STANZA XXIII. SONG. The heath this night must be my bed, Far, far, from love and thee, Mary. I may not, dare not, fancy now And all it promised me, Mary. A time will come with feeling fraught; Shall be a thought on thee, Mary. To my young bride and me, Mary! JAMES HOGG, THE ETTRICK SHEPHERD. (1773-1835.) GENIUS is irrepressible, and it " peereth in the meanest habit:" obscurity and poverty could not crush Crabbe, nor could a cabin-boy's hardships, nor a shoemaking apprenticeship, conceal the merit of Gifford, or prevent him from reaching a high rank as a satirist and a critic. James Hogg was born in a sphere perhaps still more remote than that of Burns from the possibility of attaining the dignity of a popular and national poet. Born the descendant of an ancestry of shepherds in the wilds of Ettrick, his seventh year opened amidst the ruins of his father's small and painfully-acquired means. A rude shieling was the dwelling of his childhood; some six months "buckled in the sum" of his school education; till nearly his manhood the Bible was his only reading; but the sunshine of the poetical faculty seems early to have flitted about his mind. To his mother, like many great men, he owed the nursing of the talent which God had given. Literature slowly shed her showers on his intellect; and, after a youth 1 Fern. passed in sequestered regions in the care of a few sheep, he appeared before his countrymen as a claimant of the successorship to the throne of Burns. The first wealth his pen yielded was expended on an unlucky farming speculation. Driyen to Edinburgh and to literature as a means of subsistence, the publication of the "Queen's Wake" in 1813 at length vindicated his position as a poet. In that year, a grant of the farm of Altrive in Ettrick, from his patron the Duke of Buccleuch, restored him to his original occupation. He married; leased the larger adjoining farm of Mount Benger, the failure of which again reduced him in a few years to poverty. During these years he continued to write voluminously; he was intimately connected for a considerable time with Blackwood's Magazine; he claims, indeed, the merit of founding that periodical. All his misfortunes he bore not only with equanimity, but with a cheerfulness which could never be broken. Somewhat of the touchiness of the irritable race, combined with a simplicity and artlessness of character that wore" its heart upon its sleeve," and the want of that knowledge of the world and regularity of business habits which nature seems to have denied to poets, involved Mr Hogg sometimes in unpleasant collisions with his friends, and proved the source of not a few of his misfortunes. Like most self-educated men, he was, and had a right to be so, vain of his position and achievements; but in Mr Hogg's vanity there is a bonhommie and simplicity utterly different from the insolence of pride. He was hospitable, liberal, and generous in disposition, upright and straightforward in principle. His works-prose compositions, chiefly tales," rough and racy," as Byron termed them, and his poetryamount to about thirty volumes, besides a vast number of contributions to periodicals and annuals. His poetry consists chiefly of songs, ballads, and elfin legends; he was at home in the fairy world, and it is in these gorgeous and airy regions in which his genius is chiefly conspicuous. The “Queen's Wake," his finest poem, is beautifully conceived. It is composed of a series of lyric legends, supposed to be sung before Mary Queen of Scots, at a wake (or nightly-meeting) of northern minstrels. The legends are united by a thread of narrative poetry. THE SKY-LARK. Bird of the wilderness, Sweet be thy matin o'er moorland and lea! Blest is thy dwelling-place O to abide in the desert with thee! Wild is thy lay and loud Far in the downy cloud, Love gives it energy, love gave it birth. Where, on thy dewy wing, Where art thou journeying? Thy lay is in heaven, thy love is on earth. 1 Same with watch; late-wake, or lyke-wake (fr. Sax. lichoma, a body), the watch held over the dead before burial. The analogy of k into ch is frequent, as speak, speech; seek, beseech; sack, satchel; break, breach, &c. O'er fell and fountain sheen, O'er moor and mountain green, O'er the red streamer that heralds the day, Over the rainbow's rim, Musical cherub, soar, singing, away! Sweet will thy welcome and bed of love be! Blest is thy dwelling-place O to abide in the desert with thee! FROM THE "QUEEN'S WAKE." KILMENY'S VISIONS IN FAIRY LAND.1 And that land had glens and mountains grey; * She saw the corn wave on the vale; She saw the plaid and the broad claymore, And the brows that the badge of freedom bore: The fairest that ever the sun shone on! Then a gruff untoward bedeman6 came, Kilmeny is the most beautiful of the seventeen songs in the "Queen's Wake." It is founded on the well-known ancient tradition of the power of the fairies to carry mortals into their country. Kilmeny, a good and beautiful maiden, is thus spirited away into fairy land, where, among other wonders, she sees the following visions: the first depicts the fortunes of Queen Mary and her successors till the Revolution of 1588, the second foreshadows the war of the French Revolution. 2 Marled, vari gated. 3 Scotland, the Lion being her heraldic symbol. The maiden seems intended for a per Leffu, discreet; licu, lonely-Jamieson. sonification of royal dignity and wisdom. In her attachments to Darnley and Bothwell. And the guardian maid, wi' the dauntless e'e, And she saw the red blood fall like rain; And she turned away, and could look nae mair. Till he lapped the blood to the kingdom dear; She looked again, and the scene was new. She saw a people, fierce and fell, Burst frae their bounds like fiends of hell; And she herked on her ravening crew, Till the cities and towers were wrapt in a blaze, And the thunder it roared o'er the land and the seas. Till caught by the lion's deadly paw. 1 After prophesying the misfortunes of Mary, the poet proceeds to allegorize the ineffectual efforts of James VI. against the bed man" Presbytery), and the insurrection of the national "Lion," at Presbyterian and Puritan instigation, against Charles I., which ended in the death of that king. There is some obscurity in what follows: weening his head; HIS seems to denote the national Lion," as representing Charles II. at the head of the three kingdoms, persecuting with a hig and the Presbyterian “carle" (the Covenanters), and "chasing him away to feed," &c. : but the impious "geeking at heaven" in such persecution drew down judgment on the king's family, in the "arles" (wages or recompense) of expulsion from the throne in 1688.-Scotch words: weir, war; preef, proof; gowled, threatened, scowled, yelled; carle (Ang -ax. ceorle [churl]), a man as distinguished from a boy; gecked, mocked; herked, urged; lened, conceded, yielded, desisted; swinked, laboured, struggled; brainyell, to burst forth violently; used here transitively. KILMENY'S RETURN FROM FAIRY LAND. When seven lang years had come and fled; But still and stedfast was her e'e! And the soft desire of maidens' een In that mild face could never be seen. Her seymar was the lily flower, And her cheek the moss-rose in the shower; That floats along the twilight sea. But she loved to raike1 the lanely glen, O, then the glen was all in motion: Broke from their bughts and faulds the tame, And murmured, and looked with anxious pain The hind came tripping o'er the dew; The wolf and the kid their raike began, And the tod, and the lamb, and the leveret ran ; The hawk and the hern atour them hung, And the merl and the mavis forhooyed their young; It was like an eve in a sinless world! 1 Range. 2 Scottish wild cattle.-See note 1, p. 385. Moved about her inquiringly. 6 Crow.-Houf, haunt. Enclosures and folds. |