The Poetical Works of Robert Story

Soul of the Last and Mightiest
Of all the Minstrels—be thou blest!
For that thou hast bequeathed to me
A great and glorious Legacy,
Such as no other single mind—
Save Shakspeare's—ever left behind!
One, not of earth, or earth-born gold,
In acres broad, or sums untold,
Which may by heirs be wasted, may
By lawless force be swept away,
Or meanly filched by legal stealth;
But a bequest of Mental Wealth!
Left, not to me alone, although
As much my own as if 'twere so;
And yet, high thanks to art divine!
As much the world's as it is mine;
E'en like the air, or like the sun,
Enjoyed by all, engrossed by none;
Diffused, unspent; entire, though shared;
All undiminished, unimpaired,
Ordained to rouse emotions high,
And charm—till England's language die!

O! when at first I saw the Tale
Which tells of the redoubted Gael,

Roderick Dhu.

303

And of the bard

Allan-Bane.

whose harp would wake
To soothe the Lady of the Lake,
I did not read. That term were weak
The process of the hour to speak.
Page after page, thy words of flame
To me—without a medium—came!
The instant glanced at, glanced the whole
Not on my sight, but on my soul!
And, thus daguerreotyped, each line
Will there remain while life is mine!
I deemed that lay the sweetest far
That ever sung of love and war;
And vowed that, ere my dying day,
I would attempt such lovely lay.
But I was young, and had forgot
How different were from thine, O Scott!
My genius, and my earthly lot.

What though my ear, in boyhood's time,
Delighted, drank the flowing rhyme?
Though then, like Pope, no fool to fame,
“I lisped in numbers,” for they came,
And waked, uncensured, unapproved,
An echo of the strain I loved?
And what though, in maturer days,
With none to judge, and few to praise,
Survived and ruled the impulse strong,
And my heart lived and moved in song?
Still—poor, unfriended, and untaught,
A Cyclops in my Cave of Thought,
Long sought I round, ere glimpse of day
Consoled me with its entering ray.
At length it came! and then I tried
To wake my Harp in lonely pride.

304

My Harp was made from stunted tree,
The growth of Glendale's barest lea;

Glendale, one of the minor divisons of the county of Northumberland, takes its name from the small stream of the Glen.

Yet fresh as prouder stems it grew,
And drank, with leaf as green, the dew;
Bright showers, from Till or Beaumont shed,
Its roots with needful moisture fed;
Gay birds, Northumbrian skies that wing,
Amid its branches loved to sing;
And purple Cheviot's breezy air
Kept up a life-like quivering there.
From Harp, thence rudely framed and strung,
Ah! how should strain like thine be flung?
If, moved by young ambition's dream,
I struck it to some lofty theme,
All harshly jarred its tortured chords,
As 'plaining such should be its lord's;
But all its sweetness wakened still
To lay of Northern stream or hill!

To Craven's emerald dales transferred,
That simple Harp with praise was heard.
The manliest sons, the loveliest daughters,
That flourish by the Aire's young waters,
By gentle Ribble's verdant side,
And by the Wharfe's impetuous tide,
Lauded its strains. And for this cause,
While throbs my breast to kind applause—
Nay, when, beneath the turf laid low,
No kind applause my breast can know—
A Poet's blessing, heart-bequeathed,
O'er the domains of Craven breathed,
Shall be to every hill and plain
Like vernal dew, or summer rain,
And stay with her, while bud or bell
Decks lowland mead, or upland fell!

This, and the preceding paragraph, have already appeared in the Epistle to Gourley; but to have omitted them here, would have marred the Introduction.

305

There—mindful still of thee—I strove
To frame a lay of war and love.
I roused old heroes from the urn;
Bade buried monks to day return;
And waked fair maids, whose dust had lain
Ages in lead, to bloom again;
My grateful wish to pour along
Those emerald dales the charm of song,
And do for Malham's Lake and Cave
What thou hadst done for Katrine's wave.
Not that the pride impelled me now
That had inspired my youthful vow;
I would but some like notes essay,
Not rashly wake a rival lay!

But years of gloom and strife came on;
Dark omens girt the British Throne;
The Disaffected and the Bad,
Who hopes from wild commotion had,
Gave towns to tumult and to flame,
And treason wrought—in William's name!
That was no time, in idle lays,
To kindle feuds of other days—
I tuned my Harp to Order's cause,
And sung for Britain's King and Laws!

I trust that this will not be considered a too ostentatious allusion to a number of loyal and patriotic lyrics, which successively appeared in most of the leading journals of the day, and which, in their collected form, went through three editions.

For party? Ay! but party then
Was led by England's greatest men—
By Him,

The Duke of Wellington.

to save his country born
By Him,

The late Sir Robert Peel.

whom all the people mourn;
'Twas graced by Stanley's

Now the Earl of Derby.

noble name,
And vaunted that of ‘gallant Graeme.’

Sir James Graham.

Men—far too high, too pure, too proud,
To flatter either court or crowd;
Men—moved by patriotic zeal,
And seeking nought but England's weal!

306

Dull were the head could style the man
Who followed them, a partisan.

Far from thy Tweed—my birth that claims—
I find myself on regal Thames!
The swans that Spenser loved to sing,
Before me prune the snowy wing;
In Surrey woods, by moonlight pale,
I list to Thomson's nightingale;

Thomson's fondness for the song of the nightingale is well known. He was in the habit of sitting at his open window half the summer night, entranced with its unrivalled music. The name of Collins, in my mind, is inseparably connected with that of Thomson, by his beautiful Elegy on the death of the latter.

Use the same walks that Collins used,
And muse, where Pope himself hath mused!

I allude to Battersea, the lanes and walks of which must have been familiar to the great poet, from his frequent visits to the mansion of his friend, Lord Bolingbroke, at that place.

What wonder if the wish, that burned
So strong in youth, in age returned;
And—'mid such scenes—my Harp again
Took up the long-abandoned strain?
But ah! when of the high design
Is traced at length the closing line,
I say not—How unlike to thine!
(The forward child of youthful pride,
That bold Presumption long hath died)
But—How unlike to that which first
On my enraptured Fancy burst,
When, fresh and fair, my untried theme
Rose—like a landscape in a dream!
That landscape hath familiar grown,
And half of its romance is flown.
Thus regions new, in distance seen,
Have sunny vales of smoothest green,
And mountains which, as they ascend,
With the blue sky so softly blend,
That—giving nought of earth to view—
They seem to be ethereal too!
But, visited, the change is harsh;
The vales that looked so smooth, are marsh;

307

Brushwood and heath the hills array;
And rock and quagmire bar the way!
—Yet round that marsh, who seek the vale,
May violet find, or primrose pale;
Yet on those hills, who choose to climb,
May meet the crow-flower or the thyme;
While e'en the rock for buds has room,
And e'en the quagmire boasts its bloom!

And, well I hope, that Northman ne'er
Will lend a cold fastidious ear,
To hear a Native Bard rehearse
In the good old heroic verse,
How, bold of heart and strong of hand,
His Danish Fathers won Northumberland.

University of Virginia Library

Introduction. TO THE SOUL OF SIR WALTER SCOTT.