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BERKELEY 
 
 LIBRARY 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF 
 CALIFORNIA 
 
MESSIS VITAE 
 
MESSIS VITAE 
 
 GLEANINGS OF SONG 
 
 FROM 
 
 A HAPPY LIFE 
 
 BY 
 
 JOHN STUART BLACKIE 
 
 EMERITUS PROFESSOR OF GREEK IN THE UNIVERSITY OF EDINBURGH 
 
 X&i-peTe ir&vTOTe. — St. Paul 
 
 ilontion 
 
 MACMILLAN AND CO. 
 
 AND NEW YORK 
 1886 
 
9^3 
 ! 
 
 To the Students of 
 
 The Scottish Universities 
 
 PREFACE DEDICATORY 
 
 My dear young Friends — I dedicate this 
 collection of lyrical fly-leaves to you, because 
 there is not a little in it that owed its inspiration 
 to the contagion of fresh young minds, and to the 
 leisure for cultivating the Muse afforded me by the 
 usage of what, in Scotland at least, I cannot but 
 regard as the happiest of all human avocations, 
 the profession of an Academical teacher. May you 
 learn from these versicles what they are mainly 
 meant to inspire, that reverential communion with 
 Nature, the living poetry of God, that ready sympathy 
 with all that is good in your fellow-beings, and that 
 
 402 
 
VI PREFACE 
 
 unswerving loyalty to the heroic traditions, the 
 sacred shrines, and the heart-stirring melodies of 
 our Scottish fatherland, which arc of more value 
 than much Latin and more Greek, and supply the 
 purest atmosphere in which a happy existence and 
 a fruitful activity here below may be achieved. 
 I am yours, 
 In the love of the good, the beautiful, and the true, 
 JOHN STUART BLACKIE. 
 
 University, 
 Edinburgh, October 1SS6. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 I.— POEMS AND SONGS 
 
 The Chief End of Man 
 
 Faith 
 
 Atheism . 
 
 The Lay of the Little Lad^ 
 
 Sput Dubh 
 
 My Walk 
 
 My Bath 
 
 Onward and Upward . 
 
 The Emigrant Lassie . 
 
 My Scotch Lassie 
 
 The Curse of Scotland 
 
 Rules for a Happy Life 
 
 Song of a Good Eclectic 
 
 Pessimism 
 
 Italia 
 
 There is none free but Jove 
 
 Creeds and Canaries . 
 
 PAGE 
 
 3 
 
 7 
 
 10 
 
 12 
 
 17 
 
 22 
 26 
 31 
 
 34 
 37 
 40 
 
 49 
 5i 
 
 54 
 60 
 64 
 67 
 
VI 11 
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 The Prayer of SOCRATE 
 
 Female Beauty 
 
 Portrait of a Lady 
 
 Loye and Knowledge 
 
 Polly 
 
 The Three Graces 
 
 An Afril Song . 
 
 'Cuckoo ! Cuckoo !' 
 
 Vacation Ode . 
 
 Pasteur's Word to Young Men 
 
 The Student's Farewell to Summei 
 
 A Song of Good Counsel 
 
 A Song of Backgammon 
 
 A Song for the Road, and a Rule for the Life 
 
 Benedicite 
 
 Hymn 
 
 Song of Old Age 
 
 II.— SONNETS 
 
 Religion . 
 
 The Trinity 
 
 Christ and Christendom 
 
 Atheistic Scientists . 
 
 Criticism 
 
 Subjective and Objective 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 
 
 ix 
 
 PAGE 
 
 To Scotch Heresy-Hunters . . . . .130 
 
 The Origin of Evil . 
 
 
 
 
 131-132 
 
 GeXw, 0e\w /xavrjvat. 
 
 
 
 
 
 • i33 
 
 War 
 
 
 
 
 
 • i34 
 
 Outside and Inside 
 
 
 
 
 
 • i35 
 
 Sickness and Recovery 
 
 
 
 
 
 • 136 
 
 Robert Burns . 
 
 
 
 
 
 • 138 
 
 Carlyle . 
 
 
 
 
 
 140 
 
 Norman Macleod 
 
 
 
 
 
 141 
 
 Sydney Dobell 
 
 
 
 
 
 . 142 
 
 Chinese Gordon 
 
 
 
 
 1 
 
 43-H4 
 
 Alexander Peden 
 
 
 
 
 
 i45 
 
 The Baroness Burdett-Cout- 
 
 rs 
 
 
 
 
 . 146 
 
 Lord Rosebery . 
 
 
 
 
 
 i47 
 
 Dean Ramsay . 
 
 
 
 
 
 148 
 
 Dr. Walter Smith 
 
 
 
 
 
 149 
 
 Robert Lee 
 
 
 
 
 
 150 
 
 London . 
 
 
 
 
 
 151 
 
 England . 
 
 
 
 
 
 152 
 
 The Savoy 
 
 
 
 
 
 i53 
 
 The Duke of Argyll . 
 
 
 
 
 
 i54 
 
 Clapham . 
 
 
 
 
 
 *55 
 
 Laleham .... 
 
 
 
 
 
 156 
 
 Taymouth Castle 
 
 
 
 
 
 i57 
 
 The Duchess of Sutherland 
 
 
 
 
 158 
 
 Bonskeid 
 
 
 
 
 
 i59 
 
X CONTENTS 
 
 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Loch Baa .... 
 
 160 
 
 Absentee Proprietors. 
 
 . 161 
 
 Ben Muicduibhi. 
 
 . 162 
 
 Venice .... 
 
 163 
 
 Lord Byron and Venice 
 
 164 
 
 III.— HISTORICAL BALLADS 
 
 Antrum Moor . 
 Merlin and Kentigern 
 Peden the Prophet . 
 
 NOTES . 
 
 .67 
 
 175 
 1S5 
 
 198 
 
POEMS AND SONGS 
 
THE CHIEF END OF MAN 
 
 Natus est homo ad contemplandiim at que imitandum mundum. 
 Chrysippus. 
 
 Look round about thee, and peruse 
 
 With watchful-loving eye, 
 This vast high-hung cerulean dome 
 
 Which mortals call the sky, 
 Studded with travelling lights ; and this 
 
 Green earth all gemmed with flowers, 
 Cinctured with seas, and leafy swell 
 
 Of rich redundant bowers ; 
 And with quick swarms of eager life 
 
 All proudly peopled o'er, 
 Throbbing with rival hymns of joy 
 
 From resonant shore to shore : 
 All this receive in truthful heart, 
 
 And keep it mirrored there 
 
POEMS AND SONGS 
 
 As God's live record given to thee 
 
 In picture-writing fair. 
 Nor stop thou here : but know that God 
 
 This honour gave to man, 
 To image in his human range 
 
 Some part of His great plan, 
 And work with Him as workmen work, 
 
 And strive with faithful tool 
 To multiply the perfect type 
 
 Learned in the Master's school. 
 Into the lines and hues of things 
 
 With thought's fine feeling enter, 
 And what thy cunning brush charms forth 
 
 To view makes thee a PAINTER. 
 Swim largely in broad seas of life, 
 
 And what thou findest show it, 
 From deep-moved breast in rhythmic phrase, 
 
 And men will call thee POET. 
 Or, if thou know soul-stirring sounds 
 
 To blend with tuneful art, 
 MUSICIAN thou with wizard touch 
 
 To tame each savage heart. 
 Or make thy poem of the stone 
 
 To shelter and protect, 
 
THE CHIEF END OF MAN 
 
 God of a marble world, and be 
 
 A praiseful ARCHITECT. 
 Or know as ENGINEER to guide 
 
 Blind forces with fine skill, 
 And bind the strong-breathed steam with bonds 
 
 To work thy reasoned will. 
 Or with the mattock and the spade 
 
 The sweatful honour claim, 
 To make the harsh clod teem with life ; 
 
 Then FARMER is thy name. 
 And when wild passions toss their crests 
 
 Beyond discretion's border, 
 The LAWYER thou to dam their swell, 
 
 Within just bounds of order. 
 And when the prideful pranks of men 
 
 Call forth the chastening rod, 
 Thou art a SOLDIER, and in thee 
 
 The people own a God. 
 Or dost thou find the blood of men 
 
 Sicklied with fever, then 
 Thou art the LEECH, and through thee comes 
 
 God's healing touch to men. 
 Or, is the soul sick, then mount thou 
 
 The PREACHER'S lofty station, 
 
POEMS AND SONGS 
 
 And from God's altar with pure fire 
 
 Baptize the tainted nation. 
 Or wilt thou ride the sea with ships 
 
 And the proud function claim, 
 To make all lands change gifts with all, 
 
 Then MERCHANT is thy name. 
 And when class scowls on class, and scares 
 
 Men's hearts with rude alarm, 
 The STATESMAN, thou, to speak the word 
 
 That soothes the swelling storm. 
 Thus what we catch of God's high ways 
 
 From the great cosmic plan 
 We image, as our skill may be, 
 
 In the small world of man ; 
 And, or by charm of Christian love, 
 
 Or stern rule of the Stoic, 
 We make our little Earth sublime, 
 
 Our little lives heroic. 
 
FAITH 
 
 What thing is faith ? Ask thou the gleesome boy 
 
 Who for the first time breasts the buoyant wave ; 
 Tis faith that leads him with adventurous joy 
 
 To follow, where they plunge, his comrades brave. 
 Ask thou the boor who eats and drinks and sleeps, 
 
 And loves and hates and hopes, and fears and 
 prays, 
 Fishes and fowls, work-day and Sabbath keeps, 
 
 And, where life's sign-post points his path, obeys. 
 
 Or ask the sage, with subtle-searching looks, 
 
 Well trained all things in heaven and earth to scan ;. 
 Or ask the scholar primed with Greekish books : 
 
 All live by faith of what is best in man. 
 Or him, sharp-eyed, with fine atomic science, 
 
 The loves and hates of lively dust pursuing ; 
 Who tortures Nature with all strange appliance 
 
 To drag to light the secret of her doing. 
 
POKMS AND SONGS 
 
 Ask thou the captain who with guess sublime 
 
 Mapped forth new worlds on his night-watching 
 pillow, 
 And saw in vision a fresh start of time, 
 
 Big with grand hopes beyond the Atlantic billow. 
 Ask thou the soldier who on bristling lances 
 
 Rushes undaunted, breathing valorous breath, 
 And, where his leader cheers him on, advances 
 
 To glorious victory o'er huge heaps of death. 
 
 Or ask the patriot who, when foes were strong, 
 
 And faithless friends had sold their rights for pelf, 
 Waits till harsh need and shame rouse the base 
 throng 
 
 Into the high-souled echo of himself. 
 Ask thou the statesman, when the infuriate mob 
 
 Brays senseless vetoes on his wisest plans ; 
 Unmoved he stands, his bosom knows no throb ; 
 
 His eye the calm evolving future scans. 
 
 Or ask the martyr, who, when tyrants tear 
 
 His quivering flesh, with calm assurance dies ; 
 
 Sweet life he loves, but scorns to breathe an air 
 Drugged with the taint of soul-destroying lies. 
 
FAITH 
 
 In such know faith, faith or in man or God, 
 In thine own heart, or tried tradition's stream ; 
 
 Tis one same sun that paints the flowery sod, 
 
 And shoots from pole to pole the quickening beam. 
 
 God is the Power which shapes this pictured scene, 
 Soul of all creatures, substance of all creeds ; 
 
 Faith intuition quick and instinct keen 
 
 To know His voice and follow where He leads. 
 
ATHEISM 
 
 (Written in a sleeping-berth of the yacht Santa Maria.) 
 
 The sun shines on the waters ; and the waters to the 
 
 wall 
 Of my poor cabin, narrow, dark, and small, 
 Fling a perpetual unpurposed flow 
 Of luminous pulses dancing to and fro ; 
 And from the wall the many-flickering show 
 
 Shoots to my eye, 
 Far-travelled from its fountain in the sky. 
 Suppose me born and bred in such small home, 
 Cabined and cribbed, with never a look outside 
 
 Into the heaving tide, 
 Or upward to the bright expansive dome 
 Which men call Heaven, what should I say of Light? 
 I'd say, belike, it was a tangled maze 
 
 Of freakish rays, 
 Flitting about to feed my wondering gaze, 
 Redeemed such-wise from Chaos and old Night, 
 
A THEISM 
 
 A bright confusion without law or rule ; 
 
 And for the SUN, the glorious lord of day, 
 
 And his all-permeant, all-plastic ray, 
 
 For that I knew no Sun, mayhap I'd say, 
 
 There is no sun in Heaven — and be a fool, 
 
 As atheists are — blind guides who go to school 
 
 With outward sense, and what mere sense compels 
 
 Alone believe. Be wiser thou, and know, 
 
 Behind all shadowy show 
 
 A causeful Substance dwells, 
 
 Behind all tangled maze 
 
 Of crowded things that try the wondering gaze, 
 
 In air, in water, and in teeming sod, 
 
 A Reason works, which wisely men call God. 
 
THE LAY OF THE LITTLE LADY 
 
 A BALLAD OF MULL 
 
 IN a tiny bay, 
 
 Where ships lie sure and steady, 
 In a quiet way 
 
 Lives a tiny lady ; 
 In a tiny house 
 
 Dwells my little fairy, 
 Gentle as a mouse, 
 
 Blithe as a canary. 
 
 Travelling I have been 
 
 In distant and in nigh lands, 
 
 And wonders many seen 
 
 In Lowlands and in Highlands ; 
 
 But never since the days 
 
 When fairies were quite common, 
 
THE LAY OF THE LITTLE LADY 13 
 
 Did human vision gaze 
 
 On such a dear, small woman ! 
 
 On the deep sea's brim, 
 
 In beauty quite excelling, 
 White, and tight, and trim, 
 
 Stands my lady's dwelling. 
 Stainless is the door, 
 
 With shiny polish glowing ; 
 A little plot before, 
 
 With pinks and sweet peas growing. 
 
 And when in you go 
 
 To my fairy's dwelling 
 You will find a show 
 
 Of beauty, past all telling ; 
 Wealth of pretty wares, 
 
 Curtains, pictures, laces, 
 Sofas, tables, chairs, 
 
 All in their proper places. 
 
 But above all fair, 
 
 Of which my song is telling, 
 Sits my lady there, 
 
 The mistress of the dwelling. 
 
14 POEMS AND SONGS 
 
 Dressed in serge light blue, 
 
 With trimming white and snowy ; 
 
 All so nice and new, 
 
 With nothing false and show)-. 
 
 Dainty is her head, 
 
 Quite the classic oval, 
 Just the thing you read 
 
 In the last new novel, 
 But you never saw ; 
 
 For Nature still is chary, 
 To reach the perfect law, 
 
 She modelled in my fairy. 
 
 An eye whose glance doth roam 
 
 O'er the azure spaces, 
 But still is most at home 
 
 'Mid happy human faces. 
 Cheeks of healthy red 
 
 With native freshness glowing, 
 By the strong breeze spread 
 
 From purple moorland blowing. 
 
 And a look of warm 
 
 Welcome to the stranger, 
 
THE LA Y OF THE LITTLE LAD V 
 
 Whom the sudden storm 
 
 Hath cast on her from danger ; 
 And a board well spread, 
 
 Bountiful and bonnie, 
 With milk and barley bread, 
 
 Bramble jam and honey. 
 
 And for wit and brains, 
 
 Though not taught at college, 
 Her dainty head contains 
 
 All sorts of curious knowledge. 
 Every nook she knows, 
 
 Every burn she crosses, 
 Where the rarest grows 
 
 Of fungus, ferns, and mosses. 
 
 And when flowers are few, 
 
 And suns of heat are chary, 
 She has work to do 
 
 Beseems a bright-eyed fairy ; 
 A telescope she keeps 
 
 For lofty observation, 
 Through which she finely peeps 
 
 At all the starry nation. 
 
POEMS AND SOXGS 
 
 But she's more than wise, 
 
 Better far than clever, 
 From whose heart arise 
 
 Thoughts of kindness ever ; 
 As the sun's bright ray 
 
 Every flower is kissing, 
 All that comes her way 
 
 Takes from her a blessing. 
 
 Where a widow weeps 
 
 She with her is weeping ; 
 Where a sorrow sleeps, 
 
 She doth watch it sleeping ; 
 Where the sky is bright, 
 
 With one sole taint of sadness, 
 Let her heave in sight, 
 
 And all is turned to gladness. 
 
 And now, if you should fear 
 
 I'm painting out a story, 
 Ask, and you will hear 
 
 The truth at Tobermory. 
 In beauty Mull excels 
 
 All ocean-girdled islands, 
 And there this lady dwells, 
 
 Sweet angel of the Highlands. 
 
SPUT DUBH 
 
 (A Cascade near Pitlochrie.) 
 
 SON of the mountain, 
 
 Beautiful and strong, 
 
 Roaring and pouring 
 
 And sweeping along ; 
 
 Mighty art thou, 
 
 As I see thee now 
 Flinging the gathered floods of the Ben 
 Into the leafy shade of the glen ; 
 
 Like to a steed, 
 
 With galloping speed, 
 
 Tossing his mane, 
 
 And whisking his tail, 
 
 Art thou, when the pride 
 
 Of thy foaming tide 
 
 Leaps to the vale, 
 
 Son of the mountain ! 
 c 
 
18 POEMS AND SONGS 
 
 Most like a god, 
 Of things that I know, 
 On the earth below, 
 Art thou, in the pride 
 Of thy foaming tide, 
 
 Son of the mountain ! 
 Summers and winters, 
 Inconstant ever, 
 Roll their changes 
 Over thy head ; 
 Rocks tumble down 
 From the mountain's crown, 
 And stout old trees, 
 Root-wrenched by the breeze, 
 Fall with a crash 
 Into the dash 
 Of thy billowy bed ; 
 But thou dost abide 
 Unchanged in the swell 
 Of thy sky-fed well, 
 Most like in thy pride 
 To a deathless god, 
 
 Son of the mountain ! 
 
SPUT DUBH 19 
 
 Wise was the old Greek man who sang, 
 " Water is best." 
 As from the breast 
 Of mighty Cybele, 
 Nurturing mother, 
 To every form 
 Of the breathing nation, 
 From eagle on wing 
 To creeping worm, 
 And man, the king 
 Of the vasty creation, 
 Flowed the redundant, 
 Life-sustaining, 
 Milky fountain ; 
 So, when thou pourest 
 Richly thy waters, 
 Budding and blowing 
 Follows thy flowing ; 
 Earth's sons and daughters 
 Rejoice in thy going. 
 Corn fields are waving 
 Near to thy laving, 
 Gardens are growing 
 With flower and with tree, 
 
POEMS AXD SONGS 
 
 And proud cities rise 
 With towers to the skies, 
 Watered by thee, 
 
 Son of the mountain ! 
 
 Son of the mountain, 
 Lovely art thou, 
 Where thou leapest as now, 
 Silvery bright, 
 From the mountain's brow, 
 With the unspotted breadth of the blue above thee, 
 And the circling grace of the trees that love thee, 
 Spiring larch, and the tresses fine 
 Of waving birch, 
 And the red boled strength of the dark green 
 
 pine, 
 Rejoicing with thee in the fair sunshine, 
 
 Son of the mountain. 
 No fools were they who worshipped thee 
 So fair and bright, and wild and free, 
 
 So beautiful, so strong. 
 They sought a god that they could see, 
 River god or nymph of fountain, 
 And poured their untaught litany 
 
SPUTDUBH 21 
 
 Responsive to thy bickering glee, 
 Son of the mountain ! 
 
 Son of the mountain, 
 
 Most like to a god 
 Art thou in the freedom and force of thy flow ; 
 A God must be in thee, or near thee, I know ; 
 
 And Him I adore 
 
 In this shrine of the glen, 
 
 Mid the rush and the roar 
 
 Where thy bright floods leap 
 
 With silvery sweep, 
 Down from the crown of the old granite Ben, 
 Strong son of the mountain ! 
 
MY WALK 
 
 [Seme— "Ben Greig, Mull.) 
 
 Ye gentle folks that live in town, 
 
 And on poor country wights look down, 
 
 And daily take your dainty ride 
 
 Mid courtly rank and Fashion's pride 
 
 In the Row, with dukes and earls 
 
 Lofty dames, and lovely girls, 
 
 God bless you all, and grant you pleasure 
 
 Up to the brim of your heart's measure ! 
 
 But I have joys unknown to you, 
 
 And walks remote from London view ; 
 
 Where the burnie leaps with glee, 
 And the ground is rough and hilly, 
 
 That's the walk that's dear to me, 
 Not Pall Mall or Piccadilly. 
 
 Where the torrent from the brae 
 
 Pours his strength and spreads his spray, 
 
MY WALK 23 
 
 And, like a white-maned mountain horse, 
 Plunges down with headlong force, 
 Lashing the rocks with foamy sweep 
 Into the caldron dark and deep ; 
 Where the birch-tree nods her plume 
 O'er tufted wealth of heather bloom, 
 And delicate ferns their wings uncurl 
 O'er the brown water's sleepless whirl, 
 
 Beside a blasted holly-tree, 
 
 With never a rose and never a lily, 
 
 That's the walk that's dear to me, 
 Not Pall Mall or Piccadilly. 
 
 Where from the great Ben's dewy crown 
 The infant rill comes trickling down, 
 And glances out beneath the crag 
 That cuts the sky with many a jag, 
 And creeps beneath the old gray stones. 
 Chips of the mountain's giant bones ; 
 Then trips adown with easy pace 
 Over the huge slab's slippery face, 
 To rest a while in mossy well, 
 Where starry saxifrages dwell, 
 
 With never a shrub and never a tree, 
 Where the air is sharp and chilly, 
 
24 POEMS AND SONGS 
 
 That's the walk that's dear to me, 
 Not Pall Mall or Piccadilly. 
 
 Where the rough scour flouts the sky, 
 And the ragged wrack skirs by ; 
 Where, round the granite's shattered peak, 
 Wild tempests rave and wild birds shriek ; 
 Where, down the mountain's shelvy side, 
 Long streaks of pounded ruin slide ; 
 Where thick the bare extent is sown 
 With blocks on blocks all rudely thrown, 
 And desolation, gaunt and grim, 
 Stalks o'er the huge Ben's leafless rim, 
 
 I face the blast, erect and free, 
 
 And, tho' you deem my fancy silly, 
 
 This mountain walk more pleases me 
 Than your Pall Mall and Piccadilly. 
 
 Or where below, in peaceful glen, 
 'Neath the broad shoulders of the Ben, 
 The river winds in mazy error 
 From the bright loch's gleaming mirror, 
 Upon whose green and grassy rim, 
 With tower and turret quaintly trim, 
 
MY WALK 
 
 -5 
 
 Rises the house, beneath the wood, 
 Whose lord, true-hearted, kind, and good, 
 Preserves — a boast that few may claim — 
 His crofters better than his game ; 
 
 There, by the old and wide-armed tree, 
 
 A theme for Paton or for Millais, 
 I choose the walk most dear to me, 
 Not at Pall Mall or Piccadilly. 
 
 Farewell ! God grant you honest pleasure 
 Up to the brim of your heart's measure, 
 Amid the dust and din and stew 
 Of London town, which pleases you ; 
 Amid the fair and flaunting show 
 Of prancing Fashion in the Row ; 
 With gartered lords and ladies fine, 
 Who never without candles dine, 
 And tug of war in Church and State, 
 And clash of words in stout debate ; 
 
 From such high stir I would be free : 
 In lone green glen or pasture hilly, 
 
 A quiet ramble pleases me, 
 
 Far from Pall Mall and Piccadilly ! 
 
MY BATH 
 
 [Scene — Kinnaird Burn, near Pitlochrie. ) 
 
 COME here, good people great and small, that wander 
 
 far abroad, 
 To drink of drumly German wells, and make a weary 
 
 road 
 To Baden and to Wiesbaden, and how they all are 
 
 named, 
 To Carlsbad and to Kissingen, for healing virtue 
 
 famed ; 
 Come stay at home, and keep your feet from dusty 
 
 travel free, 
 And I will show you what rare bath a good God 
 
 gave to me ; 
 'Tis hid among the Highland hills beneath the purple 
 
 brae, 
 With cooling freshness free to all, nor doctor's fee to 
 
 pay. 
 
MY BATH 27 
 
 No craft of mason made it here, nor carpenter, I wot ; 
 Nor tinkering fool with hammering tool to shape the 
 
 charmed spot ; 
 But down the rocky-breasted glen the foamy torrent 
 
 falls 
 Into the amber caldron deep, fenced round with 
 
 granite walls. 
 Nor gilded beam, nor pictured dome, nor curtain, 
 
 roofs it in, 
 But the blue sky rests, and white clouds float, above 
 
 the bubbling linn, 
 Where God's own hand hath scooped it out in 
 
 Nature's Titan hall, 
 And from her cloud-fed fountains drew its waters free 
 
 to all. 
 
 Oh come and see my Highland bath, and prove its 
 
 freshening flood, 
 And spare to taint your skin with swathes of drumly 
 
 German mud : 
 Come plunge with me into the wave like liquid topaz 
 
 fair, 
 And to the waters give your back that spout down 
 
 bravely there, 
 
28 POEMS AND SONGS 
 
 Then float upon the swirling flood, and, like a 
 glancing trout, 
 
 Plash about, and dash about, and make a lively 
 rout, 
 
 And to the gracious Sun display the glory of your 
 skin, 
 
 As you dash about and splash about in the foamy- 
 bubbling linn. 
 
 Oh come and prove my bonnie bath ; in sooth 'tis 
 
 furnished well 
 With trees, and shrubs, and spreading ferns, all in 
 
 the rocky dell, 
 And roses hanging from the cliff in grace of white 
 
 and red, 
 And little tiny birches nodding lightly overhead, 
 And spiry larch with purple cones, and tips of virgin 
 
 green, 
 And leafy shade of hazel copse with sunny glints 
 
 between : 
 Oh might the Roman wight be here who praised 
 
 Bandusia's well, 
 He'd find a bath to Nymphs more dear in my sweet 
 
 Highland dell. 
 
MY BA TH 29 
 
 Some folks will pile proud palaces, and some will 
 
 wander far 
 To scan the blinding of a sun, or the blinking of a star ; 
 Some sweat through Afric's burning sands ; and some 
 
 will vex their soul 
 To find heaven knows what frosty prize beneath the 
 
 Arctic pole. 
 God bless them all ; and may they find what thing 
 
 delights them well 
 In east or west, or north or south, — but I at home 
 
 will dwell 
 Where fragrant ferns their fronds uncurl, and health- 
 ful breezes play, 
 And clear brown waters grandly swirl beneath the 
 
 purple brae. 
 
 Oh come and prove my Highland bath, the burn, and 
 
 all the glen, 
 Hard-toiling wights in dingy nooks, and scribes with 
 
 inky pen, 
 Strange thoughtful men with curious quests that vex 
 
 your fretful brains, 
 And scheming sons of trade who fear to count your 
 
 slippery gains ; 
 
30 POEMS AND SONGS 
 
 Come wander up the burn with me, and thread the 
 
 winding glen, 
 And breathe the healthful power that flows down 
 
 from the breezy Hen, 
 And plunge you in the deep brown pool ; and from 
 
 beneath the spray 
 You'll come forth like a flower that blooms 'ncath 
 
 freshening showers in May ! 
 
ONWARD AND UPWARD 
 
 (Motto of the Lorimers. ) 
 
 Onward and upward ! 
 
 That be your motto, boys ; 
 
 Bravely and blithely 
 
 Toiling through Earth's annoys ; 
 
 Onward and upward, 
 
 Danger defying, 
 
 Sworn to be true men, 
 
 Living or dying ! 
 
 That be your motto, boys ! 
 
 If there be any who 
 Fear the rude billow here, 
 Leave them to slumber 
 And rot on a pillow here ! 
 We, with high-hearted 
 
POEMS AND SOA'GS 
 
 Daring, will enter here, 
 
 Like stout Columbus, 
 
 On seas of far venture here ! 
 
 That be our pleasure, boys ! 
 
 Onward and upward ! 
 Who would be sleeping here, 
 Let him lie low 
 
 With the worms that are creeping here ! 
 But whoso has wings 
 Through thin air will be sailing here, 
 Not in the mud and mire, 
 Draggling and trailing here ! 
 That is our fashion, boys ! 
 
 Whoso would live 
 Like a serf and a slave here, 
 Let him stoop to the lash, 
 Till he crook to his grave here ! 
 But whoso would breathe 
 A free breath in the land here, 
 Let him stand in his place 
 With his sword in his hand here ! 
 That's what I do, boys ! 
 
ONWARD AND UPWARD 33 
 
 What fired Martin Luther 
 With faith and with hope here, 
 To shake on his throne 
 The crazy old Pope here ? 
 Just what made the Roman 
 To manage and master men, 
 Daring and doing 
 And scorning disaster then ; 
 
 That made the Roman, boys ! 
 
 Onward and upward ! 
 
 That's the true plan, boys, 
 
 To cast off the brute, 
 
 And to put on the man, boys ! 
 
 If you don't rise, 
 
 The skies will not bend to you ; 
 
 Downward and Devilward 
 
 Will be the end of you ; 
 
 Take that for a fact, boys ! 
 
 D 
 
THE EMIGRANT LASSIE 
 
 As I came wandering down Glen Spean, 
 Where the braes are green and grassy, 
 
 With my light step I overtook 
 A weary-footed lassie. 
 
 She had one bundle on her back, 
 
 Another in her hand, 
 And she walked as one who was full loath 
 
 To travel from the land. 
 
 Quoth I, ' My bonnie lass ! ' — for she 
 
 Had hair of flowing gold, 
 And dark brown eyes, and dainty limbs, 
 
 Right pleasant to behold — 
 
 ' My bonnie lass, what aileth thee, 
 
 On this bright summer day, 
 To travel sad and shoeless thus 
 
 Upon the stony way ? 
 
THE EMIGRANT LASSIE 35 
 
 ' I'm fresh and strong, and stoutly shod, 
 
 And thou art burdened so ; 
 March lightly now, and let me bear 
 
 The bundles as we go.' 
 
 ' No, no ! ' she said, ' that may not be ; 
 
 What's mine is mine to bear ; 
 Of good or ill, as God may will, 
 
 I take my portioned share.' 
 
 ' But you have two, and I have none ; 
 
 One burden give to me ; 
 I'll take that bundle from thy back 
 
 That heavier seems to be.' 
 
 ' No, no ! ' she said ; ' this, if you will, 
 
 That holds — no hand but mine 
 May bear its weight from dear Glen Spean 
 
 'Cross the Atlantic brine ! ' 
 
 'Well, well ! but tell me what may be 
 
 Within that precious load, 
 Which thou dost bear with such fine care 
 
 Along the dusty road ? 
 
36 POEMS AND SONGS 
 
 1 Belike it is some present rare 
 From friend in parting hour ; 
 
 Perhaps, as prudent maidens wont, 
 Thou tak'st with thee thy dower.' 
 
 She drooped her head, and with her hand 
 She gave a mournful wave : 
 
 ' Oh, do not jest, dear sir ! — it is 
 Turf from my mother's grave ! ' 
 
 I spoke no word : we sat and wept 
 By the road-side together ; 
 
 No purer dew on that bright day 
 Was dropt upon the heather. 
 
MY SCOTCH LASSIE 
 
 If I had the brush of angel, 
 Dipt in colours rich and rare, 
 I would paint with choicest limning 
 My Scotch lassie fresh and fair. 
 
 Fresh is she as dewy morning, 
 Fair as blossom on the spray, 
 Fragrant as the birch tree waving 
 In the fresh breeze of the May. 
 
 O, my bright and blooming lassie ! 
 Maids more stately well may be ; 
 But no stateliest maiden ever 
 Breathed a smile so sweet as she. 
 
 O, my bonnie blithe-faced lassie, 
 Mild as bloom on hawthorn tree, 
 Rich as June, and ripe as Autumn, 
 Flower and fruit in one is she. 
 
38 POEMS AND SONGS 
 
 Saw you ever cowslip warmer 
 When the zephyrs came to woo ? 
 Saw you bright-eyed speedwell peeping 
 'Neath the hedge with purer blue ? 
 
 Warmer than her keen pulse keeping 
 Time to all things true and good, 
 Bluer than her blue eye swelling 
 In young love's divinest mood ? 
 
 Softer floats no plumy sea-gull 
 Than her bosom's heaving charms, 
 Swan on lake not whiter swimmeth 
 Than the whiteness of her arms. 
 
 If I had the brush of angel, 
 Dipt in colours rich and rare — 
 No ! no trick of brush or pigment 
 Ever limned a form so fair. 
 
 Let them limn who live in dreamland, 
 Where the brain-born phantoms sway ; 
 I have feasted on the substance, 
 And the shadow pales away. 
 
MY SCOTCH LASSIE 39 
 
 I will not make dainty mockery 
 With a painted thin display 
 Of a life that breathes and burgeons 
 With the fulness of the May. 
 
 I will see my dear Scotch lassie 
 In the ray that sweeps the hills, 
 In the bright far-shimmering ocean, 
 In the silver-flashing rills. 
 
 I will see her where the wandering 
 Bee sucks honey from the brae, 
 Where the mavis to the mavis 
 Pours his rich full-throated lay. 
 
 I will feed upon the sweetness 
 
 Of her presence near to me, 
 
 And her wealth of grace that hangeth 
 
 Like a peach upon a tree. 
 
 I will live on the dear memory 
 Of that hour of burning bliss, 
 When she lent her lips and thrilled me 
 With the rapture of her kiss ! 
 
THE CURSE OF SCOTLAND 
 
 1 They that will be rich fall into temptation and a snare, and into many 
 foolish and hurtful lusts, which drown men in destruction and per- 
 dition.'— St. Paul. 
 
 {Written on occasion of the fraudulent Glasgow Bank failure in 187S.) 
 
 1 Woe unto thee, Scotland, Scotland ! curse and com- 
 mination dire, 
 
 Thou art blazing with a torch not lighted from celes- 
 tial fire ! 
 
 Once the angel Gabriel lent his sword into thine elect 
 hand, 
 
 Now from west to east thou rangest with a sulphurous 
 smoking brand ; 
 
 Woe unto thee, Scotland, Scotland ! thy soul's honour 
 thou hast sold 
 
 For huge greed of glittering dust and gilded lies that 
 look like gold ! ' 
 
THE CURSE OF SCOTLAND 41 
 
 In mine ears this woe was sounded, whence it came I 
 
 might not know, 
 Above me, in me, round about me, terrible, still it 
 
 sounded so : 
 Woe to Scotland, once true Scotland, once a star 
 
 with stars in heaven, 
 Now a wandering death-blue candle, through destruc- 
 tion's limbo driven ! ' 
 Thus it sounded awful, awful, and I laid my head to 
 
 rest, 
 And I prayed to God to smother the great terror in 
 
 my breast ; 
 But it sounded still within me, like a shriek and like 
 
 a sigh, 
 Like the moaning of a tempest, like a murdered 
 
 woman's cry. 
 Through my heavy sleep it sounded, as I tossed my 
 
 fevered head, 
 Through my shrinking ears it echoed, like the gibber 
 
 of the dead ; 
 And a vision rose before me, through my sleep and 
 
 through my pain, 
 And the gates of death were opened, and the dead 
 
 men walked again, 
 
42 POEMS AND SONGS 
 
 And I saw a strange procession sailing slowly through 
 
 the air, 
 Pale, but with a noble paleness, sad and solemn float- 
 ing there, 
 And I heard the voice no longer, for a God was kind 
 
 to me, 
 And he gave a sabbath moment from that cursing 
 
 chorus free ; 
 And I looked, and, like Macbeth, a march of spectral 
 
 forms I saw, 
 Mighty names, the pride of Scotland, blazoned with 
 
 respect and awe, 
 Robed in sheets of Death's adornment, but with stars 
 
 of glory crowned, 
 Shooting streams of kindly radiance through Night's 
 
 pitchy bosom round ; 
 And the first I knew, COLUMBA, who from leafy oaks 
 
 of Deny 
 Through the troublous whirl of waters steered his 
 
 gospel-missioned wherry, 
 And with might of high volition, and with wisdom 
 
 from above 
 Tamed the savage Celts and drew them with the 
 
 gentle cords of love ; 
 
THE CURSE OF SCOTLAND 43 
 
 And the second, tall and stately, with long locks of 
 
 golden hair, 
 Was the Wallace wight ; a huge two-handed sword 
 
 aloft he bare. 
 BRUCE, the third, the bravest King that ever hewed 
 
 his thorny way 
 Sheer through danger to a throne ; I knew him by 
 
 the fair display 
 Of jewelled brooch upon his breast, and battle-axe 
 
 whose weighty stroke 
 Felled the proud Bohun, and freed the land from 
 
 England's galling yoke. 
 In the shadowy train the fourth, a noble youth of 
 
 saintly mien, 
 A burning faggot in his hand, was gentle-hearted 
 
 WlSHART seen. 
 Fifth a mightier came than he, strong and stern, and 
 
 in the van 
 Of churchly keen contention planted, fronting danger 
 
 like a man, 
 Fearing not the threats of Princes, nor the sacerdotal 
 
 ban, 
 Dazzled not by flickering smiles, nor melted by soft 
 
 tears of beauty, 
 
44 rOEMS AND SONGS 
 
 Listening only faithful-hearted to the high command 
 
 of duty, 
 KNOX ; with him the bold Protester, lion-hearted 
 
 RENWICK came, 
 In his hand a cross and tower with 'Sanquhar' writ 
 
 in words of flame ; 
 Who came next I knew from eye hot-flashing with 
 
 intensest fire, 
 On his lip the scorn of baseness, in his hand a sound- 
 ing lyre, 
 BURNS, the ploughman-bard ; behind him one of 
 
 mellower blood than he, 
 Healthy-hearted, and with large rich swell of various 
 
 minstrelsy ; 
 From his eye there streamed a sweetness like the sun 
 
 in flowery May, 
 On his Jovian forehead thoughts of kingly range did 
 
 mildly sway, 
 SCOTT ; and in his hand he held the rose and thistle 
 
 twined together, 
 And on his breast, and near his heart, a blooming 
 
 tuft of purple heather. 
 Then I saw three mighty prophets closing in the long 
 
 array, 
 
THE CURSE OF SCOTLAND 45 
 
 Prophets whom mine eyes had worshipped when they 
 
 dwelt in house of clay. 
 Chalmers first, with fervid chariot, flashing fire from 
 
 flinty stones, 
 Breathing blasts of quickening virtue o'er the valley 
 
 of dry bones : 
 GUTHRIE next, festooned with flowers, and picking 
 
 glory from the ground, 
 Flinging with redundant mirth rich sheaves of mellow 
 
 jest around. 
 Then MACLEOD, with large strong heart, from bonds 
 
 of base convention free, 
 Wise from life's o'erflowing wells to mingle godliness 
 
 with glee. 
 These I saw, a pomp of ghosts in procession pale and 
 
 slow, 
 And I looked and feared and listened ; and again the 
 
 sound of woe 
 Pierced my ears ; and that dire chorus cursed again, 
 
 and sounded so : 
 1 Woe to Scotland, woe and wailing, once the honest and 
 
 the true, 
 Cousined now with rogues and sharpers, subtle Greek 
 
 and swindling Jew ! ' 
 
46 POEMS AND SONGS 
 
 And I looked and saw and lo ! on the ground a virgin 
 
 lay 
 With a healthy hue, well favoured, clad in weeds of 
 
 sober gray, 
 But on her brow an ugly gash, and dimness floating 
 
 in her eye, 
 And her broad full bosom heaving with the frequent 
 
 sob and sigh ; 
 In her right hand she held a tuft of heather from 
 
 whose purple store 
 Gushed — O God ! a bloody spout, and with red 
 
 murder drowned the floor ; 
 From her left a thistle rose, and every prickle where 
 
 it grew 
 Turned to steel, and stabbed her flesh, and striped 
 
 her vest with crimson hue ; 
 And at her foot a book there lay, soiled and rent in 
 
 many a rag, 
 A holy book, and near the book a fat, well-nurtured 
 
 money-bag, 
 Dyed with blood ; and o'er her head a grinning big- 
 mouthed demon stood, 
 And dogs with him, a red-haired brood, that ever 
 
 licked the streaming blood. 
 
THE CURSE OF SCOTLAND 47 
 
 God ! O God ! — I would have waked ; but heavy 
 
 bonds held down my breast ; 
 
 1 stopped my ears ; but still I heard the woeful cry 
 
 that would not rest, 
 As each shape in that procession, with sepulchral 
 
 moan sonorous, 
 Pointing to the bleeding maiden sharply toned the 
 
 cursing chorus — 
 ' Woe to Scotland, woe and wailing, curse and com- 
 
 mination dire, 
 Thou art fallen, fallen, fallen low with Sidon and with 
 
 Tyre ! 
 Damned lust of gold hath bound thee, O our country, 
 
 damn'd indeed, 
 Thy most sacred birthright bartered basely for insa- 
 tiate greed ; 
 All thy proud distinctions razed, and on thy brow 
 
 that brightly shone, 
 Sullen clouds and ugly scars, red-handed murder calls 
 
 her own ; 
 And all the air is rent with cries, and all the sky is 
 
 raining tears, 
 And widows weep, and orphans wail, and old men 
 
 curse their length of years, 
 
4 S POEMS AND SONGS 
 
 And all thy hymns are turned to curses, curse and 
 
 commination dire ; 
 The woe of Babylon is thine ! the curse of Sidon and 
 
 of Tyre ; ' 
 And the recording angel writes — ' Woe to Scotland ! 
 
 thou hast sold 
 Thy soul's loyalty for dust, and glittering lies that 
 
 look like gold ! ' 
 I heard ; I saw ; mine eyes were coal ; mine ears were 
 
 hissing furnace ; I 
 Writhed in my rest, and burst the bonds of painful 
 
 sleeping with a cry ; 
 I rose and dressed, and walked abroad, and lo ! my 
 
 dreaming was no dream, 
 I found the curse in every street, in every talker's 
 
 common theme. 
 
RULES FOR A HAPPY LIFE 
 
 WOULDST thou be a happy liver, 
 Happy, and studious to enhance 
 The glory of the great Life-Giver, 
 Launch not thy boat to drift at chance 
 Where strong floods roll and wild waves dance 
 
 On life's broad-rushing river. 
 Live as a man, and count it treason 
 To man to live divorced from reason ; 
 Prove your ground, and know your game, 
 And ply your task with stout endeavour, 
 Nor courting praise, nor fearing blame. 
 Know your own worth, and know not less 
 Your neighbour's weight and worthiness ; 
 And, where he works well, let him do 
 The work that might be spoiled by you. 
 Make a good friend where'er you can ; 
 Not wise is he who hath no eyes 
 To know how fools may help the wise ; 
 E 
 
50 FORMS AND SONGS 
 
 With loving deeds bind man to man, 
 But never shrink with blinking eye 
 From what they only learn who try ; 
 And, though you stand alone, in sight 
 Of God be bold to hold the right. 
 March bravely on, and, if you stumble, 
 Never groan and never grumble ; 
 Rise again with wise forgetting ; 
 Wounds were never salved by fretting. 
 Watch your chance, and know your hour, 
 And let the moment feel your power ; 
 Shape your path, and keep your rules 
 With deaf ear turned to meddling fools. 
 Tis dull to wait, and hard to stand, 
 But God's time comes with high command, 
 That claims the service of your hand. 
 Let the wise farmer teach you knowledge, 
 Oft sought in vain at school and college ; 
 Split the rock, and turn the sod, 
 With busy hand cast honest seed, 
 Stoutly uproot each harmful weed, 
 And let the seasons wait on God ! 
 
SONG OF A GOOD ECLECTIC 
 
 German Air — ' Seit Vater Noah im Becher goss.' 
 
 My creed and my master you wish to learn ? 
 
 I really can't answer you so, 
 It never gave me grave heart-concern 
 My name or my title to know ; 
 I love all the good and the fair ; 
 
 And when prophets come near me, 
 To warn or to cheer me, 
 I take off my hat 
 To this one and that, 
 But to none in all points I can swear. 
 
 You know what the great Apostle Paul 
 
 In his wise Epistle says, 
 The body is one, and the members all, 
 
 Have rights in their several ways ; 
 And to this I am willing to swear 
 
52 POEMS AND SONGS 
 
 With head clearly knowing, 
 And heart warmly glowing, 
 
 And firm hand to strive, 
 
 Completely alive, 
 All good things to do and to dare. 
 
 My head I have given, now understand, 
 
 To Aristotle the wise, 
 All things to know sublime and grand, 
 And scan with critical eyes ; 
 
 And like him no labour I spare, 
 With fine speculation 
 And large tabulation 
 To blazon the glory 
 Of life's wondrous story 
 In the land, and the sea, and the air. 
 
 My heart I give, my noblest part, 
 To Christ the Lord who gave 
 Our faith new scope with the glorious hope 
 Of life beyond the grave ; 
 
 And no honest labour I spare, 
 To stamp on each real 
 The godlike ideal, 
 
SO KG OF A GOOD ECLECTIC 53 
 
 And with triple-mailed breast 
 To fight for the best, 
 And the load with the laden to share. 
 
 My stout right arm to Zeno I give, 
 Well poised for a weighty blow, 
 With friends a faithful friend to live, 
 To foes a fearful foe. 
 
 Thus the badge of the Stoic I wear, 
 Not fretful and tearful 
 But constant and cheerful, 
 To do on a plan 
 The service of man, 
 And stoutly to bear, and forbear. 
 
 Then Epicurus, good easy man, 
 
 I really don't wish to exclude ; 
 I give him my left — 'tis all I can — 
 For pleasure is cousin to good ; 
 And surely to banish dull care 
 With a glass brightly brimming, 
 And an eye softly swimming, 
 And a snatch of a song 
 Can never be wrong, 
 When wise moderation is there ! 
 
PESSIMISM 
 
 BRIGHT-FACED maiden, bright-souled maiden, 
 
 What is this that I must hear ? 
 Is thy heart with sorrow laden, 
 
 Is thine eye dimmed with a tear ? 
 Can it be that lips so sweetly 
 
 Rounded to be kindly kissed, 
 Could be twisted indiscreetly 
 
 To that vile word Pessimist ? 
 Not for thine own ills thou weepest ; 
 
 Softly feathered is thy nest ; 
 When thou wakest, when thou sleepest. 
 
 Thou art fortuned with the best. 
 But thy sisters and thy brothers 
 
 Pierced with many a woeful smart. 
 Dying children, wailing mothers, 
 
 Fret thy nerve, and stab thy heart 
 
PESSIMISM 
 
 55 
 
 In the country, in the city, 
 
 Godless deeds, a loveless list 
 Stir thy blood and move thy pity, 
 
 And thou art a Pessimist. 
 Storms and wars and tribulations, 
 
 Fevered passions' reinless tide, 
 With insane hallucinations 
 
 Mingled, travel far and wide. 
 Can there be an Eye inspecting 
 
 Things so tumbling in pell-mell, 
 With a cool control directing 
 
 Such a hotbed, such a hell ? 
 Nay, sweet maid, but think more slowly ; 
 
 Though this thing and that be sad, 
 'Tis a logic most unholy 
 
 That the gross of things is bad ; 
 'Tis a trick of melancholy, 
 
 Tainting life with death's alloy ; 
 Or in wisdom, or in folly, 
 
 Nature still delights in joy. 
 Dost thou hear of starving sinners 
 
 Nine and ten or ninety-nine ? 
 Many thousands eat good dinners, 
 
 Many hundreds quaff good wine. 
 
56 POEMS AND SONGS 
 
 Hast thou seen a score of cripples ? 
 
 Equal legs are not uncommon ; 
 If you know one fool that tipples, 
 
 Thousands drink not — man and woman ; 
 Tell me, if you know, how many 
 
 Murders happen in the town ? 
 One a-year, perhaps, if any ; 
 
 Should that weigh your heart quite down ? 
 No doubt, if you read the papers, 
 
 You will find a strange hotch-potch. — 
 Doting dreams, delirious capers, 
 
 Many a blunder, blot, and blotch ; 
 Bags of windy speculation, 
 
 Babblement of small and great, 
 Cheating, swindling, peculation, 
 
 Squabblement of Church and State ; 
 Miners blown up, humbugs shown up, 
 
 Beaten wives, insulted brides, 
 Raving preachers, witless teachers, 
 
 Lunatics and suicides ; 
 Drains and cesspools, faintings, fevers, 
 
 Poisoned cats and stolen collies, 
 Simple women, gay deceivers, 
 
 Every sort and size of follies, 
 
PESSIMISM 
 
 57 
 
 Wandering M.P.'s brainless babble, 
 Deputations, meetings, dinners, 
 Riots of the lawless rabble, 
 
 Purple sins of West-End sinners ; 
 Driving, dicing, drinking, dancing, 
 
 Spirit-rapping, ghostly stuff, 
 Bubble schemes, and deft financing, 
 
 When the shares are blown enough. 
 All this is true ; when men cut capers 
 That make the people talk or stare, 
 To-morrow, when you ope the papers, 
 
 You're sure to find your antics there. 
 But you and I and all our neighbours, 
 
 Meanwhile in pure and peaceful ways, 
 With link on link of fruitful labours, 
 
 Draw out our chain of happy days. 
 See things as they are ; be sober ; 
 
 Balance well life's loss and gain : 
 If to-day be chill October, 
 
 Summer suns will come again. 
 Are bleak winds for ever sighing ? 
 Do dark clouds for ever lower ? 
 Are your friends all dead and dying ? 
 All your sweetness turned to sour ? 
 
5 8 POEMS Ai\D SONGS 
 
 Great men no doubt have sometimes small ways, 
 
 But a horse is not an ass, 
 And a black snake is not always 
 
 Lurking in the soft green grass. 
 Don't be hasty, gentle lady ; 
 
 In this whirl of diverse things 
 Keep your footing, and with steady 
 
 Poise control your equal wings. 
 All things can't to all be pleasant, 
 
 I love bitter, you love sweet ; 
 Some faint when a cat is present, 
 
 Rats find babies' cheeks a treat. 
 If all tiny things were tall things, 
 
 If all petty things were grand, 
 Where will greatness be, when all things 
 
 On one common level stand ? 
 Do you think the winged breezes 
 
 Fraught with healthy ventilation, 
 When a tender infant sneezes 
 
 Should retreat with trepidation ? 
 When dry Earth to Heaven is calling 
 
 For soft rain and freshening dew, 
 Shall the rain refrain from falling 
 
 Lest my lady wet her shoe ? 
 
PESSIMISM 
 
 59 
 
 Fools still rush to rash conclusions, 
 
 And the mole-eyed minion man 
 Talks of troubles and confusions, 
 
 When he sees not half the plan. 
 Spare to blame and fear to cavil, 
 
 With short leave dismiss your pain, 
 Let no fretful fancies revel 
 
 In the sanctum of your brain. 
 Use no magnifying glasses 
 
 To change molehills into mountains, 
 Nor on every ill that passes 
 
 Pour hot tears from bitter fountains. 
 Trust in God and know your duty, 
 
 Some good things are in your power ; 
 Every day will bring its booty 
 
 From the labour of the hour. 
 Never reck what fools are prating, 
 
 Work and wait, let sorrow lie ; 
 Live and love ; have done with hating, 
 
 Goethe says — and so say I. 
 
ITALIA 
 
 ( Written on the rail on the road between Florence and Pisa.) 
 
 I 
 
 Italia ! how I love thee, with thy brightness and thy 
 
 beauty, 
 And thy flush of vivid verdure in the shining month 
 
 of May ! 
 With thy vines all richly swinging, 
 And thy blithe birds sweetly singing, 
 And thy bells of worship ringing, 
 
 In the shining month of May ; 
 With thy stout old castled places 
 With severe, majestic faces, 
 Hung round with storied graces, 
 
 In the brightness of the May ; 
 With thy towers that look serenely 
 From their proud cliffs, throned so queenly, 
 With broad mantle flaunting greenly 
 
 In the brightness of the May ; 
 
ITALIA 61 
 
 With thy streams so grandly sweeping, 
 And thy airs so softly sleeping, 
 And thy fountains freshly leaping 
 
 In the bright face of the day ; 
 With thy names that fill the ages, 
 Statesmen, singers, saints and sages, 
 And thy shrines with pictured pages 
 
 In significant display ; 
 With mighty memories near thee 
 In strength to atmosphere thee, 
 From dismal doubt to clear thee 
 
 When falls the cloudy day : 
 With thy years of long probation 
 For the glorious consummation 
 To wear the name of Nation 
 
 In the brightness of to-day : 
 Italia, I will love thee in thy grandeur and thy glory, 
 And thy wealth of spreading beauty in the shining 
 
 month of May ! 
 
 II 
 
 But, Italia, I may never change the land that I was 
 born in 
 
62 Pi EMS AND SOXGS 
 
 For thy beauty and thy splendour and thy triumpl 
 
 in the May, 
 The land of lofty Ben, 
 And of green, far-winding glen, 
 And of light-heeled, kilted men, 
 
 On the purple heather brae ; 
 With crystal wells clear gushing, 
 And amber torrents rushing, 
 And bright September flushing 
 
 With the heather on the brae : 
 With the wide Atlantic's roar 
 On the gray and granite shore, 
 And the pure dew's dripping store 
 
 On the greenness of the brae ; 
 Where the fragrant birch-tree waves 
 O'er the hollow mountain caves, 
 And the headlong-tumbling waves 
 
 Dash the glory of the spray ; 
 The land where first I drew 
 Sweet breath of life, and grew 
 Hard of foot, and fresh of hue 
 
 As the heather on the brae ; 
 The land that never quailed 
 When the haughty foe assailed, 
 
IT ALT A 63 
 
 And whose mettle never failed 
 
 In the patriotic fray, 
 And whose sons aye stand together 
 For the thistle and the heather, 
 In the bluster of the weather, 
 
 Or the mildness of the May ; 
 Brave land where I am rooted like the pine-tree on 
 
 the mountain, 
 I have loved, and I will love thee, while the sun shall 
 
 rule the May ! 
 
THERE IS NONE FREE BUT JOVE 
 
 Ovdels iXevdepos, ttXtju Aids. — .EscHYLUS. 
 
 ' THERE is none free but Jove ; ' thus speaks 
 
 A weighty old tragedian, 
 Who sang whilom to tuneful Greeks 
 
 In Doric airs and Lydian ; 
 And wisely sang — for truth and right, 
 
 Once true, are true for ever, 
 Even as the sun pours forth his light 
 
 With strength that faileth never. 
 
 Who's free ? — a king ? — Who first must please 
 
 Before he rule a people, , 
 And turn him lightly to the breeze, 
 
 Like cock upon the steeple ! 
 A priest — a churchman ? — who to fan 
 
 The people's hot devotion, 
 Must fear to stretch his faith a span. 
 
 Beyond their narrow notion. 
 
THERE IS NONE FREE BUT JOVE 65 
 
 Who's free ? — a democrat ? — no more 
 
 Than any salt sea bubble, 
 When far-drawn billows rage and roar, 
 
 Is free from yeasty trouble ; 
 No more than Autumn leaves are free 
 
 To choose their place of falling, 
 When sea-birds shriek from sea to sea, 
 
 And blast to blast is calling. 
 
 Who's free ? — the lawyer ? — not he, bound 
 
 With knots of old traditions, 
 His reason prisoned round and round 
 
 With clauses and conditions ; 
 Whose thought to mouldy record clings, 
 
 Who loves to walk in fetters, 
 And chokes the sacred soul of things 
 
 With rolls of old black letters. 
 
 Who's free ? — the scholar ? — no ; not he 
 
 The slave of printed paper, 
 Who where the sun is free to see, 
 
 Lights his own twinkling taper, 
 And from much nonsense picks some sense 
 
 And makes a mighty clamour, 
 F 
 
66 POEMS AND SONGS 
 
 And strangles living eloquence 
 In mummy bands of grammar. 
 
 Who's free ? — the statesman ? — ask the man 
 
 Who fain would do a little, 
 But shrinks back from the factious clan 
 
 That snaps at every tittle, 
 And fears his party most of all, 
 
 Who, at his boldness frowning, 
 May cast him with a weighty fall 
 
 From out the street called Downing ! 
 
 There is none free but Him above, 
 
 The mighty Lord of all things, 
 With bond of everlasting love 
 
 Who binds both great and small things. 
 And who treads Earth with pure intent 
 
 To search into His wonders, 
 Will live least slaved to sinful bent, 
 
 Most free from evil blunders. 
 
CREEDS AND CANARIES 
 
 I HAD a sweet canary bird, 
 Whose little wing was never stirred 
 
 Beyond the wires around it ; 
 I looked upon my dainty bird, 
 And, while I looked, my heart was stirred 
 To think that pretty prisoned thing 
 May never flap its native wing 
 
 Beyond the bars that bound it ! 
 
 I went and ope'd the little door, 
 
 And looked ; but, sooth, I wondered sore 
 
 To see my small canary : 
 With jerking head and pecking bill, 
 Within the wires it tarried still, 
 And had no lust abroad to spring, 
 And flit about with ransomed winsr 
 
 In ample range and airy ! 
 
68 POEMS AND SONGS 
 
 Well, well ! quoth I, 'tis plain to see 
 You have no notion to be free, 
 
 So stay within your cage now ! 
 And yet, methinks you are no fool, 
 And, safely bound by customed rule, 
 You wisely shun a larger home, 
 Where cats and deathful dogs may roam, 
 
 If you should leave your cage now ! 
 
 If birds are wise, men are not fools, 
 For they too have their customed rules 
 
 And pretty gilded cages ; 
 And, should you wish to make them free, 
 Just ope the door, and you will see 
 No folded wing they 'gin to stir, 
 But much the prudent ease prefer 
 
 Of their own gilded cages. 
 
 The lawyer and the grave D.D., 
 Who find strong bond of unity 
 In old time-hallowed pages, 
 With sanctioned text and hoary creed 
 And fond tradition serve their need, 
 And live as safe and shielded well 
 
CREEDS AND CANARIES 69 
 
 As lobsters in close-mailed shell, 
 Or birds in gilded cages. 
 
 And, though you make a dusty din, 
 They wrap them closer in their skin, 
 
 And con their ancient lessons ; 
 And they are wise ; for who can tell 
 What risks may lurk and dangers fell 
 To helmless souls all tossed about 
 In seas of drivel and of doubt, 
 
 Unmoored from old Confessions ? 
 
THE PRAYER OE SOCRATES 
 
 Kal ei'xcTO 8e irpbs tovs deovs aw\u>s rdyada OLobvcu 
 ws tovs 6eovs KaWiara iidoras owoia ayada ian. 
 
 Xenophon, Mem. i, 3, 2. 
 
 Grant, O Olympian Jove supreme, 
 
 Not my wish, and not my dream ; 
 
 Grant me neither gold that shines, 
 
 Nor ruddy copper in the mines, 
 
 Nor power to wield the tyrant's rod, 
 
 And be a fool, and seem a god, 
 
 Nor precious robe with jewelled fringe 
 
 Splendid with sea-born purple tinge, 
 
 Nor silken vest on downy pillow, 
 
 Nor hammock hard on heaving billow ; 
 
 But give all goodly things that be 
 
 Good for the whole and best for me. 
 
 My thoughts are foolish, blind, and crude ; 
 
 Thou only knowest what is good. 
 
FEMALE BEAUTY 
 
 A LOVELY woman ? — well, a flower 
 In blushing bed, or shady dell, 
 With spreading crown, or drooping bell, 
 That glories in its growing power, 
 The triumph of the sunny hour, 
 Is beautiful ; even so the trees 
 That fling their tresses to the breeze, 
 All fragrant with the breath of spring, 
 What time the leafy copses ring 
 With song of birds. But to be fair 
 Only as flowers and trees are fair, 
 With shapely form and colours rare, 
 And perfume sweetening all the air, 
 Is to be less than woman. Not 
 Pure-tinctured skin without a blot, 
 Nor merry blood that lightly flows 
 Rejoicing as it comes and goes, 
 
72 POEMS AND SONGS 
 
 Nor stature tall, nor brow serene, 
 With port and posture of a queen, 
 Nor full blue eyes that overbrim 
 With swelling life, nor rounded limb, 
 Nor ivory neck, nor lily arms, 
 Nor chiselled mouth with subtle charms, 
 Nor dimpled cheek, nor rosebud lips, 
 Nor dainty foot that lightly trips 
 And scarcely stirs the heather tips, 
 Nor fingers fine from tuneful board 
 That charm the sweetly blended chord ; 
 Not these : all these fair maid may show, 
 A faultless mould from top to toe, 
 Yet lack the one thing that makes woman 
 More than the daisy on the common, 
 The one fair thing to mortals given 
 To bridge the gap from Earth to Heaven : 
 The inspiring soul that to a godlike grace 
 Attunes each move, and spreads a glory o'er the face. 
 
PORTRAIT OF A LADY 
 
 PAINT me your perfect lady. I have seen 
 Some part, perhaps the whole, of what I mean ; 
 Yet in articulate feature to declare 
 The form that haunts my thoughts divinely fair 
 May well outrange my skill ; but thy request 
 Strikes all denial dumb. No broad display 
 Of rustling flounces marks her gentle way, 
 But like the breezes of the light- winged May, 
 Softly she comes, and fragrant all as they. 
 Oh, she is lovely ! all the summer dwells 
 In her bright eyes, and every feature tells 
 A treasured sweetness in the soul within, 
 That beats like music through the lucid skin ; 
 And, when she speaks, soft silvery accents flow 
 Full-throated from a mellow depth below, 
 Not dipt in shreds, nor with a tinkling din, 
 A shallow plash from hollow heart within. 
 
74 POEMS AND SOXGS 
 
 Not bold is she to place herself before 
 
 The first, nor slinks demure behind the door, 
 
 But takes her place just where she ought to be, 
 
 Nor makes you feel, when there, that it is she. 
 
 With native grace, and fine untutored mien, 
 
 She greets the poor, or stands before a queen, 
 
 Sweeps with light floating ease the festal floor, 
 
 Or bends o'er sick beds with the suffering poor. 
 
 She hath no postures, knows no attitudes ; 
 
 Her unschooled gesture gently shows her moods ; 
 
 She casts no proud and patronising eye 
 
 On those below, nor cringes to the high. 
 
 All things to all she is : for why ? — in all 
 
 Her skill is to be true and natural, 
 
 True to herself, and to the high ideal 
 
 That God's grace gave to her to inform the real ; 
 
 True to her kind, and to your every feeling 
 
 Respondent with a power of kindliest healing. 
 
 She knows no falseness ; even the courtliest lie 
 
 She dreams not ; truth flows from her deep blue eye ; 
 
 And, if her tongue speaks pleasant things to all, 
 
 'Tis that she loveth well both great and small ; 
 
 And all in her that mortals call politeness, 
 
 Is but the image of her bright soul's brightness 
 
PORTRAIT OF A LADY 75 
 
 Direct from heaven. Such is the perfect fair 
 Whom in my heart I hold, and worship there ; 
 And, if the picture likes thee well to see, 
 Know, lady, more than half I stole from thee ! 
 
LOVE AND KNOWLEDGE 
 
 Give me a smile of lovely woman, 
 
 The glowing cheek, the loving eye, 
 And I'll count all things cheap and common 
 
 That books can teach, or gold can buy. 
 Add field to field, nor stint your measure, 
 
 Heap bales on bales to swell your store, 
 One little kiss outweighs your treasure 
 
 From lips with sweetness streaming o'er. 
 
 Some men there be, a curious nation, 
 
 Who strive all knowable to know, 
 And register with nice summation 
 
 Things dry as dust, and cold as snow ; 
 But give to me the flower that bloweth 
 
 With fragrance from the balmy south, 
 The quickening power of love that floweth 
 
 From eye to eye, from mouth to mouth. 
 
LOVE AND KNOWLEDGE 77 
 
 What profits me the shell to gather 
 
 Of snake or lizard, newt or toad, 
 That crawled on earth ere our prime father 
 
 Looked wondering on his green abode ? 
 Let the dead to the dead be giving 
 
 What dusty good they have to give ; 
 Life is my school, and with the living, 
 
 While I have strength to live, I live. 
 
 Go take thy glass and scan the planet, 
 
 Besmoke the moth, and cut the worm, 
 And, though thy wit be weak to ban it, 
 
 Take nice account of coming storm ; 
 But give, O give me, sweet-souled woman, 
 
 Thy gracious smile, thy loving eye, 
 And all things else I'll count quite common 
 
 That books can teach, or gold can buy ! 
 
POLLY 
 
 Who will show us any good ? 
 
 Said a fool once in his folly ; 
 If he knows what thing is good, 
 
 Let him come and see my Polly ! 
 Who is Polly ? Blithe and gay 
 
 Polly is the parson's daughter ; 
 You may see her any day 
 
 On the banks of Cluny water. 
 
 Who shall show us any good ? 
 
 Said a fool once in his folly, 
 In a sullen, sceptic mood, 
 
 Sulky and self-centred wholly. 
 If he has an eye to see 
 
 Sights that banish melancholy, 
 Let him come and feast with me 
 
 On the blithe face of my Polly. 
 
POLL Y 79 
 
 With a fairy foot she dances 
 
 On the green, the parson's daughter, 
 Like a sunbeam when it glances 
 
 On the face of Cluny v/ater ; 
 Sweet as meadow hay in haytime, 
 
 Fresh and fair as Christmas holly, 
 Light as birds that sing in Maytime 
 
 Is the sweet young soul of Polly ! 
 
 Scholars seek for bliss in books, 
 
 Gray and dry, and bloodless wholly ; 
 I peruse the rosy looks 
 
 And the sunny smiles of Polly. 
 When she leaps with bounding glee, 
 
 Like a trout in Cluny water, 
 All the soul of joy in me 
 
 Flows to meet the parson's daughter. 
 
 Balls and parties make a din, 
 
 Pleasure trips a sounding clatter, 
 
 But my triumph is to win 
 
 A bright smile from the parson's daughtei 
 
 With much labour men prepare 
 Pills to purge all melancholy, 
 
So POEMS AND SONGS 
 
 I am wise to banish care 
 
 With a single look at Polly. 
 
 When my heart is sick with babble 
 
 Of the M.P.'s in the papers, 
 Where the Whig and Tory rabble 
 
 Mad with faction cut their capers, 
 I, like bird that knows his nest 
 
 On the banks of Cluny water, 
 Drown my sorrow on the breast 
 
 Of the parson's blooming daughter. 
 
 Some will pant for money, some 
 
 Posted high in public station, 
 Love with trumpet and with drum 
 
 To parade before the nation ; 
 Some will dice their lives away, 
 
 Some with wine are wildly jolly, 
 But I am happy all the day, 
 
 When I earn a kiss from Polly. 
 
 Who will show us any good ? 
 
 Look around and own your folly ; 
 In your veins nurse kindly blood, 
 
 And all you see is goodness wholly, 
 
POLLY 
 
 Nature loves the ruddy hue, 
 
 Hates pale-blooded melancholy ; 
 
 Somewhere grows a rose for you, 
 As my rose I found in POLLY ! 
 
THE THREE GRACES 
 
 GOD hath three Graces that show forth his glory, 
 Ever repeated in life's wondrous story, 
 Youth, and Beauty, and Goodness, these three, 
 Charmed into one fair wonder in Thee, 
 
 Beautiful Dora ! 
 
 YOUTH that comes fresh from the Lord of all glory, 
 Blushing with promise of life's fruitful story; 
 Sweet is the child that sings out with glee, 
 But sweeter is speech softly flowing from Thee, 
 
 Beautiful Dora ! 
 
 Beauty, the vesture of God in creation, 
 From the light plumy fern to the strong starry nation, 
 Bright in the red rose, and bright in green tree, 
 But crowned with the bloom of all brightness in Thee, 
 
 Beautiful Dora ! 
 
THE THREE GRACES 83 
 
 GOODNESS that travels with blithe ministration, 
 In pulses of love through the veins of creation, 
 Unfetters the slave, and gives songs to the free, 
 And triumphs in largesses lavished by Thee, 
 
 Beautiful Dora ! 
 
 Youth, and Beauty, and GOODNESS, three Graces, 
 Walk o'er the green Earth in blossomy places, 
 Each with the gift to her favourites free ; 
 But blessed am I who have found all the three 
 
 In beautiful Dora ! 
 
AN APRIL SONG 
 
 My heart leaps up on a bright Spring day, 
 
 When I look out to the sky, 
 And see the clouds in light display 
 
 Floating gently by. 
 So was it, when I was a boy ; 
 
 Now, though my hairs are gray, 
 My heart throbs with the self-same joy 
 
 On a shining April day : 
 
 Shine, shine, O April bright, 
 And drive dull care away ! 
 
 ' Youth's the season made for joys,' 
 
 An old song thus doth say, 
 But I can make a merry noise, 
 
 Although my hairs are gray. 
 There's danger in youth's wild delights 
 
 And hotly spurred desires ; 
 
AN APRIL SONG 85 
 
 But safety dwells with sober sprights, 
 And chastely glowing fires. 
 
 Shine, shine, O April bright, 
 And drive dull care away ! 
 
 If thou wouldst earn a poet's thanks 
 
 On a shining April day, 
 Oh, take me where the primrose prinks 
 
 The gently sloping brae, 
 Where its sweet song the burnie purls 
 
 Beneath the birchen spray, 
 And the fresh-sprouting leaf uncurls 
 
 Its greenness to the day. 
 
 Shine, shine, O April bright, 
 And drive dull care away ! 
 
 And let me hear the mavis pour 
 
 His rich full-throated lay, 
 Unbosoming his redundant store 
 
 Of gladness to the day ; 
 And let me ban all moody thoughts 
 
 To Limbo far away, 
 When all the air is quick with notes 
 
 Of happy life to-day. 
 
 Shine, shine, O April bright, 
 And drive dull care away! 
 
86 rOEMS AND SONGS 
 
 And let no breath invade my car 
 
 Of crude unreasoned babble, 
 And let no fretful word come near 
 
 Of Whig and Tory squabble ! 
 And, while on Pentland's grassy swell 
 
 I weave my song with glee, 
 Let war with wrangling factions dwell ; 
 
 God's peace abides with me. 
 
 Shine, shine, O April bright, 
 And drive dull care away! 
 
 Right lovely is Thy world, O God, 
 
 And I will praise it ever, 
 While I look up from earth's green sod 
 
 To Thee, the General GlVER ! 
 Thy grace did rein my youthful will, 
 
 All strength to Thee belongs, 
 And Thou, when hairs are gray, dost fill 
 
 The old man's breast with songs. 
 
 Shine, shine, O April bright, 
 And drive dull care away! 
 
CUCKOO! CUCKOO!' 
 
 (Song for the First of May.) 
 
 ' CUCKOO ! cuckoo !' it haunts my way ; 
 I hear that sweet note all the day, 
 From glen to glen, from brae to brae, 
 While I pursue my grassy way 
 
 Through Ettrick vale and Yarrow ! 
 
 'Cuckoo, cuckoo !' it still doth say, 
 The very spoken breath of May, 
 But viewless still from brae to brae, 
 As if a Spirit led my way, 
 
 Through all the length of Yarrow ! 
 
 How many a city drudge this day, 
 At large with me might sigh to stray, 
 Drinking deep draughts of breezy May, 
 With ' Cuckoo ! cuckoo !' all the way, 
 To hymn their march through Yarrow! 
 
88 POEMS AND SONGS 
 
 Poor city scribes ! it makes me grieve 
 To think how ye from inky sleeve 
 And fretful quill find no reprieve, 
 Nor faction's babbling mart may leave 
 To taste sweet May in Yarrow. 
 
 1 Cuckoo ! cuckoo 1' it haunts my way, 
 Now here, now there, from brae to brae ; 
 It floats and wanders with light play 
 From dark pine-wood to castle gray, 
 And shepherd's cot in Yarrow! 
 
 Ye lords and ladies gay, who ride 
 Through London parks in dusty pride, 
 I wish you all might here abide, 
 With wimpling waters at your side, 
 And cuckoo's note in Yarrow! 
 
VACATION ODE 
 
 (Read at the end of the Winter Session of the Greek Classes, Edinburgh. ) 
 
 Ye sons of learned toil, 
 Who with hard purpose moil 
 O'er grammar's thorny ways, and heaps of dusty 
 tomes, 
 Your posts are run. Be free, 
 And with unchartered glee 
 Sport where the springy foot o'er lush green meadow 
 roams! 
 
 Not from the gaunt array 
 
 Of mouldy parchments gray, 
 Drops the fine dew that slakes the knowledge-thirst- 
 ing soul! 
 
 But where from blade and spray 
 
 Glances the fresh green May, 
 And rose-tipt flowerets blow, and lucid waters roll. 
 
90 POEMS AND SONGS 
 
 Rise, and no more be vext 
 From harsh disjointed text, 
 With learned strain to wrench the dubious-worded 
 lore! 
 Up ! and redeem your sight 
 With Heaven's broad-streaming light, 
 And pictured skies, and plains with beauty dappled 
 o'er ! 
 
 And let the genial note 
 
 That through green woods doth float 
 From viewless cuckoo, win your rapt ear's wise regard, 
 
 More than the cunning chime 
 
 Of curious-builded rhyme 
 From craft of smooth-lipped Greek, or deep-mouthed 
 Roman bard. 
 
 Let roar of foaming floods, 
 And breath of growing woods, 
 Wave round you with more joy than flags of conquer- 
 ing kings ! 
 Nor let your dull thought go 
 With painful pace and slow, 
 
VACATION ODE 91 
 
 When every bursting grove with twittering gladness 
 rings ! 
 
 Not wise who stern refuse 
 
 With gracious hand to use 
 The chance-sown sport, stray whim, and random- 
 started joy ; 
 
 In many a shifting mood, 
 
 With gamesome lustihood, 
 Quaint Nature respite finds from life's severe employ. 
 
 You to familiar halls 
 
 A father's voice recalls, 
 And tells your virtues' roll with broad benignant pride ; 
 
 While eager at the gate 
 
 A mother's love doth wait 
 To gain her laurelled boy back to her careful side. 
 
 And troops of sisters fair, 
 
 Whose smiles make blithe the air, 
 And rings of lusty boys, with merry sun-brown faces, 
 
 These wait your skill to guide 
 
 Their steps by mountain side, 
 To lone green glens remote, and strange old castled 
 places ! 
 
92 POEMS AND SONGS 
 
 Now home ! You need no goad 
 
 From me on such a road ; 
 Your native steam will urge this taskless travel duly ; 
 
 And may God love you so, 
 
 Your strength through weal and woe, 
 As I did love you well, and strove to serve you truly! 
 
PASTEUR'S WORD TO YOUNG MEN 
 
 f'ai toujours aime la jeunesse. Dn plus, loin qu'il me sotiviemte dans 
 ma vie d'/iomme, je ne crois pas avoir jamais aborde un etudiant 
 sans lui dire ; travaille et persevere. Le travail amuse et seul il 
 projite a VJiomme, au citoyen, a la patrie. 
 
 BRACE up your wills, brave-hearted boys, 
 To mingle hardship with your joys, 
 
 In life's abundant measure ; 
 Put hand to plough, and persevere, 
 When skies are dark, when skies are clear, 
 For labour is the title here 
 
 That gives a claim to pleasure. 
 
 Who's he that feeds his soul with fears, 
 And makes sweet luxury of tears, 
 
 And cradles dainty sorrow ; 
 At every breath of harm who frets, 
 And grumbles when his shoes he wets, 
 And on a rainy day forgets 
 
 That suns will shine to-morrow ? 
 
94 POEMS AND SONGS 
 
 Where would he live ? In some soft spot, 
 Where all things can for all be got, 
 
 Without or toil or trouble ! 
 What sport were this, with nothing hard 
 To do, no hindrance to retard, 
 No risk to run, and one reward 
 
 For all — a floating bubble ! 
 
 Leave dreams to fools ! The name of Life 
 Is work — a various-mingled strife 
 
 Of Powers that slumber never ; 
 The swelling seas, the circling spheres, 
 The racing winds, the rolling years, 
 The fateful tide of hopes and fears, 
 
 Work bravely on for ever. 
 
 Work you with them, all work with God, 
 His tools to stir the teeming sod, 
 
 Or load the fruitful river ; 
 And, if it chance His work we mar, 
 With limping faith, or loveless war, 
 His touch to music turns the jar. 
 
 With strength that faileth never. 
 
pasteur's word to young men 
 
 95 
 
 Trench deep the soil ; cast broad the seeds, 
 And branching trees o'er noxious weeds 
 
 Will spread their fruitful measure. 
 Put hand to plough, and persevere, 
 When skies are dark, when skies are clear; 
 For labour is the relish here 
 
 That gives a zest to pleasure ! 
 
THE STUDENT'S FAREWELL TO SUMMER 
 
 I HEARD the whistling North wind say 
 
 When it came down with power, 
 Athwart the russet ferny brae, 
 
 And by the old gray tower : 
 I heard the whistling North wind say 
 
 Bright Summer suns no more 
 Shall shine on Oban's dimpled bay, 
 
 And green Dunolly's shore. 
 
 I saw a fox-glove in the dell 
 
 Beneath the crag so gray, 
 One lonely, lean, belated bell, 
 
 And thus it seemed to say : 
 The glory of the June is past, 
 
 My purple kin are gone, 
 And I am left a poor outcast 
 
 To die in the cold alone .' 
 
THE STUDENT'S FAREWELL TO SUMMER 97 
 
 I saw the long black ragged cloud 
 
 O'ercap the frowning Bens, 
 And trails of thick blue mist enshroud 
 
 The green far-gleaming glens ; 
 And thus the black cloud seemed to say, 
 
 Now Summer suns are dim, 
 The stern old Winter holds his sway, 
 
 And I will reign with him. 
 
 And is it so ? — brightest of things, 
 
 God's beauty-vested Summer, 
 Shall it depart on hasty wings 
 
 That was so late a comer ? 
 And I who lived with fragrant breeze, 
 
 Blue skies and purple braes, 
 On hueless flowers and leafless trees 
 
 Must feed my widowed gaze ? 
 
 It may not be : up ! let us go ! 
 
 I will not stay and look 
 Where gorgeous Nature's pictured show 
 
 Is now a blotted book. 
 Let Nature die ! She'll live again 
 
 When six dull months expire ; 
 H 
 
98 POEMS AND SONGS 
 
 Meanwhile against both wind and rain 
 Heap we the blazing fire 
 
 Snug in the chambered town ! and call 
 
 Our troop of friends together, 
 And for six months let no word fall 
 
 Of Nature, wind or weather ; 
 And ply the work of thought or art 
 
 That helps both self and neighbour, 
 And sing with glad and guileless heart 
 
 The song that seasons labour ! 
 
 And bring the gray tomes from our shelves 
 
 And learn strong will from Cato, 
 And take high value of ourselves 
 
 From lofty-thoughted Plato : 
 And, while with friendly cheer we pass 
 
 The rare, rich-blooded bottle, 
 Give learned flavour to the glass 
 
 By saws from Aristotle ! 
 
 And then we'll talk of Church and State, 
 And wish the hangman's rope 
 
 To wed their necks to righteous Fate 
 Who love the Roman Pope ! 
 
THE STUDENT'S FAREWELL TO SUMMER 99 
 
 And blame the loons who gave the sway 
 
 To the mere polled majority, 
 With clamorous yells to overbray 
 
 The voice of grave authority. 
 
 And then, — why then, we'll go to bed, 
 
 And wake, above all sorrow 
 Of factious brawls to lift our head, 
 
 By faithful work to-morrow, 
 Work through long weeks of blustering storm, 
 
 And Winter's gloomy reign, 
 Till the great pulse of things grows warm, 
 
 And Nature lives again ; 
 
 And suns shall shine, and birds shall sing, 
 
 And odorous breezes blow, 
 And ferns uncurl their folded winsr 
 
 Where star-eyed flow'rets grow ; 
 And surly blasts shall cease to bray, 
 
 And stormy seas to roar 
 On Oban's warm sun-fronting bay, 
 
 And green Dunolly's shore. 
 
A SONG OF GOOD COUNSEL 
 
 (to young men) 
 
 German Air — ' Geniesst den Reitz des Lebens.' 
 
 BRAVE boys, would you live wisely, 
 To God and Nature true, 
 
 Hear me, and I precisely 
 Will tell you what to do. 
 
 This world's no place for weaving 
 Light webs of fancies grand, 
 
 But for firm will achieving 
 
 High purpose with strong hand. 
 
 If weaklings deem it cruel 
 That life so hard should be, 
 
 Deem thou all hard things fuel 
 For victories meant for thee ' 
 
A SONG OF GOOD COUNSEL 
 
 March on, and never weary, 
 With firm and steady pace ; 
 
 But like the lark be cheery, 
 And skyward turn thy face. 
 
 Who frets prolongs his sorrow, 
 Who fears makes strong his foe, 
 
 And double woe to-morrow 
 
 From golden dreams will flow. 
 
 Nor dream nor doubt, but stoutly 
 The task that nearest lies 
 
 Perform, and wait devoutly 
 On God, who helps the wise. 
 
 He helps no fools, and rightly 
 Lays vauntful sinners low, 
 
 Who hold the helm not tightly 
 When windy passions blow. 
 
 And evermore in danger, 
 
 With gleesome faith be strong ; 
 The devil remains a stranger 
 
 To breasts that teem with song. 
 
102 POEMS AND SONGS 
 
 And never in thy daring 
 Dare for thyself alone, 
 
 But with thy brother sharing 
 
 The good that's most thine own. 
 
 And own the God who sent thee 
 On life's wide sea to swim, 
 
 And this glad being lent thee 
 To live and work with Him. 
 
A SONG OF BACKGAMMON 
 
 Take my word for't, this game is not 
 
 A blind unreasoned rattle, 
 Where any fool with random shot 
 
 May gain a brainless battle ; 
 But 'tis a game that you must play 
 
 With all your wits about you. 
 Or for your folly sharply pay 
 
 When evil Fate shall flout you ! 
 
 Life too's a game, I tell you true, 
 
 Of mingled skill and chances, 
 Which each brave heart must play anew 
 
 With men and circumstances. 
 Tis Providence that throws the dice, 
 
 Our function not to choose them, 
 But with quick glance, and measure nice, 
 
 And venture bold to use them. 
 
104 POEMS AND SONGS 
 
 A game like that strategic game 
 
 Which makes the soldier's story, 
 Where chance does much for praise or blame, 
 
 But skill doth reap the glory. 
 You know your ground, you know your foe : 
 
 Advancing or retreating, 
 You choose the moment when the blow 
 
 Will give the bloodiest greeting. 
 
 Five points there be which you must know 
 
 This noble game to carry, 
 First make your own men forward go, 
 
 Then block your adversary ; 
 Then let no straggler loosely stand 
 
 Alone and unprotected, 
 But still be nigh with helping hand, 
 
 Where harm may be suspected. 
 
 And never pile your men with waste 
 
 Of supererogation, 
 But spread them well, adroitly placed 
 
 At each convenient station ; 
 And chiefly keep your chequer strong, 
 
 That, when with happy venture 
 
A SONG OF BACKGAMMON 105 
 
 You snap your foeman up, he long 
 May wait the chance to enter. 
 
 And now I've told you how to play 
 
 At life and at backgammon, 
 As true as ever in his day 
 
 Spake that Egyptian Ammon ; 
 And, if you use my rule aright, 
 
 In life you'll be a winner ; 
 If not, you'll die in woeful plight, 
 
 Like many an unwhipt sinner. 
 
A SONG FOR THE ROAD, AND A RULE 
 FOR THE LIFE 
 
 A SONG for the road, and a rule for the life, 
 
 Receive from a lusty old man, Tom ; 
 Fear God, and march on, and make war to the knife, 
 
 When the enemy crosses your plan, Tom. 
 For life's a campaign ; then foot it apace, 
 
 There are dangers enough in your track, Tom ; 
 Still keep a sharp out-look, and show a bold face, 
 Or the foe will be soon on your back, Tom ! 
 For this is true wisdom, I wish you to know, 
 Sail close to the wind when you tack, Tom ! 
 We live, while we live, by the pluck that we show, 
 And if we don't stand, we must flee from the foe, 
 And fall with a stab in the back, Tom ! 
 
 You see yon huge Ben that runs up to the sky, 
 So ruggedly grand and sublime, Tom ; 
 
A SONG FOR THE ROAD, AND RULE FOR LIFE 107 
 
 A staircase so steep, you think, would defy 
 The cat o' the mountain to climb, Tom ! 
 
 But, 'tis all a delusion — just wisely survey 
 
 With your eye, and then take it aslant, Tom, 
 
 And you'll find what they say, that you can't find a way, 
 Is a tissue of cowardly cant, Tom. 
 For this, etc. 
 
 The worst of all words in the language is — But, 
 
 For whatever you purpose or plan, Tom, 
 This weak monosyllable comes in to cut 
 
 The sinews that make you a man, Tom. 
 'Tis noble to dare, but not pleasant at all 
 
 A lion to meet, where you fare, Tom ; 
 It may suit you to ride, but a rider may fall, 
 
 So you sit and you rot in your chair, Tom. 
 For this, etc. 
 
 Some people's devotion delights in this notion 
 Of heaven, that when we get there, Tom, 
 
 We'll have nothing to do but to float in the blue, 
 And pipe a psalm tune in the air, Tom ! 
 
 If 'tis so in the sky, we shall know by and by, 
 But on earth 'tis much otherwise now, Tom, 
 
108 POEMS AND SONGS 
 
 Where the battle we fight brings a keener delight 
 Than the laurels we wear on the brow, Tom. 
 For this, etc. 
 
 The end of all living is simply to live, 
 
 Is what Aristotle would say, Tom ; 
 And form to the formless by labour to give 
 
 Is to live the most excellent way, Tom ! 
 A moth in the sunbeam may flutter an hour, 
 
 To flutter is all that it can, Tom ; 
 But to fashion great thoughts into deeds is the dower 
 
 God gave to high-reasoning man, Tom ! 
 For this, etc. 
 
 If you shrink from no danger where valour avails, 
 
 There's nothing can stand in your way, Tom ; 
 You may start, like stout Lincoln, a splitter of rails, 
 
 And be king of the people some day, Tom. 
 The Romans were lords of the sea and the land, 
 
 And what was the reason of that, Tom ? 
 At the word of command, they marched on sword in 
 hand, 
 
 And they laid all their enemies flat, Tom. 
 For this, etc. 
 
A SONG FOR THE ROAD, AND RULE FOR LIFE 109 
 
 My sermon is done — still rejoice in the toils 
 That the travel of life may attend, Tom. 
 Put foot after foot ; never number the miles ; 
 
 You will know when you come to the end, Tom ! 
 Fear God ; every atom takes rank at His call ; 
 
 For the world is no rope of sand, Tom ; 
 Link hangs upon link ; and 'tis profit to all 
 
 That each march at the word of command, Tom. 
 For this is true wisdom, I wish you to know, 
 Sail close to the wind when you tack, Tom ! 
 We live, while we live, by the pluck that we show, 
 And if we don't stand, we must flee from the foe, 
 And fall with a stab in the back, Tom ! 
 
BENEDICITE 
 
 German Air — ' Alles Schweige !' 
 
 Angels holy, 
 
 High and lowly, 
 Sing the praises of the Lord ! 
 Earth and sky, all living nature, 
 Man, the stamp of thy Creator, 
 Praise ye, praise ye, God the Lord ! 
 
 Sun and moon bright, 
 
 Night and noonlight, 
 Starry temples azure-floored, 
 Cloud and rain, and wild winds' madness 
 Sons of God that shout for gladness, 
 Praise ye, praise ye, God the Lord ! 
 
 Ocean hoary, 
 Tell his glory, 
 
BENEDICITE 
 
 Cliffs where tumbling seas have roared ! 
 Pulse of waters blithely beating, 
 Wave advancing, wave retreating, 
 Praise ye, praise ye, God the Lord ! 
 
 Rock and his^h land, 
 
 Wood and island, 
 Crag where eagle's pride hath soared, 
 Mighty mountains purple-breasted, 
 Peaks cloud-cleaving, snowy-crested, 
 Praise ye, praise ye, God the Lord, 
 
 Rolling river 
 
 Praise him ever, 
 From the mountain's deep vein poured ; 
 Silver fountain clearly gushing, 
 Troubled torrent madly rushing, 
 Praise ye, praise ye, God the Lord ! 
 
 Bond and free man, 
 
 Land and sea man, 
 Earth with peoples widely stored, 
 Woodman lone o'er prairies ample, 
 Full-voiced choir in costly temple, 
 Praise ye, praise ye, God the Lord ! 
 
U2 POEMS AND SONGS 
 
 Praise him ever, 
 
 Bounteous Giver ! 
 Praise him, father, friend, and Lord ! 
 Each glad soul its free course winging, 
 Each blithe voice its free song singing, 
 Praise the great and mighty Lord ! 
 
HYMN 
 
 Air— 'Belmont.' 
 
 O FOR a heart from self set free, 
 And doubt and fret, and care, 
 
 Light as a bird, instinct with glee, 
 That fans the breezy air ! 
 
 O for a mind whose virtue moulds 
 All sensuous fair display, 
 
 And, like a strong commander, holds 
 A world of thoughts in sway ! 
 
 O for an eye that's clear to see, 
 A hand that waits on Fate, 
 
 To pluck the ripe fruit from the tree, 
 And never comes too late ! 
 
 I 
 
1 14 POEMS AND SONGS 
 
 O for a life with firm-set root, 
 And breadth of leafy green, 
 
 And flush of blooming wealth, and fruit 
 That glows with mellow sheen ! 
 
 O for a death from sharp alarms 
 
 And bitter memories free : 
 A gentle death in God's own arms, 
 
 Whose dear Son died for me ! 
 
A SONG OF OLD AGE 
 
 SlNG me a song of old age, 
 
 When the blood no longer is boiling, 
 When heaviness drags the limbs, 
 
 And the arm is wearied with toiling. 
 
 Not to the blare of the trump, 
 
 Loud wars, and masterful slaughters ; 
 
 But sing me a song of sweet peace, 
 
 To the hum of low-murmuring waters. 
 
 Sing me a song where I sit, 
 
 Where the breath of summer is blowing, 
 And, dappled with vegetive gold, 
 
 The soft, green grass is growing. 
 
 Sing me a song on the skirt 
 
 Of the brown far-stretching mountain, 
 Where the birch-tree droops 
 
 O'er the trickling grace of the fountain ; 
 
u6 POEMS AND SONGS 
 
 Where roses, the white and the red, 
 
 Like happy sisters together, 
 Ramble up hill and down dale, 
 
 And spread their smiles to the weather. 
 
 Sing me a song of old age, 
 
 Not wildly and wantonly sweeping 
 Over the limits of sense, 
 
 With proud self-confident leaping ; 
 
 Not in a thunder-car 
 
 With Jove's red lightning flaring, 
 Measuring measureless space 
 
 With thoughts that revel in daring. 
 
 But sing me a song like the brook 
 That through the green lea wanders 
 
 From grassy bend to bend, 
 
 With lightly twined meanders ; 
 
 A song of homeliest things, 
 
 Familiar, fond, and common, 
 Wild flowers, eyes of children, 
 
 And smiles of gracious woman ; 
 
A SONG OF OLD AGE 
 
 Things that gently slide, 
 
 In hours of happy musing, 
 Into the home of thought 
 
 Without the pain of choosing. 
 
 Sing of the time when men 
 
 Looked forth on the young creation, 
 Young and fresh with wonder, and love, 
 
 And strong veneration ; 
 
 Feeling the might of the gods 
 
 Who with glory and terror confound us, 
 Weaving a mystical chain 
 
 Of sleepless miracles round us ; 
 
 Stirring our hearts with thoughts 
 
 That kinship claim with the Highest, 
 
 Laying us low with a word 
 
 When the voice goes forth — Thou diest ! 
 
 Sing me a song of the time 
 
 When hymns and songs were the teachers, 
 And sun, and moon, and stars 
 
 Were God's own bright-eyed preachers. 
 
nS POEMS AND SONGS 
 
 Better to worship the spheres 
 
 As they wheel their courses benignly 
 
 Than nothing in nature to own 
 
 That works with wisdom divinely. 
 
 Better to worship the streams 
 
 With bounty exuberant flowing, 
 
 Than toil in a blind machine 
 Nor love nor liberty knowing. 
 
 Sing me a song of repose 
 
 That delights in worship and wonder, 
 Feeling a God in the bloom 
 
 Of the flower, and the roll of the thunder. 
 
 Sing me a song of the Sabbath 
 
 When the cares of the hour are sleeping, 
 
 And toilsome mortals bright feast 
 Of hope for the future are keeping ; 
 
 A song of the general Church, 
 Where rich and poor together 
 
 Pray 'neath a gilded dome, 
 
 Or on slope of the purple heather. 
 
A SONG OF OLD AGE 119 
 
 There in memory mild 
 
 Let the patriarch families gather, 
 Circling with me the throne 
 
 Of the great all-bountiful Father. 
 
 Names of hoary renown 
 
 That blazon the roll of the ages, 
 Warriors, kings, and statesmen, 
 
 Poets, and prophets, and sages, 
 
 Men, the leaders of men, 
 
 The wise, the valiant-hearted, 
 Who marched in glory through life, 
 
 And in trails of glory departed. 
 
 These I would have while I live 
 
 For guidance and fellowship near me ; 
 
 These when I die with words 
 
 Of proved old wisdom to cheer me ! 
 
 Give me — oh, give me, dear God ! 
 
 Nor power, nor honour, nor riches, 
 Nor pomp and splendour of life, 
 
 That dazzles the crowd and bewitches : 
 
120 POEMS AND SONGS 
 
 But give me the words of the wise, 
 
 And the smiles of earth's beautiful daughters, 
 To weave me a song of old age 
 
 By the hum of low-murmuring waters. 
 
II 
 
 SONNETS 
 
RELIGION 
 
 I 
 
 WHAT is religion ? I will tell you what 
 
 I think it is : not blindly to disown 
 Thy reason, and to crouch and lay thee flat 
 
 Before a something terrible unknown ; 
 Not girt with bristling fence of marshalled creeds 
 
 To thunder bans from high-presumptuous throne, 
 Nor with the mumbled charm of counted beads 
 
 To bring down God, and make your will His own 
 But in God's face with reverent love to look 
 
 Here where it shines in sky and land and sea, 
 And, where a Prophet spake in holy book, 
 
 To hear his word, and take the truth to thee, 
 And hold it fast, and tread earth's lowly sod 
 With lofty soul, as one that walks with God. 
 
124 SONNETS 
 
 II 
 
 What is religion ? Good my friend, as lust 
 
 Tricked out like love, drags white souls through 
 the mire, 
 
 Hateful, that heaven's light-winged ethereal fire 
 Dimmed with dun smoke is blurred, or choked with 
 
 dust ; 
 And as sometimes, where men are drunk with wine, 
 
 At the stale ending of a sumptuous feast, 
 
 Who more than man was mighty, less than beast 
 Lies reft of reason, bedded with the swine : 
 
 Even so religion, best of things when good, 
 When bad is worst. To own His sovereign law, 
 
 Who reins the spheres will brace thy manful mood ; 
 But, if thou kiss the sod in abject awe, 
 
 And nurse crude dreams in fearful fancy's school. 
 
 Religion is a ghost, and thou a fool. 
 
SONNETS 1 2s 
 
 THE TRINITY 
 
 If there be three in one and one in three 
 
 In the Divine perfection, then may Man, 
 Made in God's image, with wise reverence see 
 
 Some mirrored hint of this tri-unal plan 
 In his small type of being ; and I find 
 
 Three forces which to blissful issue lead, 
 In all the strivings of our human kind, 
 
 To spur their progress, or to help their need. 
 First stands the THOUGHT, the father- force which 
 brings 
 
 Shape from the shapeless with imperial sway, 
 Then comes the WORD, born of the Thought, which 
 wings 
 
 Far East, far West, its proud prophetic way ; 
 And then the Spirit that arms with trenchant power 
 The elect man, whose DEED commands the hour. 
 
[26 SONNETS 
 
 CHRIST AND CHRISTENDOM 
 
 If Jesus came, and walked the Earth to-morrow, 
 
 What would He say to many things we do 
 Here in this England, where His name we borrow 
 
 To test the false coin, and to stamp the true ? 
 What would He say to our blown speculations, 
 
 Slowness to love, and hot haste to be rich, 
 Gilded parades, self-trumpeting ovations, 
 
 Folly high-throned, and wisdom in the ditch ? 
 What to our churches, catechisms, creeds, 
 
 That murder peace, and set the world aflame, 
 Begodded wafers, crosses, relics, beads, 
 
 Sense conjured into nonsense in God's name ? 
 I know not ; but I know well who would say, 
 ' This Jew suits not the England of to-day ! ' 
 
SONNETS 127 
 
 ATHEISTIC SCIENTISTS 
 
 There is a sort of men whose faith is all 
 
 In their five fingers, and what fingering brings, 
 With all beyond of wondrous great and small, 
 
 Unnamed, uncounted in their tale of things ; 
 A race of blinkards, who peruse the case 
 
 And shell of life, but feel no soul behind, 
 And in the marshalled world can find a place 
 
 For all things, only not the marshalling Mind. 
 'Tis strange, 'tis sad ; and yet why blame the mole 
 
 For channelling earth ? — such earthy things are 
 they. 
 
 E'en let them muster forth in blank array, 
 Frames with no pictures, pictures with no soul, 
 
 I, while this daedal dome o'erspans the sod, 
 
 Will own the builder's hand, and worship God. 
 
128 SONNETS 
 
 CRITICISM 
 
 M// Kplvere Iva fxrj Kpidrjre. 
 
 IF you are young, and wish to air your pinion ; 
 
 If you know little and would seem to know 
 Much : if to listen to your crude opinion, 
 
 Echoed tenfold where every wind may blow. 
 Tickles your ears, and lends stilts to your pride, 
 
 Then be a critic : you might gain a penny 
 In some less honest way ; and you will guide 
 
 At your blind will the blind, unthinking many. 
 But, would you cherish in your faithful breast 
 
 The seed of truth, and by that virtue grow 
 To manhood's bravest stature with the best, 
 
 Judge not : but look with love and reverence low 
 Just homage of the lesser to the greater — 
 On God's two-fronted image — Life and Nature ! 
 
SONNETS 129 
 
 SUBJECTIVE AND OBJECTIVE. 
 
 THERE is a sort of men that open wide 
 
 The portals of their soul to Nature's lessons ; 
 And in their audience-chamber dwells the pride 
 
 Of things extern in finely-chased impressions. 
 Another sort I know, that, like a tide, 
 
 Roll on with swelling breast, and towering crest, 
 And with a tyrannous bounty override 
 
 All base confronters. Well ; which sort is best ? 
 Each kind is good ; for both God hath his use, 
 
 Who takes for stepping-stones, or wields as tools 
 
 The schemes of sages, and the dreams of fools ; 
 Opposing forces to one end conduce ; 
 
 But they to God most kinship do approve, 
 Who see things as they are, and see all things with 
 love. 1 
 
 1 What Goethe said of the Frau von Stein. 
 
 K 
 
SONNETS 
 
 TO SCOTCH HERESY-HUNTERS 
 
 1 No ! you must change your tactics; you may never 
 Make full-grown breasts breathe free in baby-bonds ; 
 
 The stream of thinking flows on like a river, 
 And you would dam it up in village ponds ! 
 
 Good friends, take my advice, I love you well ; 
 Creeds did their duty bravely in their day ; 
 
 Primers that taught the clever boy to spell, 
 Who now looks up, and in free, manly way 
 
 Explores his Bible. Why did Luther fling 
 His ban against the Pope and his misdeeds, 
 If private judgment must be caged in creeds, 
 
 Each free word gagged, and dipt each upward wing, 
 And you with churchly ban, and pulpit drum, 
 Strike Bible-readers blind and prophets dumb ! 
 
SONNETS 131 
 
 THE ORIGIN OF EVIL 
 
 The origin of Evil ? — good my friend, 
 Ask him who helps my vegetable needs, 
 The gardener there, the origin of weeds ; 
 
 He'll turn about and stare to comprehend 
 
 What thing you mean. The buds, he deems, are 
 there, 
 
 No doubt with very proper right to grow ; 
 And he with them has equal right to care 
 
 For flowery fragrance, and for blooming show. 
 This man is wise ; and you, what thing are you ? 
 
 A thing of idle dreams and fancies crude : 
 
 Evil exists that you may make it good, 
 
 Else had the saints on earth scant work to do. 
 
 What would you have ? in Paradise no doubt 
 
 Weeds grandly grew, and Adam plucked them out. 
 
i 3 2 SONNETS 
 
 THE ORIGIN OF EVIL 
 
 The origin of Evil ? — good my friend, 
 
 To ask such questions proves thee far from wise ; 
 
 No mightiest man that walks beneath the skies 
 Hath plumb to measure, or device to mend 
 The vasty universe. If thou would'st know 
 
 Whence Evil comes, say first what evil means, 
 
 And if this pictured pomp of shifting scenes 
 Which men call life, a many-mingling show, 
 
 Was made for your mere pleasure or for mine. 
 Cease foolish questions ; here for me and you 
 Close by our door is fruitful work to do ; 
 
 Accept the task, and own the work divine ; 
 Sow, plant, or build, drain fields or cleave the clod, 
 But spend no breath in arguing with God. 
 
SONNETS 133 
 
 6EAH, 6EAO MANHNAI 
 
 (To Mrs. J. W.) 
 
 ' / will, I will be mad! ' so some one cried, 
 
 And wisely, if with the right kind of madness ; 
 But not all surging seas are safe to ride, 
 
 And some ripe fruits rot quickly into badness. 
 Some mad with women loved a fair she-devil, 
 
 Some mad with God to stocks and stones did 
 bend, 
 Some mad with learning span their brains in drivel, 
 
 Some mad with wine have murdered their best 
 friend. 
 But art thou mad, as one I know, to fling 
 
 Bounties and blessings with wide arms abroad, 
 To lift the low, and teach the sad to sing, 
 
 And bring the outcast sinner back to God, 
 Such madness, like the rich redundant Nile, 
 The more it floods the banks, the more makes fat the 
 
 soil. 
 
134 SONNETS 
 
 WAR 
 
 (To a Quaker. ) 
 
 FRIEND, God has many sides. Deem not that war 
 
 Which throws the bloody dice for priests and kings 
 Is Devil-born or Devil-sent, to mar 
 
 The fair-proportioned harmony of things. 
 All things are full of war ; not only man, 
 
 But earth and air and waters in their flowing 
 Have their rude jostlings, which disturb the plan 
 
 That peaceful souls would map out for their going. 
 For why ? The strife of battling forces strains 
 
 Each virtue to its top of hardihood ; 
 The weaker falls ; more strength the stronger gains, 
 
 And fruitful fatness grows from fields of blood. 
 So mighty trees from wrestling with the storms, 
 Rise to more pride, and spread their giant arms. 
 
SONNETS 135 
 
 OUTSIDE AND INSIDE 
 
 (A Sketch from High Life. ) 
 
 BEHOLD this mansion how proud-perched it stands 
 Mid old ancestral woods and grassy meads, 
 And cradled lakelets, where the sea-gull breeds, 
 
 And leafy prospect o'er far seas and lands ; 
 
 And, while thine eye feasts on this lordly scene, 
 Belike the thought doth through thy fancy fare, 
 ' How happy I, had I been born the heir 
 
 To this proud palace, and this broad demesne ! ' 
 
 Foolish ! for hear ; behind this goodly show 
 
 Vice holds her conclave, Folly keeps her school ; 
 
 Pride piles the top stone ; Ruin digs below ; 
 The lord's a gambler, and his mate a fool ; 
 
 The son lies tremulous with the drunkard's doom, 
 
 The daughter last night ran off with the groom. 
 
136 SONNETS 
 
 SICKNESS AND RECOVERY 
 
 I. — Sickness. 
 
 As when a sea-gull, customed long to sweep 
 
 With breezy range from shimmering sea to sea, 
 
 In revelry of wafture fair and free, 
 O'er the broad bosom of the boundless deep ; 
 Him now an idle boy, after a storm, 
 
 Hath caught, and pruned his wing, and closely 
 barred 
 
 All outlet from the farmer's narrow yard, 
 Where he must hop about from worm to worm, 
 A sorry sight to see. So me, once king 
 
 Of thoughts far-stretching, and far-wandering ways, 
 Mischance hath caught, and dipt my venturous wing, 
 
 And chained me to a round of deedless days, 
 With all life's organ-hymns of high desire 
 Sunk to the creakin^s of a broken Ivre ! 
 
SICKNESS AND RECOVERY 137 
 
 II.— Recovery. 
 
 There now, thou faithless heart, learn once again 
 To doubt thyself, and put thy trust in GOD, 
 Whose virtue breathes live breath into the clod, 
 
 And with a touch lures forth a golden vein 
 
 Of joy from sadness ! When one dismal blot 
 Mars the blue sky, and wraps the day in night, 
 
 Is the sun dead, for that thy little spot 
 
 Glooms for an hour, uncheered by kindly light ? 
 
 O fool ! fool ! fool ! as soon may craft of man 
 Dry up the swelling founts that richly pour 
 
 From the broad flanks of Nevis Ben, as span 
 
 The breadth of blessing God doth keep in store 
 
 For whom He loves. His nature is to give, 
 
 Thine to receive ; this truth believe, and live. 
 
138 SONNETS 
 
 ROBERT BURNS 
 
 (The bright side ; on seeing his statue recently erected on the 
 Thames Embankment, London.) 
 
 WELL done, my little Scotland ! out of five 
 
 In statued state that look forth on the Thames, 1 
 Thou countest two in London's mighty hive, 
 
 Conspicuous planted with her noblest names. 
 Oxford breeds scholars, Scotland thinkers : so 
 
 Learning from logic borrowed curious skill, 
 And grateful Thames received in marble show 
 
 With stamp from Oxford, subtle-thoughted Mill. 
 
 1 Besides Bums, John Stuart Mill, Tyndall, the translator of the 
 Bible, Brunelle, the engineer of the Thames Tunnel, and Raikes, the 
 founder of the great evangelical organism of Sabbath schools. The 
 variety of types represented in this marble pentarchy is highly character- 
 istic of the Catholicity of feeling bred in such an omnifarious capital as 
 London ; and it certainly must be looked on as one of the greatest com- 
 pliments ever paid to the Scottish intellect, that the same writer should 
 receive honour in England both as a logical authority in the court of 
 academic honours, and as a political philosopher in the streets of the 
 busy metropolis. 
 
ROBERT BURNS 139 
 
 And now another Scot, strong, fiery-souled, 
 
 Finds honoured station on this famous strand, 
 
 Whose soulful song with swelling virtue rolled 
 From heart to heart to each remotest land, 
 
 And every Grace bowed low, and Phoebus smiled 
 
 Where unschooled Nature led her lusty child. 
 
 II 
 
 (The dark side ; on making a careful study of the Life of Burns.) 
 
 Poor Burns ! I may not sing a song to thee, 
 
 For tears creep o'er me, when I ope thy book, 
 To think what jars of sorrow marred thy glee, 
 
 What fogs of folly dimmed thy starry look ! 
 Not mine to weigh thy sin, or sound thy shame, 
 
 But I must pity where I cannot praise ; 
 No wash of smooth-lipped words can wipe the blame 
 
 Thine own confession heaped upon thy ways. 
 Poor child of whim, with wide-dispredden sails 
 
 Unballasted, unpiloted, thou gave 
 Thy plunging bark, the sport of every gale, 
 
 To drift at random o'er the treacherous wave ; 
 Nor knew to shape thy course, and hold thy plan, 
 And show how much of God may dwell in Man ! 
 
i 4 o SONNETS 
 
 CARLYLE 
 
 Thou wert a Titan, but a Titan tossed 
 
 With wild tumultuous heavings in thy breast, 
 And fancy-fevered, and cool judgment lost 
 
 In mighty maelstroms of divine unrest. 
 What souls were drugged with doubt in sceptic time 
 
 Thy cry disturbed into believing life, 
 And fools that raved in prose or writhed in rhyme 
 
 Were sharply surgeoned by thy needful knife : 
 But, if there were who in this storm of things 
 
 Sighed for sweet calm, and in this dark for light, 
 And in this jar for the wise Muse that sings 
 
 All wrong into the ordered ranks of right, 
 They thanked not thee, who didst assault their brain 
 With thunder-claps and water-spouts for rain. 
 
SONNETS 141 
 
 THE LATE REV. DR. NORMAN MACLEOD 
 
 (Written on reading his life by the Rev. Dr. Donald Macleod, 
 Glasgow.) 
 
 As when a man, a weary-footed wight, 
 
 Tramping long leagues of waste and wintry road, 
 Sudden uplooks, and recreates his sight 
 
 With novel prospect, bursting bright and broad, 
 Of yellow field, and green soft-gleaming glen, 
 
 And rolling stream, and wide rich-waving wood, 
 And purple brae, and blue embosomed Ben, 
 
 And shining crest of laughter-loving flood : 
 So I, lean traveller, through gray land of books, 
 
 Where weeds are rank, and foodful fruits are few, 
 With ampler thought uprose and brighter looks, 
 
 When thy brave life, great teacher, flashed in view ; 
 And launched my skiff, and caught a gale from thee, 
 Like a young sailor on a broad blue sea ! 
 
i 4 2 SONNETS 
 
 SYDNEY DOBELL 
 
 (On hearing of his death. ) 
 
 AND thou too gone ! One more bright soul away 
 
 To swell the mighty sleepers 'neath the sod. 
 One less to honour and to love, and say, 
 
 Who lives with thee doth live half-way to God. 
 My chaste-souled Sydney ! Thou wert carved too fine 
 
 For coarse observance of the general eye : 
 But who might look into thy soul's fair shrine 
 
 Saw bright gods there, and felt their presence nigh. 
 Oh, if we owe warm thanks to Heaven, 'tis when 
 
 In the slow progress of the struggling years 
 Our touch is blessed to feel the pulse of men 
 
 Who walk in love and light above their peers 
 White-robed, and forward point with guiding hand, 
 Breathing a heaven around them where they stand. 
 
SONNETS 143 
 
 CHINESE GORDON 
 
 ' I WANT a hero ' — well, that wish is wise ; 
 
 Who hath no hero lives not near to God ; 
 For heroes are the steps by which we rise 
 
 To reach His hand who lifts us from the sod. 
 I'll give you one. You've heard of Chinese Gordon, 
 
 Who laid the hot-brained pig-tail rebel low, 
 Strong, shod with peace or with sharp-bladed sword on, 
 
 To gain an ally or to crush a foe, 
 
 And reap respect from both. How came it so ? 
 He used no magic, and he owned no spell, 
 
 But with keen glance, strong will, and weighty blow, 
 Did one thing at a time, and did it well ; 
 
 And sought no praise from men, as in God's eye, 
 
 Nobly to live content or nobly die. 
 
144 SONNETS 
 
 CHINESE GORDON 
 
 II 
 
 SOME men live near to God, as my right arm 
 Is near to me ; and thus they walk about 
 
 Mailed in full proof of faith, and bear a charm 
 That mocks at fear, and bars the door on doubt, 
 
 And dares the impossible. So Gordon, thou, 
 Through the hot stir of this distracted time, 
 
 Dost hold thy course, a flaming witness how, 
 To do and dare, and make our lives sublime 
 
 As God's campaigners. What live we for but this, 
 Into the sour to breathe the soul of sweetness, 
 The stunted growth to rear to fair completeness, 
 
 Drown sneers in smiles, kill hatred with a kiss, 
 And to the sandy waste bequeath the fame 
 That the grass grew behind us where we came ! 
 
SONNETS 145 
 
 ALEXANDER PEDEN 
 
 (Written at his grave under the twin thorn trees, Cumnock.) 
 
 Here let me stand beneath the sacred shade 
 
 Of these twin thorns that shield a prophet's bones ! 
 I have stood high on monumental stones, 
 
 Where Memphian kings august made grand parade, 
 
 Not moved as here. My loves are with the braves 
 Who stand erect for freedom and for right, 
 When rampant pride, harsh law, and sworded might 
 
 Would crush out thought, and stamp all men for 
 slaves ; 
 
 And such was Peden. In the day when kings 
 Claimed right divine to murder honest men, 
 
 And venal bishops flapped their vulture wings 
 
 O'er God's dear saints, hounded from glen to glen, 
 
 Peden stood firm ; and to his faith then shown 
 
 We owe that now we call our souls our own. 
 
i 4 6 SONNETS 
 
 TO THE RIGHT HONOURABLE THE 
 BARONESS BURDETT COUTTS 
 
 To gather gold is a wide-customed game, 
 
 To Scot, or Greek, or subtle Hebrew free ; 
 But how to spend it, and to gather fame 
 
 By spending, Angela, we learn from thee. 
 God is a Giver ; and most like to God 
 
 Whose heart doth lend his hand most large employ ; 
 Even as the Sun who flings his light abroad, 
 
 Far East, far West, and where he shines is joy. 
 Good Lady, as I love the Sun's blest ray, 
 
 So I love thee, so bland, benign, and clear, 
 And of pure sweetness redolent, like the May 
 
 Breathing rich essence of the flowery year ; 
 And all the good within me owns thy sway, 
 
 And all the bad is not, when thou art near ! 
 
SONNETS 147 
 
 TO THE RIGHT HONOURABLE THE EARL 
 OF ROSEBERY 
 
 (On hearing his admirable Rectorial Address on Scottish patriotism.) 
 
 WELL, here at last God sends a Lord who dares 
 
 To be a Scot, and knows to be a man, 
 And on broad breast of honour proudly wears 
 
 The bristling badge that stamps the Scottish clan. 
 There are who live on Scottish ground ashamed 
 
 Of their Scotch blood, and with light foreign wares 
 Tinker their lack-wit brains, politely tamed 
 
 To hold the skirt up of a type not theirs 
 In servile sequence. Not so this brave Lord 
 
 Hangs from his country and his kinship loose, 
 But stands where God him planted, with bright sword 
 
 In hand, like Knox, for native Scottish use, 
 And Renwick, high-souled boy, whose noble crime 
 Rang out the reign of lies, an hour before the time. 1 
 
 1 James Renwick, the last of the illustrious band of Scottish 
 martyrs and patriots, suffered execution at [the Grassmarket of Edin- 
 burgh on the 17th February 1688, at the early age of 26 years. To this 
 noble army of martyrs, more than to any other cause — however some 
 persons may seem willing to forget it — Scotland owes the passion for 
 ecclesiastical and political freedom, which our English politicians, made 
 of less stubborn materials, have sometimes [found it difficult to com- 
 prehend. 
 
[48 SONNETS 
 
 DEAN RAMSAY 
 
 (late cf St. John's, Edinburgh, on the Publication of the Twentieth 
 Edition of his book, Reminiscences of Scottish Life and Character.} 
 
 Hail! wreathed in smiles, thou genial book! and hail 
 
 Who wove thy web of bright and various hue, 
 The wise old man, who gleaned the social tale 
 
 And thoughtful jest and roguish whim that grew 
 Freely on Scotland's soil, when Scotland knew 
 
 To be herself, nor lusted to assume 
 
 Smooth English ways — that they might live and 
 bloom 
 With freshness, ever old and ever new, 
 
 In human hearts. Thrice happy he who knows 
 With sportive light the cloudy thought to clear, 
 
 And round his head the playful halo throws 
 That plucks the terror from the front severe : 
 
 Such grace was thine, and such thy gracious part, 
 Thou wise old Scottish man of large and lovincr heart. 
 
SONNETS 149 
 
 DR. WALTER SMITH 
 
 (On hearing him preach a sermon on Isaiah xi. 13, applied to the 
 relations of Great Britain and Ireland.) 
 
 Thank God ! here comes at last a man who knows 
 
 What Bible means ; not one who speaks on Sunday 
 What serves the hour, as men don Sunday clothes, 
 
 But bravely leaps into the march of Monday 
 With Sunday texts. Deem'st thou the Saviour meant 
 
 To brew weak gospel for a sickly nation 
 Dreaming of Heaven, when groaning Earth up sent 
 
 A cry for swift and sharp regeneration ? 
 Not so ; believe His spoken word : I came, 
 
 Not peace to give my people, but a sword ; 
 Love may not league with Power enthroned on shame, 
 
 Nor Truth shake hands with falsehood most ab- 
 horred ; 
 My Truth invades the world, and in my creed 
 Each word walks forth in mail, and means a deed. 
 
150 SONNETS 
 
 ROBERT LEE 
 
 (An accomplished Edinburgh clergyman and Professor of Biblical Criti- 
 cism, who was put under ban by the General Assembly for his 
 defence of the freedom of Ritual in the Scottish Church.) 
 
 Prophets are few ; and these so few, oh shame ! 
 When they are here, we vex with wordy wars, 
 Heap them with lies, grave their fair front with 
 scars, 
 And lay them low in death, bleeding with blame, 
 And gashed with rude reproach. Such fate was thine, 
 Far-thoughted Lee, above thy people wise, 
 Who didst o'ershoot the range of vulgar eyes, 
 And with thy life didst pay the noble fine 
 Which wisdom pays, when folly acts the lord. 
 
 We wept ; but now 'neath a disclouded sky, 
 Cleared by thy martyr death, free praise is poured. 
 Twas meet that for the people one should die ; 
 1 )c.ith smothers hate ; and, when the wise man dies, 
 Even fools begin to dream of being wise. 
 
SONNETS 151 
 
 LONDON 
 
 If thou art one grown big in home conceit, 
 
 A village oracle, a parish god, 
 Where every dangler in the sleepy street 
 
 Reflects thy fancies and subserves thy nod, 
 Cease with thy mirrored self well pleased to dwell ; 
 
 Come forth, and prove thy mettle in the strife, 
 And let huge London's billowy tumult tell 
 
 The unvalued cheapness of thy twinkling life ! 
 Titanic London ! wonder of the world, 
 
 Thyself a world, and, like the world, a flow 
 Of powers with such vortiginous vastness whirled 
 
 Seems a blind rush, sans law, sans rule ; but no ! 
 The mighty mass throbs with one common soul, 
 And unseen gods inform the heaving whole. 
 
152 SONNETS 
 
 ENGLAND 
 
 (Lires written on returning from a tour in Italy.) 
 
 All hail, brave land of cloud, and mist, and smoke, 
 
 England with all thy blots I love thee well, 
 For thou hast thews of iron, heart of oak, 
 
 And mettle to defy all fiends in hell ; 
 Grand drift of Time ; the traffic of old Tyre, 
 
 The soldier-strength, the statesman-craft of Rome, 
 Fine Greekish lore, and sacred Hebrew fire, 
 
 'Neath thy gray sky have found a friendly home. 
 Let others train the peach, and trim the vine, 
 
 And breathe more sweetly more luxurious air ; 
 
 Greatly to plan, and gallantly to dare, 
 And yoke harsh Nature to thy car be thine ! 
 
 Thank God, who, for defect of gentler charm, 
 
 Gave thee strong brain, firm will, and weighty arm ! 
 
SONNETS 153 
 
 THE SAVOY 
 
 WISE was Charles Lamb, who in the busy Strand 
 
 Saw the full tide of life and wept for joy, 
 Nor less whose quiet thought can understand 
 
 To sum the ages in the still Savoy, 
 As I sit here, and muse the hours away, 
 
 And call up placid ghosts of mighty men, 
 Who made a thunderous tumult in their day, 
 
 And spoke brave words that shook big kingdoms 
 then ; 
 Where are they now ? I'd give a thousand pound 
 
 To hold short parley with that John of Gaunt, 
 
 Or with Dan Chaucer weave an old Romaunt, 
 Or rhyme with Douglas in this hallowed ground ; 
 
 It may not be ; but what they did I know ; 
 
 They cleared the soil, and sowed the seed ; we grow. 
 
154 SONNETS 
 
 TO HIS GRACE THE DUKE OF ARGYLL 
 
 On the fair marge of the far-winding flood 
 
 Rises a stately castellated pile, 
 Fenced by huge Bens, and with rich wealth of wood 
 
 Festooned and fringed for many a rambling mile : 
 It is the palace-home of the Argyll : 
 
 Pass it not lightly by : it wears a name 
 Shall warm the heart of grateful Scotland, while 
 
 Knox and the Bruce shall swell the trump of fame. 
 Happy the nation which, when kings conspire 
 
 To quench the flame they should be proud to fan, 
 Hath high-souled leaders strong to scorn the hire 
 
 That tempts the courtier to betray the man : 
 Leaders like those who fathered thine and thee, 
 Thou wise Argyll, whose blood made Scotland free ! l 
 
 1 Archibald Campbell, first Marquis of Argyll, who put the crown 
 on the head of Charles II. in the year 1651, and ten years afterwards 
 was executed by the ungrateful recipient of his loyal devotion. 
 
SONNETS 155 
 
 CLAPHAM 
 
 BRIGHT be thy greenery, and sweet thy grass, 
 
 Fair-memoried Clapham ! for there lived in thee, 
 Far from the selfish strife of class with class, 
 
 A pure white-vested gospel company, 
 Who brewed rich brewst of Christian love to soothe 
 
 The soreness of the time. The world will still 
 Paint Nature's face, and bastardise the truth 
 
 With blazoned lies and meretricious skill ; 
 But, while they fed their gaze with gilded shows, 
 
 Ye ploughed and delved, and sowed the loamy lea 
 With germing seed that gentle-bladed grows 
 
 Into the branchy firmness of a tree 
 Dropping rich fruit, from whose rare fulness Fame 
 Weaves leafy crowns to grace each honoured name. 
 
156 SONNETS 
 
 LALEHAM 
 
 (An academy for young ladies at Clapham, under the able 
 superintendence of Miss Pipe.) 
 
 BEAUTIFUL Laleham ! of most lovely things 
 
 Named with few lovelier, and of things most pure 
 
 With purest ; angels, might they drop their wings, 
 And live as earth-born men on earth, be sure, 
 
 Would find meet home and entertainment here, 
 With health and innocence, and joy and beauty, 
 
 And love and chaste regard, and godly cheer 
 To oil the wheels of gently-driving duty. 
 
 Oh ! if there be who on the barren waste 
 Of speculation feed, or through the gray 
 Routine of business fret from day to day, 
 
 For such there's balm in Laleham, here to taste 
 
 From fresh young lives rare wealth of easy graces, 
 Bright eyes, warm hearts, smooth brows, and 
 shining faces. 
 
SONNETS 157 
 
 TAYMOUTH CASTLE 
 
 A PIECE of England, ramparted around 
 
 With strength of Highland Ben and heather brae, 
 
 Art thou, fair Taymouth, with thy long array 
 Of stately trees and stretch of grassy ground, 
 
 Soft with ancestral moss, and thy fair flow 
 Of the clear amber stream in winding reaches, 
 That laves the roots of smooth wide -branching 
 beeches, 
 
 With swirl of waters murmuring deep and low. 
 Who lauds not these is blind ; but chiefly I 
 
 Would praise the noble lady of the land, 
 Who, strong in love and fruitful energy, 
 
 With genial blandness tempers high command, 
 And holds all hearts with gently-powerful sway, 
 Like the mild sun that rules the blooming May. 
 
i 5 8 SONNETS 
 
 TO HER GRACE THE DUCHESS OF 
 SUTHERLAND 
 
 (A reminiscence of iSth September 1881 in Dunrobin Castle.) 
 
 FAREWELL, Dunrobin, with thy castled towers, 
 And thy majestic sweep of sounding seas, 
 And stout old pines which from the unkindly breeze 
 
 Shield the bright vermeil of thy gardened flowers ! 
 
 And farewell thou, lord of this princely home, 
 Who not light pleasure made thy fleeting good, 
 But with rich life to sow the solitude, 
 
 And from the waste redeem the fruitful loam. 
 
 But chiefly thou, fair lady, who dost breathe 
 
 Sweet breath of piety through these ducal halls, 
 
 And with rare gospel blossoms dost enwreathc 
 The stately splendour of the blazoned walls ; 
 
 Farewell, and where thou goest, dwell with Thee 
 
 God's peace, as thy fair presence dwells with me ! 
 
SONNETS 
 
 159 
 
 BONSKEID 
 
 (The residence of George Freeland Barbour, Esq., near Killiecrankie.) 
 
 What scene is here ? O come and see and look, 
 
 And feed upon the glory of the land ! 
 Here God speaks forth His will, not in a book, 
 
 The cold gray track of a once living hand, 
 But in a sea of growth that overflows 
 
 The soul with wonder. Wealth of birchen tresses 
 Spread with diffusive leafy grace that knows 
 
 No limit to its wandering wildernesses 
 Of vegetive life. Poor man must count his gains ; 
 
 God knows no losses, hath no name for death ; 
 
 What we call death is but the march of breath 
 To other bloods to course in other veins ; 
 
 Nature scorns check, and from the pruning-knife 
 
 Rises more bold to more triumphant life. 
 
i6o SONNETS 
 
 LOCH BAA 
 
 (A beautiful lake in the centre of Mull, where his Grace of Argyll 
 has a shooting lodge, the summer residence of Dr. W. dimming, 
 Kinellan, Edinburgh.) 
 
 Farewell, Loch Baa, where oft in thoughtful mood 
 Well -pleased I mused in light-wing'd summer 
 
 hours, 
 Drinking in virtue from the breezy powers, 
 
 That swept thy soft green slopes, and curled thy flood ; 
 
 And oft-time clomb thy leafy-skirted braes, 
 Cheered by shrill pipings of the plumy clan, 
 And from the home of snowy ptarmigan 
 
 Surveyed the \\ r orld of Bens with glad amaze ; 
 Nor in the white cot failed the genial lord 
 
 Who freely poured the brightly-bubbling wine, 
 And with rare finny capture spread the board ; 
 
 Whose praise shall live, my friend of brow benign, 
 Whose heart with fretful thought was never stirred, 
 Nor his tongue tainted with one loveless word. 
 
SONNETS 161 
 
 ABSENTEE PROPRIETORS 
 
 Who owns these ample hills ? — a lord who lives 
 
 Ten months in London, and in Scotland two ; 
 O'er the wide moors, with gun in hand, he drives ; 
 
 And, Scotland, this is all he knows of you ! 
 Your tongue, your thoughts, your soul are strange to 
 him ; 
 
 Your faith, your courage, and your patience true, 
 Touch him as near as when, with hasty limb, 
 
 He brushes from his boot the mountain dew. 
 Your sweatful cottar plodding on the hill, 
 
 Your sober church, your priestless sacraments, 
 He loveth not, who loveth these — to kill 
 
 The guarded game, and swell the squandered rents. 
 These be thy masters, Scotland ! — these the men 
 Who make thy people vanish from the glen ! 
 
 M 
 
1 62 SOAW/r/W 
 
 BEN MUICDUIBHE 
 
 O'ER broad Muicduibhe sweeps the keen cold blast, 
 Far whirrs the snow-bred, white-winged ptarmigan, 
 Sheer sink the cliffs to dark Loch Etagan, 
 
 And all the hill with shattered rock lies waste. 
 
 Here brew ship-foundering storms their force divine, 
 Here gush the fountains of wild-flooding rivers ; 
 Here the strong thunder frames the bolt that 
 shivers 
 
 The giant strength of the old twisted pine. 
 
 Yet, even here, on the bare waterless brow 
 Of granite ruin, I found a purple flower, 
 
 A delicate flower, as fair as aught, I trow, 
 That toys with zephyrs in my lady's bower. 
 
 So Nature blends her powers ; and he is wise 
 
 Who to his strength no gentlest grace denies. 
 
SONNETS 163 
 
 VENICE 
 
 City of palaces, Venice, once enthroned 
 
 Secure, a queen mid fence of flashing waters, 
 Whom East and West with rival homage owned, 
 
 A wealthy mother with fair trooping daughters, 
 What art thou now ? Thy walls are gray and old, 
 
 In thy lone halls the spider weaves his woof, 
 A leprous crust creeps o'er thy house of gold, 
 
 And the cold rain drips through thy pictured roof. 
 The frequent ringing of thy churchly bells 
 
 Proclaims a faith but half-believed by few ; 
 Thy palaces are trimmed into hotels, 
 
 And travelling strangers, a vague-wondering crew, 
 Noting thy stones, with guide-book in their hand, 
 Leave half the wealth that lingers in the land. 
 
1 64 SONNETS 
 
 LORD BYRON AND THE ARMENIAN 
 CONVENT 
 
 And lived he here ? And could this sweet green isle 
 
 Volcanic stuff to his hot heart afford, 
 That he might nurse his wrath, and vent his bile 
 
 On gods and men, this proud, mistempered lord ? 
 Alas ! poor lord, to this soft leafy nest, 
 
 Where only pure and heavenly thoughts should 
 dwell, 
 He brought, and bore and cherished in his breast, 
 
 A home-bred devil, and a native hell. 
 Unhappy lord ! If this be genius, then 
 
 Grant me, O God, a Muse with sober sweep, 
 That I may eat and drink with common men, 
 
 Joy with their joys, and with their weeping weep : 
 Better to chirp mild loves in lowly bower, 
 Than soar through stormy skies, with hatred for my 
 dower. 
 
Ill 
 
 HISTORICAL BALLADS 
 
ANCRUM MOOR 
 
 A HISTORICAL BALLAD 
 
 King Henry was a rampant loon, 
 No Turk more bold than he 
 
 To tread the land with iron shoon 
 And tramp with royal glee. 
 
 God made him king of England ; there 
 
 His royal lust had scope 
 Tightly to hold beneath his thumb 
 
 People and peer and Pope. 
 
 And bishops' craft and lawyers' craft 
 Were cobwebs light to him, 
 
 And law and right were blown like chaff 
 Before his lordly whim. 
 
168 HISTORICAL BALLADS 
 
 And many a head of saint and sage 
 
 In ghastly death lay lou r , 
 That never a man on English ground 
 
 Might say King Henry no. 
 
 Now he would swallow Scotland too 
 
 To glut his kingly maw, 
 And sent his ships, two hundred sail, 
 
 Bewest North Berwick Law. 
 
 And he hath sworn by force to weld 
 
 Two kingdoms into one, 
 When Scotland's Queen with Scotland's rights, 
 
 Is wed to England's son. 
 
 And he hath heaped the quay of Leith 
 
 With devastation dire, 
 And swept fair Embro's stately town 
 
 Three days with raging fire. 
 
 And he hath hired two red-cross loons, 1 
 False Lennox and Glencairn, 
 
 1 The Border clans who had been induced to side with Henry wore 
 the red cross of St. George as a badge to distinguish them from the 
 patriotic party. The defection of some prominent members of the 
 Scottish nobility from the national cause on this occasion was not, I am 
 afraid, a solitary instance of baseness, which never bears a fouler front 
 than when found in their class. 
 
A NCR UM MO OR 1 69 
 
 From royal Henry's graceless grace 
 A traitor's wage to earn. 
 
 And he hath said to the warders twain — 
 Sir Ralph and stout Sir Bryan — 
 
 1 Ride north, and closely pare the claws 
 Of that rude Scottish lion. 
 
 ' And all the land benorth Carlisle 
 That your good sword secures, 
 
 Teviotdale and Lauderdale, 
 
 And the Merse with all its moors, 
 
 Land of the Douglas, Ker, and Scott, 
 My seal hath made it yours.' 
 
 And they have crossed from Carter Fell, 
 And laid the fields all bare ; 
 
 And they have harried Jeddart town, 
 And spoiled the abbey there. 
 
 And they have ravaged hearth and hall, 
 With steel untaught to spare 
 
 Or tottering eld, or screaming babe, 
 Or tearful lady fair. 
 
17© HISTORICAL BALLADS 
 
 And they have come with snorting speed, 
 Plashing through mire and mud, 
 
 And plunged with hot and haughty hoof 
 Through Tcviot's silver flood. 
 
 And past the stronghold of the Ker 1 
 
 Like rattling hail they pour, 
 Right in the face of Penilheugh, 
 
 And up to Ancrum Moor. 
 
 1 Where be these caitiff Scots ?' outcries 
 
 Laytcn, with hasty fume. 
 ' There !' cries Sir Eure ; ' the cowards crouch 
 
 Behind the waving broom. 
 
 ' Have at them, boys ! they may not stand 
 Before our strong-hoofed mass ; 
 
 Like clouds they come, and like the drift 
 Of rainless clouds they pass !' 
 
 1 Not so, Sir Eure ! ye do not well 
 Thus with light word to scorn 
 
 1 Ancrum House, now the residence of Sir William Scott of Ancrum, 
 but at the date of the ballad possessed by a branch of the noble race of 
 the Kcts. 
 
ANCRUM MOOR 
 
 The Douglas blood, the strong right arm 
 Of Bruce at Bannockburn. 
 
 ' Lo ! where they rise behind the broom 
 And stand in bristling pride, 
 
 Sharp as the jag of a gray sea-crag 
 That flouts the billowy tide. 
 
 1 With six-foot lances sharply set 
 
 They stand in serried lines, 
 Like Macedonian phalanx old, 
 
 Or rows of horrid pines.' 
 
 Sir Eure was hot : he might not hear, 
 Nor pause to weigh the chances, 
 
 But spurred his steed in mid career 
 Upon the frieze of lances. 
 
 Madly they plunge with foaming speed 
 On that sharp fence of steel, 
 
 And on the ground with bleeding flanks 
 They tumble, toss, and reel. 
 
 Charge upon charge ; but all in vain 
 The red-cross troop advances — 
 
172 HISTORICAL BALLADS 
 
 Rider and horse, high heaped in death, 
 Lay sprawling 'neath the lances. 
 
 But what is this that now I see ? 
 
 In battailous array- 
 Matrons and maids from Ancrum town 
 
 Are mingled in the fray. 
 
 A goodly band ; not Sparta bred 
 
 More valiant-hearted maids 
 Than these that front the fight to-day 
 
 With pitchforks and with spades. 
 
 And as they come, ' Broomhouse ! ' they cry ; 
 
 These butcher loons shall rue 
 Their damned force on that fair dame 
 
 Whom at Broomhouse they slew. 1 
 
 And there stands one, and leads the van, — 
 A Maxton 2 maid, not tall, 
 
 1 In one of their savage raids, the troops of the warder had burnt 
 the tower of Broomhouse, and in it its lady, a noble and aged matron, 
 with her whole family. — Tytler. 
 
 - A village on the Tweed, about two miles north of Ancrum Moor, 
 once very populous, and still marked by an old cross. 
 
ANCRUM MOOR 173 
 
 But with heroic soul supreme 
 She soars above them all. 
 
 With giant stroke she flails about, 
 
 And heaps a score of dead, 
 That bring — oh woe ! a vengeful troop 
 
 Upon her single head. 
 
 With swoop of trenchant blades they come, 
 
 And cut her legs away, 
 And look that she shall straightway fall 
 
 On ground and bite the clay. 
 
 Say, is it by St. Bothan's power, 
 
 Or by St. Boswell's grace, 
 That still she fights, and swings her arms, 
 
 And stoutly holds her place ? 
 
 I know not ; but true men v/ere there, 
 
 Who saw her stand a while 
 Fighting, till streams of her brave blood 
 
 Gave riches to the soil ; 
 
 And then she fell ; and true men there, 
 Upon the blood-stained moor 
 
174 HISTORICAL BALLADS 
 
 Upraised a stone to tell her fame, 
 That ever shall endure. 
 
 All praise to Humes, and Kers, and Scotts ! 
 
 But fair Maid Lilliard's deed 
 Shall in green honour keep this spot, 
 
 While Teviot runs to Tweed ! 
 
MERLIN AND KENTIGERN 
 
 A LEGEND OF TWEEDDALE 
 
 COME with me fair maiden, Lilias, 
 Come and sit a space with me, 
 
 Where the Powsaii purls and prattles 
 Gently by this old thorn tree. 1 
 
 Come and stir good thoughts within me, 
 With bright looks of kindly cheer ; 
 
 Sweetly flows an old man's story 
 Where the young are fond to hear. 
 
 Yesterday, when I was wandering 
 O'er the Broad Law's treeless back, 
 
 Came a mist, a white mist floating 
 Slowly o'er the moory track. 
 
 1 The thorn-tree stands on the burn, about fifteen yards above its 
 junction with the Tweed, below the church of Drummelzier. Here the 
 local tradition has it that the Enchanter was buried. 
 
i;6 HISTORICAL BALLADS 
 
 And ever as it travelled lightly- 
 Where the fitful breeze might be, 
 
 It took new shapes of strangest seeming 
 That looked weirdly upon me : 
 
 Now a whale, and now an ostrich, 
 
 With a neck of longest span ; 
 Now a camel, now a white bear, 
 
 Now a snowy-locked old man. 
 
 And I thought on old man Merlin, 
 
 Merlin, wizard of the Tweed, 
 Moaning o'er the tway-cleft kingdom, 
 
 Wailing o'er his waning creed. 
 
 For he was a heathen, Lilias, 
 
 Mighty man of place and pride, 
 
 Counsellor and bard and prophet 
 In the kingdom of Strathclyde. 
 
 And when Roderick, to the false gods 
 
 False, and faithful to the true, 
 In the battle of Arderydd 1 
 
 Slew the mightful Gwenddoleu ; 
 
 1 Mr. Skene, in an interesting paper in the Proceedings of the Society 
 of Antiquarians, February 1S65, fixes the site of this battle with great 
 
MERLIN AND KENTIGERN 177 
 
 Merlin old, his bard and prophet, 
 
 Cleaving to the Cymric creed, 
 Moaning o'er the lost Sun-worship, 
 
 Wandered lonely by the Tweed : 
 
 Seeking death, but might not find it ; 
 
 For he deemed it sin to die 
 With a self-implanted dagger 
 
 In the bright Sun's beaming eye. 
 
 And he came to where Drummelzier's 
 Kirk looks o'er the Powsail brook ; 
 
 And sadly here, with thoughtful brooding, 
 On a stone his seat he took. 
 
 Here he sate, with none to friend him 
 
 In his sorrow and his dool, 
 But his little dog, a black one, 
 
 And a young pig white as wool. 1 
 
 probability not far from Longtown, on the great road between that 
 town and Langholm, near the junction of the Liddell and the Esk. 
 
 1 The black dog is a familiar appendage of necromancy and 
 wizardry ; but the little pig is peculiarly Welsh, and holds a prominent 
 place in the oldest Cymric poetry. There is a whole class of poems 
 attributed to Merlin, beginning with 'Listen, O little pig! O happy 
 little pig ! ' which Stephen, in his literature of the Cymri, considers to 
 be symbolical of the Welsh people. How the little snouted creature 
 
 N 
 
178 HISTORICAL BALLADS 
 
 Sate and looked, when lo ! a figure 
 
 Cloaked and cowled, with solemn gait 
 
 Through the shower and through the sun-glint 
 Came where wizard Merlin sate : 
 
 Came as one that hath a message 
 
 Where delay might father loss, 
 On his breast a death's-head broidered, 
 
 In his skinny hand a cross. 
 
 ' Who art thou/ cried Merlin, ' coming 
 From the East where dwell my foes ? 
 
 I have here enough of sorrows, 
 Let me feed upon my woes ! 
 
 ' Cause have I to hate the traitor 
 Who hath laid my monarch low ; 
 
 Spare to triumph rudely o'er me, 
 Prostrate in my utter woe ! 
 
 ' Cause have I to hate the Christian ; 
 Hence, and give mine eyes release 
 
 came to attain this dignity he does not explain ; but it is no doubt a 
 relic of the rural economy of the oldest times, when the 5los v(pop[36s, 
 the 'divine swineherd.' was deemed worthy of occupying a prominent 
 position among the retainers of a Greek kingship. 
 
MERLIN AND KENTIGERN 179 
 
 From thy death's-heads and thy crosses ! 
 Let old Merlin die in peace.' 
 
 ' Fond old man, I may not leave thee ; 
 
 I am here by God's command, 
 With dear balm of benediction 
 
 Near thy bed in death to stand. 
 
 ' I am Kentigern : my mother, 
 
 Not far from the Isle of May, 
 Daughter of the king of Lothian, 
 
 Bore me in a wondrous way. 
 
 ' Saint Theneu, my blissful mother, 
 Whom the spiteful waves did toss 
 
 Rudely, in a fragile shallop 
 Prisoned, bore me at Culross. 
 
 ' And St. Serf, from where Loch Leven 
 
 Laves the roots of Lomond Ben, 
 Washed me throughly in the water 
 
 Of regeneration then. 
 
 ' And my mother there devoted 
 Me to God, the One, the True, 
 
180 HISTORICAL BALLADS 
 
 To the savage West to wander, 
 And convert the heathen crew. 
 
 ' Bless the Lord this day, old Merlin : 
 In the dear name of Theneu, 
 
 I am come with God's salvation, 
 On the tree who died for you.' 
 
 • Mock me not, thou sallow shaveling ! 
 
 By yon God that rides on high, 
 In the pure old Druid worship 
 
 I have lived, and I will die. 
 
 ' Gods in guise of man we know not, 
 Scourged and pierced and crucified ; 
 
 God we own above all human, 
 Baal careering in his pride : 
 
 ' Baal, whence flows Fire's holy fountain. 
 
 Pulsing with a pulse of might ; 
 Baal, that o'er yon green Trahenna, 1 
 
 Streams with floods of holy light ; 
 
 1 One of those green softly sloping mountains which are the glory of 
 Peeblesshire. It rises right opposite Drummelzier on the north bank of 
 the Tweed, right above the mouth of the Biggar water. The name, 
 like not a few others in the district, is manifestly Welsh or Cornish, not 
 Gaelic. 
 
MERLIN AND KENTIGERN 
 
 1 Baal, whose voice is in the thunder, 
 Rolling far from glen to glen ; 
 
 Baal, whose glance is lightning darted 
 From the blue crest of the Ben ; 
 
 ' Baal, whose fiery virtue melteth 
 
 Crusted ice and stony hail 
 Into rills that leap redundant, 
 
 Spreading sweetness through the vale 
 
 ' Him I own within, without me, 
 In the great and in the small, 
 
 In the near and in the far off, 
 In the each and in the all. 
 
 ' Tempt me not with human Saviours, 
 Gods to handle and to feel ! 
 
 To the bright broad eye of Heaven, 
 Life-dispensing Baal, I kneel. 
 
 ' Preach the cross to savage Saxons ; 
 
 Crosses come when they are nigh ; 
 As old Druid wisdom taught me, 
 
 I have lived and I will die !' 
 
182 HISTORICAL BALLADS 
 
 Then with holy hand uplifted 
 Spake the saintly Kentigern, 
 
 And with swelling eye of pity ; 
 
 1 Old man, thou hast much to learn. 
 
 1 But the gnarled oak can no man 
 Bend like rush or osier wand ; 
 
 Take my love, and take my blessing, 
 With thee to the Spirit-land. 
 
 ' Allwhere lives a thoughtful Reason, 1 
 In the sky and in the sod ; 
 
 Mind, and Thought, and shaping Reason, 
 This we worship, one true God. 
 
 1 Sun and moon, and forky levin, 
 
 Floods by sea, and storms by land, 
 
 Are but ministers and servants, 
 Tools in the Great Master's hand. 
 
 ' Take my prayer, and take my blessing ; 
 
 Though I may not move thy will, 
 Whom I serve hath gracious magic 
 
 To bring good from harshest ill. 
 
 1 The X670S of St. John, and vovs of Anaxagoras. 
 
MERLIN AND KENTIGERN 183 
 
 ' In His house are many mansions ; 
 
 If thy heart is pure and true, 
 He can save with stretch of mercy, 
 
 Merlin old and Gwenddoleu.' 
 
 Spake : and with his cloak wrapt round him, 
 Eastward o'er the moor he strode, 
 
 Leaving wise old Merlin brooding 
 Strangely o'er the Christian's God. 
 
 But his brooding must be barren : 
 
 Who can change an old man's creed ? 
 
 Romish Gods might not be devils, 
 But Baal was God for Merlin's need. 
 
 With an eye of moody-wandering 
 
 Gaze, he followed Kentigern, 
 Where he brushed the purple heather, 
 
 Where he swept the plumy fern. 
 
 And he wandered o'er the moorland, 
 
 Wrapt in sorrow and in dool, 
 With his small black dog behind him, 
 
 And his young pig white as wool ; 
 
1 84 HISTORICAL BALLADS 
 
 Wandered till he found a hollow 
 Cavern by the river's brim, 
 
 Where a witch, a wily lady, 
 
 With a strong spell prisoned him. 1 
 
 And she kept him there, the fell one, 
 Till his eyes with age grew dim ; 
 
 Then the wily fair, the false one, 
 Mixed the cup of death for him. 
 
 And wayfaring people found him 
 Stretched beside the river's brim ; 
 
 And beneath this ragged thorn-tree, 
 Here they dug a grave for him. 
 
 And his small black dog they buried, 
 And his little pig with him ; 
 
 And they wailed before the Sun-god 
 Sadly by the river's brim. 
 
 Weep for him, and kiss me, Lilias, 
 Kindly kisses help our need, 
 
 When a tearful story moves us 
 On the flowery banks of Tweed ! 
 
 1 Morte Arthur, vol. i. ch. 60, Wright's edition. 
 
PEDEN THE PROPHET 
 
 {Scene — A farmhouse in the parish of Auchinleck, Ayrshire ; Peden on 
 his deathbed.) 
 
 O MY heart is weary, weary, 
 
 Weary of these times of killing 
 
 On the bleeding heart of Scotland, 
 All the wrath of man fulfilling ! 
 
 O my heart is weary, weary 
 
 Of these cruel killing times, 
 When to serve our Saviour freely 
 
 Is the worst of human crimes ! 
 
 O my heart is weary, weary 
 Of this red rule of the sword ! 
 
 Earth is grown a hell to Peden ; 
 Take me to Thy home, dear Lord ! 
 
 O my heart is weary, weary 
 
 Of God's earth made home for devils, 
 
186 HISTORICAL BALLADS 
 
 Justice blind, and Mercy smothered, 
 Judges drunk 1 with bloody revels ! 
 
 I have lived to see great folly, 
 
 Faults and folly all our own, 
 When we placed the crown of Albyn 
 
 On that wanton boy at Scone ! 
 
 Fools were we to trust the Stuart, 
 Fools to take the wounded snake 
 
 To our breast from where it lay 
 Harmless, bleeding in the brake. 
 
 All that Stuart brood were tainted 
 With French poison in the blood, 
 
 Basely born of Popish Mary, 
 And a brainless lordling lewd ! 
 
 Most unwisely wise was Argyll, 
 On his head the crown to lay, 
 
 Who should lay the head that crowned him 
 Ingrate ! — bleeding on the clay. 
 
 1 The Scottish Parliament of 1661 that lent themselves to Charles 
 II. as instruments to crush the very people who had put the crown on 
 his head was called 'The Drunken Parliament* — See DODDS. 
 
PEDEN THE PROPHET 187 
 
 O, my country ! false men honoured, 
 True men trampled in the mud ; 
 
 Scottish lords in servile council 
 Reeling from the vote of blood ! 
 
 These vext eyes have seen it — manhood 
 Banished from the hearts of men, 
 
 And God's faithful remnant chased 
 With fiendish rage from den to den. 
 
 I have seen the Sharp, the Judas, 
 Hireling priest of fools and knaves, 
 
 Stamping noblest men for felons, 
 
 Shipping God's dear saints for slaves. 
 
 I have seen poor innocent children 
 Where that Judas swayed the mace, 
 
 Golden blue-eyed darlings branded 
 With hot iron in the face. 
 
 I have seen Dalziel, the savage, 
 
 Surly-mouthed, white-bearded Turk, 
 
 Crimsoning the green of Pentland 
 With unhallowed butcher work. 
 
i88 HISTORICAL BALLADS 
 
 I have seen M'Kail, the bright boy, 
 
 With a glory in his face, 
 When his limbs were crushed and shattered, 
 
 Where that Judas swayed the mace. 
 
 I have seen the brazen-fronted, 
 
 Clumsy, coarse-grained Lauderdale, 
 
 With his titled harlot bringing 
 Kilted thieves to gather mail 
 
 From the good and gracious people, 
 Who, untrained in courtly ways, 
 
 Pour the fervid psalm full-breasted 
 From the unbribed heather braes. 
 
 I have seen when holy Cargill, 
 
 He and other saintly four, 
 At the West Port of Dun Edin 
 
 Showed their faces daubed in gore. 
 
 Showed their limbs all hacked and hagged 
 By a hireling hangman loon, 
 
 To make sport to foul-mouthed jesters, 
 In the face of sun and moon. 
 
PEDEN THE PROPHET 189 
 
 I have seen, when 'neath Cairntable's 
 Shadow on a bright May morn, 
 
 Came that bloody, swearing Clavers, 
 To the Devil's service sworn. 
 
 And before the neat white cottage, 
 
 Where the godly carrier dwelt, 
 In a plunge of fiendish passion, 
 
 Drew the pistol from his belt, 
 
 And in face of weeping mother, 
 And of screaming children, there 
 
 Laid him, with a coarse blaspheming 
 Jest, upon a bloody lair. 
 
 O my heart is weary, weary 
 
 Of these cruel times of killing, 
 On the bleeding heart of Scotland, 
 
 All the Devil's spite fulfilling ! 
 
 O that I might be with Ritchie, 
 Where he sleeps in Aird's Moss, 
 
 Where the savage, swearing troopers 
 Cut him down to Scotland's loss ! 
 
I9Q HISTORICAL BALLADS 
 
 O that I might be with Ritchie, 
 
 'Neath the sod with my brave brother, 
 
 I, who homeless lived, from one 
 Bloody land tossed to another ! 
 
 O that I might be with Ritchie ! 
 But 
 
 {Knocking Juard at the door.) 
 
 Who's there ? 
 
 [Enter Renwick.] 
 
 My son, my son ! 
 {Embraces him.) 
 
 Whence and w r hither ? 
 
 Renwick. 
 
 I am wandering 
 Houseless through a scattered clan, 
 To proclaim to ears that love it, 
 God's free word of grace to man. 
 
PEDEN THE PROPHET 191 
 
 Peden. 
 
 Bless thee, brave boy ! I am going 
 
 Gently, gladly to my rest, 
 Where the wicked cease from troubling-, 
 
 Where the weary are at rest. 
 
 Renwick. 
 
 Not so, father, — though 'twere better 
 There for me with thee to dwell, 
 
 That without thee here in Scotland, 
 
 Which this James hath turned to hell ! 
 
 Peden. 
 
 List to me, my boy, my Renwick, 
 
 In the hour of darkest night 
 Faithful eyes with prophet vision 
 
 Read the streaks of coming light. 
 
 I am dying ; but full surely 
 
 God's great truth dies not with me, 
 
 That small seed which thanks thy watering, 
 Soon shall grow a mighty tree. 
 
192 HISTORICAL BALLADS 
 
 God hath shown mc in a vision ; 
 
 Even now I see the day 
 When that ass which plays the lion, 
 
 As pure ass revealed shall bray 
 
 To the moon. His time is short, 
 Of fifty years there lack but two, 
 
 To make full the lease of carnage 
 To the tiger-hearted crew. 
 
 Mark me well ! I saw in vision 
 Pope and king and cowled monk 
 
 Doomed to feast upon the vomit 
 Of the blood that they had drunk. 
 
 Short two years he hath for fooling ; 
 
 Thou shalt see it, mark me well, 
 Cross, and beads, and hempen girdle, 
 
 All the bravery of hell, 
 
 On the banks of Thames paraded ; 
 
 Thou shalt see the cursed thing, 
 Juggled wine and juggled wafers, 
 
 In the palace of the king. 
 
PEDEN THE PROPHET 193 
 
 In the palace, in the Savoy, 
 
 In St. John's at Clerkenwell, 
 Subtle Jesuits are training 
 
 Simple English youths for hell ! 
 
 What is this ? O shame ! O sorrow ! 
 
 Thou shalt see it, mark me well ; 
 England's king kneels to the Vicar 
 
 Of the Majesty of Hell ! 
 
 In the temple prankt with idols, 
 'Neath the gaudy-pictured dome, 
 
 He hath vowed a damned allegiance 
 To the scarlet-vested Rome ! 
 
 Lo ! another and another 
 
 Stride he makes that scorns all bounds ; 
 Like a drunken giant blindly 
 
 Striking where the stroke redounds. 
 
 To the peaceful halls of learning, 
 With no soul beyond the brute, 
 
 He doth come, and grimly solemn 
 Planteth there his tyrant foot. 
 O 
 
194 HISTORICAL BALLADS 
 
 He hath cast out all the scholars, 
 
 Tramped their Greek books in the mud ; 
 
 Who would swear at no king's bidding, 
 That bread is flesh and wine is blood. 
 
 On the mitred pomp of bishops 
 
 He doth tramp with foot profane — 
 
 Some good things are found in bishops — 
 But he bribes their faith in vain. 
 
 In Lud's town I see the bonfires 
 Blazing high, now here now there, 
 
 With loud cries of acclamation 
 
 Ringing through the gladsome air. 
 
 Ringing doom to James and Popery ! 
 
 Soon, right soon, the tide will turn ; 
 Any little child learns wisdom, 
 
 When his fingers he may burn, 
 
 But not James. Supremely seated 
 On a throne of vain conceit ; 
 
 All the subject world he visions 
 Crouching at a despot's feet. 
 
rEDEN THE PROPHET 195 
 
 But his dream grows pale and paler, 
 Danger bristles round and round ; 
 
 All the manly soul of England 
 To God's gospel faithful found, 
 
 Blares revolt — the child, the daughter 
 Flees the father ; son and mother, 
 
 Lo ! I see them down the river, 
 
 Through strong storm and rainy pother, 
 
 Franceward borne ; and soon the father 
 Follows where the narrowed sea 
 
 Parts the land of gilded bondage 
 From the proud home of the free. 
 
 There to plot and fret and dream, 
 
 Ever wilful, never wise ; 
 Thence once more to challenge fortune, 
 
 For a crown which Right denies. 
 
 Rome hath many slaves in Erin's 
 
 Backmost bound ; this gives him hope 
 
 With a band of loose marauders 
 To make muster for the Pope. 
 
196 HISTORICAL BALLADS 
 
 Vainly. On a milk-white charger, 
 With a white plume on his head, 
 
 From the land of dykes and ditches, 
 With redemption in his tread 
 
 Comes God's elect warrior, grandly 
 Girt about with power divine, 
 
 For well-weighed and thoughtful doing. 
 Lo ! I see on banks of Boyne, 
 
 Troops well marshalled in the summer 
 Morning's bright and beaming eye, 
 
 With green branches in their helmets, 
 Marching on to victory ! 
 
 On they come, right through the current, 
 Dash and splash with gallant ease ; 
 
 While the Pope's crude minions flee, 
 Like wicked wasps before the breeze ! 
 
 Glory, glory ! through the midnight 
 Strays the gleam of Fate to me ; 
 
 On thine eyes shall break the dawning 
 Of the day that makes us free. 
 
FED EN THE PROPHET 197 
 
 But the brightness of the noonday 
 God's high will denies to thee ; 
 
 Only from the top of Nebo 
 
 Thou the coming grace shalt see. 
 
 Fare-thee-well, my joy, my Renwick ! 
 
 Thou hast kept thy garments pure ; 
 Thou hast scorned the bribes of traitors, 
 
 What thou doest shall endure. 
 
 I go hence. More blest than Peden, 
 Stretched to die on nameless bed, 
 
 Thou shalt shine, a star with martyrs, 
 Who for God's free gospel bled. 1 
 
 1 The noble young preacher, James Renwick, was hanged in the Grass- 
 market in the month of February 1688, at the early age of twenty-six, 
 for no other crime than the courageous assertion of those principles of 
 constitutional right proclaimed publicly three months later in London 
 by the glorious resolution of 1688. 
 
NOTES 
 
 Ancrum Moor, p. 167. 
 
 The sojourner on the classic banks of the Tweed who may 
 have some floating memories of the confused doings in Scot- 
 land about the middle of the sixteenth century, when the tragic 
 history of the unfortunate Queen Mary was being foreshadowed 
 by the state of Scotland at her birth, will probably have the 
 curiosity to visit the ridge of Ancrum Moor, a few miles from 
 St. Boswells, on the Jedburgh Road, a little to the north of the 
 river Teviot, which rolls here through the beautiful domain of 
 the Marquess of Lothian, towards its junction with the Tweed 
 at Kelso. The high ground is well marked to the eye by a 
 row of pine-trees running from west to east, about half a mile 
 long : along this breezy ridge a well-trodden path leads, mark- 
 ing the march of many a patriotic pilgrim on a summer's holi- 
 day ; and at the east end of the path the pedestrian comes 
 suddenly on a plain stone enclosure, made of the red sand- 
 stone of the district, and within the enclosure an erect slab or 
 memorial stone, bearing an inscription easily read as follows : — 
 
 ' Fair Maiden Lilliard lies beneath this stane ; 
 Small was her stature, but mickle was her fame ; 
 Upon the English loons she laid full many thumps, 
 And when her legs were cuttit off she fought upon her stumps. * 
 
NOTES 199 
 
 The affair in which this Border Amazon played such a 
 stout part, took place in the year 1544, and was one of the 
 bloody sequels of the insolent course of dictation to Scotland 
 which Henry VIII. commenced immediately after the decease 
 of James V., the father of Queen Mary. This imperious Tudor, 
 accustomed, with the help of the strong-willed Machiavelian 
 Cromwell, to bear down everything before him at home, and 
 looking eagerly about him for some field in which he might 
 find compensation to England for her reluctantly abandoned 
 dream of a French inheritance, found nothing to his imagina- 
 tion more plausible than the offer of the hand of his young son 
 Edward to the infant queen of Scotland ; and this project he 
 could the more hopefully cherish, as he happened at that time 
 to hold a large number of notable Scottish prisoners in his 
 keep from the recent battle of Solway Moss. The union of 
 the kingdoms, which this project might have secured more 
 than a century and a half before it actually took place, was a 
 matter which many of the most far-sighted and best-disposed 
 statesmen in Scotland were not unwilling to entertain, espe- 
 cially as at that moment an alliance with Henry, the prominent 
 champion of Protestantism, might serve to secure the nation 
 against the machinations of the still powerful Catholic party 
 in the country. But the insolent manner in which the self- 
 willed despot made his matrimonial proposals effectually pre- 
 vented their acceptance : his demands, in which he assumed 
 the tone of Edward Longshanks, roused the pride of the 
 people, whom he ought rather to have conciliated ; and the 
 consequence was, that after a series of hasty plunges into war 
 to enforce his unreasonable claims, he made foes of his best 
 friends, and ultimately threw the nation back into its old 
 French alliance, and a French matrimonial connection to boot. 
 In the year 1544, two rapacious assaults were made by this 
 
.VOTES 
 
 bloody suitor on the country of his son : s spear -purchased 
 bride : the one by sea upon Edinburgh, under the conduct of 
 the Earl of Hertford ; the other on the Border counties, led by 
 Sir Ralph Eure and Sir Bryan Layton. It is this invasion 
 which, after ravaging the country as far as Melrose, with a 
 series of horrors only too common in those days, ended in the 
 repulse of the invaders and the death of the two wardens at 
 the battle of Ancrum Moor. 
 
 In the ballad, I have followed closely the historical account 
 as given by Tytler in his History of Scot/and, except that I 
 have omitted the previous affair at Melrose altogether, and 
 brought the invaders directly down upon Ancrum. Any 
 minute details of strategical movements — if the military 
 movements of those times might merit the name — previous 
 to the victorious result, would have been not less foreign to 
 the genius of the Border ballad than destitute of all historical 
 value. 
 
 I ought to add, that the tradition of the heroine of the fray- 
 continuing the fight on her stumps after her legs were cut off, 
 and which no doubt has its humorous aspect, is founded on 
 the acknowledged historical fact that a body of women did 
 join in the battle : as little can there be any doubt that the 
 stout little maid of Maxton was the first in the fray, and dis- 
 tinguished herself in a fashion that naturally led to the humor- 
 ous exaggeration contained in the memorial verses. Such 
 exaggerations belong to the very essence of the popular ballad, 
 and must be taken kindly, like not a few things in Homer that 
 mar the sublime in some of his most effective passages. , 
 
NOTES 201 
 
 Merlin and Kentigern, p. 175. 
 
 This ballad is founded on a passage in Fordun's Scoti- 
 chroiiicon (iii. 31), in which Kentigern, or St. Mungo, the patron 
 saint of Glasgow, is brought into communication with Merlin 
 the well-known Welsh enchanter of the medieval romances 
 Of course no man accepts Fordun as a voucher for any histori 
 cal fact ; but there is evidence enough, independent of Fordun 
 to prove that St. Kentigern and Merlin were contemporaries 
 both being representative characters of a great religious move 
 ment in the sixth century — the one representing the advancing 
 cause of Christianity in the Celtic or Cymro-Celtic kingdom of 
 Strathclyde, the other the waning cause of Druidism. The 
 battle of Arderydd, a.d. 573, fought between the Christianised 
 King Rhydderch Hael and the heathen monarch Gwenddoleu, 
 divided the Britons of the west, in point of religion, into two 
 unequal halves, of which the lesser was destined speedily to 
 be absorbed into the larger. Of this threatened absorption, 
 Merlin, the Court bard of Gwenddoleu, in the popular tradition 
 appears as the rueful prophet ; there is no hope for him or his 
 sun-worship any more, and he must mope about the hills of 
 the south Highlands, then the central part of the kingdom of 
 Strathclyde, till he dies. This is the historical kernel of the 
 miraculous legends which afterwards grew up on both sides of 
 the struggle round the person of their prominent representa- 
 tives — legends amply sufficient to prove the social importance 
 of the personages concerned, however transparently fictitious, 
 and often ludicrously childish in their details. Discount the 
 silly miracles so bountifully showered on the saint, and the 
 tricks of devilry so lavishly attributed to the Court minstrel of 
 the heathen king, and you have the lasting truth of popular 
 
202 NOTES 
 
 poetical tradition, which Aristotle pronounced to be more 
 philosophical than history. The handling which Roger Bacon, 
 and Doctor Faust, and other such victims of popular prejudice 
 received in the middle ages, may teach us that we are only 
 performing an act of historical justice when we represent 
 Merlin, the Welsh enchanter, in a much more noble light than 
 that in which he appears in the medieval romances, in the 
 pages of the monkish chronicles, or even in the classical por- 
 traiture of Lord Tennyson. The facts alluded to in the verses, 
 so far as Kentigern is concerned, will be found in the late 
 Bishop Forbes's Kalendar of Scottish Saints (Edinburgh, 1872); 
 in Skene's Celtic Scotland, ii. 179 ; and in The Legends of St. 
 Kentigern^ his Friends and Disciples, by the late Professor 
 Stevenson (Edinburgh, 1872); and in regard to Merlin, in 
 Stephen's Literature of the Cymri (London, 1876); in the 
 Morte Arthur; in Professor Veitch's interesting and instruct- 
 ive volume on The History and Poetry of the Scottish Border 
 (Glasgow, 1878) ; and in the recent work of Mr. Beveridge on 
 Culross and Tulliallan (Edinburgh, Blackwood, 1885). 
 
 Peden the Prophet, p. 1S5. 
 
 The heroic struggle for liberty of conscience carried on for 
 fifty years by the Scottish Covenanters against the insolent 
 despotism of the Stuarts, and the servile sycophancy, and cere- 
 monial pedantry of the Anglican bishops, has never received 
 to its just extent that grateful recognition which it deserves 
 from the literary mind of the country. The reason of this lies 
 partly in the tendency so natural to a large country like 
 England, to ignore the heroic history of a smaller country 
 with which it has become politically united, partly in the 
 circumstance that even in Presbyterian Scotland not a few 
 
NOTES 203 
 
 of the most influential persons in the upper classes and 
 so-called fashionable world are either Episcopalians by con- 
 viction, or given to a certain dainty flirtation with Epis- 
 copacy, which Charles II. said was the only religion for a 
 gentleman ; and in either case more apt to look on those 
 noble champions of our Scottish nationality with a narrow 
 sectarian prejudice, than with a large human sympathy. 
 Nevertheless, the truth remains that to these men as much as 
 to any of the noblest names in British constitutional history, we 
 owe the firm foundations of our religious liberties, laid by their 
 foresight and cemented with their blood ; and among these, if 
 not in every respect the greatest, certainly the most pictur- 
 esque personality, is Alexander Peden, a native of Sorn, in 
 Ayrshire, commonly called Peden the Prophet. The fact that 
 he lived, through an adventurous and sorely-tried manhood, to 
 nearly the end of these ' killing times,' constitutes him on the 
 poetic stage a fit person to rehearse in memory the principal 
 events of that lawless period, from the famous protesting stool of 
 Jenny Geddes in 1637 to the Bloody Assizes of the atrocious 
 Judge JefTeries in the autumn of 1685 ; while his traditional 
 character as a prophet marks him out no less aptly as the fore- 
 caster of the last years of that sad series of persistent blunders 
 which led to the battle of the Boyne and the final ejection of 
 James II. from a position which he claimed to occupy, not for 
 the public good, of which he was the legal guardian, but for 
 the gratification of his own blind will, and the pampering of 
 his inordinate conceit. I have therefore represented him as 
 on his deathbed reviewing the atrocities of the Stuart regimen 
 up to January 1686, the date of his death; and used the 
 historical fact of the visit of the youthful preacher Renwick to 
 the dying prophet as a fit occasion for putting into his mouth 
 a few significant utterances with regard to the immediate 
 
204 NOTES 
 
 future. The general outline of the events of those fifty years 
 of noble struggle may be assumed as sufficiently known to the 
 readers of Macaulay's pictorial pages ; the more detailed facts 
 which the ballad presents in rhythmical form will be found in 
 the admirable work by James Dodds, The Fifty Yeats Struggle 
 of tJic Covenanters (Edinburgh, Douglas, i860); and in the 
 no less interesting volumes, The Martyr Graves of Scot/and, 
 by the Rev. J. H. Thomson (Edinburgh, Johnstone, Hunter, & 
 Co., 1875), an d The Homes, Haunts, a?id Battlefields of the 
 Covenanters, by A. B. Todd (Edinburgh, Gemmell, 1866). 
 
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