Greer waved the laurel in each plume,

The badge of victory.

And old and young, and sire and son,
To meet them crowd the way,
With shouts and mirth and melody,
The debt of love to pay.

Full many a maid her true-love met,
And sobbed in his embrace,
And fluttering joy in tears and smiles
Arrayed full many a face.

Nor joy nor smile for Helen sad,
She sought the host in vain ;

For none could tell her William's fate,
If faithless or if slain.

The martial band is past and gone;
She rends her raven hair,

And in distraction's bitter mood
She weeps with wild despair.

'O, rise, my child,' her mother said, 'Nor sorrow thus in vain ;

A perjured lover's fleeting heart
No tears recall again.'

'O mother, what is gone is gone, What's lost forever lorn:

Death, death alone can comfort me ; O had I ne'er been born!

‘O, break, my heart, O, break at once!
Drink my life-blood, Despair!
No joy remains on earth for me,
For me in heaven no share.'

'O, enter not in judgment, Lord!'
The pious mother prays;
'Impute not guilt to thy frail child!
She knows not what she says.

'O, say thy pater-noster, child!
O, turn to God and grace!

His will, that turned thy bliss to bale, Can change thy bale to bliss.'

'O mother, mother, what is bliss ? O mother, what is bale ?

My William's love was heaven on earth, Without it earth is hell.

Why should I pray to ruthless Heaven, Since my loved William's slain?

I only prayed for William's sake, And all my prayers were vain.'

'O, take the sacrament, my child,
And check these tears that flow;
By resignation's humble prayer,
O, hallowed be thy woe!'

'No sacrament can quench this fire,
Or slake this scorching pain;

No sacrament can bid the dead
Arise and live again.

'O, break, my heart, O, break at once!
Be thou my god, Despair!

Heaven's heaviest blow has fallen on me, And vain each fruitless prayer.'

'O, enter not in judgment, Lord, With thy frail child of clay!

70

She knows not what her tongue has spoke ;
Impute it not, I pray !

Forbear, my child, this desperate woe,
And turn to God and grace ;
Well can devotion's heavenly glow
Convert thy bale to bliss.'

'O mother, mother, what is bliss? O mother, what is bale?

Without my William what were heaven, Or with him what were hell?'

Wild she arraigns the eternal doom, Upbraids each sacred power,

Till, spent, she sought her silent room, All in the lonely tower.

80

O'er moss and moor, and holt and hill,
His track the steady blood-hounds trace;
O'er moss and moor, unwearied still,

The furious Earl pursues the chase.

Full lowly did the herdsman fall:

'O spare, thou noble baron, spare These herds, a widow's little all;

These flocks, an orphan's fleecy care!' 100

Earnest the right-hand stranger pleads,
The left still cheering to the prey;
The Earl nor prayer nor pity heeds,

But furious keeps the onward way.

'Unmannered dog! To stop my sport Vain were thy cant and beggar whine, Though human spirits of thy sort

Were tenants of these carrion kine!'

He spurs his horse, he winds his horn,
'Hark forward, forward, holla, ho!'
But off, on whirlwind's pinions borne,
The stag, the hut, the hermit, go.

And horse and man, and horn and hound,
And clamor of the chase, was gone;
For hoofs and howls and bugle-sound,
A deadly silence reigned alone.

Wild gazed the affrighted Earl around;
He strove in vain to wake his horn,
In vain to call; for not a sound
Could from his anxious lips be borne.

He listens for his trusty hounds,

No distant baying reached his ears; His courser, rooted to the ground, The quickening spur unmindful bears. Still dark and darker frown the shades, Dark as the darkness of the grave; And not a sound the still invades,

Save what a distant torrent gave.

High o'er the sinner's humbled head

At length the solemn silence broke; And from a cloud of swarthy red

The awful voice of thunder spoke.

'Oppressor of creation fair!

Apostate Spirits' hardened tool! Scorner of God! Scourge of the poor! The measure of thy cup is full.

'Be chased forever through the wood, Forever roam the affrighted wild; And let thy fate instruct the proud,

God's meanest creature is His child."

150

Scott followed his translations from Bürger with other efforts in the same direction. The first book, indeed, which bore his name, was a prose rendering of Goethe's tragedy of Goetz von Berlichingen, published in 1799, and he translated near the same time, but did not publish till thirty years later, the House of Aspen, a free adaptation of Der Heilige Vehmé, by a pseudonymous German author of the day. The Germanic influence was curiously blended with an antiquarian zeal which had an early birth and now sent him eagerly abroad among Scottish legends and half-mythical tales for subjects. Moreover, he was drawn into the service of Monk Lewis, who persuaded him to contribute to his collection of Tales of Wonder, themselves touched with the prevailing temper of eeriness imported freely from Germany.

But the most substantial result of his labors in these experimental years was the publica

THE VIOLET

These slight verses have an interest derived from the fact that they were written by Scott in 1797 in connection with that suppressed passion for Williamina Stuart which never found direct expression to her, but remained deep in the poet's heart long after her mar

tion in 1802 and 1803 of the three volumes of Minstrelsy of The Scottish Border. Scott had now become so enamored of the native legends, so skilful as an imitator, and, much more, so informed with the spirit of the old ballads, that his own contributions harmonized with the antiquities he had gathered, and these showed in every line, as well as in the rich apparatus of notes with which they were illustrated, a mastery of the ballad literature, and a mind thoroughly at home in material which was soon to be the quarry for the author and editor's most noble edifices in verse.

The present group contains, in as nearly exact chronological order as is practicable, Scott's experiments and performances in original verse, with scattered translations and imitations, before he leaped into fame with The Lay of the Last Minstrel.

riage to Sir William Forbes, and Scott's to Miss Carpenter; so that thirty years later Scott could write in his Journal, just after waiting on Lady Jane Stuart, the aged mother of Williamina: 'I went to make another visit, and fairly softened myself like an old fool, with recalling old stories, till I was fit for nothing but shedding tears and repeating verses

for the whole night. This is sad work. The very grave gives up its dead, and time rolls back thirty years to add to my perplexities. I don't care. Yet what a romance to tell, and told I fear it will one day be. And then my three years of dreaming and my two years of wakening will be chronicled, doubtless. But the dead will feel no pain.' The story of this disappointment is told without names in the eighth chapter of Lockhart's Life, and has recently been repeated with greater explicitness by Miss Skene in The Century for July, 1899.

THE violet in her green-wood bower,

Where birchen boughs with hazels mingle,

May boast itself the fairest flower

In glen or copse or forest dingle.

Though fair her gems of azure hue,

Beneath the dewdrop's weight reclining; I've seen an eye of lovelier blue,

More sweet through watery lustre shin-
ing.

The summer sun that dew shall dry
Ere yet the day be past its morrow,
Nor longer in my false love's eye

Remained the tear of parting sorrow.

TO A LADY

WITH FLOWERS FROM A ROMAN WALL

*797

TAKE these flowers which, purple waving,
On the ruined rampart grew,
Where, the sons of freedom braving,
Rome's imperial standards flew.

Warriors from the breach of danger
Pluck no longer laurels there;
They but yield the passing stranger
Wild-flower wreaths for Beauty's hair.

THE ERL-KING

FROM THE GERMAN OF GOETHE

Scott, in sending this in a letter to a friend, makes the comment: 'The Erl-King is a goblin that haunts the Black Forest in Thuringia. To be read by a candle particularly long in the snuff.' The translation was made in 1797.