And thou who, mindful of the unhonour'd dead, Hark! how the sacred calm that breathes around No more, with reason and thyself at strife, Again, after completing his new version (these stanzas omitted), he struck out the stanza in parenthesis, before the Epitaph; altering also the firstwritten names of Gracchus, Tully, and Cæsar, to Hampden, Milton, and Cromwell, as they now stand-the Cromwell certainly not according so closely with the utterance of the line. The occasion of the Bard is the massacre of the Welsh Bards by Edward the first. Berkley's roofs-Berkley Castle, where Edward the second was murdered, his wife consenting; the mighty victor is Edward the third; the sable warrior-the Black Prince, who died before his father; Thirst and Famine refer to Richard the second, starved to death; the bristled boar is Richard the third; and the form divine is Elizabeth, of Welsh descent. COLLINS: a poet of genius; but his life aimless and closing in insanity. His works Oriental Eclogues and Odes descriptive and allegorical. AKENSIDE: a physician. His best-known poem, the Pleasures of Imagination, was published in 1744. His miscellanies were collected in 1772. Bourbon's might, Braganza's treasure-the power of France and Indian wealth of Portugal. JEAN ELLIOT: daughter of Sir Gilbert Elliot, of Minto House, Teviotdale, where she was born. The Flowers o' the Forest (the Forest being the name of a large Border district, on the Scottish side) is also called the Lament for Flodden, for the defeat of James the fourth at Flodden Field. Lilting-carolling ; yowe-milking—ewe-milking ; ilka—each; loaninga lane; wede-weeded; scorning-rallying, chaffing; dowie-dreary ; daffin-joking; gabbin'-chatting; luglen-milking-pail; shearing-reaping; bandsters-sheaf-binders; lyart and runkled—grizzled and wrinkled ; fleeching-coaxing; gloaming-twilight; swankies-lithe, active lads; bogle-ghost; dule-grief. COWPER: author of John Gilpin. His most important poem is The Task, in six books. Of other sustained works the chief are his TableTalk and Tirocinium, or a Review of Schools. He wrote also Olney Hymns; and translated the Iliad and Odyssey of Homer. The lines on the loss of the Royal George tell their own story. It happened in Portsmouth harbour, in 1782. Mary was his most faithfully attached friend, Mrs. Unwin, the cheerer of long years clouded by religious melancholy. BRUCE, of Scottish birth, in youth a shepherd, died of consumption while studying for the Secession Church. His trusted friend and literary executor, the Rev. John Logan, published the lines To the Cuckoo as his own, omitting one stanza (the seventh) which identifies it with Bruce. Dr. Grosart, in his edition of Bruce's few poems, 1865, conclusively proves both Logan's theft and Bruce's authorship. SIR WILLIAM JONES is scarcely to be counted as a poet even for these high-toned lines. Trench gives The fiend Dissension: which seems to make sense; but in the copy printed by the "Society for Constitutional Information," about 1780-2, the Ode apparently written for them, it is The fiend Discretion. CHATTERTON: the" marvellous boy," who astonished and puzzled the literary world with his Poems of Rowley: forgeries, purporting to have been written in the 14th and 15th centuries. The Rev. Walter W. Skeat has completely overthrown the supposition of there being any early English foundation for these poems. He shows the metres to be wrong, the words wrongly syllabled, the phrases involving anachronisms. Nothing but patience is required to unravel every riddle which the Rowley poems present." Their sole claim to attention is as the remarkable work of a precociously clever boy. The Roundelay (from Ella, "a Tragycal Enterlude or Discoorseynge Tragedie wrotenn by Thomas Rowleye") and a Ballad of Charity (of his latest writing) give fair indication of what he might have done had he lived. Barely eighteen when, despairing of life, he poisoned himself. As he "coined a language," so he made his own glossary for words not otherwise to be explained. Cryne is hair; rode-complexion ; dentefasten; gre-grow; Ouphante-Elfin. BLAKE: engraver, painter, poet; who wrote, printed, and published his poems, with his own designs, his own engraving, and his own colouring. Very beautiful some of these, young and simply natural, giving promise, as with Chatterton, of a rich maturity; but excess of imagination, verging on insanity, rendered his longer and later works incoherent and unintelligible. His shorter lyrics, his best, yet not always clear, are in the Songs of Innocence, 1787, and Songs of Experience, 1794. Jerusalem and Milton, "written against his will," soon after 1800, was the latest of his longer poetic utterances. After that he devoted himself mainly to Art. BURNS. Hallow-een, the Cotter's Saturday Night, "and other poems,' appeared in 1786; Tam O'Shanter in 1793. No need to comment on Songs which have gained a world-wide popularity, which close our four centuries of Verse with a music ever fresh and young as that of Chaucer in his youngest days. Very many of Burns' songs, altered or built up from old fragments, were contributed by him to Johnson's Scots' Musical Museum; and others afterward to Thomson's collection of Original Scottish Airs. Wad-would; bide the stoure-bear the storm; yestreen-yester-even; braw-smart; sleekit-creeping; brattle-stir; pattle-a stick to clear the plough of earth; daimen icker--an odd ear of corn; thrave-a number of sheaves; the lave-the remainder; big-build; foggage-moss; snellbitter; but house or hauld-out of house or hold; thole-endure; cranreuch-frost; no thy lane--not alone; agiey-awry; stoure-here meaning the ploughed-up ground; bield-shelter; histie-barren ; ilka—every ; airts-quarters; row-roll; shaw-a copse, a wood; knowes-knolls, hills; aboon-above; scaith-injure; tent-guard; steer--molest; staw-stole ; fou-full of drink, merry; coost-toss'd; asklent-askance; unco sleighvery proudly; gart-made; abeigh-by; fleech'd-coax'd; grat, etc.. wept till his eyes were blear'd and blind; louping-leaping; linn-waterfall; smoor'd-smother'd; crouse and canty-brisk and jolly; snool-snub; bluntie—stupid ; gleib—patch, morsel; clout—snatch; kith—friends, not relations; spier-ask; coof-fool, a word of contempt; loof-the open hand, the inside; warily tent-be on the look out; back-yett-back-gate; a-jee-ajar; syne-then; lightly-make light of; gowd-gold; hoddin grey-undyed wool; birkie-fellow; the gree-the triumph, or prize of victory. NAIRN. Burns' countrywoman, Lady Nairn, may appropriately complete our volume, with a song worthy of Burns himself, and for a long while attributed to him as his death-singing. It was supposed to be addressed to his wife Jean, and so printed; but it has been claimed by and for Lady Nairn, who wrote during the latter part of the century a number of songs: Caller Herrings, the Laird o' Cockpen, and many more, keeping her name secret. The Land o' the Leal was written in 1798. Four lines, not helping the song, were added by her many years later; and of four other lines (says the Rev. Charles Rogers, who edited her poems in 1869) it is doubtful whether they be not "an interpolation by another hand." The words are here given as Lady Nairn first wrote them. INDEX OF FIRST LINES. PAGE Ae fond kiss, and then we sever! Alas! have I not pain enough, my friend!.. All ye woods and trees and bowers! 295 59 136 Beauty, sweet Love! is like the morning dew 80 Because I breathe not love to every one 60 246 105 Buzz! quoth the Blue-Fly... 129 Call for the robin red-breast and the wren.... Calm was the day, and through the trembling air.. Choose me your Valentine! 131 28 79 114 255 178 |