WINTHROP MACKWORTH PRAED
(1802-1839)

LETTERS FROM TEIGNMOUTH. I.-OUR BALL§ You'll come to our ball;-since we parted I've thought of you more than I'll say; Indeed, I was half broken-hearted

For a week, when they took you away.
Fond fancy brought back to my slumbers
Our walks on the Ness and the Den,
And echoed the musical numbers

Which you used to sing to me then.
I know the romance, since it's over,
"Twere idle, or worse, to recall;-
I know you're a terrible rover;

But, Clarence, you'll come to our Ball!

It's only a year since, at College,

12

This is a specimen of the half gay, half grave vers de société of which Praed was a master. Teignmouth is a watering-place in Devonshire. The various places named belong to the locality. The Ness is a promontory. The Den is a promenade formed by a sand-bank between the town and the sea. Haldon is a range of hills; Shaldon, a village just across the river Teign; Dawlish, another seaside resort three miles

away. As for the other allusions, Sir Thomas Lawrence was a famous portrait painter of that date (1829); National Schools (line 38) had lately been established at various places by a national society for the education of the poor; "Captain Rock" was a fictitious name signed to public notices by one of the Irish insurgents of 1822: "Hock is a kind of wine -Hochheimer; a "Blue" is a "blue-stocking" -a woman affecting literature and politics.

You'll find us all changed since you vanished;
We've set up a National School;
And waltzing is utterly banished;
And Ellen has married a fool;
The Major is going to travel;

Miss Hyacinth threatens a rout;
The walk is laid down with fresh gravel;
Papa is laid up with the gout;

And Jane has gone on with her easels,
And Anne has gone off with Sir Paul;
And Fanny is sick with the measles,

And I'll tell you the rest at the Ball.
You'll meet all your beauties;-the Lily,
And the Fairy of Willowbrook Farm,
And Lucy, who made me so silly
At Dawlish, by taking your arm;
Miss Manners, who always abused you,
For talking so much about Hock;
And her sister, who often amused you,
By raving of rebels and Rock;
And something which surely would answer,
An heiress quite fresh from Bengal:-
So, though you were seldom a dancer,
You'll dance, just for once, at our Ball.
But out on the world!-from the flowers
It shuts out the sunshine of truth;
It blights the green leaves in the bowers,
It makes an old age of our youth:
And the flow of our feeling, once in it,
Like a streamlet beginning to freeze,
Though it cannot turn ice in a minute,
Grows harder by sudden degrees.
Time treads o'er the graves of affection;
Sweet honey is turned into gall;
Perhaps you have no recollection

That ever you danced at our Ball.

You once could be pleased with our ballads-
To-day you have critical ears;

You once could be charmed with our salads-
Alas! you've been dining with Peers;
You trifled and flirted with many;

You've forgotten the when and the how;
There was one you liked better than any---
Perhaps you've forgotten her now.
But of those you remember most newly,

Of those who delight or inthrall,
None love you a quarter so truly

As some you will find at our Ball.

They tell me you've many who flatter,

Because of your wit and your song; They tell me (and what does it matter?)

You like to be praised by the throng; They tell me you're shadowed with laurel, They tell me you're loved by a Blue; They tell me you're sadly immoral—

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84

DREAM-PEDLARY*

If there were dreams to sell,
What would you buy?
Some cost a passing-bell;

Some a light sigh,

That shakes from Life's fresh crown Only a rose-leaf down.

If there were dreams to sell,

Merry and sad to tell,

And the crier rang the bell,

What would you buy?

A cottage lone and still,

With bowers nigh, Shadowy, my woes to still

Until I die.

Such pearl from Life's fresh crown
Fain would I shake me down:
Were dreams to have at will,
This would best heal my ill,
This would I buy.

But there were dreams to sell
Ill didst thou buy;

Life is a dream, they tell,

Waking, to die.
Dreaming a dream to prize,
Is wishing ghosts to rise;
And, if I had the spell
To call the buried well,
Which one would I?

If there are ghosts to raise,
What shall I call,
Out of hell's murky haze,
Heaven's blue pall?
Raise my loved long-lost boy
To lead me to his joy-

There are no ghosts to raise;
Out of death lead no ways;
Vain is the call.

Know'st thou not ghosts to sue,

No love thou hast.

Else lie, as I will do,

THOMAS HOOD (1798-1845)

THE DEATH-BED

We watched her breathing through the night,
Her breathing soft and low,

As in her breast the wave of life
Kept heaving to and fro.

So silently we seemed to speak,

So slowly moved about,

As we had lent her half our powers
To eke her living out.

Our very hopes belied our fears,

Our fears our hopes belied

We thought her dying when she slept,
And sleeping when she died.

For when the morn came dim and sad,
And chill with early showers,
Her quiet eyelids closed-she had
Another morn than ours.

THE SONG OF THE SHIRT

20 With fingers weary and worn,
With eyelids heavy and red,
A woman sat, in unwomanly rags,
Plying her needle and thread-
Stitch! stitch! stitch!

In poverty, hunger, and dirt,

And still with a voice of dolorous pitch
She sang the "Song of the Shirt".

"Work! work! work!

While the cock is crowing aloof!

30 And work-work-work,

Till the stars shine through the roof! It's Oh! to be a slave

Along with the barbarous Turk,

Where woman has never a soul to save,
If this is Christian work!

"Work-work-work,

Till the brain begins to swim;
Work-work-work,

Till the eyes are heavy and dim!

40 Seam, and gusset, and band,

Band, and gusset, and seam, Till over the buttons I fall asleep, And sew them on in a dream!

With one and all,' and hand in hand, And who shall bid us nay?

"And when we come to London Wall, A pleasant sight to view,

Come forth! come forth, ye cowards all, Here's men as good as you!

"Trelawny he's in keep and hold. Trelawny he may die;

But here's twenty thousand Cornish bold, Will know the reason why!"'

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24

In 1688, Sir Jonathan Trelawny, a native of Cornwall, was, with six other bishops, thrown into the Tower of London for resisting James the Second's Declaration of Indulgence. He was soon released. It was long supposed that this ballad, which was first printed anonymously, dated from that time. The refrain is ancient, but the ballad was written by Hawker in 1825. The Tamar and Severn (lines 13 and 14) are rivers of southwestern England. Michael (line 11) is the archangel to whom was given the task of overthrowing Satan and consigning him to hell.

THE SILENT TOWER OF BOTTREAU†
Tintadgel bells ring o'er the tide,
The boy leans on his vessel side;

He hears that sound, and dreams of home
Soothe the wild orphan of the foam.
"Come to thy God in time!''
Thus saith their pealing chime:
Youth, manhood, old age past,
"Come to thy God at last."

But why are Bottreau's echoes still?
Her tower stands proudly on the hill;

Yet the strange chough that home hath found,
The lamb lies sleeping on the ground.
"Come to thy God in time!""
Should be her answering chime:
"Come to thy God at last!"'
Should echo on the blast.

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The ship rode down with courses free, The daughter of a distant sea:

Her sheet was loose, her anchor stored, The merry Bottreau bells on board.

"Come to thy God in time!" Rung out Tintadgel chime; Youth, manhood, old age past,

"Come to thy God at last!"

The pilot heard his native bells
Hang on the breeze in fitful swells;
"Thank God," with reverent brow he cried,
"We make the shore with evening's tide."
"Come to thy God in time!"

It was his marriage chime:
Youth, manhood, old age past,
His bell must ring at last.

"Thank God, thou whining knave, on land,
But thank, at sea, the steersman's hand,'
The captain's voice above the gale:
"Thank the good ship and ready sail.''
"Come to thy God in time!"
Sad grew the boding chime:
"Come to thy God at last!"'
Boomed heavy on the blast.

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40

Uprose that sea! as if it heard The mighty Master's signal-word: What thrills the captain's whitening lip? "The rugged heights that line the sea-shore in the neighborhood of Tintadgel Castle and Church [on the coast of Cornwall] are crested with towers. Among these, that of Bottreau, or, as it is now written, Boscastle, is without bells. The silence of this wild and lonely churchyard on festive or solemn occasions is not a little striking. On enquiry I was told that the bells were once shipped for this church, but that when the vessel was within sight of the tower the blasphemy of her captain was punished in the manner related in the Poem. The bells, they told me, still lie in the bay, and announce by strange sounds the approach of a storm."-R. S. Hawker.

The death-groans of his sinking ship.
"Come to thy God in time!"
Swung deep the funeral chime:
Grace, mercy, kindness past,
"Come to thy God at last!"'

Long did the rescued pilot tell—

When gray hairs o'er his forehead fell,

While those around would hear and weepThat fearful judgment of the deep.

"Come to thy God in time!"'

He read his native chime:

Youth, manhood, old age past,

His bell rung out at last.

Still when the storm of Bottreau's waves
Is wakening in his weedy caves,
Those bells, that sullen surges hide,

Peal their deep notes beneath the tide:
"Come to thy God in time!"
Thus saith the ocean chime:
Storm, billow, whirlwind past,
"Come to thy God at last!"'

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SIR WALTER SCOTT (1771-1832)

FROM OLD MORTALITY*

CHAPTER I. PRELIMINARY

64

"Most readers," says the Manuscript of Mr. Pattieson, "must have witnessed with delight the joyous burst which attends the dismissing of a village-school on a fine summer evening. The buoyant spirit of childhood, repressed with so much difficulty during the tedious hours of discipline, may then be seen to explode, as it were, in shout, and song, and frolic, as the little urchins join in groups on their playground, and arrange their matches of sport for the evening. But there is one individual who partakes of the relief afforded by the moment of dismission, whose feelings are not so obvious to the eye of the spectator, or so apt to receive his sympathy. I mean the teacher himself, who, stunned with the hum, and suffocated 'with the closeness of his school-room, has spent the whole day (himself against a host) in controlling petulance, exciting indifference to action, striv ing to enlighten stupidity, and labouring to soften obstinacy; and whose very powers of * Old Mortality is a story of the rising of the Scotch Covenanters about 1677-9 against the English church and throne. Scott had once met, in the churchyard of Dunnottar, one Robert Paterson, familiarly known as "Old Mortality," and he chooses to make him responsible for the substance of the tale. is one of the "Tales of My Landlord"; and the Landlord of Wallace Inn, Mr. Cleishbottom the schoolmaster, and the manuscript of his assistant, the frail Mr. Pattieson, are all a part of the fictitious background.

It