Chapter VI: Book II (3)

The Pigmy people, and the feather'd train,
Mingling in mortal combat on the plain,
I sing. Ye Muses, favour my designs,
Lead on my squadrons and arrange the lines;
The flashing swords and fluttering wings display,
And long bills nibbling in the bloody fray;
Cranes darting with disdain on tiny foes,
Conflicting birds and men, and war's unnumber'd woes!
The wars and woes of heroes six feet long
Have oft resounded in Pierian song. 10
Who has not heard of Colchos' golden fleece,
And Argo mann'd with all the flower of Greece?
Of Thebes' fell brethren; Theseus stern of face;
And Peleus' son, unrivall'd in the race;
Eneas, founder of the Roman line,
And William, glorious on the banks of Boyne?
Who has not learn'd to weep at Pompey's woes,
And over Blackmore's epic page to doze?
'Tis I, who dare attempt unusual strains,
Of hosts unsung, and unfrequented plains; 20
The small shrill trump, and chiefs of little size,
And armies rushing down the darken'd skies.
Where India reddens to the early dawn,
Winds a deep vale from vulgar eye withdrawn:
Bosom'd in groves the lowly region lies,
And rocky mountains round the border rise.
Here, till the doom of fate its fall decreed,
The empire flourish'd of the pigmy breed;
Here Industry perform'd, and Genius plann'd,
And busy multitudes o'erspread the land. 30
But now to these lone bounds if pilgrim stray,
Tempting through craggy cliffs the desperate way,
He finds the puny mansion fallen to earth,
Its godlings mouldering on the abandon'd hearth;
And starts where small white bones are spread around,
"Or little [1] footsteps lightly print the ground;"
While the proud crane her nest securely builds,
Chattering amid the desolated fields.
But different fates befell her hostile rage,
While reign'd invincible through many an age 40
The dreaded pigmy: roused by war's alarms,
Forth rush'd the madding manikin to arms.
Fierce to the field of death the hero flies;
The faint crane fluttering flaps the ground and dies;
And by the victor borne (o'erwhelming load!)
With bloody bill loose-dangling marks the road.
And oft the wily dwarf in ambush lay,
And often made the callow young his prey;
With slaughter'd victims heap'd his board, and smiled,
To avenge the parent's trespass on the child. 50
Oft, where his feather'd foe had rear'd her nest,
And laid her eggs and household gods to rest,
Burning for blood in terrible array,
The eighteen-inch militia burst their way:
All went to wreck; the infant foeman fell,
Whence scarce his chirping bill had broke the shell.
Loud uproar hence and rage of arms arose,
And the fell rancour of encountering foes;
Hence dwarfs and cranes one general havoc whelms,
And Death's grim visage scares the pigmy realms. 60
Not half so furious blazed the warlike fire
Of mice, high theme of the Maeonian lyre;
When bold to battle march'd the accoutred frogs,
And the deep tumult thunder'd through the bogs.
Pierced by the javelin bulrush on the shore
Here agonizing roll'd the mouse in gore;
And there the frog (a scene full sad to see!)
Shorn of one leg, slow sprawl'd along on three;
He vaults no more with vigorous hops on high,
But mourns in hoarsest croaks his destiny. 70
And now the day of woe drew on apace,
A day of woe to all the pigmy race,
When dwarfs were doom'd (but penitence was vain)
To rue each broken egg, and chicken slain.
For, roused to vengeance by repeated wrong,
From distant climes the long-bill'd legions throng:
From Strymon's lake, Cayster's plashy meads,
And fens of Scythia, green with rustling reeds;
From where the Danube winds through many a land,
And Mareotis leaves the Egyptian strand; 80
To rendezvous they waft on eager wing,
And wait, assembled, the returning spring.
Meanwhile they trim their plumes for length of flight,
Whet their keen beaks and twisting claws for fight:
Each crane the pigmy power in thought o'erturns,
And every bosom for the battle burns.
When genial gales the frozen air unbind,
The screaming legions wheel, and mount the wind;
Far in the sky they form their long array,
And land and ocean stretch'd immense survey 90
Deep, deep beneath; and, triumphing in pride
With clouds and winds commix'd, innumerous ride.
'Tis wild obstreperous clangour all, and heaven
Whirls, in tempestuous undulation driven.
Nor less the alarm that shook the world below,
Where march'd in pomp of war the embattled foe:
Where manikins with haughty step advance,
And grasp the shield, and couch the quivering lance:
To right and left the lengthening lines they form,
And rank'd in deep array await the storm. 100
High in the midst the chieftain-dwarf was seen,
Of giant stature and imperial mien:
Full twenty inches tall, he strode along,
And view'd with lofty eye the wondering throng;
And while with many a scar his visage frown'd,
Bared his broad bosom, rough with many a wound
Of beaks and claws, disclosing to their sight
The glorious meed of high heroic might.
For with insatiate vengeance he pursued,
And never-ending hate, the feathery brood. 110
Unhappy they, confiding in the length
Of horny beak, or talon's crooked strength,
Who durst abide his rage; the blade descends,
And from the panting trunk the pinion rends:
Laid low in dust the pinion waves no more,
The trunk disfigured stiffens in its gore.
What hosts of heroes fell beneath his force!
What heaps of chicken carnage mark'd his course!
How oft, O Strymon, thy lone banks along,
Did wailing Echo waft the funeral song! 120
And now from far the mingling clamours rise,
Loud and more loud rebounding through the skies.
From skirt to skirt of Heaven, with stormy sway,
A cloud rolls on, and darkens all the day.
Near and more near descends the dreadful shade,
And now in battailous array display'd,
On sounding wings, and screaming in their ire,
The cranes rush onward, and the fight require.
The pigmy warriors eye with fearless glare
The host thick swarming o'er the burden'd air; 130
Thick swarming now, but to their native land
Doom'd to return a scanty straggling band.--
When sudden, darting down the depth of heaven,
Fierce on the expecting foe the cranes are driven,
The kindling frenzy every bosom warms,
The region echoes to the crash of arms;
Loose feathers from the encountering armies fly,
And in careering whirlwinds mount the sky.
To breathe from toil upsprings the panting crane,
Then with fresh vigour downwards darts again. 140
Success in equal balance hovering hangs.
Here, on the sharp spear, mad with mortal pangs,
The bird transfix'd in bloody vortex whirls,
Yet fierce in death the threatening talon curls;
There, while the life-blood bubbles from his wound,
With little feet the pigmy beats the ground:
Deep from his breast the short, short sob he draws,
And, dying, curses the keen-pointed claws.
Trembles the thundering field, thick cover'd o'er
With falchions, mangled wings, and streaming gore; 150
And pigmy arms, and beaks of ample size,
And here a claw, and there a finger, lies.
Encompass'd round with heaps of slaughter'd foes,
All grim in blood the pigmy champion glows;
And on the assailing host impetuous springs,
Careless of nibbling bills and flapping wings;
And 'midst the tumult wheresoe'er he turns,
The battle with redoubled fury burns;
From every side the avenging cranes amain
Throng, to o'erwhelm this terror of the plain. 160
When suddenly (for such the will of Jove)
A fowl enormous, sousing from above,
The gallant chieftain clutch'd, and, soaring high,
(Sad chance of battle!) bore him up the sky.
The cranes pursue, and, clustering in a ring,
Chatter triumphant round the captive king.
But, ah! what pangs each pigmy bosom wrung,
When, now to cranes a prey, on talons hung,
High in the clouds they saw their helpless lord,
His wriggling form still lessening as he soar'd. 170
Lo! yet again with unabated rage,
In mortal strife the mingling hosts engage.
The crane with darted bill assaults the foe,
Hovering; then wheels aloft to 'scape the blow:
The dwarf in anguish aims the vengeful wound;
But whirls in empty air the falchion round.
Such was the scene, when 'midst the loud alarms
Sublime the eternal Thunderer rose in arms,
When Briareus, by mad ambition driven,
Heaved Pelion huge, and hurl'd it high at heaven, 180
Jove roll'd redoubling thunders from on high,
Mountains and bolts encounter'd in the sky;
Till one stupendous ruin whelm'd the crew,
Their vast limbs weltering wide in brimstone blue.
But now at length the pigmy legions yield,
And, wing'd with terror, fly the fatal field.
They raise a weak and melancholy wail,
All in distraction scattering o'er the vale.
Prone on their routed rear the cranes descend;
Their bills bite furious, and their talons rend; 190
With unrelenting ire they urge the chase,
Sworn to exterminate the hated race.
'Twas thus the pigmy name, once great in war,
For spoils of conquer'd cranes renown'd afar,
Perish'd. For, by the dread decree of Heaven,
Short is the date to earthly grandeur given,
And vain are all attempts to roam beyond
Where fate has fix'd the everlasting bound.
Fallen are the trophies of Assyrian power,
And Persia's proud dominion is no more: 200
Yea, though to both superior far in fame,
Thine empire, Latium, is an empty name!
And now, with lofty chiefs of ancient time,
The pigmy heroes roam the Elysian clime.
Or, if belief to matron-tales be due,
Full oft, in the belated shepherd's view,
Their frisking forms, in gentle green array'd,
Gambol secure amid the moonlight glade:
Secure, for no alarming cranes molest,
And all their woes in long oblivion rest: 210
Down the deep vale and narrow winding way
They foot it featly, ranged in ringlets gay:
'Tis joy and frolic all, where'er they rove,
And Fairy-people is the name they love.

[Footnote 1: 'Or little,' &c.: from Gray's Elegy.]

THE HARES.

A FABLE.

Yes, yes, I grant the sons of Earth
Are doom'd to trouble from their birth.
We all of sorrow have our share;
But say, is yours without compare?
Look round the world; perhaps you'll find
Each individual of our kind
Press'd with an equal load of ill,
Equal at least: look further still,
And own your lamentable case
Is little short of happiness. 10
In yonder hut that stands alone
Attend to Famine's feeble moan;
Or view the couch where Sickness lies,
Mark his pale cheek, and languid eyes;
His frame by strong convulsion torn,
His struggling sighs, and looks forlorn.
Or see, transfixt with keener pangs,
Where o'er his hoard the miser hangs;
Whistles the wind; he starts, he stares,
Nor Slumber's balmy blessing shares; 20
Despair, Remorse, and Terror roll
Their tempests on his harass'd soul.
But here perhaps it may avail
To enforce our reasoning with a tale.
Mild was the morn, the sky serene,
The jolly hunting band convene,
The beagle's breast with ardour burns,
The bounding steed the champaign spurns,
And Fancy oft the game descries
Through the hound's nose and huntsman's eyes, 30
Just then a council of the hares
Had met on national affairs.
The chiefs were set; while o'er their head
The furze its frizzled covering spread.
Long lists of grievances were heard,
And general discontent appear'd.
"Our harmless race shall every savage
Both quadruped and biped ravage?
Shall horses, hounds, and hunters still
Unite their wits to work us ill? 40
The youth, his parent's sole delight,
Whose tooth the dewy lawns invite,
Whose pulse in every vein beats strong,
Whose limbs leap light the vales along,
May yet ere noontide meet his death,
And lie dismember'd on the heath.
For youth, alas! nor cautious age,
Nor strength, nor speed eludes their rage.
In every field we meet the foe,
Each gale comes fraught with sounds of woe; 50
The morning but awakes our fears,
The evening sees us bathed in tears.
But must we ever idly grieve,
Nor strive our fortunes to relieve?
Small is each individual's force;
To stratagem be our recourse;
And then, from all our tribes combined,
The murderer to his cost may find
No foes are weak whom Justice arms,
Whom Concord leads, and Hatred warms. 60
Be roused; or liberty acquire,
Or in the great attempt expire."
He said no more, for in his breast
Conflicting thoughts the voice suppress'd:
The fire of vengeance seem'd to stream
From his swoln eyeball's yellow gleam.
And now the tumults of the war,
Mingling confusedly from afar,
Swell in the wind. Now louder cries
Distinct of hounds and men arise. 70
Forth from the brake, with beating heart,
The assembled hares tumultuous start,
And, every straining nerve on wing,
Away precipitately spring.
The hunting band, a signal given,
Thick thundering o'er the plain are driven;
O'er cliff abrupt, and shrubby mound,
And river broad, impetuous bound;
Now plunge amid the forest shades,
Glance through the openings of the glades; 80
Now o'er the level valley sweep,
Now with short step strain up the steep;
While backward from the hunter's eyes
The landscape like a torrent flies.
At last an ancient wood they gain'd,
By pruner's axe yet unprofaned.
High o'er the rest, by nature rear'd,
The oak's majestic boughs appear'd;
Beneath, a copse of various hue
In barbarous luxuriance grew. 90
No knife had curb'd the rambling sprays,
No hand had wove the implicit maze.
The flowering thorn, self-taught to wind,
The hazel's stubborn stem entwined,
And bramble twigs were wreathed around,
And rough furze crept along the ground.
Here sheltering from the sons of murther,
The hares their tired limbs drag no further.
But, lo! the western wind ere long
Was loud, and roar'd the woods among; 100
From rustling leaves and crashing boughs
The sound of woe and war arose.
The hares distracted scour the grove,
As terror and amazement drove;
But danger, wheresoe'er they fled,
Still seem'd impending o'er their head.
Now crowded in a grotto's gloom,
All hope extinct, they wait their doom.
Dire was the silence, till, at length,
Even from despair deriving strength, 110
With bloody eye and furious look,
A daring youth arose and spoke:
"O wretched race, the scorn of Fate,
Whom ills of every sort await!
O cursed with keenest sense to feel
The sharpest sting of every ill!
Say ye, who, fraught with mighty scheme,
Of liberty and vengeance dream,
What now remains? To what recess
Shall we our weary steps address, 120
Since Fate is evermore pursuing
All ways, and means to work our ruin?
Are we alone, of all beneath,
Condemn'd to misery worse than death?
Must we, with fruitless labour, strive
In misery worse than death to live?
No. Be the smaller ill our choice;
So dictates Nature's powerful voice.
Death's pang will in a moment cease;
And then, all hail, eternal peace!" 130
Thus while he spoke, his words impart
The dire resolve to every heart.
A distant lake in prospect lay,
That, glittering in the solar ray,
Gleam'd through the dusky trees, and shot
A trembling light along the grot.
Thither with one consent they bend,
Their sorrows with their lives to end;
While each, in thought, already hears
The water hissing in his ears. 140
Fast by the margin of the lake,
Conceal'd within a thorny brake,
A linnet sat, whose careless lay
Amused the solitary day.
Careless he sung, for on his breast
Sorrow no lasting trace impress'd;
When suddenly he heard a sound
Of swift feet traversing the ground.
Quick to the neighbouring tree he flies,
Thence trembling casts around his eyes; 150
No foe appear'd, his fears were vain;
Pleased he renews the sprightly strain.
The hares whose noise had caused his fright,
Saw with surprise the linnet's flight.
"Is there on earth a wretch," they said,
"Whom our approach can strike with dread?"
An instantaneous change of thought
To tumult every bosom wrought.
So fares the system-building sage,
Who, plodding on from youth to age, 160
At last on some foundation dream
Has rear'd aloft his goodly scheme,
And proved his predecessors fools,
And bound all nature by his rules;
So fares he in that dreadful hour,
When injured Truth exerts her power,
Some new phenomenon to raise,
Which, bursting on his frighted gaze,
From its proud summit to the ground
Proves the whole edifice unsound. 170
"Children," thus spoke a hare sedate,
Who oft had known the extremes of fate,
"In slight events the docile mind
May hints of good instruction find,
That our condition is the worst,
And we with such misfortunes curst,
As all comparison defy,
Was late the universal cry;
When, lo! an accident so slight
As yonder little linnet's flight, 180
Has made your stubborn hearts confess
(So your amazement bids me guess)
That all our load of woes and fears
Is but a part of what he bears.
Where can he rest secure from harms,
Whom even a helpless hare alarms?
Yet he repines not at his lot;
When past, the danger is forgot:
On yonder bough he trims his wings,
And with unusual rapture sings: 190
While we, less wretched, sink beneath
Our lighter ills, and rush to death.
No more of this unmeaning rage,
But hear, my friends, the words of age:
"When, by the winds of autumn driven,
The scatter'd clouds fly 'cross the heaven,
Oft have we, from some mountain's head,
Beheld the alternate light and shade
Sweep the long vale. Here, hovering, lowers
The shadowy cloud; there downward pours, 200
Streaming direct, a flood of day,
Which from the view flies swift away;
It flies, while other shades advance,
And other streaks of sunshine glance.
Thus chequer'd is the life below
With gleams of joy and clouds of woe.
Then hope not, while we journey on,
Still to be basking in the sun;
Nor fear, though now in shades ye mourn,
That sunshine will no more return. 210
If, by your terrors overcome,
Ye fly before the approaching gloom,
The rapid clouds your flight pursue,
And darkness still o'ercasts your view.
Who longs to reach the radiant plain
Must onward urge his course amain:
For doubly swift the shadow flies,
When 'gainst the gale the pilgrim plies.
At least be firm, and undismay'd
Maintain your ground! the fleeting shade 220
Ere long spontaneous glides away,
And gives you back the enlivening ray.
Lo, while I speak, our danger past!
No more the shrill horn's angry blast
Howls in our ear: the savage roar
Of war and murder is no more.
Then snatch the moment fate allows,
Nor think of past or future woes."
He spoke; and hope revives; the lake
That instant one and all forsake, 230
In sweet amusement to employ
The present sprightly hour of joy.
Now from the western mountain's brow,
Compass'd with clouds of various glow,
The sun a broader orb displays,
And shoots aslope his ruddy rays.
The lawn assumes a fresher green,
And dew-drops spangle all the scene.
The balmy zephyr breathes along,
The shepherd sings his tender song, 240
With all their lays the groves resound,
And falling waters murmur round:
Discord and care were put to flight,
And all was peace and calm delight.

THE WOLF AND SHEPHERDS.

A FABLE.

(WRITTEN IN 1757, AND FIRST PUBLISHED IN 1766.)

Laws, as we read in ancient sages,
Have been like cobwebs in all ages:
Cobwebs for little flies are spread,
And laws for little folks are made;
But if an insect of renown,
Hornet or beetle, wasp or drone,
Be caught in quest of sport or plunder,
The flimsy fetter flies in sunder.
Your simile perhaps may please one
With whom wit holds the place of reason: 10
But can you prove that this in fact is
Agreeable to life and practice?
Then hear, what in his simple way
Old Æsop told me t' other day.
In days of yore, but (which is very odd)
Our author mentions not the period,
We mortal men, less given to speeches,
Allow'd the beasts sometimes to teach us.
But now we all are prattlers grown,
And suffer no voice but our own; 20
With us no beast has leave to speak,
Although his honest heart should break.
'Tis true, your asses and your apes,
And other brutes in human shapes,
And that thing made of sound and show,
Which mortals have misnamed a beau,
(But in the language of the sky
Is call'd a two-legg'd butterfly),
Will make your very heartstrings ache
With loud and everlasting clack, 30
And beat your auditory drum,
Till you grow deaf, or they grow dumb.
But to our story we return:
'Twas early on a Summer morn,
A Wolf forsook the mountain den,
And issued hungry on the plain.
Full many a stream and lawn he past
And reach'd a winding vale at last;
Where from a hollow rock he spied
The shepherds drest in flowery pride. 40
Garlands were strew'd, and all was gay,
To celebrate a holiday.
The merry tabor's gamesome sound
Provoked the sprightly dance around.
Hard by a rural board was rear'd,
On which in fair array appear'd
The peach, the apple, and the raisin,
And all the fruitage of the season.
But, more distinguish'd than the rest,
Was seen a wether ready drest, 50
That smoking, recent from the flame,
Diffused a stomach-rousing steam.
Our Wolf could not endure the sight,
Courageous grew his appetite:
His entrails groan'd with tenfold pain,
He lick'd his lips, and lick'd again:
At last, with lightning in his eyes,
He bounces forth, and fiercely cries:
"Shepherds, I am not given to scolding,
But now my spleen I cannot hold in. 60
By Jove, such scandalous oppression
Would put an elephant in passion.
You, who your flocks (as you pretend)
By wholesome laws from harm defend,
Which make it death for any beast,
How much soe'er by hunger press'd,
To seize a sheep by force or stealth,
For sheep have right to life and health;
Can you commit, uncheck'd by shame,
What in a beast so much you blame? 70
What is a law, if those who make it
Become the forwardest to break it?
The case is plain: you would reserve
All to yourselves, while others starve.
Such laws from base self-interest spring,
Not from the reason of the thing--"
He was proceeding, when a swain
Burst out,--"And dares a wolf arraign
His betters, and condemn their measures,
And contradict their wills and pleasures? 80
We have establish'd laws, 'tis true,
But laws are made for such as you.
Know, sirrah, in its very nature
A law can't reach the legislature.
For laws, without a sanction join'd,
As all men know, can never bind;
But sanctions reach not us the makers,
For who dares punish us, though breakers?
'Tis therefore plain, beyond denial,
That laws were ne'er design'd to tie all; 90
But those, whom sanctions reach alone:
We stand accountable to none.
Besides, 'tis evident, that, seeing
Laws from the great derive their being,
They as in duty bound should love
The great, in whom they live and move,
And humbly yield to their desires:
'Tis just what gratitude requires.
What suckling, dandled on the lap,
Would tear away its mother's pap? 100
But hold--Why deign I to dispute
With such a scoundrel of a brute?
Logic is lost upon a knave,
Let action prove the law our slave."
An angry nod his will declared
To his gruff yeoman of the guard;
The full-fed mongrels, train'd to ravage,
Fly to devour the shaggy savage.
The beast had now no time to lose
In chopping logic with his foes; 110
"This argument," quoth he, "has force,
And swiftness is my sole resource."
He said, and left the swains their prey,
And to the mountains scour'd away.

SONG;

IN IMITATION OF SHAKSPEARE'S "BLOW, BLOW, THOU WINTER WIND."

1

Blow, blow, thou vernal gale!
Thy balm will not avail
To ease my aching breast;
Though thou the billows smooth,
Thy murmurs cannot soothe
My weary soul to rest.

2

Flow, flow, thou tuneful stream!
Infuse the easy dream
Into the peaceful soul;
But thou canst not compose
The tumult of my woes,
Though soft thy waters roll.

3

Blush, blush, ye fairest flowers!
Beauties surpassing yours
My Rosalind adorn;
Nor is the Winter's blast,
That lays your glories waste,
So killing as her scorn.

4

Breathe, breathe, ye tender lays,
That linger down the maze
Of yonder winding grove;
O let your soft control
Bend her relenting soul
To pity and to love.

5

Fade, fade, ye flowerets fair!
Gales, fan no more the air!
Ye streams, forget to glide;
Be hush'd each vernal strain;
Since nought can soothe my pain,
Nor mitigate her pride.

TO LADY CHARLOTTE GORDON,

DRESSED IN A TARTAN SCOTCH BONNET, WITH PLUMES, ETC.

1

Why, lady, wilt them bind thy lovely brow
With the dread semblance of that warlike helm;
That nodding plume, and wreath of various glow,
That graced the chiefs of Scotia's ancient realm?

2

Thou know'st that Virtue is of power the source,
And all her magic to thy eyes is given;
We own their empire, while we feel their force,
Beaming with the benignity of heaven.

3

The plumy helmet and the martial mien
Might dignify Minerva's awful charms;
But more resistless far the Idalian queen--
Smiles, graces, gentleness, her only arms.

EPITAPH:

BEING PART OF AN INSCRIPTION DESIGNED FOR A MONUMENT ERECTED BY A GENTLEMAN TO THE MEMORY OF HIS LADY.

Farewell, my best beloved! whose heavenly mind
Genius with virtue, strength with softness join'd;
Devotion, undebased by pride or art,
With meek simplicity, and joy of heart:
Though sprightly, gentle; though polite, sincere;
And only of thyself a judge severe:
Unblamed, unequall'd in each sphere of life,
The tenderest daughter, sister, parent, wife.
In thee, their patroness the afflicted lost;
Thy friends their pattern, ornament, and boast;
And I--but ah, can words my loss declare,
Or paint the extremes of transport and despair!
O thou, beyond what verse or speech can tell--
My guide, my friend, my best beloved, farewell!

EPITAPH

ON TWO YOUNG MEN OF THE NAME OF LEITCH, WHO WERE DROWNED IN CROSSING THE
RIVER SOUTHESK. 1757.

O thou! whose steps in sacred reverence tread
These lone dominions of the silent dead;
On this sad stone a pious look bestow,
Nor uninstructed read this tale of woe;
And while the sigh of sorrow heaves thy breast,
Let each rebellious murmur be suppress'd;
Heaven's hidden ways to trace, for us how vain!
Heaven's wise decrees, how impious to arraign!
Pure from the stains of a polluted age,
In early bloom of life they left the stage:
Not doom'd in lingering woe to waste their breath,
One moment snatch'd them from the power of Death:
They lived united, and united died;
Happy the friends whom Death cannot divide!

EPITAPH, INTENDED FOR HIMSELF.

1

Escaped the gloom of mortal life, a soul
Here leaves its mouldering tenement of clay,
Safe where no cares their whelming billows roll,
No doubts bewilder, and no hopes betray.

2

Like thee, I once have stemm'd the sea of life;
Like thee, have languish'd after empty joys;
Like thee, have labour'd in the stormy strife;
Been grieved for trifles, and amused with toys.

3

Yet, for a while, 'gainst Passion's threatful blast
Let steady Reason urge the struggling oar;
Shot through the dreary gloom, the morn at last
Gives to thy longing eye the blissful shore.

4

Forget my frailties, thou art also frail;
Forgive my lapses, for thyself mayst fall;
Nor read, unmoved, my artless tender tale,
I was a friend, O man! to thee, to all.

END OF BEATTIE'S POEMS.

POETICAL WORKS OF ROBERT BLAIR.

THE LIFE OF ROBERT BLAIR.

The paradox of Dr Johnson, in reference to sacred poetry, has long ago fallen into disrepute. It seems singular indeed, how it ever obtained credence, even although supported by one of the most powerful pens that ever wrote in Britain, when we remember that, previous to that author's day, the best poetry in the world 'had' been sacred. The Holy Scriptures then existed, with that poetry which bursts out at their every pore, besides being collected here and there into masses of rich song, "pressed down, shaken together, and running over." Dante, too, had written his great work, which, as if to mark it out for ever from things unclean and common, he had called the "'Divina' Commedia," and which was worthy of the name. Tasso's "Gerusalemme Liberata" had a religious moral, as well as a title suggestive of religious ideas. Spenser's "Faery Queen" was sacred, if not in all the parts, yet at least in the pervading spirit of its poetry. Cowley's "Davideis," Herbert's "Temple," Milton's "Paradise Lost" and "Paradise Regained," and Young's "Night Thoughts," existed then, were all admitted to be more or less masterpieces, and were all sacred in their subjects and aims. Blair's "Grave" too, had, ere Johnson's day, appeared, and furnished a good example of a solemn and religious theme, treated with genuine poetic power.

We need not say what a flood of sacred song has arisen since, and drowned the dictum of the lexicographer in the waves. Nay, an opinion is gaining ground, that all lofty poetry tends toward the sacred, and lies under the shadow of the divine. Poetry is like fire, which, even when employed in culinary or destructive purposes, points its column upwards, and seems to transmit the flower and essence of its conquests to heaven. All poetry that does not thus ascend is either morbid in spirit, or secondary in merit.

We come now to the life of one of our best religious poets,--ROBERT BLAIR--whose short poem "The Grave," is so admirable as to excite keen regret that it is almost the only specimen extant of his gifted and original mind.

The facts of his life are more than usually scanty, and our biography, therefore, must be brief and meagre. Robert Blair was born in Edinburgh, in 1699. It is curious, by the way, how few poets the Modern Athens has produced. It has bred lawyers, statists, critics, savans, in plenty, but reared but few men of transcendant genius, and, so far as we remember, only five good poets,--Scott, Ferguson, Ramsay, Falconer, and Blair,--whom the manufacturing town of Paisley nearly matches with its Tannahill, Motherwell, Alexander and John Wilson. Blair was the eldest son of the Rev. David Blair, who was a minister of the Old Church of Edinburgh, and one of the chaplains to the King. His mother was Euphemia Nisbet, daughter of Alexander Nisbet, Esq., of Carfin. His grandfather, Robert Blair, of Irvine,--descended from the ancient family of Blair 'of that ilk ('i.e.', of Blair), in Ayrshire,--distinguished himself, in the troublous times of the Solemn League and Covenant, as a powerful preacher, an able negociator, and a brave, determined man. The celebrated Hugh Blair,--whose writings, once so popular, seem now nearly forgotten,--was our poet's cousin, although younger by nineteen years. Robert lost his father while yet a boy, but enjoyed the anxious care and admirable training of an excellent mother. He studied first at the University of Edinburgh, and afterwards in Holland. Of the particulars of either part of his curriculum nothing is known. On his return from abroad, he seems to have received license to preach, and to have hung about Edinburgh for a few years, an unemployed probationer. This was of less consequence, as he had some hereditary property. It gave him, too, abundant leisure for study, and he employed it well--cultivating natural history and the cognate sciences--publishing a few fugitive verses, which made very little impression on the public--and drawing out the first rude draught of the poem which was destined to make him immortal,--"The Grave." In 1731, when he was in his thirty-second year, he was appointed to the living of Athelstaneford, a parish in East Lothian, where he continued to reside all the rest of his life. Dissenter though the author of this biography be, he is free to confess, that there is very much that is enviable in the position of a parish minister, particularly in the country. Possessed of an easy competence, and a manageable field of labour, surrounded by the simplicities of rural manners, and the picturesque features of rural scenery,--lord of his sphere of duty, and master of his time,--his life can be, and often is, one of the most useful and happy, honourable in its toils, and graceful in its relaxations, to be found on earth. Where could we expect elegant studies to be prosecuted with more success, or whence could we expect more works of sanctified learning and genius to issue, than in and from the "manses" of Scotland, always so beautifully situated, now on the brink of the mountain stream, singing its wild way through the woods,--now in the centre of rich orchards and fertile fields,--now on sunny braes, overlooking the whole parish, prostrate in its loveliness at their feet,--and now surrounded and shadowed by broad old oaks and tall black pine-trees? And so, accordingly, it has been, although not perhaps to the extent we might have wished or expected. Philosophy of the deepest order has been studied--inquiries the most profound and extensive into natural science and history have been prosecuted; and painting, music, and poetry, have found enthusiastic and gifted votaries, who, at the same time, have not neglected their higher vocation,--in the quiet manses of our country; and we rejoice to know that this state of things continues, and is not confined to the Established Church, but may be asserted with equal or greater force to exist in others.

At Athelstaneford, Blair seems to have realised this ideal of a country minister. He was attentive to his pastoral duties, and the correspondent of Doddridge and the author of "The Grave," could not fail to be an evangelical, a practical, and a powerful preacher. He at the same time diligently prosecuted his favourite studies, which were botany, natural history, and poetry. Possessing a considerable fortune, he lived on a footing of equality and friendship with the gentry of the neighbourhood, and others of similar rank in distant parts of Scotland. Sir Francis Kinloch of Gilmerton and John Gallander of Craigforth are mentioned as two of his intimates. We are tempted to figure the author of "The Grave" as a morose and melancholy 'solitaire'--musing amid midnight churchyards--stumbling over bones--and returning home to light his lamp, inserted in a gaping skull, and to write out his gloomy cogitations. This is very far from being his real character. He was more frequently seen wandering amidst the flowery nooks of summer, with a microscope in his hand; or, on his way home from his pastoral visitations, stopping to analyse the fungi and the mosses which met him on his path; or musing above the long liquid lapse of some wayside stream, down which were floating the red leaves of autumn; or turning a telescope of his own construction aloft to the gleaming host of heaven. In his mode of spending his time, as well as in some of the stern features of his genius, he resembled Crabbe, who, believing that every weed was a flower, spent much of his time amidst the fields and on the sea-shores; who extracted delight out of the meanest fungus, even as he extracted poetry out of the humblest characters; and whose life, like Blair's, was a harmless dream.

After spending seven years of studious solitude, he, in 1738, married his relation, Isabella Law, daughter of Mr Law of Elvingston, who had been professor of moral philosophy in the University of Edinburgh, and whose death, which had happened ten years before, he had mourned in some rather lame verses, which our readers will find in this edition. Her brother was the sheriff-depute of East Lothian. She is described as a lady of great beauty and amiable manners, and succeeded in making the poet very happy. She bore him five sons and one daughter. Of these, Robert arose, through various gradations of honour at the Scottish bar, to be President of the Court of Session, and died in 1811. He was a man of massive and powerful intellect. It is, we think, in 'Peter's Letters' that Lockhart gives a glowing portraiture of President Blair's remarkable powers. He had not the genius or "hairbrained sentimental trace" of his father, but had inherited that clear, stern understanding, and that profound insight into men and manners, which are met with in every page of "The Grave."

Of this poem the author had, we said, drawn a first outline when a youth in Edinburgh. This he completed after his settlement at Athelstaneford; and, about the year 1742, he began to make arrangements for its publication. He had, probably through his neighbour, the celebrated Colonel Gardiner, who fell at the battle of Prestonpans, become acquainted with Isaac Watts, who paid him, he says in one of his letters, "many civilities." To him he forwarded the MS. of his poem. Dr Watts, with characteristic candour and good taste, admired it, and offered it to two different London booksellers, both of whom, however, declined to publish it, expressing a doubt whether any person living three hundred miles from town could write so as to be acceptable to the fashionable and the polite! No poetry at that time went down except imitations of Pope. Blair got back his MS., and, nothing daunted, sent it to Philip Doddridge, who was also an intimate of Colonel Gardiner's, requesting his opinion, which appears to have been as favourable as that of Dr Watts. At length it was published in London in the year 1743, and reprinted at Edinburgh in 1747, a year after its author's death.

Between that event and the appearance of his poem, nothing remarkable occurred. The success of his work must have shed additional sweetness into a cup which was rich before. "His tastes," says one of his biographers, "were elegant and domestic. Books and flowers seem to have been the only rivals in his thoughts. His rambles were from his fireside to his garden; and, although the only record of his genius is of a gloomy character, it is evident that his habits and life contributed to render him cheerful and happy." At last that awful chasm, the terrors, grandeurs, and moral lessons of which he had so powerfully sung, opened its jaws to receive him, and the Grave crowned its laureate with its cold and earthy crown. He was seized with fever, caught probably in the exercise of his pastoral functions, and expired on the 4th of February 1746, at the early age of forty-seven, when his body and mind were both in full vigour, and when, speaking after the manner of men, yet greater works than "The Grave" were before him. He left his wife, who lived till 1774, and five children behind him. His body reposes in the church-yard of Athelstaneford, without a monument, and with nothing but the initials K.B. to mark the spot.

The fact that he died comparatively so young, sufficiently accounts for the paucity of his poems. He had found a vein of rich and virgin gold; he had thrown out one mass of ore, and was, as it were, resting on his pickaxe ere recommencing his labour, when he was smitten down by a workman who never rests nor slumbers. Still let us thankfully accept what he has produced; the more as it is so distinctively original, so free from any serious alloy, and so impressively religious in its spirit and tone.

This masterpiece of Blair's genius is not a great poem so much as it is a magnificent portion, fragment, or book of a great poem. The most, alike of its merits and its faults, spring from the fact, that it keeps close to its subject--it daguerreotypes its dreadful theme. Many have objected to its conclusion as lame and impotent, and would have wished a loftier swell of hopeful anticipation of the Resurrection at the close; but this, in fact, would have started the subject of another poem. Blair was writing of the power and triumphs of the tomb. He left it to others, or possibly to another poem by himself, to celebrate the victory over it, to be gained at the resurrection. Enough for his purpose to allude to it at the close, in such a way as to intimate his own belief in its reality. Surely he expects too much who requires the painter of "Night" to introduce "Morning" into the same picture.

The shortness of the poem has been objected to it. But this, we think, shows the poet's good sense. The subject is too uniform and too gloomy for a long poem. "The Grave, in twelve books" would have been totally unreadable. It was far better to give, as Blair has given, a strong, stern, rapid, and concentrated sketch of the grisly gulf. The grave, in one respect, has no unity, and no story. It stands by itself, hollow, solitary, with its momentary ghastly yawnings, its general repose, and the dark mysteries which, whether open or shut, it conceals in its silent bosom. Reverence, as well as good taste, requires the poet who would venture on such a theme, to approach it trembling, and to withdraw from it in haste.

Yet Blair has been accused of a want of reverence in his treatment of this awful subject, nor is this objection altogether unfounded; the poet does treat "the Grave" in a somewhat abrupt and cavalier fashion, and does not seem sufficiently afraid of it. He was young when he wrote the greater part of the poem, and of young poets we may ask as Wordsworth asks about little children, "What can they know of death?" It had never knocked at his door or glared in at his window. He was, besides, of a bold and daring genius. He consulted rather strong effect than minute finish. The tone and style of his poem, consequently, are somewhat hirsute and unpolished. Campbell says of him, judiciously, "Blair may be a homely and even a gloomy poet in the eye of fastidious criticism; but there is a masculine and pronounced character even in his gloom and homeliness that keeps it most distinctly apart from either dulness or vulgarity. His style pleases us like the powerful expression of a countenance without regular beauty." He excels most in describing the darkest and most terrible ideas suggested by the subject, and seems almost to exult, while depicting the triumphs of the grave over the rich, the strong, the lofty, and the powerful. Death himself he assails in language approaching virulence, as when he says

O great maneater,
Unheard-of epicure, without a fellow,
Thou must render up thy dead,
And with high interest too.

This exulting spirit, however, springs in him, less from ferocious feeling than from conscious rejoicing power. He is not a savage, brandishing his bloody tomahawk, so much as a Michael Angelo, hewing, with heat and haste, at one of his terrible pieces of statuary. He characterizes the miser severely; he lashes the proud wicked man whom he sees pompously hearsed into Hell; with stern irony he pursues the beauty from her looking-glass to the clods where

"The high-fed worm, in lazy volumes roll'd,
Feeds on her damask cheek;"

he derides the baffled son of Æsculapius, who is deserted and deceived by his own drugs; and he exerts all the fearful force of his genius to show us the suicide in that "Other Place," where

"The common damn'd shun his society,
And look upon themselves as fiends less foul."

But the fine imagery and the rapid touch serve alike to show that though he is angry, it is with the wrath of a man--not with the malignity of a demon. We have sometimes been induced to fancy that Pollok, in the "Course of Time," loves to linger amid the ruins of fallen and lost natures; and finds a savage luxury in the contemplation of the agonies of those whom he represents as damned. He tells us that he loved no scenery so well as that of solitary wastes, where nature was utterly barren and seemed willing to decay--where the dark wings of monotonous gloom and eternal silence met and sullenly embraced over the dreary region; and he seems to have had the same passion for moral as for physical desolations. Blair, on the other hand, never tarries long in such scenes; he does not dwell amidst, and brood over them like an owl, but crosses them with the swift brushing wing of a bird returning to her evening nest. He never goes out of his way to search for them--he sees and shows them merely because they meet him on his path. There is nothing morbid nor much that is melancholy in this poem. He takes the hard fact as it is, and paints it with all his force, but he does not seek to exaggerate or discolour it. He shows "the Grave" in various lights, at morning, night, and noon--not under the uniform weight of a leaden midnight sky, or only by the ghastly illumination of a waning moon.

Southey, in his "Life of Cowper," has fallen into the mistake of supposing Blair one of the imitators of Young. Now, in fact, Blair's poem was 'written' before the "Last Day" of Young, or the "Night Thoughts" had appeared. Its originality is indeed one of its greatest merits and charms. The author has copied no style, imitated no manner, and scorned to permit any living man or poet to stand between him and the cold stern reality of death, which he was to reflect in song. He is worthy, thus, of the name so often misapplied, of Poet--'i.e.' Maker. You see an original genius both in the beauties and the faults of the work. Its language, so simply strong and daring in its homeliness, its free and energetic motion, its fresh fearless touch, its fidelity to nature and to life, the quick succession and sharp brief poignancy of its pictures, its absence of elaboration, and carelessness about minute lights and shades--all combine to prove that the author has an eye, an imagination, and a purpose quite peculiar to himself. He treats "the Grave" with as much originality as if he had been contemporary with the earliest sepulchre--as if he had plucked grass from Abel's tomb; and yet, while it has not lost to his eye its first fearful gloss and glory, it has gathered around it the dear or dismal associations of six thousand years; and Adam and the "new-made widow" seem to be leaning side by side over its dust. We could have conceived of him treating the subject more reconditely, imaginatively, and metaphysically, but not of handling it with more direct and masculine power.

That he has done so, is, undoubtedly, one great cause of the poem's popularity. Had he woven any gossamer of reverie or philosophic conjecture over "the Grave," or even shown much personal interest in it, he might have gained a more peculiar set of admirers, but would not have won his way to the world's heart. As it is, the popularity of "The Grave" has been unbounded. Partly from the subject, partly from the shortness, partly from the signal truth and force of the poem, it rose rapidly to fame. It became "everybody's Grave." The poem was copied into all school collections. It lay along with 'Robinson Crusoe' and Bunyan's 'Pilgrim's Progress', in the windows of cottages, and on the tables of wayside inns--achieving thus what Coleridge predicated over that well-thumbed copy of 'Thomson's Seasons', in the Welsh ale-house--"true fame!" It pervaded America. It was translated into other languages, and in its own it now transmigrated into a tract, now filled the page of a periodical, and now became a small separate book, telling its solemn tale to those who, though at first reluctant, as was the wedding guest to hear the Anciente Marinere, were at last compelled to listen, if not to learn. Light ballads and other amusing and clever trifles, had before and have since thus "put a girdle round about the globe in forty minutes;" but here was the phenomenon of a sad and serious strain, with little merit or charm but Christian truth and rugged poetry, passing, as if on telegraphic wires, through the whole world in a moment of time. Perhaps we should add a reason, although a very subordinate one, for the popularity of the poem. It was its author's 'first' and 'last'. He wrote himself at once and easily 'up'--he never tried and succeeded in writing himself laboriously 'down'.

The only books which should gain permanent reputation are those which supply materials for thought, and are studded with moveable gems of expression. We think we may divide the poems of the past and present into two classes, which we may discriminate into 'buildings' and 'quarries'. Many works to which you can hardly deny the character of works of genius may be likened to elegant and splendid edifices, the structure of which you cannot but admire, although the secret of their architecture you do not understand, and although from them you neither do nor can extract a single stone. They stand up before the view, dazzling and confounding,--

"Distinct but distant, clear, but ah! how cold."

Other books, less magnificent in aspect and rougher in style, are yet so full of suggestive and germinating thought, that we must liken them to quarries, surrounded it may be by thorns and briars, and precipices, but containing the richest of matter, and communicating with the very depths of the earth. Not to enter on the vexed questions connected with more celebrated poets, we may name Darwin and Dr Thomas Brown as two specimens of the building, and Robert Blair as an admirable example of the quarry. In household words and sententious truths, he yields (taking his space into consideration), not even to Young, or Pope, or Cowper, but to Shakspeare alone. His poem is a tissue of texts; many of his expressions might pass and have passed for bits of Hamlet. Take a few:--

"Friendship, mysterious cement of the soul,
Sweetener of life, and solder of society."

"Son of the morning, whither art thou gone?
Where hast thou hid thy many-spangled head,
And the majestic menace of thine eyes
Felt from afar?"

"Sorry pre-eminence of high descent!
Above the vulgar, born to 'rot in state'."

Hence, by the way, Byron's famous lines,--

"It seem'd the mockery of hell to fold
The 'rottenness' of eighty years in gold."

The exquisite description of beauty in the grave has been already quoted. That of the strong man dying is quite Shakspearian, and equally so is the picture commencing, "Death's shafts fly quick," particularly the passage about the sexton. How much he has compressed in the few words of the celebrated description!--

"The wind is up; hark! how it howls! methinks
Till now I never heard a sound so dreary;
Doors creak, and windows clap, and night's foul bird,
Rook'd in the spire, screams loud."

Who Blair's favourite authors were, we are not informed, but internal evidence proves him to have frequently and profitably read Shakspeare; and in terseness of description, comprehensiveness of vision, careless grandeur of execution, and short felicitous strokes of genius, he bears to him a considerable resemblance.