Chapter VI: Part II: Analysis of Part II (4)

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.