YARROW Revisited, AND OTHEr poems 279 he had built, and where he had long lived in so much prosperity and happiness. But what struck me most was the patient kindness with which he supported himself under the many fretful expressions that his sister Anne addressed to him or uttered in his hearing. She, poor thing, as mistress of that house, had been subject, after her mother's death, to a heavier load of care and responsibility and greater sacrifices of time than one of such a constitution of body and mind was able to bear. Of this, Dora and I were made so sensible, that, as soon as we had crossed the Tweed on our departure, we gave vent at the same moment to our apprehensions that her brain would fail and she would go out of her mind, or that she would sink under the trials she had passed and those which awaited her. On Tuesday morning Sir Walter Scott accompanied us and most of the party to Newark Castle on the Yarrow. When we alighted from the carriages he walked pretty stoutly, and had great pleasure in revisiting those his favourite haunts. Of that excursion the verses Yarrow Revisited are a memorial. Notwithstanding the romance that pervades Sir Walter's works and attaches to many of his habits, there is too much pressure of fact for these verses to harmonise as much as I could wish with other poems. On our return in the afternoon we had to cross the Tweed directly opposite Abbotsford. The wheels of our carriage grated upon the pebbles in the bed of the stream that there flows somewhat rapidly; a rich but sad light of rather a purple than a golden hue was spread over the Eildon Hills at that moment; and, thinking it probable that it might be the last time Sir Walter would cross the stream, I was not a little moved, and expressed some of my feelings in the Sonnet beginning "A trouble, not of clouds, or weeping rain." At noon on Thursday we left Abbotsford, and in the morning of that day Sir Walter and I had a serious conversation tête-à-tête, when he spoke with gratitude of the happy life which upon the whole he had led. He had written in my daughter's Album, before he came into the breakfast-room that morning, a few stanzas addressed to her, and, while putting the book into her hand, in his own study, standing by his desk, he said to her in my presence "I should not have done anything of this kind but for your father's sake: they are probably the last verses I shall ever write." They show how much his mind was impaired, not by the strain of thought but by the execution, some of the lines being imperfect, and one stanza wanting corresponding rhymes: one letter, the initial S, had been In this interview omitted in the spelling of his own name. also it was that, upon my expressing a hope of his health being benefited by the climate of the country to which he was going, and by the interest he would take in the classic remembrances of Italy, he made use of the quotation from Yarrow Unvisited as recorded by me in the Musings of Aquapendente six years afterwards. Mr. Lockhart has mentioned in his life of him what I heard from several quarters while abroad, both at Rome and elsewhere, that little seemed to interest him but what he could collect or hear of the fugitive Stuarts and their adherents who had followed them into exile. Both the Yarrow Revisited and the "Sonnet" were sent him before his departure from England. Some further particulars of the conversations which occurred during this visit I should have set down had they not been already accurately recorded by Mr. Lockhart. I first became acquainted with this great and amiable man-Sir Walter Scott-in the year 1803, when my sister and I, making a tour in Scotland, were hospitably received by him in Lasswade upon the banks of the Esk, where he was then living. We saw a good deal of him in the course of the following week; the particulars are given in my sister's Journal of that tour.-I. F.] ΤΟ SAMUEL ROGERS, Esq. AS A TESTIMONY OF FRIENDSHIP, AND ACKNOWLEDGMENT OF INTELLECTUAL OBLIGATIONS, THESE MEMORIALS ARE AFFECTIONATELY INSCRIBED. RYDAL MOUNT, Dec. 11, 1834. I “THE GALLANT YOUTH, WHO MAY HAVE GAINED" [The following Stanzas are a memorial of a day passed with Sir Walter Scott, and other Friends visiting the Banks of the Yarrow under his guidance, immediately before his departure from Abbotsford, for Naples. The title Yarrow Revisited will stand in no need of explanation, for Readers acquainted with the Author's previous poems suggested by that celebrated Stream.-I. F.] THE YOUTH, WHO MAY HAVE GAINED THE gallant Youth, who may have gained, Was but an Infant in the lap When first I looked on Yarrow; Long left without a warder, I stood, looked, listened, and with Thee, Grave thoughts ruled wide on that sweet day, In gentle bosoms, while sere leaves Were on the bough, or falling; But breezes played, and sunshine gleamed— Reddened the fiery hues, and shot Transparence through the golden. For busy thoughts the Stream flowed on In foamy agitation; And slept in many a crystal pool For quiet contemplation: † No public and no private care The freeborn mind enthralling, We made a day of happy hours, Our happy days recalling. Brisk Youth appeared, the Morn of youth, 281 5 10 15 20 25 * Wordsworth arrived at Abbotsford with his daughter to say farewell to Scott on the 21st September 1831. "On the 22nd," says Mr. Lockhart, "these two great poets, who had through life loved each other well, and in spite of very different theories as to art, appreciated each other's genius more justly than infirm spirits ever did either of them, spent the morning together in a visit to Newark. Hence the last of the three poems by which Wordsworth has connected his name to all time with the most romantic of Scottish streams."-Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, vol. x. ch. lxxx. p. 104. Compare the note to Musings near Aquapendente, in the Poems of the Italian Tour of 1837.- ED. + Compare Tennyson's Brook, and Burns's Epistle to William Simpson, Ochiltree, stanza 15.-ED. Life's temperate Noon, her sober Eve, Her Night not melancholy; In harmony united, Like guests that meet, and some from far, By cordial love invited. And if, as Yarrow, through the woods Did meet us with unaltered face, Though we were changed and changing; If, then, some natural shadows spread Our inward prospect over, The soul's deep valley was not slow Its brightness to recover. 30 35 40 For thee, O SCOTT! compelled to change 50 For warm Vesuvio's vine-clad slopes; May classic Fancy, linking 1 1837. O! while they minister to thee, waylay 1835. 55 THE YOUTH, WHO MAY HAVE GAINED May Health return to mellow Age, With Strength, her venturous brother; For Thou, upon a hundred streams, By tales of love and sorrow, Of faithful love, undaunted truth, And streams unknown, hills yet unseen, At parent Nature's grateful call, With gladness must requite Thee. A gracious welcome shall be thine, Dreams treasured up from early days, And what, for this frail world, were all Did no responsive harp, no pen, Yea, what were mighty Nature's self? Her features, could they win us, Unhelped by the poetic voice That hourly speaks within us? Nor deem that localised Romance Where'er thy path 283 |