‘Busk and boon, my merry men a’,
For ill dooms I do guess;
I cannot look on that bonnie face
As it lies on the grass.’
‘Wha looks to freits, my master dear,
Its freits will follow them;
Let it ne’er be said that Edom o’ Gordon
Was daunted by a dame....’”
I cannot help wondering whether the great work done in the last century and a half towards the recovery of old ballads in their integrity will have any effect beyond the entertainment of a few scientific men and lovers of what is ancient, now that the first effects upon Wordsworth and his contemporaries have died away. Can it possibly give a vigorous impulse to a new school of poetry that shall treat the life of our time and what in past times has most meaning for us as freshly as those ballads did the life of their time? It is possible; and it is surely impossible that such examples of simple, realistic narrative shall be quite in vain. Certainly the more they are read the more they will be respected, and not only because they often deal with heroic matters heroically, but because their style is commonly so beautiful, their pathos so natural, their observation of life so fresh, so fond of particular detail—its very lists of names being at times real poetry.
Sometimes the style is equal and like to that of the most accomplished poetry, as in the stanza—