160

SPIRITS' SONG.

I.

CROW'D the cock?-The cock hath crow'd;
Paler still the glow-worm glow'd,
As his shrill awakening horn
Welcom❜d in the approach of morn,—
Fled the darkness with affright,

Fled the vestals that glanc'd on the night;
Abash'd they turn'd their lamps away,

As his clarion proclaim'd the god of the day!
Where are the ghosts of the dead,

That forsook their earthy bed,

And startled the darkness dismal and drear,
With shrieks of horror and fear,

And, piercing the veil of night,

Stood like columns of terrible light,

Like meteors their eyes, and so pallid their hue,
Like giants their stature increasing to view,

Swath'd in the soil'd sheets of the charnel and tomb,
While trembled the peasant, belated in gloom,

As pacing the yawning church-yard thrill'd with dread,
Who willingly would, had he power, have fled

From the yells of the damn'd, and the groans of the dead?— Have the spirits of darkness sped?

II.

Over a murderer's all-shunned grave,
Where fiends howl, and goblins rave;
While the bandogs hoarsely bark,
Meet the hags with Guthmond dark,-
There, with mickle toil and trouble,
Then they make the hell-broth bubble!
Three and three the cauldron round
Dance infernal beats the ground,—
While the hollow vaults all ring,
And their impious rites they sing,
Rites abhorr'd to Hecate,
Which the sun may never see:
And, as round the ghosts assemble,
Even they with horror tremble;—
Quails each corse within its shroud,
The untouch'd belfry peals aloud,
Many a sepulchre is riven,
Blasted seems the moon in heaven,
And the stars refuse their light,

Acheron enwraps the night.

But they hear the cock crow, and they start as they hear, The bells cease their peal, and the rout disappear;

Each ghost to his prison-house fleetly retires,

To fast, and to purge off his guilt in the fires,

H.

161

REVIEWS.

Queen Hynde, a Poem, in Six Books. By James Hogg,
Author of the Queen's Wake, Poetic Mirror, Pilgrims of
the Sun, &c. &c.-London, Longman. 1825. pp. 443.
THIS wildly-beautiful and very original poem has remained
almost unnoticed by the reviewers, though highly deserving
the warmest welcome, and the most cordial support, of all true
lovers of genuine song and a tale of the "olden time." The
Westminster Review, indeed, has inserted a trumpery and unfeel-
ing article respecting it, which, for its want of candour, and
utter insensibility to the pure poetic merits of the piece, ought
to put that periodical at once out of circulation, as a pseudo-
critical work from which it is vain to expect either truth or taste.
It is in truth a hoggish article, but has the misfortune of not
grunting so musically as the famous porker against whom it is
ignorantly obstreperous, and who "grunts you as sweet as
any"-we would say " nightingale," but that himself for-
bids it. He will be nothing but a lark—“a lark, lost in
the heavens' blue."

"The nightingale may give delight
Awhile, 'mid silence of the night;
But th' lark, lost in the heavens' blue,
O, her wild strain is ever new!"—p. 56.

And a lark he is too, for all his name, which, by some sly caprice of chance, was bestowed upon him as the opposite of his nature; perhaps by contrast, to heighten the charm of his genial sweetness, or to surprise us into admiration by the prompt appearance of his native bearing, so different from the character of his announcement. We know he is a lark, but fortune called him Hogg in jest. Well,

"A rose

By any other name would smell as sweet."

But let us call the Westminster reviewer what we may, his article will remain a swinish one-a mére grunt. Let him

VOL. III. PART I.

M

learn, however, to grunt more mellifluously before he attempt again to write upon our sweet songster of a lark, which we and all, in the mere tantilising freedom of familiar fondness, denominate Hogg, solely because that, from his "wild strain,"

"Pleasures flow in so thick and fast
Upon our hearts, that we at last
Must needs express our love's excess

With words of unmeant bitterness."

What are we to think of the perception of a critic, who refuses to praise the following, as one of the finest specimens of poetical composition he ever read?

Yes, I'll be querulous or boon,

Flow with the tide, change with the moon;
For what am I, or what art thou,
Or what the cloud and radiant bow,

Or what are waters, winds, and seas,
But elemental energies?

The sea must flow, the cloud descend,
The thunder burst, the rainbow bend,
Not when they would, but when they can,
Fit emblems of the soul of man!
Then let me frolic while I may,
The sportive vagrant of a day;
Yield to the impulse of the time,
Be it a toy, or theme sublime;
Wing the thin air or starry sheen,
Sport with the child upon the green;
Dive to the sea-maid's coral dome,
Or fairy's visionary home;

Sail on the whirlwind or the storm,
Or trifle with the maiden's form;
Or raise up spirits of the hill,
But only if, and when I will.

Say, may the meteor of the wild,
Nature's unstaid, erratic child,
That glimmers o'er the forest fen,
Or twinkles in the darksome glen,
Can that be bound? Can that be rein'd?
By cold ungenial rules restrain'd?
No!-leave it o'er its ample home,
The boundless wilderness, to roam!
To gleam, to tremble, and to die,
'Tis Nature's error, so am I !

Then, O forgive my wandering theme!

Pity my faults, but do not blame!

Short my advantage, small my lore,
I have one only monitor,

Whose precepts, to an ardent brain,
Can better kindle than restrain.
Then leave to all his fancies wild,
Nature's own rude untutor'd child;
And should he forfeit that fond claim,
Pity his loss, but do not blame.

Let those who list, the garden choose,
Where flowers are regular and profuse;
Come thou to dell and lonely lea,

And cull the mountain gems with me;
And sweeter blooms may be thine own,
By Nature's hand at random sown;
And sweeter strains may touch thy heart,
Than are producible by art.

The nightingale may give delight

A while, 'mid silence of the night,
But th' lark, lost in the heavens' blue,
O, her wild strain is ever new!

We have reason to reproach ourselves for having delayed our notice of this exquisite production, which, but from peculiar circumstances, would have appeared in the last number of our Journal. We had already devoted a considerable portion of a previous number to an examination of the merits of a minstrel of the mountain land, whose genius is somewhat too much restrained, perhaps, by the cold rules of art; and we waited impatiently for the reappearance of this untutored child of song, whose only monitor is nature, that our pages might be agreeably diversified with the representation of the various manners in which genius delights to manifest itself to an admiring world.

The history of Scottish Song is rich in examples of uneducated genius; and the name of Burns is in itself a tower of strength. England too can boast of her untutored sons; and, had we leisure and space, an interesting comparison might be instituted between the different kinds and degrees of merit by which each is distinguished. But the present is no opportunity for the display of national vanity, and we would proceed to our task, like impartial critics, without national prejudice or affection; and least of all would we wish to alloy, with any adscititious admixture, the pleasure which may and ought to be derived by every reader of taste and feeling, from such fine poetry as our "lark in the heavens' blue" has uttered in the broad daylight of his genius-in the full development of his extraordinary powers, and the perfect awakening of his inexhaustible ability.

At the plough, the poetic genius of his country encountered Burns, and threw her inspiring mantle over him. Among the Southern Highlands, in the pastoral solitudes of Ettrick, nature presented to the perusal of our shepherd one of the most romantic and beautiful pages in her expansive volumethe only volume he could peruse; for, at the age of twentyone, he was unable either to write or read. In haunts

"The most remote and inaccessible

By shepherds trod,"

he tended his sheep during all his prime of life, in seclusion and in loneliness. Destitute of learning, with few opportunities of instruction, removed equally from the advantages and incumbrances of literature, in the most poetic region of his own poetic land, he made him friends-of the mountain, which bore him on its majestic summit :-of the deep vale, on whose refreshing verdure his eye delighted to repose, when fatigued with the unclouded azure of the sunny sky at summer noontide:- of that sky itself, that spread its magnificent canopy above, still immeasurably above him, however high the mountain on which he stood, although the brow of one were but the other's base, and only to advance were to ascend, in sublime distance far over the utmost elevation of the loftiest hills:-of the clouds that flitted in gorgeous pageantry over "the heavens' blue," ever and anon forming, as it were, a grotesque pavilion, wherein rode some giant spirit, terrible in the blackness of his darkness; or some huge upfolded chariot, drawn by steeds of no mortal breed, and unlike the steeds of earth, wherein haply was borne some unknown god, from one end of the heaven to the other, charged with a mysterious mission to other lands; or battlement, or palacetower, whereabout battle raged, and war deepened in more sombre volumes of enfolding wrath; or other mountains, whose foundations were in the wind, that bore them onward in their unwieldy magnitude;- then vanished, as if their fantastic mutations had been only shadowed forth by the capricious fancy, which they mocked with vain shadows and faithless visions. With the spring, hallowed by fäery visit at moonlight, the brook that babbled of their secrets all the livelong day to the hills down which it flowed, the cave in which the breezes gathered, and whistled for sport and company,-he made acquaintance. These were his companions, and he invested them with humanity. They were to him being, and passion, and feeling, and appetite. For them had he affection:yea, for the very mists on the mountain top he felt a love, and gathered them around him as a mantle, as if for him, and to invest him with a regality, they were created, that he might be the

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