These last two lines have the very movement and note, the deep heavy plunge, the still swirl of the water. Well I know the lochs whence Aill comes red in flood; many a trout have I taken in Aill, long ago. This, of course, causes a favourable prejudice, a personal bias towards admiration. But I think the poetry itself is good, and stirs the spirit, even of those who know not Ailmoor, the mother of Aill, that lies dark among the melancholy hills.
The spirit is stirred throughout by the chivalry and the courage of Scott’s men and of his women. Thus the Lady of Branksome addresses the English invaders who have taken her boy prisoner:—
“For the young heir of Branksome’s line,
God be his aid, and God be mine;
Through me no friend shall meet his doom;
Here, while I live, no foe finds room.
Then if thy Lords their purpose urge,
Take our defiance loud and high;
Our slogan is their lyke-wake dirge,
Our moat, the grave where they shall lie.”
Ay, and though the minstrel says he is no love poet, and though, indeed, he shines more in war than in lady’s bower, is not this a noble stanza on true love, and worthy of what old Malory writes in his “Mort d’Arthur”? Because here Scott speaks for himself, and of his own unhappy and immortal affection:—
“True love’s the gift which God has given
To man alone beneath the Heaven.
It is not Fantasy’s hot fire,
Whose wishes, soon as granted, fly;
It liveth not in fierce desire,
With dead desire it dock not die:
It is the secret sympathy,
The silver link, the silken tie,
Which heart to heart and mind to mind,
In body and in soul can bind.”
Truth and faith, courage and chivalry, a free life in the hills and by the streams, a shrewd brain, an open heart, a kind word for friend or foeman, these are what you learn from the “Lay,” if you want to learn lessons from poetry. It is a rude legend, perhaps, as the critics said at once, when critics were disdainful of wizard priests and ladies magical. But it is a deathless legend, I hope; it appeals to every young heart that is not early spoiled by low cunning, and cynicism, and love of gain. The minstrel’s own prophecy is true, and still, and always,
“Yarrow, as he rolls along,
Bears burden to the minstrel’s song.”
After the “Lay” came “Marmion, a Tale of Flodden Field.” It is far more ambitious and complicated than the “Lay,” and is not much worse written. Sir Walter was ever a rapid and careless poet, and as he took more pains with his plot, he took less with his verse. His friends reproved him, but he answered to one of them—
“Since oft thy judgment could refine
My flattened thought and cumbrous line,
Still kind, as is thy wont, attend,
And in the minstrel spare the friend:
Though wild as cloud, as stream, as gale,
Flow forth, flow unrestrained, my tale!”
Any one who knows Scott’s country knows how cloud and stream and gale all sweep at once down the valley of Ettrick or of Tweed. West wind, wild cloud, red river, they pour forth as by one impulse—forth from the far-off hills. He let his verse sweep out in the same stormy sort, and many a “cumbrous line,” many a “flattened thought,” you may note, if you will, in “Marmion.” For example—