Then turn thy fearful rein and ride, Though twice ten thousand men have died On this eventful day, To gild the military fame Which thou for life in traffic tame Of inconsistence faint and frail ? A torrent fierce and wide; Whose channel shows displayed XV Spur on thy way since now thine ear Has brooked thy veterans' wish to hear, Who as thy flight they eyed 210 Exclaimed while tears of anguish came. Wrung forth by pride and rage and shame - And, pressing on thy desperate way, The children of the Dou. Thine ear no yell of horror cleft Have felt the final stroke; And now o'er thy devoted head 340 350 360 370 Here piled in common slaughter sleep 420 XXI 430 440 Period of honor as of woes, What bright careers 't was thine to close! 450 Marked on thy roll of blood what names XXII 460 Forgive, brave dead, the imperfect lay! Who may your names, your numbers, say? What high-strung harp, what lofty line, From your cold couch of swamp and clay, Till time shall cease to run; XXIII Farewell, sad field! whose blighted face CONCLUSION 490 Rivalled the heroes of the watery way, And washed in foemen's gore unjust reproach away. Now, Island Empress, wave thy crest on high, And bid the banner of thy Patron flow, Gallant Saint George, the flower of chivalry, For thou hast faced like him a dragon foe, 40 And rescued innocence from overthrow, And trampled down like him tyrannic might, And to the gazing world mayst proudly show The chosen emblem of thy sainted knight, Who quelled devouring pride and vindicated right. Yet mid the confidence of just renown, Renown dear-bought, but dearest thus acquired, Write, Britain, write the moral lesson down: 'Tis not alone the heart with valor fired, The discipline so dreaded and admired, In many a field of bloody conquest known; Such may by fame be lured, by gold be hired 'Tis constancy in the good cause alone Best justifies the meed thy valiant sons have won. HAROLD THE DAUNTLESS INTRODUCTORY NOTE In the Introduction to The Lord of the Isles, which he prefixed to the 1830 edition of his poems, Scott refers to the mystification which he practised on the public by the anonymous issue of The Bridal of Triermain, and the attempt to father it on Lord Kinedder. He then says: Upon another occasion I sent up another of these trifles, which, like schoolboys' kites, served to show how the wind of popular taste was setting. The manner was supposed to be that of a rude minstrel or Scald, in op position to The Bridal of Triermain, which was designed to belong rather to the Italian school. This new fugitive piece was called Harold the Dauntless; and I am still astonished at my having committed the gross error of selecting the very name which Lord Byron had made so famous. It encountered rather an odd fate. My ingenious friend, Mr. James Hogg, had published, about the same time, a work called The Poetic Mirror, containing imitations of the principal living poets. There was in it a very good imitation of my own style, which bore such a resemblance to Haroid the Dauntless that there was no discovering the original from the imitation; and I believe that many who took the trouble of thinking upon the subject were rather of opinion that my ingenious friend was the true, and not. the fictitious, Simon Pure. Since this period, which was in the year 1817, the Author has not been an intruder on the public by any poetical work of importance.' Harold the Dauntless was indeed the last poem of any length that Scott wrote. When it appeared, in January, 1817, Scott was deep in the multitudinous interests which swept him away from poetry, the enlargement of his domain, the writing of the Waverley Novels, contributions to the Annual Register and the various literary enterprises into which he was drawn by the Ballantynes. He kept Harold by him, after finishing the Bridul, some two years, making a plaything of it, something to take up, as Lockhart says, whenever the coach brought no proof-sheets to jog him as to serious matters; and poetry written under such conditions is hardly likely to repay the writer or to treat him otherwise than as a jealous mistress treats her lover. It was published simply as by the author of The Bridal of Triermain, and no effort seems to have been made to turn aside attention to Erskine, Gillies, or any one else. Although Scott professed in one or two instances an interest in his work, it is pretty evident that it appealed but slightly to his mind, now so absorbed in larger ventures. 'I begin,' he wrote to Morritt, to get too old and stupid, I think, for poetry, and will certainly never again adventure on a grand scale;' and the next day he wrote to Lady Louisa Stuart: I thought once I should have made it something clever, but it turned vapid upon my imagination; and I finished it at last with hurry and impatience. Nobody knows, that has not tried the feverish trade of poetry, how much it depends upon mood and whim; I don't wonder, that in dismissing all the other deities of Paganism, the Muses should have been retained by common consent; for, in sober reality, writing good verses seems to depend upon something separate from the volition of the author.' HAROLD THE DAUNTLESS A POEM IN SIX CANTOS INTRODUCTION THERE is a mood of mind we all have known For who for sympathy may seek that cannot tell of pain? The jolly sportsman knows such drearihood Clouding that morn which threats the heath-cock's brood; But more than all the discontented fair, Whom father stern and sterner aunt restrain From county-ball or race occurring rare, While all her friends around their vestments gay prepare. Ennui! or, as our mothers called thee, Spleen! To thee we owe full many a rare device; - |