Chapter 9

1 'Twas at the silent, solemn hour When night and morning meet; In glided Margaret's grimly ghost, And stood at William's feet.

2 Her face was like an April-morn, Clad in a wintry cloud; And clay-cold was her lily hand, That held her sable shroud.

3 So shall the fairest face appear, When youth and years are flown: Such is the robe that kings must wear, When death has reft their crown.

4 Her bloom was like the springing flower, That sips the silver dew; The rose was budded in her cheek, Just opening to the view.

5 But love had, like the canker-worm, Consumed her early prime: The rose grew pale, and left her cheek; She died before her time.

6 'Awake!' she cried, 'thy true love calls, Come from her midnight-grave; Now let thy pity hear the maid, Thy love refused to save.

7 'This is the dumb and dreary hour, When injured ghosts complain; When yawning graves give up their dead, To haunt the faithless swain.

8 'Bethink thee, William, of thy fault, Thy pledge and broken oath! And give me back my maiden-vow, And give me back my troth.

9 'Why did you promise love to me, And not that promise keep? Why did you swear my eyes were bright, Yet leave those eyes to weep?

10 'How could you say my face was fair, And yet that face forsake? How could you win my virgin-heart, Yet leave that heart to break?

11 'Why did you say my lip was sweet, And made the scarlet pale? And why did I, young witless maid! Believe the flattering tale?

12 'That face, alas! no more is fair, Those lips no longer red: Dark are my eyes, now closed in death, And every charm is fled.

13 'The hungry worm my sister is; This winding-sheet I wear: And cold and weary lasts our night, Till that last morn appear.

14 'But, hark! the cock has warned me hence; A long and late adieu! Come, see, false man, how low she lies, Who died for love of you.'

15 The lark sung loud; the morning smiled, With beams of rosy red: Pale William quaked in every limb, And raving left his bed.

16 He hied him to the fatal place Where Margaret's body lay; And stretched him on the green-grass turf, That wrapped her breathless clay.

17 And thrice he called on Margaret's name. And thrice he wept full sore; Then laid his cheek to her cold grave, And word spake never more!

THE BIRKS OF INVERMAY.

The smiling morn, the breathing spring, Invite the tunefu' birds to sing; And, while they warble from the spray, Love melts the universal lay. Let us, Amanda, timely wise, Like them, improve the hour that flies; And in soft raptures waste the day, Among the birks of Invermay.

For soon the winter of the year, And age, life's winter, will appear; At this thy living bloom will fade, As that will strip the verdant shade. Our taste of pleasure then is o'er, The feathered songsters are no more; And when they drop and we decay, Adieu the birks of Invermay!

JAMES MERRICK.

Merrick was a clergyman, as well as a writer of verse. He was born in 1720, and became a Fellow of Trinity College, Oxford, where Lord North was one of his pupils. He took orders, but owing to incessant pains in the head, could not perform duty. He died in 1769. His works are a translation of Tryphiodorus, done at twenty, a version of the Psalms, a collection of Hymns, and a few miscellaneous pieces, one good specimen of which we subjoin.

THE CHAMELEON.

Oft has it been my lot to mark A proud, conceited, talking spark, With eyes that hardly served at most To guard their master 'gainst a post; Yet round the world the blade has been, To see whatever could be seen. Returning from his finished tour, Grown ten times perter than before; Whatever word you chance to drop, The travelled fool your mouth will stop: 'Sir, if my judgment you'll allow-- I've seen--and sure I ought to know.'-- So begs you'd pay a due submission, And acquiesce in his decision.

Two travellers of such a cast, As o'er Arabia's wilds they passed, And on their way, in friendly chat, Now talked of this, and then of that; Discoursed a while, 'mongst other matter, Of the chameleon's form and nature. 'A stranger animal,' cries one, 'Sure never lived beneath the sun: A lizard's body lean and long, A fish's head, a serpent's tongue, Its foot with triple claw disjoined; And what a length of tail behind! How slow its pace! and then its hue-- Who ever saw so fine a blue?'

'Hold there,' the other quick replies, ''Tis green, I saw it with these eyes, As late with open mouth it lay, And warmed it in the sunny ray; Stretched at its ease the beast I viewed, And saw it eat the air for food.'

'I've seen it, sir, as well as you, And must again affirm it blue; At leisure I the beast surveyed Extended in the cooling shade.'

''Tis green, 'tis green, sir, I assure ye.' 'Green!' cries the other in a fury: 'Why, sir, d' ye think I've lost my eyes?' ''Twere no great loss,' the friend replies; 'For if they always serve you thus, You'll find them but of little use.'

So high at last the contest rose, From words they almost came to blows: When luckily came by a third; To him the question they referred: And begged he'd tell them, if he knew, Whether the thing was green or blue.

'Sirs,' cries the umpire, 'cease your pother; The creature's neither one nor t' other. I caught the animal last night, And viewed it o'er by candle-light: I marked it well, 'twas black as jet-- You stare--but sirs, I've got it yet, And can produce it.'--'Pray, sir, do; I'll lay my life the thing is blue.' 'And I'll be sworn, that when you've seen The reptile, you'll pronounce him green.'

'Well, then, at once to ease the doubt,' Replies the man, 'I'll turn him out: And when before your eyes I've set him, If you don't find him black, I'll eat him.'

He said; and full before their sight Produced the beast, and lo!--'twas white. Both stared, the man looked wondrous wise-- 'My children,' the chameleon cries, (Then first the creature found a tongue,) 'You all are right, and all are wrong: When next you talk of what you view, Think others see as well as you: Nor wonder if you find that none Prefers your eyesight to his own.'

DR JAMES GRAINGER.

This writer possessed some true imagination, although his claim to immortality lies in the narrow compass of one poem--his 'Ode to Solitude.' Little is known of his personal history. He was born in 1721 --belonging to a gentleman's family in Cumberland. He studied medicine, and was for some time a surgeon connected with the army. When the peace came, he established himself in London as a medical practitioner. In 1755, he published his 'Solitude,' which found many admirers, including Dr Johnson, who pronounced its opening lines 'very noble.' He afterwards indited several other pieces, wrote a translation of Tibullus, and became one of the critical staff of the _Monthly Review_. He was unable, however, through all these labours to secure a competence, and, in 1759, he sought the West Indies. In St Christopher's he commenced practising as a physician, and married the Governor's daughter, who brought him a fortune. He wrote a poem entitled 'The Sugar-cane.' This was sent over to London in MS., and was read at Sir Joshua Reynold's table to a literary coterie, who, according to Boswell, all burst out into a laugh when, after much blank-verse pomp, the poet began a new paragraph thus--

'Now, Muse, let's sing of _rats_!

And what increased the ridicule was, that one of the company, slily overlooking the reader, found that the word had been originally 'mice,' but had been changed to rats as more dignified.

Boswell goes on to record Johnson's opinion of Grainger. He said, 'He was an agreeable man, a man that would do any good that was in his power.' His translation of Tibullus was very well done, but 'The Sugar- cane, a Poem,' did not please him. 'What could he make of a Sugar-cane? one might as well write "The Parsley-bed, a Poem," or "The Cabbage Garden, a Poem."' Boswell--'You must then _pickle_ your cabbage with the _sal Atticum_.' Johnson--'One could say a great deal about cabbage. The poem might begin with the advantages of civilised society over a rude state, exemplified by the Scotch, who had no cabbages till Oliver Cromwell's soldiers introduced them, and one might thus shew how arts are propagated by conquest, as they were by the Roman arms.' Cabbage, by the way, in a metaphorical sense, might furnish a very good subject for a literary _satire_.

Grainger died of the fever of the country in 1767. Bishop Percy corroborates Johnson's character of him as a man. He says, 'He was not only a man of genius and learning, but had many excellent virtues, being one of the most generous, friendly, benevolent men I ever knew.'

Grainger in some points reminds us of Dyer. Dyer staked his reputation on 'The Fleece;' but it is his lesser poem, 'Grongar Hill,' which preserves his name; that fine effusion has survived the laboured work. And so Grainger's 'Solitude' has supplanted the stately 'Sugar-cane.' The scenery of the West Indies had to wait till its real poet appeared in the author of 'Paul and Virginia.' Grainger was hardly able to cope with the strange and gorgeous contrasts it presents of cliffs and crags, like those of Iceland, with vegetation rich as that of the fairest parts of India, and of splendid sunshine, with tempests of such tremendous fury that, but for their brief continuance, no property could be secure, and no life could be safe.

The commencement of the 'Ode to Solitude' is fine, but the closing part becomes tedious. In the middle of the poem there is a tumult of personifications, some of them felicitous and others forced.

'Sage Reflection, bent with years,' may pass, but 'Conscious Virtue, void of fears,' is poor. 'Halcyon Peace on moss reclined,' is a picture; 'Retrospect that scans the mind,' is nothing; 'Health that snuffs the morning air,' is a living image; but what sense is there in 'Full-eyed Truth, with bosom bare?' and how poor his 'Laughter in loud peals that breaks,' to Milton's 'Laughter, holding both his sides!' The paragraph, however, commencing 'With you roses brighter bloom,' and closing with 'The bournless macrocosm's thine,' is very spirited, and, along with the opening lines, proves Grainger a poet.

ODE TO SOLITUDE.

O solitude, romantic maid! Whether by nodding towers you tread, Or haunt the desert's trackless gloom, Or hover o'er the yawning tomb, Or climb the Andes' clifted side, Or by the Nile's coy source abide, Or starting from your half-year's sleep From Hecla view the thawing deep, Or, at the purple dawn of day, Tadmor's marble wastes survey, You, recluse, again I woo, And again your steps pursue.

Plumed Conceit himself surveying, Folly with her shadow playing, Purse-proud, elbowing Insolence, Bloated empiric, puffed Pretence, Noise that through a trumpet speaks, Laughter in loud peals that breaks, Intrusion with a fopling's face, Ignorant of time and place, Sparks of fire Dissension blowing, Ductile, court-bred Flattery, bowing, Restraint's stiff neck, Grimace's leer, Squint-eyed Censure's artful sneer, Ambition's buskins, steeped in blood, Fly thy presence, Solitude.

Sage Reflection, bent with years, Conscious Virtue, void of fears, Muffled Silence, wood-nymph shy, Meditation's piercing eye, Halcyon Peace on moss reclined, Retrospect that scans the mind, Rapt, earth-gazing Reverie, Blushing, artless Modesty, Health that snuffs the morning air, Full-eyed Truth, with bosom bare, Inspiration, Nature's child, Seek the solitary wild.

You, with the tragic muse retired, The wise Euripides inspired, You taught the sadly-pleasing air That Athens saved from ruins bare. You gave the Cean's tears to flow, And unlocked the springs of woe; You penned what exiled Naso thought, And poured the melancholy note. With Petrarch o'er Vaucluse you strayed, When death snatched his long-loved maid; You taught the rocks her loss to mourn, Ye strewed with flowers her virgin urn. And late in Hagley you were seen, With bloodshot eyes, and sombre mien, Hymen his yellow vestment tore, And Dirge a wreath of cypress wore. But chief your own the solemn lay That wept Narcissa young and gay, Darkness clapped her sable wing, While you touched the mournful string, Anguish left the pathless wild, Grim-faced Melancholy smiled, Drowsy Midnight ceased to yawn, The starry host put back the dawn, Aside their harps even seraphs flung To hear thy sweet Complaint, O Young! When all nature's hushed asleep, Nor Love nor Guilt their vigils keep, Soft you leave your caverned den, And wander o'er the works of men; But when Phosphor brings the dawn By her dappled coursers drawn, Again you to the wild retreat And the early huntsman meet, Where as you pensive pace along, You catch the distant shepherd's song, Or brush from herbs the pearly dew, Or the rising primrose view. Devotion lends her heaven-plumed wings, You mount, and nature with you sings. But when mid-day fervours glow, To upland airy shades you go, Where never sunburnt woodman came, Nor sportsman chased the timid game; And there beneath an oak reclined, With drowsy waterfalls behind, You sink to rest. Till the tuneful bird of night From the neighbouring poplar's height Wake you with her solemn strain, And teach pleased Echo to complain.

With you roses brighter bloom, Sweeter every sweet perfume, Purer every fountain flows, Stronger every wilding grows. Let those toil for gold who please, Or for fame renounce their ease. What is fame? an empty bubble. Gold? a transient shining trouble. Let them for their country bleed, What was Sidney's, Raleigh's meed? Man's not worth a moment's pain, Base, ungrateful, fickle, vain. Then let me, sequestered fair, To your sibyl grot repair; On yon hanging cliff it stands, Scooped by nature's salvage hands, Bosomed in the gloomy shade Of cypress not with age decayed. Where the owl still-hooting sits, Where the bat incessant flits, There in loftier strains I'll sing Whence the changing seasons spring, Tell how storms deform the skies, Whence the waves subside and rise, Trace the comet's blazing tail, Weigh the planets in a scale; Bend, great God, before thy shrine, The bournless macrocosm's thine. * * * * *

MICHAEL BRUCE.

We refer our readers to Dr Mackelvie's well-known and very able Life of poor Bruce, for his full story, and for the evidence on which his claim to the 'Cuckoo' is rested. Apart from external evidence, we think that poem more characteristic of Bruce's genius than of Logan's, and have therefore ranked it under Bruce's name.

Bruce was born on the 27th of March 1746, at Kinnesswood, parish of Portmoak, county of Kinross. His father was a weaver, and Michael was the fifth of a family of eight children.

Poor as his parents were, they were intelligent, religious, and most conscientious in the discharge of their duties to their children. In the summer months Michael was sent out to herd cattle; and one loves to imagine the young poet wrapt in his plaid, under a whin-bush, while the storm was blowing,--or gazing at the rainbow from the summit of a fence,--or admiring at Lochleven and its old ruined castle,--or weaving around the form of some little maiden, herding in a neighbouring field --some 'Jeanie Morrison'--one of those webs of romantic early love which are beautiful and evanescent as the gossamer, but how exquisitely relished while they last! Say not, with one of his biographers, that his 'education was retarded by this employment;' he was receiving in these solitary fields a kind of education which no school and no college could furnish; nay, who knows but, as he saw the cuckoo winging her way from one deep woodland recess to another, or heard her dull, divine monotone coming from the heart of the forest, the germ of that exquisite strain, 'least in the kingdom' of the heaven of poetry in size, but immortal in its smallness, was sown in his mind? In winter he went to school, and profited there so much, that at fifteen (not a very early period, after all, for a Scotch student beginning his curriculum--in our day twelve was not an uncommon age) he was judged fit for going to college. And just in time a windfall came across the path of our poet, the mention of which may make many of our readers smile. This was a legacy which was left his father by a relative, amounting to 200 merks, or L11, 2s.6d. With this munificent sum in his pocket, Bruce was sent to study at Edinburgh College. Here he became distinguished by his attainments, and particularly his taste and poetic powers; and here, too, he became acquainted with John Logan, afterwards his biographer. After spending three sessions at college, supported by his parents and other friends, he returned to the country, and taught a school at Gairney Bridge (a place famous for the first meeting of the first presbytery of the Seceders) for L11 of salary. Thence he removed to Foresthill, near Alloa, where a damp school-room, poverty, and hard labour in teaching, united to injure his health and depress his spirits. At Foresthill he wrote his poem 'Lochleven,' which discovers no small descriptive power. Consumption began now to make its appearance, and he returned to the cottage of his parents, where he wrote his 'Elegy on Spring,' in which he refers with dignified pathos to his approaching dissolution. On the 5th of July 1767, this remarkable youth died, aged twenty-one years and three months. His Bible was found on his pillow, marked at the words, Jer. xxii. 10, 'Weep ye not for the dead, neither bemoan him: but weep sore for him that goeth away: for he shall return no more, nor see his native country.'

Lord Craig wrote some time afterwards an affecting paper in the _Mirror_, recording the fate, and commending the genius of Bruce. John Logan, in 1770, published his poems. In the year 1807, the kind-hearted Principal Baird published an edition of the poems for the behoof of Bruce's mother, then an aged widow. And in 1837, Dr William Mackelvie, Balgedie, Kinross- shire, published what may be considered the standard Life of this poet, along with a complete edition of his Works.

It is impossible from so small a segment of a circle as Bruce's life describes, to infer with any certainty the whole. So far as we can judge from the fragments left, his power was rather in the beautiful, than in the sublime or in the strong. The lines on Spring, from the words 'Now spring returns' to the close, form a continuous stream of pensive loveliness. How sweetly he sings in the shadow of death! Nor let us too severely blame his allusion to the old Pagan mythology, in the words--

'I hear the helpless wail, the shriek of woe, I see the muddy wave, the dreary shore;'

remembering that he was still a mere student, and not recovered from that fine intoxication in which classical literature drenches a young imaginative soul, and that at last we find him 'resting in the hopes of an eternal day.' 'Lochleven' is the spent echo of the 'Seasons,' although, as we said before, its descriptions possess considerable merit. His 'Last Day' is more ambitious than successful. If we grant the 'Cuckoo' to be his, as we are inclined decidedly to do, it is a sure title to fame, being one of the sweetest little poems in any language. Shakspeare would have been proud of the verse--

'Sweet bird! thy bower is ever green, Thy sky is ever clear; Thou hast no sorrow in thy song, No winter in thy year.'

Bruce has not, however, it has always appeared to us, caught so well as Wordsworth the differentia of the cuckoo,--its invisible, shadowy, shifting, supernatural character--heard, but seldom seen--its note so limited and almost unearthly:--

'O Cuckoo, shall I call thee bird, Or but a _wandering voice_?'

How fine this conception of a separated voice--'The viewless spirit of a _lonely_ sound,' plaining in the woods as if seeking for some incarnation it cannot find, and saddening the spring groves by a note so contradictory to the genius of the season. In reference to the note of the cuckoo we find the following remarks among the fragments from the commonplace-book of Dr Thomas Brown, printed by Dr Welsh:--'The name of the cuckoo has generally been considered as a very pure instance of imitative harmony. But in giving that name, we have most unjustly defrauded the poor bird of a portion of its very small variety of sound. The second syllable is not a mere echo of the first; it is the sound reversed, like the reading of a sotadic line; and to preserve the strictness of the imitation we should give it the name of Ook-koo.' _This_ is the prose of the cuckoo after its poetry.

TO THE CUCKOO.

1 Hail, beauteous stranger of the grove! The messenger of spring! Now Heaven repairs thy rural seat, And woods thy welcome sing.

2 Soon as the daisy decks the green, Thy certain voice we hear; Hast thou a star to guide thy path, Or mark the rolling year?

3 Delightful visitant! with thee I hail the time of flowers, And hear the sound of music sweet, From birds among the bowers.

4 The school-boy, wandering through the wood To pull the primrose gay, Starts thy curious voice to hear, And imitates the lay.

5 What time the pea puts on the bloom, Thou fli'st thy vocal vale, An annual guest in other lands, Another spring to hail.

6 Sweet bird! thy bower is ever green, Thy sky is ever clear; Thou hast no sorrow in thy song, No winter in thy year.

7 Oh, could I fly, I'd fly with thee! We'd make with joyful wing Our annual visit o'er the globe, Attendants on the spring.

ELEGY, WRITTEN IN SPRING.

1 'Tis past: the North has spent his rage; Stern Winter now resigns the lengthening day; The stormy howlings of the winds assuage, And warm o'er ether western breezes play.

2 Of genial heat and cheerful light the source, From southern climes, beneath another sky, The sun, returning, wheels his golden course: Before his beams all noxious vapours fly.

3 Far to the North grim Winter draws his train, To his own clime, to Zembla's frozen shore; Where, throned on ice, he holds eternal reign, Where whirlwinds madden, and where tempests roar.

4 Loosed from the bonds of frost, the verdant ground Again puts on her robe of cheerful green, Again puts forth her flowers, and all around, Smiling, the cheerful face of Spring is seen.

5 Behold! the trees new-deck their withered boughs; Their ample leaves, the hospitable plane, The taper elm, and lofty ash disclose; The blooming hawthorn variegates the scene.

6 The lily of the vale, of flowers the queen, Puts on the robe she neither sewed nor spun: The birds on ground, or on the branches green, Hop to and fro, and glitter in the sun.

7 Soon as o'er eastern hills the morning peers, From her low nest the tufted lark upsprings; And cheerful singing, up the air she steers; Still high she mounts, still loud and sweet she sings.

8 On the green furze, clothed o'er with golden blooms That fill the air with fragrance all around, The linnet sits, and tricks his glossy plumes, While o'er the wild his broken notes resound.

9 While the sun journeys down the western sky, Along the green sward, marked with Roman mound, Beneath the blithesome shepherd's watchful eye, The cheerful lambkins dance and frisk around.

10 Now is the time for those who wisdom love, Who love to walk in Virtue's flowery road, Along the lovely paths of Spring to rove, And follow Nature up to Nature's God.