List-frequent to the hurrying rout, 330 Reddened and thawed with flame and blood And, pressing on thy desperate way, The children of the Don. Thine ear no yell of horror cleft And now o'er thy devoted head 340 350 360 370 Here piled in common slaughter sleep 420 Those whom affection long shall weep: Here rests the sire that ne'er shall strain His orphans to his heart again; The son whom on his native shore The parent's voice shall bless no more; The bridegroom who has hardly pressed His blushing consort to his breast; The husband whom through many a year Long love and mutual faith endear. Thou canst not name one tender tie But here dissolved its relics lie! O, when thou see'st some mourner's veil Shroud her thin form and visage pale, Or mark'st the matron's bursting tears Stream when the stricken drum she hears, Or see'st how manlier grief suppressed Is laboring in a father's breast, With no inquiry vain pursue The cause, but think on Waterloo ! XXI 430 440 Period of honor as of woes, What bright careers 't was thine to close! 450 Marked on thy roll of blood what names To Briton's memory and to Fame's Laid there their last immortal claims ! Thou saw'st in seas of gore expire Redoubted PICTON's soul of fire Saw'st in the mingled carnage lie All that of PONSONBY could dieDE LANCEY change Love's bridal-wreath For laurels from the hand of DeathSaw'st gallant MILLER'S failing eye Still bent where Albion's banners fly, And CAMERON in the shock of steel Die like the offspring of Lochiel; And generous GORDON mid the strife Fall while he watched his leader's life. Ah! though her guardian angel's shield Fenced Britain's hero through the field, Fate not the less her power made known Through his friends' hearts to pierce his own! From your cold couch of swamp and clay, To fill before the sun was low The bed that morning cannot know.— 470 Oft may the tear the green sod steep, And sacred be the heroes' sleep Till time shall cease to run; And ne'er beside their noble grave May Briton pass and fail to crave A blessing on the fallen brave Who fought with Wellington! XXIII 480 Farewell, sad field! whose blighted face Wears desolation's withering trace; Long shall my memory retain Thy shattered huts and trampled grain, With every mark of martial wrong That scathe thy towers, fair Hougomont! Yet though thy garden's green arcade The marksman's fatal post was made, Though on thy shattered beeches fell The blended rage of shot and shell, Though from thy blackened portals torn Their fall thy blighted fruit-trees mourn, Has not such havoc bought a name Immortal in the rolls of fame? Yes Agincourt may be forgot, And Cressy be an unknown spot, And Blenheim's name be new; But still in story and in song, For many an age remembered long, Shall live the towers of Hougomont And Field of Waterloo. CONCLUSION 490 The fisher-skiff and barge that bears a Still wafting onward all to one dark silent port; In the Introduction to The Lord of the Isles, which he prefixed to the 1830 edition of his poems, Scott refers to the mystification which he practised on the public by the anonymous sue of The Bridal of Triermain, and the attempt to father it on Lord Kinedder. He then says: Upon another occasion I sent up another of these trifles, which, like schoolboys' position to The Bridal of Triermain, which was designed to belong rather to the Italian school. This new fugitive piece was called Harold the Dauntless; and I am still astonished at my having committed the gross error of selecting the very name which Lord Byron had made so famous. It encountered rather an odd fate. My ingenious friend, Mr. James Hogg, had kites, served to show how the wind of popular published, about the same time, a work called taste was setting. The manner was supposed to be that of a rude minstrel or Scald, in op The Poetic Mirror, containing imitations of the principal living poets. There was in it a very good imitation of my own style, which bore such a resemblance to Harold the Dauntless that there was no discovering the original from the imitation; and I believe that many who took the trouble of thinking upon the subject were rather of opinion that my ingenious friend was the true, and not the fictitious, Simon Pure. Since this period, which was in the year 1817, the Author has not been an intruder on the public by any poetical work of importance.' Harold the Dauntless was indeed the last poem of any length that Scott wrote. When it appeared, in January, 1817, Scott was deep in the multitudinous interests which swept him away from poetry, the enlargement of his domain, the writing of the Waverley Novels, contributions to the Annual Register and the various literary enterprises into which he was drawn by the Ballantynes. He kept Harold by him, after finishing the Bridal, some two years, making a plaything of it, something to take up, as Lockhart says, 'whenever the coach brought no proof-sheets to jog him as to serious matters; and poetry written under such conditions is hardly likely to repay the writer or to treat him otherwise than as a jealous mistress treats her lover. It was published simply as by the author of The Bridal of Triermain,' and no effort seems to have been made to turn aside attention to Erskine, Gillies, or any one else. Although Scott professed in one or two instances an interest in his work, it is pretty evident that it appealed but slightly to his mind, now so absorbed in larger ventures. 'I begin,' he wrote to Morritt, to get too old and stupid, I think, for poetry, and will certainly never again adventure on a grand scale;' and the next day he wrote to Lady Louisa Stuart: 'I thought once I should have made it something clever, but it turned vapid upon my imagination; and I finished it at last with hurry and impatience. Nobody knows, that has not tried the feverish trade of poetry, how much it depends upon mood and whim; I don't wonder, that in dismissing all the other deities of Paganism, the Muses should have been retained by common consent; for, in sober reality, writing good verses seems to depend upon something separate from the volition of the author.' HAROLD THE DAUNTLESS A POEM IN SIX CANTOS INTRODUCTION THERE is a mood of mind we all have known For who for sympathy may seek that cannot tell of pain? The jolly sportsman knows such drearihood Clouding that morn which threats the heath-cock's brood; Who hope the soft mild southern shower in vain; But more than all the discontented fair, Whom father stern and sterner aunt restrain From county-ball or race occurring rare, While all her friends around their vestments gay prepare. 10 20 The amateur's blotched pallet thou mayst claim, And much of trifling grave and much of buxom game. Then of the books to catch thy drowsy glance O, might my lay be ranked that happier list among! Each hath his refuge whom thy cares assail. And the romancer's tale becomes the reader's dream. 'Tis thus my malady I well may bear, Albeit outstretched, like Pope's own Paridel, And find to cheat the time a powerful spell In old romaunts of errantry that tell, Or Oriental tale of Afrite fell, Of Genii, Talisman, and broad-winged Roc, Though taste may blush and frown, and sober reason mock. Oft at such season too will rhymes unsought Than Ennui's yawning smile, what time she drops it down. |