“Come back! come back!” he cried in grief,
“Across this stormy water;
And I’ll forgive your Highland chief,
My daughter!—Oh, my daughter!”
’Twas vain: the loud waves lash’d the shore,
Return or aid preventing;
The waters wild went o’er his child,
And he was left lamenting.
NOTES AND QUESTIONS
Biography. Thomas Campbell (1777-1844) was a popular Scottish poet. He was born in Glasgow, his father being a prominent merchant of that city. At an early age Campbell began to write poetry, and at twenty-one had published “The Pleasures of Hope,” a poem that was received with much favor. He excelled in war poetry, his “Hohenlinden”, “The Battle of the Baltic”, and “Ye Mariners of England” being the most widely read. His ballads “Lochiel” and “Lord Ullin’s Daughter” are the best known. Campbell is remembered not alone for these stirring narrative poems, but also for the excellence of favorite lines that he wrote, such as “To live in the hearts we leave behind is not to die,” and “’Tis distance lends enchantment to the view.”