JOHN MORRISON.
Morrison, originally a blacksmith to trade, and latterly a Free Church catechist in Harris, is one of the most powerful and ingenious of the bards. I do not know in any language a poem like his Duin og is seann Duin’ agam in its subtlety of conception, its felicity of expression, and its cunning weavings and turnings of verses. Its theme is the “holy war” in the Christian soul, which he treats not at all in the style of Bunyan, but in quite an original fashion. It was published in 1835, again in America along with many of his other poems. His poetry shows that he was profoundly exercised and interested in the spiritual problems and difficulties of the Christian life. Few men ever obtained a deeper insight into the human heart, and fewer still possessed equally great poetic gifts for uttering what has been seen and felt. A good edition of his whole works is much required; and it was once hoped that his son, Dr Morrison of Edinburgh, would satisfy the wishes of his father’s admirers. The bard died in 1852, sixty-two years of age, before any of his works in book-form appeared.
Usquba has been the theme of frequent laudations by the secular bards; the following verses are from a preaching poem of a very different strain:—
Ye friends whom I cherish, nurse not in your mind
That I sing in this song from a motive unkind;
My theme is the drink-plague—that ill-unconfined,
That feeds on our ravage and ruin.
Ye cannot dislike though the satire be keen;
For disgrace, woe, and want are where’er it has been;
And spirits immortal enslaved may be seen
Its road to the devil pursuing.
Degraded is he who delights in its breath,
For its trade has been plann’d in the regions beneath;
Its curse has been wed to consumption and death
In bodies’ and souls’ undoing.