SB 165 
 
m 
 

 THE LUGGIE. 
 

 THE LUGGIIE 
 
 AND OTHER POEMS. 
 
 BY DAVID GRAY. 
 
 A MEMOIR BY JAMES HEDDERWICK, AND A PREFATORY 
 NOTICE BY R. M. MILNES, M.P. 
 
 Cambridge : 
 MACMILLAN AND CO. 
 
 AND 23, HENRIETTA STREET, CO VENT GARDEN, 
 
 Bonbon. 
 1862. 
 
Cambridge : 
 
 PRINTED BY JONATHAN PALMER, 58, SIDNEY STREET. 
 
a;? 7 & 
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 Page 
 THE LUGGIE 1 
 
 IN THE SHADOWS 63 
 
 POEMS NAMED AND WITHOUT NAMES 97 
 
 MISCELLANEOUS SONNETS . 139 
 
INTRODUCTORY NOTICE. 
 
 IN the Spring of 1860 I received a letter signed 
 DAVID GKAY, enclosing some manuscript verses. 
 The writer stated that he was a Scotchman, who 
 had had the ordinary education of the artisans of 
 that country ; that he had written these and other 
 Poems, and desired my advice as to his coming up 
 to London and making his way there in the career 
 of Literature. I was struck with the superiority of 
 the verses to almost all the productions of self-taught 
 men that had been brought under my observation, 
 and I therefore answered the letter at some length, 
 recognising the remarkable faculty which Mr. Gray 
 seemed to me to possess ; urging him to cultivate it 
 not exclusively nor even especially but to make it 
 part of his general culture and intellectual develop- 
 ment ; and above all desiring him not to make the 
 perilous venture of a London literary life, but, at 
 any rate for some time, to content himself with 
 such opportunities as he had, and to strive to obtain 
 
viii INTEOD UCTOE T NOTICE. 
 
 some professional independence, however humble, in 
 which his poetical powers might securely expand 
 and become the solace of his existence instead of the 
 precarious purveyor of his daily bread. A few 
 weeks afterwards I was told a young man wished to 
 see me, and when he came into the room I at once 
 saw it could be no other than the young Scotch 
 Poet. It was a light, well-built, but somewhat 
 stooping figure, with a countenance that at once 
 brought strongly to my recollection a cast of the 
 face of Shelley in his youth, which I had seen at 
 Mr. Leigh Hunt's. There was the same full brow, 
 out-looking eyes, and sensitive melancholy mouth. 
 He told me at once that he had come to London in 
 consequence of my letter, as from the tone of it he 
 was sure I should befriend him. I was dismayed at 
 this unexpected result of my advice, and could do no 
 more than press him to return home as soon as pos- 
 sible. I painted as darkly as I could the chances 
 and difficulties of a literary struggle in the crowded 
 competition of this great city, and how strong a 
 swimmer it required to be not to sink in such a sea 
 of tumultuous life. "No he would not return. " 
 I determined in my own mind that he should do so 
 before I myself left town for the country, but at the 
 same time I believed that he might derive advantage 
 from a short personal experience of hard realities. 
 He had a confidence in his own powers, a simple 
 
INTROD UCTOET NOTICE. ix 
 
 certainty of his own worth, which I saw would 
 keep him in good heart and preserve him from base 
 temptations. He refused to take money, saying he 
 had enough to go on with ; but I gave him some 
 light literary work, for which he was very grateful. 
 When he came to me again, I went over some of 
 his verse with him, and I shall not forget the pas- 
 sionate gratification he shewed when I told him 
 that, in my judgment, he was an undeniable Poet. 
 After this admission he was ready to submit to my 
 criticism or correction, though he was sadly de- 
 pressed at the rejection of one of his Poems, over 
 which he had evidently spent much labour and care, 
 by the Editor of a distinguished popular periodical, 
 to whom I had sent it with a hearty recommenda- 
 tion. His indeed was not a spirit to be seriously 
 injured by a temporary disappointment; but when 
 he fell ill so soon afterwards, one had something of 
 the feeling of regret that the notorious review of 
 Keats inspires in connection with the premature loss 
 of the author of "Endymion:" 
 
 It was only a few weeks after his arrival in Lon- 
 don that the poor boy came to my house apparently 
 under the influence of violent fever. He said he 
 had caught cold in the wet weather, having been 
 insufficiently protected by clothing ; but had delayed 
 coming to me for fear of giving me unnecessary 
 trouble. I at once sent him back to his lodgings, 
 
 b 
 
x IN TROD UCTOR T NOTICE. 
 
 which were sufficiently comfortable, and put him 
 under good medical superintendence. It soon became 
 apparent that pulmonary disease had set in, but there 
 were good hopes of arresting its progress. I visited 
 him often, and every time with increasing interest. 
 He had somehow found out that his lungs were af- 
 fected, and the image of the destiny of Keats was 
 ever before him. I leave to his excellent friend 
 Mr. Hedderwick to tell the rest of this sad story. I 
 never saw him after he left London. I much re- 
 gret that imperative circumstances did not permit 
 me to take him under my roof, that I at least might 
 have the satisfaction of thinking that all human 
 means of saving his life had been exhausted : for 
 there was in him the making of a great man. His 
 lyrical faculty, astonishing as it was, might not 
 have outlived the ardour and susceptibilities of 
 youth ; but there was that simple persistence of cha- 
 racter about him, which is so prominent in the best 
 of his countrymen. I was much struck with seeing 
 how he had hitherto made the best of all his scanty 
 opportunities; how he had got all the good out of 
 the homely virtues of his domestic life with no sign 
 of reproach at the plain practical people about him 
 for not making much of his poetry and sympathising 
 with his visions of fame. These indeed must have 
 seemed, to say the least, intolerably presumptuous 
 to those about him, and indeed to most of those with 
 
INTRODUCTORY NOTICE. xi 
 
 whom he came in contact. I own I heeded them 
 little. It has always appeared to me that if a certain 
 brightness of hope and presumption of genius in 
 young men who have had all the advantages of the 
 best education in their reach, and whose youth has 
 grown up in careful classical culture and with the 
 associations of a refined society, be regarded with 
 a compassionate interest and feelings no severer than 
 a gentle ridicule, a far milder condemnation and 
 deeper sympathy should be given to those who, 
 without the ordinary processes of mental progress, 
 without the free interchange of thought, and above 
 all, without the means of weighing their own with 
 other intelligences, have within themselves the cer- 
 tain conviction of superiority and the perceptions of 
 an interminable vista of Beauty and of Truth. 
 Such minds feel themselves to be, as it were, ex- 
 ceptional creatures in the moral world in which they 
 happen to be placed; and it is as unreasonable to 
 expect from them a just appreciation of their own 
 powers, as it would be to require an accurate notion 
 of distance from a being freshly gifted with sight. 
 How is he to distinguish the near and commonplace 
 from the distant and rare? How is he to know 
 that such have been the thoughts and such the ex- 
 pressions of thousands before him ? How is he to 
 possess the distinctions of taste and the discrimina- 
 tions of judgment which a long, even though super- 
 
xii INTROD UCTOIt T NO TICE. 
 
 ficial, literary education confers on so many undis- 
 tinguished natures and uncritical minds ? Therefore 
 when the mere boy who can write such poems as 
 these in the shadow of death has talked of being 
 buried in Westminster Abbey, let not the feeling be 
 other than that which would meet the aspirations of 
 Stephenson the apprentice, or Nelson the midshipman. 
 
 It is also significant that a good deal of the over- 
 confidence which David Gray manifested gave way 
 as soon as he knew he was really appreciated and 
 cared for. His vanity sang forth, as it were, in the 
 night of his discouragement, to give himself fortitude 
 to bear the solitude and the gloom. "With all his 
 admiration of his "Luggie," he clearly could not 
 help in his mind comparing it with the " Seasons"; 
 and then he writes, " When I read Thomson, I 
 despair." Soon after an almost bombastic estimate 
 of his own mental progress, he becomes thoroughly 
 ashamed of himself, and says, " that being bare of 
 all recommendations," he had " lied to his own con- 
 science," deeming that "if he called himself a great 
 man, others would be bound to believe him." Surely 
 this was a spirit to which knowledge would have 
 given a just humility, and for which praise and love 
 were especially necessary, for they would have 
 brought with them modesty and truth. 
 
 I would recommend the readers of these Poems 
 to keep in mind how deeply they are based on the 
 
INTRO]} VCTORY NOTICE. xm 
 
 few phenomena of nature that came within the Poet' s 
 observation. He revels in the frost and snow until 
 the winter of his own sorrow and sickness becomes 
 too hard for him to bear, and then he only asks for 
 
 " One clear day, a snowdrop, and sweet air." 
 
 The lost illusion of the cuckoo, when it was trans- 
 formed into 
 
 " A slender bird of modest brown," 
 
 is missed, as something he cannot afford to spare in 
 his scanty store of natural delights. The "Luggie" 
 itself ever remains the simple stream that it really 
 is and is not decked-out in any fantastic or in- 
 harmonious colouring. He described in a letter to 
 me the rapturous emotions with which the rich hues 
 and picturesque forms of the coast of South Devon- 
 shire filled his breast ; and I believe that these very 
 feelings would have prolonged his life, had circum- 
 stances permitted him to enjoy them. 
 
 I will not here assume the position of a poetical 
 critic, both because I know such criticism to be 
 dreary and unsatisfactory, and because I am con- 
 scious that the personal interest I took in David 
 Gray is likely in some degree to influence my judg- 
 ment. There is in truth no critic of poetry but the 
 man who enjoys it, and the amount of gratification 
 felt is the only just measure of criticism. I believe 
 however that I should have found much pleasure in 
 
xiv IN TROD UCTOR T NOTICE. 
 
 these Poems if I had met with them accidentally 
 and if I had been unaware of the strange and 
 pathetic incidents of their production. But the 
 public mind will not separate the intrinsic merits 
 of the verses from the story of the writer, any more 
 than the works and fate of Keats or of Chatterton ; 
 we value all connected with the being of every true 
 Poet because it is the highest form of Nature that 
 man is permitted to study and enjoy. 
 
 K. M. MILNES. 
 
MEMOIR OP THE AUTHOR. 
 
 IT is unusual, I fear, to produce a Memoir of a mere 
 literary aspirant of one whose place in the world 
 of letters remains to be ascertained and concerning 
 whom but little interest can be felt. Yet, whatever 
 may be the ultimate verdict on the Poems contained 
 in this volume, there is something in the short, 
 ambitious, and melancholy career of their author, 
 which may perhaps assist the reader to judge ac- 
 curately of their merits. There are poets of a high, 
 although not perhaps of the highest order of intellect, 
 whose writings are a continual reflex of their own 
 inner selves who lay bare their hearts in their 
 works and, without some knowledge of whom, in 
 their personal character and relations, it would be 
 difficult to form any generous, or even fair estimate 
 of their productions. 
 
 Of this intensely subjective class of bards was 
 DAVID GKAY, the author of " The Luggie, and other 
 Poems." His life, which embraced only his passion- 
 ate youth-time, was tremulously, almost morbidly, 
 fanciful. It is necessary to know this, not in order 
 that his effusions may be judged charitably, but in 
 order that they may be judged truly. "What might 
 
XVI MEMOIR OF THE AUTHOR. 
 
 have been weakness or affectation in a mature man, 
 was with him a natural instinct of tenderness. Had 
 he lived to watch the fate of his hook, he would 
 prohably have been as sensitive as Keats to the 
 shafts of criticism. Consumption, ending fatally, 
 has saved him from that ordeal. He is gone where 
 no censure can wound, where no detraction can 
 affect him; but a life as strangely bright and 
 beautiful as it was unhappily brief, seems to suggest 
 a memory that should be guarded by loving hands. 
 
 David Gray was born on the 29th of January, 
 1838, on the banks of the Luggie, about eight miles 
 distant from the city of Glasgow. His precise place 
 of birth was Duntiblae, a little row of houses on 
 the south side of the stream; but, while he was 
 a mere child, his parents removed to Merkland, on 
 the north side, where they still continue to dwell. 
 All his associations, therefore, clustered about Merk- 
 land, which is situated within a mile of the town 
 of Kirkintilloch, on the Gartshore road. It has 
 neither the dignity of a village, nor the primitive 
 rudeness of a clachan, but is simply a group of 
 road-side cottages, some half-dozen in number, hum- 
 ble, but with slated roofs, having pleasant patches 
 of garden in front and behind, and wholly occupied 
 by handloom weavers and their families, who receive 
 their webs and their inadequate remuneration from 
 the manufacturing warehouses of the great city. 
 His parents are both living an industrious and 
 exemplary couple, with the constant click of the 
 shuttle in one division of their cottage, and with 
 
MEMOIR OF THE AUTHOR. xvii 
 
 doubtless the occasional squall of juvenile voices in 
 the other. David was the eldest of eight children, 
 there being four boys and three girls now left. The 
 Luggie flows past Merkland at the foot of a pre- 
 cipitous bank, and shortly afterwards loses itself 
 among the shadows of Oxgang, with its fine old 
 mansion-house and rookery, and debouches at Kir- 
 kintilloch into the Kelvin, one of the tributaries of 
 the Clyde, celebrated in Scottish song. It is a mere 
 unpretending rivulet, yet sufficient to turn the 
 wheel of an old meal-mill at the straggling village 
 of Waterside, a little way up the stream, though in 
 a lower level of the valley. Neither, except at one 
 or two points, is it of a character to attract a lover 
 of the picturesque. But although not particularly 
 fitted for a painter's eye, it sufficed for a poet's love. 
 The little bright-eyed first-born of the Merkland 
 handloom weaver had the more accessible nooks of 
 it by heart long before his ambitious feet could 
 carry him to more beautiful regions ; and although, 
 in later years, he extended the radius of his rambles, 
 and made intimate acquaintance with the mag- 
 nificent glens and cascades in the recesses of the 
 Campsie fells, his tiny " natal stream," at the foot 
 of the familiar " brae," so associated in his heart 
 with the recollections of childhood and the endear- 
 ments of home, never lost its freshness or its charm. 
 Other appeals to his imagination were not wanting. 
 At a distance of some miles to the north was the 
 noble outline of the Campsie range; villages of 
 smoking industry dotted the valley and plain; to 
 
xvm MEMOIR OF TEE AUTHOR. 
 
 the south-west Glasgow toiled all the week under 
 its cloud, and consecrated the listening Sabbath 
 with the faint clang of its bells ; while nightly to 
 the south the country was ablaze, and the sky 
 reddened, with the numerous blast-furnaces to which 
 the west of Scotland chiefly owes its preponderat- 
 ing wealth. JsTor was the locality, in other re- 
 spects, deficient in interest. Close to Kirkintilloch 
 the Roman invasion had left its tide-mark in the 
 shape of certain easily distinguishable remains of 
 the famous wall of Antoninus; there, too, was the 
 Forth and Clyde Canal, with its leisurely craft 
 looking picturesque in the landscape, as if sitting 
 for artistic effect, or rejoicing in the land-rest be- 
 tween the turmoil of two oceans; while the oc- 
 casional rush of some railway train along its geological 
 groove now hidden, anon revealed, and soon wholly 
 out of sight, and out of hearing marked the advent 
 of a new and more active era. All these things the 
 " marvellous boy" must have daily noted; but still 
 it was mainly the music of his own little Luggie 
 which murmured melodiously in his verse, and which 
 he began at length fondly to dream of linking im- 
 mortally with his name. 
 
 Perhaps in no other country save Scotland could 
 a lad in Gray's position the son of a handloom 
 weaver, burdened with a large family, and living in 
 the outlying suburb of a common country town 
 have attained the advantage of a classical education. 
 His first teacher was Mr. Adams, who still conducts, 
 with efficiency, the Kirkintilloch parish school. 
 
MEMOIR OF THE AUTHOR. xix 
 
 While under this excellent preceptor, his literary 
 bias became strikingly apparent. Zealous at his 
 tasks, bright with precocious intellect, an uncon- 
 scionable devourer of books, and personally ambitious 
 of distinction, it was early intended that he should 
 devote himself to the office of the Christian ministry 
 in connection with the Free Church of Scotland, to 
 which his parents belonged. When about fourteen 
 years of age he was accordingly sent to Glasgow, 
 where, supporting himself to a considerable extent 
 by laborious tuition, first as pupil-teacher in a pub- 
 lic school in Bridge ton, and afterwards as Queen's 
 scholar in the Free Church Normal Seminary, he 
 contrived to attend the Humanity, Greek, and other 
 classes in the University during four successive 
 sessions. Having likewise obtained some employ- 
 ment as a private tutor, he found it necessary to add 
 French to his lingual acquisitions. Eut whatever 
 progress he may have made in his more severe 
 studies, it soon became evident that the bent of his 
 mind was poetical rather than theological. His 
 imagination became much more possessed with the 
 beauties of Greek mythology than with the dogmas 
 of Calvinistic faith. In place of composing sermons, 
 he betook himself to writing verses. Many of these, 
 bearing the nom de plume of " Will Gumey," were 
 published, from time to time, in the columns of the 
 " Glasgow Citizen" a journal in which, some years 
 before, Alexander Smith, the author of the " Life- 
 Drama/' had made his first appearance in print; and 
 abandoning the idea of the pulpit, and detesting the 
 
xx MEMOIR OF THE AUTHOR. 
 
 drudgery of the ferule, the determination seems 
 gradually to have taken root in his mind of adopt- 
 ing literature as a profession. 
 
 His letters at this time betray an extraordinary 
 and altogether unhealthy degree of excitement, as 
 of one setting out on some adventurous path, and 
 uncertain whether he was a genius or a dreamer. 
 In one of these addressed to myself, he says : " This 
 is the third note with which I have attempted to 
 preface the lines I have enclosed. I know not 
 what to say about them. They are the faint but 
 true expressions of my imagination, though deficient 
 alas ! how deficient to symbolise the beauty of the 
 cloudland I have visited, or the ideal love of my 
 soul. Perhaps you may deem this the raving of 
 a restless spirit the spasmodic mawkishness of a 
 ' metre-balladmonger :' but do not, for God's sake, 
 do not. If you knew how often I have halted in 
 the middle of the lobby of your office with a bundle 
 of MSS., if you knew the wild dreams of literary 
 ambition I am ever framing, yet all the time conscious 
 of my own utter insignificance, my dear sir, you 
 would pity me." These hectic sentences, accident- 
 ally preserved, are characteristic of the kind of des- 
 perate frenzy with which he was accustomed to 
 compensate for, and avenge, on paper, the shrinking 
 physical bashfulness of his nature. Shortly after- 
 wards, when I had met him in society, I fancied I 
 detected, in the restless yet timid twinkle of his dark 
 eye, a lack of philosophic balance, a keen and vivid 
 intellect united with a certain nervous incapacity of 
 
MEMOIR OF THE AUTHOR. xxi 
 
 self-reliance, an irrepressible impulse to lofty literary 
 enterprise, shaken with, maddening apprehensions of 
 failure. 
 
 But neither his circumstances nor his temperament 
 permitted him to rest. My acquaintance with him 
 was too slight and casual, irrespectively of difference 
 of age, to invite or win his confidence. He had, 
 however, several companions to whom he had been 
 attracted by kindred sympathies and tastes, and with 
 whom he often drew glowing and extravagant pic- 
 tures of the future, and as often obliterated them as 
 vain. Among these was Arthur Sutherland, a col- 
 league of his own in the Free Church Normal 
 Seminary, and now a respectable teacher at Mary- 
 burgh, near Dingwall. His letters to Sutherland, 
 written early in 1860, when he had attained the age 
 of twenty-two, are full of fantastic schemes to be 
 undertaken by them jointly, one of which was to 
 gather what money they could, meet on a certain 
 day in Edinburgh, make their way to London on 
 foot, and of course take the literary world by storm ! 
 These brave and foolish notions originated probably 
 in a state of mind which he confesses. " Solitude, " 
 he says, " and an utter want of all physical exercise, 
 are working deplorable ravages in my nervous sys- 
 tem. The crow's-feet are blackening about my eyes ; 
 and I cannot think to face the sunlight. When I 
 ponder alone over my own inability to move the 
 world to move one heart in it no wonder that my 
 ' face gathers blackness.' Tennyson beautifully, and 
 (so far) truly says, that the face is ' the form and 
 
xxn MEMOIR OF THE AUTHOR. 
 
 colour of the mind and life.' If you saw me!" 
 Another congenial spirit was William Freeland, a 
 native of Kirkintilloch, somewhat older in years, 
 and now filling, with honour, a responsible position 
 in connection with the Glasgow press. Many a 
 ramble did he enjoy with the latter among the scenes 
 of their common boyhood, and many a dream did 
 they both dream of how greatness was to be attained, 
 and how fame was to be conquered. In Freeland he 
 found a prudent, as well as a sympathetic adviser, 
 who took every opportunity of curbing his too im- 
 petuous enthusiasm, and saving him from immolation 
 on the critical slights and antagonisms which literary 
 precocity and assumption are certain to provoke, un- 
 less when under the sanctity of a last illness, or the 
 shelter of a premature grave. 
 
 The beginning of 1860 was a feverish and critical 
 period in the life of our young author. His term of 
 service in the Free Normal Seminary had expired. 
 He was idle that is, he was bringing in no money ; 
 and prompted by his parents to find work, and im- 
 pelled by his own ambition to seek fame, his case 
 dilated, in his own eyes, into one of singular and 
 desperate urgency. But was he really idle for a day 
 for an hour? I venture to suppose that there 
 were few busier brains and fingers in existence 
 than his. Only twenty-two ! and yet with sundry 
 languages mastered, .with whole libraries read, and 
 with many a goodly quire of paper covered with 
 matter which men high in the world of letters re- 
 garded as at least remarkable for his years ! Know- 
 
MEMOIR OF THE A UTSOJK. xxm 
 
 ing that unaided he was powerless for instant action, 
 and that he could not afford to wait for the tardy 
 rewards of modest merit, he seems to have taken to 
 letter-writing on a large and hold scale, assuming 
 the claims of genius for the favours which fortune 
 had denied. He had completed a poem of a thousand 
 lines. Would no one help him to get it published ? 
 "Writing to Sutherland, he says, "I sent to G. H. 
 Lewes, to Professor Masson, to Professor Aytoun, to 
 Disraeli ; but no one will read it. They swear they 
 have no time. For my part, I think the poem will 
 live, and so I care not whether I were drowned to- 
 morrow." Again he says: "I spoke to you of the 
 refusals which had been unfairly given my poem. 
 Better to have a poem refused than a poem unwrit- 
 ten." But I have evidence before mfe that he re- 
 ceived considerate and kindly replies to some, at 
 least, of his appeals, no doubt blended with whole- 
 some advice, though, on the whole, most creditable 
 to the courtesy and generosity of men having enor- 
 mous demands on their time, addressing a youth, an 
 utter stranger to them, who wrote as if fancying he 
 had a mission to electrify the world. 
 
 His first influential friend was Mr. Sydney Dobell, 
 whose genius as a poet is not greater than his thorough 
 kindliness as a man. To that gentleman he intro- 
 duced himself by means of a short note, dated No- 
 vember, 1859. It was addressed to him at Cleeve 
 Tower, Cheltenham, and began as follows : 
 
 "First: Cleeve Tower I take to be a pleasant place, 
 clothed with ivy, and shaded by ancestral beeches: at all 
 
xxiv MEMOIR OF THE AUTHOR. 
 
 events, it is mightily different from my mother's home. Let 
 that be understood distinctly. 
 
 "Second: I am a poet. Let that also be understood dis- 
 tinctly. 
 
 "Third: Having at the present time only 8s. a-week, I 
 wish to improve my position, for the sake of gratifying and 
 assisting a mother whom I love beyond the conception of the 
 vulgar. 
 
 " These, then, are my premises, and the inference takes 
 the form of this request. "Will you a poet as far as you 
 can, assist another, a younger poet (of twenty) in a way not 
 to wound his feelings, or hurt his independency of spirit." 
 
 The quaint confidence with which he enclosed his 
 certificates of character, and asked his influence, 
 probably excited, in the mind of Mr. Dobell, a 
 curiosity, if not an interest, regarding the writer. 
 At all events, a correspondence ensued, at times very 
 wild and melodramatic on the one side, and full of 
 stern counsel and substantial kindness on the other. 
 This correspondence, extending, at intervals, over the 
 remainder of poor Gray's life, I have not before me 
 in any complete form. But from a confusion of docu- 
 ments kindly placed in my hands, a few characteristic 
 passages may in the course of this memoir be culled. 
 Dobell's first answer to Gray does not appear to have 
 been preserved ; but it elicited a poetical response, 
 of which the following is the opening passage : 
 
 " for the vowel? d flow of knightly Spenser, 
 Whose soul rain'd fragrance, like a golden censer 
 Chain-swung in Grecian temple, that I might 
 To your fine soul aread my love aright. 
 "With kind forbearance, birth of native feeling, 
 A heart of mould celestial revealing 
 
MEMOIR OF THE AUTHOR. xxv 
 
 You bore the vagaries of one, consuming 
 
 His inner spirit with divine illuming ; 
 
 You bore the vagaries of one, who dreams 
 
 What time his spirit, 'mid the streaky gleams 
 
 Of autumn sunset wanders, finding there 
 
 Heaven's ante-chamber, vermeil- flush 'd, and fair 
 
 In feathery purples, fringed with orange-dun 
 
 The porch of bliss, the threshold of the sun. 
 
 Oh had I known thee when the Auroral birth 
 
 Of poesy o'erwhelmed me, and this earth 
 
 Became an angel-finger' d lyre dim-sounding, 
 
 To souls like thine in echoes sweet abounding ! 
 
 Then would thy presence, brother, have fulfill' d 
 
 A yearning of my spirit, and instill' d 
 
 An inspiration in me, like a star 
 
 Luminous, tremulous, and oracular! 
 
 But far away, with all my hopes and fears, 
 
 I wrung a blessing from the flowing years, 
 
 And nursed what my good God had given me, 
 
 The birthright of great souls dear poesy. 
 
 Now have I found thee, but, dear heart ! the golden 
 
 Dream to which my soul is so beholden 
 
 Is circumscribed and shorn, because I am 
 
 A beggar of thy bounty. Is the balm 
 
 Of thy dear converse all in this to end, 
 
 And shall the beggar never be the FRIEND ?" 
 
 We have here, with some imperfections, an 
 audible echo of the earlier style of Keats, as well 
 as a sample of the varied means which Gray em- 
 ployed to wrest from men of distinction, not merely 
 their recognition, but their friendship. Writing in 
 plain prose to Mr. Dobell, I find him thus foolishly 
 vaticinating: "I tell you that, if I live, my name 
 and fame shall be second to few of any age, and to 
 none of my own. I speak thus because I feel 
 
xxvi MEMOIR OF THE AUTHOR. 
 
 power. Nor is this feeling an artificial disease, as 
 it was in Eousseau, but a feeling which has grown 
 with me since ever I could think." That this ex- 
 travagance must have been promptly and sharply 
 rebuked, I learn by a subsequent letter from Gray, 
 dated December, 1859. "You were pretty heavy 
 on me," he says, "and my egotism, as you called 
 it. If you knew me a little better, and my aims, 
 and how I have struggled to gain the little know- 
 ledge I have, you would account me modest. Mark : 
 it is not what I have done, or can now do, but what 
 I feel myself able and born to do, that makes me 
 seem so selfishly stupid. Yon sentence, thrown 
 back to me for re-consideration, would certainly 
 seem strange to anybody but myself; but the thought 
 that I had so written to you only made me the more 
 resolute in my actions, and the wilder in my visions. 
 What if I sent the same sentence back to you again, 
 with the quiet, stern answer that it is my intention 
 to be the ' first poet of my own age, and second only 
 to a very few of any age/ "Would you think me 
 'mad/ 'drunk/ or an 'idiot'; or my 'self-confi- 
 dence' one of the ' saddest paroxysms' ? When my 
 biography falls to be written, will not this same 
 ' self-confidence' be one of the most striking features 
 of my intellectual development ? Might not a ' poet 
 of twenty' feel great things ? In all the stories of 
 mental warfare that I have ever read, that mind 
 which became of celestial clearness and godlike 
 power, did nothing for twenty years Itutfeel. And 
 I am so accustomed to compare my own mental 
 
MEMOIR OF THE A UTHOE. xxvii 
 
 progress with that of such men as Shakspeare, 
 Goethe, and Wordsworth, (examples of this last pro- 
 position) that the dream of my youth will not he 
 fulfilled, if my fame equal not, at least that of the 
 latter of these three." In another letter, written 
 in another mood, he says, " I am ashamed of what 
 I wrote to you hefore. I was an actor then, not 
 myself: for, heing hare of all recommendations, 
 I lied with my own conscience, deeming that if 
 I called myself a great man you were bound to 
 believe me." This sudden and unwonted modesty 
 was probably the mere expression of a casual fit of 
 despondency entirely sincere while it continued, 
 yet not more sincere than the arrogance which it 
 recanted, and which, as the master impulse of his 
 being, was certain to reassert its supremacy. How- 
 ever this might be, Mr. Dobell appears to have 
 become favourably impressed by the fearless can- 
 dour of the young enthusiast, as I find him writing 
 to Gray, who had been talking of going to Edinburgh, 
 penniless, to try his fortune : " The tone of your 
 last letter is, to me, a better evidence that you are 
 born to do something noble than any number of 
 confident oracles, or any flatulent ' consciousness of 
 power' that ever distended the figure of dyspeptic 
 youth : nay, even than any genuine ' consciousness of 
 power' that is sufficiently objective and shapely to 
 be seen, known, and named by its owner. I think 
 so highly of that letter as a diagnostic, that if ,you 
 carry out your intention of going to Edinburgh, it 
 will much gratify me if you will accept one or two 
 
xxvm MEMOIR OF TEE AUTHOR. 
 
 notes of introduction to friends of mine there, whose 
 
 good opinion, if you win it, may be of use to you 
 
 Let me know how things fare with you, and be 
 sure of the increased interest and good will which 
 I hope that farther knowledge may ripen into friend- 
 ship of yours faithfully, Sydney Dobell." 
 
 When relieved from his duties as a teacher in 
 Glasgow, young Gray now engaged on a play after 
 the model of Shakspeare, anon upon a descriptive 
 poem after a manner of his own, and filling up 
 every interval of time with a correspondence as 
 voluminous as that conducted by a Minister of State 
 must have been both an enigma and an annoyance 
 to the humble household at Merkland. A genius 
 in the family, dreaming insane dreams, and earning 
 no bread a Pegasus spurning his harness, and doing 
 no honest drudgery is apt, among persons whose 
 choice lies between famine and toil, to inspire other 
 feelings than those of admiration and pride. Ac- 
 cordingly, every day that elapsed increased his 
 feverish anxiety to do something practical to 
 achieve something great to unlock, with the golden 
 key of his genius, some honourable door to pre- 
 ferment. At one time he talked of starting a school 
 in conjunction with his friend Sutherland; but the 
 project was fiercely against the grain, and came to 
 nothing. Some of his Glasgow friends recommended 
 him to look out for a situation in connection with 
 the newspaper press, but none offered. Meanwhile, 
 the idea of bursting like a meteor upon London 
 never seems to have left his mind, and was probably 
 
MEMOIR OF THE AUTHOR. xxix 
 
 stimulated at length into action by the fact that 
 Robert "W. Buchanan, a young man whose ac- 
 quaintance he had made in Glasgow, and who was 
 equally fired with the ambition of literary eminence, 
 entertained a similar project. Gray, however, having 
 probably obtained assistance from some of the friends 
 whom he was continually interesting in his behalf, 
 started on his courageous venture alone. In a brief 
 note to his parents, dated Glasgow, 5th May, 1860, 
 he says, " I start off to-night at 5 o'clock by the 
 Edinburgh and Glasgow railway, right on to London, 
 in good health and spirits. " 
 
 Year after year, what a grave to ambition and 
 high hope must the great metropolis prove to many 
 a sanguine youth ! How the " burning and shining 
 light" of the provincial town is apt to become lost 
 in the blaze of its accumulated intellect ! What 
 innumerable hearts hearts that may have felt as if 
 throbbing with celestial fire must be continually 
 breaking unnoticed and unknown in the midst of its 
 incomparable and delusive splendours ! Our youth- 
 ful adventurer, however, was not without sundry 
 advantages. True, his stock-in-trade consisted only 
 of a mass of unpublished and possibly unsaleable 
 verse ; but he had nevertheless most of the qualities 
 calculated to ingratiate him with strangers an ex- 
 cellent education, a clerkly style of caligraphy, a 
 fervid willingness to work at any congenial task, 
 a person eminently prepossessing, and the blended 
 diffidence and courage significant of simple manners 
 and honest aims. To Dobell he wrote, " I am in 
 
xxx MEMOIR OF TEE AUTHOR. 
 
 London, and dare not look into the middle of next 
 week. What brought me here? God knows, for 
 I don't. Alone in such a place is a horrible thing. 
 I have seen Dr. Mackay, but it's all up. People 
 
 don't seem to understand me Westminster 
 
 Abbey ! I was there all day yesterday. If I live 
 I shall be buried there so help me God ! A com- 
 pletely defined consciousness of great poetical genius 
 is my only antidote against utter despair and des- 
 picable failure." A youth with such an exaggerated 
 notion of his own powers, and so destitute of all 
 prudent reticence on the subject of his conscious 
 capacity for triumph, would probably have fared 
 roughly in the world had he lived into the thick of 
 its battle. Yet was he ever repenting; for, what 
 seems to be his next letter to Dobell begins, " Let 
 me write to you just now without that melodramatic 
 air and tone which seems to haunt me like an evil 
 spirit. Perhaps if you saw me, you would wonder 
 if the quiet, bashful, boyish-looking fellow before 
 you was the writer of all yon blood- and-thunder." 
 Who knows but that, had he lived to a riper age, he 
 might have " reformed it altogether," through the 
 bitterness of that disappointment whose sweet fruit 
 is wisdom, and through the " years that bring the 
 philosophic mind !" 
 
 Eut in the present crisis of his fortunes, Gray 
 needed all his extraordinary gifts of self-sustainment, 
 and there can be no doubt that they served him in 
 good stead. Endowed with a feebler purpose and 
 a fainter hope, how could he have flown at such 
 
MEMOIR OF THE AUTHOR. xxxi 
 
 high game, engaged so much kindly interest, secured 
 so much instant help ? Among those whom he found 
 to befriend him were Mr. Dobell's cousin, Miss 
 Coates, of Upper Terrace Lodge, Hampstead, and 
 her friend Miss Marian James, to whose elegant pen 
 English literature is indebted for several charming 
 works of fiction. Of the kindness of these ladies 
 he always spoke in terms of grateful appreciation. 
 But by far the most important interview which 
 he contrived to obtain in London was with Mr. 
 E. Monckton Milnes, M.P. Occupying a place 
 among those who add the grace of letters to the 
 dignity of statesmanship, I can readily imagine 
 that gentleman to be a good deal exposed to the 
 importunities of similar aspirants. To this cause 
 at least I am inclined to attribute the fact that 
 Gray had to make his way through sundry dis- 
 couragements before reaching the true kernel of his 
 liking. He answered his letters coldly and curtly ; 
 and even when he had seen the tall and timid 
 youth, and been favourably impressed with the 
 ability which his poetry manifested, he appears to 
 have disguised, to some extent, the interest which 
 he really felt, lest he should stimulate fatally the 
 vanity which he detected and feared. Writing to 
 his parents Gray says : "I think Monckton Milnes 
 will prove my friend. He says that to be a Scotch 
 minister is the very best thing I could do. * How- 
 ever, (says he, the last time I saw him,) you can 
 stay a few weeks more in London, and I'll give you 
 1. per week till you get a situation; but it would 
 
xxxii MEMOIR OF THE A TITHOR. 
 
 be better for you to go home.' He gave me some 
 MS. to copy in fact, made something for me to 
 do." On all hands, Gray seems to have been dis- 
 suaded from relying on poetry for a subsistence ; 
 and the " Luggie" was, I believe, although I find 
 no trace of it in the papers in my hands, rejected in 
 several lofty quarters. But however chagrined by 
 the disparaging remarks of certain critics, he was 
 by no means badly off. Through Dr. Mackay he 
 obtained some work, and he was likewise profit- 
 ably employed in copying MS. for Lord Elgin's 
 Japanese secretary, whom, in one of his letters, he 
 calls " the frank, generous Mr. Oliphant." But the 
 shadow was about to descend. Incidentally I find 
 him writing home, in a letter still dated May, the 
 month of his departure from Glasgow, " By-the-bye, 
 I have had the worst cold ever I had in my life. 
 I cannot get it away properly : but I feel a great 
 deal better to-day." Writing shortly afterwards he 
 says, " The only thing that bothers me is this cold : 
 it's so heavy on my chest that I can't get it up." 
 Prom these sentences it is evident that the disease 
 which was ultimately to sap his young life had 
 already begun its ravages. The " beginning of the 
 end" had come. 
 
 Gray was at length completely prostrated with 
 illness. In his loneliness, he became, I believe, 
 a fellow-lodger, for a short time, with Buchanan, 
 who had arrived in London about the same time, 
 and who was pushing his way successfully among 
 certain of the metropolitan periodicals. But thanks 
 
MEMOIR OF THE AUTHOR. xxxm 
 
 to the kindness of his wealthier friends, there was 
 no fear of destitution to aggravate his physical and 
 mental sufferings. The young poet, suddenly struck 
 down in the enthusiasm of his struggles and the 
 pride of his hopes, was a spectacle eminently cal- 
 culated to touch the large heart of the biographer of 
 Keats. Mr. Milnes bestowed upon him the delicate 
 attentions and charities of a true gentleman pro- 
 viding for him the best medical advice together with 
 practical aid of every kind ; and, considerate of the 
 home-sickness which usually accompanies ill-health 
 in a strange place, had him carefully sent back to 
 Merkland, which, however humble, was his home, 
 and therefore richer in comfort for him at that 
 moment than any other spot in the world. 
 
 Fancy our poetic dreamer once more under his 
 father's roof, with all his schemes frustrated, and 
 with his mind full of bewildering recollections of 
 the new spheres of life, of which he had caught only 
 a brief, dazzling glimpse ! Scarcely a doubt could 
 exist as to the mortal character of his ailment. He 
 was, however, attended by a competent local phy- 
 sician, Dr. Stewart, of Kirkintilloch ; and, through 
 varying moods of confirmed invalidism, he wrought 
 hopefully at his poems, and endeavoured to interest 
 all and sundry in their publication. Besides Dr. 
 Stewart, he was at length visited, at the instance of 
 Mr. Dobell, by Dr. Drummond of Glasgow. The 
 latter took a serious, and indeed most emphatic and 
 active view of his case; and adding to his keen 
 professional zeal a friendly personal interest in the 
 
 d 
 
xxxi v MEMOIR OF THE AUTHOR. 
 
 sufferer, originated a movement to get him conveyed 
 to a southern climate. He himself young, am- 
 bitious, clinging wildly to life became eager for 
 a sea-voyage, and a residence under warmer skies, 
 as his only hope; and, with this view, kept up a 
 continual and half-frantic correspondence with his 
 various friends. But the idea of a voyage south 
 met, on the whole, with little encouragement. Mr. 
 Milnes wrote : " The remedy derived from climate 
 is of the most uncertain and capricious character, 
 and, in many cases, the absence of affectionate care, 
 and the sense of loneliness which succeeds the 
 yearning for the unknown, so despairing, that I 
 would never take on myself to advise any friend 
 to go away. The treatment, too, of the disease is 
 now made less dependent on warmth of atmosphere 
 than it used to be, and the cases of recovery are 
 much more frequent. I know how easy a thing it 
 is to give counsel, and how poor is consolation ; but 
 still I must expect you to be brave and resigned, 
 and to feel that, above being a Poet, is the power 
 of 'being a Man. There is much in this world far 
 sadder and crueller than the thought of leaving it ; 
 and the old Greeks counted every man happy who 
 died young. " In a less decisive, but still similar 
 tone/ wrote Mr. Oliphant, with whom he appears 
 to have been desirous of proceeding, in some useful 
 capacity, to Japan. He shewed anxiety to aid him 
 in his views if the doctor considered a long voyage 
 imperative. From the difficulties, however, which 
 he suggested, his tone was undoubtedly dissuasive ; 
 
MEMOIR OF THE AUTHOR. xxxv 
 
 and, taking all things into consideration, he added, 
 " If there is any chance of your health standing the 
 English climate I would recommend your remaining." 
 Surely we cannot say that sympathy was denied 
 him, after reading the following sentences from 
 Dobell : "I shall say nothing of what I feel (for 
 I am no hand at words in such cases) except that 
 there were some tears on my face after reading your 
 letter. Not for sorrow exactly sorrow never makes 
 me ' cry' but for ' the pity of it, the pity of it, 
 lago !' Well, if matters are as you say which, 
 however, I will not wholly beliete till the good 
 physician whom I have asked to examine your chest 
 reports it hopeless we must accept them as we best 
 can, you know, and see what is to be done under 
 the inevitable conditions. And before looking in 
 those transmortal directions to which good folks 
 usually seem to think it imperative to turn their 
 dying eyes forgetting that the long sweet habit of 
 earthly perception is not to be unlearned in a day 
 let us try what we can do on this side the eternal 
 threshold." Every one, however, seemed to shrink 
 from the responsibility of setting the young invalid 
 fo$th upon a long sea-voyage alone. The next 
 alternative, then, suggested and urged by Dr. Drum- 
 mond, was that he should pass the winter in the 
 south of England. The doctor recommended Bromp- 
 ton Hospital : Mr. Milnes Torquay in Devonshire. 
 
 As a specimen of the kind of letters which Gray 
 wrote at this time, I subjoin one to myself, dated 
 November 21, 1860 : 
 
xxxvi MEMOIR OF THE AUTHOR. 
 
 " I write you in a certain commotion of mind, and may 
 speak wrongly. But I write to you because I know that 
 it will take much to offend you when no offence is meant : 
 and when the probable offence will proceed from youthful 
 heat and frantic foolishness. It may be impertinent to address 
 you, of whom I know so little, and yet so much ; but the 
 severe circumstances seem to justify it. 
 
 " The medical verdict pronounced upon me is certain and 
 rapid death if I remain at Merkland. That is awful enough 
 even to a brave man. But there is a chance of escape : as a 
 drowning man grasps at a straw I strive for it. Good, kind, 
 true Dobell writes me this morning the plans for my welfare 
 which he has put in progress, and which most certainly meet 
 my wishes. They are as follows: Go immediately, and as 
 a guest, to the house of Dr. Lane, in the salubrious town of 
 Richmond: thence, when the difficult matter of admission 
 is overcome, to the celebrated Brompton Hospital for chest 
 diseases ; and in the spring to Italy. Of course, all this pre- 
 supposes the conjectural problem that I will slowly recover. 
 * Consummation devoutly to be wished !' Now, you think, 
 or say, what prevents you from taking advantage of all these 
 plans ? At once, and without any squeamishness, money for 
 an outfit. I did not like to ask Dobell, nor do I ask you ; 
 but hearing a ' subscription* had been spoken of, I urge it 
 with all my weak force. I am not in want of an immense 
 sum, but say 12. or 15. This would conduce to my safety 
 as far as human means could do so. If you can aid me in 
 getting this sum, the obligation to a sinking fellow-creature 
 will be as indelible in his heart as the moral law. 
 
 " I hope you will not misunderstand me. My barefaced 
 request may be summed thus : If your influence set the 
 affair a-going, quietly and quickly, the thing is done, and 
 I am off. Surely I am worth 15. And for God's sake 
 overlook the strangeness, and the freedom, and the utter 
 impertinence of this communication. I would be off for 
 Richmond in two days, had I the money : and sitting here 
 thinking of the fearful probabilities makes me half-mad." 
 
MEMOIR OF TEE AUTHOR. xxxvii 
 
 Helpless himself, the death- stricken invalid could 
 only thus appeal for help with the strength which 
 is the prerogative of weakness ; and he found it in 
 more than one quarter. Mr. Milnes, the kind- 
 hearted ladies at Hampstead, and other English 
 friends, were ready to lend whatever little assistance 
 might be needed ; while, among the benevolent 
 persons in Scotland whom Mr. Dobell had moved 
 in his behalf, was the excellent Mrs. Mchol, widow 
 of the late Dr. Mchol, Professor of Astronomy in 
 the University of Glasgow. The latter resided in 
 Edinburgh; but through Mr. "William Logan of 
 Glasgow, she communicated to poor Gray all kinds 
 of sympathy and aid. Mr. Logan, formerly, and 
 for many years, connected with the City Mission, 
 is by nature a philanthropist. He became a frequent 
 visitor at Merkland, and the chief medium of com- 
 munication with most of the dying poet's influential 
 friends. A little money which had been offered 
 through him with a view to gratify his ardent wish 
 of seeing his poems in print, was now made available 
 for the more urgent purpose of conveying him south ; 
 and Mr. Logan, having aided his parents in the 
 necessary preparations, and provided for his kindly 
 reception immediately on the arrival of the train in 
 London, saw him, towards the end of the year, 
 tenderly and safely away a fragile fugitive from 
 the rigours of the northern winter, with a good 
 deal of hope in his heart, and a moderate sum of 
 money in his pocket. 
 
 Alas ! the forlorn traveller carried with him one 
 
xxxvm MEMOIR OF THE AUTHOR. 
 
 fatal, one inevitable, one desperately-clinging and 
 remorseless companion, in the shape of that disease 
 which is evermore paling the cheek of beauty and 
 blighting the aspirations of youth. Dr. Lane, at his 
 celebrated hydropathic establishment, Sudbrook Park, 
 Richmond, treated him with conspicuous kindness ; 
 but his health did not improve. His cough "was 
 no better," and he feared that the sudden removal 
 of the cod-liver oil "was beginning to tell on his 
 appearance." Writing to his parents, he says : 
 "I believe, after all, that there's no place like 
 home ; but however sweet and pleasant and refresh- 
 ing the idea of it is now, and will be ever, I will 
 not come north, as long as I am able to remain south. 
 Kindness, and comfort, and change of air, and so 
 forth, are all very well. Yet is something awanting : 
 that inexpressible tenderness in trifles which en- 
 riches existence and makes it . bearable. Life is 
 thrust upon us : men wish it not. This wide uni- 
 verse is an enigma and a mystery. Death alone can 
 unriddle it. Let it come. You see I am a little 
 home-sick, like the boy when he goes to school. 
 I would not have been home-sick had I remained 
 well; but whenever I get sick, and weary, and 
 weak, as I am now, I can't help displaying a little 
 of the woman." In the same letter he says : " There 
 is no notice yet of a removal hence. I am dreadfully 
 afraid of Brompton : living among sallow, dolorous, 
 dying consumptives, is enough to kill me. If I am 
 put into a room with four coughing, weak, nerveless 
 patients, how do you think I'm to bear it ? Here 
 
MEMOIR OF THE AUTHOR. xxxix 
 
 I 'm as comfortable as can be : a fire in my room all 
 day, plenty of meat, and good society nobody so 
 ill as myself: but there, perhaps hundreds far worse 
 (the hospital holds 218 in all stages of the disease 
 90 of them died last report), dying beside me perhaps 
 it frightens me." Miss Coates had subscribed to 
 Brompton Hospital for the express purpose of pro- 
 curing his admission. But either no vacancy oc- 
 curred, or he shrunk from it. Mr. Milnes thereupon 
 sent him to Devonshire, under arrangements calcu- 
 lated to ensure for him as large a measure as possible 
 of affectionate attention and care. The sight of the 
 Sanatarium at Torquay, however, appears to have 
 had an extraordinary effect upon his nervous system. 
 His cry became "home, home!" and to the amaze- 
 ment of his northern friends, he presented himself 
 abruptly at Merkland. 
 
 It was now the middle of January, 1861, the 
 opening of the year of which he was never to see 
 the end. To Ereeland he wrote : " Of course you 
 know that I am home having wildly (and perhaps 
 unwisely) broken through all the plans and good in- 
 tentions of my friends. But the sight of the Con- 
 sumptive Hospital, and the folk in it, put me into 
 a severe nevous fever, and nothing would satisfy me 
 but home. When you come out (and come soon), 
 I will recount to you my miseries and misfortunes. 
 If I don't either get better or worse quickly, my 
 mind will become diseased." Sending one of his 
 pieces, written "In the Shadows," he says: "I 
 wrote the enclosed since I came back, the first verses 
 
xl MEMOIR OF THE AUTHOR. 
 
 I have written for eight months. Not one line 
 
 pleases me : when I read Thomson I despair 
 
 When you come, bring books of any kind, if I 
 have not read them. Books, books, books I have 
 none." Indeed, as he did not seem to suffer from 
 his journey, but, on the contrary, gave evidence of 
 revived literary energy, his friends were hopeful of 
 an increase of physical strength which the opening 
 up of a milder season would confirm. Mr. Milnes 
 wrote to him on January 19: "Of course I am 
 sorry at the failure of the Torquay venture, but you 
 have shewn so much vivacity in getting free from it, 
 that I trust you have more life in you than was 
 supposed, and that I may yet receive many letters 
 from you. I knew the conditions of hospital life 
 would be painful and embarrassing to you; but I 
 hoped that the medical advice, the climate, and the 
 scenery would have proved compensations. Had 
 my friends arrived at Torquay in time to look after 
 you, they might have devised some other plan, but 
 it is not for one in health and comfort to analyse the 
 feelings of one in your position." Something, how- 
 ever, had been attempted perhaps the best had 
 been done and, at all events, the suffering youth 
 had received a lesson in contentment. Nor had that 
 lesson, as far as could be judged, been ineffectual, 
 for he appeared to recognise in the toil-supported 
 abode at Merkland, a comfort sweeter and dearer 
 than the luxury of gilded saloons. 
 
 Day after day week after week month after 
 month life was now ebbing ebbing away from 
 
MEMOIR OF TEE AUTHOR. xli 
 
 him for ever. One day I have no clue to the date 
 beyond the word " Monday " a memory must have 
 recurred to him of a boyish companionship, a 
 memory of one to whom, in gladder days, he had 
 talked of being " ready for adventures," and address- 
 ing his " dear, dear, true Sutherland," he wrote : 
 
 " As my time narrows to a completion, you grow dearer. 
 I think of you daily with quiet tears. I think of the happy, 
 happy days we might have spent together at Maryhurgh ; hut 
 the vision darkens. My crown is laid in the dust for ever. 
 Nameless too! God, how that troubles me! Had I hut 
 written one immortal poem, what a glorious consolation! 
 But this shall be my epitaph if I have a gravestone at all, 
 
 "'Tivas not a life, 
 'Twas but a piece of childhood thrown away.' 
 
 dear, dear Sutherland ! I wish I could spend two healthy 
 months with you: we would make an effort, and do some- 
 thing great. But slowly, insidiously, and I fear fatally, 
 consumption is doing its work, until I shall be only a fair 
 odorous memory (for I have great faith in your affection for 
 me) to you a sad tale for your old age. 
 
 " Whom the gods love, die young." 
 
 Bless the ancient Greeks for that comfort. If I was not 
 ripe, do you think I would be gathered ? 
 
 "Work for fame for my sake, dear Sutherland. Who 
 knows but in spiritual being I may send sweet dreams to you 
 to advise, comfort, and command ! who knows ? At all 
 events, when I am mooly, may you be fresh as the dawn. 
 
 " Yours till death, and I trust hereafter too, 
 
 " DAVID GRAY." 
 
 Even under this strong and touching conscious- 
 ness of an early doom with the dart of death, like 
 the sword of Damocles, continually suspended over 
 
xlii MEMOIR OF THE AUTHOR. 
 
 him and visible Gray continued to weave, in glory 
 if not in joy, his poetic fancies. Down, indeed, to 
 the very edge of the grave, he contrived to plant 
 those flowers of poesy which he trusted would bloom 
 over him when he was dead. His beautiful dying 
 sonnets were all written when his shattered frame 
 only showed more clearly the burning of the internal 
 fire. In the month of May he wrote to Freeland: 
 "I feel more acutely the approach of that mystic 
 dissolution of existence. The body is unable to per- 
 form its functions, and like rusty machinery creaks 
 
 painfully to the final crash I cannot write ; 
 
 my head aches, and my hand trembles ; yet I must 
 make an effort. About my poem it troubles me 
 like an infernal ever-present demon. Some day I'll 
 burn all I have ever written yet no ! They are 
 all that remain of me as a living soul. Milnes 
 offers 5 towards its publication. I shall have it 
 ready for you by Saturday first. You must ask 
 Hedderwick if he will read it ; and perhaps Sheriff 
 Bell and other Glasgow critics would look at it. Do 
 I dream?" To Freeland likewise, who was one of 
 his most regular and welcome visitors, he had 
 scrawled out a high-flown dedication ending with 
 these words: " Before I enter that nebulous uncer- 
 tain land of shadowy notions and tremulous wonder- 
 ings standing on the threshold of the sun and look- 
 ing back I cry thee, Beloved! a last farewell, 
 lingeringly, passionately, without tears." 
 
 Although seeing much to admire in the poem of 
 "The Luggie," I hesitated to guarantee it such 
 
MEMOIR OF TEE AUTBOR. xliii 
 
 a reception as would render its publication profit- 
 able. Some other opinions which were obtained in 
 Glasgow were more adverse. Moreover, circum- 
 stances prevented me, at the time, from taking any 
 active initiative. Delay after delay occurred; but 
 there was no delay on the part of the insidious foe 
 with which the young poet contended. September 
 came, and he wrote despairingly to Logan : "If my 
 book be not immediately gone on with, I fear I may 
 never see it. Disease presses closely on me. Reasons 
 innumerable I could urge for the lawful sweetness 
 of my desire, but your goodness will suggest them .... 
 The merit of my MSS. is very little mere hints of 
 better things crude notions harshly languaged : 
 but that must be overlooked. They are left not to 
 the world (wild thought !) but as the simple possible 
 sad only legacy I can leave to those who have loved 
 and love me." 
 
 It was a hard task to resist such appeals. Nor 
 were they wholly resisted. There was much dis- 
 cussion, and even, some movement, but the matter 
 hung fire. Glasgow was a bad field for the publica- 
 tion of poetry. The result to the emaciated and 
 feeble author might be failure and disappointment, 
 hastening the inexorable change. November with 
 its gloom arrived, and Gray, obviously feeling his 
 end very near, made a final appeal to Mr. Dobell 
 the staunch friend whom he had never seen, and was 
 destined never to see. " Surely," he wrote, "he to 
 whom the poem the old, incomplete, despised, be- 
 loved poem is dedicated, shall read it. Dear Mr. 
 
xliv MEMOIR OF THE AUTHOR. 
 
 Dobell, will you read ' The Luggie/ and see whether 
 or not it is worthy of your favour or acceptance ? 
 I have inscribed it to you, after the ancient manner 
 of Thomson. God knows it is not much; but, 
 as I said to you a year ago, it is all I have." 
 The tender bribe of the dedication was modestly 
 declined for reasons deemed satisfactory, but with 
 the aid of his lady friends at Hampstead, and the 
 ready co-operation of Mr. Macmillan, publisher, 
 Cambridge, the poem was, without loss of time, put 
 into the hands of the printer. By a fortunate acci- 
 dent, a specimen page beginning, " How beautiful !" 
 reached Merkland on the very day preceding his 
 death. It was accompanied by the following note 
 from the accomplished hand of the authoress of 
 " Ethel:" 
 
 "Upper-terrace Lodge, Nov. 29. 
 
 " My dear Mr. Gray, I have heard from Mr. Macmillan 
 this morning. He says the MS. will form a volume like 
 * Edwin of Deira ;' and the enclosed is a specimen page sent, 
 with the printer's estimate. I cannot resist the impulse to 
 send it on to you, because I think it will give you so much 
 pleasure to see even this small portion of your work already 
 in the form injvhich I hope before long we may see it pub- 
 lished. After Mr. Dobell' s praise of your poetry, you will 
 hardly care for mine ; yet I will say briefly that those sonnets 
 which I found time to read before sending off the MS. to 
 Cambridge, impressed me deeply with their truth, and beauty, 
 and rare excellence and simplicity of pathos. It seems to me, 
 too, that in your poetry, even the most mournful, there is 
 a shining forth of that hopeful, loving faith in God's love, 
 which it is indeed a good thing for poets to teach, and which 
 I earnestly trust is the abiding solace and rest of your own 
 
MEMOIR OF TEE AUTHOR. xlv 
 
 spirit. I can only write these few lines now ; but believe 
 that I am always, with much sympathy, sincerely your friend, 
 
 " MARIAN JAMES." 
 
 As he gazed upon the neatly-printed page, he 
 seemed to feel that the dream of his life was about 
 to be fulfilled. He read its clear type as if by the 
 reflection of a light caught from the spiritual world. 
 That it was "good news," he said; that he might 
 now subside tranquilly "without tears" into his 
 eternal rest, he probably felt. Next day, the 3rd of 
 December, 1861, the shadow of utter blackness 
 came down upon the % humble household atMerkland, 
 blinding all eyes. David Gray was no more. His 
 spirit had been borne gently away on the wings of 
 the strong and beautiful promises breathed from the 
 Eook of Life almost his last words being, "God 
 has love, and I have faith." He was in his twenty- 
 fourth year. Among his papers the following me- 
 morial was found, written in his own clear hand : 
 
 MY EPITAPH. 
 
 Below lies one whose name was traced in sand 
 
 He died not knowing what it was to live : 
 
 Died while the first sweet consciousness of manhood 
 
 And maiden thought electrified his soul : 
 
 Faint beatings in the calyx of the rose. 
 
 Bewildered reader, pass without a sigh 
 
 In a proud sorrow ! There is life with God, 
 
 In other kingdom of a sweeter air ; 
 
 In Eden every flower is blown : Amen. 
 
 DAVID GRAY. 
 Sept. 27, 1861. 
 
xlvi MEMOIR OF THE AUTHOR. 
 
 Whether these lines will yet be inscribed on any 
 stone, I know not. At all events, it will not be 
 among the congregated tombs of the great ones of 
 all time. Westminster Abbey was not for him. 
 If, in any possible future, there arose before him 
 a vision of its solemn arches, its silent yet eloquent 
 sculptures, and its groups of pilgrim worshippers, 
 it was only at the end of a term of years which he 
 was fated never to reach. But not the less peace- 
 fully will his spirit rest in the near neighbourhood 
 of that home from which his affections were never 
 weaned, and of that stream whose low murmur he 
 laboured, through years of passionate yearning, to 
 exalt into an eternal melody. Not far from Merk- 
 land, on an elevation a short distance from the 
 highway, there is situated a lonely place of sepul- 
 ture, surrounded by a low rude wall of stone, with 
 a little watch-tower over the entrance-gate, useful 
 for shelter and observation during nights, long since 
 bygone, when graveyards were broken into and 
 plundered, but now occupied with the few imple- 
 ments necessary for the performance of the last 
 mortal rites. It has neither church nor house at- 
 tached, and is known as the " Auld Aisle Eurying- 
 ground." With the poet it had been a favourite 
 place of resort and meditation. He could see from 
 it the Luggie, the Bothlin burn, the Woodilee farm, 
 all the localities which he most loved. There, as 
 appeared from the dates on the grave- stones, had 
 the bones of his ancestors reposed for above two 
 hundred years ; and thither, on the Saturday after 
 
MEMOIR OF THE AUTHOR. xlvii 
 
 his death, were his own remains carried on hand- 
 spokes, after the old Scotch fashion followed by 
 about thirty mourners. The wintry day had been 
 lowering, but the hour of the funeral was brightened 
 with gleams of clear sunshine, and in the midst of 
 many regrets, yet of some soothings, all that was 
 mortal of David Gray was laid deep in the mould, 
 near a solitary ash-tree the only tree in the place 
 now bare and disconsolate, but erelong to break 
 into foliage, and be an aviary for the songs of 
 summer. 
 
 In person, the deceased poet was tall, with a 
 slight stoop. His head was not large, but his 
 temperament was of the keenest and brightest edge. 
 With black curling hair, eyes dark, large, and lus- 
 trous, and a complexion of almost feminine delicacy, 
 his appearance never failed to make a favourable 
 impression on strangers. Yet with some of his 
 fastest friends such as Dobell and Mrs. Nichol 
 he never became personally acquainted. That he 
 was gifted with poetic genius there is enough, I 
 think, in his brief life-story, apart altogether from 
 his lyrical achievements, to prove. ]N"o mere flash 
 of vanity could so have shaped itself into the nim- 
 bus of a genuine inspiration. "What further evidence 
 of supreme endowment he might have furnished to 
 the world had he lived, we can only of course guess. 
 Morally, he was, as far as I can discover, singularly 
 pure, and worthy of the kindly interest which he 
 awakened in so many quarters. One overmastering 
 passion an ever-burning desire for fame had ap- 
 
xlviii MEMOIR OF THE AUTHOR. 
 
 parently swallowed up every other in his bosom. 
 The simple love of poetry he may have been too apt 
 to interpret as the essential and celestial gift. He 
 may have been too apt to mistake the whisperings 
 of ambition and conceit for the authentic oracles of 
 prophecy. But, on the other hand, is not a strong, 
 irrepressible, deeply-inherent impulse but the quick- 
 ening, in many cases, of veritable power? At all 
 events, looking at the superlative struggle of this 
 son of a Scotch handloom weaver, and at its sad, 
 unsatisfied end, generous readers and readers who 
 are not generous can never be wholly just will 
 recognise in him a spirit freeing itself, at the very 
 outset of life, from all grovelling contagion, shaping 
 forth its own magnificent destiny, and pursuing its 
 divine ideal with the stedfastness of an angelic will. 
 How far his posthumous writings may win for him 
 the laurels for which, through every accident of 
 fortune, he incessantly sighed and toiled, I hesitate 
 to predict. Inasmuch, however, as there are many 
 who knew and loved him, and will dwell often and 
 fondly on his pages the unfinished columns of 
 a temple suddenly arrested in the building the 
 words of the mighty master may be fairly, not 
 foolishly or falsely applied : 
 
 " Death makes no conquest of this conqueror ; 
 For now he lives in Fame, though not in life." 
 
 J. H. 
 
 GLASGOW, Wtft March, 1862. 
 
THE LTJGGIE. 
 
THE LUGGIE. 
 
 HTHAT impulse which all beauty gives the soul 
 Is languaged as I sing. For fairer stream 
 Rolled never golden sand unto the sea, 
 Made sweeter music than the Luggie, gloom' d 
 By glens whose melody mingles with her own. 
 The uttered name my inmost being thrills, 
 A word beyond a charm; and if this lay 
 Could smoothly flow along and wind to the end 
 In natural manner, as the Luggie winds 
 Her tortuous waters, then the world would list 
 In sweet enthralment, swallowed up and lost, 
 As he who hears the music that beguiles. 
 For as the pilgrim on warm summer days 
 Pacing the dusty highway, when he sees 
 The limpid silver glide with liquid lapse 
 
4 THE LUG GTE. 
 
 Between the emerald banks with inward thrc- 
 
 Blesses the clear enticement and partakes: 
 
 (His hot face meeting its own counterpart 
 
 Shadowy, from an unvoyageable sky); 
 
 So would the people in these later days 
 
 Listen the singing of a country song, 
 
 A virelay of harmless homeliness; 
 
 These later days, when in most bookish rhymes 
 
 Dear blessed Nature is forgot, and lost 
 
 Her simple unelaborate modesty. 
 
 And 'unto thee, my friend ! thou prime of soul 
 'Mong men; I gladly bring my first-born song! 
 Would it were worthier for thy noble sake, 
 True poet and true English gentleman! 
 Thy favours flattered me, thy praise inspired: 
 Thy utter kindness took my heart, and now 
 Thy love alleviates my slow decline. 
 Beneath an ash in beauty tender leaved, 
 
TEE LUOGIE. 5 
 
 And thro' whose boughs the glimmering sunshine 
 
 flow'd 
 
 In rare ethereal jasper, making cool 
 A chequered shadow in the dark-green grass, 
 I lay enchanted. At my; head there bloomed 
 A hedge of sweet-briar, fragrant as the breath, 
 Of maid beloved when her cheek is laid 
 To yours in downy pressure, soft as sleep, 
 A bank of harebells, flowers unspeakable 
 For half- transparent azure, nodding, gleamed 
 As a faint zephyr, laden with perfume, 
 Kissed them to motion, gently, with no will. 
 Before me streams most dear unto my heart, 
 Sweet Luggie, sylvan Bothlin fairer twain 
 
 Than ever sung themselves into the sea, 
 
 
 Lucid JEgean, gemmed with sacred isles 
 
 Were rolled together in an emerald vale; 
 And into the severe bright noon, the smoke 
 In airy circles o'er the sycamores 
 
6 THE LUGGIE. 
 
 Upcurled a lonely little cloud of blue 
 
 Above the nappy hamlet. Far away, 
 
 A gently-rising hill with umbrage clad, 
 
 Hazel and glossy birch and silver fir, 
 
 Met the keen sky. Oh, in that wood, I know, 
 
 The woodruff and the hyacinth are fair 
 
 In their own season; with the bilberry 
 
 Of dim and misty blue, to childhood dear. 
 
 Here, on a sunny August afternoon, 
 
 A vision stirred my spirit half-awake 
 
 To fling a purer lustre on those fields 
 
 That knew my boyish footsteps; and to sing 
 
 Thy pastoral beauty, Luggie, into fame. 
 
 Now, while the nights are long, by the dear hearth 
 
 Of home I write; and ere the mavis trills 
 
 His smooth notes from the budding boughs of March, 
 
 While the red windy morning o'er the east , . 
 
 "Widens, or while the lowly sky of eve 
 
 Burns like a topaz; all the dear design 
 
THE L UGG IH. 
 
 May reach completion, married to my song 
 As far as words can syllable desire. 
 
 May yet the inspiration and delight 
 That proved my soul on that Autumnal day, 
 Be with me now, while o'er the naked earth 
 Hushfully falls the soft, white, windless snow! 
 
 Once more, God, once more before I die, 
 Before blind darkness and the wormy grave 
 Contain me, and my memory fades away 
 Like a sweet-coloured evening, slowly, sad 
 Once more, God, thy wonders take my soul. 
 A winter day! the feather-silent snow 
 Thickens the air with strange delight, and lays 
 A fairy carpet on the barren lea. 
 No sun, yet all around that inward light 
 "Which is in purity, a soft moonshine, 
 The silvery dimness of a happy dream. 
 
8 THE LUGGIE. 
 
 How beautiful! afar on moorland ways, 
 
 Bosomed by mountains, darkened by huge glens, 
 
 (Where the lone altar raised by Druid hands 
 
 Stands like a mournful phantom), hidden clouds 
 
 Let fall soft beauty, till each green fir branch 
 
 Is plumed and tassel' d, till each heather stalk 
 
 Is delicately fringed. The sycamores, 
 
 Thro' all their mystical entanglement 
 
 Of boughs, are draped with silver. All the green 
 
 Of sweet leaves playing with the subtle air 
 
 In dainty murmuring; the obstinate drone 
 
 Of limber bees that in the monkshood bells 
 
 House diligent; the imperishable glow 
 
 Of summer sunshine never more confessed 
 
 The harmony of nature, the divine 
 
 Diffusive spirit of the Beautiful. 
 
 Out in the snowy dimness, half revealed 
 
 Like ghosts in glimpsing moonshine, wildly run 
 
 The children in bewildering delight. 
 
THE LUGGIE. 9 
 
 There is a living glory in the air 
 A glory in the hush'd air, in the soul 
 A palpitating wonder hush'd in awe. 
 
 Softly with delicate softness as the light 
 Quickens in the undawned east; and silently 
 "With definite silence as the stealing dawn 
 Dapples the floating clouds, slow fall, slow fall, 
 "With indecisive motion eddying down, 
 The white-winged flakes calm as the sleep of sound, 
 Dim as a dream. The silver-misted air 
 Shines with mild radiance, as when thro' a cloud 
 Of semi-lucent vapour shines the moon. 
 I saw last evening, (when the ruddy sun, 
 Enlarged and strange, sank low and visibly, 
 Spreading fierce orange o'er the west), a scene 
 Of winter in his milder mood. Green fields, 
 Which no kine cropped, lay damp ; and naked trees 
 Threw skeleton shadows. Hedges, thickly grown, 
 
10 TEE LUGGIK 
 
 Twined into compact firmness with no leaves, 
 Trembled in jewelled fretwork as the sun 
 To lustre touched the tremulous waterdrops. 
 Alone, nor whistling as his fellows do 
 In fabling poem and provincial song, 
 The ploughboy shouted to his reeking team; 
 And at the clamour, from a neighbouring field 
 Arose, with whirr of wings, a flock of rooks 
 More clamorous; and thro' the frosted air, 
 Blown wildly here and there without a law, 
 They flew, low -grumbling out loquacious croaks. 
 Eed sunset brightened all things ; streams ran red 
 Yet 'coldly; and before the unwholesome east, 
 Searching the bones and breathing ice, blew down 
 The hill with a dry whistle, by the fire 
 In chamber twilight rested I at home. 
 
 But now what revelation of fair change, 
 Giver of the seasons and the days! 
 
THE LUGGIE. 11 
 
 Creator of all elements, pale mists, 
 
 Invisible great winds arid exact frost! 
 
 How shall I speak the wonder of thy snow? 
 
 What though we know its essence and its birth, 
 
 Can quick expound in philosophic wise, 
 
 The how, and whence, and manner of its fall; 
 
 Yet, oh, the inner beauty and the life 
 
 The life that is in snow ! The virgin-soft 
 
 And utter purity of the down-flake 
 
 Falling upon its fellow with no sound! 
 
 Unblown by vulgar winds, innumerous flakes 
 
 Fall gently, with the gentleness of love ! 
 
 Between its spotless-clothed banks, in clear 
 
 Pellucid luculence, the Luggie seems 
 
 Charmed in its course, and with deceptive calm 
 
 Flows mazily in unapparent lapse, 
 
 A liquid silence. Every field is robed, 
 
 And in the furrow lies the plough unused. 
 
 The earth is cherished, for beneath the soft 
 
12 THE LUGGIE. 
 
 Pure uniformity, is gently born 
 
 Warmth and rich mildness fitting the dead roots 
 
 For the resuscitation of the spring. 
 
 Now while I write, the wonder clothes the vale, 
 Calmed every wind and loaded every grove; 
 And looking thro' the implicated boughs 
 I see a gleaming radiance. Sparkling snow 
 Refined by morning-footed frost so still 
 Mantles each bough; and such a windless hush 
 Breathes thro' the air, it seems the fairy glen 
 About some phantom palace, pale abode 
 Of* fabled Sleeping Beauty. Songless birds 
 Flit restlessly about the breathless wood, 
 Waiting the sudden breaking of the charm; 
 And as they quickly spring on nimble wing 
 From the white twig, a sparkling shower falls 
 Starlike. It is not whiteness, but a clear 
 Outshining of all purity, which takes 
 
THE LUGGIE. 13 
 
 The winking eyes with such a silvery gleam. 
 
 E"o sunshine, and the sky is all one cloud. 
 
 The vale seems lonely, ghostlike; while aloud 
 
 The housewife's voice is heard with doubled sound. 
 
 I have not words to speak the perfect show; 
 
 The ravishment of beauty; the delight 
 
 Of silent purity; the sanctity 
 
 Of inspiration which o'erflows the world, 
 
 Making it breathless with divinity. 
 
 God makes His angels spirits that is, winds 
 
 His ministers a flaming fire. So, heart! 
 
 (Weak heart that fainted in thy loneliness) 
 
 In the sweet breezes spirits are alive; 
 
 God's angels guide the thunder-clouds; and God 
 
 Speaks in the thunder truly. All around 
 
 Is loving and continuous deity; 
 
 His mercy over all His works remains. 
 
 And surely in the glossy snow there shines 
 
 Angelic influence a ministry 
 
14 THE LUGOIE. 
 
 Devout and heavenly, that with benign 
 Action, amid a wondrous hush lets fall 
 The dazzling garment on the fostered fields. 
 
 So thus with fair delapsion softly falls 
 The sacred shower; and when the shortened day 
 Dejected dies in the low streaky west, 
 The rimy moon displays a cold blue night, 
 And keen as steel the east wind sprinkles ice. 
 Thicker than bees, about the waxing moon 
 Gather the punctual stars. Huge whitened hills 
 Rise glimmering to the blue verge of the night, 
 Ghostlike, and striped with narrow glens of firs 
 Black-waving, solemn. O'er the Luggie stream 
 Gathers a veiny film of ice, and creeps 
 "With elfin feet around each stone and reed, 
 Working fine masonry; while o'er the dam 
 Dashing, a noise of waters fills the clear 
 And nitrous air. All the dark wintry hours 
 
THE LUGGIE. 15 
 
 Sharply the winds from the white level moors 
 Keen whistle. Timorous in homely bed 
 The schoolboy listens, fearful lest gaunt wolves 
 Or beasts, whose uncouth forms in ancient books 
 He has beheld, at creaking shutters pull 
 Howling. And when at last the languid dawn 
 In windy redness re-illumes the east 
 "With ineffectual fire, an intense blue 
 Severely vivid o'er the snowy hills 
 Gleams chill, while hazy half-transparent clouds 
 Slow-range the freezing ether of the west. 
 Along the woods the keenly vehement blasts 
 Wail, and disrobe the mantled boughs, and fling 
 A snow-dust everywhere. Thus wears the day : 
 While grandfather over the well-watched fire 
 Hangs cowering, with a cold drop at his nose. 
 
 Now underneath the ice the Luggie growls, 
 And to the polished smoothness curlers come 
 
16 THE LUGGIR 
 
 Budely ambitious. Then for happy hours 
 The clinking stones are slid from wary hands, 
 And Ba/rleycorn, best wine for surly airs, 
 Bites i' th' mouth, and ancient jokes are crack'd. 
 And oh, the journey homeward, when the sun, 
 Low-rounding to the west, in ruddy glow 
 Sinks large, and all the amber- skirted clouds, 
 His flaming retinue, with dark'ning glow 
 Diverge ! The broom is brandished as the sign 
 Of conquest, and impetuously they boast 
 Of how this shot was played with what a bend 
 Peculiar the perfection of all art 
 That stone came rolling grandly to the Tee 
 "With victory crown' d, and flinging wide the rest 
 In lordly crash! "Within the village inn, 
 What time the stars are sown in ether keen, 
 * Clear and acute with brightness; and the moon 
 Sharpens her semicircle ; and the air 
 "With bleakly shivering sough cuts like a scythe, 
 
THE LUGGIE. 17 
 
 They by the roaring chimney sit, and quaff 
 The beaded ' Usqueta' with sugar dash'd. 
 Oh when the precious liquid fires the brain 
 To joy, and every heart beats fast with mirth 
 And ancient fellowship, what nervy grasps 
 Of horny hands o'er tables of rough oak ! 
 What singing of Lang Syne till teardrops shine, 
 And friendships brighten as the evening wanes! 
 
 Now the dead earth, wrapt solemnly, expects 
 The punctual resurrection of the Spring. 
 Shackled and bound, the coldly vigilant frost 
 Stiffens all rivers, and with eager power 
 Hardens each glebe. The wasted country owns 
 The keen despotic vehemence of the North; 
 And with the resignation that obtains 
 Where he is weak and powerless, man awaits, 
 Under God's mercy, the dissolvent thaw. 
 
18 THE LUGGIE. 
 
 All-beholding, All -informing God 
 Invisible, and ONXY through effects 
 Known and belov'd, unshackle the waste earth! 
 Soul of the incomplete vitality 
 In atom and in man! So id of all "Worlds! 
 Leave not Thy glory vacant, nor afflict 
 "With fear and hunger, man whom Thou hast made. 
 Thou from Thy chambers waterest the earth; 
 Thou givest snow like wool; and scatterest wide 
 Hoarfrost like ashes. Casting forth Thy ice 
 Like morsels, who can stand before Thy cold? 
 Thou sendest forth Thy word, and lo ! they melt ; 
 Causing Thy wind to blow, the waters flow.* 
 
 Soon the frozen air receives the subtle thaw : 
 And suddenly a crawling mist, with rain 
 Impregn'd, the damp day dims, and drizzling drops 
 Proclaim a change. At night across the heavens 
 
 * Psalm cxlvii. 1618. 
 
THE LUGGIE. 19 
 
 * 
 
 Swift- journeying, and by a furious wind 
 Squadron' d, the hurrying clouds range the roused sky, 
 Magnificently sombrous. The wan moon 
 Amazed, gleams often through a cloudy rack, 
 Then shuddering, hides. One earnest wakeful star 
 Of living sapphire drooping by her side, 
 A faithful spirit in her lone despair, 
 Outshines the cloudy tempest. Then the shower 
 Falls ceaseless, and night murmurs with the rain. 
 And in the sounding morning what a change! 
 The meadows shine new- washed; while here and 
 
 there 
 
 A dusky patch of snow in shelter' d paths 
 Melts lonely. The awakened forest waves 
 "With boughs unplumed. The white investiture 
 Of the fair earth hath vanished, and the hills 
 That in the evening sunset glowed with rose 
 And ineffectual baptism of gold, 
 Shine tawdry, crawled upon by the blind rain. 
 
20 TEE LUOGIE. 
 
 Now Luggie 'thunders down the ringing vale, 
 Tawnily brown, wide-leaving yellow sand 
 Upon the meadow. The South-West, aroused, 
 Blustering in moody kindness clears the sky 
 To its blue depths by a fall-winged wind, 
 Blowing the diapason of red March. 
 
 Blow high and cleanse the sky, South- West wind ! 
 
 Boll the full clouds obedient; overthrow 
 
 White crags of vapour in confusion piled 
 
 Precipitate, high-toppling undissolved : 
 
 And while with silent workings they are spread 
 
 And scattered, broken into ruinous pomp 
 
 By Thy invisible influence, what calm 
 
 And sweet disclosure of the upper deep 
 
 Cerulean, the atmospheric sea! 
 
 Blow high and sift the earth, thou South- West wind ! 
 
 Now the dull air grows rarer, and no more 
 
 The stark day thickens towards evenfall; 
 
THE LUGGIE. 21 
 
 Nor from the solid cloud-gloom drips the rain : 
 Bat in a sunset mild and beautiful 
 The day sinks, till in clear dilucid air, 
 As in a chamber newly decorate, 
 The golden Phoebe reddens with the wind. 
 No more through hoary mists and low -hung clouds 
 The eternal hills bones of the earth upheave 
 Their deity for worship : but severe 
 Against the clear sky outlined, each sharp crag 
 Uplifts its scarred magnificence to Heaven. 
 From breezy ledge the eagle springs aloft, 
 And beating boldly up against the wind, 
 "With inconceivable velocity 
 Stretches to upper ether, and renews 
 Haughty communion with the regal sun! 
 Blow high, deep-mouth' d wind from the South- 
 West! 
 
 And in the caves and hollows of the rocks 
 Moan mournfully, for desolation reigns. 
 
22 THE LUGGIE. 
 
 Through the unknown abysses and foul chasms, 
 Sacred to horror and eternal damps 
 And darkness ever-cumbent, blindly howl 
 Till the hoarse dragons, wailing in their woe 
 Infernal, answer from accursed dens. 
 
 Pleasant to him who long in sick-room pent, 
 
 Surveying still the same unchanging hills 
 
 Belted with vapour, muffled up in cloud; 
 
 The same raw landscape soaked in ceaseless rain; 
 
 Pleasant to him the invigorating wind. 
 
 Boused from reclusive thought by the deep sound 
 
 And motion of the forest (as a steed 
 
 When shrills the silver trumpet of the onset), 
 
 He rushes to communion with old forms. 
 
 Like a fair picture suddenly uncovered 
 
 To an impatient artist, the fair earth, 
 
 Touched with the primal glory of the Spring, 
 
 Flings an indefinite glamour on his soul. 
 
THE LUGGIE. 23 
 
 "With indistinct commotion he perceives 
 All things, and his delight is indistinct. 
 Earth's forms and ever-living beauty strike 
 Amazement through his spirit, till he feels 
 As one new-born to being undeflowered. 
 The sudden music from the budding woods, 
 The lark in air, startles and overjoys. 
 
 Laverock ! (for thy Scottish name to me 
 Sounds sweetest) with unutterable love 
 
 1 love thee: for each morning, as I lie 
 Eelaxed and weary with my long disease, 
 One from low grass arises visibly 
 
 And sings as if it sang for me alone. 
 Among a thousand I could tell the tones 
 Of this, my little sweet hierophant ! 
 To fainting heart and the despairing soul 
 What is more soothing than the natural voice 
 Of birds ? One Candlemas many years ago, 
 When weak with pain and sickness, it infused 
 
24 THE LUGGIE. 
 
 Into my soul a bliss delectable. 
 
 For suddenly into the misty air 
 
 A mellow, smooth and liquid music, clear 
 
 As silver, softer than an organ stop 
 
 Ere the bass grumbles, rose. The blunted winds 
 
 "No longer edged severely with keen frost 
 
 Eorgot to whisper, and a summer-calm 
 
 Pervaded soul and sense. No violet 
 
 As yet breathed perfume; from the darkling sward 
 
 JNo snowdrop boldly peeped; and even the ash, 
 
 Whence flowed the sound, unfolded not her buds 
 
 To blacken while the embryo gathered green. 
 
 And yet this hardy herald of the Spring 
 
 Chaunted rich harmony, daintily carved out 
 
 Her voice, and through her sleek throat sobb'd her 
 
 soul 
 
 In a delicious tremble. As she tuned 
 Her pliant song, slow from the closing sky 
 The sacred snow fell calm. Yet through the shower, 
 
THE LUGGIE. 25 
 
 Hushing all nature into silence, clear 
 
 The Feltie-flier* trilled her slippery close 
 
 In panting rapture, from the whitening ash. 
 
 I stood all wonder; and to this late hour 
 
 Eememher the dear song with ravishment; 
 
 Nor ever comes a merry Candlemas day 
 
 But I am out to hear. And if perchance 
 
 Some warbler sprinkle on the vacant air 
 
 Its homeless notes, the bird seems to my heart 
 
 The individual bird of comely grey 
 
 That sang her pliant strain through falling snow. 
 
 Now, when the crumbling glebe is by the wind 
 Unbound, and snows adown the mountains hoar 
 Glide liquid, from the furrow loose the plough. 
 Enyoke the willing horses, and upturn 
 With deep-pressed share the saponaceous loam. 
 From morn to even with progression slow 
 
 * I am almost certain this name of the bird is merely local, but 
 I know no other. 
 
26 THE LUGGIE. 
 
 The ploughboy cuts his awkward parallels, 
 And soberly imbrowns the decent fields. 
 It was a hazy February day 
 Ten years ago, when T, a boy of ten, 
 Beheld a country ploughing-match. The morn 
 Lighted the east with a dim smoky flare 
 Of leaden purple, as the rumbling wains 
 Each with a plough light-laden (while behind 
 Trotted a horse sleek-comb' d and tail bedight 
 With many-coloured ribbons) by our home 
 "Went downwards to the rich fat meadow-grounds 
 Bounding the Luggie. Many a herd of beeves 
 Dew-lapp'd had fattened there, and headlong oft 
 O'er the hoof-clattering turf they wildly ran, 
 Lashing with swinging tail the thirsty flies. 
 But now the smooth expanse of level green 
 Was quickly to be changed to sober brown; 
 And twenty ploughs by twenty ploughmen held 
 To cut with shining share the living turf. 
 
TSE LUGGIE. 27 
 
 Oh many a wintry hour, thro' wind and rain, 
 In valleys gloom' d, or by the bleak hill-side 
 Lonely, these twenty had themselves inured 
 And stubborn' d to perfection. Many a touch 
 And word of honest kindness had been used 
 To the dear faithful horses snooving on 
 In quiet patience, jutting noble chests. 
 !N"ow the big day, expected long, was come: 
 And, with proud shoulders yoked, conscious they 
 
 stood 
 
 Patient and unrefusing; while behind, 
 All ready stripped, brown brawny arms displayed 
 Arms sinewed by long labour eager swains 
 O'er-leaning slight, with cautious wary hold 
 The plough detain. At the commencing sign 
 A simultaneous noise discordant tears 
 The air thick-closing to a hazy damp. 
 Sudden the horses move, and the clear yokes, 
 Well-polished, clatter. With an artful bend 
 
28 THE LUGGIK 
 
 The gleaming coulter takes the grass and cuts 
 The greenly tedded blades with nibbling noise 
 Almost unheard. The smooth share follows fast; 
 And from its shining slope the clayey glebe 
 In neat and neighbouring furrows sidelong falls. 
 Thus till the dank, raw- cold, and unpurged day 
 Gathering its rheumy humours threatens rain; 
 And the bleak night steals up the forlorn east. 
 And when the careful verdict is preferr'd 
 By the wise judge (a gray-hair' d husbandman, 
 Himself in his fresh youth a ploughboy keen), 
 Some bosoms fire exultant. Others, slow 
 Their reeking horses harnessed, lag along 
 Heart-sad and weary ; and the rumbling noise 
 Of homeward-going carts for miles away 
 Is heard, till night brings silence and repose. 
 
 But never with sad motions of the soul, 
 Despairing, yoked his sleek and smoking team 
 
THE LUGGIE. 29 
 
 For homeward journey my beloved Mend ! 
 
 He the great prize, the guinea all of gold, 
 
 Gained thrice and grew a very famous man; 
 
 Till Death, the churl accurs'd, him in his prime 
 
 Eore to the border-land of wonder. Then 
 
 I felt the blank in life when dies a friend. 
 
 Inexplicable emptiness and want 
 
 Unsatisfied ! The unrepealable law 
 
 Consumed the living while the dead decayed. 
 
 No more, no more thro' glorious nights of May 
 
 We wander, chasing pleasure as of old. 
 
 First night of May ! and the soft-silvered moon 
 
 Brightens her semi-circle in the blue; 
 
 And 'mid the tawny orange of the west 
 
 Shines the full star that ushers in the even! 
 
 On the low meadows by the Luggie-side 
 
 Gathers a semi-lucent mist, and creeps 
 
 In busy silence, shrouding golden furze 
 
 And leavy copsewood. Thro' the tortuous dell 
 
30 THE LUGGIE. 
 
 Like an eternal sound the Luggie flows 
 
 In unreposing melody. And here, 
 
 Three perfect summers gone, my dear first friend 
 
 Was with me; and we swore a sudden oath, 
 
 To travel half-a-dozen miles and court 
 
 Two sisters, whose sweet faces sunshine kissed 
 
 To berry brown and country comeliness 
 
 Kiss-worthier than the love of Solomon. 
 
 So singing clearly with a merry heart 
 
 Old songs It was upon a Lammas nicht ; 
 
 And that sweet thing by gentle Tannahil, 
 
 Married to music sweeter than itself, 
 
 The Lowland Lassie thro' dew- silvered fields 
 
 We hastened 'mid the mist our footsteps raised 
 
 Until we reached the moorland. From its bed 
 
 Among the purplish heather whirring rose 
 
 The plover, wildly screaming; and from glens 
 
 Of moaning firs the pheasant's piercing shriek 
 
 Discordant sounded. Then, 'mong elder trees 
 
TEE LUGGIK 31 
 
 Throwing antique fat shadows, soon we saw :.<: ;;. 
 
 The window panes, moon- whitened ; and low heard 
 
 Bawtie, the shaggie collie, grumble out 
 
 His disapproval in a sullen growl. 
 
 But slyly wearing nearer, cried my friend, 
 
 " Whisht, Eawtie! Eawtie!" and the fellow came 
 
 Whining, and laid a wet nose in his palm 
 
 Obedient, while I tinkled on the panes 
 
 A fairy summons to the souls within. 
 
 The door creaked musically, and a face 
 
 Peeped smiling, till I whispered, " Open, Kate !" 
 
 And thro* the moonshine came the low sweet quest 
 
 "Oh! is it you?" My answer was a kiss. 
 
 Then entering the kitchen paved with stone, 
 
 We kicked the sparkling faggot till it blazed; 
 
 And, sitting round it, many a tale of love 
 
 Was told, until the chrysolite of dawn 
 
 Eurned in the east, and from the mountains rolled 
 
 The sarcenent mists far-flaming with the morn. 
 
32 THE LUGGIE. 
 
 This was my first of May three years ago : 
 Now in a churchyard by the Eothlin side 
 The Auld Aisle moulders my first friend, and keeps 
 An early tryste with God, the All in All. 
 
 We sat at school together on one seat, 
 
 Came home together thro' the lanes, and knew 
 
 The dunnock's nest together in the hedge, 
 
 With smooth blue eggs in cosy brightness warm. 
 
 And as two youngling kine on cold Spring nights 
 
 Lie close together on the bleak hill-side 
 
 For mutual heat, so when a trouble came 
 
 We crept to one another, growing still 
 
 True Mends in interchange of heart and soul. 
 
 But suddenly death changed his countenance, 
 
 And grav'd him in the darkness far from me. 
 
 Friendship, prelibation of divine 
 
 Enjoyment, union exquisite of soul, 
 
 How many blessings do I owe to thee, 
 
THE LVGGIE. 33 
 
 How much of incommunicable woe ! 
 The daises bloom among the tall green blades 
 Upon his grave, and listening you may hear 
 The Bothlin make sweet music as she flows ; 
 And you may see the poplars by her brink 
 Twinkle their silvery leaflets in the sun. 
 little wandering preacher, Bothlin brook! 
 "Wind musically by his lonely grave. 
 well-known face, for ever lost ! and voice, 
 For ever silent! I have heard thee sing 
 .In village inns what time the silver frost 
 Curtained the panes in silent ministry, 
 Sing old Scotch baHads full of love and woe, 
 "While the assimilative snow fell white and calm 
 With ceaseless lapse. And I have seen thee dance 
 "Wild galliards with the buxom lasses, far 
 In lone farm-houses set on whistling hills, 
 "While the storm thickened into thunder-cloud. 
 Dear mentor in all rustic merriment, 
 D 
 
34 THE LUGGIR 
 
 Ever as hearty as the night was long ! 
 
 I miss thee often, as I do to-night, 
 
 And my heart fills; and thy beloved songs 
 
 The music and the words ring in my ears, 
 
 Then Lowland lassie wilt thou go until 
 
 My eyes are full of tears, dear heart ! dear heart ! 
 
 And I could pass the perilous edge of death 
 
 To see thy dear, dear face, and hear again 
 
 The old wild music as of old, of old. 
 
 But as the Luggie with a plaintive song 
 Twists thro* a glen of greenest gloom, and gropes 
 For open sunshine; and, the shadows past, 
 Glides quicker-footed thro' divided meads 
 With sliding purl, so from that tale of gloom 
 My song with happier motions seeks the calm 
 And quiet smoothness of a silver end. 
 Erom orient valleys where as lucent dew 
 As ever jewelled Hermon, falls and shines 
 
THE LUGGIE. 35 
 
 Fulfilled by sunrise; where slant arrow- showers 
 Of golden beams make every twinkling drop 
 A diamond, and every blade of grass 
 A glory; comes the earth-born wanderer 
 Sweet Luggie, singing. Over the mill-dam 
 Sounding, a cataract in miniature, 
 White-robed it dashes thro' unceasing mist. 
 Thro 7 ivied bridge, adown its rocky bed 
 Shadowed by wavy limes whose branches bend 
 Kissing the wave to ripples, on it purls 
 Abrupt, capricious, past the hazel bower 
 Where marriageable maid is being woo'd ; 
 And as on sward of velvet by her side 
 Her lover low reclines, while his dear tongue 
 Voices warm passion she confiding lays 
 All her mild beauty in his manly breast 
 Blushing. Ah, Luggie! sure you murmur now 
 Clearly and dearly o'er thy pumy stones! 
 And when amid a pause of thought they hear 
 
36 THE LUGGIE. 
 
 Thy babblement of music, never a shade 
 
 Darkens their souls. Thy song is happiness, 
 
 A revelation of sweet sympathies 
 
 By them interpreted; for never yet 
 
 Was Nature sullen when the spirit shone. 
 
 This is in twilight, when that only star 
 
 White Hesperus from chastest azure grows; 
 
 And as night trails her thousand shadows slow 
 
 Over the spinning world, the streamlet sings 
 
 Her mother earth asleep. Autumn nights ! 
 
 When skies are deeply blue, and the full moon. 
 
 Soars in voluptuous whiteness, Juno-like, 
 
 A passionate splendour; when in the great south 
 
 Orion like a frozen skeleton 
 
 Hints of his ancient hugeness and mail'd strength ; 
 
 And Cassiopeia glimmers cold and clear 
 
 Upon her throne of seven diamonds! 
 
 In the thick-foliaged brake, the nightingale 
 
 Of Scotland, chirping stonechacker, prolongs 
 
THE LUGGIE. 37 
 
 With whit, whit, chirr -r the day's full melody. 
 Par-sounding thro' blue silence and smooth air, 
 The drumming noise of the hoarse waterfall 
 Is heard unheeded all by homely fires, 
 And heard unheeded all in hazel bower 
 Where love wings hours of serene joy; and still 
 As roams with eerie wail the unbodied wind 
 Thro' ghostly glen of pine, the maiden clings 
 More closely, till two firm entwining arms 
 Press comfort; and there is a touch of lips. 
 
 Now in this season ere the flickering leaves 
 
 Touch' d with October's fiery alchemy 
 
 Grow sere and crisp is shorn the meadow-hay. 
 
 Mingled with spiral orchis, dim blue-bell 
 
 Of delicatest azure, crowfoot smooth, 
 
 And ox-eye flaunting with faint flowers wild, 
 
 Nameless to me the fragrant rye-grass grew. 
 
 Now with a measured sweep the keen-edged scythe 
 
38 THE LUGGIE. 
 
 Cuts all to wither in the imbrowning sun. 
 Two golden days o'erpast (with eves of cloud 
 Magnificently coloured, heaped and strewn 
 Confusedly) the country lasses come 
 Bare-armed, bare-ancled ; and 'mid honest mirth 
 And homely jests with tinkling laughter winged, 
 Gather the fading balm. With kindling eyes, 
 And all the life of maidenhood aflame 
 In little tremulous pants, they carry light 
 The warm load to the stack. 
 
 Oh, many a time 
 
 The old man, building slow the rising stack, 
 Saw and reproved not our wild merriment: 
 Remembering, half- sad, his own fresh youth 
 When beauty was a magic to the soul 
 And a fair face a charm ; when a lip-touch 
 Was necromancy; and the perfect life 
 A wondrous yearning after womanhood. 
 
THE LUGGIE. 39 
 
 But at the breathless nerve-dissolving noon, 
 "When hot the undiminished sun downthrows 
 Direct his beams, they from the field retire 
 To cool consoling grove, or haply seek 
 The drowsy pool by beechen shadow chilled, 
 To lave the limbs relaxed. With eager leap, 
 Headlong they plunge from the enamelled bank 
 Into the liquid cold, and slowly move 
 "With measured strokes and palms outspread ; while 
 
 oft, 
 
 When the clear water rises o'er the lip 
 Dallying, they uptilt the swelling chest 
 In unspent vigour. 
 
 Oh, the pleasant time ! 
 
 Pleasant beneath embowering trees, when day 
 Hides with her silken mists the distant scene 
 And breathes afar a nerve- dissolving steam 
 Pleasant in sweet consolatory shade 
 To wander pensive. Then the soul serenes 
 
40 THE LUGG1E. 
 
 The turbulent passions, and in devout trance, 
 
 Unconscious of celestial power, reveals 
 
 The God reflected in fair natural forms. 
 
 For as the Sun disdains the vulgar gaze 
 
 In his uplifted sphere, yet in the broad 
 
 Gray Ocean shews a softer face, so God 
 
 In nature shines. Oh, sweet the bowery path 
 
 Of fair Glenconner, where in volant youth 
 
 I saw the heroes of divine Romance. 
 
 2sTo pathway winding through fresh orange groves, 
 
 Leading to white Campanian city, set 
 
 Inviolably by the sapphire sea, 
 
 Can fair Glenconner' s umbrage-shadowed way 
 
 Excel. The bird -embowering beechen boughs, 
 
 Kissing each other, on the dusty way 
 
 Throw trembling shadows; and when warm west 
 
 winds 
 
 Roam hither in voluptuous unconcern, 
 There is a 'music and a fragrancy 
 
TEE LUGGIK 41 
 
 Upon Glenconner, like the music hymned 
 
 Ey quires angelic on cerulean floors. 
 
 Deem not I speak in vanity, or speak 
 
 In false hyperbole, as poets do, 
 
 When languaging in love the radiance 
 
 Of maids ; but there is beauty and delight 
 
 And passive feeling sweeter than all sense, 
 
 To him who walks beneath the boughs, and hears 
 
 The humming music like the sound of seas. 
 
 There have I dreamed for hours and gathered 
 
 there 
 
 The homely inspiration which fulfils 
 The yearning of my soul. There have I felt 
 The unconfined divinity which lies 
 In beauty; and when the eternal stars 
 Have twinkled silver thro' illumined leaves, 
 I could not choose but worship. 
 
 fair eves 
 
42 THE LUGGIE. 
 
 Of undescribable sweetness long ago ! 
 
 When gloaming caught me musing unawares, 
 
 Musing alone beneath the whispering leaves 
 
 That overshade Glenconner. Hour of calm 
 
 Suggestive thought, when, like a robe, the earth 
 
 Puts on a shadowy pensiveness, and stills 
 
 The music of her motions multiform. 
 
 Day lingered in the west ; and thro' a sky 
 
 Of thinly-waning orange, sullen clouds 
 
 Of amethyst, with flamy purple edged, 
 
 Moved evenly in sluggish pilotage. 
 
 The windless shades of quiet eventide 
 
 Slow gathered, and the sweet concordant tones 
 
 Of melody within the leafy brake 
 
 Died clearly, till the Mavis piped alone; 
 
 Then softly from the jasper sky, a star 
 
 Drew radiant silver, brightening as the west 
 
 Darkened. But ere the semicircled moon 
 
 Shed her white light adown the lucent air, 
 
THE LTTGGIK 43 
 
 The Mavis ceased, and thro' the thin gloom brake 
 
 The Corncraik's curious cry, the sylvan voice 
 
 Of the shy bird that haunts the bladed corn; 
 
 And suddenly, yet silently, the blue 
 
 Deepened, until innumerous white stars 
 
 Thro' crystal smooth and yielding ether drooped, 
 
 Not coldly, but in passionate June glow. 
 
 The Corncraik now, 'mong tall green bladed corn, 
 
 Breasted her eggs with feathers dew-besprent, 
 
 And stayed her human cry. The silence left 
 
 A gap within the soul, a sudden grief, 
 
 An emptiness in the low sighing air. 
 
 Then swooning through full night, the summer' d 
 
 earth 
 
 Bosom' d her children into tender rest; 
 Now delicately chambered ladies breathe 
 Their souls asleep in white limb'd luxury. 
 Yirgins purest lipped ! with snowy lids 
 Soft closed on living eyes ! unkissed cheeks, 
 
44 THE LUGGIE. 
 
 Half-sunk in pillowy pressure, and round arms 
 
 In the sweet pettishness of silver dreams 
 
 Flung warm into the cold unheeding air! 
 
 Sleep ! soft bedewer of infantine eyes, 
 
 Pouter of rosy little lips ! plump hands 
 
 Are doubled into deeply dimpled fists 
 
 And stretched in rosy langour, curls are laid 
 
 In fragrance on the rounded baby-face, 
 
 Kiss- worthy darling ! Stiller of clear tongues 
 
 And silvery laughter! Now the musical noise 
 
 Of little feet is silent, and blue shoes 
 
 No more come pattering from the nursery door. 
 
 Death is not of thee, Sleep! Thy calm domain 
 
 Is tempered with a dreamy bliss, and dimmed * 
 
 With haunted glooms, and richly sanctified 
 
 With the fine elements of Paradise. 
 
 Burn in the gleaming sky, ye far-off Stars! 
 
 And thou, inoffensive Crescent! lift 
 
 The wonder of thy softness, the white shell 
 
THE LUGGIE. 45 
 
 Of thy clear beauty, till the wholesome dawn 
 "Wither thy brightness pale, and borrowed pride ! 
 
 But sleep supine, on indolent afternoon 
 
 Ere the winds wake, and holy mountain airs 
 
 Descend, is sweet. Oh, let the bard describe 
 
 The sacred spot where, underneath the round 
 
 Green odoriferous sycamore, he lay 
 
 Sleepless, yet half asleep, in that one mood 
 
 When the quick sense is duped, and angel wings 
 
 Make spiritual music. Sweet and dim 
 
 The sacred spot, beloved not alone 
 
 For its own beauty : but the memories, 
 
 The pictures of the past which in the mind 
 
 Arise in fair profusion, each distinct 
 
 With the soft hue of some peculiar mood, 
 
 Enchant to living lustre what before 
 
 Was to the untaught vision simply fair. 
 
 In a fair valley, carpeted with turf 
 
46 THE LUGGIE. 
 
 Elastic, sloping upwards from the stream, 
 A rounded sycamore in honied leaves 
 Most plenteous, murmurous with humming bees, 
 Shadows a well. Darkly the crystal wave- 
 Gleams cold, secluded; on its polished breast 
 Imaging twining boughs. No pitcher breaks 
 Its natural sleep, except at morn and eve 
 "When my good mother thro' the dewy grass 
 "Walks patient with her vessels, bringing home 
 The clear refreshment. Every blowing Spring, 
 A snowdrop with pure streaks of delicate green 
 Upon its inmost leaves, from withered grass 
 Springs whitely, and within its limpid breast 
 Is mirror' d whitely. Not a finger plucks 
 This hidden beauty; but it blooms and dies, 
 In lonely lustre blooms and lonely dies 
 Unknown, unloved, save by one simple heart 
 Poetic, the creator of this song. 
 And after this frail luxury hath given 
 
THE LVGGIK 47 
 
 Its little life in keeping to the soul 
 
 Of all the worlds, a robin builds its nest 
 
 In lowly cleft, a foot or so above 
 
 The water. His dried leaves, and moss, and grass 
 
 He hither carries, lining all with hair 
 
 For softness. I have laid the hand that writes 
 
 These rhymes beloved, on the crimson breast, 
 
 Sleek-soft, that panted o'er the five unborn; 
 
 "While, leaf-hid, o'er me sang the watchful mate 
 
 Plaintive, and with a sorrow in the song, 
 
 In silvan nook where anchoret might dwell 
 
 Contented. Often on September days, 
 
 When woods were efflorescent, and the fields 
 
 Refulgent with the bounty of the corn, 
 
 And warming sunshine filled the breathless air 
 
 With a pale steam, in heart-confused mood 
 
 Have I worn holidays enraptured there; 
 
 For, dear God ! there is a pure delight 
 
 In dreaming: in those mental- weary times, 
 
48 THE LUGGIE. 
 
 When the vext spirit finds a false content 
 In fashioning delusions. Oh, to lie 
 Supinely stretched upon the shaded turf, 
 Beholding thro' the openings of green leaves 
 White clouds in silence navigating slow 
 Cerulean seas illimitable ! Hushed 
 The drowsy noon, and, with a stilly sound 
 Like harmony of thought, the Luggie frets 
 Its bubbling mellowed to a musical hum 
 By distance. Then the influences faint, 
 Those visionary impulses that swell 
 The soul to inspiration, crowding come 
 Mysterious: and phantom memory 
 (Ghost of dead feeling) haunts the undissolved, 
 The unsubvertive temple of the soul! 
 
 But as thro' loamy meadows lipping slow 
 Eats the fern-fringed Luggie; and in spray 
 Leaps the mill-dam, and o'er the rocky flats 
 
THE LUGGIE. 49 
 
 Spreads in black eddies; so my firstborn song 
 Hastes to the end in heedless vagrancy. 
 ravishingly sweet the clacking noise 
 Of looms that murmur in our quiet dell ! 
 No fairer valley Dyer ever dreamed 
 Dyer, best river-singer, bard among, 
 Ten thousand. Eeader, hasten ye and come, 
 And see the Luggie wind her liquid stream 
 Thro' copsy villages and spiry towns ; 
 And see the Bothlin trotting swift of foot 
 From glades of alder, eager to combine 
 Her dimpling harmony with Luggie' s calm 
 Clear music, like the music of the soul. 
 But where you see the meeting, reader, stay, 
 stay and hear the music of the looms. 
 Thro' homely rustic bridge with ivy shagged, 
 ("Which you shall see if ever you do come 
 A summer pilgrim to our valley fair,) 
 The Luggie flows with bells of foam-like stars 
 
 E 
 
50 THE LUGGIE. 
 
 About its surface. A smooth bleaching-green 
 
 Spreads its soft carpet to the open doors 
 
 Of simple houses, shining- white. Blue smoke 
 
 Curls thro' the breathing air to the tree-tops 
 
 Thin spreading, and is lost. A humming noise 
 
 Industrious is heard, the clack of looms, 
 
 Whereon sit maidens, homely fair, and full 
 
 Of household simpleness, who sing and weave, 
 
 And sing and weave thro 1 all the easy hours, 
 
 Each day to-morrow's counterpart, and smooth 
 
 Memory the mirror wherein golden Hope, 
 
 Contented, sees herself. Here dwell an old 
 
 Couple whose lives have known twice forty years 
 
 (My mother's parents), their sage spirits touched 
 
 With blest anticipation of a home 
 
 Celestial bright, wherein they may fulfil 
 
 The life which death discovers. Last winter night 
 
 I, an accustomed visitant, beheld 
 
 The dear old pair. He in an easy chair 
 
THE LVGGIE. 51 
 
 Lay dozing, while beside her noiseless wheel 
 
 She sat, her brow into her lap declined, 
 
 And half asleep ! Sure sign, my mother said, 
 
 Of the conclusion of mortality. 
 
 A boy of ten, their grandson, on the floor 
 
 Lay stretched in early slumber; all the three 
 
 Unconscious of my entrance. A strange sight, 
 
 Fraught with strange lessons for the human soul. 
 
 In the first portion of her married life, 
 
 This woman, now, alas ! so weary, old, 
 
 Eore daughters five; of well-beloved sons 
 
 An equal number. Some of them died young, 
 
 But six are yet alive, and dwelling all 
 
 "Within a mile of her own house. The flower, 
 
 The idol of the mother, and her pride, 
 
 Dear magnet of all hopes, embodiment 
 
 Of heavenly blessings, was the youngest son, 
 
 Youngest of all. Me often has she told 
 
 How not a man could fling the stone with him ; 
 
52 THE LUGGIK 
 
 That in his shoes he outran racers fleet 
 
 Barefooted; dancing on the shaven green 
 
 On summer holidays and autumn eves 
 
 (As to this day they do) his laugh was clearest, 
 
 Lightest his step; and he could thrill the hearts 
 
 Of simple women by a natural grace, 
 
 And perilous recital of love tales. 
 
 I cannot tell by what mysterious means, 
 
 Day-dream, or silver vision of the night, 
 
 Or sacred show of reason, picturing 
 
 A smooth ambition and calm happiness 
 
 For years of weaker age but suddenly 
 
 In prime of life there flowered in his soul 
 
 An inextinguishable love to be 
 
 A minister of God. "When holy schemes 
 
 Govern the motions of the spirit, ways 
 
 Are found to compass them. With wary care, 
 
 Frugality praiseworthy, and the strength 
 
 Of two strong arms, he in the summer months 
 
THE LUGGIK 53 
 
 Hoarded a competence equivalent 
 
 To all demands, until the sessions end. 
 
 Whate'er by manual labour he had gained 
 
 Thro' the clear summer months in verdant fields, 
 
 With brooks of silver laced, and cool'd with winds, 
 
 Was spent in winter in the smoky town. 
 
 But when his annual course of study past 
 
 He with his presence blessed his father's house, 
 
 With what a sacred sanctity of hope 
 
 Eager his mother dreamed, or garrulous 
 
 Spake of him every where his foreign ways, 
 
 And midnight porings o'er uncanny books. 
 
 His father, with a stern delight suffused, 
 
 Grew a proud man of some importance now 
 
 In his own eyes; for who in all the vale 
 
 Had e'er a son so noble and so learned, 
 
 So worthy as his own? 
 
 So time wore on : but when three years complete 
 
 Had perfected their separate destinies, 
 
54 TEE LUGGIE. 
 
 A change stole o'er the current of their lives, 
 
 As a cloud-shadow glooms the crystal stream. 
 
 Their son came home, but with his coming came 
 
 Sorrow. A hue too beautifully fair 
 
 Brighten' d his cheek, as sunlight tints a cloud. 
 
 His face had caught a trick of joy more sad 
 
 Than visible grief; and all the subtle frame 
 
 Of human life, so wonderfully wrought, 
 
 A mystery of mechanism, was wearing 
 
 In sore uneasy manner to the grave. 
 
 What need to tell what every heart must know 
 
 In sympathy prophetical? Long time, 
 
 A varied year in seasons four complete, 
 
 (For -the white snow- drop o'er my mother's well 
 
 Twice oped its whitest leaves among the green) 
 
 He lay consuming. It must needs have been 
 
 A weary trial to the thinking soul, 
 
 Thus with a consciousness of coming death, 
 
 The grim Attenuation! evermore 
 
TEE LVGGIE. 55 
 
 bearing insatiate. At her spinning-wheel 
 
 His mother sat; and when his voice grew faint, 
 
 A simple whistle by his pillow lay, 
 
 And at its sound she entered patient, sad, 
 
 Her soothing love to minister, her hope 
 
 To nourish to its fading. But his breath 
 
 Grew weaker ever; and his dry pale lips 
 
 Closing upon the little instrument, 
 
 Could not produce a faintly audible note ! 
 
 A little bell, the plaything of a child, 
 
 Now at his bedside hung, and its clear tones 
 
 Tinkled the weary summons. Thus his time 
 
 Narrowed to a completion, and his soul, 
 
 Immortal in its nature, thro' his eyes 
 
 Yearning, beheld the majesty of Him 
 
 Great in His mystery of godliness, 
 
 Fulfiller of the dim Apocalypse ! 
 
 Twelve years have past since then, and he is now 
 
56 THE LUGGIE. 
 
 A happy memory in the hearts of those 
 
 Who knew him; for to know him was to love. 
 
 And oft I deem it better, as the fates, 
 
 Or God, whose will is fate, have proven it; 
 
 For had he lived and fallen (as who of us 
 
 Doth perfectly? and let him that is proud 
 
 Take heed lest he do fall) he would have been 
 
 A sadness to them in their aged hours. 
 
 But now he is an honour and delight; 
 
 A treasure of the memory; a joy 
 
 Unutterable: by the lone fireside 
 
 They never tire to speak his praise, and say 
 
 How, if he had been spared, he would have been 
 
 So great, and good, and noble as, (they say) 
 
 The country knows; although I know full well 
 
 That not a man in all the parish round 
 
 Speaks of him ever; he is now forgot, 
 
 And this his natal valley knows him not. 
 
TEE LUGGIE. 57 
 
 And this his natal valley knows him not ? 
 
 The well-beloved, nothing? the fair face 
 
 And pliant limbs, poor indistinctive dust ? 
 
 The body, blood, and network of the brain 
 
 Crumbled as a clod crumbles! Is this all? 
 
 A turf, a date, an epitaph, and then 
 
 Oblivion, and profound nonentity ! 
 
 And thus his natal valley knows him not. 
 
 Trees murmur to the passing wind, streams flow, 
 
 Flowers shine with dewdrops in the shady glens, 
 
 All unintelligent creation smiles 
 
 In loving-kindness; but, like a light dream 
 
 Of morning, man arises in fair show, 
 
 Like the hued rainbow from incumbent gloom 
 
 Elicited, he shines against the sun 
 
 A momentary glory. Not a voice 
 
 Remains to whisper of his whereabouts : 
 
 The palpable body in its mother's breast 
 
 Dissolves, and every feature of the face 
 
58 THE LUGGIE. 
 
 Is lost in feculent changes. black earth! 
 "Wrap from bare eyes the slow decaying form, 
 The beauty rotting from the living hair, 
 The body made incapable thro 1 sin 
 God's Spirit to contain. Earth, wrap it close 
 Till the heavens vibrate to the trump of doom ! 
 
 This is not all : for the invisible soul 
 
 Eetrays the soft desire, the quenchless wish, 
 
 To live a purer life, more proximate 
 
 To the prime Fountain of all life. The power 
 
 Of vivid fancy and the boundless scenes, 
 
 (High coloured with the colouring of Heaven) 
 
 Creations of imagination, tell 
 
 The mortal yearnings of immortal souls ! 
 
 Now, while around me in blind labour, winds 
 
 Howl, and the raindrops lash the streaming pane; 
 
 Now, while the pine-glen on the mountain side 
 
 Roars in its wrestling with the sightless foe, 
 
THE LUGGIE. 59 
 
 And the black tarn grows hoary with the storm ; 
 
 Amid the external elemental war, 
 
 My soul with calm comportment more becalmed 
 
 By the wild tempest furious without 
 
 Sits in her sacred cell, and ruminates 
 
 On Death, severe discloser of new life. 
 
 "When the well-known and once embraceable form 
 
 Is but a handful of white dust, the soul 
 
 Grows in divine dilation, nearer God. 
 
 Therefore grieve not, my heart, that unsustained 
 
 His memory died among us, that no more, 
 
 "While yet the grass is hoary and the dawn 
 
 Lingers, he shyly thro' untrodden fields 
 
 Brushes his early path: that he no more 
 
 Beneath the beech, in lassitude outstretched, 
 
 Ponders the holy strains of Israel's King; 
 
 For in translated glory, and new clothed 
 
 With Incorruptible, he purer air 
 
 Breathes in a fairer valley. There no storm 
 
60 THE LUGGIK 
 
 Maddens as now; no flux, and no opaque, 
 But all is calm, and permanent, and clear, 
 God's glory and the Lamb illumine all! 
 
 Now ends this song not for self-honour sung, 
 But in the Luggie's service. It hath been 
 A crowned vision and a silver dream, 
 That I should touch this valley with renown 
 Eternal, make the fretting waters gleam 
 In light above the common light of earth. 
 The shoreless air of heaven is purer here, 
 The golden beams more keenly crystalline, 
 The skies more deeply sapphired. Tor to me, 
 About these emerald fields and lawny hills, 
 There linger glories which you cannot see, 
 And influences which you cannot feel, 
 Delight and incommunicable woe ! 
 My home is here; and like a patient star, 
 Shining between untroubled Paradise 
 
THE LUGGIE. 61 
 
 And my own soul, a mother shines therein, 
 The sole perfection of true womanhood: 
 A father with the wisdom which pertains 
 To gray experience, and that stern delight 
 In naked truth, and reason which belongs 
 To the intense reflective mind hath told 
 His fifty winters here. And all the hopes 
 "Which gild the present; all the sad regrets 
 "Which dull the past, are present to my soul 
 In the external forms and colourings 
 Of this dear valley. Therefore do I yearn 
 To make its stream flow in undying verse, 
 Low-singing thro' the labyrinthine dell! 
 
 And let forgiving charity preclude 
 Harsh judgments from the singer : not that he 
 Fearfully would forestal the righteous word, 
 Blameworthy, spoken in kindness, and that truth 
 Which sanctions condemnation. Yet, dear Lord, 
 
62 THE LUGGIE. 
 
 A youthful flattering of the spirit, touched 
 With a desire unquenchable, displays 
 
 My hope's delirium. Oh! if the dream 
 
 
 Fade into nothing, into worse than nought, 
 
 Blackness of darkness like the golden zones 
 Of an autumnal sunset, and the night 
 Of unfulfilled ambition closes round 
 My destiny, think what an awful hell 
 Overwhelms the conquer' d soul ! Therefore, men 
 Who guard with jealousy and loving care 
 The honour of our sacred literature, 
 Eead with a kindness born of trustful hope, 
 Forgiving rambling schoolboy thoughts, too plain 
 To litter with a spasm, or clothe in cold 
 Mosaic fretwork of well-pleasing words, 
 Forgiving youth's vagaries, want of skill, 
 And blind devotional passion for my home! 
 
THE SHADOWS. 
 
 i POEM IN SONNETS. 
 
, scared mortal! and in awe behold 
 The chancel of a dying poet's mind, 
 Hung round, ah! not adorned, with pictures bold 
 And quaint, but roughly touched for the refined. 
 The chancel not the charnel-house ! For I 
 To God have raised a shrine immaculate 
 Therein, whereon His name to glorify, 
 And daily mercies meekly celebrate. 
 So in, scared breather! here no hint of death 
 Skull or cross-bones suggesting sceptic fear; 
 Yea rather calmer beauty, purer breath ,-". 
 Inhaled from a diviner atmosphere. 
 
66 IN THE SHADOWS. 
 
 TF it must be ; if it must be, God ! 
 
 That I die young, and make no further moans ; 
 That, underneath the unrespective sod, 
 
 In unescutcheoned privacy, my bones 
 Shall crumble soon, then give me strength to bear 
 
 The last convulsive throe of too sweet breath! 
 I tremble from the edge of life, to dare 
 
 The dark and fatal leap, having no faith, 
 No glorious yearning for the Apocalypse; 
 
 But, like a child that in the night-time cries 
 For light, I cry; forgetting the eclipse 
 
 Of knowledge and our human destinies. 
 peevish and uncertain soul! obey 
 The law of life in patience till the Day. 
 
IN TEE SHADOWS. 67 
 
 II. 
 
 gods love die young." The thought 
 is old; 
 
 And yet it soothed the sweet Athenian mind. 
 I take it with all pleasure, overbold, 
 
 Perhaps, yet to its virtue much inclined 
 By an inherent love for what is fair. 
 This is the utter poetry of woe 
 That the bright-flashing gods should cure despair 
 By love, and make youth precious here below. 
 I die, being young; and, dying, could become 
 
 A pagan, with the tender Grecian trust. 
 Let death, the fell anatomy, benumb 
 
 The hand that writes, and fill my mouth with 
 
 dust 
 
 Chant no funereal theme, but, with a choral 
 Hymn, ye mourners! hail immortal youth au- 
 roral ! 
 
68 Itf THE SHADOWS. 
 
 III. 
 
 the tearworthy four, consumption killed 
 In youthful prime, before the nebulous mind 
 Had its symmetric shapeliness defined, 
 
 Had its transcendent destiny fulfilled. 
 May future ages grant me gracious room, 
 
 With Pollock, in the voiceless solitude 
 
 Finding his holiest rapture, happiest mood; 
 
 Poor White for ever poring o'er the tomb; 
 With Keats, whose lucid fancy mounting far 
 
 Saw heaven as an intenser, a more keen 
 
 Eedintegration of the Beauty seen 
 
 And felt by all the breathers on this star; 
 
 With gentle Bruce, flinging melodious blame 
 
 On the Future for an uncompleted name. 
 
IN THE SHADOWS. 69 
 
 IV. 
 
 CiK many a time with Ovid have I borne 
 
 My father's vain, yet well-meant reprimand, 
 
 To leave the sweet-air' d, clover-purpled land 
 Of rhyme its Lares loftily forlorn, 
 With all their pure humanities unworn 
 
 To batten on the bare Theologies ! 
 
 To quench a glory lighted at the skies, 
 Fed on one essence with the silver morn, 
 
 Were of all blasphemies the most insane. 
 So deeplier given to the delicious spell 
 
 I clung to thee, heart-soothing Poesy ! 
 Now on a sick-bed rack'd with arrowy pain 
 
 I lift white hands of gratitude, and cry, 
 Spirit of God in Milton! was it well? 
 
70 IN THE SHADOWS. 
 
 V. 
 
 T AST night, on coughing slightly with sharp pain, 
 
 * 
 There came arterial blood, and with a sigh 
 
 Of absolute grief I cried in bitter vein, 
 
 That drop is my death-warrant : I must die. 
 Poor meagre life is mine, meagre and poor! 
 
 Eather a piece of childhood thrown away; 
 An adumbration faint; the overture 
 
 To stifled music; year that ends in May; 
 The sweet beginning of a tale unknown; 
 
 A dream unspoken; promise unfulfilled; 
 A morning with no noon, a rose unblown 
 
 All its deep rich vermilion crushed and killed 
 I* th' bud by frost : Thus in false fear I cried, 
 Forgetting that to abolish death Christ died. 
 
IN THE SHADOWS. 71 
 
 VI. 
 
 O WEETLY, my mother ! Go not yet away 
 
 I have not told my story. Oh, not yet, 
 "With the fair past before me, can I lay 
 
 My cheek upon the pillow to forget. 
 sweet, fair past, my twenty years of youth 
 
 Thus thrown away, not fashioning a man; 
 But fashioning a memory, forsooth ! 
 
 More feminine than follower of Pan. 
 God ! let me not die for years and more ! 
 
 Fulfil Thyself, and I will live then surely 
 Longer than a mere childhood. Now heartsore, 
 
 "Weary, with being weary weary, purely. 
 In dying, mother, I can find no pleasure 
 Except in being near thee without measure. 
 
72 IN THE SHADOWS. 
 
 VII. 
 
 TTEW Atlas for my monument; upraise 
 A pyramid for my tomb, that, undestroyed 
 By rank, oblivion, and the hungry void, 
 
 My name shall echo through prospective days. 
 careless conqueror! cold, abysmal grave! 
 
 Is it not sad is it not sad, my heart 
 
 To smother young ambition, and depart 
 
 Unhonoured and unwilling, like death's slave? 
 
 No rare immortal remnant of my thought 
 Embalms my life; no poem, firmly reared 
 Against the shock of time, ignobly feared 
 
 Eut all my life's progression come to nought. 
 Hew Atlas! build a pyramid in a plain! 
 Oh, cool the fever burning in my brain! 
 
IN THE SHADOWS. 73 
 
 VIII. 
 
 Tj^BOM this entangling labyrinthine maze 
 Of doctrine, creed, and theory; from vague 
 Vain speculations: the detested plague 
 Of spiritual pride, and vile affrays 
 
 Sectarian, good Lord, deliver me ! 
 Nature! thy placid monitory glory 
 Shines uninterrogated, while the story 
 Goes round of this and that theology, 
 
 This creed, and that, till patience close the list. 
 Once more on Carronben's wind-shrilling height 
 To sit in sovereign solitude, and quite 
 
 Eorget the hollow world a pantheist 
 Eeyond Bonaventura ! This were cheer 
 Passing the tedious tale of shallow pulpiteer. 
 
74 IN TEE SHADOWS. 
 
 IX. 
 
 A YALE of tears, a wilderness of woe, 
 
 A sad unmeaning mystery of strife ; 
 Eeason with Passion strives, and Feeling ever 
 Battles with Conscience, clear- eyed arbiter. 
 
 Thus spake I in sad mood not long ago, 
 To my dear father, of this human life, 
 
 Its jars and phantasies. Soft answered he, 
 With soul of love strong as a mountain river : 
 
 "We make ourselves Son, you are what you are 
 Neither by fate nor providence nor cause 
 
 External : all unformed humanity 
 Waiteth the stamp of individual laws; 
 
 And as you love and act, the plastic spirit 
 
 Doth the impression evermore inherit. 
 
IN THE SHADOWS. 75 
 
 X. 
 
 T AST Autumn we were four, and travelled far 
 
 With Phoebe in her golden plenilune, 
 
 O'er stubble-fields where sheaves of harvest boon 
 Stood slanted. Many a clear and stedfast star 
 
 Twinkled its radiance thro' crisp-leaved beeches, 
 Over the farm to which, with snatches rare 
 
 Of ancient ballads, songs, and saucy speeches, 
 He hurried, happy mad. Then each had there 
 
 A dove-eyed sister pining for him, four 
 Fair ladies legacied with loveliness, 
 
 Chaste as a group of stars, or lilies blown 
 In rural nunnery. God ! Thy sore 
 
 Strange ways expound. Two to the grave have 
 
 gone 
 "Without apparent reason more or less. 
 
76 IN THE SHADOWS. 
 
 XI. 
 
 , while the long-delaying ash assumes 
 
 The delicate April green, and, loud and clear, 
 Through the cool, yellow, mellow twilight glooms, 
 
 The thrush's song enchants the captive ear; 
 !N"ow, while a shower is pleasant in the falling, 
 
 Stirring the still perfume that wakes around; 
 Now, that doves mourn, and from the distance 
 calling, 
 
 The cuckoo answers, with a sovereign sound, 
 Come, with thy native heart, true and tried ! 
 
 But leave all hooks ; for what with converse high, 
 Flavoured with Attic wit, the time shall glide 
 
 On smoothly, as a river floweth by, 
 Or as on stately pinion, through the gray 
 Evening, the culver cuts his liquid way. 
 
IN THE SHADOWS. 77 
 
 XII. 
 
 are all fair things at their death the fairest ? 
 
 Beauty the beautifullest in decay? 
 
 Why doth rich sunset clothe each closing day 
 With ever-new apparelling the rarest? 
 
 Why are the sweetest melodies all born 
 Of pain and sorrow? Mourneth not the dove 
 In the green forest gloom, an absent love? 
 
 Leaning her breast against that cruel thorn, 
 Doth not the nightingale, poor bird, complain 
 
 And integrate her uncontrollable woe 
 To such perfection, that to hear is pain? 
 
 Thus, Sorrow and Death alone realities 
 Sweeten their ministration, and bestow 
 
 On troublous life a relish of the skies! 
 
78 IN TEE SHADOWS. 
 
 XIII. 
 
 A KD well-beloved, is this all, this all? 
 
 Gone, like a vapour which the potent morn 
 Kills, and in killing glorifies! I call 
 
 Through the lone night for thee, my dear first- 
 born 
 Soul-fellow! bat my heart vibrates in vain. 
 
 Ah! well I know, and often fancy forms 
 The weather-blown churchyard where thou art 
 lain 
 
 The churchyard whistling to the frequent storms. 
 But down the valley, by the river side, 
 
 Huge walnut-trees bronze-foliaged, motionless 
 As leaves of metal in their shadows hide 
 
 Warm nests, low music, and true tenderness. 
 But thou, betrothed! art far from me, from me. 
 heart! be merciful I loved him utterly. 
 
IN THE SHADOWS. 79 
 
 XIV. 
 
 BATHER! when I have passed, with deathly 
 
 swoon, 
 
 Into the ghost-world, immaterial, dim, 
 may nor time nor circumstance dislimn 
 
 My image from thy memory, as noon 
 
 Steals from the fainting hloom the cooling dew ! 
 Like flower, itself completing bud and hell, 
 
 In lonely thicket, be thy sorrow true, 
 
 And in expression secret. Worse than hell 
 
 To see the grave hypocrisy to hear 
 The crocodilian sighs of summer friends 
 Outraging grief's assuasive, holy ends! 
 
 But thou art faithful, father, and sincere; 
 And in thy brain the love of me shall dwell 
 Like the memorial music in the curved sea-shell. 
 
80 IN THE SHADOWS. 
 
 XV. 
 
 my sick-bed gazing upon the west, 
 Where all the bright effulgencies of day 
 Lay steeped in sunless vapours, raw and gray, 
 
 Herein (methought) is mournfully exprest 
 The end of false ambitions, sullen doom 
 
 Of my brave hopes, Promethean desires : 
 
 Barren and perfumeless, my name expires 
 Like summer-day setting in joyless gloom. 
 
 Yet faint I not in sceptical dismay, 
 
 Upheld by the belief that all pure thought 
 
 Is deathless, perfect: that the truths out- wrought 
 
 By the laborious mind cannot decay, 
 Being evolutions of that Sovereign Mind 
 Akin to man's; yet orbed, exhaustless, undefined. 
 
IN THE SHADOWS. 81 
 
 XVI. 
 
 rpHE daisy-flower is to the summer sweet, 
 
 Though utterly unknown it live and die; 
 The spheral harmony were incomplete 
 
 Did the dew'd laverock mount no more the sky, 
 
 Because her music's linked sorcery 
 Bewitched no mortal heart to heavenly mood. 
 
 This is the law of nature, that the deed 
 Should dedicate its excellence to God, 
 
 And in so doing find sufficient meed. 
 Then why should I make these heart-hurning cries 
 
 In sickly rhyme with morbid feeling rife, 
 For fame and temporal felicities? 
 Forgetting that in holy labour lies 
 
 The scholarship severe of human life. 
 
82 IN THE SHADOWS. 
 
 XVII. 
 
 C\ GOD, it is a terrible thing to die 
 
 Into the inextinguishable life; 
 To leave this known world with a feeble cry, 
 
 All its poor jarring and ignoble strife. 
 that some shadowy spectre would disclose 
 
 The Future, and the soul's confineless hunger 
 Satisfy with some knowledge of repose ! 
 
 For here the lusts of avarice waxeth stronger, 
 Making life hateful; youth alone is true, 
 
 Full of a glorious self-forgetfulness : 
 Better to die inhabiting the new 
 
 Kingdom of faith and promise, and confess, 
 Even in the agony and last eclipse, 
 Some revelation of the Apocalypse! 
 
IN THE SHADOWS. 83 
 
 XVIII. 
 
 T\7"ISE in his day that heathen emperor, 
 
 To whom, each morrow, came a slave, and cried 
 "Philip, remember thou must die:" no more. 
 
 To me such daily voice were misapplied 
 Disease guests with me ; and each cough, or cramp, 
 
 Or aching, like the Macedonian slave, 
 Is my memento mori. 'Tis the stamp 
 
 Of God's true life to he in dying hrave. 
 "I fear not death, but dying"* not the long 
 
 Hereafter, sweetened by immortal love; 
 But the quick, terrible last breath the strong 
 
 Convulsion. Oh, my Lord of breath above ! 
 Grant me a quiet end, in easeful rest 
 A sweet removal, on my mother's breast. 
 
 * This is a saying of Socrates. 
 
84 IN THE SHADOWS. 
 
 XIX. 
 
 QCTOBER'S gold is dim the forests rot, 
 The weary rain falls ceaseless, while the day 
 Is wrapped in damp. In mire of village way 
 
 The hedge-row leaves are stamp' d, and, all forgot, 
 
 The broodless nest sits visible in the thorn. 
 Autumn, among her drooping marigolds, 
 "Weeps all her garnered sheaves, and empty folds, 
 
 And dripping orchards plundered and forlorn. 
 
 The season is a dead one, and I die! 
 
 !Nb more, no more for me the spring shall make 
 A resurrection in the earth and take 
 
 The death from out her heart God, I die! 
 
 The cold throat-mist creeps nearer, till I breathe 
 
 Corruption. Drop, stark night, upon my death! 
 
THE SHADOWS. 85 
 
 XX. 
 
 ~T)IE down, dismal day ! and let me live. 
 
 And come, blue deeps ! magnificently strewn 
 "With coloured clouds large, light, and fugitive 
 
 By upper winds through pompous motions blown, 
 Now it is death in life a vapour dense 
 
 Creeps round my window till I cannot see 
 The far snow-shining mountains, and the glens 
 
 Shagging the mountain-tops. God ! make free 
 This barren, shackled earth, so deadly cold 
 
 Breathe gently forth Thy spring, till winter flies 
 In rude amazement, fearful and yet bold, 
 
 While she performs her custom' d charities. 
 I weigh the loaded hours till life is bare 
 God ! for one clear day, a snowdrop, and sweet 
 air ! 
 
86 IN TEE SHADOWS. 
 
 XXI. 
 
 ^OMETIMES, when sunshine and blue sky pre- 
 vail 
 
 When spent winds sleep, and, from the budding 
 
 larch, 
 Small birds, with incomplete, vague sweetness, hail 
 
 The unconfirmed yet quickening life of March, 
 Then say I to myself, half-eased of care, 
 
 Toying with hope as with a maiden's token 
 "This glorious, invisible fresh air 
 
 "Will clear my blood till the disease be broken." 
 But slowly, from the wild and infinite west, 
 
 Tip-sails a cloud, full- charged with bitter sleet. 
 The omen gives my spirit much unrest; 
 
 I fling aside the hope, as indiscreet 
 A false enchantment, treacherous and fair 
 And sink into my habit of despair. 
 
IN THE SHADOWS. 87 
 
 XXII. 
 
 Q WINTER! wilt thou never, never go? 
 
 Summer! but I weary for thy coming; 
 Longing once more to hear the Luggie flow, 
 
 And frugal bees laboriously humming. 
 Now, the east wind diseases the infirm, 
 
 And I must crouch in corners from rough weather. 
 Sometimes a winter sunset is a charm 
 
 When the fired clouds, compacted, blaze together, 
 And the large sun dips, red, behind the hills. 
 
 I, from my window, can behold this pleasure ; 
 And the eternal moon, what time she fills 
 
 Her orb with argent, treading a soft measure, 
 With queenly motion of a bridal mood, 
 Through the white spaces of infinitude. 
 
88 IN THE SHADO W8. 
 
 XXIII. 
 
 AH, beautiful moon! Oh, beautiful moon! again 
 
 Thou persecutest me until I bend 
 My brow, and soothe the aching of my brain, 
 
 I cannot see what handmaidens attend 
 Thy silver passage as the heaven clears ; 
 
 For, like a slender mist, a sweet vexation 
 Works in my heart, till the impulsive tears 
 
 Confess the bitter pain of adoration. 
 Oh, too, too beautiful moon ! lift the white shell 
 
 Of thy soft splendour through the shining air ! 
 I own the magic power, the witching spell, 
 
 And, blinded by thy beauty, call thee fair! 
 Alas ! not often now thy silver horn 
 Shall me delight with dreams and mystic love 
 forlorn ! 
 
IN THE SHADOWS. 89 
 
 XXIV. 
 
 >r pIS April, yet the wind retains its tooth. 
 
 I cannot venture in the biting air, 
 But sit and feign wild trash and dreams uncouth, 
 
 "Stretched on the rack of a too easy chair." 
 And when the day has howled itself to sleep, 
 
 The lamp is lighted in my little room; 
 And lowly, as the tender lapwings creep, 
 
 Comes my own mother, with her love's perfume. 
 living sons with living mothers! learn 
 
 Their worth, and use them gently, with no 
 
 chiding ; 
 Por youth, I know, is quick; of temper stern 
 
 Sometimes ; and apt to blunder without guiding. 
 So was I long, but now I see her move, 
 Transfigured in the radiant mist of love. 
 
90 IN THE SHADOWS. 
 
 XXV. 
 
 T YINGr awake at holy eventide, 
 
 While in clear mournfulness the throstle's hymn 
 Hushes the night, and the great west grown dim 
 Laments the sunset's evanescent pride : 
 Lo! I behold an orb of silver brightly 
 
 Grow from the fringe of sunset, like a dream 
 Prom Thought's severe infinitude, and nightly 
 Show forth God's glory in its sacred gleam. 
 Ah, Hesper ! maidenliest star that ere 
 Twinkled in firmament ! cool gloaming's prime 
 Cheerer, whose fairness niaketh wondrous fair 
 Old pastorals, and the Spenserian rhyme: 
 Thy soft seduction doth my soul enthral 
 Like music, with a dying, dying fall! 
 
IN THE SHADOWS. 91 
 
 XXVI. 
 
 are three bonnie Scottish melodies, 
 
 So native to the music of my soul, 
 That of its humours they seem prophecies. 
 
 The ravishment of Chaucer was less whole, 
 Less perfect, when the April nightingale 
 
 Let itself in upon him. Surely, Lord! 
 
 Before whom psaltery and clarichord, 
 Concentual with saintly song, prevail, 
 
 There lurks some subtle sorcery, to Thee 
 And heaven akin, in each woe-burning air! 
 
 Land of the Leal, and Bonnie Bessie Lee, 
 And Home sweet Home, the lilt of love's despair. 
 
 Now, in remembrance even, the feelings speak, 
 
 For lo ! a shower of grace is on my cheek. 
 
92 IN THE SHADOWS. 
 
 XXVII. 
 
 " Thou art wearin' awa', Jean, 
 Like snaw when it's thaw, Jean ; 
 Thou art wearin' awa' 
 To the land o' the leal." OLD Soxo. 
 
 C\ THE impassable sorrow, mother mine ! 
 
 Of the sweet, mournful air which, clear and well, 
 For me thou singest !. Never the divine 
 
 Mahomedan harper, famous Israfel, 
 Such rich enchanting luxury of woe 
 
 Elicited from all his golden strings ! 
 Therefore, dear singer sad ! chant clear, and low, 
 
 And lovingly, the bard's imaginings. 
 poet unknown ! conning thy verses o'er 
 
 In lone, dim places, sorrowfully sweet; 
 And musician! touching the quick core 
 
 Of pity, when thy skilful closes meet 
 My tears confess your witchery as they flow, 
 Since I, too, wear away like the unenduring snow. 
 
IN THE SHADOWS. 93 
 
 XXVIII. 
 
 TTPLIFT in unparticipated night 
 
 Oh indefinable Being ! far retired 
 From mortal ken in uncreated light: 
 
 "While demonstrating glories unacquired 
 When shall the wavering sciences evolve 
 
 The infinite secret, Thee ? What mind shall scan 
 The tenour of Thy workmanship, or solve 
 
 The dark, perplexing destiny of man? 
 Oh ! in the hereafter border-land of wonder, 
 
 Shall the proud world's inveterate tale be told, 
 The curtain of all mysteries torn asunder, 
 
 The cerements from the living soul unrolled? 
 Impatient questioner, soon, soon shall death 
 Eeveal to thee these dim phantasmata of faith. 
 
94 IN THE SHADOWS. 
 
 XXIX. 
 
 A ND thus proceeds the mode of human life 
 
 From mystery to mystery again; 
 From God to God, thro' grandeur, grief, and strife, 
 
 A hurried plunge into the dark inane 
 Whence had we lately sprung. And is't for ever ? 
 
 Ah! sense is blind beyond the gaping clay, 
 And all the eyes of faith can see it never. 
 
 We know the bright-hair' d sun will bring the 
 
 day, 
 Like glorious book of silent prophecy; 
 
 Majestic night assume her starry throne; 
 The wondrous seasons come and go: but we 
 
 Die, and to mortal ken for ever gone. 
 Who shall pry further? who shall kindle light 
 In the dread bosom of the infinite ? 
 
THE SHADOWS. 95 
 
 * 
 
 A THOU of purer eyes than to behold 
 Uncleanness ! sift my soul, removing all 
 Strange thoughts, imaginings fantastical, 
 
 Iniquitous allurements manifold. 
 
 Make it a spiritual ark; abode 
 
 Severely sacred, perfumed, sanctified, 
 Wherein the Prince of Purities may abide 
 
 The holy and eternal Spirit of God. 
 
 The gross, adhesive loathsomeness of sin, 
 
 Give me to see. Yet, far more, far more, 
 
 That beautiful purity which the saints adore 
 In a consummate Paradise within 
 
 The Yeil, Lord, upon my soul bestow, 
 
 An earnest of that purity here below. 
 
96 IN TEE SHADOWS. 
 
 Below lies one whose name was traced in sand. 
 
 He died, not knowing what it was to live: 
 
 Died, while the first sweet consciousness of manhood 
 
 To maiden thought electrified his soul, 
 
 Faint heatings in the calyx of the rose. 
 
 Bewildered reader! pass without a sigh, 
 
 In a proud sorrow ! There is life with God 
 
 In other kingdom of a sweeter air. 
 
 In Eden every flower is blown : AMEN. 
 

 POEMS NAMED AND WITHOUT 
 
 NAMES. 
 
POEMS NAMED AND WITHOUT NAMES. 
 
 HPHE evening now is still and calm, 
 
 As if sad Eloi'sa's soul 
 Had breathed a spiritual balm 
 
 Throughout the softened whole. 
 Within the azure of the sky 
 
 There shineth not a single star; 
 But in a soft serenity 
 
 The Crescent cometh from afar. 
 In darker lines the firs that shade 
 
 The house of Merkland round and round, 
 Come out, and from the fragrant glade 
 
 No liquid notes resound: 
 I heard the birds this livelong day, 
 
 In sweet unwrinkled blending, 
 
100 POEMS NAMED AND 
 
 As if this merry month of May 
 
 Should never have an ending. 
 could I utter thoughts that rise, 
 
 could I sing the tender 
 Softness of the summer skies, 
 
 In all their virgin splendour! 
 crescent Moon, like pearled bark 
 
 To ferry souls to glory; 
 silent deepening of the dark 
 
 O'er vale and promontory ! 
 Alas, that I should live, and be 
 
 A churl in soul, while slowly 
 God makes the fearful eve, and breathes 
 
 A calm thro' hearts unholy! 
 
WITHO UT NAMES. 101 
 
 C\ COOL the summer woods 
 
 Of dear Gartshore, where bloom 
 Soft clouds of white anemones 
 
 Among their own perfume. 
 And clear the little brooklet, 
 
 Singing an endless lay, 
 Winding its nameless waters 
 
 Close by the white highway. 
 And here in sweet sensation, 
 
 And soul-uneasy swoon, 
 I've lain for many a golden 
 
 Hour of a summer noon. 
 The cushats crooned around me 
 
 Their hoarse and amorous song; 
 And in a brooding drowsiness, 
 
 The echoes swooned along; 
 
102 POEMS NAMED AND 
 
 Till all the sweet sensations 
 
 Grew into utter pain, 
 And I was fain to wander 
 
 Sadly home again. 
 There have been brotherhoods in song, 
 
 And human friendships ever true; 
 There have been lovers unto death, 
 
 Yes, and right many too. 
 But never in the march of time, 
 
 And never in all mortal knowing, 
 From history or nobler rhyme, 
 
 Hath there been such a constant flowing : 
 One from mountains far away, 
 
 One from glades of emerald shining, 
 Flowing, flowing evermore 
 
 For a delicate combining. 
 If upon a summer's day, 
 
 When the air is blue and bracing, 
 You for Merkland take your way, 
 
WITHO TIT NAMES. 103 
 
 Sweet uneasy fancies chasing; 
 You may see the famous grove 
 
 If not famous, then most surely 
 Eipe for fame, which is but love 
 
 Where they mingle most demurely. 
 Not in song and babbling play 
 
 Which no poet could unravel; 
 But in tender simple way, 
 
 On a bed of golden gravel. 
 Where I sit I see them now, 
 
 Bothlin with her endless winding 
 Erom a mountain's purple brow, 
 
 Sacred contemplation finding; 
 In still nooks of shady rest, 
 
 Gleaming greenly 'neath the holly : 
 Youth, she says, is often blest 
 
 With a little melancholy. 
 Luggie from the orient fields 
 
 Wiser is, yet hath a beauty, 
 
104 POEMS NAMED AND 
 
 Which the snowy conscience yields 
 
 To the softened face of duty. 
 All she does bespeaks a grace, 
 
 Yet the grace hath that of sadness 
 We behold in many a face, 
 
 Where we had expected gladness. 
 But when Bothlin meets her there, 
 
 See the change to sudden glory! 
 Surely such another pair 
 
 Never met in classic story. 
 I could sing for half a day, 
 
 And my spirit, never weary, 
 Fashioning the vernal lay 
 
 With a linnet's impulse cheery. 
 But some night in leafy June, 
 
 You tho, place yourself may see; 
 When the light is in the moon, 
 
 Like the passion that's in me. 
 
WITHOUT NAMES. 105 
 
 THE ANEMONE. 
 
 T HAVE wandered far to-day, 
 In a pleased unquiet way; 
 Over hill and songful hollow, 
 Vernal byeways, fresh and fair, 
 Did I simple fancies follow; 
 Till upon a hill- side hare, 
 Suddenly I chanced to see 
 A little white anemone. 
 
 Beneath a clump of furze it grew; 
 And never mortal eye did view 
 Its rathe and slender beauty, till 
 I saw it in no -mocking mood; 
 For with its sweetness did it fill 
 To me the ample solitude. 
 
106 POEMS NAMED AND 
 
 A fond remembrance made me see 
 Strange light in the anemone. 
 
 One April day when I was seven, 
 Beneath the clear and deepening heaven, 
 My father, God preserve him! went 
 With me a Scottish mile and more; 
 And in a playful merriment 
 He deck'd my bonnet o'er and o'er 
 To fling a sunshine on his ease 
 With tenderest anemones. 
 
 Now, gentle reader, as I live, 
 This snowy little bloom did give 
 My being most endearing throes. 
 I saw my father in his prime; 
 Eut youth it comes, and youth it goes, 
 And he has spent his blithest time : 
 Yet dearer grown thro' all to me, 
 And dearer the anemone. 
 
WITHO UT NAMES. 1 07 
 
 So with the spirit of a sage 
 I pluck' d it from its hermitage, 
 And placed it 'tween the sacred leaves 
 Of Agnes' Eve at that rare part 
 Where she her fragrant robe unweaves, 
 And with a gently beating heart, 
 In troubled bliss and balmy woe, 
 Lies down to dream of Porphyro. 
 
 Let others sing of that and this, 
 In war and science find their bliss; 
 Vainly they seek and will not find 
 The subtle lore that nature brings 
 Unto the reverential mind, 
 The pathos worn by common things, 
 By every flower that lights the lea, 
 And by the pale anemone. 
 
108 POEMS NAMED AND 
 
 T AST night a vision was dispelled, 
 
 Which. I can never dream again ; 
 A wonder from the earth has gone, 
 
 A passion from my brain. 
 I saw upon a budding ash 
 
 A cuckoo, and she blithely sung 
 To all the valleys round about, 
 
 While on a branch she swung. 
 Cuckoo, cuckoo : I looked around, 
 
 And like a dream fulfilled, 
 A slender bird of modest brown, 
 
 My sight with wonder thrilled. 
 I looked again and yet again; 
 
 My eyes, thought I, do sure deceive me ; 
 But when belief made doubting vain, 
 
 Alas, the sight did grieve me. 
 
WITHO UT NAMES. 1 09 
 
 For twice to-day I heard the cry, 
 
 The hollow cry of melting love; 
 And twice a tear bedimmed my eye. 
 
 I saw the singer in the grove, 
 I saw him pipe his eager tone, 
 
 Like any other common bird, 
 And, as I live, the sovereign cry 
 
 Was not the one I always heard. 
 why within that lusty wood 
 
 Did I the fairy sight behold? 
 why within that solitude 
 
 Was I thus blindly overbold? 
 My heart, forgive me ! for indeed 
 
 I cannot speak my thrilling pain : 
 The wonder vanished from the earth, 
 
 The passion from my brain. 
 
110 POEMS NAMED AND 
 
 THE YELLOWHAMMEK. 
 
 TN" fairy glen of "Woodilee, 
 One sunny summer morning, 
 I plucked a little birchen tree, 
 The spungy moss adorning; 
 And bearing it delighted home, 
 I planted it in garden loam, 
 Where, perfecting all duty, 
 It flowered in tassel' d beauty. 
 
 When delicate April in each dell 
 Was silently completing 
 Her ministry in bud and bell, 
 To grace the summer's meeting; 
 
WITHO UT NAMES. Ill 
 
 My birchen tree of glossy rind 
 Determined not to be behind; 
 So with a subtle power 
 The buds began to flower. 
 
 And I could watch from out my house 
 The twigs with leaflets thicken; 
 From glossy rind to twining boughs 
 The milky sap 'gan quicken. 
 And when the fragrant form was green 
 No fairer tree was to be seen, 
 All Gartshore woods adorning, 
 Where doves are always mourning. 
 
 But never dove with liquid wing, 
 Or neck of changeful gleaming, 
 Came near my garden tree to sing 
 Or croodle out its meaning. 
 But this sweet day, an hour ago, 
 
112 POEMS NAMED AND 
 
 A yellowhammer clear and low, 
 In love and tender pity 
 Thrilled out his dainty ditty. 
 
 And I was pleased, as you may think, 
 
 And blessed the little singer : 
 
 '0 fly for your mate to Luggie brink, 
 
 Dear little bird ! and bring her ; 
 
 And build your nest among the boughs, 
 
 A sweet and cosy little house 
 
 Where ye may well content ye, 
 
 % 
 
 Since true love is so plenty. 
 
 And when she sits upon her nest, 
 Here are cool shades to shroud her/ 
 At this the singer sang his best, 
 louder yet, and louder; 
 Until I shouted in my glee, 
 His song had so enchanted me. 
 
WITH UT NAMES. 1 1 3 
 
 No nightingale could pant on 
 In joy so wise and wanton. 
 
 But at my careless noise he flew, 
 And if he chance to bring her 
 A happy bride the summer thro' 
 'Mong birchen boughs to linger, 
 I'll sing to you in numbers high 
 A summer song that shall not die, 
 But keep in memory clearly 
 The bird I love so dearly. 
 
114 POEMS NAMED AND 
 
 SNOW. 
 
 upon the summer lea, 
 Daisies, kingcups, pale primroses 
 These are sung from sea to sea, 
 
 As many a darling rhyme discloses. 
 Tangled -wood and hawthorn dale 
 In many a songful snatch prevail; 
 But never yet, as well I mind, 
 In all their verses can I find 
 A simple tune, with quiet flow, 
 To match the falling of the snow. 
 
 weary passed each winter day, 
 
 And windily howled each winter night; 
 
 miry grew each village way, 
 And mists enfolded every height; 
 
WITEO UT NAMES. 1 15 
 
 And ever on the window pane 
 
 A froward gust blew down with rain, 
 
 And day by day in tawny brown 
 
 The Luggie stream came heaving down: 
 
 I could have fallen asleep and dreamed 
 
 Until again spring sunshine gleamed. 
 
 And what! said I, is this the mode 
 That Winter kings it now-a-days? 
 
 The Eobin keeps his own abode, 
 And pipes his independent lays. 
 
 I've seen the day on Merkland hill, 
 
 That snow has fallen with a will, 
 
 Even in November! Now, alas! 
 
 The whole year round we see the grass : . 
 
 Ah, winter now may come and go 
 
 Without a single fall of snow. 
 
 It was the latest day but one 
 Of winter, as I questioned thus; 
 
116 POEMS NAMED AND 
 
 And sooth ! an angry mood was on, 
 As at a thing most scandalous; 
 When lo ! some hailstones on the pane 
 With sudden tinkle rang amain, 
 Till in an ecstasy of joy 
 I clapp'd and shouted like a boy 
 Oh, rain may come and rain may go, 
 But what can match the falling snow! 
 
 It draped the naked sycamore 
 
 On Foordcroft hill, above the well; 
 The elms of Eosebank o'er and o'er 
 
 Were silvered richly as it fell. 
 The distant Campsie peaks were lost, 
 And farthest Criftin with his host 
 Of gloomy pine-trees disappeared, 
 Nor even a lonely ridge upreared. 
 Oh, rain may come and rain may go, 
 But what can match the falling snow ! 
 
WITHO UT NAMES. 1 1 7 
 
 Afar upon the Solsgirth moor, 
 
 Each heather sprig of withered brown 
 Is fringed with thread of silver pure 
 
 As slow the soft flakes waver down; 
 And on Glenconner's lonely path, 
 And Gartshore's still and open strath, 
 It falleth, quiet as the birth 
 Of morning o'er the quickening earth. 
 Oh, rain may come and rain may go, 
 But what can match the falling snow! 
 
 And all around our Merkland home 
 Is laid a sheet of virgin lawn; 
 
 On fairer, softer, ne'er did roam 
 
 
 The nimble Oread or Faun. 
 
 There is a wonder in the air, 
 
 A living beauty everywhere; 
 
 As if the whole had ne'er been planned, 
 
 But touched by Merlin's famous wand, 
 
1 1 8 POEMS NAMED AND 
 
 Suddenly woke beneath his hand 
 To potent bliss in fairy show 
 A mighty ravishment of snow ! 
 
WITHO UT NAMES. 119 
 
 JOHN Frost, old Nature's jeweller, had beautified 
 
 the leas, 
 And the lustre of his fret- work was twinkling on 
 
 the trees, 
 As we rambled o'er the meadows in a meditative 
 
 We had left the town behind us for a roaming 
 
 holiday, 
 Eeneath an arc of gloom, all dark and indistinct it 
 
 lay, 
 And the fog was wreathed about it like a robe of 
 
 iron-gray. 
 
120 POEMS NAMED AND 
 
 But a carpeting of leaflets, and a canopy of blue, 
 And the mystery of ether as the warming sunshine 
 
 grew, 
 Sent a mellow thrill of happiness our eager spirits 
 
 through. 
 
 And over lanes, where Winter bluff had shook 
 
 his hoary beard, 
 Where in the naked hedgerows the broodless nests 
 
 appear' d, 
 And the brown leaves of the beech-tree were with 
 
 silver gloss veneer' d. 
 
 We wandered and we pondered till half the morn 
 was spent, 
 
 And the red orb through the tangled boughs his 
 cunning vigour sent, 
 
 And the valley mists all melted at his glance omni- 
 potent. 
 
WITHO UT NAMES. 121 
 
 Dim on a sloping hill-side, clothed in a misty 
 
 pall, 
 Stands a turret grey and hoary, where the ancient 
 
 ivies crawl, 
 Their Arab arms round casement, sill, and door, 
 
 and mould'ring wall. 
 
 And there we halted half-an-hour within a roofless 
 
 hall, 
 'Neath a bower of wildest ivy hanging downwards 
 
 from the wall, 
 Bearing in its grand luxuriance a flower funereal. 
 
 There we talked of the gay plumes erst bent to 
 
 pass the lintel old, 
 The maidens that were moved to smile at gallant 
 
 wooers bold, 
 The jovial nights of brave carouse, the wine-cups 
 
 manifold. 
 
122 POEMS NAMED AND 
 
 And all the faded glories of the mediaeval time, 
 When the age was in its manhood, and the land 
 
 was in its prime, 
 And manly deeds were chanted in a bold heroic 
 
 rhyme. 
 
 Then, plucking each a sprig, bedecked with simple 
 yellow flower, 
 
 "We scrambled sadly downwards from our old en- 
 chanted bower, 
 
 And the glory of the sunshine fell upon us like 
 a shower. 
 
 Once more beneath the concave of a clear effulgent 
 
 sky, 
 Where flocks of cawing rooks to the mansion 
 
 wavered by 
 A mansion standing coldly 'mid a windy rookery. 
 
WITHO UT NAMES. 1 23 
 
 And over breezy mountains, where the poacher, 
 
 with his gun, 
 Stood lonely as a boulder- stone, 'tween earth and 
 
 shining sun, 
 We wandered and we pondered till the winter day 
 
 was done. 
 
124 POEMS NAMED AND 
 
 AH, many a leaf will fall to-night, 
 
 As she wanders through the wood! 
 
 And many an angry gust will break 
 
 The dreary solitude. 
 
 I wonder if she's past the bridge, 
 
 Where Luggie moans beneath ; 
 
 While rain-drops clash in planted lines 
 
 On rivulet and heath. 
 
 Disease hath laid his palsied palm 
 
 Upon my aching brow; 
 
 The headlong blood of twenty-one 
 
 Is thin and sluggish now. 
 
 'Tis nearly ten! A fearful night 
 
 Without a single star 
 
WITHO UT NAMES. 1 25 
 
 To light the shadow on her soul 
 
 With sparkle from afar: 
 
 The moon is canopied with clouds, 
 
 And her burden it is sore; 
 
 What would wee Jackie do, if he 
 
 Should never see her more? 
 
 Aye, light the lamp, and hang it up 
 
 At the window fair and free; 
 
 'Twill be a beacon on the hill 
 
 To let your mother see. 
 
 And trim it well, my little Ann, 
 
 For the night is wet and cold, 
 
 And you know the weary, winding way 
 
 Across the miry wold. 
 
 All drenched will be her simple gown, 
 
 And the wet will reach her skin: 
 
 I wish that I could wander down, 
 
 And the red quarry win 
 
 To take the burden from her back, 
 
126 POEMS NAMED AND 
 
 And place it upon mine; 
 
 With words of cheerful condolence, 
 
 Not uttered to repine. 
 
 You have a kindly mother, dears, 
 
 As ever bore a child, 
 
 And heaven knows I love her well 
 
 In passion undenled. 
 
 Ah me ! I never thought that she 
 
 Would brave a night like this, 
 
 While I sat weaving by the fire 
 
 A web of phantasies. 
 
 How the winds beat this home of ours 
 
 With arrow-falls of rain ; 
 
 This lonely home upon the hill 
 
 They beat with might and main. 
 
 And 'mid the tempest one lone heart 
 
 Anticipates the glow, 
 
 Whence, all her weary journey done, 
 
 Shall happy welcome flow. 
 
WITHO UT NAMES. 127 
 
 'Tis after ten! Oh, were she here, 
 
 Young man altho' I be, 
 
 I could fall down upon her neck, 
 
 And weep right gushingly! 
 
 I have not loved her half enough, 
 
 The dear old toiling one, 
 
 The silent watcher by my bed, 
 
 In shadow or in son. 
 
128 POEMS NAMED AND 
 
 "Happy child! 
 Thou art so exquisitely wild, 
 I think of thee with many tears, 
 For what may be thy lot in future years." 
 
 WOBDSWOHTH. 
 
 ^PHE goldening peach, on the orchard wall, 
 
 Soft feeding in the sun, 
 
 Hath never so downy and rosy a cheek 
 
 As this laughing little one. 
 
 The brook that murmurs and dimples alone 
 
 Through glen, and grove, and lea, , 
 
 Hath never a life so merry and true 
 
 As my brown little brother of three. 
 
 Prom flower to flower, and from bower to bower, 
 
 In my mother's garden green, 
 
 A-peering at this, and a-cheering at that, 
 
 The funniest ever was seen; 
 
 Now throwing himself in his mother's lap, 
 
WITHO UT NAMES. 129 
 
 With his cheek upon her breast, 
 
 He tells his wonderful travels, forsooth ! 
 
 And chatters himself to rest. 
 
 And what may become of that brother of mine, 
 
 Asleep in his mother's bosom? 
 
 "Will the wee rosy bud of his being, at last 
 
 Into a wild flower blossom? 
 
 Will the hopes that are deepening as silent and fair 
 
 As the azure about his eye, 
 
 Be told in glory and motherly pride, 
 
 Or answered with a sigh? 
 
 Let the curtain rest: for, alas! 'tis told 
 
 That Mercy's hand benign 
 
 Hath woven and spun the gossamer thread 
 
 That forms the fabric so fine. 
 
 Then dream, dearest Jackie ! thy sinless dream, 
 
 And waken as blythe and as free; 
 
 There's many a change in twenty long years, 
 
 My brown little brother of three. 
 
130 POEMS NAMED AND 
 
 sycamores of wondrous fairness smooth, 
 And mealy green of trunk, and murmurous 
 In multitudinous sun -twinkling leaves, 
 This valley grace. Three fairer than the rest, 
 Which in the silent worship of my heart 
 I fondly call the brothers of Bridgend, 
 O'er cottage floors when doors are wide for heat, 
 And often on the face of cradled child, 
 Throw dusky shadows. And when lenient winds 
 Blow motion, the cool shadows flicker and play 
 Upon the floors, and glimpse the countenance 
 Of the sweet baby, till the mother laughs, 
 And bending downward, kisses. But of all 
 The trees that ever tufted hill or vale, 
 That ever took the breeze or sheltered nest, 
 
WITHO UT NAMES. 131 
 
 * 
 Or rung with flowing melody of birds, 
 
 The strangest and the dearest, best and first, 
 "Waves audibly upon a windy hill' 
 Above the Luggie. In the front of Spring, 
 When the first crocus gleams among the grass, 
 One half shines out full-leaved, the other bare: 
 And when the Autumn violet hath lost 
 Its fragrance, and the meadow-hay is mown, 
 One half shines out full-leaved, the other bare. 
 It is two trees, whose marriageable boughs 
 Twine each with each and throw a common shade, 
 A chesnut and an elm. The former opes 
 Its oily buds whene'er the teeming south 
 Breathes life and warm intenerating balm, 
 But fades in early Autumn ; while supreme 
 In vigorous development, the elm 
 Pull-foliaged glimmers till October's end. 
 At the twin roots and facing the rich west 
 A summer seat is rustically carved, 
 
132 POEMS NAMED AND 
 
 f 
 A sylvan shelter from the mid-day sun: 
 
 But nor in mid-day nor when decent eve 
 
 Gathers her purples have I rested there; 
 
 Eut when thro' crisp and fleecy clouds the moon 
 
 O'er the soft orient sheds a milder dawn. 
 
 Then tripping up the dewy lea, with step 
 
 Light as an antelope, a maiden came, 
 
 And all her radiance in my bosom laid; 
 
 And on this seat, while high among the leaves, 
 
 Rain murmured, and the glory of the moon 
 
 "Was dimmed, I whispered all my passion tale. 
 
 Ah me, ah me ! her silken hair downslid, 
 
 Her smooth comb dropt among the grass, and both 
 
 Stooped searching, and her burning cheek met mine : 
 
 And starting sudden upward, with her face 
 
 Eosed to the beating temples, meek she gazed, 
 
 Half sad, and the blue languish of her eyes 
 
 Drooped tearful. And in madness and delight, 
 
 I with my left arm zoned her little waist, 
 
WITHO UT NAMES. 133 
 
 And with my right hand smoothed the silken hair 
 
 From her fair brow, snow-cold; and, by the doves 
 
 That bill and coo in Yenus' pearly car! 
 
 There was a touch of lips. Then creeping close 
 
 Into my bosom like a little thing 
 
 That was confused, she cradled pantingly. 
 
 Thus, while the rain was murmuring overhead, 
 
 And the out-passioned moon thro' vaporous gloom 
 
 Dipt queenly, whispered I my perilous tale. 
 
 Ah me, ah me ! a tender answer came ; 
 
 For with her softling finger-tips she touched 
 
 My hand, warm laid upon her heart, and pressed 
 
 A meek approval with averted face. 
 
 poet maker, darling love, sweet love, 
 
 Awakener of manhood and the life 
 
 Of life ! Eut let me not like talking fool 
 
 Prate all thy virgin whiteness, all thy sweet 
 
 Deliciousness, for thou art living yet ! 
 
 And as the rose that opens to the sun 
 
134 POEMS NAMED AND 
 
 Its downy leaves, scents sweetest at the core, 
 So all thy loveliness is but the robe 
 That clothes a maiden chastity of soul. 
 
 hasten, hasten down your azure road, 
 And darken all the golden zones of heaven, 
 Bright Sun, for I am weary for my love. 
 
WITHOUT NAMES. 135 
 
 OWEET Muse and well-beloved, with my decline 
 
 Declining, like a rose crushed unawares, 
 
 Having tob early knowledge of decay, 
 
 Too subtle pleasure to behold the tree 
 
 Shed its thin foliage on the sluggish stream, 
 
 What a sweet subject for thy silver sounds! 
 
 for a quill pluck' d from the soaring wing 
 
 Of archangel, then dipt in holy dew, 
 
 To catch thy latest looks, thou loveliest 
 
 October, o'er the many-coloured woods! 
 
 October! vastlier disconsolate 
 
 Than Saturn guiding melancholy spheres, 
 
 ugh ante-mundane silence and ripe death. 
 
136 POEMS NAMED AND 
 
 Ere the last stack is housed, and woods are bare, 
 
 And the vermilion fruitage of the brier 
 
 Is soaked in mist, or shrivelled up with frost ; 
 
 Ere warm Spring nests are coldly to be seen 
 
 Tenantless, but for rain and the cold snow, 
 
 "While yet there is a loveliness abroad, 
 
 The frail and indescribable loveliness 
 
 Of a fair form Life with reluctance leaves, 
 
 Being there only powerful, while the earth 
 
 Wears sackcloth in her great prophetic grief: 
 
 Then the reflective melancholy soul, 
 Aimlessly wandering with slow falling foot 
 The heath'ry solitude, in hope to assuage 
 The cunning humour of his malady, 
 Loses his painful bitterness, and feels 
 His own specific sorrows one by one 
 Taken up in the huge dolour of all things. 
 
WITHO UT NAMES. 137 
 
 the sweet melancholy of the time 
 
 "When gently, ere the heart appeals, the year 
 
 Shines in the fatal beauty of decay! 
 
 When the sun sinks enlarged on Carronben, 
 
 Nakedly visible without a cloud, 
 
 And faintly from the faint eternal blue 
 
 (That dim, sweet harebell-colour) comes the star 
 
 Which evening wears ; when Luggie flows in mist, 
 
 And in the cottage windows, one by one, 
 
 With sudden twinkle household lamps are lit, 
 
 What noiseless falling of the faded leaf! 
 
 Sweet on a blossoming summer's afternoon, 
 When Fancy plays the wizard in the brain, 
 Idly to saunter thro' a lusty wood ! 
 
 But sweeter far by how much sweeter, God 
 i 
 
 Alone hath knowledge in a pensive mood, 
 Outstretched on green moss- velvet floss' d with 
 thyme, 
 
138 POEMS NAMED AND WITHOUT NAMES. 
 
 To watch the fall o' the leaf before the moon 
 
 Shines out in sweet completion circular. 
 
 For when the sunset hath withdrawn its gold 
 
 And tawny glimmering, like the surcease 
 
 Of rich, low melody, erst inaudible streams 
 
 Find voices in their still unwearied flow; 
 
 And winds that have been much about the moors 
 
 And mountains, have a deadly feel of cold, 
 
 Forespeaking clear blue dawns and frosty chill. 
 
MISCELLANEOUS SONNETS. 
 
MISCELLANEOUS SONNETS. 
 
 J^ LIME-TEEE broad of bough and rough of 
 
 trunk 
 
 Deepens a shadow, as the evening cool, 
 Over the Luggie gathering in deep pool 
 
 Contemplative, its waters summer-shrunk; 
 
 The Lammas floods have sucked away the mould 
 About its roots, and now in bare sunshine 
 Like knot of snakes they twine and inter-twine 
 
 Fantastic implication, fold in fold. 
 
 Secure in covert, 'neath the fringing fern 
 
 Lurks the bright-speckled trout, untroubled, save 
 
 When boyhood with a glorious unconcern 
 Eagerly plunges in the sleeping wave. 
 
 Here the much-musing poet might recapture 
 
 The inspiration flown, the vagrant rapture. 
 
142 MISCELLANEOUS SONNETS. 
 
 JfjZEKIEL, thus from the Lord God. Behold, 
 Mount Seir, I am against thee! Desolate, 
 Most desolate thy cloudy and dark fate. 
 
 Between the lips of talkers had and hold, 
 
 Thy towns forsaken, and thy rivers rolled 
 Thro' silent wastes, are taken up, and great 
 The joy at thy high glories ruinate. 
 
 While all the earth is wanton, thou art cold, 
 For thy most cruel lifting of the spear 
 
 'Gainst Israel in her time of consternation. 
 
 Slain men shall fill thy mountains, mount Seir ! 
 
 Sith thou hast hlood pursued, fell tribulation 
 Shall curse thy blessings, mock'd and unde- 
 
 plored : 
 As I live,' thou shalt know I am the Lord ! 
 
MISCELLANEOUS SONNETS. 143 
 
 T ONG yearnings had my soul to gaze upon 
 
 Fair Italy with atmosphere of fire; 
 On tawny Spain; on th' immemorial land 
 Where Time has dallied with the Parthenon 
 
 In beautiful affection and desire. 
 But when last even, effluently bland, 
 
 I saw sweet Luggie wind her amber waters 
 Thro' lawns of dew and glens of glimmering green, 
 
 And saw the comeliness of Scotland's daughters, 
 Their speaking eyes and modest mountain mien, 
 
 I blest the Godhead over all presiding, 
 Who placed me here, removed from human strife, 
 
 Where Luggie, in her clear unwearied gliding, 
 Is but the image of my inner life. 
 
144 MISCELLANEOUS SONNETS. 
 
 QWEET Mavis! at this cool delicious hour 
 
 Of gloaming, when a pensive quietness 
 Hushes the odorous air, with what a power 
 
 Of impulse unsubdued, thou dost express 
 Thyself a spirit ! "While the silver dew 
 
 Holy as manna on the meadow falls, 
 Thy song's impassioned clarity, trembling through 
 
 This omnipresent stillness, disenthrals 
 The soul to adoration. First I heard 
 
 A low thick lubric gurgle, soft as love, 
 Yet sad as memory, thro' the silence poured 
 Like starlight. But the mood intenser grows, 
 
 Precipitate rapture quickens, move on move 
 Lucidly linked together, till the close. 
 
MISCELLANEOUS SONNETS. 145 
 
 C\ DEEP unlovely brooklet, moaning slow 
 
 Thro' moorish fen in utter loneliness! 
 The partridge cowers beside thy loamy flow 
 
 In pulseful tremor, when with sudden press 
 The huntsman fluskers thro' the rustled heather. 
 
 In March thy sallow-buds from vermeil shells 
 Break satin-tinted, downy as the feather 
 
 Of moss-chat that among the purplish bells 
 Breasts into fresh new life her three unborn. * 
 
 The plover hovers o'er thee, uttering clear 
 And mournful strange, his human cry forlorn : 
 
 While wearily, alone, and void of cheer 
 Thou guid'st thy nameless waters from the fen, 
 To sleep unsunned in an untrampled glen. 
 
146 MISCELLANEOUS SONNETS. 
 
 what a calm serenity she smooths 
 
 Her way thro 7 cloudless jasper sown with stars ! 
 Chaster than virtue, sweeter than the truths 
 
 Of maidenhood, in Spenser's knightly wars. 
 For what is all Belphoebe's golden hair, 
 
 The chastity of Britomart, the love 
 Of Florimel so faithful and so fair, 
 
 To thee, thou "Wonder! And yet far above 
 Thy inoffensive beauty must I hold 
 
 Dear Una, sighing for the Bed-cross Knight 
 Thro' all her losses, crosses manifold. 
 
 And when the lordly lion fell in fight, 
 "Who, who can paragon her tearful woe? 
 Not thou, not thou, Moon ! didst ever passion so. 
 
MISCELLANEOUS SONNETS. 147 
 
 Q PBECIOUS Morphia! I sanctify 
 
 The soothing power that in a painless swoon 
 Laps my weak limbs, giving me strength to lie, 
 
 Till sacred dawn increases until noon: 
 Then when, from his meridional height, 
 
 The sun devolves, and cooling breezes wake, 
 It is a comfort and divine delight 
 
 The weary bed exhausted to forsake, 
 And bathe my temples in the blessed air. 
 
 But when day wanes and the wind-moaning night 
 Deepens to darkness, then thy virtue rare, 
 
 dream-creative liquid ! brings delight, 
 Thy silver drops diffusive, kindly steep 
 The senses in the golden juice of sleep. 
 
148 MISCELLANEOUS SONNETS. 
 
 , light-foot Lady! from thy vaporous hall, 
 
 And, with a silver-swim into the air, 
 Shine down the starry cressets one and all 
 
 From Pleiades to golden Jupiter ! 
 I see a growing tip of silver peep 
 
 Above the full-fed cloud, and lo ! with motion 
 Of queenly stateliness, and smooth as sleep, 
 
 She glides into the blue for my devotion. 
 
 sovran Beauty ! standing here alone 
 Under the insufferable infinite, 
 
 1 worship with dazed eyes and feeble moan 
 Thy lucid persecution of delight. 
 
 Come, cloudy dimness ! Dip, fair dream, again ! 
 God! I cannot gaze, for utter pain. 
 
MISCELLANEOUS SONNETS. 149 
 
 A SACRED land, to common men unknown, 
 
 A land of bowery glades and greenwoods hoary, 
 Still waters where white stars reflected shone, 
 
 And ancient castles in their ivied glory. 
 Fair knights caparison' d in golden mail, 
 
 And maidens whose enchantment was their beauty, 
 Met but to whisper each the passion-tale, 
 
 For love was all their pleasure and their duty. 
 Here cedar bark, as with a moving will, 
 
 Floated thro' liquid silver all untended; 
 Here wrong and baseness ever came to ill, 
 
 And virtue with delight was sweetly blended. 
 This land, dear Spenser! was thy fair creation, 
 Made thro' fine glamour of imagination. 
 
150 MISCELLANEOUS SONNETS. 
 
 T)ACTOLTJS singeth over golden sand; 
 
 Seamander, old and blood-empurpled river, 
 Rolls yet her divine waters; Castaly 
 
 Flows lucid in the light of ancient song; 
 Whilst thou, sweet Luggie! fairest of this land, 
 
 And fair as any of that famous throng, 
 In pastoral, still loveliness, must he 
 
 Bald as a marshy brooklet nameless ever! 
 Nay, by the spirit of beauty and dear pleasure, 
 
 Sure I shall sing thee as my first delight, 
 Nurse of my soul, companion of my leisure ! 
 
 And if in aftertime thy waters roll 
 More worthily, more spiritually bright, 
 
 It will be sunshine to my perfect soul. 
 
MISCELLANEOUS SONNETS. 151 
 
 C\ FOB the days of sweet Mythology, 
 
 "When dripping Naiads taught their streams to 
 
 glide ! 
 "When, 'mid the greenery, one would ofttimes spy 
 
 An Oread tripping with her face aside. 
 The dismal realms of Dis by Virgil sung. 
 
 "Whose shade led Dante, in his virtue bold, 
 All the sad grief and agony among, 
 
 O'er Acheron, that mournful river old, 
 Ev'n to the Stygian tide of purple gloom ! 
 
 Pan in the forest making melody! 
 And far away where hoariest billows boom, 
 
 Old Neptune's steeds with snorting nostrils high ! 
 These were the ancient days of sunny song; 
 Their memory yet how dear to the poetic throng ! 
 
 THE END. 
 
FEINTED BY JONATHAN PALMER, CAMBRIDGK. 
 
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