legend says it was so called from Camber,

the son of Brute. This legendary king of Britain divided his dominions

among his three sons: to Locrin he gave the southern part (England),

which was called Loegria; to Albanact the northern (Scotland), Albania;

and to Camber, the western (Wales), Cambria.

5. =Snowdon.= "Snowdon was a name given by the Saxons to that mountainous

tract which the Welsh themselves call _Cragium-eryri_. It included all

the highlands of Caernarvonshire and Merionethshire as far east as the

river Conway."--_Gray._ It was in the spring of 1283 that the army of

Edward I. forced its way through the defiles of these mountains.

=shaggy.= See "Lycidas," 54:

"Nor on the shaggy top of Mona high."

6. =Gloster.= "Gilbert de Clare, surnamed the Red, Earl of Gloucester and

Hereford, son-in-law to King Edward."--_Gray._

7. =Mortimer.= Edward, or Edmond, de Mortimer, Lord of Wigmore, one of

King Edward's ablest leaders. It was by one of his knights that the

Welsh prince Llewellyn was slain in December, 1282.

8. =rock.= One of the heights of Snowdon, probably Pen-maen-mawr, the

extreme northern point of the range, a few miles from the mouth of the

Conway River.

9. "The image was taken from a well-known picture of Raphael,

representing the Supreme Being in the vision of Ezekiel. There are two

of these paintings (both believed originals), one at Florence, the other

in the Duke of Orleans's collection at Paris."--_Gray._

10. Explain the meaning of this line.

11. =Hoel.= A Welsh prince and famous bard, some of whose poems are still

extant. Cadwallo and Urien, named below, were other celebrated bards.

The name of Modred is not so well known; it is possible that Gray refers

to "the famous Myrddin ab Morvyn, called Merlyn the Wild, a disciple of

Taliessin--the form of the name being changed for the sake of euphony."

It is not entirely clear whether the Llewellyn mentioned here was a

bard, or the famous but unfortunate prince who lost his life in the war

with King Edward. (See note 7, above.) Is it the lay sung in memory of

mild Llewellyn? Or is it the lay which soft Llewellyn sang?

12. =hushed the stormy main.= Shakespeare says:

"The rude sea grew civil at her song,

And certain stars shot madly from their spheres,

To hear the sea-maid's music."

--_Midsummer Night's Dream_, Act ii, sc. 1.

13. =Plinlimmon.= A group of lofty mountains in Wales. The name is

probably a corruption of _Pum-lumon_, "the fire-beacons," so-called

because there was a beacon on each of the five peaks composing the

group.

14. =Arvon's shore.= Caernarvon, or Caer yu Arvon, means the camp in

Arvon. The shore referred to is that of Caernarvon, on the mainland,

opposite the island of Anglesey.

15. =eagle.= "Camden and others observe that eagles used annually to build

their aerie among the rocks of Snowdon, which from thence (as some

think) were named by the Welsh, _Craigian-eryri_, or the crags of the

eagles. At this day (I am told), the highest point of Snowdon is called

'the Eagle's Nest.'"--_Gray._

16. =Dear as the ruddy drops.= Shakespeare has it:

"As dear to me as are the ruddy drops

That visit my sad heart."

--_Julius Cæsar_, Act ii, sc. 1.

17. =I see them sit.= See Milton's "Lycidas," 52:

"On the steep

Where your old bards, the Druids lie."

=griesly.= Grisly. From the A.-S. _grisli_, dreadful.

18. =Weave the warp=, etc. As the _Fates_ were represented by the ancient

Greeks as spinning the destinies of men, so the _Norns_ in the Norse

mythology are said to weave the destinies of the heroes who die in

battle.

"Glittering lances are the loom,

Where the dusky warp we strain,--

Shafts for shuttles, dipt in gore,

Shoot the trembling cords along;

Swords that once a monarch bore,

Keep the tissue close and strong."

--_The Fatal Sisters_, translated by Gray,

from the Norse.

19. "Edward the Second, cruelly butchered in Berkeley Castle."--_Gray._

The murder of the king occurred on the night of September 21, 1327.

Berkeley Castle stands at the southeast end of the town of Berkeley,

about one and one-half miles from the Severn River. It was built before

the time of Henry II., and is still inhabited by a descendant of its

founders.

20. =She-wolf of France.= Isabel of France, the wife of Edward II.

Shakespeare applies this epithet to Margaret, the queen of Henry VI.:

"She-wolf of France, but worse than wolves of France."

--_3 Henry VI._, Act i, sc. 4.

21. Edward III., the son of Queen Isabel, proved indeed to be a scourge

to France.

22. "Death of that king (Edward III.), abandoned by his children, and

even robbed in his last moments by his courtiers and his

mistress."--_Gray._

23. =sable warrior.= "Edward the Black Prince, dead some time before his

father."--_Gray._

24. The magnificence of the first years of Richard II.'s reign is

figured in this and the following lines.

25. =Thirst and Famine scowl.= When Richard II. died in prison, his body

was brought to St. Paul's, and "the face was left uncovered, to meet

rumors that he had been assassinated by his keeper, Sir Piers Exon." But

the older writers assert that he was starved to death.

26. =din of battle.= "Ruinous wars of York and Lancaster."--_Gray._

=bray.= From Gr. _bracho_, to clash.

27. =towers of Julius.= "The oldest part of that structure (the Tower of

London) is vulgarly attributed to Julius Cæsar."--_Gray._

28. =meek usurper.= "Henry the Sixth, very near being canonized. The line

of Lancaster had no right of inheritance to the crown."--_Gray._ The

references in the preceding line are to Henry's "consort," Queen

Margaret, and his father, Henry V.

29. =The rose of snow, twined with her blushing foe.= The reference is to

the union of the houses of York and Lancaster after the War of the

Roses.

30. =bristled boar.= Richard III., so called from his badge of a silver

boar. So Shakespeare:

"In the sty of the most deadly boar."

--_Richard III._, Act iv, sc. 5.

"The wretched, bloody, and usurping boar

That spoiled your summer fields and fruitful vines,

Swills your warm blood like wash."

--_Ibid._ Act v, sc. 2.

31. The bard's vision of the future has come to an end, and he again

addresses the king.

32. =Half of thy heart.= "Eleanor of Castile died a few years after the

conquest of Wales. The heroic proof she gave of her affection for her

lord is well known."--_Gray._

Tennyson, in the "Dream of Fair Women," speaks of Queen Eleanor as

"Her who knew that Love can vanquish Death,

Who kneeling, with one arm about her king,

Drew forth the poison with her balmy breath,

Sweet as new buds in spring."

33. The bard's visions are resumed, and he sees the glories which were

ushered in with the advent of the Tudor line. Henry VII.'s paternal

grandfather was Sir Owen Tewdwr of Pernnyuydd, in Anglesey, whose mother

was of royal British blood. "Both Merlin and Taliessin had prophesied

that the Welsh should regain their sovereignty over this island; which

seemed to be accomplished in the house of Tudor."--_Gray._

34. =a form divine.= Elizabeth.

35. =awe-commanding face.= "Speed, relating an audience given by Queen

Elizabeth to Paul Dzialiuski, ambassador of Poland, says: 'And thus she,

lion-like rising, daunted the malapert orator no less with her stately

port and majestical deporture, than with the tartnesse of her princlie

cheekes.'"--_Gray._

36. Taliessin was a famous Welsh bard who flourished in the sixth

century. It is said that some of his works are still preserved by his

countrymen.

37. See "Faerie Queene," 1:

"Fierce warres and faithful love shall moralize my song."

38. =buskined measures.= The tragic drama as represented by Shakespeare.

So Milton speaks ("Il Penseroso," 102) of the "buskind stage." The

buskin was the Greek _cothurnus_, a boot with high heels, designed to

add stature and dignity to the tragic actor.

39. =Fond.= Foolish. This is the original meaning of the word, and is so

used by the older poets.

40. =he repairs.= So Milton:

"Sinks the day-star in the ocean bed,

And yet anon repairs his drooping head."

BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE.

THOMAS GRAY was born in Cornhill, London, December 26th, 1716. Through

the help of his mother's brother, who was Assistant-Master at that

famous school, he received his primary education at Eton, and in 1735

entered St. Peter's College, Cambridge. In 1738 he left the University

without taking a degree, intending to study law at the Inner Temple.

Soon afterwards, however, he accompanied Horace Walpole on a tour

through France and Italy, and spent the greater part of two years in

Paris, Rome, and Florence. Upon his return to England, finding himself

possessed of a life-long competency, he resolved to give up the law and

devote himself entirely to self-culture. He settled at Cambridge, and

gave all his time to study and to the cultivation of his mind. The first

of his poems to appear in print was the "Ode on a Distant Prospect of

Eton College," published in 1747. His "Elegy Written in a Country

Churchyard" was not published until 1750, although it had been written

and handed about in manuscript several years before. The post of

Poet-Laureate was offered him in 1757, on the death of Colley Cibber;

but he did not accept it. In 1768 he was appointed Professor of Modern

History at Cambridge, but the state of his health was such that he was

never permitted to lecture. He died, July 29th, 1771, at the age of

fifty-four.

"He was certainly the most accomplished man of his time," says Hales,

"and was something much more than accomplished. His learning was not

only wide but deep; his taste, if perhaps too fastidious, was pure and

thorough; his genius was of no mean degree or order; his affections were

of the truest and sincerest. . . . His poems are works of refinement

rather than of passion; but yet they are inspired with genuine

sentiment. They are no doubt extremely artificial in form; the weight of

their author's reading somewhat depresses their originality; he can with

difficulty escape from his books to himself; but yet there is in him a

genuine poetical spirit. His poetry, however elaborated, is sincere and

truthful. If the exterior is what Horace might have called over-filed

and polished, the thought is mostly of the simplest and naturalest."

Matthew Arnold says: "Gray's production was scanty, and scanty it could

not but be. Even what he produced was not always pure in diction, true

in evolution. Still, with whatever drawbacks, he is alone or almost

alone in his age. Gray said himself that the style he aimed at was

'extreme conciseness of expression, yet pure, perspicuous, and musical.'

Compared, not with the work of the great masters of the golden ages of

poetry, but with the poetry of his own contemporaries in general, Gray

may be said to have reached, in his style, the excellence at which he

aimed."

Cowper writes, "I have been reading Gray's works, and think him the only

poet since Shakespeare entitled to the character of sublime."

Lowell says: "Gray, if we may believe the commentators, has not an idea,

scarcely an epithet, that he can call his own, and yet he is, in the

best sense, one of the classics of English literature."

And Sir James Mackintosh says: "Of all English poets he was the most

finished artist. He attained the highest degree of splendor of which

poetic style seemed to be capable. It may be added that he deserves the

comparatively trifling praise of having been the most learned poet since

Milton."

=Other Poems to be Read:= Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard; On a

Distant Prospect of Eton College; The Progress of Poesy; Ode on Spring.

REFERENCES: Johnson's _Lives of English Poets_; _Gray_ (English Men of

Letters), by Edmund Gosse; Hazlitt's _Lectures on the English Poets_;

Roscoe's _Essays_.

Alexander Pope.

FROM THE "ESSAY ON CRITICISM."

Some to Conceit{1} alone their taste confine,

And glitt'ring thoughts struck out at ev'ry line;

Pleas'd with a work where nothing's just or fit;{2}

One glaring Chaos and wild heap of wit.{3}

Poets, like painters, thus, unskill'd to trace

The naked nature and the living grace,

With gold and jewels cover ev'ry part,

And hide with ornaments their want of art.

True wit is nature to advantage dress'd;

What oft was thought, but ne'er so well express'd;{4}

Something, whose truth convinc'd at sight we find,

That gives us back the image of our mind.

As shades more sweetly recommend the light,

So modest plainness sets off sprightly wit.

For works may have more wit than does 'em good,

As bodies perish through excess of blood.

Others for Language all their care express,

And value books, as women men,{5} for dress:

Their praise is still,--the style is excellent;

The sense, they humbly take upon content.{6}

Words are like leaves; and where they most abound,

Much fruit of sense beneath is rarely found:

False eloquence, like the prismatic glass,

In gaudy colors spreads on ev'ry place;

The face of nature we no more survey,

All glares alike, without distinction gay:

But true expression, like th' unchanging sun,

Clears and improves whate'er it shines upon;

It gilds all objects, but it alters none.

Expression is the dress of thought, and still

Appears more decent, as more suitable;

A vile conceit in pompous words express'd

Is like a clown in regal purple dress'd:

For diff'rent styles with diff'rent subjects sort,{7}

As sev'ral garbs with country, town, and court.

Some by old words to fame have made pretence,

Ancients in phrase, mere moderns in their sense;

Such labor'd nothings, in so strange a style,

Amaze th' unlearn'd, and make the learned smile,

Unlucky, as Fungoso{8} in the play,

These sparks{9} with awkward vanity display

What the fine gentleman wore yesterday;

And but so mimic ancient wits at best,

As apes our grandsires, in their doublets drest.

In words, as fashions, the same rule will hold;

Alike fantastic, if too new or old:

Be not the first by whom the new are try'd,

Nor yet the last to lay the old aside.

But most by numbers judge a poet's song,

And smooth or rough, with them, is right or wrong:

In the bright muse, tho' thousand charms conspire,

Her voice is all these tuneful fools admire;

Who haunt Parnassus{10} but to please their ear,

Not mend{11} their minds, as some to church repair,

Not for the doctrine, but the music there.

These equal syllables alone require,

Tho' oft the ear the open vowels tire;{12}

While expletives their feeble aid do join;

And ten low words oft creep in one dull line:

While they ring round the same unvaried chimes,

With sure returns of still expected rhymes;

Where'er you find "the cooling western breeze,"

In the next line, it "whispers through the trees":{13}

If crystal streams "with pleasing murmurs creep,"

The reader's threaten'd (not in vain) with "sleep":

Then, at the last and only couplet fraught

With some unmeaning thing they call a thought,

A needless Alexandrine ends the song,{14}

That, like a wounded snake, drags its slow length along.{15}

Leave such to tune their own dull rhymes, and know

What's roundly smooth, or languishingly slow;

And praise the easy vigor of a line,

Where Denham's strength and Waller's{16} sweetness join.

True ease in writing comes from art, not chance,

As those move easiest who have learn'd to dance.

'Tis not enough no harshness gives offence,

The sound must seem an echo to the sense:

Soft is the strain when Zephyr gently blows,

And the smooth stream in smoother numbers{17} flows;

But when loud surges lash the sounding shore,

The hoarse, rough verse should like the torrent roar:

When Ajax{18} strives some rock's vast weight to throw,

The line too labors, and the words move slow:

Not so, when swift Camilla{19} scours the plain,

Flies o'er th' unbending corn, and skims along the main.

Hear how Timotheus'{20} vary'd lays surprise,

And bid alternate passions fall and rise!

While at each change, the son of Libyan Jove{21}

Now burns with glory, and then melts with love;

Now his fierce eyes with sparkling fury glow,

Now sighs steal out, and tears begin to flow:

Persians and Greeks like turns of nature found,

And the world's victor stood subdu'd by sound!

The power of music all our hearts allow,

And what Timotheus was, is Dryden now.

Avoid extremes; and shun the fault of such,

Who still are pleas'd too little or too much.

At ev'ry trifle scorn to take offence,

That always shows great pride, or little sense:

Those heads, as stomachs, are not sure the best,

Which nauseate all, and nothing can digest.

Yet let not each gay turn thy rapture move;

For fools admire, but men of sense approve:

As things seem large which we through mists descry;

Dulness is ever apt to magnify.

Some foreign writers, some our own despise;

The ancients only, or the moderns prize.

Thus wit, like faith, by each man is apply'd

To one small sect, and all are damn'd beside.

Meanly they seek the blessing to confine,

And force that sun but on a part to shine,

Which not alone the southern wit sublimes,

But ripens spirits in cold northern climes;

Which from the first has shone on ages past,

Enlights the present, and shall warm the last;

Tho' each may feel increases and decays,

And see now clearer and now darker days.

Regard not, then, if wit be old or new,

But blame the false, and value still the true.

Some ne'er advance a judgment of their own,

But catch the spreading notion of the Town;

They reason and conclude by precedent,

And own stale nonsense which they ne'er invent.

Some judge of authors' names, not works, and then

Nor praise nor blame the writings, but the men.

Of all this servile herd, the worst is he

That in proud dulness joins with Quality.{22}

A constant critic at the great man's board,

To fetch and carry nonsense for my Lord.

What woful stuff this madrigal would be,

In some starv'd hackney sonneteer, or me?

But let a Lord once own the happy lines,

How the wit brightens! how the style refines!

Before his sacred name flies ev'ry fault,

And each exalted stanza teems with thought!

NOTES.

Pope's "Essay on Criticism" was published in 1711. It consists of 724

lines, and is written in heroic couplets--that style of poetic

composition in which Pope excelled all others. It is full of sound

critical precepts, put together with considerable art, and expressed in

a manner which, at the time of its production, insured the popularity of

the poem and the fame of its author. It was probably suggested by

Boileau's "Art Poétique," which was founded on Horace's "Ars Poetica,"

and it in turn on Aristotle's rules, very commonly known among the

classical poets. "The Essay," says De Quincey, "is a collection of

independent maxims tied together into a fasciculus by the printer, but

having no natural order or logical dependence; generally so vague as to

mean nothing. And, what is remarkable, many of the rules are violated by

no man so often as by Pope, and by Pope nowhere so often as in this

poem."

1. =Conceit.= Affected wit. "Conceit is to nature what paint is to beauty;

it is not only needless but impairs what it would improve."--_Pope._

2. =fit.= Proper. "Fit audience find, though few" (Milton, "Paradise

Lost," V, 7).

3. =wit.= This is a favorite word with Pope, and is used by him to

indicate a variety of ideas,--such as thought, knowledge, imagination,

expression, the exercise of humor, etc. In this poem there are no fewer

than twelve couplets rhyming to it.

4. "It requires very little reading of the French text-books to find the

maxims which Pope has strung together in this poem, but he has dressed

them so neatly, and turned them out with such sparkle and point, that

these truisms have acquired a weight not their own, and they circulate

as proverbs among us in virtue of their pithy form rather than their

truth. They exemplify his own line, 'What oft was thought, but ne'er so

well expressed.' Pope told Spence that he had gone through all the best

critics, specifying Quintilian, Rapin, and Le Bossu. But whatever

trouble he took in collecting what to say, his main effort is expended

upon how to say it."--_Pattison._

5. =as women men.= "As women value men," or "as women by men are

valued"--which?

6. =humbly take upon content.= Are satisfied to take in faith.

7. =sort.= Agree.

8. =Fungoso.= A character in Ben Jonson's comedy, "Every Man in his

Humour."

9. =sparks.= Fops; vain, showy men.

10. =Parnassus.= A mountain in Hellas, the chief seat of Apollo and the

Muses. Hence, figuratively, a resort of the poets.

11. =mend.= Improve, make better, amend.

"Mend your speech a little

Lest it may mar your fortunes."

--_Shakespeare_, _King Lear_, Act i, sc. i.

12. "The gaping of the vowels in this line, the expletive _do_ in the

next, and the ten monosyllables in that which follows, give such a

beauty to this passage as would have been very much admired in an

ancient poet."--_Addison._

13. Pope himself is not disinclined to make use of these rhymes. See

"Essay on Man," 271.

"Warms in the sun, refreshes in the breeze,

Glows in the stars, and blossoms in the trees."

14. Referring to the Spenserian stanza which is composed of nine lines,

eight of which are iambic pentameters, and the ninth a hexameter or

Alexandrine. The name Alexandrine is said to have been derived from an

old French poem on Alexander the Great, written about the twelfth or

thirteenth century, and composed entirely of hexameter verses. See note

on the versification of the "Faerie Queene," page 234.

15. Observe the skill with which, both in this line and in several which

precede and follow, the poet has made "the sound to seem an echo to the

sense."

16. Waller had been regarded as the greatest poet of the seventeenth

century (see page 205), and Denham, in the time of Pope, was more

esteemed than Milton or Spenser. Dryden called Denham

"That limping old bard

Whose fame on 'The Sophy' and 'Cooper's Hill' stands."

17. =numbers.= Poetical metre.

"As yet a child nor yet a fool to fame,

I lisped in numbers, for the numbers came."

--_Pope, Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot._

18. =Ajax.= "The beautiful distich upon Ajax puts me in mind of a

description in Homer's 'Odyssey,' which none of the critics have taken

notice of. It is where Sisyphus is represented lifting his stone up the

hill which is no sooner carried to the top of it, but it immediately

tumbles to the bottom. This double motion of the stone is admirably

described in the numbers of these verses; as in the four first it is

heaved up by several spondees intermixed with proper breathing places,

and at last trundles down in a continual line of dactyls."--_Addison._

19. =Camilla.= The virgin queen of the Volsci. She aided Turnus against

Æneas, and was famed for her fleetness of foot.

20. =Timotheus.= See notes on "Alexander's Feast," by Dryden.

21. =son of Libyan Jove.= Alexander. See note 5, page 166.

22. =Quality.= Persons of high rank.

ODE ON ST. CECILIA'S DAY.

MDCCVIII.

I.

Descend, ye Nine!{1} descend and sing;

The breathing instruments inspire,

Wake into voice each silent string,

And sweep the sounding lyre!

In a sadly pleasing strain,{2}

Let the warbling lute complain:

Let the loud trumpet sound,

Till the roofs all around

The shrill echoes rebound;

While in more lengthen'd notes and slow,

The deep, majestic, solemn organs blow.

Hark! the numbers soft and clear

Gently steal upon the ear;

Now louder, and yet louder rise,

And fill with spreading sounds the skies:

Exulting in triumph now swell the bold notes,

In broken air, trembling, the wild music floats,

Till, by degrees, remote and small,

The strains decay,

And melt away,

In a dying, dying fall.

II.

By music, minds an equal temper know,{3}

Nor swell too high, nor sink too low.

If in the breast tumultuous joys arise,

Music her soft, assuasive{4} voice applies;

Or, when the soul is press'd with cares,

Exalts her in enlivening airs.

Warriors she fires with animated sounds;

Pours balm into the bleeding lover's wounds:

Melancholy lifts her head,

Morpheus rouses from his bed,

Sloth unfolds her arms and wakes,

Listening Envy drops her snakes;

Intestine war no more our passions wage,

And giddy factions hear away their rage.

III.

But when our country's cause provokes to arms,

How martial music every bosom warms!

So when the first bold vessel dared the seas,

High on the stern the Thracian raised his strain,{5}

While Argo saw her kindred trees

Descend from Pelion to the main.

Transported demi-gods{6} stood round,

And men grew heroes at the sound,

Inflamed with glory's charms;

Each chief his sevenfold shield display'd,

And half unsheathed the shining blade:

And seas, and rocks, and skies rebound,

To arms! to arms! to arms!

IV.

But when, through all the infernal bounds{7}

Which flaming Phlegethon surrounds,

Love, strong as death,{8} the poet led

To the pale nations of the dead,

What sounds were heard,

What scenes appear'd,

O'er all the dreary coast!

Dreadful gleams,

Dismal screams,

Fires that glow,

Shrieks of woe,

Sullen moans,

Hollow groans,

And cries of tortured ghosts!

But, hark! he strikes the golden lyre;

And see! the tortured ghosts respire,

See, shady forms{9} advance!

Thy stone, O Sisyphus, stands still,{10}

Ixion rests upon his wheel,

And the pale spectres dance;

The Furies sink upon their iron beds,

And snakes uncurl'd hang listening round their heads.

V.

By the streams that ever flow,

By the fragrant winds that blow

O'er the Elysian flowers;

By those happy souls who dwell

In yellow meads of asphodel,

Or amaranthine bowers;

By the heroes' armed shades,

Glittering through the gloomy glades,

By the youths that died for love,

Wandering in the myrtle grove,

Restore, restore Eurydice to life:

Oh take the husband, or return the wife!

He sung, and hell{11} consented

To hear the poet's prayer;

Stern Proserpine relented,

And gave him back the fair.

Thus song could prevail

O'er death and o'er hell,

A conquest how hard and how glorious!

Though fate had fast bound her

With Styx nine times round her,

Yet music and love were victorious.{12}

VI.

But soon, too soon, the lover turns his eyes:

Again she falls, again she dies, she dies!

How wilt thou now the fatal sisters move?

No crime was thine, if 'tis no crime to love.

Now under hanging mountains,

Beside the falls of fountains,

Or where Hebrus wanders,

Rolling in meanders,

All alone,

Unheard, unknown,

He makes his moan;

And calls her ghost,

For ever, ever, ever lost!

Now with furies surrounded,{13}

Despairing, confounded,

He trembles, he glows,

Amidst Rhodope's{14} snows:

See, wild as the winds, o'er the desert he flies;

Hark! Hæmus resounds with the Bacchanals' cries--

Ah see, he dies!

Yet even in death Eurydice he sung,

Eurydice still trembled on his tongue,

Eurydice the woods,

Eurydice the floods,

Eurydice the rocks, and hollow mountains rung.

VII.

Music{15} the fiercest grief can charm,

And fate's severest rage disarm;

Music can soften pain to ease,

And make despair and madness please:

Our joys below it can improve,

And antedate the bliss above.

This the divine Cecilia found,

And to her Maker's praise confined the sound.

When the full organ joins the tuneful choir,

The immortal powers incline their ear;

Borne on the swelling notes our souls aspire,

While solemn airs improve the sacred fire;

And angels lean from heaven to hear.

Of Orpheus now no more let poets tell,

To bright Cecilia greater power is given;

His numbers raised a shade from hell,

Hers lift the soul to heaven.{16}

NOTES.

This poem was written in 1708 at the suggestion of Sir Richard Steele;

it was set to music by Maurice Greene, and in 1730 was performed at the

public commemoration at Cambridge. Its model is Dryden's famous ode,

"Alexander's Feast," of which Pope was a warm admirer (see page 159).

Dr. Johnson says; "In his 'Ode on St. Cecilia's Day' Pope is generally

confessed to have miscarried; yet he has miscarried only as compared

with Dryden, for he has far outgone other competitors. Dryden's plan is

better chosen; history will always take stronger hold of the passions

than fable: the passions excited by Dryden are the pleasures and pains

of real life; the scene of Pope is laid in imaginary existence; Pope is

read with calm acquiescence, Dryden with turbulent delight; Pope hangs

upon the ear, Dryden finds the passes of the mind. Both the odes want

the essential constituent of metrical compositions, the stated

recurrence of settled numbers. . . . If Pope's ode be particularly

inspected, it will be found that the first stanza consists of sounds,

well chosen, indeed, but only sounds. The second consists of

hyperbolical commonplaces, easily to be found, and, perhaps, without

much difficulty to be as well expressed. In the third, however, there

are numbers, images, harmony, and vigor not unworthy the antagonist of

Dryden. Had all been like this--but every part cannot be the best. The

next stanzas place and detain us in the dark and dismal regions of

mythology; . . . we have all that can be performed by elegance of

diction or sweetness of versification; but what can form avail without

better matter? The last stanza again refers to commonplaces. The

conclusion is too evidently modelled by that of Dryden; and it may be

remarked that both end with the same fault--the comparison of each is

literal on one side and metaphorical on the other. Poets do not always

express their own thoughts. Pope, with all this labor in the praise of

music, was ignorant of its principles and insensible of its effects."

St. Cecilia, the Christian Polyhymnia and patron saint of sacred music,

is said to have suffered martyrdom about the year 230. In Chaucer's

"Seconde Nonnes Tale"--which is an almost literal translation of the

"Legenda Aurea," written in the thirteenth century--it is related that,

on account of Cecilia's spotless purity, an angel came down from heaven

to be her guardian. Her husband, Valerian, was also the recipient of

angelic favors, for

"This angel had of roses and lilie

Corones two, the which he bare in honde,

And first to Cecile, as I understonde,

He yaf that on, and after gan he take

That other to Valerian hire make."

How and when Cecilia was first recognized as the patron saint of music

does not appear. The legend only says, that

"While the organs maden melodie,

To God alone thus in hire hert song she;

'O Lord, my soule and eke my body gie

Unwemmed, lest that I confounded be.'"

There is also a tradition in the church that St. Cecilia was the

inventor of the organ. Dryden calls her "inventress of the vocal frame"

(see page 164). The origin of this musical instrument is not known, but

the first organs used in Italy are said to have been brought thither

from Greece. Some of the Roman churches are known to have had them in

use in the seventh century, but they were not common until several

hundred years later. The festival of St. Cecilia occurs on the 22d of

November.

1. =ye Nine.= The nine Muses: (1) Calliope, the Muse of epic poetry; (2)

Clio, the Muse of history; (3) Euterpe, the Muse of lyric poetry; (4)

Melpomene, the Muse of tragedy; (5) Terpsichore, the Muse of choral

dance and song; (6) Erato, the Muse of erotic poetry; (7) Polyhymnia,

the Muse of the sublime hymn; (8) Urania, the Muse of astronomy; (9)

Thalia, the Muse of comedy and idyllic poetry. The custom of invoking

the Muses, at the beginning of poems, is derived from Homer:

"Of Peleus' son, Achilles, sing, O Muse."

--_Iliad_, I, 1.

"Tell me, O Muse, of that sagacious man

Who, having overthrown the sacred town

Of Ilium, wandered far," etc.

--_Odyssey_, I, 1.

Milton invokes the

"heavenly Muse that on the secret top

Of Oreb, or of Sinai, didst inspire

That shepherd," etc.

--_Paradise Lost_, I, 1.

2. Observe how, in the sixteen lines following, the sound is made in

some measure to be "an echo to the sense."

3. =equal temper know.= Evenness of disposition acquire. The music of

Timotheus had an opposite effect on Alexander. See "Alexander's Feast."

4. =assuasive.= Moderating.

5. =the Thracian raised his strain.= Orpheus was a Thracian, the son of

Oeagrus and the Muse Calliope. Apollo gave him a lyre, and the Muses

instructed him in its use; and so sweet was the music which he drew from

it that the wild beasts were enchanted and the trees and rocks moved

from their places to follow the sound. When Jason and his followers, the

Argonauts, were unable to launch their ship Argo, Orpheus played his

lyre, and the vessel glided into the sea, while her "kindred trees

descended" from the slopes of the mountain (Pelion) and followed her

into "the main."

6. =demi-gods.= Half-gods; heroes. Among the Argonauts were Hercules,

Castor and Pollux, Theseus, Peleus, Nestor, and others similarly

renowned.

7. =infernal bounds.= Boundaries of hell. The wife of Orpheus was a nymph

named Eurydice. She having died from the bite of a serpent, the sweet

musician followed her into the infernal regions. He begged of Pluto that

his wife might return with him to the earth, but his prayer was granted

only upon condition that he should not look back upon her until both had

safely passed the gates between Hades and the upper world. The poet

tells the rest of the story.

=Phlegethon.= A river of hell in which flowed fire instead of water.

8. See Song of Solomon viii. 6: "Love is strong as death."

9. =shady forms.= Departed spirits were called "shades," because they were

supposed to be perceptible sometimes to the sight but never to the

touch. See "heroes' armed shades," below.

10. =Sisyphus.= See note 18, page 147.

=Ixion.= King of the Lapithæ. As a punishment for ingratitude to Zeus, his

hands and feet were chained to a wheel which was always in motion.

=Furies.= See note 20, page 167.

11. =hell.= The powers of hell--or, as he explains below, Proserpine, the

queen of the infernal regions. =Styx.= The principal river of hell, around

which it flows seven--not nine--times.

12. See Milton's "L'Allegro," 135:

"Lap me in soft Lydian airs,

Married to immortal verse, . . .

That Orpheus' self may heave his head

From golden slumber on a bed

Of heaped Elysian flowers, and hear

Such strains as would have won the ear

Of Pluto to have quite set free

His half-regain'd Eurydice."

13. Orpheus's grief for the loss of Eurydice caused him to treat with

contempt the Thracian women among whom he dwelt, and they in revenge

tore him to pieces, under the excitement of their Bacchanalian orgies.

His head was given by the Hebrus to the sea, and finally carried to the

island of Lesbos, where it was buried. See Milton's "Lycidas," 58:

"What could the Muse herself that Orpheus bore,

The Muse herself for her enchanting son,

Whom universal nature did lament,

When by the rout that made the hideous roar,

His gory visage down the stream was sent,

Down the swift Hebrus to the Lesbian shore?"

See, also, "Paradise Lost," VII, 32:

"The barbarous dissonance

Of Bacchus and his revellers, the race

Of that wild rout that tore the Thracian bard

In Rhodope, where woods and rocks had ears

To rapture, till the savage clamor drown'd

Both harp and voice; nor could the Muse defend

Her son."

14. =Rhodope.= A range of mountains in Thrace, sacred to Bacchus. =Hæmus=

was another range extending from Rhodope, on the west, to the Black Sea,

on the east.

15. =Music.= Compare what Pope says of music with:

"Music hath charms to soothe the savage breast."

--_Congreve_, _The Mourning Bride_.

"O Music! sphere-descended maid,

Friend of pleasure, wisdom's aid!"

--_Collins_, _The Passions_.

"Soft is the music that would charm forever."

--_Wordsworth_, _Sonnets_.

16. Compare these lines with the four which end Dryden's "Alexander's

Feast."

BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE.

ALEXANDER POPE was born in London in 1688. He had some instruction at

home, and was afterwards sent, first to a Roman Catholic seminary near

Winchester, then to another in London. "This," he said, "was all the

teaching I ever had, and God knows it extended a very little way. When I

had done with my priests, I took to reading by myself, for which I had a

very great eagerness and enthusiasm, especially for poetry: and in a few

years I had dipped into a very great number of the English, Italian,

Latin, and Greek poets." He was small of stature and deformed, and his

ill health made him peevish, irritable, and selfish. Yet his rare

intellectual abilities and the deserved success of his earlier poetry

secured for him the friendship of many of the most influential men of

the time. Bolingbroke declared that he never knew a man more tenderly

devoted to his friends; and Warburton said, "He is as good a companion

as poet, and, what is more, appears to be a good man."

Pope's "Essay on Criticism" was published in 1711; the "Rape of the

Lock" in 1714; his translation of Homer's "Iliad" in 1715-18, and of the

"Odyssey" in 1726; the "Dunciad" in 1728; the "Essay on Man" in 1732. A

revised and enlarged version of the "Dunciad" was published in 1742. The

latter part of Pope's life was spent at his country-seat of Twickenham,

which he enlarged and beautified from the proceeds of his translation of

Homer. He died in 1744.

"Pope is our greatest master in didactic poetry," says Stopford Brooke,

"not so much because of the worth of the thoughts as because of the

masterly form in which they are put."

"In two directions," says Mark Pattison, "in that of condensing and

pointing his meaning, and in that of drawing the utmost harmony of sound

out of the couplet, Pope carried versification far beyond the point at

which it was when he took it up. The matter which he worked up into his

verse has a permanent value, and is indeed one of the most precious

heirlooms which the eighteenth century has bequeathed us."

=Other Poems to be Read:= The Rape of the Lock; The Dying Christian to his

Soul; The Universal Prayer; Pastorals; Windsor Forest.

REFERENCES: Johnson's _Lives of the Poets_; Stephen's _Hours in a

Library_; De Quincey's _Literature of the Eighteenth Century_; Lowell's

_My Study Window_; _Pope_ (English Men of Letters), by Leslie Stephen.

The Seventeenth Century.

"_The people of the seventeenth century were weary of liberty, weary of

the unmitigated rage of the dramatists, cloyed with the roses and the

spices and the kisses of the lyrists, tired of being carried over the

universe and up and down the avenues of history at the freak of every

irresponsible rhymester. Literature had been set open to all the breezes

of heaven by the blustering and glittering Elizabethans, and in the

hands of their less gifted successors it was fast declining into a mere

Cave of the Winds. . . . We know the poets of the early Caroline period

almost entirely by extracts, and their ardor, quaintness, and sudden

flashes of inspiration give them a singular advantage in this form. The

sustained elevation which had characterized Shakespeare and Spenser, and

even in some degree several of the chief of their contemporaries, had

passed away, but still the poets were most brilliant, most delectable in

their purple patches. . . . As the last waves of the Renaissance died

away, a deathly calm settled down upon the pools of thought. Man

returned from the particular to the general, from romantic examples to

those disquisitions on the norm which were thought to display a

classical taste. The seer disappeared, and the artificer took his place.

For a whole century the singer that only sang because he must, and as

the linnets do, was entirely absent from English literature. He came

back at the close of the eighteenth century, with Burns in Scotland, and

with Blake in England._"--EDMUND GOSSE.

"_At the same time, amid the classical coldness which then dried up

English literature, and the social excess which then corrupted English

morals . . . appeared a mighty and superb mind (Milton), prepared by

logic and enthusiasm for eloquence and the epic style; the heir of a

poetical age, the precursor of an austere age, holding his place

between the epoch of unselfish dreaming and the epoch of practical

action._"--TAINE.

=Poets of the Seventeenth Century.=

=Ben Jonson= (1573-1637). See biographical note, page 213.

=William Drummond of Hawthornden= (1585-1649). Short poems; "Poems:

Amorous, Funerall, Divine, Pastorall, in Sonnets, Songs, Sextains,

Madrigals"; "Floures of Sion."

=William Browne= (1588-1643). "Britannia's Pastorals"; "The Shepherd's

Pipe"; "The Inner Temple Masque."

=George Wither= (1588-1667). Short poems; "Collection of Emblems"; "Nature

of Man"; "The Shepheard's Hunting"; "Fidelia."

=Phineas Fletcher= (1582-1650). "The Locustes"; "The Purple Island."

=Giles Fletcher= (1588-1623). "Christ's Victory and Triumph."

=Thomas Carew= (1589-1639). Short poems; "Cælum Britannicum."

=Francis Quarles= (1592-1644). "Divine Poems"; "Emblems, Divine and

Moral."

=Robert Herrick= (1594-1674). See biographical note, page 202.

=Sir John Suckling= (1608-1642). Love poems.

=Richard Lovelace= (1618-1658). Short poems; "Lucasta: Odes, Sonnets,

Songs," etc.

=Lord Herbert of Cherbury= (1581-1648). Odes and short poems.

=George Herbert= (1592-1634). "The Temple: Sacred Poems and Private

Ejaculations"; short poems.

=George Sandys= (1577-1643). "Christ's Passion."

=Richard Crashaw= (1615-1650). "Steps to the Altar."

=Henry Vaughan= (1621-1695). "Silex Scintillans"; "The Mount of Olives."

=Abraham Cowley= (1618-1667). "Poetical Blossomes"; "The Mistress."

=Edmund Waller= (1605-1687). See biographical note, page 205.

=Sir John Denham= (1615-1668). "Cooper's Hill."

=Sir William Davenant= (1605-1668). "Gondibert"; "Madagascar and Other

Poems."

=John Milton= (1608-1674). See biographical note, page 195.

=Andrew Marvell= (1621-1678). Lyric and satiric poems.

=Samuel Butler= (1612-1680). "Hudibras."

=Thomas Otway= (1651-1685). "The Poet's Complaint of his Muse"; "Windsor

Castle."

=John Dryden= (1631-1700). See biographical note, page 175.

John Dryden.

ALEXANDER'S FEAST; OR, THE POWER OF MUSIC:

AN ODE IN HONOR OF ST. CECILIA'S DAY.

'Twas at the royal feast,{1} for Persia won

By Philip's warlike son:

Aloft in awful state

The godlike hero sate

On his imperial throne:

His valiant peers were placed around;

Their brows with roses and with myrtles bound:{2}

(So should desert in arms be crowned.)

The lovely Thais,{3} by his side,

Sate like a blooming Eastern bride

In flower of youth and beauty's pride.

Happy, happy, happy pair!

None but the brave,

None but the brave,

None but the brave deserves the fair.

_Chorus._

Happy, happy, happy pair!

None but the brave,

None but the brave,

None but the brave deserves the fair.

Timotheus,{4} placed on high

Amid the tuneful quire,

With flying fingers touched the lyre:

The trembling notes ascend the sky,

And heavenly joys inspire.

The song began from Jove,{5}

Who left his blissful seats above,

(Such is the power of mighty love.)

A dragon's fiery form belied the god:

Sublime on radiant spires he rode.

The listening crowd admire the lofty sound,

A present deity,{6} they shout around;

A present deity, the vaulted roofs rebound:

With ravish'd ears

The monarch hears,

Assumes the god,

Affects to nod,{7}

And seems to shake the spheres.

_Chorus._

With ravish'd ears

The monarch hears,

Assumes the god,

Affects to nod,

And seems to shake the spheres.

The praise of Bacchus then, the sweet musician sung,

Of Bacchus ever fair and ever young:

The jolly god in triumph comes;

Sound the trumpets; beat the drums;

Flush'd with a purple grace,

He shows his honest face:

Now give the hautboys{8} breath; he comes! he comes!

Bacchus, ever fair and young,

Drinking joys did first ordain;

Bacchus' blessings are a treasure,

Drinking is the soldier's pleasure;

Rich the treasure,

Sweet the pleasure;

Sweet is pleasure after pain.

_Chorus._

Bacchus' blessings are a treasure,

Drinking is the soldier's pleasure;

Rich the treasure,

Sweet the pleasure;

Sweet is pleasure after pain.

Sooth'd with the sound, the king grew vain;

Fought all his battles o'er again;

And thrice he routed all his foes; and thrice he slew the slain.{9}

The master saw the madness rise;

His glowing cheeks, his ardent eyes;

And, while he Heaven and Earth defied,

Changed his hand, and check'd his pride.

He chose a mournful muse,

Soft pity to infuse:

He sung Darius{10} great and good,

By too severe a fate,

Fallen, fallen, fallen, fallen,

Fallen from his high estate,

And welt'ring in his blood;

Deserted at his utmost need,

By those his former bounty fed:

On the bare earth expos'd he lies,{11}

With not a friend to close his eyes.{12}

With downcast looks the joyless victor sate,

Revolving in his alter'd soul

The various turns of chance below;

And, now and then, a sigh he stole,{13}

And tears began to flow.

_Chorus._

Revolving in his alter'd soul

The various turns of chance below;

And, now and then, a sigh he stole,

And tears began to flow.

The mighty master smil'd to see

That love was in the next degree:

'Twas but a kindred sound to move,

For pity melts the mind to love.{14}

Softly sweet, in Lydian{15} measures,

Soon he sooth'd his soul to pleasures.

War, he sung, is toil and trouble;

Honor, but an empty bubble;{16}

Never ending, still beginning,

Fighting still, and still destroying;

If the world be worth thy winning,

Think, oh think it worth enjoying!

Lovely Thais sits beside thee,

Take the good the gods provide thee.

The many{17} rend the air with loud applause;

So Love was crown'd, but Music won the cause.

The prince, unable to conceal his pain,

Gaz'd on the fair

Who caus'd his care,

And sigh'd and look'd,{18} sigh'd and look'd,

Sigh'd and look'd, and sigh'd again;

At length, with love and wine at once oppress'd,

The vanquish'd victor sunk upon her breast.

_Chorus._

The prince, unable to conceal his pain,

Gaz'd on the fair

Who caus'd his care,

And sigh'd and look'd, sigh'd and look'd,

Sigh'd and look'd, and sigh'd again;

At length, with love and wine at once oppress'd,

The vanquish'd victor sunk upon her breast.

Now strike the golden lyre again;

A louder yet, and yet a louder strain.

Break his bands of sleep{19} asunder,

And rouse him, like a rattling peal of thunder.

Hark, hark, the horrid sound

Has raised up his head!

As awaked from the dead,

And amaz'd he stares around.

Revenge! revenge! Timotheus cries,

See the Furies{20} arise:

See the snakes that they rear,

How they hiss in their hair,

And the sparkles that flash from their eyes!

Behold a ghastly band,

Each a torch in his hand!

Those are Grecian ghosts,{21} that in battle were slain,

And unburied remain

Inglorious on the plain:

Give the vengeance due

To the valiant crew.{22}

Behold how they toss their torches on high,

How they point to the Persian abodes,

And glittering temples of their hostile gods!

The princes applaud with a furious joy;

And the king seiz'd a flambeau with zeal to destroy;

Thais led the way,{23}

To light him to his prey,

And like another Helen, fired another Troy.

_Chorus._

And the king seiz'd a flambeau with zeal to destroy;

Thais led the way,

To light him to his prey,

And like another Helen, fired another Troy.

Thus, long ago,

Ere heaving bellows learn'd to blow,

While organs{24} yet were mute;

Timotheus to his breathing flute,

And sounding lyre,

Could swell the soul to rage, or kindle soft desire.

At last divine Cecilia came,

Inventress of the vocal frame;{25}

The sweet enthusiast, from her sacred store,

Enlarged the former narrow bounds,

And added length to solemn sounds,

With Nature's mother-wit, and arts unknown before.

Let old Timotheus yield the prize,

Or both divide the crown:

He rais'd a mortal to the skies;

She drew an angel down.{26}

_Grand Chorus._

At last divine Cecilia came,

Inventress of the vocal frame;

The sweet enthusiast, from her sacred store,

Enlarged the former narrow bounds,

And added length to solemn sounds,

With Nature's mother-wit, and arts unknown before.

Let old Timotheus yield the prize,

Or both divide the crown:

He rais'd a mortal to the skies

She drew an angel down.

NOTES.

This song was written in 1697. Lord Bolingbroke relates that, calling

upon the poet one morning, Dryden said to him: "I have been up all

night; my musical friends made me promise to write them an ode for their

Feast of St. Cecilia, and I was so struck with the subject which

occurred to me that I could not leave it till I had completed it: here

it is, finished at one sitting."

The poem was first set to music by one Jeremiah Clarke, a steward of the

Musical Society, whose members had solicited Dryden to write it. In 1736

it was rearranged by the great composer Handel, and again presented at a

public performance.

M. Taine says, "His 'Alexander's Feast' is an admirable trumpet-blast,

in which metre and sound impress upon the nerves the emotions of the

mind, a master-piece of rapture and of art, which Victor Hugo alone has

come up to."

"As a piece of poetical mechanism to be set to music, or recited in

alternate strophe and anti-strophe," says Hazlitt, "nothing can be

better."

"This ode is Dryden's greatest and best work."--_Macaulay._

1. =royal feast.= About the year B.C. 331, Alexander the Great, having

overthrown the Persian Empire, held a great feast at Persepolis in

celebration of his victories. At the close of the revelries, instigated,

it is said, by Thais, his Athenian mistress, he set fire with his own

hand to the great palace of Persepolis; and a general massacre of the

inhabitants ensued. The ruins of the city and palace are still to be

seen in a beautiful valley watered by the river Araxes--now called

Bendemir--not far from the border of the Carmanian Desert.

2. =with roses and with myrtles.= At the banquets of the Greeks it was the

custom of the guests to wear garlands of roses and myrtles.

3. =Thais.= "Her name is best known from the story of her having

stimulated the Conqueror, during a great festival at Persepolis, to set

fire to the palace of the Persian kings; but this anecdote, immortalized

as it has been by Dryden's famous ode, appears to rest on the sole

authority of Cleitarchus, one of the least trustworthy of the historians

of Alexander, and is in all probability a mere fable." After the death

of Alexander, Thais became the wife of Ptolemy Lagus.

4. =Timotheus.= A famous flute-player from Thebes. Another and more

celebrated Timotheus, "the poet of the later Athenian dithyramb," was a

native of Miletus and died about the time of Alexander's birth.

5. Alexander claimed to be the son of Jupiter Ammon; and when he visited

the temple of that god, in the Libyan Desert, he was received by the

priests and honored as such. See Plutarch's _Life of Alexander_.

6. =present deity.= See Psalm xlvi. 1.

7. =affects to nod.= See Homer's "Iliad." I, 528-530: "Jove spake, and

nodded his dark brow, and the ambrosial locks waved from his immortal

head; and he made great Olympus quake."

8. =hautboys.= Oboes. French _hautbois_. Wind instruments resembling the

clarionet.

=Bacchus.= Compare Shakespeare:

"Come, thou monarch of the vine,

Plumpy Bacchus with pink eyne."

--_Antony and Cleopatra_, Act ii, sc. 7.

9. =thrice he slew the slain.= How could he slay the slain?

10. =Darius.= At the time of this feast at Persepolis, Darius, the

vanquished king of Persia, was still living, although a fugitive. In the

following year Alexander pursued him into the Parthian Desert, where he

was murdered by the satrap of Bactria. By order of Alexander, the body

of the unfortunate king was sent to Persepolis, to be buried in the

tombs of the kings.

11. =expos'd he lies.= Dryden seems to have written this under the

impression that Darius had been killed before the time of the great

feast at Persepolis.

12. =close his eyes.= Compare this with the lines from Pope ("Elegy on an

Unfortunate Lady"):

"By foreign hands thy dying eyes were closed;

By foreign hands thy decent limbs composed."

13. =a sigh he stole.= Sighed silently. His sighs when the result of pity

were not very distinctly uttered. Compare Shakespeare:

"And then the lover,

Sighing like a furnace."

--_As You Like It_, Act ii, sc. 7.

And then read, in the next stanza, how Alexander sighed when moved by

love.

14. =pity melts the mind to love.= Compare:

"Pity swells the tide of love."

--_Young's Night Thoughts_, III, 106.

"Pity's akin to love."

--_Southern's Oroonoko_, II, 1.

15. =Lydian measures.= The people of Lydia were noted for the effeminacy

of their manners. And Lydian music was peculiarly soft and voluptuous.

"And ever against eating cares,

Lap me in soft Lydian airs."

--_Milton's L'Allegro_, 135.

"And all the while sweet Musicke did divide

Her looser notes with Lydian harmony."

--_Spenser's Faerie Queene_, III, 1.

Observe the change in metre in the ten lines beginning "Softly sweet."

What does the word _sweet_ modify?

16. =Honor, but an empty bubble.= So Shakespeare:

"Honor is a mere scutcheon."

--_1 Henry IV._, Act v, sc. 1.

17. =The many.= The multitude.

18. =sigh'd and look'd.= He no longer _steals_ a sigh, as he did when

pitying Darius. See note 13, above.

19. =Break his bands of sleep.= The music now is very different from the

Lydian measures which "soothed his soul to pleasures." "Suidas," says

Dr. Warton, "mentions the Orthian style in music, in which Timotheus is

said to have played to Alexander; and one Antigenidas inflamed this

prince still more by striking into what were called Harmatian measures.

Quintus Curtius gives a minute description of the burning of the palace

at Persepolis, when Alexander was accompanied by Thais. But it does not

appear in the accurate Arrian that Thais had any share in this

transaction. Arrian, but more so Aristobulus, endeavored to exculpate

Alexander from the charge of frequent ebriety; but Menander plainly

mentions the drunkenness of Alexander as proverbial."

20. =Furies.= The Eumenides, or avengers of evil. They are variously

represented by the poets. Æschylus describes them as having black

bodies, hair composed of twining snakes, and eyes dripping with blood.

21. =Grecian ghosts.= The spirits of the Greek warriors in Alexander's

army who had been slain by the Persians.

22. =crew.= This word was formerly used to designate any associated

multitude or assemblage of persons. It is now restricted to a ship's

company, except when occasionally used in a bad sense. From A.-S.

_cread_ or _cruth_, a crowd.

23. =Thais led the way, etc.= See note 19, above. Neither Thais nor Helen

actually fired any city. What the poet means to say is that, as Helen

was the cause of the destruction of Troy, so Thais instigated the

burning of Persepolis.

24. =organs.= The word _organ_ originally denoted but a single pipe, and

hence the older English writers, when referring to the complete

instrument, generally used the word in the plural number. "Father

Schmidt and other famous organ-builders flourished in the latter part of

the seventeenth century. The organ in Temple Church, London, was built

by Schmidt in Charles II.'s time."

25. =vocal frame.= The organ--the grand instrument of church music--so

perfect that it may literally be said to speak. See introductory note to

Pope's "Ode on St. Cecilia's Day," page 153.

26. St. Cecilia, according to the story in the "Golden Legend," was

under the immediate protection of an angel. But it was not her sweet

playing, but her spotless purity, that brought the angel to earth, not

to listen, but to be "a heavenly guard."

Compare these last four lines with those at the close of Pope's Ode.

Dr. Warton says of "Alexander's Feast": "If Dryden had never written

anything but this ode, his name would have been immortal, as would that

of Gray, if he had never written anything but his 'Bard.' It is

difficult to find new terms to express our admiration of the variety,

richness, and melody of its numbers; the force, beauty, and distinctness

of its images; the succession of so many different passions and

feelings; and the matchless perspicuity of its diction. No particle of

it can be wished away, but the epigrammatic turn of the four concluding

lines."

Hallam says: "This ode has a few lines mingled with a far greater number

ill conceived and ill expressed; the whole composition has that spirit

which Dryden hardly ever wanted, but it is too faulty for high praise.

It used to pass for the best work of Dryden and the best ode in the

language. But few lines are highly poetical, and some sink to the level

of a common drinking song. It has the defects as well as the merits of

that poetry which is written for musical accompaniment."

THE FIRE OF LONDON.

[FROM "ANNUS MIRABILIS."]

Such was the rise of this prodigious fire,{1}

Which, in mean buildings first obscurely bred,

From thence did soon to open streets aspire,

And straight to palaces and temples spread.

The diligence of trades, and noiseful gain,

And luxury, more late, asleep were laid;

All was the Night's, and in her silent reign

No sound the rest of Nature did invade.

In this deep quiet, from what source unknown,{2}

Those seeds of fire their fatal birth disclose;

And first few scattering sparks about were blown,

Big with the flames that to our ruin rose.

Then in some close-pent room it crept along,

And, smouldering as it went, in silence fed;

Till the infant monster, with devouring strong,

Walk'd boldly upright with exalted head.

Now, like some rich or mighty murderer,

Too great for prison which he breaks with gold,

Who fresher for new mischiefs does appear,

And dares the world to tax him with the old,

So scapes the insulting fire his narrow jail,

And makes small outlets into open air;

There the fierce winds his tender force assail,

And beat him downward to his first repair.

The winds, like crafty courtesans, withheld

His flames from burning but to blow them more:

And, every fresh attempt, he is repell'd

With faint denials, weaker than before.

And now, no longer letted{3} of his prey,

He leaps up at it with enraged desire,

O'erlooks the neighbors with a wide survey,

And nods at every house his threatening fire.

The ghosts of traitors from the Bridge{4} descend,

With bold fanatic spectres to rejoice;

About the fire into a dance they bend,

And sing their sabbath notes with feeble voice.

Our guardian angel saw them where they sate,

Above the palace of our slumbering King;

He sighed, abandoning his charge to Fate,

And drooping oft look'd back upon the wing.

At length the crackling noise and dreadful blaze

Call'd up some waking lover to the sight;

And long it was ere he the rest could raise,

Whose heavy eyelids yet were full of night.

The next to danger, hot pursued by fate,

Half-clothed, half-naked, hastily retire;

And frighted mothers strike their breasts too late

For helpless infants left amidst the fire.

Their cries soon waken all the dwellers near;

Now murmuring noises rise in every street;

The more remote run stumbling with their fear,

And in the dark men justle as they meet.

So weary bees in little cells repose;

But if night-robbers lift the well-stored hive,

An humming through their waxen city grows,

And out upon each other's wings they drive.{5}

Now streets grow throng'd and busy as by day;

Some run for buckets to the hallow'd quire;

Some cut the pipes, and some the engines play,

And some more bold mount ladders to the fire.

In vain; for from the east a Belgian wind

His hostile breath through the dry rafters sent;

The flames impell'd soon left their foes behind,

And forward with a wanton fury went.

A key{6} of fire ran all along the shore,

And lighten'd all the river with a blaze;

The waken'd tides began again to roar,

And wondering fish in shining waters gaze.

Old Father Thames rais'd up his reverend head,

But fear'd the fate of Simois{7} would return;

Deep in his ooze he sought his sedgy bed,

And shrank his waters back into his urn.

The fire meantime walks in a broader gross;{8}

To either hand his wings he opens wide;

He wades the streets, and straight he reaches cross,

And plays his longing flames on the other side.

At first they warm, then scorch, and then they take;

Now with long necks from side to side they feed;

At length, grown strong, their mother-fire forsake,

And a new colony of flames succeed.

To every nobler portion of the town

The curling billows roll their restless tide;

In parties now they straggle up and down,

As armies unopposed for prey divide.

One mighty squadron, with a sidewind sped,

Through narrow lanes his cumber'd fire does haste,

By powerful charms of gold and silver led

The Lombard bankers and the Change to waste.

Another backward to the Tower would go,

And slowly eats his way against the wind;

But the main body of the marching foe

Against the imperial palace is design'd.

Now day appears; and with the day the King,

Whose early care had robb'd him of his rest;

Far off the cracks of falling houses ring,

And shrieks of subjects pierce his tender breast.

Near as he draws, thick harbingers of smoke

With gloomy pillars cover all the place;

Whose little intervals of night are broke

By sparks that drive against his sacred face.

More than his guards his sorrows made him known,

And pious tears which down his cheeks did shower;

The wretched in his grief forgot their own;

So much the pity of a king has power.

He wept the flames of what he lov'd so well,

And what so well had merited his love;

For never prince in grace did more excel,

Or royal city more in duty strove.

NOTES.

This selection from Dryden's long and very tedious poem, "Annus

Mirabilis, the year of Wonders, 1666," is given here as a specimen of

that kind of mechanical versification so popular in the latter half of

the seventeenth century. "That part of my poem which describes the

Fire," says Dryden, "I owe first to the piety and fatherly affection of

our monarch to his suffering subjects; and, in the second place, to the

courage, loyalty, and magnanimity of the city; both of which were so

conspicuous that I have wanted words to celebrate them as they deserve.

And I have chosen to write my poem in quatrains or stanzas of four in

alternate rhyme, because I have ever judged them more noble, and of

greater dignity, both for the sound and number, than any other verse in

use amongst us." This opinion, however, was certainly not long

maintained by the poet, for he never afterward practised that form of

versification which he has here praised.

1. =this prodigious fire.= A half sheet published immediately after the

Great Fire contains this account of the catastrophe which Dryden

describes in his verses:

"On Sunday, the second of September, this present year 1666, about one

o'clock in the morning, there happened a sad and deplorable fire in

_Pudding-lane_ near _New Fish-street_; which, falling out in a part of

the city so close built with wooden houses . . . in a short time became

too big to be mastered by any engines or working near it. . . . It

continued all Monday and Tuesday with such impetuosity, that it consumed

houses and churches all the way to _St. Dunstan's Church_, in

_Fleet-street_; at which time, by the favour of God, the wind slackened;

and that night, by the vigilancy, industry, and indefatigable pains of

his Majesty and his Royal Highness, calling upon all people, and

encouraging them by their personal assistances, a stop was put to the

fire in Fleet-street, etc. But on Wednesday night it suddenly broke out

afresh in the _Inner Temple_. His Royal Highness in person fortunately

watching there that night, by his care, diligence, great labour, and

seasonable commands for the blowing up, with gunpowder, some of the said

buildings, it was most happily before day extinguished."

2. =source unknown.= "It was ascribed by the rage of the people either to

the Republicans or the Catholics, especially the latter. An inscription

on the monument, intended to perpetuate this groundless suspicion, was

erased by James II., but restored at the Revolution."--_Warton._

3. =letted.= Hindered. This use of the word _let_ is now obsolete, except

in the phrase, "Without let or hindrance." It was frequently employed

by the older writers.

"What lets but one may enter?"--_Shakespeare._