By the festal cities' blaze, While the wine-cup shines in light; By thy wild and stormy steep, Brave hearts! to Britain's pride On the deck of fame that died ; With the gallant good Riou: Soft sigh the winds of Heaven o'er their grave! While the billow mournful rolls, And the mermaid's song condoles, Singing glory to the souls Of the brave! YE MARINERS OF ENGLAND. Ye mariners of England, Whose flag has braved a thousand years Your glorious standard launch again, And sweep through the deep, While the stormy tempests blow; While the battle rages loud and long, And the stormy tempests blow. The spirits of your fathers Shall start from every wave! For the deck it was their field of fame, Where Blake and mighty Nelson fell, As ye sweep through the deep, While the stormy tempests blow; Britannia needs no bulwarks, Her march is o'er the mountain waves, With thunders from her native oak, As they roar on the shore, When the stormy tempests blow; The meteor flag of England Till danger's troubled night depart, When the storm has ceased to blow; HOHENLINDEN. On Linden, when the sun was low, But Linden saw another sight, By torch and trumpet fast arrayed, Then shook the hills with thunder riven, And louder than the bolts of heaven Far flashed the red artillery. But redder yet that light shall glow "Tis morn; but scarce yon level sun The combat deepens. On, ye brave, Few, few shall part where many meet! SIR W. SCOTT. SIR WALTER SCOTT is the most eminent of the literary men of whom Scotland is justly proud. He was born in 1771. Infirm health during a part of his boyhood opposed obstacles to the progress of his education; but the great number of imaginative works which it left him leisure to read, and which must have weakened an intellect less robust, appears but to have stimulated his genius, and given to it that direction which it afterwards followed. He found time for graver studies at a later time; and while cultivating poetry and antiquarian researches, pursued his profession as a lawyer, and attained its distinctions and emoluments. The Lay of the last Minstrel, the most spirited and brilliant, as it was one of the earlier of his works, gained at once a well-deserved celebrity. Marmion, The Lady of the Lake, The Lord of the Isles, Rokeby, and several poems besides, followed in succession, and met with a like success. It was the peculiar merit of Scott's poetry that it revived something of that chivalrous sentiment without which society rusts in selfishness and sordid pursuits, and that it turned back the eyes of a self-conceited age to the "olden time." The vividness, if not always the poetic truthfulness, with which Scott described the Highland scenery of his native land, conduced not less to the revival of that appreciation of nature which had almost ceased to exist while English poetry copied French models. Not less salutary was the poetry of Scott from its manly, healthful tone, and its absence of frivolity, morbidness, and sentimentality. These merits did not prevent it from being in a large measure supplanted by the higher colouring and coarser appeals of Lord Byron's early works. With that absence of petty jealousy which belonged to him, Scott willingly yielded place to a younger competitor; and devoting himself to a new class of literature, of which he was almost the inventor, produced that series of historical novels with which, even more than with poetry, his name is identified. It was, however, adversity which brought out the unpretending greatness of his robust character. Having unfortunately entered into a sort of partnership with an eminent publisher, he suddenly found that by the bank ruptcy of the firm that large fortune which years of labour had acquired for him was confiscated; while for an enormous debt he continued responsible. Without a murmur he applied himself to the gigantic task of meeting those new liabilities; and, labouring with increased industry in almost every department of literature, he acquired within a few years a second fortune so large as nearly to defray the debt, as well as to preserve for his family the domain which he had purchased at Abbotsford-a suitable residence for that new branch of the ancient house of Scott to found which had been his ambition. Those labours proved, however, too severe for his health. Being ordered to try a southern climate, a frigate was placed at his disposal by King William the Fourth. After a brief sojourn at Naples and at Rome, he returned home through Germany; his long-cherished desire to meet Goethe being, however, frustrated by the death of that poet, which had just taken place at Weimar. Scott expired soon after his return to Abbotsford, A.D. 1832; and was interred, according to his own wish, among the ruins of Dryburgh Abbey. With the frank nature and cordial humour which belonged to Chaucer and Shakespeare, Scott possessed much also of that dramatic insight which belonged to them. has been called, with reference to his novels, "a prose Shakespeare;" nor is the title an exaggerated one, if we appreciate the full difference between poetry and the most poetical prose. Several of his poems may be considered as novels in verse; and it is remarkable that as such they do not possess passages which equal in poetic power the best passages in his prose novels. Scott's poetry hardly aims at either the philosophic depth or the imaginative elevation which belong to the best poetry of the age; and having been composed, in some instances, almost with the rapidity of an improvisatore rather than the loving labour of a poet devoted to his art, and zealous for its fame, if not for his own, its diction is deficient in richness, expressiveness, force, and finish; but his poems are also free from the faults and affectations so often united with lofty pretensions. He BRANKSOME TOWER. The feast was over in Branksome tower, No living wight, save the ladye alone, The tables were drawn, it was idlesse all; Or crowded round the ample fire: The stag-hounds, weary with the chase, Nine-and-twenty knights of fame Hung their shields in Branksome Hall; Brought them their steeds from bower to stall; Waited, duteous, on them all: Ten of them were sheathed in steel, With corslet laced, Pillow'd on buckler cold and hard; They carved at the meal With gloves of steel, And they drank the red wine through the helmet barred. Ten squires, ten yeomen, mail-clad men, Such was the custom in Branksome Hall. Why do these steeds stand ready dight? From Warkworth, or Naworth, or merry Carlisle. |