EDITED BY MRS FRANCES HODGSON BURNETT. [COPYRIGHT.] [All Rights Reserved.] THE Poems of Sir Walter Scott.

Te Aroha News, Volume VII, Issue 428, 14 December 1889, Page 6

EDITED BY MRS FRANCES HODGSON BURNETT. [COPYRIGHT.] [All Rights Reserved.] THE Poems of Sir Walter Scott.

By ANDREW LANG.

Yesterday, as the sun was very bright, and there was no wind, I took a fishing rod on chance and Scott s poems, and rowed into the middle of St. Mary's loch. Every lull, every tuft of heather was reflected in the lake, as in a silver mirror. There was no sound but th^ lapping of the water against the boat, the cry of the blackcock from the hill, and the pleasant plash of a trout vising here and there. So I read the ' Lay of the Last Minstrel ' over again, here, in the middle of the scenes where the story is lai \, and where the fights were fought. For when the Baron went on pilgrimage And took with him the elfish page To Mary's Chapel of the Lowes. it wa3 to the ruined chapel here that he came, For there, beside our Lady's lake, An ottering he hud sworn to make, And he would pay his vows. But his enemy, the Lady of Branksonie gathered a band Of the best that would rido at her command and they all came from the country round. Branksome, where the lady lived, is twenty miles off, across the ranges of lonely green bills. Harden, where her ally, Wat of Harden, abode, is close by, and Deloraine, where William dwelt, is nearer still, and John of Thurlestane had his square tower in heather, ' where victual never grew ' on Ettrick Water within ten miles. They were three hundred spears and three : Through Douglas burn up Yarrow stream Their horses prance, their lances gleam. They came to St. Mary's Lake ere day. But the chapel was void, and the Baron away ; They burned the chapel for very raure. And cursed Lord Cranstoun's goblin Page They were a rough clan to burn a holy chapel because they failed to kill their enemy within the sacred walls ! But, as I read again, for the twentieth time, Sir Walter's poem, floating on the lonely breast of the lake, in the heart of the hills where Yarrow flows, among the little green mounds that cover the ruins of chapel and castle, and lady's bowe- , I a^ked myself whether Sir Walter was indeed a great and delightful poet, or whether he pleases me so much because I was born in his own country, and have one drop of the blood of bis robber knights in my own veins ? Writing here for boys and girls, one cannot go into some questions about poetry which would probably seem tiresome to them, or puzzling. Sir Walter Scott's own history is his best criticism ; it is as well known here as George Washington's in America ; yet a little of it may be told again. He was born in Edinburgh, more than a hundred years ago ; he knew the men who had fought for Prince Charley, he came of the House of Harden, the Border Clan that watched the passes against English invasion, in the old veais when Scotland and England were seldom at peace on the Border. He was lame like Lord Byron, but that never soured him as it did his Lordship ; he was one of the strongest men of his day in the arms, a great rider, almost too reckless on horseback, never going by a bridge if he could find a ford, and so with his strength and his spirit, he naturally dreamed of old wars though his own life was peaceful. Fromchilclhoodhe told stories to his schoolfellows, and read old poetry. At Abbotsford, his home, they show you four little volumes of ballads and ghost stories such as were then sold for a pennj', and bought by the country folk, better reading than newspapers, I think. He collected these, and had them bound when he was a boy. The servants were always carrying them ofT, but he got them back again. He knew all the ancient ballads of witches and fighting by heart. Once another poet, the Efctrick shepherd, repeated to him a long piece of his own. Years went by, and Scott, the shepherd, and a third man were waiting beside the river Tweed till some of their fishing gear was brought from a neighbouring farm. Scott asked his friend to repeat his poem. The shepherd had quite forgotten it, but Scott repeated it all, word for word, though he had only heard it once. He read everything about the fighting days of yore, and forgot nothing. There was not a legend, a proverb, a rhyme, but he knew it, not a strange story in old chronicles, French, Spanish, Scotch, but he had it in his memory. So at lasb it befell that he was hurb when drilling with a regiment of cavalry, for we were then at war with Napoleon, and he was a volunteer. As he could not exercise with the rest, he bethought him how a lady had asked him to write a ballad on a goblin called Gilpin Homer, not a very poetical name, though both Jack Homer and John Gilpin are famous. So he rhymed away, letting his fancy divert itself with all the tales and names of places dear to him in the hills. And behold, the rhyme, when it was ended, was the c Lay of the Last Minstrel.' Instantly Scott became famous. English poetry had long been very tame and commonplace, written in couplets like Pope's, very artificial and smart, or sensible and slow. Here was a poem, of which the music seemed to gallop, like thundering hoofs and ringing bridles of a ruahing border troop. Here were goblin, ghost, and fairy, fight and foray, fair ladies and true loves, gallant knights and hard blows, blazing beacons on every hill crest, and from the bartizan of every tower. Here was a world made alive again that had been dead for three hundred years, a world of men and women. Then Scott became in a day the most popular poet of his time, not only in England, but in Europe, and, I believe, in America too. But he did not stop when he had written the 'Lay ;' he was naturally encouraged to go on, and he wrote ' Marmion,' 'The Lady of the Lake,' 'Rokeby,' and ' The Lord of the Isles.' In each new poem he lost a little pf the old force and speed. He made more complicated stories, introducing love affairs, which he never did very well. In his poem the old Harper says — My hairs are grey, my limb 3 are old, My heart is dead, my veins are cold, I may not, must not sing of love.

He was nob old, bub he had been in love onoe, and nob happily, and never again ; nor did he ever forget that lady, bub loved

her to his death. Perhaps this, his own' bad fortune, or some other reason may have prevented him from making his love stories the best part of his work. He waa never a man to moan over his own sorrow. I have seen an unpublished letter of his in which he complains that he hates his young lovers, who do all the love-making, bub that he delights in robbers, brigands, fighting men ) Consequently, the more he put love stories into his poems the tamer they grew, till at last they only flamed up, here and there, in a good fight, like Bannockburn in * The Lord of the Isles.' Moreover, he was never so good in poetry nut of • his am countrie ' —the Border Land. In the Highlands he was pretty well at home, especially in the hunting .scones : bub whon he "went to England and did * Rokeby.' the poem was no more like the 'Lay' than a slow, dull English river is like ' the glittering and resolute streams of Tweed ' or the tawny waters of Aill. For these reasons everyone who wants to read Scott's poetry should begin with the 1 Lay.' From opening to close it never falters :—: — Nine and twontv knights of fame Hung their shields in Branksoinc Hall, Nine and twenty squires of namo Brought, their steeds from tower to stall, Nine and twenty yeomen tall Waited, duteous, on them all. Ten of, them wore sheathed in steel, "With belted sword and spur on heol. They quitted not their banners bright Neither by day nor yet by night : They lay down to rest With corslet laced, Pillowed on buckler cold and hard ; They carved at the meat With gloves of steel. And they drank red wine through the helmet barred. Now, is not that a bravo beginning ? Does nob the verse clank and chime like sword sheath on spur, like the bits of champing horses ? Then, when William ofvDelornine is sent on his lonety midnight ride across the haunted moors and wolds, does the verse nob gallop like the heavy armoured horses ? Unchallenged then passed Deloraine To ancient Riddell's fair domain. Where Aill, from mountains freed, Down fiom the lakes did raving co vq. Fach wave was crested with tawny foam. Like the mane of a chestnut stoed. In vain ! no torrent deep ov broad Mieht bar the bold moss-trooper's road ; At the first plunge the horse sunk low, And the water broke over the saddle-bow. These last two lines have the very movement and note, the deep heavy plunge, the still swirl of the water. Well I know the lochs whence Aill comes red in flood, many a trout have I taken in Aill long ago. But I think the poetry itself is good, and stirs the spirit, even of those who know not Ailmoor, the mother of Aill, that Hep dark among the melancholy hills. The spirit is stiired throughout by the chivalry and the coin-age of Scott's men and women. Thus the Lady of Branksome addressed the English invaders who have taken her boy prisoner: — For the i oung heir of Blanksome's line. God be his aid, and God be mine ! Through me no friend shall meet his doom ; Heie, while I live, no foe finds room. Then if thy 1 ords their purpose urge. Take our defiance loud and high : Our slogan' is their hke-waket dirge, Our moat the grave where they shall lie. Ay, and though the minstrel says he ib no love poet, and though, indeed, he shines more in war than in lady's bower, is not this a whole stanza on true love, and worthy of whab old Malory writes in his ' Mort d'Arthur ?' Because here Scott speaks for himself, and his unhappy and immortal affecbion :—: — True love's the gift which God has given To men alone beneath the Heaven. It is not Fantasj 's hot lire Whose « ishes, soon as granted, fly ; It livcth not in tierce desire, IVilh dead desire it doth not die ; I r is the secret sympathy. The silver link, the silken tie, With heart to heart and mind to mind, Iv body and in soul can bind. Truth and faith, courage and chivalry, a free life in the hills, and by the streams, a shrewd brain, an open heart, a kind word for friond or toeman, these are what you learn from the * Lay,' if you want to learn les&ons from poetry. It ib a rude legend, perhaps, as the critics said at the time, when they were disdainful of wizard priests and ladies magical. But it is a deathless Jegend, I hope ; it appeals to every young heart that is nob early spoiled by low'cunning, and cynicism, and love of gain. The minstrel's own prophecy is true, and still, and always, Yarrow, as he rolls along, Bears burden to the minstrel's song. After the l Lay ' came ' Marmion> a Tale of Flodden Field.' It is far more ambitious and complicated than the ' Lay,' and is really fay worse written. Sir Walter was ever a rapid and careless poet, and, as he took more pains with his plot, he took less with his verse. His friends reproved him, bub he answered bo one of them, Since oft thy judgment could refine My flattened thought and cumbrous line, Still kind, as is thy wont, attend. And in the minstrel spare the friend ; Though wild as cloud, as stream, «■> gale, Flora forth , flow iinre^trainea, rrtj/ talc ! Anyone who knows Scobb's country knows how cloud, and stream, and gale all sweep ab once down bhe valley of Ebbrick or of Tweed. West wind, wild cloud, red river, all pour forth as by one impulse ; forth from the far-off hill=. He let. his verse sweep out in the same stormy sorb, and many a ' cumbrous line,' many a ' flatbened bhoughb,' you may nobe, if you will, in ' Marmion.' The l Lay 'is a tale that only verse could tell, much of ' Marmion ' might have been told in prose, and most of 'Rokebv.' But proso could never tell bhe tale of Flodden Fight in ' Marmion,' which I verily believe is bhe best battle piece in all the poetry of all time, betber even than the .stand of Aias by the ships in the Iliad, better than the slaying of the wooers in the Odyssey. Nor could prose give us the hunting of the deer and the long gallop over hillside and down valley, with which the ' Lady of the Lake ' open<=, opening thereby the enchanted gates of the Highlands of ohe world. You will notice thab the ' Lady of the Lake,' except in the battle piece, is bold in a less rapid metre than that of the * Lay.' But all the poems are interspersed with songs and ballads, as the beautiful ballad of ' Alice Brand,' and Scott's fame rests on these far more than on his later versified romances. Coming immediately after the very tamest poets who ever lived, like Hayley, Scott wrote songs and ballads as wild, and free, or melancholy and gay, as ever shepherd sang, or gipsy carrolled, or witch wife moaned, or old forgotten minstrel lefb to the world, music with no maker's name. For example bake the Outlaw's rhyme : — With burnished brand and musketoon, So gallantly you come, I read you for a bold dragoon That loves the tink of drum. I list no mOre the tink of drum. No more the trumpet hear ; But when the beetle sounds his hum, My comrades take the spear, And oh ! though Brignal banks be fair, And Greta woods be gay, Yet rnickle must the maiden dare, Would reign my Queen of May. How musical again is this :—: — This morn is merry Juno, I trow, The rose is budding fair, Hut she shall bloom in winter snow, Ere we two meet again. He turned his charger as he spake Upon the rivershore; He gave his bridle reins a shake, Said, ' Adieu for evermore. My love! And adieu for evermore !' If you want a ballad with a touch of fear, and something to teach you how to

shudder, try the" « Evo of St. John.' 1 remember reading ifc when I was a very small boy, and going bo bed in a subduod frame of mind. There a»-e scores of songs in lu3 works, touching and sad, or gay as a hunter's waking, that tell of lovely things lost by tradition, and found by him on the moors, all these — not prized by Sir Walter himself are in his gift, and in that of no other man. Alone among poets, ho had neither vanity nor jealousy ; ho thought little of his own verso and his own fame ; would that he had thought moro, would that he 1 had been more careful of what was so precioas ! But he turned to prose ; bade poetry farewell. Yet, once again, farewell, them Minstrel Harp, 1 Yet, once oirn in, forgive my fccWe sway, And little reck lof the censure sharp May idly cavil at an idle lay. People &(,ill cavil idly, complaining tha Scott did not finish, or did not polish his pieces, that he was not Keats or was not Wordsworth. He was himself ; he was the Last Minstrel, the latest, the greatest, the noblest of natural poets concorned with natural things. Ho sang of free, fierce, and warlike life, of streams yet rich in salmon, and moots not yet occupied by brewers ; of lonely places haunted in the long groy twilights of the North ; of crumbling towers where once dwelt the Lady ot Branksome or the Flosvor of Yarrow. Nafcuro summed up in him many a past ago, a world of ancient faiths, and before the old time of great England wholly died, to England, as to Greece, she gave her Homer. When he was old, and tired, and near his death — so worn with trouble and labour that he actually signed his own name wrong — he wrote his latest verse, for a lady. It ends — My country, bo thou glorious still ! and so he died, within the sound of tteh c whisper of Tweed, foreseeing the years when his country would no more be glorious, thinking of Ei. gland only, forgetting quite the private sorrow of his own later days. People will tell you that Scott was n it a great poet, that his bolt is shot, hi° fame perishing, Lit'lehe cared for his fame ! Bufc foi* my part I think and hopo than Scott can never die till men grow up into manhood without ever having been boys, — till they foigeb that One glorious hour of crowded life Ts worth an ago without a name !

* Slogan— battle cry. t Lykc->\ ake— dirge chanted over corpses.