31

Or struggling with the darkness all the night,
And visited all night by troops of stars,
Or when they climb the sky or when they sink:
Companion of the morning star at dawn,
Thyself Earth's rosy star, and of the dawn
Co-herald: wake, O wake, and utter praise!
Who sank thy sunless pillars deep in Earth?
Who filled thy countenance with rosy light?
Who made thee parent of perpetual streams?
And you, ye five wild torrents fiercely glad!
Who called you forth from night and utter
death,

40

Solemnly seemest, like a vapory cloud,
To rise before me-Rise, O ever rise,
Rise like a cloud of incense from the Earth!
Thou kingly Spirit throned among the hills,
Thou dread ambassador from Earth to
Heaven,

Great Hierarch! tell thou the silent sky,
And tell the stars, and tell yon rising sun
Earth, with her thousand voices, praises God.

1802

THE KNIGHT'S TOMB

1802

Where is the grave of Sir Arthur O'Kellyn? Where may the grave of that good man be?---By the side of a spring, on the breast of

Helvellyn, 1

Under the twigs of a young birch tree!

1 a mountain in Cumberland

10

When I was young?-Ah, woeful When!
Ah! for the change 'twixt Now and Then!
This breathing house not built with hands,
This body that does me grievous wrong,
O'er aery cliffs and glittering sands,
How lightly then it flashed along-
Like those trim skiffs, unknown of yore,
On winding lakes and rivers wide,
That ask no aid of sail or oar,
That fear no spite of wind or tide!
Nought cared this body for wind or weather
When Youth and I lived in't together.

Flowers are lovely; Love is flower-like;
Friendship is a sheltering tree;

Oh! the joys, that came down shower-like, Of Friendship, Love, and Liberty,

21

A first rough draft of this poem was called "Area Spontanea," and the whole still reads like a musical improvisation.

Ere I was old!

Ere I was old? Ah, woeful Ere,
Which tells me, Youth's no longer here!
O Youth! for years so many and sweet,
'Tis known, that Thou and I were one,
I'll think it but a fond conceit-
It cannot be that Thou art gone!
Thy vesper-bell hath not yet tolled-
And thou wert aye a masker bold!
What strange disguise hast now put on,
To make believe that thou art gone?
I see these locks in silvery slips,
This drooping gait, this altered size:
But Springtide blossoms on thy lips,
And tears take sunshine from thine eyes!
Life is but thought; so think I will
That Youth and I are housemates still.

30

40

1834

All Nature seems at work. Slugs leave their lair

The bees are stirring-birds are on the wing-
And Winter slumbering in the open air,
Wears on his smiling face a dream of Spring!
And I the while, the sole unbusy thing,
Nor honey make, nor pair, nor build, nor sing.

Yet well I ken the banks where amaranths blow,

Have traced the fount whence streams of nectar flow.

Bloom, O ye amaranths! bloom for whom ye

may,

For me ye bloom not! Glide, rich streams, away!

With lips unbrightened, wreathless brow, I stroll.

And would you learn the spells that drowse my soul?

Work without Hope draws nectar in a sieve, And Hope without an object cannot live. 1825

1828

2 the mournful Ay de mi (alas!) of a man confronted by age and sickness, and looking back over a life of defeated hopes and wasted opportunities

SIR WALTER SCOTT 1771-1832

The death of Scott is often taken to mark the end of the early nineteenth century romantic period, as the publication of the Lyrical Ballads marks its beginning. Born and reared in the society of Edinburgh, and with two years at the university, Scott had a taste for literature; as a youth he had spent much time riding and walking through the border land, and had collected ballads and songs from the old singers, which he afterwards published. Until 1815 he was chiefly a poet, producing The Lay of the Last Minstrel, 1805; Marmion, 1808; The Lady of the Lake, 1810. Then Waverley opened a new vein.

The immediate and vast popularity of his novels, and his personal ambition to found a family and to be known to posterity as "Scott of Abbotsford," tempted him into a publishing enterprise that failed and left him, six years before his death, with a debt of £120,000. This he resolutely set himself to write off. Before the stroke that preceded his death at Abbotsford he had actually earned one third of this amount and fifteen years later, the last penny was paid by royalties.

The spirit of romance gained from his background and experiences pervades Scott's work, and is seen to great advantage in his poems. In these his imagination seems stimulated rather than restrained by their historical setting. Vigorous, headlong narrative is his forte. He follows his theme with the spirit of a Roosevelt, and leaves with the reader the sense of abundant resources untouched. The possession of tireless energy is the first and last impression given by Scott's narratives. His lyric poetry, though full of grace and tenderness, is quite different from Burns's, for Scott is impersonal, almost objective.

Scott's inborn romanticism was greatly stimulated by his antiquarian pursuits, which confirmed in him an attitude of mind that looked toward the past. His Tory sympathies also led him to magnify the virtues of a social order that had faded away. The stirring life of the Scotch border from medieval days down to those of his immediate ancestors first filled his imagination and then became the subject of his serious study. All this enabled him, when Byron's more passionate narrative poetry eclipsed his own, to take up the writing of prose fiction and reach eminent success in the historical romance, a practically new field in his day.

Biography: Lockhart, Scott's son-in-law, in his Memoirs of Scott, 2 vols. 1837-8, produced one of the famous literary biographies of the century; Hutton (EML); Yonge (GW). Criticism: Carlyle, a little unsympathetic; Hazlitt; Saintsbury; Stephen; Lang; Woodberry, Swinburne; Jenks, In the Days of Scott. Interesting recent comment: V. Rendall's "Scott and the Waverley Novels," 19th Cent. 96:531-6; T. Seccombe's "Scott: Waverley," Liv. Age 282:485-91; B. Croce, "Walter Scott: an Italian Estimate," Liv. Age 317:99-103, and Dial 75:325-31.