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CHARLES DUDLEY WARNER

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HAMILTON WRIGHT MABIE
LUCIA GILBERT RUNKLE
GEORGE HENRY WARNER

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Connoisseur Edition
Vol. VIII.

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LIMITED TO FIVE HUNDRED COPIES IN HALF RUSSIA
No. ..........

Copyright, 1896, by
R. S. PEALE AND J. A. HILL
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THE ADVISORY COUNCIL

CRAWFORD H. TOY, A. M., LL. D.,
Professor of Hebrew, Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass.
THOMAS R. LOUNSBURY, LL. D., L. H. D.,
Professor of English in the Sheffield Scientific School of Yale University, New Haven, Conn.
WILLIAM M. SLOANE, Ph. D., L. H. D.,
Professor of History and Political Science, Princeton University, Princeton, N. J.
BRANDER MATTHEWS, A. M., LL. B.,
Professor of Literature, Columbia University, New York City.
JAMES B. ANGELL, LL. D.,
President of the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Mich.
WILLARD FISKE, A. M., Ph. D.,
Late Professor of the Germanic and Scandinavian Languages and Literatures, Cornell University, Ithaca, N. Y.
EDWARD S. HOLDEN, A. M., LL. D.,
Director of the Lick Observatory, and Astronomer, University of California, Berkeley, Cal.
ALCÉE FORTIER, LIT. D.,
Professor of the Romance Languages, Tulane University, New Orleans, La.
WILLIAM P. TRENT, M. A.,
Dean of the Department of Arts and Sciences, and Professor of English and History, University of the South, Sewanee, Tenn.
PAUL SHOREY, Ph. D.,
Professor of Greek and Latin Literature, University of Chicago, Chicago, Ill.
WILLIAM T. HARRIS, LL. D.,
United States Commissioner of Education, Bureau of Education, Washington, D. C.
MAURICE FRANCIS EGAN, A. M., LL. D.,
Professor of Literature in the Catholic University of America, Washington, D. C.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

VOL. VIII

FULL-PAGE ILLUSTRATIONS

VOLUME VIII

VIGNETTE PORTRAITS

JOHN CALVIN

(1509-1564)

BY ARTHUR CUSHMAN M^cGIFFERT

ohn Calvin was born in the village of Noyon, in northeastern France, on the 10th of July, 1509. He was intended by his parents for the priesthood, for which he seemed to be peculiarly fitted by his naturally austere disposition, averse to every form of sport or frivolity, and he was given an excellent education with that calling in view; but finally at the command of his father—whose plans for his son had undergone a change—he gave up his theological preparation and devoted himself to the study of law. Gifted with an extraordinary memory, rare insight, and an uncommonly keen reasoning faculty, he speedily distinguished himself in his new field, and a brilliant career was predicted for him by his teachers. His tastes however were more literary than legal, and his first published work, written at the age of twenty-three, was a commentary on Seneca's 'De Clementia,' which brought him wide repute as a classical scholar and as a clear and forceful writer.

Though he had apparently renounced forever all thoughts of a clerical life, he retained, even while he was engaged in the study of law and in the more congenial pursuit of literature, his early love for theology; and in 1532, under the influence of some of Luther's writings which happened to fall into his hands, he was converted to the Protestant faith and threw in his fortunes with the little evangelical party in Paris. His intellectual attainments made him a marked man wherever he went, and he speedily became the leading spirit in the circle to which he had attached himself. Compelled soon afterward by the persecuting measures of King Francis I. to flee the country, he took up his residence at Basle and settled down, as he hoped, to a quiet literary life. It was during his stay here that he published in 1536 the first edition of his greatest work, 'The Christian Institutes,' in which is contained the system of theology which has for centuries borne his name, and by which he is best known to the world at large. Probably no other work written by so young a man has ever produced such a wide-spread, profound, and lasting influence. In its original form, it is true, the work was only a brief and simple introduction to the study of the Scriptures, much less imposing and forbidding than the elaborate body of divinity which is now known to theologians as 'Calvin's Institutes': but all the substance of the last edition is to be found in the first; the theology of the one is the theology of the other—the Calvin of 1559 is the Calvin of 1536. The fact that at the age of twenty-six Calvin could publish a system of theology at once so original and so profound—a system, moreover, which with all his activity of intellect and love of truth he never had occasion to modify in any essential particular—is one of the most striking phenomena in the history of the human mind; and yet it is but one of many illustrations of the man's marvelous clearness and comprehensiveness of vision, and of his force and decision of character. His life from beginning to end was the consistent unfolding of a single dominant principle—the unwavering pursuit of a single controlling purpose. From his earliest youth the sense of duty was all-supreme with him; he lived under a constant imperative—in awe of, and in reverent obedience to, the will of a sovereign God; and his theology is but the translation into language of that experience; its translation by one of the world's greatest masters of logical thought and of clear speech.

Calvin's great work was accompanied by a dedicatory epistle addressed to King Francis I., which is by common consent one of the finest specimens of courteous and convincing apology in existence. A brief extract from it will be found in the selections given below.

JOHN CALVIN.

Soon after the publication of the 'Institutes,' Calvin's plans for a quiet literary career were interrupted by a peremptory call to assist in the work of reforming the Church and State of Geneva; and the remainder of his life, with the exception of a brief interval of exile, was spent in that city, at the head of a religious movement whose influence was ultimately felt throughout all Western Europe. It is true that Calvin was not the originating genius of the Reformation—that he belonged only to the second generation of reformers, and that he learned the Protestant faith from Luther. But he became for the peoples of Western Europe what Luther was for Germany, and he gave his own peculiar type of Protestantism—that type which was congenial to his disposition and experience—to Switzerland, to France, to the Netherlands, to Scotland, and through the Dutch, the English Puritans, and the Scotch Presbyterians, to large portions of the New World. Calvin, to be sure, is not widely popular to-day even in those lands which owe him most, for he had little of that human sympathy which glorifies the best thought and life of the present age; but for all that, he has left his mark upon the world, and his influence is not likely ever to be wholly outgrown. His emphasis upon God's holiness made his followers scrupulously, even censoriously pure; his emphasis upon God's will made them stern and unyielding in the performance of what they believed to be their duty; his emphasis upon God's majesty, paradoxical though it may seem at first sight, promoted in no small degree the growth of civil and religious liberty, for it dwarfed all mere human authority and made men bold to withstand the unlawful encroachments of their fellows. Thus Calvin became a mighty force in the world, though he gave the world far more of law than of gospel, far more of Moses than of Christ.

Calvin's career as a writer began at an early day and continued until his death. His pen was a ready one and was seldom idle. In the midst of the most engrossing cares and occupations—the cares and occupations of a preacher, a pastor, a teacher of theology, a statesman, and a reformer to whom the Protestants of many lands looked for inspiration and for counsel—he found time, though he died at the early age of fifty-four, to produce works that to-day fill more than threescore volumes, and all of which bear the unmistakable impress of a great mind. In addition to his 'Institutes,' theological and ethical tracts, and treatises, sermons, and epistles without number, he wrote commentaries upon almost all the books of the Bible; which for lucidity, for wide and accurate learning, and for sound and ripe judgment, have never been surpassed. Among the most characteristic and important of his briefer works are his vigorous and effective 'Reply to Cardinal Sadolet,' who had endeavored after Calvin's exile from Geneva in 1539 to win back the Genevese to the Roman Church; his tract on 'The Necessity of Reforming the Church; presented to the Imperial Diet at Spires, A.D. 1544, in the cause of all who wish with Christ to reign'—an admirable statement of the conditions which had made a reformation of the Church imperatively necessary, and had led to the great religious and ecclesiastical revolution; another tract on 'The True Method of Giving Peace to Christendom and Reforming the Church,'—marked by a beautiful Christian spirit and permeated with sound practical sense; still another containing 'Articles Agreed Upon by the Faculty of Sacred Theology at Paris, with the Antidote', and finally an 'Admonition Showing the Advantages which Christendom might Derive from an Inventory of Relics.' Though Calvin was from boyhood up of a most serious turn of mind, and though his writings, in marked contrast to the writings of Luther, exhibit few if any traces of genial spontaneous humor, the last two works show that he knew how to employ satire on occasion in a very telling way for the overthrow of error and for the discomfiture of his opponents.

In addition to the services which Calvin rendered by his writings to the cause of Christianity and of sacred learning, must be recognized the lasting obligation under which as an author he put his mother tongue. Whether he wrote in Latin or in French, his style was always chaste, elegant, clear, and vigorous. His Latin compares favorably with the best models of antiquity; his French is a new creation. The latter language indeed owes almost as much to Calvin as the German language owes to Luther. He was unquestionably its greatest master in the sixteenth century, and he did more than any one else to fix its permanent character—to give it that exactness, that lucidity, that purity and harmony of which it justly boasts.

Calvin's writings bear throughout the imprint of his character. There appears in all of them the same horror of impurity and dishonor, the same stern sense of duty, the same respect for the sovereignty of the Almighty, the same severe judgment of human failings. To read them is to breathe the tonic air of snow-clad heights; but they are seldom if ever touched with the tender glow of human feeling or transfigured with the radiance of creative imagination. There is that in David, in Isaiah, in Paul, in Luther, which appeals to every heart and makes their words immortal; but Calvin was neither poet nor prophet,—the divine afflatus was not his,—and it is not without reason that his writings, vigorous, forceful, profound, as is their context, and pure and elegant as is their style, are read to-day only by theologians or historians.

PREFATORY ADDRESS TO THE 'INSTITUTES'

To Francis, King of the French, the most Christian Majesty, the most Mighty and Illustrious Monarch, his Sovereign,—John Calvin prays peace and salvation in Christ.

Sire:—When I first engaged in this work, nothing was further from my thoughts than to write what should afterwards be presented to your Majesty. My intention was only to furnish a kind of rudiments, by which those who feel some interest in religion might be trained to true godliness. And I toiled at the task chiefly for the sake of my countrymen the French, multitudes of whom I perceived to be hungering and thirsting after Christ, while very few seemed to have been duly imbued with even a slender knowledge of him. That this was the object which I had in view is apparent from the work itself, which is written in a simple and elementary form, adapted for instruction.

But when I perceived that the fury of certain bad men had risen to such a height in your realm that there was no place in it for sound doctrine, I thought it might be of service if I were in the same work both to give instruction to my countrymen, and also lay before your Majesty a Confession, from which you may learn what the doctrine is that so inflames the rage of those madmen who are this day with fire and sword troubling your kingdom. For I fear not to declare that what I have here given may be regarded as a summary of the very doctrine which, they vociferate, ought to be punished with confiscation, exile, imprisonment, and flames, as well as exterminated by land and sea.

I am aware indeed how, in order to render our cause as hateful to your Majesty as possible, they have filled your ears and mind with atrocious insinuations; but you will be pleased of your clemency to reflect that neither in word nor deed could there be any innocence, were it sufficient merely to accuse. When any one, with the view of exciting prejudice, observes that this doctrine of which I am endeavoring to give your Majesty an account has been condemned by the suffrages of all the estates, and was long ago stabbed again and again by partial sentences of courts of law, he undoubtedly says nothing more than that it has sometimes been violently oppressed by the power and faction of adversaries, and sometimes fraudulently and insidiously overwhelmed by lies, cavils, and calumny. While a cause is unheard, it is violence to pass sanguinary sentences against it; it is fraud to charge it, contrary to its deserts, with sedition and mischief.

That no one may suppose we are unjust in thus complaining, you yourself, most illustrious Sovereign, can bear us witness with what lying calumnies it is daily traduced in your presence; as aiming at nothing else than to wrest the sceptres of kings out of their hands, to overturn all tribunals and seats of justice, to subvert all order and government, to disturb the peace and quiet of society, to abolish all laws, destroy the distinctions of rank and property, and in short turn all things upside down. And yet that which you hear is but the smallest portion of what is said; for among the common people are disseminated certain horrible insinuations—insinuations which, if well founded, would justify the whole world in condemning the doctrine with its authors to a thousand fires and gibbets. Who can wonder that the popular hatred is inflamed against it, when credit is given to those most iniquitous accusations? See why all ranks unite with one accord in condemning our persons and our doctrine!

Carried away by this feeling, those who sit in judgment merely give utterance to the prejudices which they have imbibed at home, and think they have duly performed their part if they do not order punishment to be inflicted on any one until convicted, either on his own confession, or on legal evidence. But of what crime convicted? "Of that condemned doctrine," is the answer. But with what justice condemned? The very evidence of the defense was not to abjure the doctrine itself, but to maintain its truth. On this subject, however, not a whisper is allowed....

It is plain indeed that we fear God sincerely and worship him in truth, since, whether by life or by death, we desire his name to be hallowed; and hatred herself has been forced to bear testimony to the innocence and civil integrity of some of our people, on whom death was inflicted for the very thing which deserved the highest praise. But if any, under pretext of the gospel, excite tumults (none such have as yet been detected in your realm), if any use the liberty of the grace of God as a cloak for licentiousness (I know of numbers who do), there are laws and legal punishments by which they may be punished up to the measure of their deserts; only in the mean time let not the gospel of God be evil spoken of because of the iniquities of evil men.

Sire, that you may not lend too credulous an ear to the accusations of our enemies, their virulent injustice has been set before you at sufficient length: I fear even more than sufficient, since this preface has grown almost to the bulk of a full apology. My object however was not to frame a defense, but only with a view to the hearing of our cause, to mollify your mind, now indeed turned away and estranged from us,—I add, even inflamed against us,—but whose good will, we are confident, we should regain, would you but once with calmness and composure read this our Confession, which we desire your Majesty to accept instead of a defense. But if the whispers of the malevolent so possess your ear that the accused are to have no opportunity of pleading their cause; if those vindictive furies, with your connivance, are always to rage with bonds, scourgings, tortures, maimings, and burnings—we indeed, like sheep doomed to slaughter, shall be reduced to every extremity; yet so that in our patience we will possess our souls, and wait for the strong hand of the Lord, which doubtless will appear in its own time, and show itself armed, both to rescue the poor from affliction and also take vengeance on the despisers, who are now exulting so securely.

Most illustrious King, may the Lord, the King of kings, establish your throne in righteousness and your sceptre in equity.

Basle, August 1st, 1536.

ELECTION AND PREDESTINATION

From the 'Institutes of the Christian Religion'

The human mind when it hears this doctrine of election cannot restrain its petulance, but boils and rages as if aroused by the sound of a trumpet. Many, professing a desire to defend the Deity from an invidious charge, admit the doctrine of election but deny that any one is reprobated (Bernard, in 'Die Ascensionis,' Serm. 2). This they do ignorantly and childishly, since there could be no election without its opposite, reprobation. God is said to set apart those whom he adopts for salvation. It were most absurd to say that he admits others fortuitously, or that they by their industry acquire what election alone confers on a few. Those therefore whom God passes by he reprobates, and that for no other cause but because he is pleased to exclude them from the inheritance which he predestines to his children. Nor is it possible to tolerate the petulance of men in refusing to be restrained by the word of God, in regard to his incomprehensible counsel, which even angels adore.

We have already been told that hardening is not less under the immediate hand of God than mercy. Paul does not, after the example of those whom I have mentioned, labor anxiously to defend God by calling in the aid of falsehood; he only reminds us that it is unlawful for the creature to quarrel with its Creator. Then how will those who refuse to admit that any are reprobated by God, explain the following words of Christ? "Every plant which my heavenly Father hath not planted shall be rooted up" (Matth. xv. 13). They are plainly told that all whom the heavenly Father has not been pleased to plant as sacred trees in his garden are doomed and devoted to destruction. If they deny that this is a sign of reprobation, there is nothing, however clear, that can be proved to them. But if they will still murmur, let us in the soberness of faith rest contented with the admonition of Paul, that it can be no ground of complaint that God, "willing to show his wrath, and to make his power known, endured with much long-suffering the vessels of wrath fitted for destruction: and that he might make known the riches of his glory on the vessels of mercy, which he had afore prepared unto glory" (Rom. ix. 22, 23). Let my readers observe that Paul, to cut off all handle for murmuring and detraction, attributes supreme sovereignty to the wrath and power of God; for it were unjust that those profound judgments which transcend all our powers of discernment should be subjected to our calculation.

It is frivolous in our opponents to reply that God does not altogether reject those whom in lenity he tolerates, but remains in suspense with regard to them, if peradventure they may repent; as if Paul were representing God as patiently waiting for the conversion of those whom he describes as fitted for destruction. For Augustine, rightly expounding this passage, says that where power is united to endurance, God does not permit, but rules (August. Cont. Julian., Lib. v., c. 5). They add also, that it is not without cause the vessels of wrath are said to be fitted for destruction, and that God is said to have prepared the vessels of mercy, because in this way the praise of salvation is claimed for God; whereas the blame of perdition is thrown upon those who of their own accord bring it upon themselves. But were I to concede that by the different forms of expression Paul softens the harshness of the former clause, it by no means follows that he transfers the preparation for destruction to any other cause than the secret counsel of God. This indeed is asserted in the preceding context, where God is said to have raised up Pharaoh, and to harden whom he will. Hence it follows that the hidden counsel of God is the cause of hardening. I at least hold with Augustine, that when God makes sheep out of wolves he forms them again by the powerful influence of grace, that their hardness may thus be subdued; and that he does not convert the obstinate, because he does not exert that more powerful grace, a grace which he has at command if he were disposed to use it (August, de Prædest. Sanct., Lib. i., c. 2)....

SEPTUAGINT.
Facsimile, somewhat reduced, of a page of the VATICAN MANUSCRIPT.
Fourth Century. Vatican Library.
The Septuagint is the Greek translation, by seventy elders, of the Hebrew Bible.

The earlier copies are all in uncial or "capital" letters, cursive or "lower-case" letters being a later invention.

This is a good specimen of the hand-work of the ecclesiastical scribes of the fourth century.

Accordingly, when we are accosted in such terms as these: Why did God from the first predestine some to death, when as they were not yet in existence, they could not have merited sentence of death?—let us by way of reply ask in our turn, What do you imagine that God owes to man, if he is pleased to estimate him by his own nature? As we are all vitiated by sin, we cannot but be hateful to God, and that not from tyrannical cruelty, but the strictest justice. But if all whom the Lord predestines to death are naturally liable to sentence of death, of what injustice, pray, do they complain? Should all the sons of Adam come to dispute and contend with their Creator, because by his eternal providence they were before their birth doomed to perpetual destruction: when God comes to reckon with them, what will they be able to mutter against this defense? If all are taken from a corrupt mass, it is not strange that all are subject to condemnation. Let them not therefore charge God with injustice, if by his eternal judgment they are doomed to a death to which they themselves feel that, whether they will or not, they are drawn spontaneously by their own nature. Hence it appears how perverse is this affectation of murmuring, when of set purpose they suppress the cause of condemnation which they are compelled to recognize in themselves, that they may lay the blame upon God. But though I should confess a hundred times that God is the author (and it is most certain that he is), they do not however thereby efface their own guilt, which, engraven on their own consciences, is ever and anon presenting itself to their view....

If God merely foresaw human events, and did not also arrange and dispose of them at his pleasure, there might be room for agitating the question, how far his foreknowledge amounts to necessity; but since he foresees the things which are to happen, simply because he has decreed that they are so to happen, it is vain to debate about prescience, while it is clear that all events take place by his sovereign appointment.

They deny that it is ever said in distinct terms, God decreed that Adam should perish by his revolt. As if the same God who is declared in Scripture to do whatsoever he pleases could have made the noblest of his creatures without any special purpose. They say that, in accordance with free will, he was to be the architect of his own fortune; that God had decreed nothing but to treat him according to his desert. If this frigid fiction is received, where will be the omnipotence of God, by which, according to his secret counsel on which everything depends, he rules over all? But whether they will allow it or not, predestination is manifest in Adam's posterity. It was not owing to nature that they all lost salvation by the fault of one parent. Why should they refuse to admit with regard to one man that which against their will they admit with regard to the whole human race? Why should they in caviling lose their labor? Scripture proclaims that all were, in the person of one, made liable to eternal death. As this cannot be ascribed to nature, it is plain that it is owing to the wonderful counsel of God. It is very absurd in these worthy defenders of the justice of God to strain at a gnat and swallow a camel. I again ask how it is that the fall of Adam involves so many nations with their infant children in eternal death without remedy, unless that it so seemed meet to God? Here the most loquacious tongues must be dumb. The decree, I admit, is dreadful; and yet it is impossible to deny that God foreknew what the end of man was to be before he made him, and foreknew because he had so ordained by his decree. Should any one here inveigh against the prescience of God, he does it rashly and unadvisedly. For why, pray, should it be made a charge against the heavenly Judge, that he was not ignorant of what was to happen? Thus, if there is any just or plausible complaint, it must be directed against predestination. Nor ought it to seem absurd when I say that God not only foresaw the fall of the first man, and in him the ruin of his posterity, but also at his own pleasure arranged it. For as it belongs to his wisdom to foreknow all future events, so it belongs to his power to rule and govern them by his hand.

FREEDOM OF THE WILL

From the 'Institutes of the Christian Religion'

God has provided the soul of man with intellect, by which he might discern good from evil, just from unjust, and might know what to follow or to shun, reason going before with her lamp; whence philosophers, in reference to her directing power, have called her [Greek: to hêgemonichon]. To this he has joined will, to which choice belongs. Man excelled in these noble endowments in his primitive condition, when reason, intelligence, prudence, and judgment not only sufficed for the government of his earthly life, but also enabled him to rise up to God and eternal happiness. Thereafter choice was added to direct the appetites and temper all the organic motions; the will being thus perfectly submissive to the authority of reason. In this upright state, man possessed freedom of will, by which if he chose he was able to obtain eternal life. It were here unseasonable to introduce the question concerning the secret predestination of God, because we are not considering what might or might not happen, but what the nature of man truly was. Adam, therefore, might have stood if he chose, since it was only by his own will that he fell; but it was because his will was pliable in either direction, and he had not received constancy to persevere, that he so easily fell. Still he had a free choice of good and evil; and not only so, but in the mind and will there was the highest rectitude, and all the organic parts were duly framed to obedience, until man corrupted its good properties, and destroyed himself. Hence the great darkness of philosophers who have looked for a complete building in a ruin, and fit arrangement in disorder. The principle they set out with was, that man could not be a rational animal unless he had a free choice of good and evil. They also imagined that the distinction between virtue and vice was destroyed, if man did not of his own counsel arrange his life. So far well, had there been no change in man. This being unknown to them, it is not surprising that they throw everything into confusion. But those who, while they profess to be the disciples of Christ, still seek for free-will in man, notwithstanding of his being lost and drowned in spiritual destruction, labor under manifold delusion, making a heterogeneous mixture of inspired doctrine and philosophical opinions, and so erring as to both. But it will be better to leave these things to their own place. At present it is necessary only to remember that man at his first creation was very different from all his posterity; who, deriving their origin from him after he was corrupted, received a hereditary taint. At first every part of the soul was formed to rectitude. There was soundness of mind and freedom of will to choose the good. If any one objects that it was placed, as it were, in a slippery position because its power was weak, I answer, that the degree conferred was sufficient to take away every excuse. For surely the Deity could not be tied down to this condition,—to make man such that he either could not or would not sin. Such a nature might have been more excellent; but to expostulate with God as if he had been bound to confer this nature on man, is more than unjust, seeing he had full right to determine how much or how little he would give. Why he did not sustain him by the virtue of perseverance is hidden in his counsel; it is ours to keep within the bounds of soberness. Man had received the power, if he had the will, but he had not the will which would have given the power; for this will would have been followed by perseverance. Still, after he had received so much, there is no excuse for his having spontaneously brought death upon himself. No necessity was laid upon God to give him more than that intermediate and even transient will, that out of man's fall he might extract materials for his own glory.

LUIZ VAZ DE CAMOENS

(1524?-1580)

BY HENRY R. LANG

ortuguese literature is usually divided into six periods, which correspond, in the main, to the successive literary movements of the other Romance nations which it followed.

First Period (1200-1385), Provençal and French influences. Soon after the founding of the Portuguese State by Henry of Burgundy and his knights in the beginning of the twelfth century, the nobles of Portugal and Galicia, which regions form a unit in race and speech, began to imitate in their native idiom the art of the Provençal troubadours who visited the courts of Leon and Castile. This courtly lyric poetry in the Gallego-Portuguese dialect, which was also cultivated in the rest of the peninsula excepting the East, reached its height under Alphonso X. of Castile (1252-84), himself a noted poet and patron of this art, and under King Dionysius of Portugal (1279-1325), the most gifted of all these troubadours. The collections (cancioneiros) of the works of this school preserved to us contain the names of one hundred and sixty-three poets and some two thousand compositions (inclusive of the four hundred and one spiritual songs of Alphonso X.). Of this body of verse, two-thirds affect the artificial style of Provençal lyrics, while one-third is derived from the indigenous popular poetry. This latter part contains the so-called cantigas de amigo, songs of charming simplicity of form and naïveté of spirit in which a woman addresses her lover either in a monologue or in a dialogue. It is this native poetry, still echoed in the modern folk-song of Galicia and Portugal, that imparted to the Gallego-Portuguese lyric school the decidedly original coloring and vigorous growth which assign it an independent position in the mediæval literature of the Romance nations.

Composition in prose also began in this period, consisting chiefly in genealogies, chronicles, and in translations from Latin and French dealing with religious subjects and the romantic traditions of British origin, such as the 'Demanda do Santo Graal.' It is now almost certain that the original of the Spanish version of the 'Amadis de Gaula' (1480) was the work of a Portuguese troubadour of the thirteenth century, Joam de Lobeira.

Second Period (1385-1521), Spanish influence. Instead of the Provençal style, the courtly circles now began to cultivate the native popular forms, the copla and quadra, and to compose in the dialect of Castile, which communicated to them the influence of the Italian Renaissance, with the vision and allegory of Dante and a fuller understanding of classical antiquity. These two literary currents became the formative elements of the second poetic school of an aristocratic character in Portugal, at the courts of Alphonse V. (1438-1481), John II. (1481-95), and Emanuel (1495-1521), whose works were collected by the poet Garcia de Resende in the 'Cancioneiro Geral' (Lisbon, 1516).

The prose-literature of this period is rich in translations from the Latin classics, and chiefly noteworthy for the great Portuguese chronicles which it produced. The most prominent writer was Fernam Lopes (1454), the founder of Portuguese historiography and the "father of Portuguese prose."

Third Period (1521-1580), Italian influence. This is the classic epoch of Portuguese literature, born of the powerful rise of the Portuguese State during its period of discovery and conquest, and of the dominant influence of the Italian Renaissance. It opens with three authors who were prominently active in the preceding literary school, but whose principal influence lies in this. These are Christovam Falcão and Bernardim Ribeiro, the founders of the bucolic poem and the sentimental pastoral romance, and Gil Vicente, a comic writer of superior talent, who is called the father of the Portuguese drama, and who, next to Camoens, is the greatest figure of this period. Its real initiator, however, was Francesco Sa' de Miranda (1495-1557) who, on his return from a six-years' study in Italy in 1521, introduced the lyric forms of Petrarch and his followers as the only true models for composition. Besides giving by his example a classic form to lyrics, especially to the sonnet, and cultivating the pastoral poem, Sa' de Miranda, desirous of breaking the influence of Gil Vicente's dramas, wrote two comedies of intrigue in the style of the Italians and of Plautus and Terence. His attempts in this direction, however, found no followers, the only exception being Ferreira's tragedy 'Ines de Castro' in the antique style. The greatest poet of this period, and indeed in the whole history of Portuguese literature, is Luiz de Camoens, in whose works, epic, lyric, and dramatic, the cultivation of the two literary currents of this epoch, the national and the Renaissance, attained to its highest perfection, and to whom Portuguese literature chiefly owes its place in the literature of the world.

Among the works in prose produced during this time are of especial importance the historical writings, such as the 'Décadas' of João de Barros (1496-1570), the "Livy of Portugal" and the numerous romances of chivalry.

LUIS DE CAMOËNS.

Fourth Period (1580-1700), Culteranistic influence. The political decline of Portugal is accompanied by one in its literature. While some lyric poetry is still written in the spirit of Camoens, and the pastoral romance in the national style is cultivated by some authors, Portuguese literature on the whole is completely under the influence of the Spanish, receiving from the latter the euphuistic movement, known in Spain as culteranismo or Gongorismo. Many writers of talent of this time used the Spanish language in preference to their own. It is thus that the charming pastoral poem 'Diana,' by Jorge de Montemor, though composed by a Portuguese and in a vein so peculiar to his nation, is credited to Spanish literature.

Fifth Period (1700-1825), Pseudo-Classicism. The influence of the French classic school, felt in all European literatures, became paramount in Portugal. Excepting the works of a few talented members of the society called "Arcadia," little of literary interest was produced until the appearance, at the end of the century, of Francisco Manoel de Nascimento and Manoel Maria Barbosa du Bocage, two poets of decided talent who connect this period with the following.

Sixth Period (since 1825), Romanticism. The initiator of this movement in Portugal was Almeida-Garrett (1799-1854), with Gil Vicente and Camoens one of the three great poets Portugal has produced, who revived and strengthened the sense of national life in his country by his 'Camoens,' an epic of glowing patriotism published during his exile in 1825, by his national dramas, and by the collection of the popular traditions of his people, which he began and which has since been zealously continued in all parts of the country. The second influential leader of romanticism was Alexandre Herculano (1810-1877), great especially as national historian, but also a novelist and poet of superior merit. The labors of these two men bore fruit, since the middle of the century, in what may be termed an intellectual renovation of Portugal which first found expression in the so-called Coimbra School, and has since been supported by such men as Theophilo Braga, F. Adolpho Coelho, Joaquim de Vasconcellos, J. Leite de Vasconcellos, and others, whose life-work is devoted to the conviction that only a thorough and critical study of their country's past can inspire its literature with new life and vigor and maintain the sense of national independence.

Luiz Vaz De Camoens, Portugal's greatest poet and patriot, was born in 1524 or 1525, most probably at Coimbra, as the son of Simão Vaz de Camoens and Donna Anna de Macedo of Santarem. Through his father, a cavalleiro fidalgo, or untitled nobleman, who was related with Vasco da Gama, Camoens descended from an ancient and once influential noble family of Galician origin. He spent his youth at Coimbra, and though his name is not found in the registers of the university, which had been removed to that city in 1537, and of which his uncle, Bento de Camoens, prior of the monastery of Santa Cruz, was made chancellor in 1539, it was presumably in that institution, then justly famous, that the highly gifted youth acquired his uncommon familiarity with the classics and with the literatures of Spain, Italy, and that of his own country. In 1542 we find Camoens exchanging his alma mater for the gay and brilliant court of John III., then at Lisbon, where his gentle birth, his poetic genius, and his fine personal appearance brought him much favor, especially with the fair sex, while his independent bearing and indiscreet speech aroused the jealousy and enmity of his rivals. Here he woos and wins the damsels of the palace until a high-born lady in attendance upon the Queen, Donna Catharina de Athaide,—whom, like Petrarch, he claims to have first seen on Good Friday in church, and who is celebrated in his poems under the anagram of Natercia,—inspires him with a deep and enduring passion. Irritated by the intrigues employed by his enemies to mar his prospects, the impetuous youth commits imprudent acts which lead to his banishment from the city in 1546. For about a year he lives in enforced retirement on the Upper Tagus (Ribatejo), pouring out his profound passion and grief in a number of beautiful sonnets and elegies. Most likely in consequence of some new offense, he is next exiled for two years to Ceuta in Africa, where, in a fight with the Moors, he loses his right eye by a chance splinter. Meeting on his return to Lisbon in 1547 neither with pardon for his indiscretions nor with recognition for his services and poetic talent, he allows his keen resentment of this unjust treatment to impel him into the reckless and turbulent life of a bully. It was thus that during the festival of Corpus Christi in 1552 he got into a quarrel with Gonçalo Borges, one of the King's equerries, in which he wounded the latter. For this Camoens was thrown into jail until March, 1553, when he was released only on condition that he should embark to serve in India. Not quite two weeks after leaving his prison, on March 24th, he sailed for India on the flag-ship Sam Bento, bidding, as a true Renaissance poet, farewell to his native land in the words of Scipio which were to come true: "Ingrata patria non possidebis ossa mea." After a stormy passage of six months, the Sam Bento cast anchor in the bay of Goa. Camoens first took part in an expedition against the King of Pimenta, and in the following year (1554) he joined another directed against the Moorish pirates on the coast of Africa. The scenes of drunkenness and dissoluteness which he witnessed in Goa inspired him with a number of satirical poems, by which he drew upon himself much enmity and persecution. In 1556 his three-years' term of service expired; but though ardently longing for his beloved native land, he remained in Goa, influenced either by his bent for the soldier's life or by the sad news of the death of Donna Catharina de Athaide in that year. He was ordered to Macao in China, to the lucrative post of commissary for the effects of deceased or absent Portuguese subjects. There, in the quietude of a grotto near Macao, still called the Grotto of Camoens, the exiled poet finished the first six cantos of his great epic 'The Lusiads.' Recalled from this post in 1558, before the expiration of his term, on the charge of malversation of office, Camoens on his return voyage to Goa was shipwrecked near the mouth of the Me-Kong, saving nothing but his faithful Javanese slave and the manuscript of his 'Lusiads'—which, swimming with one hand, he held above the water with the other. In Cambodia, where he remained several months, he wrote his marvelous paraphrase of the 137th psalm, contrasting under the allegory of Babel (Babylon) and Siam (Zion), Goa and Lisbon. Upon his return to Goa he was cast into prison, but soon set free on proving his innocence by a public trial. Though receiving, in 1557, another lucrative employment, Camoens finally resolved to go home, burning with the desire to lay his patriotic song, now almost completed, before his nation, and to cover with honor his injured name.

He accepted a passage to Sofala offered him by Pedro Barreto, who had become viceroy of Mozambique in that year. Unable to refund the amount of the passage, he was once more held for debt and spent two years of misery and distress in Mozambique, completing and polishing during this time his great epic song and preparing the collection of his lyrics, his 'Parnasso.' In 1559 he was released by the historian Diogo do Couto and other friends of his, visiting Sofala with the expedition of Noronha, and embarked on the Santa Clara for Lisbon.

On the 7th of April, 1570, Camoens once more set foot on his native soil, only to find the city for which he had yearned, sadly changed. The government was in the hands of a brave but harebrained and fanatic young monarch, ruled by the Jesuits; the capital had been ravaged by a terrible plague which had carried off fifty thousand souls; and its society had no room for a man who brought with him from the Indies, whence so many returned with great riches, nothing but a manuscript, though in it was sung in classic verse the glory of his people. Still, through the kind offices of his warm friend Dom Manoel de Portugal, Camoens obtained, on the 25th of September, 1571, the royal permission to print his epic. It was published in the spring of the following year (March, 1572). Great as was the success of the work, which marked a new epoch in Portuguese history, the reward which the poet received for it was meagre. King Sebastian granted him an annual pension of fifteen thousand reis (fifteen dollars, which then had the purchasing value of about sixty dollars in our money), which, after the poet's death, was ordered by Philip II. to be paid to his aged mother. Destitute and broken in spirit, Camoens lived for the last eight years of his life with his mother in a humble house near the convent of Santa Ana, "in the knowledge of many and in the society of few." Dom Sebastian's departure early in 1578 for the conquest in Africa once more kindled patriotic hopes in his breast; but the terrible defeat at Alcazarquivir (August 4th of the same year), in which Portugal lost her king and her army, broke his heart. He died on the 10th of June, 1580, at which time the army of Philip II., under the command of the Duke of Alva, was marching upon Lisbon. He was thus spared the cruel blow of seeing, though not of foreseeing, the national death of his country. The story that his Javanese slave Antonio used to go out at night to beg of passers-by alms for his master, is one of a number of touching legends which, as early as 1572, popular fancy had begun to weave around the poet's life. It is true, however, that Camoens breathed his last in dire distress and isolation, and was buried "poorly and plebeianly" in the neighboring convent of Santa Ana. It was not until sixteen years later that a friend of his, Dom Gonçalo Coutinho, caused his grave to be marked with a marble slab bearing the inscription:—"Here lies Luis de Camoens, Prince of the Poets of his time. He died in the year 1579. This tomb was placed for him by order of D. Gonçalo Coutinho, and none shall be buried in it." The words "He lived poor and neglected, and so died," which in the popular tradition form part of this inscription, are apocryphal, though entirely in conformity with the facts. The correctness of 1580 instead of 1579 as the year of the poet's death is proven by an official document in the archives of Philip II. Both the memorial slab and the convent-church of Santa Ana were destroyed by the earthquake of 1755 and during the rebuilding of the convent, and the identification of the remains of the great man thus rendered well-nigh impossible. In 1854, however, all the bones found under the floor of the convent-church were placed in a coffin of Brazil-wood and solemnly deposited in the convent at Belem, the Pantheon of King Emanuel. In 1867 a statue was erected to Camoens by the city of Lisbon.

'The Lusiads' (Portuguese, Os Lusiadas), a patronymic adopted by Camoens in place of the usual term Lusitanos, the descendants of Lusus (the mythical ancestor of the Portuguese), is an epic poem which, as its name implies, has for its subject the heroic deeds not of one hero, but of the whole Portuguese nation. Vasco da Gama's discovery of the way to the East Indies forms, to be sure, the central part of its action; but around it are grouped, with consummate art, the heroic deeds and destinies of the other Lusitanians. In this, Camoens' work stands alone among all poems of its kind. Originating under conditions similar to those which are indispensable to the production of a true epic, in the heroic period of the Portuguese people, when national sentiment had risen to its highest point, it is the only one among the modern epopees which comes near to the primitive character of epic poetry. A trait which distinguishes this epic from all its predecessors is the historic truthfulness with which Camoens confessedly—"A verdade que eu conto nua e pura Vence toda a grandiloqua escriptura"—represents his heroic personages and their exploits, tempering his praise with blame where blame is due, and the unquestioned fidelity and exactness with which he depicts natural scenes. Lest, however, this adherence to historic truth should impair the vivifying element of imagination indispensable to true poetry, our bard, combining in the true spirit of the Renaissance myth and miracle, threw around his narrative the allegorical drapery of pagan mythology, introducing the gods and goddesses of Olympus as siding with or against the Portuguese heroes, and thus calling the imagination of the reader into more active play. Among the many beautiful inventions of his own creative fancy with which Camoens has adorned his poem, we shall only mention the powerful impersonation of the Cape of Storms in the Giant Adamastor (c. v.), an episode used by Meyerbeer in his opera 'L'Africaine,' and the enchanting scene of the Isle of Love (c. ix.), as characteristic of the poet's delicacy of touch as it is of his Portuguese temperament, in which Venus provides for the merited reward and the continuance of the brave sons of Lusus. For the metric form of his verse, Camoens adopted the octave rhyme of Ariosto, while for his epic style he followed Virgil, from whom many a simile and phrase is directly borrowed. His poem, justly admired for the elegant simplicity, the purity and harmony of its diction, bears throughout the deep imprint of his own powerful and noble personality, that independence and magnanimity of spirit, that fortitude of soul, that genuine and glowing patriotism which alone, amid all the disappointments and dangers, the dire distress and the foibles and faults of his life, could enable him to give his mind and heart steadfastly to the fulfillment of the lofty patriotic task he had set his genius,—the creation of a lasting monument to the heroic deeds of his race. It is thus that through 'The Lusiads' Camoens became the moral bond of the national individuality of his people, and inspired it with the energy to rise free once more out of Spanish subjection.

Lyrics. Here, Camoens is hardly less great than as an epic poet, whether we consider the nobility, depth, and fervor of the sentiments filling his songs, or the artistic perfection, the rich variety of form, and the melody of his verse. His lyric works fall into two main classes, those written in Italian metres and those in the traditional trochaic lines and strophic forms of the Spanish peninsula. The first class is contained in the 'Parnasso,' which comprises 356 sonnets, 22 canzones, 27 elegies, 12 odes, 8 octaves, and 15 idyls, all of which testify to the great influence of the Italian school, and especially of Petrarch, on our poet. The second class is embodied in the 'Cancioneiro,' or song-book, and embraces more than one hundred and fifty compositions in the national peninsular manner. Together, these two collections form a body of lyric verse of such richness and variety as neither Petrarch and Tasso nor Garcilaso de la Vega can offer. Unfortunately, Camoens never prepared an edition of his Rimas; and the manuscript, which, as Diogo do Couto tells us, he arranged during his sojourn in Mozambique from 1567 to 1569, is said to have been stolen. It was not until 1595, fully fifteen years after the poet's death, that one of his disciples and admirers, Fernão Rodrigues Lobo Soropita, collected from Portugal, and even from India, and published in Lisbon, a volume of one hundred and seventy-two songs, four of which, however, are not by Camoens. The great mass of verse we now possess has been gathered during the last three centuries. More may still be discovered, while, on the other hand, much of what is now attributed to Camoens does not belong to him, and the question how much of the extant material is genuine is yet to be definitely answered.

In his lyrics, Camoens has depicted, with all the passion and power of his impressionable temperament, the varied experiences and emotions of his eventful life. This variety and change of sentiments and situations, while greatly enhancing the value of his songs by the impression of fuller truth and individuality which they produce, is in so far disadvantageous to a just appreciation of them, as it naturally brings with it much verse of inferior poetic merit, and lacks that harmony and unity of emotion which Petrarch was able to effect in his Rime by confining himself to the portraiture of a lover's soul.

Drama. In his youth, most likely during his life at court between 1542 and 1546, Camoens wrote three comedies of much freshness and verve, in which he surpassed all the Portuguese plays in the national taste produced up to his time. One, 'Filodemo,' derives its plot from a mediæval novel; the other two, 'Rei Seleuco' (King Seleucus) and 'Amphitryões,' from antiquity. The last named, a free imitation of Plautus's 'Amphitryo,' is by far the best play of the three. In these comedies we can recognize an attempt on the part of the author to fuse the imperfect play in the national taste, such as it had been cultivated by Gil Vicente, with the more regular but lifeless pieces of the classicists, and thus to create a superior form of national comedy. In this endeavor, however, Camoens found no followers.

Bibliography. The most complete edition of the works of Camoens is that by the Viscount de Juromenha, 'Obras de Luiz de Camões,' (6 vols., Lisbon, 1860-70); a more convenient edition is the one by Th. Braga (in 'Bibliotheca da Actualidade,' 3 vols., Porto, 1874). The best separate edition of the text of 'The Lusiads' is by F.A. Coelho (Lisbon, 1880). Camoens' lyric and dramatic works are published in his collected works, no separate editions of them existing thus far. In regard to the life and works of Camoens in general cf. Adamson, 'Memoirs of the Life and Writings of Camoens' (2 vols., London, 1820); Th. Braga, 'Historia de Camoens' (3 vols., Porto, 1873-75); Latino Coelho, 'Luiz de Camoens' (in the 'Galeria de varões illustres,' i., Lisbon, 1880); J. de Vasconcellos, 'Bibliographia Camoniana' (Porto, 1880); Brito Aranha, 'Estudos Bibliographicos' (Lisbon, 1887-8); W. Storck, 'Luis' de Camoens Leben' (Paderborn, 1890); and especially the judicious and impartial article by Mrs. Carolina Michaelis de Vasconcellos in Vol. ii. of Gröber's 'Grundriss der romanischen Philologie' (Strassburg, 1894). The best translations of Camoens' works are the one by W. Storck, 'Camoens' Sämmtliche Gedichte, 6 vols., Paderborn, 1880-85), into German, and the one by R.F. Burton, who has also written on the life of the poet, 'The Lusiads' (2 vols., London, 1880), and 'The Lyricks' (3 vols., London, 1884, containing only those in Italian metres), into English. The extracts given below are from Burton.

THE LUSIADS

Canto I

The feats of Arms, and famed heroick Host,
from occidental Lusitanian strand,
who o'er the waters ne'er by seaman crost,
fared beyond the Taprobane-land,
forceful in perils and in battle-post,
with more than promised force of mortal hand;
and in the regions of a distant race
rear'd a new throne so haught in Pride of Place:

And, eke, the Kings of mem'ory grand and glorious,
who hied them Holy Faith and Reign to spread,
converting, conquering, and in lands notorious,
Africk and Asia, devastation made;
nor less the Lieges who by deeds memorious
brake from the doom that binds the vulgar dead;
my song would sound o'er Earth's extremest part
were mine the genius, mine the Poet's art.

Cease the sage Grecian, and the man of Troy
to vaunt long voyage made in by-gone day:
Cease Alexander, Trojan cease to 'joy
the fame of vict'ories that have pass'd away:
The noble Lusian's stouter breast sing I,
whom Mars and Neptune dared not disobey:
Cease all that antique Muse hath sung, for now
a better Brav'ry rears its bolder brow.

And you, my Tagian Nymphs, who have create
in me new purpose with new genius firing;
if 'twas my joy whilere to celebrate
your founts and stream my humble song inspiring;
Oh! lend me here a noble strain elate,
a style grandiloquent that flows untiring;
so shall Apollo for your waves ordain ye
in name and fame ne'er envy Hippokréné.

Grant me sonorous accents, fire-abounding,
now serves ne peasant's pipe, ne rustick reed;
but blasts of trumpet, long and loud resounding,
that 'flameth heart and hue to fiery deed:
Grant me high strains to suit their Gestes astounding,
your Sons, who aided Mars in martial need;
that o'er the world he sung the glorious song,
if theme so lofty may to verse belong.

And Thou! O goodly omen'd trust, all-dear[1]
to Lusitania's olden liberty,
whereon assurèd esperance we rear
enforced to see our frail Christianity:
Thou, O new terror to the Moorish spear,
the fated marvel of our century,
to govern worlds of men by God so given,
that the world's best be given to God and Heaven:

Thou young, thou tender, ever-flourishing bough,
true scion of tree by Christ belovèd more
than aught that Occident did ever know,
"Cæsarian" or "Most Christian" styled before:
Look on thy 'scutcheon, and behold it show
the present Vict'ory long past ages bore;
Arms which He gave and made thine own to be
by Him assurèd on the fatal tree:[2]

Thou, mighty Sovran! o'er whose lofty reign
the rising Sun rains earliest smile of light;
sees it from middle firmamental plain;
And sights it sinking on the breast of Night:
Thou, whom we hope to hail the blight, the bane
of the dishonour'd Ishmaëlitish knight;
and Orient Turk, and Gentoo—misbeliever
that drinks the liquor of the Sacred River:[3]

Incline awhile, I pray, that majesty
which in thy tender years I see thus ample,
E'en now prefiguring full maturity
that shall be shrined in Fame's eternal temple:
Those royal eyne that beam benignity
bend on low earth: Behold a new ensample
of hero hearts with patriot pride inflamèd,
in number'd verses manifold proclaimèd.

Thou shalt see Love of Land that ne'er shall own
lust of vile lucre; soaring towards th' Eternal:
For 'tis no light ambition to be known
th' acclaimed herald of my nest paternal.
Hear; thou shalt see the great names greater grown
of Vavasors who hail the Lord Supernal:
So shalt thou judge which were the higher station,
King of the world or Lord of such a nation.

Hark, for with vauntings vain thou shalt not view
phantastical, fictitious, lying deed
of lieges lauded, as strange Muses do,
seeking their fond and foolish pride to feed
Thine acts so forceful are, told simply true,
all fabled, dreamy feats they far exceed;
exceeding Rodomont, and Ruggiero vain,
and Roland haply born of Poet's brain.

For these I give thee a Nuno, fierce in fight,
who for his King and Country freely bled;
an Egas and a Fuas; fain I might
for them my lay with harp Homeric wed!
For the twelve peerless Peers again I cite
the Twelve of England by Magriço led:
Nay, more, I give thee Gama's noble name,
who for himself claims all Æneas' fame.

And if in change for royal Charles of France,
or rivalling Cæsar's mem'ories thou wouldst trow,
the first Afonso see, whose conquering lance
lays highest boast of stranger glories low:
See him who left his realm th' inheritance
fair Safety, born of wars that crusht the foe:
That other John, a knight no fear deter'd,
the fourth and fifth Afonso, and the third.

Nor shall they silent in my song remain,
they who in regions there where Dawns arise,
by Acts of Arms such glories toil'd to gain,
where thine unvanquisht flag for ever flies,
Pacheco, brave of braves; th' Almeidas twain,
whom Tagus mourns with ever-weeping eyes;
dread Albuquerque, Castro stark and brave,
with more, the victors of the very grave.

But, singing these, of thee I may not sing,
O King sublime! such theme I fain must fear.
Take of thy reign the reins, so shall my King
create a poesy new to mortal ear:
E'en now the mighty burthen here I ring
(and speed its terrors over all the sphere!)
of sing'ular prowess, War's own prodigies,
in Africk regions and on Orient seas.

Casteth on thee the Moor eyne cold with fright,
in whom his coming doom he views designèd:
The barb'rous Gentoo, sole to see thy sight
yields to thy yoke the neck e'en now inclinèd;
Tethys, of azure seas the sovran right,
her realm, in dowry hath to thee resignèd;
and by thy noble tender beauty won,
would bribe and buy thee to become her son.

In thee from high Olympick halls behold
themselves, thy grandsires' sprites; far-famèd pair;[4]
this clad in Peacetide's angel-robe of gold,
that crimson-hued with paint of battle-glare:
By thee they hope to see their tale twice told,
their lofty mem'ries live again; and there,
when Time thy years shall end, for thee they 'sign
a seat where soareth Fame's eternal shrine.

But, sithence ancient Time slow minutes by
ere ruled the Peoples who desire such boon;
bend on my novel rashness favouring eye,
that these my verses may become thine own:
So shalt thou see thine Argonauts o'erfly
yon salty argent, when they see it shown
thou seest their labours on the raging sea:
Learn even now invok'd of man to be.[5]

Canto III

Now, my Calliope! to teach incline
what speech great Gama for the king did frame:
Inspire immortal song, grant voice divine
unto this mortal who so loves thy name.
Thus may the God whose gift was Medicine,
to whom thou barest Orpheus, lovely Dame!
never for Daphne, Clytia, Leucothoe
due love deny thee or inconstant grow he.

Satisfy, Nymph! desires that in me teem,
to sing the merits of thy Lusians brave;
so worlds shall see and say that Tagus-stream
rolls Aganippe's liquor. Leave, I crave,
leave flow'ry Pindus-head; e'en now I deem
Apollo bathes me in that sovran wave;
else must I hold it, that thy gentle sprite,
fears thy dear Orpheus fade through me from sight.

All stood with open ears in long array
to hear what mighty Gama mote unfold;
when, past in thoughtful mood a brief delay,
began he thus with brow high-raised and bold:—
"Thou biddest me, O King! to say my say
anent our grand genealogy of old:
Thou bidd'st me not relate an alien story;
Thou bidd'st me laud my brother Lusian's glory.

"That one praise others' exploits and renown
is honour'd custom which we all desire;
yet fear I 'tis unfit to praise mine own;
lest praise, like this suspect, no trust inspire;
nor may I hope to make all matters known
for Time however long were short; yet, sire!
as thou commandest all is owed to thee;
maugre my will I speak and brief will be.

"Nay, more, what most obligeth me, in fine,
is that no leasing in my tale may dwell;
for of such Feats whatever boast be mine,
when most is told, remaineth much to tell:
But that due order wait on the design,
e'en as desirest thou to learn full well,
the wide-spread Continent first I'll briefly trace,
then the fierce bloody wars that waged my race.

"Lo! here her presence showeth noble Spain,
of Europe's body corporal the head;
o'er whose home-rule, and glorious foreign reign,
the fatal Wheel so many a whirl hath made;
Yet ne'er her Past or force or fraud shall stain,
nor restless Fortune shall her name degrade;
no bonds her bellic offspring bind so tight
but it shall burst them with its force of sprite.

"There, facing Tingitania's shore, she seemeth
to block and bar the Med'iterranean wave,
where the known Strait its name ennobled deemeth
by the last labour of the Theban Brave.
Big with the burthen of her tribes she teemeth,
circled by whelming waves that rage and rave;
all noble races of such valiant breast,
that each may justly boast itself the best.

"Hers the Tarragonese who, famed in war,
made aye-perturbed Parthenopé obey;
the twain Asturias, and the haught Navarre
twin Christian bulwarks on the Moslem way:
Hers the Gallego canny, and the rare
Castilian, whom his star raised high to sway
Spain as her saviour, and his seign'iory feel
Bætis, Leon, Granada, and Castile.

"See, the head-crowning coronet is she
of general Europe, Lusitania's reign,
where endeth land and where beginneth sea,
and Phœbus sinks to rest upon the main.
Willed her the Heavens with all-just decree
by wars to mar th' ignoble Mauritan,
to cast him from herself: nor there consent
he rule in peace the Fiery Continent.

"This is my happy land, my home, my pride;
where, if the Heav'ens but grant the pray'er I pray
for glad return and every risk defied,
there may my life-light fail and fade away.
This was the Lusitania, name applied
by Lusus or by Lysa, sons, they say,
of antient Bacchus, or his boon compeers,
eke the first dwellers of her eldest years.

"Here sprang the Shepherd,[6] in whose name we see
forecast of virile might, of virtuous meed;
whose fame no force shall ever hold in fee,
since fame of mighty Rome ne'er did the deed.
This, by light Heaven's volatile decree,
that antient Scyther, who devours his seed,
made puissant pow'er in many a part to claim,
assuming regal rank; and thus it came:—

"A King there was in Spain, Afonso hight,
who waged such warfare with the Saracen,
that by his 'sanguined arms, and arts, and might,
he spoiled the lands and lives of many men.
When from Hercùlean Calpè winged her flight
his fame to Caucasus Mount and Caspian glen,
many a knight, who noblesse coveteth,
comes offering service to such King and Death.

"And with intrinsic love inflamèd more
for the True Faith, than honours popular,
they troopèd, gath'ering from each distant shore,
leaving their dear-loved homes and lands afar.
When with high feats of force against the Moor
they proved of sing'ular worth in Holy War,
willèd Afonso that their mighty deeds
commens'urate gifts command and equal meeds.

"'Mid them Henrique, second son, men say,
of a Hungarian King, well-known and tried,
by sort won Portugal which, in his day,
ne prizèd was ne had fit cause for pride:
His strong affection stronger to display
the Spanish King decreed a princely bride,
his only child, Teresa, to the count;
And with her made him Seigneur Paramount.

"This doughty Vassal from that servile horde,
Hagar, the handmaid's seed, great vict'ories won;
reft the broad lands adjacent with his sword
and did whatever Brav'ery bade be done;
Him, for his exploits excellent to reward,
God gave in shortest space a gallant son,
whose arm to 'noble and enfame was fain
the warlike name of Lusitania's reign.

"Once more at home this conqu'ering Henry stood
who sacred Hierosol'yma had relievèd,
his eyes had fed on Jordan's holy flood,
which the Dear Body of Lord God had lavèd;
when Godfrey left no foe to be subdued,
and all Judæa conquered was and savèd,
many that in his wars had done devoir
to their own lordships took the way once more.

"But when this stout and gallant Hun attainèd
Life's fatal period, age and travail-spent,
he gave, by Death's necessity constrainèd,
his sprite to him that had that spirit lent:
A son of tender years alone remainèd,
to whom the Sire bequeath'd his 'bodiment;
with bravest braves the youth was formed to cope,
for from such sire such son the world may hope.

"Yet old Report, I know not what its weight
(for on such antique tale no man relies),
saith that the Mother, tane in tow the State,
A second nuptial bed did not despise:
Her orphan son to disinher'ited fate
she doomed, declaring hers the dignities,
not his, with seigniory o'er all the land,
her spousal dowry by her sire's command.

"Now Prince Afonso (who such style had tane
in pious mem'ory of his Grandsire's name),
seeing no part and portion in his reign
all pilled and plundered by the Spouse and Dame.
by dour and doughty Mars inflamed amain,
privily plots his heritage to claim:
He weighs the causes in his own conceit
till firm Resolve its fit effect shall greet.

"Of Guimara'ens the field already flow'd
with floods of civil warfare's bloody tide,
where she, who little of the Mother show'd,
to her own bowels love and land denied.
Fronting the child in fight the parent stood;
nor saw her depth of sin that soul of pride
against her God, against maternal love:
Her sensual passion rose all pow'r above.

"O magical Medea! O Progne dire!
if your own babes in vengeance dared ye kill
for alien crimes, and injuries of the sire,
look ye, Teresa's deed was darker still.
Foul greed of gain, incontinent desire,
were the main causes of such bitter ill:
Scylla her agèd sire for one did slay,
for both Teresa did her son betray.

"Right soon that noble Prince clear vict'ory won
from his harsh Mother and her Fere indign;
in briefest time the land obeyed the son,
though first to fight him did the folk incline.
But reft of reason and by rage undone
he bound the Mother in the biting chain:
Eftsoons avenged her griefs the hand of God:
Such veneration is to parents ow'd.

"Lo! the superb Castilian 'gins prepare
his pow'r to 'venge Teresa's injuries,
against the Lusian land in men so rare,
whereon ne toil ne trouble heavy lies.
Their breasts the cruel battle grandly dare,
aid the good cause angelic Potencies;
unrecking might unequal still they strive,
nay, more, their dreadful foe to flight they drive!

"Passeth no tedious time, before the great
Prince a dure Siege in Guimaraens dree'd
by passing pow'er, for to 'mend his state,
came the fell en'emy, full of grief and greed:
But when committed life to direful Fate,
Egas, the faithful guardian, he was free'd,
who had in any other way been lost,
all unpreparèd 'gainst such 'whelming host.

"But when the loyal Vassal well hath known
how weak his Monarch's arm to front such fight,
sans order wending to the Spanish fone,
his Sovran's homage he doth pledge and plight.
Straight from the horrid siege th' invader flown
trusteth the word and honour of the Knight,
Egas Moniz: But now the noble breast
of the brave Youth disdaineth strange behest.

"Already came the plighted time and tide,
when the Castilian Don stood dight to see,
before his pow'er the Prince bend low his pride,
yielding the promisèd obediency.
Egas who views his knightly word belied,
while still Castile believes him true to be,
Sweet life resolveth to the winds to throw,
nor live with foulest taint of faithless vow.

"He with his children and his wife departeth
to keep his promise with a faith immense;
unshod and strippèd, while their plight imparteth
far more of pity than of vengeance:
'If, mighty Monarch! still thy spirit smarteth
to wreak revenge on my rash confidence,'
quoth he, 'Behold! I come with life to save
my pledge, my knightly honour's word I gave.'

"'I bring, thou seest here, lives innocent,
of wife, of sinless children dight to die;
if breasts of gen'erous mould and excellent
accept such weaklings' woeful destiny.
Thou seest these hands, this tongue inconsequent:
hereon alone the fierce exper'iment try
of torments, death, and doom that pass in full
Sinis or e'en Perillus' brazen bull.'

"As shrifted wight the hangman stands before,
in life still draining bitter draught of death,
lays throat on block, and of all hope forlore,
expects the blighting blow with bated breath:
So, in the Prince's presence angry sore,
Egás stood firm to keep his plighted faith:
When the King, marv'elling at such wondrous truth,
feels anger melt and merge in Royal ruth.

"Oh the great Portingall fidelity
of Vassal self-devote to doom so dread!
What did the Persian more for loyalty
whose gallant hand his face and nostrils shred?
When great Darius mourned so grievously
that he a thousand times deep-sighing said,
far he prefer'd his Zóp'yrus sound again,
than lord of twenty Babylons to reign.

"But Prince Afonso now prepared his band
of happy Lusians proud to front the foes,
those haughty Moors that held the glorious land
yon side where clear delicious Tagus flows:
Now on Ourique[8] field was pitched and plan'd
the Royal 'Campment fierce and bellicose,
facing the hostile host of Sarrasin
though there so many, here so few there bin.

"Confident, yet would he in naught confide,
save in his God that holds of Heav'en the throne;
so few baptizèd stood their King beside,
there were an hundred Moors for every one:
Judge any sober judgment, and decide
'twas deed of rashness or by brav'ery done
to fall on forces whose exceeding might
a cent'ury showèd to a single Knight.

"Order five Moorish Kings the hostile host
of whom Ismár, so called, command doth claim;
all of long Warfare large experience boast,
wherein may mortals win immortal fame:
And gallant dames the Knights they love the most
'company, like that brave and beauteous Dame,
who to beleaguered Troy such aidance gave
with woman-troops that drained Thermòdon's wave.

"The coolth serene, and early morning's pride,
now paled the sparkling stars about the Pole,
when Mary's Son appearing crucified
in vision, strengthened King Afonso's soul.
But he, adoring such appearance, cried,
fired with a phrenzied faith beyond control:
'To th' Infidel, O Lord! to th' Infidel:[9]
Not, Lord, to me who know Thy pow'er so well.'

"Such gracious marvel in such manner sent
'flamèd the Lusians' spirits fierce and high,
towards their nat'ural King, that excellent
Prince, unto whom love-boon none could deny:
Aligned to front the foeman prepotent,
they shouted res'onant slogan to the sky,
and fierce the 'larum rose, 'Real, real,
for high Afonso, King of Portugal!'

"Accomplishèd his act of arms victorious,
home to his Lusian realm Afonso[10] sped,
to gain from Peace-tide triumphs great and glorious,
as those he gained in wars and battles dread;
when the sad chance, on History's page memorious,
which can unsepulchre the sheeted dead,
befell that ill-starr'd, miserable Dame
who, foully slain, a thronèd Queen became.

"Thou, only thou, pure Love, whose cruel might
obligeth human hearts to weal and woe,
thou, only thou, didst wreak such foul despight,
as though she were some foul perfidious foe.
Thy burning thirst, fierce Love, they say aright,
may not be quencht by saddest tears that flow;
Nay, more, thy sprite of harsh tyrannick mood
would see thine altars bathed with human blood.

"He placed thee, fair Ignèz! in soft retreat,
culling the first-fruits of thy sweet young years,
in that delicious Dream, that dear Deceit,
whose long endurance Fortune hates and fears:
Hard by Mondego's yearned-for meads thy seat,
where linger, flowing still, those lovely tears,
until each hill-born tree and shrub confest
the name of Him deep writ within thy breast.[11]

"There, in thy Prince awoke responsive-wise,
dear thoughts of thee which soul-deep ever lay;
which brought thy beauteous form before his eyes,
whene'er those eyne of thine were far away;
Night fled in falsest, sweetest phantasies,
in fleeting, flying reveries sped the Day;
and all, in fine, he saw or cared to see
were memories of his love, his joys, his thee.

"Of many a dainty dame and damosel
The coveted nuptial couches he rejecteth;
for naught can e'er, pure Love! thy care dispel,
when one enchanting shape thy heart subjecteth.
These whims of passion to despair compel
the Sire, whose old man's wisdom aye respecteth,
his subjects murmuring at his son's delay
to bless the nation with a bridal day.

"To wrench Ignèz from life he doth design,
better his captured son from her to wrench;
deeming that only blood of death indign
the living lowe of such true Love can quench.
What Fury willed it that the steel so fine,
which from the mighty weight would never flinch
of the dread Moorman, should be drawn in hate
to work that hapless delicate Ladye's fate?

"The horr'ible Hangmen hurried her before
the King, now moved to spare her innocence;
but still her cruel murther urged the more
the People, swayed by fierce and false pretence.
She with her pleadings pitiful and sore,
that told her sorrows and her care immense
for her Prince-spouse and babes, whom more to leave
than her own death the mother's heart did grieve:

"And heav'enwards to the clear and crystalline skies,
raising her eyne with piteous tears bestainèd;
her eyne, because her hands with cruel ties
one of the wicked Ministers constrainèd:
And gazing on her babes in wistful guise,
whose pretty forms she loved with love unfeignèd,
whose orphan'd lot the Mother filled with dread,
until their cruel grandsire thus she said:—

"'If the brute-creatures, which from natal day
on cruel ways by Nature's will were bent;
or feral birds whose only thought is prey,
upon aërial rapine all intent;
if men such salvage be'ings have seen display
to little children loving sentiment,
e'en as to Ninus' mother did befall,
and to the twain who rear'd the Roman wall:

"'O thou, who bear'st of man the gest and breast,
(an it be manlike thus to draw the sword
on a weak girl because her love imprest
his heart, who took her heart and love in ward);
respect for these her babes preserve, at least!
since it may not her òbscure death retard:
Moved be thy pitying soul for them and me,
although my faultless fault unmoved thou see!

"'And if thou know'est to deal in direful fight
the doom of brand and blade to Moorish host,
Know also thou to deal of life the light
to one who ne'er deserved her life be lost;
But an thou wouldst mine inno'cence thus requite,
place me for aye on sad exilèd coast,
in Scythian sleet, on seething Libyan shore,
with life-long tears to linger evermore.

"'Place me where beasts with fiercest rage abound,—
Lyons and Tygers,—there, ah! let me find
if in their hearts of flint be pity found,
denied to me by heart of humankind.
There with intrinsic love and will so fond
for him whose love is death, there will I tend
these tender pledges whom thou see'st; and so
shall the sad mother cool her burning woe.'

"Inclin'ed to pardon her the King benign,
moved by this sad lament to melting mood;
but the rude People and Fate's dure design
(that willed it thus) refused the pardon sued:
They draw their swords of steely temper fine,
They who proclaim as just such deed of blood:
Against a ladye, caitiff, felon wights!
how showed ye here, brute beasts or noble Knights?

"Thus on Polyxena, that beauteous maid,
last solace of her mother's age and care,
when doom'd to die by fierce Achilles' shade,
the cruel Pyrrhus hasted brand to bare:
But she (a patient lamb by death waylaid)
with the calm glances which serene the air,
casts on her mother, mad with grief, her eyes
and silent waits that awesome sacrifice.

"Thus dealt with fair Ignèz the murth'erous crew,
in th' alabastrine neck that did sustain
the charms whereby could Love the love subdue
of him, who crown'd her after death his Queen;
bathing their blades; the flow'ers of snowy hue,
which often water'ed by her eyne had been,
are blood-dyed; and they burn with blinding hate,
reckless of tortures stor'd for them by Fate.

"Well mightest shorn of rays, O Sun! appear
to fiends like these on day so dark and dire;
as when Thyestes ate the meats that were
his seed, whom Atreus slew to spite their sire.
And you, O hollow Valleys! doomed to hear
her latest cry from stiffening lips expire—
her Pedro's name,—did catch that mournful sound,
whose echoes bore it far and far around!

"E'en as Daisy sheen, that hath been shorn
in time untimely, floret fresh and fair,
and by untender hand of maiden torn
to deck the chaplet for her wreathèd hair;
gone is its odor and its colours mourn;
So pale and faded lay that Ladye there;
dried are the roses of her cheek, and fled
the white live color, with her dear life dead.

"Mondego's daughter-Nymphs the death obscure
wept many a year, with wails of woe exceeding;
and for long mem'ry changed to fountain pure
the floods of grief their eyes were ever feeding:
The name they gave it, which doth still endure,
revived Ignèz, whose murthered love lies bleeding,
see yon fresh fountain flowing 'mid the flowers,
tears are its waters, and its name 'Amores!'[12]

"Time ran not long, ere Pedro saw the day
of vengeance dawn for wounds that ever bled;
who, when he took in hand the kingly sway,
eke took the murth'erers who his rage had fled:
Them a most cruel Pedro did betray;
for both, if human life the foemen dread,
made concert savage and dure pact, unjust as
Lepidus made with Anthony' and Augustus."

[1] Invocation to Dom Sebastian.

[2] The Arms of Portugal (Canto iii., 53, 54).

[3] The Ganges (not the Jordan).

[4] D. Joam III. and the Emperor Charles Quint.

[5] End of exordium: narrative begins.

[6] Viriatus.

[7] Valdevez, or Campo da Matança, A.D. 1128 (Canto iv. 16).

[8] Battle of Ourique, A.D. 1139.

[9] I. e., disclose Thyself; show a sign.

[10] Alfonso IV. (1325-1357).

[11] Writing his name upon the tree-trunks and leaves.

[12] The famous Fonte-dos-Amores, near Coimbra.

THE CANZON OF LIFE

I

Come here! my confidential Secretary
Of the complaints in which my days are rife,
Paper,—whereon I gar my griefs o'erflow.
Tell we, we twain, Unreasons which in life
Deal me inexorable, contrary
Destinies surd to prayer and tearful woe.
Dash we some water-drops on muchel lowe,
Fire we with outcries storm of rage so rare
That shall be strange to mortal memory.
Such misery tell we
To God and Man, and eke, in fine, to air,
Whereto so many times did I confide
My tale and vainly told as I now tell;
But e'en as error was my birthtide-lot,
That this be one of many doubt I not.
And as to hit the butt so far I fail
E'en if I sinnèd her cease they to chide:
Within mine only Refuge will I 'bide
To speak and faultless sin with free intent.
Sad he so scanty mercies must content!

II

Long I've unlearnt me that complaint of dole
Brings cure of dolours; but a wight in pain
To greet is forcèd an the grief be great.
I will outgreet; but weak my voice and vain
To express the sorrows which oppress my soul;
For nor with greeting shall my dole abate.
Who then shall grant me, to relieve my weight
Of sorrow, flowing tears and infinite sighs
Equal those miseries my Sprite o'erpower?
But who at any hour,
Can measure miseries with his tears or cries?
I'll tell, in fine, the love for me design'd
By wrath and woe and all their sovenance;
For other dole hath qualities harder, sterner.
Draw near and hear me each despairing Learner!
And fly the many fed on Esperance
Or wights who fancy Hope will prove her kind;
For Love and Fortune willed, with single mind,
To leave them hopeful, so they comprehend
What measure of unweal in hand they hend.

III

When fro' man's primal grave, the mother's womb,
New eyes on earth I oped, my hapless star
To mar my Fortunes 'gan his will enforce;
And freedom (Free-will given me) to debar:
I learnt a thousand times it was my doom.
To know the Better and to work the Worse:
Then with conforming tormentize to curse
My course of coming years, when cast I round
A boyish eye-glance with a gentle zest,
It was my Star's behest
A Boy born blind should deal me life-long wound.
Infantine tear-drops wellèd out the deep
With vague enamoured longings, nameless pine:
My wailing accents fro' my cradle-stound
Already sounded me love-sighing sound.
Thus age and destiny had like design:
For when, peraunter, rocking me to sleep
They sung me Love-songs wherein lovers weep,
Attonce by Nature's will asleep I fell,
So Melancholy witcht me with her spell!

IV

My nurse some Feral was; Fate nilled approve
By any Woman such a name be tane
Who gave me breast; nor seemed it suitable.
Thus was I suckled that my lips indrain
E'en fro' my childhood venom-draught of Love,
Whereof in later years I drained my fill,
Till by long custom failed the draught to kill.
Then an Ideal semblance struck my glance
Of that fere Human deckt with charms in foyson,
Sweet with the suavest poyson,
Who nourisht me with paps of Esperance;
Till later saw mine eyes the original,
Which of my wildest, maddest appetite
Makes sinful error sovran and superb.
Meseems as human form it came disturb,
But scintillating Spirit's divinest light.
So graceful gait, such port imperial
Were hers, unweal vainglory'd self to weal
When in her sight, whose lively sheen and shade
Exceeded aught and all things Nature made.

V

What new unkindly kind of human pain
Had Love not only doled for me to dree
But eke on me was wholly execute?
Implacable harshness cooling fervency
Of Love-Desire (thought's very might and main)
Drave me far distant fro' my settled suit,
Vext and self-shamed to sight its own pursuit.
Hence sombre shades phantastick born and bred
Of trifles promising rashest Esperance;
While boons of happy chance
Were likewise feignèd and enfigurèd.
But her despisal wrought me such dismay
That made my Fancy phrenesy-ward incline,
Turning to disconcert the guiling lure.
Here mine 'twas to divine, and hold for sure,
That all was truest Truth I could divine;
And straightway all I said in shame to unsay;
To see whatso I saw in còntrayr way;
In fine, just Reasons seek for jealousy
Yet were the Unreasons eather far to see.

VI

I know not how she knew that fared she stealing
With Eyën-rays mine inner man which flew
Her-ward with subtlest passage through the eyne
Little by little all fro' me she drew,
E'en as from rain-wet canopy, exhaling
The subtle humours, sucks the hot sunshine.
The pure transparent geste and mien, in fine,
Wherefore inadequate were and lacking sense
"Beauteous" and "Belle" were words withouten weight;
The soft, compassionate
Eye-glance that held the spirit in suspense:
Such were the magick herbs the Heavens all-wise
Drave me a draught to drain, and for long years
To other Being my shape and form transmew'd;
And this transforming with such joy I view'd
That e'en my sorrows snared I with its snares;
And, like the doomèd man, I veiled mine eyes
To hide an evil crescive in such guise;
Like one caressèd and on flattery fed
Of Love, for whom his being was born and bred.

VII

Then who mine absent Life hath power to paint
Wi' discontent of all I bore in view;
That Bide, so far from where she had her Bide,
Speaking, which even what I spake unknew,
Wending, withal unseeing where I went,
And sighing weetless for what cause I sigh'd?
Then, as those torments last endurance tried,
That dreadful dolour which from Tartarus's waves
Shot up on earth and racketh more than all,
Wherefrom shall oft befall
It turn to gentle yearning rage that raves?
Then with repine-ful fury fever-high
Wishing yet wishing not for Love's surceàse;
Shifting to other side for vengeänce,
Desires deprived of their esperance,
What now could ever change such ills as these?
Then the fond yearnings for the things gone by,
Pure torment sweet in bitter faculty,
Which from these fiery furies could distill
Sweet tears of Love with pine the soul to thrill?

VIII

For what excuses lone with self I sought,
When my suave Love forfended me to find
Fault in the Thing belovèd and so lovèd?
Such were the feignèd cures that forged my mind
In fear of torments that for ever taught
Life to support itself by snares approvèd.
Thus through a goodly part of Life I rovèd,
Wherein if ever joyed I aught content
Short-lived, immodest, flaw-full, without heed,
'Twas nothing save the seed
That bare me bitter tortures long unspent.
This course continuous dooming to distress,
These wandering steps that strayed o'er every road
So wrought, they quencht for me the flamy thirst
I suffered grow in Sprite, in Soul I nurst
With Thoughts enamoured for my daily food,
Whereby was fed my Nature's tenderness:
And this by habit's long and asperous stress,
Which might of mortals never mote resist,
Was turned to pleasure-taste of being triste.

IX

Thus fared I Life with other interchanging;
I no, but Destiny showing fere unlove;
Yet even thus for other ne'er I'd change.
Me from my dear-loved patrial nide she drove
Over the broad and boisterous Ocean ranging,
Where Life so often saw her èxtreme range.
Now tempting rages rare and missiles strange
Of Mart, she willèd that my eyes should see
And hands should touch, the bitter fruit he dight:
That on this Shield they sight
In painted semblance fire of enemy,
Then ferforth driven, vagrant, peregrine,
Seeing strange nations, customs, tongues, costumes;
Various heavens, qualities different,
Only to follow, passing-diligent
Thee, giglet Fortune! whose fierce will consumes
Man's age upbuilding aye before his eyne
A Hope with semblance of the diamond's shine:
But, when it falleth out of hand we know,
'Twas fragile glass that showed so glorious show.

X

Failed me the ruth of man, and I descried
Friends to unfriendly changèd and contràyr,
In my first peril; and I lackèd ground,
Whelmed by the second, where my feet could fare;
Air for my breathing was my lot denied,
Time failed me, in fine, and failed me Life's dull round.
What darkling secret, mystery profound
This birth to Life, while Life is doomed withhold
Whate'er the world contain for Life to use!
Yet never Life to lose
Though 'twas already lost times manifold!
In brief my Fortune could no horror make,
Ne certain danger ne ancipitous case
(Injustice dealt by men, whom wild-confused
Misrule, that rights of olden days abused,
O'er neighbour-men upraised to power and place!)
I bore not, lashèd to the sturdy stake,
Of my long suffering, which my heart would break
With importuning persecuting harms
Dasht to a thousand bits by forceful arms.

XI

Number I not so numerous ills as He
Who, 'scaped the wuthering wind and furious flood,
In happy harbour tells his travel-tale;
Yet now, e'en now, my Fortune's wavering mood
To so much misery obligeth me
That e'en to pace one forward pace I quail:
No more shirk I what evils may assail;
No more to falsing welfare I pretend;
For human cunning naught can gar me gain.
In fine on sovran Strain
Of Providence divine I now depend:
This thought, this prospect 'tis at times I greet
My sole consoler for dead hopes and fears.
But human weakness when its eyne alight
Upon the things that fleet, and can but sight
The sadding Memories of the long-past years;
What bread such times I break, what drink I drain,
Are bitter tear-floods I can ne'er refrain,
Save by upbuilding castles based on air,
Phantastick painture fair and false as fair.

XII

For an it possible were that Time and Tide
Could bend them backward and, like Memory, view
The faded footprints of Life's earlier day;
And, web of olden story weaving new,
In sweetest error could my footsteps guide
'Mid bloom of flowers where wont my youth to stray;
Then would the memories of the long sad way
Deal me a larger store of Life-content:
Viewing fair converse and glad company,
Where this and other key
She had for opening hearts to new intent;—
The fields, the frequent stroll, the lovely show,
The view, the snow, the rose, the formosure,
The soft and gracious mien so gravely gay,
The singular friendship casting clean away
All villein longings, earthly and impure,
As one whose Other I can never see;—
Ah, vain, vain memories! whither lead ye me
With this weak heart that still must toil and tire
To tame (as tame it should) your vain Desire?

L'Envoi

No more, Canzon! no more: for I could prate
Sans compt a thousand years; and if befall
Blame to thine over-large and long-drawn strain
We ne'er shall see (assure who blames) contain
An Ocean's water packt in vase so small,
Nor sing I delicate lines in softest tone
For gust of praise; my song to man makes known
Pure Truth wherewith mine own Experience teems;
Would God they were the stuff that builds our dreams!

ADIEU TO COIMBRA

Sweet lucent waters of Mondego-stream,
Of my Remembrance restful jouïssance,
Where far-fet, lingering, traitorous Esperance
Long whiles misled me in a blinding Dream:
Fro' you I part, yea, still I'll ne'er misdeem
That long-drawn Memories which your charms enhance
Forbid me changing and, in every chance,
E'en as I farther speed I nearer seem.
Well may my Fortunes hale this instrument
Of Soul o'er new strange regions wide and side,
Offered to winds and watery element:
But hence my Spirit, by you 'companied,
Borne on the nimble wings that Reverie lent,
Flies home and bathes her, Waters! in your tide.

THOMAS CAMPBELL

(1777-1844)

he life of Thomas Campbell, though in large measure fortunate, was uneventful. It was not marked with such brilliant successes as followed the career of Scott; nor was fame purchased at the price of so much suffering and error as were paid for their laurels by Byron, Shelley, and Burns; but his star shone with a clear and steady ray, from the youthful hours that saw his first triumph until near life's close. The world's gifts—the poet's fame, and the public honors and rewards that witnessed to it—were given with a generous hand; and until the death of a cherished wife and the loss of his two children—sons, loved with a love beyond the common love of fathers—broke the charm, Campbell might almost have been taken as a type of the happy man of letters.

Thomas Campbell

Thomas Campbell was born in Glasgow, July 27th, 1777. His family connection was large and respectable, and the branch to which he belonged had been settled for many years in Argyleshire, where they were called the Campbells of Kirnan, from an estate on which the poet's grandfather resided and where he died. His third son, Alexander, the father of the poet, was at one time the head of a firm in Glasgow, doing a profitable business with Falmouth in Virginia; but in common with almost all merchants engaged in the American trade, he was ruined by the War of the Revolution. At the age of sixty-five he found himself a poor man, involved in a costly suit in chancery, which was finally decided against him, and with a wife and nine children dependent upon him. All that he had to live on, at the time his son Thomas was born, was the little that remained to him of his small property when the debts were paid, and some small yearly sums from two provident societies of which he was a member. The poet was fortunate in his parents: both of them were people of high character, warmly devoted to their children, whose education was their chief care,—their idea of education including the training of the heart and the manners as well as the mind.

When eight years old Thomas was sent to the grammar school at Glasgow, where he began the study of Latin and Greek. "I was so early devoted to poetry," he writes, "that at ten years old, when our master, David Allison, interpreted to us the first Eclogue of Virgil, I was literally thrilled with its beauty. In my thirteenth year I went to the University of Glasgow, and put on the red gown. The joy of the occasion made me unable to eat my breakfast. Whether it was presentiment or the mere castle-building of my vanity, I had even then a day-dream that I should one day be Lord Rector of the university."

As a boy, Campbell gained a considerable familiarity with the Latin and Greek poets usually read in college, and was always more inclined to pride himself on his knowledge of Greek poetry than on his own reputation in the art. His college life was passed in times of great political excitement. Revolution was in the air, and all youthful spirits were aflame with enthusiasm for the cause of liberty and with generous sympathy for oppressed people, particularly the Poles and the Greeks. Campbell was caught by the sacred fire which later was to touch the lips of Byron and Shelley; and in his earliest published poem his interest in Poland, which never died out from his heart, found its first expression. This poem, 'The Pleasures of Hope,' a work whose title was thenceforth to be inseparably associated with its author's name, was published in 1799, when Campbell was exactly twenty-one years and nine months old. It at once placed him high in public favor, though it met with the usual difficulty experienced by a first poem by an unknown writer, in finding a publisher. The copyright was finally bought by Mundell for sixty pounds, to be paid partly in money and partly in books. Three years after the publication, a London publisher valued it as worth an annuity of two hundred pounds for life; and Mundell, disregarding his legal rights, behaved with so much liberality that from the sale of the first seven editions Campbell received no less than nine hundred pounds. Besides this material testimony to its success, scores of anecdotes show the favor with which it was received by the poets and writers of the time. The greatest and noblest of them all, Walter Scott, was most generous in his welcome. He gave a dinner in Campbell's honor, and introduced him to his friends with a bumper to the author of 'The Pleasures of Hope.'

It seemed the natural thing for a young man so successfully launched in the literary coteries of Edinburgh and Glasgow to pursue his advantage in the larger literary world of London. But Campbell judged himself with humorous severity. "At present," he writes in a letter, "I am a raw Scotch lad, and in a company of wits and geniuses would make but a dull figure with my northern brogue and my 'braw Scotch boos.'" The eyes of many of the young men of the time were turned toward Germany, where Goethe and Schiller, Lessing and Wieland, were creating the golden age of their country's literature; and Campbell, full of youthful hope and enthusiasm, and with a little money in his pocket, determined to visit the Continent before settling down to work in London. In 1800 he set out for Ratisbon, which he reached three days before the French entered it with their army. His stay there was crowded with picturesque and tragic incidents, described in his letters to friends at home—"in prose," as his biographer justly says, "which even his best poetry hardly surpasses." From the roof of the Scotch Benedictine Convent of St. James, where Campbell was often hospitably entertained while in Ratisbon, he saw the battle of Hohenlinden, on which he wrote the poem once familiar to every schoolboy. Wearied with the bloody sights of war, he left Ratisbon and the next year returned to England. While living at Altona he wrote no less than fourteen of his minor poems, but few of these escaped the severity of his final judgment when he came to collect his verses for publication. Among these few the best were 'The Exile of Erin' and the noble ode 'Ye Mariners of England,' the poem by which alone, perhaps, his name deserves to live; though 'The Battle of the Baltic' in its original form 'The Battle of Copenhagen'—unfortunately not the one best known—is well worthy of a place beside it.

On his return from the Continent, Campbell found himself received in the warmest manner, not only in the literary world but in circles reckoned socially higher. His poetry hit the taste of all the classes that go to make up the general reading public; his harp had many strings, and it rang true to all the notes of patriotism, humanity, love, and feeling. "His happiest moments at this period," says his biographer, "seem to have been passed with Mrs. Siddons, the Kembles, and his friend Telford, the distinguished engineer, for whom he afterward named his eldest son." Lord Minto, on his return from Vienna, became much interested in Campbell and insisted on his taking up his quarters for the season in his town-house in Hanover Square. When the season was over Lord Minto went back to Scotland, taking the poet with him as traveling companion. At Castle Minto, Campbell found among other visitors Walter Scott, and it was while there that 'Lochiel's Warning' was composed and 'Hohenlinden' revised, and both poems prepared for the press.

In 1803 Campbell married his cousin, Matilda Sinclair. The marriage was a happy one; Washington Irving speaks of the lady's personal beauty, and says that her mental qualities were equally matched with it. "She was, in fact," he adds, "a more suitable wife for a poet than poets' wives are apt to be; and for once a son of song had married a reality and not a poetical fiction."

For seventeen years he supported himself and his family by what was for the most part task-work, not always well paid, and made more onerous by the poor state of his health. In 1801 Campbell's father died, an old man of ninety-one, and with him ceased the small benevolent-society pensions that, with what Thomas and the eldest son living in America could contribute, had hitherto kept the parents in decent comfort. But soon after Thomas's marriage and the birth of his first child, the American brother failed, so that the pious duty of supporting the aged mother now came upon the poet alone. He accepted the addition to his burden as manfully as was to be expected of so generous a nature, but there is no doubt that he was in great poverty for a few years. Although often despondent, and with good reason, his natural cheerfulness and his good sense always came to the rescue, and in his lowest estate he retained the respect and the affection of his many friends.

In 1805 Campbell received a pension of £200, which netted him, when fees and expenses were deducted, £168 a year. Half of this sum he reserved for himself and the remainder he divided between his mother and his two sisters. In 1809 he published 'Gertrude of Wyoming,' which had been completed the year before. It was hailed with delight in Edinburgh and with no less favor in London, and came to a second edition in the spring of 1810. But like most of Campbell's more pretentious poetry, it has failed to keep its place in the world's favor. The scene of the poem is laid in an impossible Pennsylvania where the bison and the beaver, the crocodile, the condor, and the flamingo, live in happy neighborhood in groves of magnolia and olive; while the red Indian launches his pirogue upon the Michigan to hunt the bison, while blissful shepherd swains trip with maidens to the timbrel, and blue-eyed Germans change their swords to pruning-hooks, Andalusians dance the saraband, poor Caledonians drown their homesick cares in transatlantic whisky, and Englishmen plant fair Freedom's tree! The story is as unreal as the landscape, and it is told in a style more labored and artificial by far than that of Pope, to whom indeed the younger poet was often injudiciously compared. Yet it is to be noted that Campbell's prose style was as direct and unaffected as could be wished, while in his two best lyrical poems, 'Ye Mariners of England,' and the first cast of 'The Battle of the Baltic,' he shows a vividness of conception and a power of striking out expression at white heat in which no one of his contemporaries excelled him.

Campbell was deservedly a great favorite in society, and the story of his life at this time is largely the record of his meeting with distinguished people. The Princess of Wales freely welcomed him to her court; he had corresponded with Madame de Staël, and when she came to England he visited her often and at her request read her his lectures on poetry; he saw much of Mrs. Siddons, and when in Paris in 1814, visited the Louvre in her company to see the statues and pictures of which Napoleon had plundered Italy.

In 1826 Campbell was made Lord Rector of Glasgow University, and in 1828 he was re-elected unanimously. During this second term his wife died, and in 1829 the unprecedented honor of an election for a third term was bestowed upon him, although he had to dispute it with no less a rival than Sir Walter Scott. "When he went to Glasgow to be inaugurated as Lord Rector," says his biographer, "on reaching the college green he found the boys pelting each other with snowballs. He rushed into the mêlée and flung about his snowballs right and left with great dexterity, much to the delight of the boys but to the great scandal of the professors. He was proud of the piece of plate given him by the Glasgow lads, but of the honor conferred by his college title he was less sensible. He hated the sound of Doctor Campbell, and said to an acquaintance that no friend of his would ever call him so."

The establishment through his direct agency of the University of London was Campbell's most important public work. Later his life was almost wholly engrossed for a time by his interest in the cause of Poland—a cause indeed that from his youth had lain near his heart. But as he grew older and his health declined he became more and more restless, and finally in 1843 took up his residence at Boulogne. His parents, his brothers and sisters, his wife, his two children, so tenderly loved, were all gone. But he still corresponded with his friends, and to the last his talk was cheerful and pleasant. In June, 1844, he died, and in July he was buried in Westminster Abbey in Poets' Corner. About his grave stood Milman, the Duke of Argyle,—the head of his clan,—Sir Robert Peel, Brougham, Lockhart, Macaulay, D'Israeli, Horace Smith, Croly and Thackeray, with many others, and when the words "Dust to dust" were pronounced, Colonel Szyrma, a distinguished Pole, scattered over the coffin a handful of earth from the grave of Kosciuszko at Cracow.

HOPE

From the 'Pleasures of Hope'

At summer eve, when Heaven's ethereal bow
Spans with bright arch the glittering hills below,
Why to yon mountain turns the musing eye,
Whose sunbright summit mingles with the sky?
Why do those cliffs of shadowy tint appear
More sweet than all the landscape smiling near?
'Tis distance lends enchantment to the view,
And robes the mountain in its azure hue.
Thus with delight we linger to survey
The promised joys of life's unmeasured way;
Thus, from afar, each dim-discovered scene
More pleasing seems than all the past hath been,
And every form that Fancy can repair
From dark oblivion glows divinely there.
What potent spirit guides the raptured eye
To pierce the shades of dim futurity?
Can Wisdom lend, with all her heavenly power,
The pledge of Joy's anticipated hour?
Ah no! she darkly sees the fate of man—
Her dim horizon bounded to a span;
Or if she hold an image to the view,
'Tis Nature pictured too severely true.
With thee, sweet Hope, resides the heavenly light
That pours remotest rapture on the sight;
Thine is the charm of life's bewildered way,
That calls each slumbering passion into play.
Waked by thy touch, I see the sister band,
On tiptoe watching, start at thy command,
And fly where'er thy mandate bids them steer,
To Pleasure's path or Glory's bright career....
Where is the troubled heart consigned to share
Tumultuous toils or solitary care,
Unblest by visionary thoughts that stray
To count the joys of Fortune's better day?
Lo! nature, life, and liberty relume
The dim-eyed tenant of the dungeon gloom;
A long-lost friend, or hapless child restored,
Smiles at his blazing hearth and social board;
Warm from his heart the tears of rapture flow,
And virtue triumphs o'er remembered woe.
Chide not his peace, proud Reason; nor destroy
The shadowy forms of uncreated joy,
That urge the lingering tide of life, and pour
Spontaneous slumber on his midnight hour.
Hark! the wild maniac sings, to chide the gale
That wafts so slow her lover's distant sail;
She, sad spectatress, on the wintry shore,
Watched the rude surge his shroudless corse that bore,
Knew the pale form, and shrieking in amaze,
Clasped her cold hands, and fixed her maddening gaze;
Poor widowed wretch! 'Twas there she wept in vain,
Till Memory fled her agonizing brain:—
But Mercy gave, to charm the sense of woe,
Ideal peace, that truth could ne'er bestow;
Warm on her heart the joys of Fancy beam,
And aimless Hope delights her darkest dream.
Oft when yon moon has climbed the midnight sky,
And the lone sea-bird wakes its wildest cry,
Piled on the steep, her blazing fagots burn
To hail the bark that never can return;
And still she waits, but scarce forbears to weep
That constant love can linger on the deep.

THE FALL OF POLAND

From the 'Pleasures of Hope'

O Sacred Truth! thy triumph ceased a while,
And Hope, thy sister, ceased with thee to smile,
When leagued Oppression poured to Northern wars
Her whiskered pandoors and her fierce hussars,
Waved her dread standard to the breeze of morn,
Pealed her loud drum, and twanged her trumpet horn;
Tumultuous horror brooded o'er her van,
Presaging wrath to Poland—and to man!
Warsaw's last champion from her height surveyed,
Wide o'er the fields, a waste of ruin laid—
O Heaven! he cried,—my bleeding country save!
Is there no hand on high to shield the brave?
Yet, though destruction sweep those lovely plains,
Rise, fellow-men! our country yet remains.
By that dread name, we wave the sword on high,
And swear for her to live! with her to die!
He said, and on the rampart-heights arrayed
His trusty warriors, few but undismayed;
Firm-paced and slow, a horrid front they form,
Still as the breeze, but dreadful as the storm;
Low murmuring sounds along their banners fly,
Revenge, or death—the watchword and reply;
Then pealed the notes, omnipotent to charm,
And the loud tocsin tolled their last alarm!
In vain, alas! in vain, ye gallant few!
From rank to rank your volleyed thunder flew;
Oh, bloodiest picture in the book of Time,
Sarmatia fell, unwept, without a crime;
Found not a generous friend, a pitying foe,
Strength in her arms, nor mercy in her woe!
Dropped from her nerveless grasp the shattered spear,
Closed her bright eye and curbed her high career;
Hope for a season bade the world farewell,
And Freedom shrieked, as Kosciusko fell!
The sun went down, nor ceased the carnage there;
Tumultuous Murder shook the midnight air—
On Prague's proud arch the fires of ruin glow,
His blood-dyed waters murmuring far below;
The storm prevails, the rampart yields a way,
Bursts the wild cry of horror and dismay!
Hark, as the smoldering piles with thunder fall,
A thousand shrieks for hopeless mercy call!
Earth shook—red meteors flashed along the sky,
And conscious Nature shuddered at the cry!
O righteous Heaven! ere Freedom found a grave,
Why slept the sword, omnipotent to save?
Where was thine arm, O Vengeance! where thy rod,
That smote the foes of Zion and of God;
That crushed proud Ammon, when his iron car
Was yoked in wrath, and thundered from afar?
Where was the storm that slumbered till the host
Of blood-stained Pharaoh left their trembling coast;
Then bade the deep in wild commotion flow,
And heaved an ocean on their march below?
Departed spirits of the mighty dead!
Ye that at Marathon and Leuctra bled!
Friends of the world! restore your swords to man,
Fight in his sacred cause, and lead the van;
Yet for Sarmatia's tears of blood atone,
And make her arm puissant as your own;
Oh! once again to Freedom's cause return
The patriot Tell, the Bruce of Bannockburn!

THE SLAVE

From the 'Pleasures of Hope'

And say, supernal Powers! who deeply scan
Heaven's dark decrees, unfathomed yet by man,—
When shall the world call down, to cleanse her shame.
That embryo spirit, yet without a name,
That friend of Nature, whose avenging hands
Shall burst the Libyan's adamantine bands?
Who, sternly marking on his native soil
The blood, the tears, the anguish and the toil,
Shall bid each righteous heart exult to see
Peace to the slave, and vengeance on the free!
Yet, yet, degraded men! th' expected day
That breaks your bitter cup is far away;
Trade, wealth, and fashion ask you still to bleed,
And holy men give Scripture for the deed;
Scourged and debased, no Briton stoops to save
A wretch, a coward—yes, because a slave!
Eternal Nature! when thy giant hand
Had heaved the floods and fixed the trembling land,
When life sprang startling at thy plastic call,
Endless thy forms, and man the lord of all:—
Say, was that lordly form inspired by thee,
To wear eternal chains and bow the knee?
Was man ordained the slave of man to toil,
Yoked with the brutes, and fettered to the soil,
Weighed in a tyrant's balance with his gold?
No! Nature stamped us in a heavenly mold!
She bade no wretch his thankless labor urge,
Nor, trembling, take the pittance and the scourge;
No homeless Libyan, on the stormy deep,
To call upon his country's name and weep!
Lo! once in triumph, on his boundless plain,
The quivered chief of Congo loved to reign;
With fires proportioned to his native sky,
Strength in his arm, and lightning in his eye;
Scoured with wild feet his sun-illumined zone,
The spear, the lion, and the woods, his own;
Or led the combat, bold without a plan,
An artless savage, but a fearless man.
The plunderer came;—alas! no glory smiles
For Congo's chief, on yonder Indian isles;
Forever fallen! no son of nature now,
With Freedom chartered on his manly brow.
Faint, bleeding, bound, he weeps the night away,
And when the sea-wind wafts the dewless day,
Starts, with a bursting heart, for evermore
To curse the sun that lights their guilty shore!
The shrill horn blew; at that alarum knell
His guardian angel took a last farewell.
That funeral dirge to darkness hath resigned
The fiery grandeur of a generous mind.
Poor fettered man! I hear thee breathing low
Unhallowed vows to Guilt, the child of Woe:
Friendless thy heart; and canst thou harbor there
A wish but death—a passion but despair?
The widowed Indian, when her lord expires,
Mounts the dread pile, and braves the funeral fires.
So falls the heart at Thraldom's bitter sigh;
So Virtue dies, the spouse of Liberty!

DEATH AND A FUTURE LIFE

From the 'Pleasures of Hope'

Unfading Hope! when life's last embers burn,
When soul to soul, and dust to dust return!
Heaven to thy charge resigns the awful hour.
Oh, then thy kingdom comes! Immortal Power!
What though each spark of earth-born rapture fly
The quivering lip, pale cheek, and closing eye,—
Bright to the soul thy seraph hands convey
The morning dream of life's eternal day—
Then, then the triumph and the trance begin,
And all the phœnix spirit burns within!
Oh deep-enchanting prelude to repose,
The dawn of bliss, the twilight of our woes!
Yet half I hear the panting spirit sigh,
It is a dread and awful thing to die!
Mysterious worlds, untraveled by the sun!
Where Time's far-wandering tide has never run,—
From your unfathomed shades and viewless spheres,
A warning comes, unheard by other ears.
'Tis Heaven's commanding trumpet, long and loud,
Like Sinai's thunder, pealing from the cloud!
While Nature hears, with terror-mingled trust,
The shock that hurls her fabric to the dust;
And like the trembling Hebrew, when he trod
The roaring waves, and called upon his God,
With mortal terrors clouds immortal bliss,
And shrieks, and hovers o'er the dark abyss!
Daughter of Faith, awake, arise, illume
The dread unknown, the chaos of the tomb;
Melt and dispel, ye spectre doubts, that roll
Cimmerian darkness o'er the parting soul!
Fly, like the moon-eyed herald of Dismay,
Chased on his night-steed by the star of day!
The strife is o'er—the pangs of Nature close,
And life's last rapture triumphs o'er her woes.
Hark! as the spirit eyes, with eagle gaze,
The noon of Heaven undazzled by the blaze,
On heavenly winds that waft her to the sky
Float the sweet tones of star-born melody;
Wild as that hallowed anthem sent to hail
Bethlehem's shepherds in the lonely vale,
When Jordan hushed his waves, and midnight still
Watched on the holy towers of Zion hill.
Soul of the just! companion of the dead!
Where is thy home, and whither art thou fled?
Back to its heavenly source thy being goes.
Swift as the comet wheels to whence he rose;
Doomed on his airy path a while to burn,
And doomed like thee to travel and return.
Hark! from the world's exploding centre driven,
With sounds that shook the firmament of Heaven,
Careers the fiery giant, fast and far,
On bickering wheels and adamantine car;
From planet whirled to planet more remote,
He visits realms beyond the reach of thought;
But wheeling homeward, when his course is run,
Curbs the red yoke, and mingles with the sun:
So hath the traveler of earth unfurled
Her trembling wings, emerging from the world;
And o'er the path by mortal never trod,
Sprung to her source, the bosom of her God!
Oh, lives there, Heaven, beneath thy dread expanse,
One hopeless, dark idolater of Chance,
Content to feed, with pleasures unrefined,
The lukewarm passions of a lowly mind,
Who, moldering earthward, reft of every trust,
In joyless union wedded to the dust,
Could all his parting energy dismiss,
And call this barren world sufficient bliss?
There live, alas! of heaven-directed mien,
Of cultured soul, and sapient eye serene,
Who hail thee, Man! the pilgrim of a day,
Spouse of the worm, and brother of the clay;
Frail as the leaf in Autumn's yellow bower,
Dust in the wind, or dew upon the flower;
A friendless slave, a child without a sire,
Whose mortal life and momentary fire
Light to the grave his chance-created form,
As ocean-wrecks illuminate the storm;
And when the guns' tremendous flash is o'er,
To-night and silence sink for evermore!
Are these the pompous tidings ye proclaim,
Lights of the world, and demigods of Fame?
Is this your triumph—this your proud applause,
Children of Truth, and champions of her cause?
For this hath Science searched, on weary wing,
By shore and sea, each mute and living thing?
Launched with Iberia's pilot from the steep,
To worlds unknown, and isles beyond the deep?
Or round the cope her living chariot driven,
And wheeled in triumph through the signs of Heaven?
O star-eyed Science, hast thou wandered there,
To waft us home the message of despair?
Then bind the palm, thy sage's brow to suit,
Of blasted leaf and death-distilling fruit.
Ah me! the laureled wreath that Murder rears,
Blood-nursed, and watered by the widow's tears,
Seems not so foul, so tainted, and so dread,
As waves the nightshade round the skeptic's head.
What is the bigot's torch, the tyrant's chain?
I smile on death, if Heavenward Hope remain!
But if the warring winds of Nature's strife
Be all the faithless charter of my life;
If Chance awaked, inexorable power,
This frail and feverish being of an hour;
Doomed o'er the world's precarious scene to sweep,
Swift as the tempest travels on the deep;
To know Delight but by her parting smile,
And toil, and wish, and weep a little while;—
Then melt, ye elements, that formed in vain
This troubled pulse and visionary brain!
Fade, ye wild flowers, memorials of my doom,
And sink, ye stars, that light me to the tomb!
Truth, ever lovely,—since the world began,
The foe of tyrants, and the friend of man,—
How can thy words from balmy slumber start
Reposing Virtue, pillowed on the heart!
Yet if thy voice the note of thunder rolled,
And that were true which Nature never told,
Let Wisdom smile not on her conquered field:
No rapture dawns, no treasure is revealed.
Oh! let her read, nor loudly, nor elate,
The doom that bars us from a better fate;
But, sad as angels for the good man's sin,
Weep to record, and blush to give it in!

LOCHIEL'S WARNING

WIZARD

Lochiel, Lochiel! beware of the day
When the Lowlands shall meet thee in battle array!
For a field of the dead rushes red on my sight,
And the clans of Culloden are scattered in fight.
They rally, they bleed, for their kingdom and crown;
Woe, woe to the riders that trample them down!
Proud Cumberland prances, insulting the slain,
And their hoof-beaten bosoms are trod to the plain.
But hark! through the fast-flashing lightning of war,
What steed to the desert flies frantic and far?
'Tis thine, O Glenullin! whose bride shall await,
Like a love-lighted watch-fire, all night at the gate.
A steed comes at morning; no rider is there;
But its bridle is red with the sign of despair.
Weep, Albin! to death and captivity led!
Oh weep! but thy tears cannot number the dead:
For a merciless sword on Culloden shall wave,
Culloden! that reeks with the blood of the brave.

LOCHIEL

Go, preach to the coward, thou death-telling seer!
Or, if gory Culloden so dreadful appear,
Draw, dotard, around thy old wavering sight
This mantle, to cover the phantoms of fright.

WIZARD

Ha! laugh'st thou, Lochiel, my vision to scorn?
Proud bird of the mountain, thy plume shall be torn!
Say, rushed the bold eagle exultingly forth,
From his home in the dark rolling clouds of the north?
Lo! the death-shot of foemen outspeeding, he rode
Companionless, bearing destruction abroad;
But down let him stoop from his havoc on high!
Ah! home let him speed,—for the spoiler is nigh.
Why flames the far summit? Why shoot to the blast
Those embers, like stars from the firmament cast?
'Tis the fire-shower of ruin, all dreadfully driven
From his eyrie, that beacons the darkness of heaven.
O crested Lochiel! the peerless in might,
Whose banners arise on the battlements' height,
Heaven's fire is around thee, to blast and to burn;
Return to thy dwelling! all lonely return!
For the blackness of ashes shall mark where it stood,
And a wild mother scream o'er her famishing brood.

LOCHIEL

False Wizard, avaunt! I have marshaled my clan;
Their swords are a thousand, their bosoms are one!
They are true to the last of their blood and their breath,
And like reapers descend to the harvest of death.
Then welcome be Cumberland's steed to the shock!
Let him dash his proud foam like a wave on the rock!
But woe to his kindred, and woe to his cause,
When Albin her claymore indignantly draws;
When her bonneted chieftains to victory crowd,
Clanronald the dauntless, and Moray the proud,
All plaided and plumed in their tartan array—

WIZARD

Lochiel, Lochiel! beware of the day;
For, dark and despairing, my sight I may seal,
But man cannot cover what God would reveal;
'Tis the sunset of life gives me mystical lore,
And coming events cast their shadows before.
I tell thee, Culloden's dread echoes shall ring
With the bloodhounds that bark for thy fugitive king.
Lo! anointed by Heaven with the vials of wrath,
Behold, where he flies on his desolate path!
Now in darkness and billows, he sweeps from my sight:
Rise, rise! ye wild tempests, and cover his flight!
'Tis finished. Their thunders are hushed on the moors:
Culloden is lost, and my country deplores.
But where is the iron-bound prisoner? where?
For the red eye of battle is shut in despair.
Say, mounts he the ocean wave, banished, forlorn,
Like a limb from his country cast bleeding and torn?
Ah no! for a darker departure is near;
The war-drum is muffled, and black is the bier;
His death-bell is tolling: O Mercy, dispel
Yon sight, that it freezes my spirit to tell!
Life flutters convulsed in his quivering limbs,
And his blood-streaming nostril in agony swims.
Accursed be the fagots that blaze at his feet,
Where his heart shall be thrown ere it ceases to beat,
With the smoke of its ashes to poison the gale—

LOCHIEL

Down, soothless insulter! I trust not the tale:
For never shall Albin a destiny meet
So black with dishonor, so foul with retreat.
Though my perishing ranks should be strewed in their gore,
Like ocean-weeds heaped on the surf-beaten shore,
Lochiel, untainted by flight or by chains,
While the kindling of life in his bosom remains,
Shall victor exult, or in death be laid low,
With his back to the field, and his feet to the foe!
And, leaving in battle no blot on his name,
Look proudly to Heaven from the death-bed of fame.

THE SOLDIER'S DREAM

Our bugles sang truce—for the night-cloud had lowered,
And the sentinel stars set their watch in the sky;
And thousands had sunk on the ground overpowered,
The weary to sleep, and the wounded to die.

When reposing that night on my pallet of straw,
By the wolf-scaring fagot that guarded the slain,
At the dead of the night a sweet vision I saw,
And thrice ere the morning I dreamt it again.

Methought from the battle-field's dreadful array,
Far, far I had roamed on a desolate track:
'Twas Autumn,—and sunshine arose on the way
To the home of my fathers, that welcomed me back.

I flew to the pleasant fields traversed so oft
In life's morning march, when my bosom was young;
I heard my own mountain-goats bleating aloft,
And knew the sweet strain that the corn-reapers sung.

Then pledged we the wine-cup, and fondly I swore
From my home and my weeping friends never to part;
My little ones kissed me a thousand times o'er,
And my wife sobbed aloud in her fullness of heart.

"Stay, stay with us,—rest; thou art weary and worn!"
And fain was their war-broken soldier to stay:—
But sorrow returned with the dawning of morn,
And the voice in my dreaming ear melted away.

LORD ULLIN'S DAUGHTER

A Chieftan, to the Highlands bound,
Cries, "Boatman, do not tarry!
And I'll give thee a silver pound,
To row us o'er the ferry."

"Now who be ye, would cross Lochgyle,
This dark and stormy water?"
"O, I'm the chief of Ulva's isle,
And this Lord Ullin's daughter.

"And fast before her father's men
Three days we've fled together;
For should he find us in the glen,
My blood would stain the heather.

"His horsemen hard behind us ride;
Should they our steps discover,
Then who will cheer my bonny bride
When they have slain her lover?"

Out spoke the hardy Highland wight,
"I'll go, my chief—I'm ready;—
It is not for your silver bright,
But for your winsome lady;

"And by my word! the bonny bird
In danger shall not tarry;
So though the waves are raging white
I'll row you o'er the ferry."

By this the storm grew loud apace,
The water-wraith was shrieking;
And in the scowl of heaven each face
Grew dark as they were speaking.

But still as wilder blew the wind,
And as the night grew drearer,
Adown the glen rode armèd men,
Their trampling sounded nearer.

"O haste thee, haste!" the lady cries,
"Though tempests round us gather,
I'll meet the raging of the skies,
But not an angry father."

The boat has left a stormy land,
A stormy sea before her,
When, oh! too strong for human hand,
The tempest gathered o'er her.

And still they rowed amidst the roar
Of waters fast prevailing:
Lord Ullin reached that fatal shore;
His wrath was changed to wailing.

For sore dismayed, through storm and shade,
His child he did discover:
One lovely hand she stretched for aid,
And one was round her lover.

"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 lashed the shore,
Return or aid preventing:—
The waters wild went o'er his child,
And he was left lamenting.

THE EXILE OF ERIN