To the solid ground

Of Nature trusts the mind that builds for aye.
A Volant Tribe of Bards on Earth.

Soft is the music that would charm forever;
The flower of sweetest smell is shy and lowly.

Not Love, not War.

True beauty dwells in deep retreats,
Whose veil is unremoved

Till heart with heart in concord beats,

And the lover is beloved.

To

Let other Bards of Angels sing.

Type of the wise who soar but never roam,
True to the kindred points of heaven and home.

A Briton even in love should be
A subject, not a slave!

To a Skylark.

Ere with Cold Beads of Midnight Dew.

Scorn not the sonnet. Critic, you have frowned,
Mindless of its just honours; with this key
Shakespeare unlocked his heart.1

And when a damp

Scorn not the Sonnet.

Fell round the path of Milton, in his hand
The thing became a trumpet; whence he blew
Soul-animating strains, -alas! too few.

But he is risen, a later star of dawn.

Ibid.

A Morning Exercise.

Alas! how little can a moment show

Of an eye where feeling plays
In ten thousand dewy rays:

A face o'er which a thousand shadows go!

Stern Winter loves a dirge-like sound.

The Triad

On the Power of Sound. zii.

The bosom-weight, your stubborn gift,
That no philosophy can lift.

Nature's old felicities.

Presentiments.

The Trosachs.

Myriads of daisies have shone forth in flower
Near the lark's nest, and in their natural hour
Have passed away; less happy than the one
That by the unwilling ploughshare died to prove
The tender charm of poetry and love.

Poems composed during a Tour in the Summer of 1833. zzrvii

Small service is true service while it lasts.

Of humblest friends, bright creature! scorn not one: The daisy, by the shadow that it casts,

Protects the lingering dewdrop from the sun.

To a Child. Written in her Album.

Since every mortal power of Coleridge
Was frozen at its marvellous source,
The rapt one, of the godlike forehead,
The heaven-eyed creature sleeps in earth:
And Lamb, the frolic and the gentle,
Has vanished from his lonely hearth.

Extempore Effusion upon the Death of James Hogg.

How fast has brother followed brother,
From sunshine to the sunless land!

Those old credulities, to Nature dear,

Shall they no longer bloom upon the stock
Of history?

Ibid.

Memorials of a Tour in Italy, in

How does the meadow-flower its bloom unfold?
Because the lovely little flower is free

Down to its root, and in that freedom bold.

A Poet! He hath put his Heart to School

Minds that have nothing to confer

Find little to perceive.

Yes, Thou art Fair

SIR WALTER SCOTT. 1771-1832.

Such is the custom of Branksome Hall.

Lay of the Last Minstrel. Canto i. Stanza 7.

If thou would'st view fair Melrose aright,
Go visit it by the pale moonlight.

O fading honours of the dead!
O high ambition, lowly laid!

was not always

a man of woe.

cannot tell how the truth may be;

I say the tale as 't was said to me.

In

In

peace, Love tunes the shepherd's reed;

war, he mounts the warrior's steed;

In halls, in gay attire is seen;

In hamlets, dances on the green.

Love rules the court, the camp, the grove,

And

men below and saints above;
For love is heaven, and heaven is love.

Her blue eyes sought the west afar,
For lovers love the western star.

Along thy wild and willow'd shore.

Ne'er

Was flattery lost on poet's ear;
A simple race! they waste their toil
For the vain tribute of a smile.

Canto ii. Stanza 1.

Stanza 10.

Stanza 12.

Stanza 22.

Canto iii. Stanza 1.

Stanza 24.

Canto iv. Stanza 1.

Stanza 35

Call it not vain: they do not err
Who say that when the poet dies
Mute Nature mourns her worshipper,
And celebrates his obsequies.

Lay of the Last Minstrel. Canto v. Stanza 1

True love's the gift which God has given
To man alone beneath the heaven:

It is not fantasy's hot fire,

Whose wishes soon as granted fly;

It liveth not in fierce desire,

With dead desire it doth not die;

It is the secret sympathy,

The silver link, the silken tie,

Which heart to heart and mind to mind

In body and in soul can bind.

Stanza 13.

Breathes there the man with soul so dead
Who never to himself hath said,

This is my own, my native land!

Whose heart hath ne'er within him burn'd1
As home his footsteps he hath turn'd

From wandering on a foreign strand?
If such there breathe, go, mark him well!
For him no minstrel raptures swell;
High though his titles, proud his name,
Boundless his wealth as wish can claim,
Despite those titles, power, and pelf,
The wretch, concentred all in self,
Living, shall forfeit fair renown,
And, doubly dying, shall go down

To the vile dust from whence he sprung,
Unwept, unhonour'd, and unsung.2

Canto vi. Stanza 1.

1 Did not our heart burn within us while he talked with us by the way?—

Luke xxiv. 32.

Hath not thy heart within thee burned

At evening's calm and holy hour?

? See Pope, page 341.

S. G. BULFINCH: The Voice of God in the Garden,

O Caledonia! stern and wild,
Meet nurse for a poetic child!

Land of brown heath and shaggy wood;

Land of the mountain and the flood!

Lay of the Last Minstrel. Canto vi. Stanza 2.

Profan'd the God-given strength, and marr'd the lofty line.

Marmion. Introduction to Canto i.

Just at the age 'twixt boy and youth,

When thought is speech, and speech is truth.

When, musing on companions gone,
We doubly feel ourselves alone.

"T is an old tale and often told;

But did my
fate and wish agree,
Ne'er had been read, in story old,
Of maiden true betray'd for gold,

That loved,

or was avenged, like me.

When Prussia hurried to the field,

Introduction to Canto ii.

And snatch'd the spear, but left the shield.1

In the lost battle,

Ibid.

Stanza 27.

Introduction to Canto it.

Borne down by the flying,
Where mingles war's rattle
With groans of the dying.

Where's the coward that would not dare
To fight for such a land?

Lightly from fair to fair he flew,
And loved to plead, lament, and sue;
Suit lightly won, and short-lived pain,
For monarchs seldom sigh in vain.

Stanza 11.

Canto iv. Stanza 30.

Canto v. Stanza 9.

With a smile on her lips and a tear in her eye.2

But woe awaits a country when

Stanza 12.

Stanza 16

She sees the tears of bearded men.

1 See Freneau, page 443.

2

Reproof on her lips, but a smile in her eye. - LOVER: Rory O'More.