Katherine! to many an hour of mine

Light wings and sunshine you have lent;

And so adieu, and still be thine

The all-in-all of life—Content!

[75] A Norman leader, Gilliespie le Camile, in the service of the king of

Scotland, married the heiress of Lochaw in the twelfth century, and from

him the Campbells are sprung.

GILDEROY.

The last, the fatal hour is come,

That bears my love from me;

I hear the dead note of the drum,

I mark the gallows’ tree!

The bell has tolled; it shakes my heart;

The trumpet speaks thy name;

And must my Gilderoy depart

To bear a death of shame?

No bosom trembles for thy doom;

No mourner wipes a tear;

The gallows’ foot is all thy tomb,

The sledge is all thy bier.

Oh, Gilderoy! bethought we then

So soon, so sad to part,

When first in Roslin’s lovely glen

You triumphed o’er my heart?

Your locks they glittered to the sheen,

Your hunter garb was trim;

And graceful was the ribbon green

That bound your manly limb!

Ah! little thought I to deplore

Those limbs in fetters bound;

Or hear, upon the scaffold floor,

The midnight hammer sound.

Ye cruel, cruel, that combined

The guiltless to pursue;

My Gilderoy was ever kind,

He could not injure you!

A long adieu! but where shall fly

Thy widow all forlorn,

When every mean and cruel eye

Regards my woe with scorn?

Yes! they will mock thy widow’s tears,

And hate thine orphan boy;

Alas! his infant beauty wears

The form of Gilderoy.

Then will I seek the dreary mound

That wraps thy mouldering clay,

And weep and linger on the ground,

And sigh my heart away.

ADELGITHA.

The ordeal’s fatal trumpet sounded,

And sad pale Adelgitha came,

When forth a valiant champion bounded,

And slew the slanderer of her fame.

She wept, delivered from her danger;

But when he knelt to claim her glove—

“Seek not,” she cried, “oh! gallant stranger,

For hapless Adelgitha’s love.

“For he is in a foreign far land

Whose arm should now have set me free

And I must wear the willow garland

For him that’s dead, or false to me.”

“Nay! say not that his faith is tainted!”

He raised his vizor—At the sight

She fell into his arms and fainted;

It was indeed her own true knight!

ABSENCE.

’Tis not the loss of love’s assurance,

It is not doubting what thou art,

But ’tis the too, too long endurance

Of absence, that afflicts my heart.

The fondest thoughts two hearts can cherish,

When each is lonely doomed to weep,

Are fruits on desert isles that perish,

Or riches buried in the deep.

What though, untouched by jealous madness,

Our bosom’s peace may fall to wreck;

The undoubting heart, that breaks with sadness,

Is but more slowly doomed to break.

Absence! is not the soul torn by it

From more than light, or life, or breath?

’Tis Lethe’s gloom, but not its quiet,—

The pain without the peace of death!

THE RITTER BANN.

The Ritter Bann from Hungary

Came back renowned in arms,

But scorning jousts of chivalry

And love and ladies’ charms.

While other knights held revels, he

Was wrapt in thoughts of gloom,

And in Vienna’s hostelrie

Slow paced his lonely room.

There entered one whose face he knew,—

Whose voice, he was aware,

He oft at mass had listened to,

In the holy house of prayer.

’Twas the Abbot of St. James’s monks,

A fresh and fair old man:

His reverend air arrested even

The gloomy Ritter Bann.

But seeing with him an ancient dame

Come clad in Scotch attire,

The Ritter’s colour went and came,

And loud he spoke in ire.

“Ha! nurse of her that was my bane,

Name not her name to me;

I wish it blotted from my brain:

Art poor?—take alms, and flee.”

“Sir Knight,” the Abbot interposed,

“This case your ear demands;”

And the crone cried, with a cross enclosed

In both her trembling hands:—

“Remember, each his sentence waits;

And he that shall rebut

Sweet Mercy’s suit, on him the gates

Of Mercy shall be shut.

“You wedded, undispensed by Church,

Your cousin Jane in Spring;

In Autumn, when you went to search

For churchmen’s pardoning,

“Her house denounced your marriage-band,

Betrothed her to De Grey,

And the ring you put upon her hand

Was wrenched by force away.

“Then wept your Jane upon my neck,

Crying, ‘Help me, nurse, to flee

To my Howel Bann’s Glamorgan hills;’

But word arrived—ah me!—

“You were not there; and ’twas their threat,

By foul means or by fair,

To-morrow morning was to set

The seal on her despair.

“I had a son, a sea-boy, in

A ship at Hartland Bay;

By his aid from her cruel kin

I bore my bird away.

“To Scotland from the Devon’s

Green myrtle shores we fled;

And the Hand that sent the ravens

To Elijah, gave us bread.

“She wrote you by my son, but he

From England sent us word

You had gone into some far countrie,

In grief and gloom he heard.

“For they that wronged you, to elude

Your wrath, defamed my child;

And you—ay, blush, Sir, as you should—

Believed, and were beguiled.

“To die but at your feet, she vowed

To roam the world; and we

Would both have sped and begged our bread,

But so it might not be.

“For when the snow-storm beat our roof,

She bore a boy, Sir Bann,

Who grew as fair your likeness proof

As child e’er grew like man.

“’Twas smiling on that babe one morn

While heath bloomed on the moor,

Her beauty struck young Lord Kinghorn

As he hunted past our door.

‘She shunned him, but he raved of Jane,

And roused his mother’s pride;

Who came to us in high disdain,—

‘And where’s the face,’ she cried,

“‘Has witched my boy to wish for one

So wretched for his wife?—

Dost love thy husband? Know, my son

Has sworn to seek his life.’

“Her anger sore dismayed us,

For our mite was wearing scant,

And unless that dame would aid us,

There was none to aid our want.

“So I told her, weeping bitterly,

What all our woes had been;

And though she was a stern ladie,

The tears stood in her een.

“And she housed us both, when, cheerfully,

My child to her had sworn,

That even if made a widow, she

Would never wed Kinghorn.”——

Here paused the nurse, and then began

The Abbot, standing by:—

“Three months ago a wounded man

To our abbey came to die.

“He heard me long, with ghastly eyes

And hand obdurate clenched,

Speak of the worm that never dies,

And the fire that is not quenched.

“At last by what this scroll attests

He left atonement brief,

For years of anguish to the breasts

His guilt had wrung with grief.

“‘There lived,’ he said, ‘a fair young dame

Beneath my mother’s roof;

I loved her, but against my flame

Her purity was proof.

“‘I feigned repentance, friendship pure:

That mood she did not check,

But let her husband’s miniature

Be copied from her neck.

“‘As means to search him, my deceit

Took care to him was borne

Nought but his picture’s counterfeit,

And Jane’s reported scorn.

“‘The treachery took: she waited wild;

My slave came back and lied

Whate’er I wished; she clasped her child,

And swooned, and all but died.

“‘I felt her tears for years and years

Quench not my flame, but stir;

The very hate I bore her mate

Increased my love for her.

“‘Fame told us of his glory, while

Joy flushed the face of Jane;

And while she blessed his name, her smile

Struck fire into my brain.

“‘No fears could damp; I reached the camp,

Sought out its champion;

And if my broad-sword failed at last,

’Twas long and well laid on.

“‘This wound’s my meed, my name’s Kinghorn,

My foe’s the Ritter Bann.’——

The wafer to his lips was borne,

And we shrived the dying man.

“He died not till you went to fight

The Turks at Warradein;

But I see my tale has changed you pale.”—

The Abbot went for wine;

And brought a little page who poured

It out, and knelt and smiled:—

The stunned knight saw himself restored

To childhood in his child;

And stooped and caught him to his breast,

Laughed loud and wept anon,

And with a shower of kisses pressed

The darling little one.

“And where went Jane?”—“To a nunnery, Sir—

Look not again so pale—

Kinghorn’s old dame grew harsh to her.”—

“And has she ta’en the veil?”—

“Sit down, Sir,” said the priest, “I bar

Rash words.”—They sat all three,

And the boy played with the knight’s broad star,

As he kept him on his knee.

“Think ere you ask her dwelling-place,”

The Abbot further said;

“Time draws a veil o’er beauty’s face

More deep than cloister’s shade.

“Grief may have made her what you can

Scarce love perhaps for life.”

“Hush, Abbot,” cried the Ritter Bann,

“Or tell me where’s my wife.”

The priest undid two doors that hid

The inn’s adjacent room,

And there a lovely woman stood,

Tears bathed her beauty’s bloom.

One moment may with bliss repay

Unnumbered hours of pain;

Such was the throb and mutual sob

Of the Knight embracing Jane.

THE HARPER.

On the green banks of Shannon, when Sheelah was nigh,

No blithe Irish lad was so happy as I;

No harp like my own could so cheerily play,

And wherever I went was my poor dog Tray.

When at last I was forced from my Sheelah to part,

She said (while the sorrow was big at her heart),

“Oh! remember your Sheelah when far, far away;

And be kind, my dear Pat, to our poor dog Tray.”

Poor dog! he was faithful and kind, to be sure,

And he constantly loved me, although I was poor;

When the sour-looking folks sent me heartless away,

I had always a friend in my poor dog Tray.

When the road was so dark, and the night was so cold,

And Pat and his dog were grown weary and old,

How snugly we slept in my old coat of grey,

And he licked me for kindness—my poor dog Tray.

Though my wallet was scant, I remembered his case,

Nor refused my last crust to his pitiful face;

But he died at my feet on a cold winter day,

And I played a sad lament for my poor dog Tray.

Where now shall I go, poor, forsaken, and blind

Can I find one to guide me, so faithful, and kind;

To my sweet native village, so far, far away,

I can never more return with my poor dog Tray.

SONG TO THE EVENING STAR.

Star that bringest home the bee,

And sett’st the weary labourer free!

If any star shed peace, ’tis thou,

That send’st it from above,

Appearing when Heaven’s breath and brow

Are sweet as hers we love.

Come to the luxuriant skies,

Whilst the landscape’s odours rise,

Whilst far-off lowing herds are heard,

And songs, when toil is done,

From cottages whose smoke unstirred

Curls yellow in the sun.

Star of love’s soft interviews,

Parted lovers on thee muse;

Their remembrancer in Heaven

Of thrilling vows thou art,

Too delicious to be riven

By absence from the heart.

SONG. “MEN OF ENGLAND.”

Men of England! who inherit

Rights that cost your sires their blood!

Men whose undegenerate spirit

Has been proved on land and flood:—

By the foes ye’ve fought uncounted,

By the glorious deeds ye’ve done,

Trophies captured—breaches mounted,

Navies conquered—kingdoms won!

Yet, remember, England gathers

Hence but fruitless wreaths of fame,

If the patriotism of your fathers

Glow not in your hearts the same.

What are monuments of bravery,

Where no public virtues bloom?

What avail in lands of slavery,

Trophied temples, arch, and tomb?

Pageants!—Let the world revere us

For our people’s rights and laws,

And the breasts of civic heroes

Bared in Freedom’s holy cause.

Yours are Hampden’s, Russell’s glory,

Sydney’s matchless shade is yours,—

Martyrs in heroic story,

Worth a hundred Agincourts!

We’re the sons of sires that baffled

Crowned and mitred tyranny:—

They defied the field and scaffold

For their birthrights—so will we!

THE MAID’S REMONSTRANCE.

Never wedding, ever wooing,

Still a love-lorn heart pursuing,

Read you not the wrong you’re doing

In my cheek’s pale hue?

All my life with sorrow strewing,

Wed, or cease to woo.

Rivals banished, bosoms plighted,

Still our days are disunited;

Now the lamp of hope is lighted,

Now half quenched appears,

Damped, and wavering, and benighted,

Midst my sighs and tears.

Charms you call your dearest blessing,

Lips that thrill at your caressing,

Eyes a mutual soul confessing,

Soon you’ll make them grow

Dim, and worthless your possessing

Not with age, but woe!

SONG.

Drink ye to her that each loves best.

And if you nurse a flame

That’s told but to her mutual breast,

We will not ask her name.

Enough, while memory tranced and glad

Paints silently the fair,

That each should dream of joys he’s had,

Or yet may hope to share.

Yet far, far hence be jest or boast

From hallowed thoughts so dear;

But drink to them that we love most,

As they would love to hear.

SONG.

When Napoleon was flying

From the field of Waterloo,

A British soldier dying

To his brother bade adieu!

“And take,” he said, “this token

To the maid that owns my faith,

With the words that I have spoken

In affection’s latest breath.”

Sore mourned the brother’s heart,

When the youth beside him fell;

But the trumpet warned to part,

And they took a sad farewell.

There was many a friend to lose him,

For that gallant soldier sighed;

But the maiden of his bosom

Wept when all their tears were dried.

THE BEECH-TREE’S PETITION.

O leave this barren spot to me!

Spare, woodman, spare the beechen tree

Though bush or floweret never grow

My dark unwarming shade below;

Nor summer bird perfume the dew

Of rosy blush, or yellow hue;

Nor fruits of autumn, blossom-born,

My green and glossy leaves adorn;

Nor murmuring tribes from me derive

The ambrosial amber of the hive;

Yet leave this barren spot to me:

Spare, woodman, spare the beechen tree!

Thrice twenty summers I have seen

The sky grow bright, the forest green;

And many a wintry wind have stood

In bloomless, fruitless solitude,

Since childhood in my pleasant bower

First spent its sweet and sportive hour.

Since youthful lovers in my shade

Their vows of truth and rapture made;

And on my trunk’s surviving frame

Carved many a long-forgotten name.

Oh! by the sighs of gentle sound,

First breathed upon this sacred ground,

By all that Love has whispered here,

Or Beauty heard with ravished ear;

As Love’s own altar honour me:

Spare woodman, spare the beechen tree!

SONG.

Earl March looked on his dying child,

And smit with grief to view her—

“The youth,” he cried, “whom I exiled,

Shall be restored to woo her.”

She’s at the window many an hour

His coming to discover;

And her love looked up to Ellen’s bower,

And she looked on her lover—

But ah! so pale, he knew her not,

Though her smile on him was dwelling.

“And am I then forgot—forgot?”—

It broke the heart of Ellen.

In vain he weeps, in vain he sighs,

Her cheek is cold as ashes;

Nor love’s own kiss shall wake those eyes

To lift their silken lashes.

LOVE AND MADNESS. AN ELEGY. WRITTEN IN 1795.

Hark! from the battlements of yonder tower[76]

The solemn bell has tolled the midnight hour!

Roused from drear visions of distempered sleep,

Poor Broderick[77] wakes—in solitude to weep!

“Cease, Memory, cease,” the friendless mourner cried,

“To probe the bosom too severely tried!

Oh! ever cease, my pensive thoughts, to stray

Through the bright fields of Fortune’s better day

When youthful Hope, the music of the mind,

Tuned all its charms, and Errington was kind!

“Yet, can I cease, while glows this trembling frame,

In sighs to speak thy melancholy name?

I hear thy spirit wail in every storm!

In midnight shades I view thy passing form!

Pale as in that sad hour when doomed to feel,

Deep in thy perjured heart, the bloody steel!

“Demons of Vengeance! ye at whose command

I grasped the sword with more than woman’s hand.

Say ye, did Pity’s trembling voice control,

Or horror damp the purpose of my soul?

No! my wild heart sat smiling o’er the plan,

Till Hate fulfilled what baffled Love began!

“Yes; let the clay-cold breast that never knew

One tender pang to generous Nature true,

Half-mingling pity with the gall of scorn,

Condemn this heart, that bled in love forlorn!

“And ye, proud fair, whose soul no gladness warms,

Save Rapture’s homage to your conscious charms!

Delighted idols of a gaudy train,

Ill can your blunter feelings guess the pain,

When the fond faithful heart, inspired to prove

Friendship refined, the calm delight of love,

Feels all its tender strings with anguish torn,

And bleeds at perjured Pride’s inhuman scorn!

“Say, then, did pitying Heaven condemn the deed,

When Vengeance bade thee, faithless lover! bleed?

Long had I watched thy dark foreboding brow,

What time thy bosom scorned its dearest vow!

Sad, though I wept the friend, the lover changed,

Still thy cold look was scornful and estranged,

Till from thy pity, love, and shelter thrown,

I wandered hopeless, friendless, and alone!

“Oh! righteous Heaven! ’twas then my tortured soul

First gave to wrath unlimited control!

Adieu the silent look! the streaming eye!

The murmured plaint! the deep heart-heaving sigh

Long-slumbering Vengeance wakes to better deeds;

He shrieks, he falls, the perjured lover bleeds!

Now the last laugh of agony is o’er,

And pale in blood he sleeps, to wake no more!

“’Tis done! the flame of hate no longer burns

Nature relents, but, ah! too late returns!

Why does my soul this gush of fondness feel?

Trembling and faint, I drop the guilty steel!

Cold on my heart the hand of terror lies,

And shades of horror close my languid eyes!

“Oh!’twas a deed of Murder’s deepest grain,

Could Broderick’s soul so true to wrath remain?

A friend long true, a once fond lover fell!—

Where Love was fostered could not Pity dwell?

“Unhappy youth! while yon pale crescent glows

To watch on silent nature’s deep repose,

Thy sleepless spirit, breathing from the tomb,

Foretells my fate, and summons me to come!

Once more I see thy sheeted spectre stand,

Roll the dim eye, and wave the paly hand!

“Soon may this fluttering spark of vital flame

Forsake its languid melancholy frame!

Soon may these eyes their trembling lustre close,

Welcome the dreamless night of long repose!

Soon may this woe-worn spirit seek the bourne

Where, lulled to slumber, Grief forgets to mourn!”

[76] Warwick Castle.

[77] Miss Broderick: she murdered her lover, Errington.—See Campbell’s

“Life and Letters,” by Dr. Beattie.

SONG.

Oh, how hard it is to find

The one just suited to our mind;

And if that one should be

False, unkind, or found too late,

What can we do but sigh at fate,

And sing, Woe’s me—Woe’s me!

Love’s a boundless burning waste,

Where Bliss’s stream we seldom taste,

And still more seldom flee

Suspense’s thorns, Suspicion’s stings;

Yet somehow Love a something brings

That’s sweet—e’en when we sigh, “Woe’s me!”

STANZAS ON THE THREATENED INVASION 1803.

Our bosoms we’ll bare for the glorious strife,

And our oath is recorded on high,

To prevail in the cause that is dearer than life,

Or crushed in its ruins to die!

Then rise, fellow freemen, and stretch the right hand,

And swear to prevail in your dear native land!

’Tis the home we hold sacred is laid to our trust—

God bless the green Isle of the brave!

Should a conqueror tread on our forefathers’ dust,

It would rouse the old dead from their grave!

Then rise, fellow freemen, and stretch the right hand,

And swear to prevail in your dear native land!

In a Briton’s sweet home shall a spoiler abide,

Profaning its loves and its charms?

Shall a Frenchman insult the loved fair at our side?

To arms! oh, my Country, to arms!

Then rise, fellow freemen, and stretch the right hand,

And swear to prevail in your dear native land!

Shall a tyrant enslave us, my countrymen!—No!

His head to the sword shall be given—

A death-bed repentance be taught the proud foe,

And his blood be an offering to Heaven!

Then rise, fellow freemen, and stretch the right hand,

And swear to prevail in your dear native land!

EXILE OF ERIN.[78]

There came to the beach a poor Exile of Erin,

The dew on his thin robe was heavy and chill:

For his country he sighed, when at twilight repairing

To wander alone by the wind-beaten hill.

But the day-star attracted his eye’s sad devotion,

For it rose o’er his own native isle of the ocean,

Where once in the fire of his youthful emotion,

He sang the bold anthem of “Erin go bragh!”[79]

“Sad is my fate!” said the heart-broken stranger;

“The wild deer and wolf to a covert can flee,

But I have no refuge from famine and danger,

A home and a country remain not to me.

Never again, in the green sunny bowers,

Where my forefathers lived, shall I spend the sweet hours,

Or cover my harp with the wild-woven flowers,

And strike to the numbers of ‘Erin go bragh!’

“Erin, my country! though sad and forsaken,

In dreams I revisit the sea-beaten shore;

But, alas! in a far foreign land I awaken,

And sigh for the friends who can meet me no more!

Oh cruel fate! wilt thou never replace me

In a mansion of peace—where no perils can chase me?

Never again shall my brothers embrace me?

They die to defend me, or live to deplore!

“Where is my cabin-door, fast by the wild-wood?

Sisters and sire! did ye weep for its fall?

Where is the mother that looked on my childhood?

And where is the bosom-friend, dearer than all?

Oh! my sad heart! long abandoned by pleasure,

Why did it doat on a fast-fading treasure?

Tears, like the rain-drop, may fall without measure,

But rapture and beauty they cannot recall.

“Yet all its sad recollections suppressing,

One dying wish my lone bosom can draw:

Erin! an exile bequeaths thee his blessing!

Land of my forefathers! ‘Erin go bragh!’

Buried and cold, when my heart stills her motion,

Green be thy fields,—sweetest isle of the ocean!

And thy harp-striking bards sing aloud with devotion,—

Erin mavournin[80]—Erin go bragh!’”

[78] Anthony McCann, exiled for being implicated in the Irish Rebellion

of 1798. Campbell met him at Hamburg.

[79] Ireland for ever.

[80] Ireland my darling.

LORD ULLIN’S DAUGHTER.

A chieftain to the Highlands bound,

Cries, “Boatman, do not tarry!

And I’ll give thee a silver pound,

To row us o’er the ferry.”

“Now who be ye, would cross Lochgyle,

This dark and stormy water?”

“O, I’m the chief of Ulva’s isle,

And this Lord Ullin’s daughter.

“And fast before her father’s men

Three days we’ve fled together,

For should he find us in the glen,

My blood would stain the heather.

“His horsemen hard behind us ride;

Should they our steps discover,

Then who will cheer my bonny bride

When they have slain her lover?”

Outspoke the hardy Highland wight

“I’ll go, my chief—I’m ready;

It is not for your silver bright,

But for your winsome lady:

“And by my word! the bonny bird

In danger shall not tarry;

So though the waves are raging white,

I’ll row you o’er the ferry.”

By this the storm grew loud apace,

The water-wraith was shrieking;[81]

And in the scowl of heaven each face

Grew dark as they were speaking.

But still as wilder blew the wind,

And as the night grew drearer,

Adown the glen rode armèd men,

Their trampling sounded nearer.

“O haste thee, haste!” the lady cries,

“Though tempests round us gather;

I’ll meet the raging of the skies,

But not an angry father.”

The boat has left a stormy land,

A stormy sea before her,—

When, oh! too strong for human hand,

The tempest gathered o’er her.

And still they rowed amidst the roar

Of waters fast prevailing:

Lord Ullin reached that fatal shore,

His wrath was changed to wailing.

For sore dismayed, through storm and shade,

His child he did discover:

One lovely hand she stretched for aid,

And one was round her lover.

“Come back! come back!” he cried in grief,

“Across this stormy water:

And I’ll forgive your Highland chief,

My daughter!—oh my daughter!”

Twas vain: the loud waves lashed the shore,

Return or aid preventing:

The waters wild went o’er his child—

And he was left lamenting.

[81] The evil spirit of the waters.

ODE TO THE MEMORY OF BURNS.

Soul of the Poet! wheresoe’er,

Reclaimed from earth, thy genius plume

Her wings of immortality:

Suspend thy harp in happier sphere,

And with thine influence illume

The gladness of our jubilee.

And fly like fiends from secret spell,

Discord and strife, at BURNS’S name,

Exorcised by his memory;

For he was chief of bards that swell

The heart with songs of social flame,

And high delicious revelry.

And Love’s own strain to him was given,

To warble all its ecstasies

With Pythian words unsought, unwilled—

Love, the surviving gift of Heaven,

The choicest sweet of Paradise,

In life’s else bitter cup distilled.

Who that has melted o’er his lay

To Mary’s soul, in Heaven above,

But pictured sees, in fancy strong,

The landscape and the livelong day

That smiled upon their mutual love?

Who that has felt forgets the song?

Nor skilled one flame alone to fan:

His country’s high-souled peasantry

What patriot-pride he taught!—how much

To weigh the inborn worth of man!

And rustic life and poverty

Grow beautiful beneath his touch.

Him, in his clay-built cot,[82] the muse

Entranced, and showed him all the forms

Of fairy-light and wizard gloom

(That only gifted Poet views),

The Genii of the floods and storms,

And martial shades from Glory’s tomb.

On Bannock-field what thoughts arouse

The swain whom BURNS’S song inspires?

Beat not his Caledonian veins,

As o’er the heroic turf he ploughs,

With all the spirit of his sires,

And all their scorn of death and chains?

And see the Scottish exile tanned

By many a far and foreign clime,

Bend o’er his home-born verse, and weep

In memory of his native land,

With love that scorns the lapse of time,

And ties that stretch beyond the deep.

Encamped by Indian rivers wild,

The soldier resting on his arms,

In BURNS’S carol sweet recalls

The scenes that blessed him when a child,

And glows and gladdens at the charms

Of Scotia’s woods and waterfalls.

O deem not, midst this worldly strife,

An idle art the Poet brings:

Let high Philosophy control

And sages calm the stream of life,

’Tis he refines its fountain-springs,

The nobler passions of the soul.

It is the muse that consecrates

The native banner of the brave,

Unfurling at the trumpet’s breath,

Rose, thistle, harp; ’tis she elates

To sweep the field or ride the wave,

A sunburst in the storm of death.

And thou, young hero, when thy pall

Is crossed with mournful sword and plume,

When public grief begins to fade,

And only tears of kindred fall,

Who but the Bard shall dress thy tomb,

And greet with fame thy gallant shade?

Such was the soldier—BURNS, forgive

That sorrows of mine own intrude

In strains to thy great memory due.

In verse like thine, oh! could he live,

The friend I mourned—the brave, the good—

Edward that died at Waterloo![83]

Farewell, high chief of Scottish song!

That couldst alternately impart

Wisdom and rapture in thy page,

And brand each vice with satire strong,

Whose lines are mottoes of the heart,

Whose truths electrify the sage.

Farewell! and ne’er may Envy dare

To wring one baleful poison drop

From the crushed laurels of thy bust:

But while the lark sings sweet in air,

Still may the grateful pilgrim stop,

To bless the spot that holds thy dust.

[82] Burns was born in a clay cottage, which his father had built with

his own hands.

[83] Major Edward Hodge, of the 7th Hussars, who fell at the head of his

squadron in the attack of the Polish Lancers.

THE SOLDIER’S DREAM.

Our bugles sang truce—for the night-cloud had lowered,

And the sentinel stars set their watch in the sky;

And thousands had sunk on the ground overpowered,

The weary to sleep, and the wounded to die.

When reposing that night on my pallet of straw,

By the wolf-scaring faggot that guarded the slain,

At the dead of the night a sweet vision I saw,

And thrice ere the morning I dreamt it again.

Methought from the battle-field’s dreadful array,

Far, far I had roamed on a desolate track:

’Twas Autumn,—and sunshine arose on the way

To the home of my fathers, that welcomed me back.

I flew to the pleasant fields traversed so oft

In life’s morning march, when my bosom was young

I heard my own mountain-goats bleating aloft,

And knew the sweet strain that the corn-reapers sung.

Then pledged we the wine-cup, and fondly I swore,

From my home and my weeping friends never to part

My little ones kissed me a thousand times o’er,

And my wife sobbed aloud in her fulness of heart,

Stay, stay with us,—rest, thou art weary and worn;

And fain was their war-broken soldier to stay;—

But sorrow returned with the dawning of morn,

And the voice in my dreaming ear melted away.

LINES WRITTEN ON VISITING A SCENE IN ARGYLESHIRE.

At the silence of twilight’s contemplative hour,

I have mused in a sorrowful mood,

On the wind-shaken weeds that embosom the bower,

Where the home of my forefathers stood.[84]

All ruined and wild is their roofless abode,

And lonely the dark raven’s sheltering tree:

And travelled by few is the grass-covered road,

Where the hunter of deer and the warrior trode

To his hills that encircle the sea.

Yet wandering, I found on my ruinous walk,

By the dial-stone agèd and green,

One rose of the wilderness left on its stalk,

To mark where a garden had been

Like a brotherless hermit, the last of its race,

All wild in the silence of nature, it drew,

From each wandering sun-beam, a lonely embrace,

For the night-weed and thorn overshadowed the place,

Where the flower of my forefathers grew.

Sweet bud of the wilderness! emblem of all

That remains in this desolate heart!

The fabric of bliss to its centre may fall,

But patience shall never depart!

Though the wilds of enchantment, all vernal and bright,

In the days of delusion by fancy combined

With the vanishing phantoms of love and delight,

Abandon my soul, like a dream of the night,

And leave but a desert behind.

Be hushed, my dark spirit! for wisdom condemns

When the faint and the feeble deplore;

Be strong as the rock of the ocean that stems

A thousand wild waves on the shore!

Through the perils of chance, and the scowl of disdain,

May thy front be unaltered, thy courage elate!

Yea! even the name I have worshipped in vain

Shall awake not the sigh of remembrance again:

To bear is to conquer our fate.

[84] Kirnan.

SPANISH PATRIOT’S SONG.

How rings each sparkling Spanish brand,

There’s music in its rattle;

And gay, as for a saraband,

We gird us for the battle.

Follow, follow!

To the glorious revelry,

When the sabres bristle,

And the death-shots whistle.

Of rights for which our swords outspring,

Shall Angoulême bereave us?

We’ve plucked a bird of nobler wing—

The eagle could not brave us.

Follow, follow!

Shake the Spanish blade, and sing—

France shall ne’er enslave us:

Tyrants shall not brave us.

Shall yonder rag, the Bourbon’s flag,

White emblem of his liver,

For Spain the proud be Freedom’s shroud?

Oh, never, never, never.

Follow, follow!

Follow to the fight, and sing—

Liberty for ever:

Ever, ever, ever.

Thrice welcome hero of the hilt,

We laugh to see his standard;

Here let his miscreant blood be spilt

Where braver men’s was squandered.

Follow, follow!

If the laureled tricolor

Durst not over-flaunt us,

Shall yon lily daunt us?

No! ere they quell our valour’s veins,

They’ll upward to their fountains

Turn back the rivers on our plains,

And trample flat our mountains.

Follow, follow!

Shake the Spanish blade, and sing—

France shall ne’er enslave us:

Tyrants shall not brave us.

VERSES ON MARIE ANTOINETTE.[85]

Behold where Gallia’s captive queen,

With steady eye and look serene,

In life’s last awful—awful scene,

Slow leaves her sad captivity.

Hark! the shrill horn that rends the sky

Bespeaks thy ready murder nigh,

The long parade of death I spy,

And leave my lone captivity.

Farewell, ye mansions of despair,

Scenes of my sad sequestered care.

The balm of bleeding war is near.

Adieu, my lone captivity.

To purer mansions in the sky,

Fair Hope directs my grief-worn eye,

Where sorrow’s child no more shall sigh

Amid her lone captivity.

Adieu, ye babes whose infant bloom

Beneath oppression’s lawless doom,

Pines in the solitary gloom

Of undeserved captivity.

O Power benign that rul’st on high,

Cast down, cast down a pitying eye;

Shed consolation from the sky,

To soothe their sad captivity.

Now virtue’s sure reward to prove,

I seek empyreal realms above,

To meet my long-departed love;

Adieu my lone captivity.

[85] These lines were published in a leading Glasgow newspaper in 1792.

DIRGE OF WALLACE.

They lighted the tapers at dead of night,

And chanted their holiest hymn,

But her brow and her bosom were damp with affright,

Her eye was all sleepless and dim.

And the lady of Elderslie wept for her lord,

When a deathwatch beat in her lonely room,

When her curtain had shook of its own accord,

And the raven had flapped at her window board,

To tell of her warrior’s doom.

Now sing the death-song and loudly pray

For the soul of my knight so dear,

And call me a widow this wretched day,

Since the warning of God is here.

For a nightmare rides on my strangled sleep—

The lord of my bosom is doomed to die;

His valorous heart they have wounded deep,

And the blood-red tears shall his country weep,

For Wallace of Elderslie.

Yet knew not his country that ominous hour,

Ere the loud matin bell was rung,

That a trumpet of death on an English tower

Had the dirge of her champion sung.

When his dungeon light looked dim and red

On the high-born blood of a martyr slain,

No anthem was sung at his holy death-bed;

No weeping was there when his bosom bled,

And his heart was rent in twain.

Oh! it was not thus when his ashen spear

Was true to that knight forlorn,

And hosts of a thousand were scattered like deer,

At the sound of the hunter’s horn!

When he strode o’er the wreck of each well-fought field,

With the yellow-haired chiefs of his native land;

For his lance was not shivered on helmet or shield,

And the sword that seemed fit for archangel to wield,

Was light in his terrible hand.

But bleeding and bound though “the Wallace wight,”

For his much-loved country die,

The bugle ne’er sung to a braver knight

Than Wallace of Elderslie.

But the day of his glory shall never depart,

His head unentombed shall with glory be palmed,

From its blood-streaming altar his spirit shall start;

Though the raven has fed on his mouldering heart—

A nobler was never embalmed.

JEMIMA, ROSE, AND ELEANORE; THREE CELEBRATED SCOTTISH BEAUTIES.

Adieu! Romance’s heroines—

Give me the nymphs who this good hour

May charm me, not in Fiction’s scenes,

But teach me Beauty’s living power.

My harp that has been mute too long

Shall sleep at Beauty’s name no more,

So but your smiles reward my song—

Jemima, Rose, and Eleanore.

In whose benignant eyes are beaming

The rays of purity and truth;

Such as we fancy woman’s seeming

In the creation’s golden youth.

The more I look upon thy grace,

Rosina, I could look the more;

But for Jemima’s witching face,

And the sweet smile of Eleanore.

Had I been Lawrence, kings had wanted

Their portraits, till I painted yours;

And these had future hearts enchanted,

When this poor verse no more endures.

I would have left the Congress faces,

A dull-eyed diplomatic corps,

Till I had grouped you as the Graces—

Jemima, Rose, and Eleanore.

The Catholic bids fair saints befriend him,

Your poet’s heart is Catholic too;

His rosary shall be flowers ye send him,

His saints’ days when he visits you.

And my sere laurels for my duty,

Miraculous at your touch would rise;

Could I give verse one trait of beauty

Like that which glads me from your eyes.

Unsealed by you these lips have spoken,

Disused to song for many a day,

Ye’ve tuned a harp whose strings were broken,

And warmed a heart of callous clay;

So when my fancy next refuses

To twine for you a garland more,

Come back again and be my Muses—

Jemima, Rose, and Eleanore.

THE DEATH-BOAT OF HELIGOLAND

Can restlessness reach the cold sepulchred head?—

Ay, the quick have their sleep-walkers, so have the dead

There are brains, though they moulder, that dream in the tomb,

And that maddening forehear the last trumpet of doom,

Till their corses start sheeted to revel on earth,

Making horror more deep by the semblance of mirth:

By the glare of new-lighted volcanoes they dance,

Or at mid-sea appal the chilled mariner’s glance.

Such I wot, was the band of cadaverous smile

Seen ploughing the night-surge of Heligo’s isle.

The foam of the Baltic had sparkled like fire,

And the red moon looked down with an aspect of ire;

But her beams on a sudden grew sick-like and grey,

And the mews that had slept clanged and shrieked far away

And the buoys and the beacons extinguished their light,

As the boat of the stony-eyed dead came in sight,

High bounding from billow to billow; each form

Had its shroud like a plaid flying loose to the storm;

With an oar in each pulseless and icy-cold hand,

Fast they ploughed, by the lee-shore of Heligoland,

Such breakers as boat of the living ne’er crossed;

Now surf-sunk for minutes again they uptossed,

And with livid lips shouted reply o’er the flood

To the challenging watchman that curdled his blood—

“We are dead—we are bound from our graces in the west,

First to Hecla, and then to——” Unmeet was the rest

For man’s ear. The old abbey bell thundered its clang,

And their eyes gleamed with phosphorous light as it rang

Ere they vanished, they stopped, and gazed silently grim,

Till the eye could define them, garb, feature and limb

Now who were those roamers?—of gallows or wheel

Bore they marks, or the mangling anatomist’s steel?

No, by magistrates’ chains ’mid their grave-clothes you saw,

They were felons too proud to have perished by law;

But a ribbon that hung where a rope should have been,

’Twas the badge of their faction, its hue was not green,

Showed them men who had trampled and tortured and driven

To rebellion the fairest Isle breathed on by Heaven,—

Men whose heirs would yet finish the tyrannous task,

If the Truth and the Time had not dragged off their mask.

They parted—but not till the sight might discern

A scutcheon distinct at their pinnace’s stern,

Where letters emblazoned in blood-coloured flame,

Named their faction—I blot not my page with its name.

SONG.

When Love came first to Earth, the SPRING

Spread rose-beds to receive him

And back he vowed his flight he’d wing

To Heaven, if she should leave him.

But SPRING departing, saw his faith

Pledged to the next new comer—

He revelled in the warmer breath

And richer bowers of SUMMER.

Then sportive AUTUMN claimed by rights

An Archer for her lover,

And even in WINTER’S dark, cold nights

A charm he could discover.

Her routs and balls, and fireside joy,

For this time were his reasons—

In short, Young Love’s a gallant boy,

That likes all times and seasons.

LINES ON THE DEPARTURE OF EMIGRANTS FOR NEW SOUTH WALES.

On England’s shore I saw a pensive band,

With sails unfurled for earth’s remotest strand,

Like children parting from a mother, shed

Tears for the home that could not yield them bread,

Grief marked each face receding from the view,

’Twas grief to nature honourably true.

And long, poor wanderers o’er the ecliptic deep,

The song that names but home shall bid you weep;

Oft shall ye fold your flocks by stars above

In that far world, and miss the stars ye love;

Oft, when its tuneless birds scream round forlorn,

Regret the lark that gladdens England’s morn,

And, giving England’s names to distant scenes,

Lament that earth’s extension intervenes.

But cloud not yet too long, industrious train,

Your solid good with sorrow nursed in vain:

For has the heart no interest yet as bland

As that which binds us to our native land?

The deep-drawn wish, when children crown our hearth,

To hear the cherub-chorus of their mirth,

Undamped by dread that want may e’er unhouse,

Or servile misery knit those smiling brows:

The pride to rear an independent shed,

And give the lips we love unborrowed bread;

To see a world, from shadowy forests won,

In youthful beauty wedded to the sun;

To skirt our home with harvests widely sown,

And call the blooming landscape all our own,

Our children’s heritage, in prospect long.

These are the hopes, high-minded hopes and strong,

That beckon England’s wanderers o’er the brine,

To realms where foreign constellations shine;

Where streams from undiscovered fountains roll,

And winds shall fan them from th’ Antarctic pole,

And what though doomed to shores so far apart

From England’s home, that e’en the home-sick heart

Quails, thinking, ere that gulf can be recrossed,

How large a space of fleeting life is lost:

Yet there, by time, their bosoms shall be changed,

And strangers once shall cease to sigh estranged,

But jocund in the year’s long sunshine roam,

That yields their sickle twice its harvest-home.

There, marking o’er his farm’s expanding ring

New fleeces whiten and new fruits upspring,

The grey-haired swain, his grandchild sporting round,

Shall walk at eve his little empire’s bound,

Emblazed with ruby vintage, ripening corn,

And verdant rampart of Acacian thorn,

While, mingling with the scent his pipe exhales,

The orange-grove’s and fig-tree’s breath prevails;

Survey with pride beyond a monarch’s spoil,

His honest arm’s own subjugated soil;

And summing all the blessings God has given,

Put up his patriarchal prayer to Heaven,

That when his bones shall here repose in peace,

The scions of his love may still increase,

And o’er a land where life has ample room,

In health and plenty innocently bloom.

Delightful land, in wildness e’en benign,

The glorious past is ours, the future thine!

As in a cradled Hercules, we trace

The lines of empire in thine infant face.

What nations in thy wide horizon’s span

Shall teem on tracts untrodden yet by man!

What spacious cities with their spires shall gleam

Where now the panther laps a lonely stream,

And all but brute or reptile life is dumb!

Land of the free! thy kingdom is to come,

Of states, with laws from Gothic bondage burst,

And creeds by chartered priesthood’s unaccurst;

Of navies, hoisting their emblazoned flags,

Where shipless seas now wash unbeaconed crags;

Of hosts reviewed in dazzling files and squares,

Their pennoned trumpets breathing native airs,—

For minstrels thou shalt have of native fire,

And maids to sing the songs themselves inspire:—

Our very speech, methinks, in after time,

Shall catch th’ Ionian blandness of thy clime;

And whilst the light and luxury of thy skies

Give brighter smiles to beauteous woman’s eyes,

The Arts, whose soul is love, shall all spontaneous rise.

Untracked in deserts lies the marble mine,

Undug the ore that midst thy roofs shall shine;

Unborn the hands—but born they are to be—

Fair Australasia, that shall give to thee

Proud temple-domes, with galleries winding high,

So vast in space, so just in symmetry,

They widen to the contemplating eye,

With colonnaded aisles in long array,

And windows that enrich the flood of day

O’er tesselated pavements, pictures fair,

And nichèd statues breathing golden air.

Nor there, whilst all that’s seen bids Fancy swell,

Shall Music’s voice refuse to seal the spell;

But choral hymns shall wake enchantment round,

And organs yield their tempests of sweet sound.

Meanwhile, ere Arts triumphant reach their goal,

How blest the years of pastoral life shall roll!

E’en should some wayward hour the settler’s mind

Brood sad on scenes for ever left behind,

Yet not a pang that England’s name imparts,

Shall touch a fibre of his children’s hearts;

Bound to that native land by nature’s bond,

Full little shall their wishes rove beyond

Its mountains blue, and melon-skirted streams,

Since childhood loved and dreamt of in their dreams.

How many a name, to us uncouthly wild,

Shall thrill that region’s patriotic child,

And bring as sweet thoughts o’er his bosom’s chords,

As aught that’s named in song to us affords!

Dear shall that river’s margin be to him,

Where sportive first he bathed his boyish limb,

Or petted birds, still brighter than their bowers,

Or twined his tame young kangaroo with flowers.

But more magnetic yet to memory

Shall be the sacred spot, still blooming nigh,

The bower of love, where first his bosom burned,

And smiling passion saw its smile returned.

Go forth and prosper then, emprizing band:

May He, who in the hollow of his hand

The ocean holds, and rules the whirlwind’s sweep,

Assuage its wrath, and guide you on the deep!

FAREWELL TO LOVE.

I had a heart that doated once in passion’s boundless pain,

And though the tyrant I abjured, I could not break his chain;

But now that Fancy’s fire is quenched, and ne’er can burn anew,

I’ve bid to Love, for all my life, adieu! adieu! adieu!

I’ve known, if ever mortal knew, the spells of Beauty’s thrall,

And if my song has told them not, my soul has felt them all;

But Passion robs my peace no more, and Beauty’s witching sway

Is now to me a star that’s fall’n—a dream that’s passed away.

Hail! welcome tide of life, when no tumultuous billows roll,

How wondrous to myself appears this halcyon calm of soul!

The wearied bird blown o’er the deep would sooner quit its shore,

Than I would cross the gulf again that time has brought me o’er.

Why say the Angels feel the flame?—Oh, spirits of the skies!

Can love like ours, that doats on dust, in heavenly bosoms rise?—

Ah no; the hearts that best have felt its power, the best can tell,

That peace on earth itself begins, when Love has bid farewell.

LINES ON A PICTURE OF A GIRL IN THE ATTITUDE OF PRAYER, BY THE ARTIST

GRUSE, IN THE POSSESSION OF LADY STEPNEY.

Was man e’er doomed that beauty made

By mimic art should haunt him?

Like Orpheus, I adore a shade,

And doat upon a phantom.

Thou maid that in my inmost thought

Art fancifully sainted,

Why liv’st thou not—why art thou nought

But canvass sweetly painted?

Whose looks seem lifted to the skies,

Too pure for love of mortals—

As if they drew angelic eyes

To greet thee at heaven’s portals.

Yet loveliness has here no grace,

Abstracted or ideal—

Art ne’er but from a living face

Drew looks so seeming real.

What wert thou, maid?—thy life—thy name

Oblivion hides in mystery;

Though from thy face my heart could frame

A long romantic history.

Transported to thy time I seem,

Though dust thy coffin covers—

And hear the songs, in fancy’s dream,

Of thy devoted lovers.

How witching must have been thy breath—

How sweet the living charmer—

Whose very semblance after death

Can make the heart grow warmer!

Adieu, the charms that vainly move

My soul in their possession—

That prompt my lips to speak of love,

Yet rob them of expression.

Yet thee, dear picture, to have praised

Was but a poet’s duty;

And shame to him that ever gazed

Impassive on thy beauty.

STANZAS ON THE BATTLE OF NAVARINO.

Hearts of oak that have bravely delivered the brave,

And uplifted old Greece from the brink of the grave,

’Twas the helpless to help, and the hopeless to save,

That your thunderbolts swept o’er the brine;

And as long as yon sun shall look down on the wave

The light of your glory shall shine.

For the guerdon ye sought with your bloodshed and toil,

Was it slaves, or dominion, or rapine, or spoil?

No! your lofty emprize was to fetter and foil

The uprooter of Greece’s domain!

When he tore the last remnant of food from her soil,

Till her famished sank pale as the slain!

Yet, Navarin’s heroes! does Christendom breed

The base hearts that will question the fame of your deed

Are they men?—let ineffable scorn be their meed,

And oblivion shadow their graves!—

Are they women?—to Turkish serails let them speed!

And be mothers of Mussulman slaves.

Abettors of massacre! dare ye deplore

That the death-shriek is silenced on Hellas’s shore?

That the mother aghast sees her offspring no more

By the hand of Infanticide grasped?

And that stretched on yon billows distained by their gore

Missolonghi’s assassins have gasped?

Prouder scene never hallowed war’s pomp to the mind,

Than when Christendom’s pennons wooed social the wind,

And the flower of her brave for the combat combined,

Their watch-word, humanity’s vow;—

Not a sea-boy that fought in that cause, but mankind

Owes a garland to honour his brow!

Nor grudge, by our side, that to conquer or fall,

Came the hardy rude Russ, and the high-mettled Gaul;

For whose was the genius, that planned at its call,

Where the whirlwind of battle should roll?

All were brave! but the star of success over all

Was the light of our Codrington’s soul.

That star of the day-spring, regenerate Greek!

Dimmed the Saracen’s moon, and struck pallid his cheek;

In its first flushing morning thy Muses shall speak

When their lore and their lutes they reclaim:

And the first of their songs from Parnassus’s peak

Shall be “_Glory to Codrington’s name!_”

LINES ON LEAVING A SCENE IN BAVARIA.

Adieu the woods and waters’ side

Imperial Danube’s rich domain!

Adieu the grotto, wild and wide,

The rocks abrupt, and grassy plain!

For pallid Autumn once again

Hath swelled each torrent of the hill;

Her clouds collect, her shadows sail,

And watery winds that sweep the vale,

Grow loud and louder still.

But not the storm, dethroning fast

Yon monarch oak of massy pile;

Nor river roaring to the blast

Around its dark and desert isle;

Nor church-bell[86] tolling to beguile

The cloud-born thunder passing by,

Can sound in discord to my soul:

Roll on, ye mighty waters, roll!

And rage, thou darkened sky!

Thy blossoms now no longer bright;

Thy withered woods no longer green

Yet, Eldurn shore, with dark delight

I visit thy unlovely scene!

For many a sunset hour serene

My steps have trod thy mellow dew;

When his green light the fire-fly gave,

When Cynthia from the distant wave

Her twilight anchor drew,

And ploughed, as with a swelling sail,

The billowy clouds and starry sea:

Then while thy hermit nightingale

Sang on his fragrant apple-tree,—

Romantic, solitary, free,

The visitant of Eldurn’s shore,

On such a moonlight mountain strayed

As echoed to the music made

By Druid harps of yore.

Around thy savage hills of oak,

Around thy waters bright and blue,

No hunter’s horn the silence broke,

No dying shriek thine echo knew;

But safe, sweet Eldurn woods, to you

The wounded wild deer ever ran.

Whose myrtle bound their grassy cave,

Whose very rocks a shelter gave

From blood-pursuing man.

Oh heart effusions, that arose

From nightly wanderings cherished here;

To him who flies from many woes,

Even homeless deserts can be dear!

The last and solitary cheer

Of those that own no earthly home,

Say—is it not, ye banished race,

In such a loved and lonely place

Companionless to roam?

Yes! I have loved thy wild abode,

Unknown, unploughed, untrodden shore;

Where scarce the woodman finds a road,

And scarce the fisher plies an oar:

For man’s neglect I love thee more;

That art nor avarice intrude

To tame thy torrent’s thunder-shock,

Or prune thy vintage of the rock

Magnificently rude.

Unheeded spreads thy blossomed bud

Its milky bosom to the bee;

Unheeded falls along the flood

desolate and aged tree.

Forsaken scene, how like to thee

The fate of unbefriended Worth!

Like thine her fruit dishonoured falls,

Like thee in solitude she calls

A thousand treasures forth.

O! silent spirit of the place,

If, lingering with the ruined year,

Thy hoary form and awful face

I yet might watch and worship here!

Thy storm were music to mine ear,

Thy wildest walk a shelter given

Sublimer thoughts on earth to find,

And share, with no unhallowed mind,

The majesty of heaven.

What though the bosom friends of Fate,—

Prosperity’s unweanèd brood,—

Thy consolations cannot rate,

O self-dependent solitude!

Yet with a spirit unsubdued,

Though darkened by the clouds of Care,

To worship thy congenial gloom,

A pilgrim to the Prophet’s tomb

Misfortune shall repair.

On her the world hath never smiled

Or looked but with accusing eye;

All-silent goddess of the wild,

To thee that misanthrope shall fly!

I hear her deep soliloquy,

I mark her proud but ravaged form,

As stern she wraps her mantle round,

And bids, on winter’s bleakest ground,

Defiance to the storm.

Peace to her banished heart, at last,

In thy dominions shall descend,

And, strong as beechwood in the blast,

Her spirit shall refuse to bend;

Enduring life without a friend,

The world and falsehood left behind,

Thy votary shall bear elate

(Triumphant o’er opposing Fate),

Her dark inspirèd mind.

But dost thou, Folly, mock the muse

A wanderer’s mountain walk to sing,

Who shuns a warring world, nor wooes

The vulture cover of its wing?

Then fly, thou cowering, shivering thing,

Back to the fostering world beguiled

To waste in self-consuming strife

The loveless brotherhood of life,

Reviling and reviled!

Away, thou lover of the race

That hither chased yon weeping deer!

If Nature’s all majestic face

More pitiless than man’s appear;

Or if the wild winds seem more drear

Than man’s cold charities below,

Behold around his peopled plains,

Where’er the social savage reigns,

Exuberance of woe!

His art and honours wouldst thou seek

Embossed on grandeur’s giant walls?

Or hear his moral thunders speak

Where senates light their airy halls,

Where man his brother man enthralls;

Or sends his whirlwind warrants forth

To rouse the slumbering fiends of war,

To dye the blood-warm waves afar,

And desolate the earth?

From clime to clime pursue the scene,

And mark in all thy spacious way,

Where’er the tyrant man has been,

There Peace, the cherub, cannot stay;

In wilds and woodlands far away

She builds her solitary bower,

Where only anchorites have trod,

Or friendless men, to worship God,

Have wandered for an hour.

In such a far forsaken vale,—

And such, sweet Eldurn vale, is thine,—

Afflicted nature shall inhale

Heaven-borrowed thoughts and joys divine:

No longer wish, no more repine

For man’s neglect or woman’s scorn;—

Then wed thee to an exile’s lot,

For if the world hath loved thee not,

Its absence may be borne.

[86] In Catholic countries you often hear the church bells rung to

propitiate Heaven during thunder storms.

STANZAS TO PAINTING.

O thou by whose expressive art

Her perfect image Nature sees

In union with the Graces start,

And sweeter by reflection please!

In whose creative hand the hues

Fresh from yon orient rainbow shine;

I bless thee, Promethéan Muse!

And call thee brightest of the Nine!

Possessing more than vocal power,

Persuasive more than poet’s tongue;

Whose lineage, in a raptured hour,[87]

From Love, the Sire of Nature, sprung.

Does Hope her high possession meet?

Is joy triumphant, sorrow flown?

Sweet is the trance, the tremor sweet,

When all we love is all our own.

But oh! thou pulse of pleasure dear,

Slow throbbing, cold, I feel thee part;

Lone absence plants a pang severe,

Or death inflicts a keener dart.

Then for a beam of joy to light

In memory’s sad and wakeful eye!

Or banish from the noon of night

Her dreams of deeper agony.

Shall Song its witching cadence roll?

Yea, even the tenderest air repeat,

That breathed when soul was knit to soul,

And heart to heart responsive beat?

What visions rise! to charm, to melt!

The lost, the loved, the dead are near!

Oh, hush that strain too deeply felt!

And cease that solace too severe!

But thou serenely silent art!

By heaven and love wast taught to lend

A milder solace to the heart,

The sacred image of a friend.

All is not lost! if, yet possest,

To me that sweet memorial shine:—

If close and closer to my breast

I hold that idol all divine.

Or, gazing through luxurious tears,

Melt o’er the loved departed form,

Till death’s cold bosom half appears

With life, and speech, and spirit warm.

She looks! she lives! this trancèd hour,

Her bright eye seems a purer gem

Than sparkles on the throne of power,

Or glories wealthy diadem.

Yes, Genius, yes! thy mimic aid

A treasure to my soul has given,

Where beauty’s canonisèd shade

Smiles in the sainted hues of heaven

No spectre forms of pleasure fled,

Thy softening, sweetening tints restore;

For thou canst give us back the dead,

E’en in the loveliest looks they wore.

Then blest be Nature’s guardian Muse,

Whose hand her perished grace redeems!

Whose tablet of a thousand hues

The mirror of creation seems.

From Love began thy high descent;

And lovers, charmed by gifts of thine,

Shall bless thee mutely eloquent;

And call thee brightest of the Nine!

[87] Alluding to the well-known tradition respecting the origin of

painting, that it arose from a young Corinthian female tracing the shadow

of her lovers profile on the wall, as he lay asleep.

DRINKING-SONG OF MUNICH.

Sweet Iser! were thy sunny realm

And flowery gardens mine,

Thy waters I would shade with elm

To prop the tender vine;

My golden flagons I would fill

With rosy draughts from every hill;

And under every myrtle bower,

My gay companions should prolong

The laugh, the revel, and the song,

To many an idle hour.

Like rivers crimsoned with the beam

Of yonder planet bright,

Our balmy cups should ever stream

Profusion of delight;

No care should touch the mellow heart,

And sad or sober none depart;

For wine can triumph over woe,

And Love and Bacchus, brother powers,

Could build in Iser’s sunny bowers

A paradise below.

LINES ON REVISITING A SCOTTISH RIVER.

And call they this Improvement?—to have changed,

My native Clyde, thy once romantic shore,

Where Nature’s face is banished and estranged,

And Heaven reflected in thy wave no more;

Whose banks, that sweetened May-day’s breath before,

Lie sere and leafless now in summer’s beam,

With sooty exhalations covered o’er;

And for the daisied green sward, down thy stream

Unsightly brick-lanes smoke, and clanking engines gleam.

Speak not to me of swarms the scene sustains;

One heart free tasting Nature’s breath and bloom

Is worth a thousand slaves to Mammon’s gains.

But whither goes that wealth, and gladd’ning whom?

See, left but life enough and breathing-room

The hunger and the hope of life to feel,

Yon pale Mechanic bending o’er his loom,

And Childhood’s self as at Ixion’s wheel,

From morn till midnight tasked to earn its little meal.

Is this Improvement?—where the human breed

Degenerates as they swarm and overflow,

Till Toil grows cheaper than the trodden weed,

And man competes with man, like foe with foe,

Till Death, that thins them, scarce seems public woe?

Improvement!—smiles it in the poor man’s eyes,

Or blooms it on the cheek of Labour?—No—

To gorge a few with Trade’s precarious prize,

We banish rural life, and breathe unwholesome skies.

Nor call that evil slight; God has not given

This passion to the heart of man in vain,

For Earth’s green face, th’ untainted air of Heaven,

And all the bliss of Nature’s rustic reign.

For not alone our frame imbibes a stain

From fœtid skies; the spirit’s healthy pride

Fades in their gloom—And therefore I complain,

That thou no more through pastoral scenes shouldst glide,

My Wallace’s own stream, and once romantic Clyde!

LINES ON REVISITING CATHCART.

Oh! scenes of my childhood, and dear to my heart

Ye green waving woods on the margin of Cart,

How blest in the morning of life I have strayed,

By the stream of the vale and the grass-covered glade!

Then, then every rapture was young and sincere,

Ere the sunshine of bliss was bedimmed by a tear,

And a sweeter delight every scene seemed to lend,

That the mansion of peace was the house of a friend.

Now the scenes of my childhood and dear to my heart,

All pensive I visit, and sigh to depart;

Their flowers seem to languish, their beauty to cease,

For a _stranger_ inhabits the mansion of peace.

But hushed be the sigh that untimely complains,

While Friendship and all its enchantment remains,

While it blooms like the flower of a winterless clime,

Untainted by chance, unabated by time.

THE “NAME UNKNOWN;” IN IMITATION OF KLOPSTOCK.

Prophetic pencil! wilt thou trace

A faithful image of the face,

Or wilt thou write the “Name Unknown,”

Ordained to bless my charmèd soul,

And all my future fate control,

Unrivalled and alone?

Delicious Idol of my thought!

Though sylph or spirit hath not taught

My boding heart thy precious name;

Yet musing on my distant fate,

To charms unseen I consecrate

A visionary flame

Thy rosy blush, thy meaning eye,

Thy virgin voice of melody,

Are ever present to my heart;

Thy murmured vows shall yet be mine,

My thrilling hand shall meet with thine,

And never, never part!

Then fly, my days, on rapid wing,

Till Love the viewless treasure bring;

While I, like conscious Athens, own

A power in mystic silence sealed,

A guardian angel unrevealed,

And bless the “Name Unknown!”

SONG.

Withdraw not yet those lips and fingers,

Whose touch to mine is rapture’s spell;

Life’s joy for us a moment lingers,

And death seems in the word—farewell.

The hour that bids us part and go,

It sounds not yet,—oh! no, no, no!

Time, whilst I gaze upon thy sweetness,

Flies like a courser nigh the goal;

To-morrow where shall be his fleetness,

When thou art parted from my soul?

Our hearts shall beat, our tears shall flow,

But not together,—no, no, no!

HALLOWED GROUND.

What’s hallowed ground? Has earth a clod

Its Maker meant not should be trod

By man, the image of his God,

Erect and free,

Unscourged by superstition’s rod

To bow the knee?

That’s hallowed ground—where mourned and missed

The lips repose our love has kissed;—

But where’s their memory’s mansion? Is’t

Yon churchyard’s bowers?

No! in ourselves their souls exist,

A part of ours.

A kiss can consecrate the ground

Where mated hearts are mutual bound:

The spot where love’s first links were wound,

That ne’er are riven,

Is hallowed down to earth’s profound,

And up to Heaven!

For time makes all but true love old;

The burning thoughts that then were told

Run molten still in memory’s mould;

And will not cool,

Until the heart itself be cold

In Lethe’s pool.

What hallows ground where heroes sleep?

’Tis not the sculptured piles you heap!

In dews that heavens far distant weep

Their turf may bloom;

Or Genii twine beneath the deep

Their coral tomb.

But strew his ashes to the wind

Whose sword or voice has served mankind—

And is he dead, whose glorious mind

Lifts thine on high?—

To live in hearts we leave behind,

Is not to die.

Is’t death to fall for Freedom’s right?

He’s dead alone that lacks her light!

And murder sullies in Heaven’s sight

The sword he draws:—

What can alone ennoble fight?

A noble cause!

Give that! and welcome war to brace

Her drums! and rend Heaven’s reeking space!

The colours planted face to face,

The charging cheer,

Though Death’s pale horse lead on the chase,

Shall still be dear.

And place our trophies where men kneel

To Heaven!—but Heaven rebukes my zeal!

The cause of Truth and Human weal,

O God above!

Transfer it from the sword’s appeal

To Peace and Love.

Peace, Love! the cherubim that join

Their spread wings o’er Devotion’s shrine—

Prayers sound in vain, and temples shine,

Where they are not—

The heart alone can make divine

Religion’s spot.

To incantations dost thou trust,

And pompous rites in domes august?

See mouldering stones and metal’s rust

Belie the vaunt,

That man can bless one pile of dust

With chime or chaunt.

The ticking wood-worm mocks thee, man!

Thy temples—creeds themselves grow wan!

But there’s a dome of nobler span,

A temple given

Thy faith, that bigots dare not ban—

Its space is Heaven!

Its roof star-pictured Nature’s ceiling,

Where trancing the rapt spirit’s feeling,

And God himself to man revealing

The harmonious spheres

Make music, though unheard their pealing

By mortal ears.

Fair stars! are not your beings pure?

Can sin, can death your worlds obscure?

Else why so swell the thoughts at your

Aspect above?

Ye must be Heaven’s that make us sure

Of heavenly love!

And in your harmony sublime

I read the doom of distant time;

That man’s regenerate soul from crime

Shall yet be drawn,

And reason on his mortal clime

Immortal dawn.

What’s hallowed ground? ’Tis what gives birth

To sacred thoughts in souls of worth!—

Peace! Independence! Truth! go forth

Earth’s compass round;

And your high priesthood shall make earth

_All hallowed ground_.

CAROLINE.

PART I.

I’ll bid the hyacinth to blow,

I’ll teach my grotto green to be;

And sing my true love all below

The holly bower and myrtle tree.

There all his wild-wood sweets to bring,

The sweet South wind shall wander by,

And with the music of his wing

Delight my rustling canopy.

Come to my close and clustering bower

Thou spirit of a milder clime,

Fresh with the dews of fruit and flower,

Of mountain heath, and moory thyme.

With all thy rural echoes come,

Sweet comrade of the rosy day,

Wafting the wild bee’s gentle hum,

Or cuckoo’s plaintive roundelay.

Where’er thy morning breath has played,

Whatever isles of ocean fanned,

Come to my blossom-woven shade,

Thou wandering wind of fairy-land.

For sure from some enchanted isle,

Where Heaven and Love their sabbath hold,

Where pure and happy spirits smile,

Of beauty’s fairest, brightest mould:

From some green Eden of the deep,

Where Pleasure’s sigh alone is heaved,

Where tears of rapture lovers weep,

Endeared, undoubting, undeceived;

From some sweet paradise afar,

Thy music wanders, distant, lost—

Where Nature lights her leading star,

And love is never, never crossed.

Oh gentle gale of Eden bowers,

If back thy rosy feet should roam,

To revel with the cloudless Hours

In Nature’s more propitious home.

Name to thy loved Elysian groves,

That o’er enchanted spirits twine,

A fairer form than cherub loves,

And let the name be CAROLINE.

CAROLINE.

PART II.

TO THE EVENING STAR.

Gem of the crimson-coloured Even,

Companion of retiring day,

Why at the closing gates of Heaven,

Belovèd star dost thou delay?

So fair thy pensile beauty burns,

When soft the tear of twilight flows;

So due thy plighted love returns,

To chambers brighter than the rose,

To Peace, to Pleasure, and to Love,

So kind a star thou seem’st to be,

Sure some enamoured orb above

Descends and burns to meet with thee.

Thine is the breathing, blushing hour,

When all unheavenly passions fly,

Chased by the soul-subduing power

Of Love’s delicious witchery.

O! sacred to the fall of day,

Queen of propitious stars appear,

And early rise and long delay,

When Caroline herself is here!

Shine on her chosen green resort,

Whose trees the sunward summit crown,

And wanton flowers that well may court

An angel’s feet to tread them down.

Shine on her sweetly-scented road,

Thou star of evening’s purple dome,

That lead’st the nightingale abroad,

And guid’st the pilgrim to his home.

Shine, where my charmer’s sweeter breath

Embalms the soft exhaling dew,

Where dying winds a sigh bequeath

To kiss the cheek of rosy hue.

Where, winnowed by the gentle air,

Her silken tresses darkly flow,

And fall upon her brow so fair,

Like shadows on the mountain snow.

Thus, ever thus, at day’s decline,

In converse sweet, to wander far,

O bring with thee my Caroline,

And thou shalt be my ruling star!

FIELD FLOWERS.

Ye field flowers! the gardens eclipse you ’tis true,

Yet, wildings of nature I dote upon you,

For ye waft me to summers of old,

When the earth teemed around me with faery delight,

And when daisies and buttercups gladdened my sight,

Like treasures of silver and gold.

I love you for lulling me back into dreams

Of the blue Highland mountains and echoing streams,

And of birchen glades breathing their balm,

While the deer was seen glancing in sunshine remote,

And the deep mellow crush of the wood-pigeon’s note,

Made music that sweetened the calm.

Not a pastoral song has a pleasanter tune

Than ye speak to my heart, little wildings of June:

Of old ruinous castles ye tell,

Where I thought it delightful your beauties to find,

When the magic of Nature first breathed on my mind,

And your blossoms were part of her spell.

E’en now what affections the violet awakes;

What loved little islands twice seen in their lakes,

Can the wild water-lily restore;

What landscapes I read in the primrose’s looks,

And what pictures of pebbled and minnowy brooks

In the vetches that tangled their shore.

Earth’s cultureless buds, to my heart ye were dear,

Ere the fever of passion, or ague of fear

Had scathed my existence’s bloom;

Once I welcome you more in life’s passionless stage,

With the visions of youth to revisit my age,

And I wish you to grow on my tomb.

LINES ON THE VIEW FROM ST. LEONARD’S.

Hail to thy face and odours, glorious Sea!

’Twere thanklessness in me to bless thee not,

Great beauteous Being! in whose breath and smile

My heart beats calmer, and my very mind

Inhales salubrious thoughts. How welcomer

Thy murmurs than the murmurs of the world!

Though like the world thou fluctuatest, thy din

To me is peace, thy restlessness repose.

E’en gladly I exchange yon spring-green lanes

With all the darling field-flowers in their prime,

And gardens haunted by the nightingales’

Long trills and gushing ecstacies of song

For these wild headlands and the sea-mew’s clang—

With thee beneath my windows, pleasant Sea,

I long not to o’erlook earth’s fairest glades

And green savannahs—Earth has not a plain

So boundless or so beautiful as thine;

The eagle’s vision cannot take it in:

The lightning’s wing too weak to sweep its space

Sinks half-way o’er it like a wearied bird:

It is the mirror of the stars, where all

Their hosts within the concave firmament,

Gay marching to the music of the spheres,

Can see themselves at once.

Nor on the stage

Of rural landscape are there lights and shades

Of more harmonious dance and play than thine.

How vividly this moment brightens forth,

Between grey parallel and leaden breadths.

A belt of hues that stripes thee many a league,

Flushed like the rainbow, or the ringdove’s neck,

And giving to the glancing sea-bird’s wing

The semblance of a meteor.

Mighty sea!

Cameleon-like thou changest, but there’s love

In all thy change, and constant sympathy

With yonder Sky—thy Mistress; from her brow

Thou tak’st thy moods and wear’st her colours on

Thy faithful bosom; morning’s milky white,

Noon’s sapphire, or the saffron glow of eve;

And all thy balmier hours, fair Element,

Have such divine complexion—crispèd smiles,

Luxuriant heavings, and sweet whisperings,

That little is the wonder Love’s own Queen

From thee of old was fabled to have sprung—

Creation’s common! which no human power

Can parcel or enclose; the lordliest floods

And cataracts that the tiny hands of man

Can tame, conduct, or bound, are drops of dew

To thee that couldst subdue the Earth itself,

And brook’st commandment from the Heavens alone

For marshalling thy waves—

Yet, potent sea!

How placidly thy moist lips speak e’en now

Along yon sparkling shingles. Who can be

So fanciless as to feel no gratitude

That power and grandeur can be so serene,

Soothing the home-bound navy’s peaceful way,

And rocking e’en the fisher’s little bark

As gently as a mother rocks her child?—

The inhabitants of other worlds behold

Our orb more lucid for thy spacious share

On earth’s rotundity; and is he not

A blind worm in the dust, great Deep, the man

Who sees not or who seeing has no joy

In thy magnificence? What though thou art

Unconscious and material, thou canst reach

The inmost immaterial mind’s recess,

And with thy tints and motion stir its chords

To music, like the light on Memnon’s lyre!

The Spirit of the Universe in thee

Is visible; thou hast in thee the life—

The eternal, graceful, and majestic life—

Of nature and the natural human heart

Is therefore bound to thee with holy love.

Earth has her gorgeous towns; the earth-circling sea

Has spires and mansions more amusive still—

Men’s volant homes that measure liquid space

On wheel or wing. The chariot of the land

With pained and panting steeds and clouds of dust

Has no sight-gladdening motion like these fair

Careerers with the foam beneath their bows,

Whose streaming ensigns charm the waves by day

Whose carols and whose watch-bells cheer the night,

Moored as they cast the shadows of their masts

In long array, or hither flit and yond

Mysteriously with slow and crossing lights,

Like spirits on the darkness of the deep.

There is a magnet-like attraction in

These waters to the imaginative power

That links the viewless with the visible,

And pictures things unseen. To realms beyond

Yon highway of the world my fancy flies,

When by her tall and triple mast we know

Some noble voyager that has to woo

The trade-winds and to stem the ecliptic surge.

The coral groves—the shores of conch and pearl,

Where she will cast her anchor and reflect

Her cabin-window lights on warmer waves,

And under planets brighter than our own:

The nights of palmy isles, that she will see

Lit boundless by the fire-fly—all the smells

Of tropic fruits that will regale her—all

The pomp of nature, and the inspiriting

Varieties of life she has to greet,

Come swarming o’er the meditative mind.

True, to the dream of Fancy, Ocean has

His darker hints; but where’s the element

That chequers not its usefulness to man.

With casual terror? Scathes not Earth sometimes

Her children with Tartarean fires, or shakes

Their shrieking cities, and, with one last clang

Of bells for their own ruin, strews them flat

As riddled ashes—silent as the grave?

Walks not Contagion on the Air itself?

I should—old Ocean’s Saturnalian days

And roaring nights of revelry and sport

With wreck and human woe—be loth to sing;

For they are few and all their ills weigh light

Against his sacred usefulness, that bids

Our pensile globe revolve in purer air.

Here Morn and Eve with blushing thanks receive

Their fresh’ning dews, gay fluttering breezes cool

Their wings to fan the brow of fevered climes,

And here the Spring dips down her emerald urn

For showers to glad the earth.

Old Ocean was

Infinity of ages ere we breathed

Existence—and he will be beautiful

When all the living world that sees him now

Shall roll unconscious dust around the sun.

Quelling from age to age the vital throb

In human hearts, Death shall not subjugate

The pulse that swells in _his_ stupendous breast,

Or interdict his minstrelsy to sound

In thund’ring concert with the quiring winds;

But long as Man to parent Nature owns

Instinctive homage, and in times beyond

The power of thought to reach, bard after bard

Shall sing thy glory, BEATIFIC SEA!

LINES ON POLAND.

And have I lived to see thee sword in hand

Uprise again immortal Polish Land!—

Whose flag brings more than chivalry to mind,

And leaves the tri-color in shade behind;—

A theme for uninspirèd lips too strong;

That swells my heart beyond the power of song:—

Majestic men, whose deeds have dazzled faith,

Ah! yet your fate’s suspense arrests my breath;

Whilst, envying bosoms bared to shot and steel,

I feel the more that fruitlessly I feel.

Poles! with what indignation I endure

Th’ half-pitying servile mouths that call you poor;

Poor! is it England mocks you with her grief,

That hates, but dares not chide, th’ _Imperial Thief_?

France with her soul beneath a Bourbon’s thrall,

And Germany that has no soul at all,—

States quailing at the giant overgrown,

Whom dauntless Poland grapples with alone?

No, ye are rich in fame e’en whilst ye bleed:

_We_ cannot aid you—_we_ are poor indeed!

In Fate’s defiance—in the world’s great eye,

Poland has won her Immortality!

The Butcher, should he reach her bosom now,

Could tear not Glory’s garland from her brow;

Wreathed, filleted, the victim falls renowned,

And all her ashes would be holy ground!

But turn, my soul, from presages so dark:

Great Poland’s spirit is a deathless spark

That’s fanned by Heaven to mock the Tyrant’s rage:

She, like the eagle, will renew her age,

And fresh historic plumes of Fame put on,—

Another Athens after Marathon,—

Where eloquence shall fulmine, arts refine,

Bright as her arms that now in battle shine.

Come—should the heavenly shock my life destroy

And shut its flood-gates with excess of joy;

Come but the day when Poland’s fight is won—

And on my grave-stone shine the morrow’s sun—

The day that sees Warsaw’s cathedral glow

With endless ensigns ravished from the foe,—

Her women lifting their fair hands with thanks,

Her pious warriors kneeling in their ranks,

The scutcheoned walls of high heraldic boast,

The odorous altar’s elevated host,

The organ sounding through the aisle’s long glooms,

The mighty dead seen sculptured o’er their tombs;

(John, Europe’s saviour—Poniatowski’s fair

Resemblance—Kosciusko’s shall be there;)

The tapered pomp—the halleluiah’s swell,

Shall o’er the soul’s devotion cast a spell,

Till visions cross the rapt enthusiast’s glance,

And all the scene becomes a waking trance.

Should Fate put far—far off that glorious scene,

And gulfs of havoc interpose between,

Imagine not, ye men of every clime,

Who act, or by your sufferance share the crime—

Your brother Abel’s blood shall vainly plead

Against the “_deep damnation_” of the deed.

Germans ye view its horror and disgrace

With cold phosphoric eyes and phlegm of face.

Is Allemagne profound in science, lore,

And minstrel art?—her shame is but the more

To doze and dream by governments oppressed,

The spirit of a book-worm in each breast.

Well can ye mouth fair Freedom’s classic line,

And talk of Constitutions o’er your wine:

But all your vows to break the tyrant’s yoke

Expire in Bacchanalian song and smoke:

Heavens! can no ray of foresight pierce the leads

And mystic metaphysics of your heads,

To show the self-same grave, Oppression delves

For Poland’s rights, is yawning for yourselves!

See, whilst the Pole, the vanguard aid of France,

Has vaulted on his barb and couched the lance,

France turns from her abandoned friends afresh,[88]

And soothes the Bear that prowls for patriot flesh,

Buys, ignominious purchase! short repose,

With dying curses and the groans of those

That served, and loved, and put in her their trust.

Frenchmen! the dead accuse you from the dust—

Brows laurelled—bosoms marked with many a scar

For France—that wore her Legion’s noblest star,

Cast dumb reproaches from the field of Death

On Gallic honour; and this broken faith

Has robbed you more of Fame—the life of life,—

Than twenty battles lost in glorious strife!

And what of England—Is she steeped so low

In poverty, crest-fallen, and palsied so,

That we must sit much wroth, but timorous more,

With murder knocking at our neighbour’s door!—

Not murder masked and cloaked with hidden knife,

Whose owner owes the gallows life for life;

But _Public Murder!_—that with pomp and gaud,

And royal scorn of Justice walks abroad

To wring more tears and blood than e’er were wrung

By all the culprits Justice ever hung!

We read the diademed Assassin’s vaunt,

And wince, and wish we had not hearts to pant

With useless indignation—sigh, and frown,

But have not hearts to throw the gauntlet down.

If but a doubt hung o’er the grounds of fray,

Or trivial rapine stopped the world’s highway;

Were this some common strife of States embroiled;—

Britannia on the spoiler and the spoiled

Might calmly look, and, asking time to breathe,

Still honourably wear her olive wreath

But this is Darkness combating with Light:

Earth’s adverse Principles for empire fight:

Oppression, that has belted half the globe,

Far as his knout could reach or dagger probe,

Holds reeking o’er our brother freemen slain

That dagger—shakes it at us in disdain;

Talks big to Freedom’s states of Poland’s thrall,

And, trampling one, contemns them one and all.

My Country! colours not thy once proud brow

At this effront?—Hast thou not fleets enow

With Glory’s streamer, lofty as the lark,

Gay fluttering o’er each thunder-bearing bark,

To warm th’ Insulter’s seas with barb’rous blood,

And interdict his flag from Ocean’s flood?

E’en now far off the sea-cliff, where I sing,

I see, my Country, and my Patriot King!

Your ensign glad the deep. Becalmed and slow

A war-ship rides; while Heaven’s prismatic bow

Uprisen behind her on th’ horizon’s base, }

Shines flushing through the tackle, shrouds, and stays, }

And wraps her giant form in one majestic blaze. }

My soul accepts the omen; Fancy’s eye

Has sometimes a veracious augury:

The Rainbow types Heaven’s promise to my sight;

The Ship, Britannia’s interposing Might!

But if there should be none to aid you, Poles,

Ye’ll but to prouder pitch wind up your souls,

Above example, pity, praise or blame,

To sow and reap a boundless field of Fame.

Ask aid no more from Nations that forget

Your championship—old Europe’s mighty debt.

Though Poland (Lazarus-like) has burst the gloom,

She rises not a beggar from the tomb:

In Fortune’s frown, on Danger’s giddiest brink,

Despair and Poland’s name must never link.

All ills have bounds—plague, whirlwind, fire, and flood:

E’en power can spill but bounded sums of blood.

States caring not what freedom’s price may be,

May late or soon, but must at last be free;

For body-killing tyrants cannot kill

The public soul—the hereditary will

That downward as from sire to son it goes,

By shifting bosoms more intensely glows:

Its heir-loom is the heart, and slaughtered men

Fight fiercer in their orphans o’er again.

Poland recasts—though rich in heroes old,—

Her men in more and more heroic mould:

Her Eagle-ensign best among mankind

Become, and types her eagle-strength of mind:

Her praise upon my faltering lips expires:

Resume it, younger bards, and nobler lyres!

[88] The fact ought to be universally known, that France was indebted to

Poland for not being invaded by Russia. When the Duke Constantine fled

from Warsaw, he left papers behind him proving that the Russians, after

the Parisian events in July, meant to have marched towards Paris, if the

Polish insurrection had not prevented them.

LINES ON THE CAMP HILL, NEAR HASTINGS.

In the deep blue of eve,

Ere the twinkling of stars had begun,

Or the lark took his leave

Of the skies and the sweet setting sun,

I climbed to yon heights,

Where the Norman encamped him of old,[89]

With his bowmen and knights,

And his banner all burnished with gold.

At the Conqueror’s side

There his minstrelsy sat harp in hand,

In pavilion wide;

And they chaunted the deeds of Roland.

Still the ramparted ground

With a vision my fancy inspires,

And I hear the trump sound,

As it marshalled our Chivalry’s sires.

On each turf of that mead

Stood the captors of England’s domains,

That ennobled her breed

And high-mettled the blood of her veins.