Louder, louder chant the lay,
Waken, lords and ladies gay!
Tell them youth, and mirth, and glee,
Run a course as well as we;
Time, stern huntsman! who can baulk,
Stanch as hound, and fleet as hawk;
Think of this, and rise with day,
Gentle lords and ladies gay.
IN IMITATION OF AN OLD ENGLISH POEM.
My wayward fate I needs must plain,
Though bootless be the theme;
I loved, and was beloved again,
Yet all was but a dream:
For, as her love was quickly got,
So it was quickly gone;
No more I'll bask in flame so hot,
But coldly dwell alone.
Not maid more bright than maid was e'er
My fancy shall beguile,
By flattering word, or feigned tear,
By gesture, look, or smile:
No more I'll call the shaft fair shot,
Till it has fairly flown,
Nor scorch me at a flame so hot;-
I'll rather freeze alone.
No waking dream shall tinge my thought
With dyes so bright and vain,
No silken net, so slightly wrought,
Shall tangle me again:
No more I'll pay so dear for wit,
I'll live upon mine own,
Nor shall wild passion trouble it,-
I'll rather dwell alone.
And thus I'll hush my heart to rest,— "Thy loving labor's lost;
Thou shalt no more be wildly blest,
To be so strangely crost;
The widow'd turtles mateless die,
The phoenix is but one;
They seek no loves-no more will I—
I'll rather dwell alone."
IN LICHFIELD CATHEDRAL, AT THE BURIAL-PLACE OF THE FAMILY OF MISS SEWARD.
AMID these aisles, where once his precepts show'd
The Heavenward pathway which in life he trod,
This simple tablet marks a Father's bier,
And those he loved in life, in death are near,
For him, for them, a Daughter bade it rise,
Memorial of domestic charities.
Still wouldst thou know why o'er the marble
In female grace the willow droops her head;
Why on her branches, silent and unstrung,
The minstrel harp is emblematic hung;
What poet's voice is smother'd here in dust
Till waked to join the chorus of the just,-
Lo! one brief line an answer sad supplies,
Honor'd, beloved, and mourn'd, here SEWARD lies:
Her worth, her warmth of heart, let friendship say;
Go seek her genius in her living lay.
TO MISS BAILLIE'S PLAY OF THE FAMILY LEGEND.
"TIS sweet to hear expiring Summer's sigh, Through forests tinged with russet, wail and die;
poet could write in the same exquisite taste."-Life of Scott vol. iii. p. 330. 2 Edinburgh Annual Register, 1809.
3 Miss Baillie's Family Legend was produced with consid erable success on the Edinburgh stage in the winter of 1809-10. This prologue was spoken on that occasion by the Author's friend, Mr. Daniel Terry.
"Tis sweet and sad the latest notes to hear
Of distant music, dying on the ear;
But far more sadly sweet, on foreign strand,
We list the legends of our native land,
Link'd as they come with every tender tie,
Memorials dear of youth and infancy.
Chief, thy wild tales, romantic Caledon, Wake keen remembrance in each hardy son. Whether on India's burning coasts he toil, Or till Acadia's' winter-fetter'd soil,
Now bilks excisemen, and now bullies kings.
Like his, I ween, thy comprehensive mind
Holds laws as mouse-traps baited for mankind:
Thine eye, applausive, each sly vermin sees,
That baulks the snare, yet battens on the cheese
Thine ear has heard, with scorn instead of awe,
Our buckskinn'd justices expound the law,
Wire-draw the acts that fix for wires the pain,
And for the netted partridge noose the swain;
And thy vindictive arm would fain have broke
The last light fetter of the feudal yoke,
He hears with throbbing heart and moisten'd eyes, To give the denizens of wood and wild,
And, as he hears, what dear illusions rise!
It opens on his soul his native dell,
The woods wild waving, and the water's swell;
Tradition's theme, the tower that threats the plain,
The mossy cairn that hides the hero slain;
The cot, beneath whose simple porch were told,
By gray-hair'd patriarch, the tales of old,
The infant group, that hush'd their sports the
while,
And the dear maid who listen'd with a smile.
The wanderer, while the vision warms his brain,
Is denizen of Scotland once again.
Are such keen feelings to the crowd confined,
And sleep they in the Poet's gifted mind?
Oh no! For She, within whose mighty page
Each tyrant Passion shows his woe and rage,
Has felt the wizard influence they inspire,
And to your own traditions tuned her lyre.
Yourselves shall judge—whoe'er has raised the sail
By Mull's dark coast, has heard this evening's tale.
The plaided boatman, resting on his oar,
Points to the fatal rock amid the roar
Of whitening waves, and tells whate'er to-night
Our humble stage shall offer to your sight;
Proudly preferr'd that first our efforts give
Scenes glowing from her pen to breathe and live;
More proudly yet, should Caledon approve
The filial token of a Daughter's love.
WRITTEN IN IMITATION OF CRABBE, AND PUBLISHED
IN THE EDINBURGH ANNUAL REGISTER OF 1809,2
WELCOME, grave Stranger to our green retreats,
Where health with exercise and freedom meets!
Thrice welcome, Sage, whose philosophic plan
By nature's limits metes the rights of man;
Generous as he, who now for freedom bawls,
Now gives full value for true Indian shawls:
D'er court, o'er customhouse, his shoe who flings,
1 Acadia, or Nova Scotia.
Nature's free race, to each her free-born child.
Hence hast thou mark'd, with grief, fair London a
race,
Mock'd with the boon of one poor Easter chase,
And long'd to send them forth as free as when
Pour'd o'er Chantilly the Parisian train,
When musket, pistol, blunderbuss, combined,
And scarce the field-pieces were left behind!
A squadron's charge each leveret's heart dismay'd
On every covey fired a bold brigade;
La Douce Humanité approved the sport,
For great the alarm indeed, yet small the hurt
Shouts patriotic solemnized the day,
And Seine re-echo'd Vive la Liberté !
But mad Citoyen, meek Monsieur again,
With some few added links resumes his chain.
Then, since such scenes to France no more are
known,
Come, view with me a hero of thine own!
One, whose free actions vindicate the cause
Of silvan liberty o'er feudal laws.
Seek we yon glades, where the proud oak o'er
tops
Wide-waving seas of birch and hazel copse,
Leaving between deserted isles of land,
Where stunted heath is patch'd with ruddy sand;
And lonely on the waste the yew is seen,
Or straggling hollies spread a brighter green.
Here, little worn, and winding dark and steep,
Our scarce mark'd path descends yon dingle deep.
Follow-but heedful, cautious of a trip,-
In earthly mire philosophy may slip.
Step slow and wary o'er that swampy stream,
Till, guided by the charcoal's smothering steam,
We reach the frail yet barricaded door
Of hovel form'd for poorest of the poor;
No hearth the fire, no vent the smoke receives,
The walls are wattles, and the covering leaves;
For, if such hut, our forest statutes say,
Rise in the progress of one night and day
(Though placed where still the Conqueror's heste
o'erawe,
And his son's stirrup shines the badge of law),
2 See Life of Scott vol. iii. p. 329.
The builder claims the unenviable boon,
To tenant dwelling, framed as slight and soon As wigwam wild, that shrouds the native frore On the bleak coast of frost-barr'd Labrador.'
Approach, and through the unlatticed window реер
Nay, shrink not back, the inmate is asleep;
Sunk 'mid yon sordid blankets, till the sun
Stoop to the west, the plunderer's toils are done.
Loaded and primed, and prompt for desperate
hand,
Rifle and fowling-piece beside him stand;
While round the hut are in disorder laid
The tools and booty of his lawless trade;
For force or fraud, resistance or escape,
The crow, the saw, the bludgeon, and the crape.
His pilfer'd powder in yon nook he hoards,
And the filch'd lead the church's roof affords-
(Hence shall the rector's congregation fret,
That while his sermon's dry his walls are wet.)
The fish-spear barb'd, the sweeping net are there,
Doe-hides, and pheasant plumes, and skins of hare,
Cordage for toils, and wiring for the snare.
Barter'd for game from chase or warren won,
Yon cask holds moonlight,2 run when moon was
And late-snatched spoils lie stow'd in hutch apart, To wait the associate higgler's evening cart.
Look on his pallet foul, and mark his rest:
What scenes perturb'd are acting in his breast!
His sable brow is wet and wrung with pain,
And his dilated nostril toils in vain;
For short and scant the breath each effort draws,
And 'twixt each effort Nature claims a pause.
Beyond the loose and sable neckcloth stretch'd,
His sinewy throat seems by convulsion twitch'd,
While the tongue falters, as to utterance loth,
Sounds of dire import-watchword, threat, and
oath.
Though, stupefied by toil, and drugg'd with gin,
The body sleep, the restless guest within
Now plies on wood and wold his lawless trade,
Now in the fangs of justice wakes dismay'd.—
"Was that wild start of terror and despair, Those bursting eyeballs, and that wilder'd air, Signs of compunction for a murder'd hare? Do the locks bristle and the eyebrows arch, For grouse or partridge massacred in March?"—
No, scoffer, no! Attend, and mark with awe, There is no wicket in the gate of law!
1 Such is the law in the New Forest, Hampshire, tending greatly to increase the various settlements of thieves, smugglers, and deer-stealers, who infest it. In the forest courts presiding judge wears as a badge of office an antique stir
He, that would e'er so lightly set ajar
That awful portal, must undo each bar :
Tempting occasion, habit, passion, pride,
Will join to storm the breach, and force the barrier
wide.
That ruffian, whom true men avoid and dreaa, Whom bruisers, poachers, smugglers, call Black Ned,
Was Edward Mansell once;-the lightest heart,
That ever play'd on holiday his part!
The leader he in every Christmas game,
The harvest feast grew blither when he came,
And liveliest on the chords the bow did glance,
When Edward named the tune and led the dance.
Kind was his heart, his passions quick and strong,
Hearty his laugh, and jovial was his song;
And if he loved a gun, his father swore,
""Twas but a trick of youth would soon be o'er,
Himself had done the same some thirty years be
fore."
But he whose humors spurn law's awful yoke, Must herd with those by whom law's bonds are broke,
The common dread of justice soon allies
The clown, who robs the warren, or excise,
With sterner felons train'd to act more dread.
Even with the wretch by whom his fellow bled.
Then, as in plagues the foul contagions pass,
Leavening and festering the corrupted mass,-
Guilt leagues with guilt, while mutual motives
draw,
Their hope impunity, their fear the law;
Their foes, their friends, their rendezvous the same,
Till the revenue baulk'd, or pilfer'd game,
Flesh the young culprit, and example leads
To darker villany, and direr deeds.
Wild howl'd the wind the forest glades along, And oft the owl renew'd her dismal song; Around the spot where erst he felt the wound, Red William's spectre walk'd his midnight rouna When o'er the swamp he cast his blighting look, From the green marshes of the stagnant brook The bittern's sullen shout the sedges shook! The waning moon, with storm presaging gleam, Now gave and now withheld her doubtful beam. The old Oak stoop'd his arms, then flung them high, Bellowing and groaning to the troubled sky"Twas then, that, couch'd amid the brushwood sere, In Malwood-walk young Mansell watch'd the deer. The fattest buck received his deadly shotThe watchful keeper heard, and sought the spot.
rup, said to have been that of William Rufus. See Mr William Rose's spirited poem, entitled "The Red King." "To the bleak coast of savage Labrador."-FALCONER 2 A cant term for smuggled spirits.
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