Part 3 — 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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!

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.

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.

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!”