Sir Walter Scott
The Bard of ancient lore! Like one forlorn,
He turned, enamoured, to the silent Past;
And searching down its mazes gray and vast,
As you might find the blossom by the thorn,
He found fair things in barren places cast
And brought them up into the light of morn.
Lo! Truth, resplendent, as a tropic dawn,
Shines always through his wond'rous pictures! Hence
The many quick emotions which are born
Of an Imagination so intense!
The chargers' hoofs come tearing up the sward—
The claymores rattle in the restless sheath;
You close his page, and almost look abroad
For Highland glens and windy leagues of heath.
Let me here endeavour to draw the fair distinctions between the great writers,
or some of the great writers, of Scott's day; borrowing at the same time
a later name. I shall start with that strange figure, Percy Bysshe Shelley.
He was too subjective to be merely a descriptive poet,
too metaphysical to be vague, and too imaginative to be didactic.
As Scott was the most dramatic, Wordsworth the most profound,
Byron the most passionate, so Shelley was the most spiritual writer
of his time. Scott's poetry was the result of vivid emotion,
Wordsworth's of quiet observation, Byron's of passion,
and Shelley's of passion and reflection. Scott races like a torrent,
Byron rolls like a sea, Wordsworth ripples into a lake,
Tennyson flows like a river, and Shelley gushes like a fountain.
As Tennyson is the most harmonious, so Shelley is the most musical
of modern bards. I fear to touch upon that grand old man, Coleridge;
he appears to me so utterly apart from his contemporaries. He stands,
like Teneriffe, alone. Can I liken him to a magnificent thunder-scorched crag
with its summits eternally veiled in vapour?—H.K.
The Bereaved One
She sleeps—and I see through a shadowy haze,
Where the hopes of the past and the dreams that I cherished
In the sunlight of brighter and happier days,
As the mists of the morning, have faded and perished.
She sleeps—and will waken to bless me no more;
Her life has died out like the gleam on the river,
And the bliss that illumined my bosom of yore
Has fled from its dwelling for ever and ever.
I had thought in this life not to travel alone,
I had hoped for a mate in my joys and my sorrow—
But the face of my idol is colder than stone,
And my path will be lonely without her to-morrow.
I was hoping to bask in the light of her smile
When Fortune and Fame with their laurels had crown'd me—
But the fire in her eyes has been dying the while,
And the thorns of affliction are planted around me.
There are those that may vent all their grief in their tears
And weep till the past is away in the distance;
But this wreck of the dream of my sunshiny years
Will hang like a cloud o'er the rest of existence.
In the depth of my soul she shall ever remain;
My thoughts, like the angels, shall hover about her;
For our hearts have been reft and divided in pain
And what is this world to be left in without her?
Dungog
Here, pent about by office walls
And barren eyes all day,
'Tis sweet to think of waterfalls
Two hundred miles away!
I would not ask you, friends, to brook
An old, old truth from me,
If I could shut a Poet's book
Which haunts me like the Sea!
He saith to me, this Poet saith,
So many things of light,
That I have found a fourfold faith,
And gained a twofold sight.
He telleth me, this Poet tells,
How much of God is seen
Amongst the deep-mossed English dells,
And miles of gleaming green.
From many a black Gethsemane,
He leads my bleeding feet
To where I hear the Morning Sea
Round shining spaces beat!
To where I feel the wind, which brings
A sound of running creeks,
And blows those dark, unpleasant things,
The sorrows, from my cheeks.
I'll shut mine eyes, my Poet choice,
And spend the day with thee;
I'll dream thou art a fountain voice
Which God hath sent to me!
And far beyond these office walls
My thoughts shall even stray,
And watch the wilful waterfalls,
Two hundred miles away.
For, if I know not of thy deeds,
And darling Kentish downs,
I've seen the deep, wild Dungog fells,
And hate the heart of towns!
Then, ho! for beaming bank and brake,
Far-folded hills among,
Where Williams,* like a silver snake,
Draws winding lengths along!
—
* A tributary of the river Hunter, after Hunter, on which Dungog stands.
—
And ho! for stormy mountain cones,
Where headlong Winter leaps,
What time the gloomy swamp-oak groans,
And weeps and wails and weeps.
There, friends, are spots of sleepy green,
Where one may hear afar,
O'er fifteen leagues of waste, I ween,
A moaning harbour bar!
(The sea that breaks, and beats and shakes
The caverns, howling loud,
Beyond the midnight Myall Lakes,*
And half-awakened Stroud!)**
—
* A chain of lakes near Port Stephens, N.S.W.
** A town on the Karuah, which flows into Port Stephens.
—
There, through the fretful autumn days,
Beneath a cloudy sun,
Comes rolling down rain-rutted ways,
The wind, Euroclydon!
While rattles over riven rocks
The thunder, harsh and dry;
And blustering gum and brooding box
Are threshing at the sky!
And then the gloom doth vex the sight
With crude, unshapely forms
Which hold throughout the yelling night
A fellowship with storms!
But here are shady tufts and turns,
Where sumptuous Summer lies
(By reaches brave with flags and ferns)
With large, luxuriant eyes.
And here, another getteth ease—
Our Spring, so rarely seen,
Who shows us in the cedar trees
A glimpse of golden green.
What time the flapping bats have trooped
Away like ghosts to graves,
And darker growths than Night are cooped
In silent, hillside caves.
Ah, Dungog, dream of darling days,
'Tis better thou should'st be
A far-off thing to love and praise—
A boon from Heaven to me!
For, let me say that when I look
With wearied eyes on men,
I think of one unchanging nook,
And find my faith again.