herself is lost in heaven, but thou art for ever the same, rejoicing in the brightness of thy course. When the world is dark with tempests, when thunder rolls and lightning flies, thou lookest in thy beauty from the clouds, and laughest at the storm. But to Ossian thou lookest in vain, for he beholds thy beams no more; whether thy yellow hair flows on the eastern clouds, or thou tremblest at the gates of the west. But thou art perhaps like me, for a season; thy years will have an end. Thou shalt sleep in thy clouds, careless of the voice of the morning. Exult, then, O sun, in the strength of thy youth! Age is dark and unlovely; it is like the glimmering light of the moon when it shines through broken clouds, and the mist is on the hills: the blast of the north is on the plain; the traveller shrinks in the midst of his journey. (From Carthon.) Desolation of Balclutha. I have seen the walls of Balclutha, but they were desolate. The fire had resounded in the halls; and the voice of the people is heard no more. The stream of Clutha was removed from its place by the fall of the walls. The thistle shook there its lonely head; the moss whistled to the wind. The fox looked out from the windows; the rank grass of the wall waved round its head. Desolate is the dwelling of Moina; silence is in the house of her fathers. Raise the song of mourning, O bards! over the land of strangers. They have but fallen before us; for one day we must fall. Why dost thou build the hall, son of the winged days? Thou lookest from thy towers to-day: yet a few years, and the blast of the desert comes; it howls in thy empty court, and whistles round thy half-worn shield. And let the blast of the desert come! we shall be renowned in our day! The mark of my arm shall be in battle; my name in the song of bards. Raise the song, send round the shell: let joy be heard in my hall. When thou, sun of heaven, shalt fail if thou shalt fail, thou mighty light! if thy brightness is but for a season, like Fingal, our fame shall survive thy beams. Such was the song of Fingal in the day of his joy. (From Carthon.) The Songs of Selma. Star of descending night! fair is thy light in the west ! thou that liftest thy unshorn head from thy cloud: thy steps are stately on thy hill. What dost thou behold in the plain? The stormy winds are laid. The murmur of the torrent comes from afar. Roaring waves climb the distant rock. The flies of evening are on their feeble wings; the hum of their course is on the field. What dost thou behold, fair light? But thou dost smile and depart. The waves come with joy around thee: they bathe thy lovely hair. Farewell, thou silent beam! Let the light of Ossian's soul arise! And it does arise in its strength! I behold my departed friends. Their gathering is on Lora, as in the days of other years. Fingal comes like a watery column of mist; his heroes are around: And see the bards of song, gray-haired Ullin! stately Ryno! Alpin with the tuneful voice! the soft complaint of Minona! How are ye changed, my friends, since the days of Selma's feast? when we contended, like gales of spring, as they fly along the hill, and bend by turns the feebly whistling rushed unfrequent from the hill. The souls of the heroes were sad when she raised the tuneful voice. Often had they seen the grave of Salgar, the dark dwelling of whitebosomed Colma. Colma left alone on the hill, with all her voice of song! Salgar promised to come: but the night descended around. Hear the voice of Colma, when she sat alone on the hill! Colma. It is night; I am alone, forlorn on the hill of storms. The wind is heard in the mountain. The torrent pours down the rock. No hut receives me from the rain; forlorn on the hill of winds! Rise, moon! from behind thy clouds. Stars of the night, arise! Lead me, some light, to the place where my love rests from the chase alone! his bow near him, unstrung his dogs panting around him. But here I must sit alone, by the rock of the mossy stream. The stream and the wind roar aloud. I hear not the voice of my love! Why delays my Salgar, why the chief of the hill his promise? Here is the rock, and here the tree! here is the roaring stream! Thou didst promise with night to be here. Ah! whither is my Salgar gone? With thee I would fly from my father; with thee from my brother of pride. Our race have long been foes; we are not foes, O Salgar! Cease a little while, O wind! stream, be thou silent a while! let my voice be heard around! Let my wanderer hear me ! Salgar, it is Colma who calls! Here is the tree and the rock. Salgar, my love! I am here. Why delayest thou thy coming? Lo! the calm moon comes forth. The flood is bright in the vale. The rocks are gray on the steep. I see him not on the brow. His dogs come not before him with tidings of his near approach. Here I must sit alone! Who lie on the heath beside me? Are they my love and my brother? Speak to me, O my friends! To Colma they give no reply. Speak to me: I am alone! My soul is tormented with fears! Ah! they are dead! Their swords are red from the fight. O my brother! my brother! why hast thou slain my Salgar? why, O Salgar! hast thou slain my brother? Dear were ye both to me! what shall I say in your praise? Thou wert fair in the hill among thousands! he was terrible in fight. Speak to me; hear my voice; hear me, sons of my love! are silent; silent for ever! Cold, cold are their breasts of clay! Oh! from the rock on the hill; from the top of the windy steep, speak, ye ghosts of the dead! speak, I will not be afraid! Whither are ye gone to rest? In what cave of the hill shall I find the departed? No feeble voice is on the gale: no answer half-drowned in the storm! They I sit in my grief! I wait for morning in my tears! Rear the tomb, ye friends of the dead. Close it not till Colma come. My life flies away like a dream: why should I stay behind? Here shall I rest with my friends by the stream of the sounding rock. When night comes on the hill, when the loud winds arise, my ghost shall stand in the blast, and mourn the death of my friends. The hunter shall hear from his booth; he shall fear, but love my voice! for sweet shall my voice be for my friends: pleasant were her friends to Colma ! Such was thy song, Minona, softly blushing daughter of Torman. Our tears descended for Colma, and our souls were sad! Ullin came with his harp; he gave the song of Alpin. The voice of Alpin was pleasant; the soul of Ryno was a beam of fire! But they had rested in a narrow house; their voice had ceased in Selma. Ullin had returned one day from the chase before the heroes fell. He heard their strife on the hill; their song was soft but sad! They mourned the fall of Morar, first of mortal men! His soul was like the soul of Fingal; his sword like the sword of Oscar. But he fell, and his father mourned; his sister's eyes were full of tears. Minona's eyes were full of tears, the sister of car-borne Morar. She retired from the song of Ullin, like the moon in the west, when she foresees the shower, and hides her fair head in a cloud. I touched the harp, with Ullin; the song of mourning rose! Ryno. The wind and the rain are past; calm is the noon of day. The clouds are divided in heaven. Over the green hills flies the inconstant sun. Red through the stony vale comes down the stream of the hill. Sweet are thy murmurs, O stream! but more sweet is the voice I hear. It is the voice of Alpin, the son of song, mourning for the dead! Bent is his head of age; red his tearful eye. Alpin, thou son of song, why alone on the silent hill? why complainest thou, as a blast in the wood; as a wave on the lonely shore? Alpin. My tears, O Ryno! are for the dead; my voice for those that have passed away. Tall thou art on the hill; fair among the sons of the vale. But thou shalt fall like Morar; the mourner shall sit on thy tomb. The hills shall know thee no more; thy bow shall lie in thy hall, unstrung! Thou wert swift, O Morar! as a roe on the desert; terrible as a meteor of fire. Thy wrath was as the storm. Thy sword in battle, as lightning in the field. Thy voice was a stream after rain; like thunder on distant hills. Many fell by thy arm; they were consumed in the flames of thy wrath. But when thou didst return from war, how peaceful was thy brow! Thy face was like the sun after rain; like the moon in the silence of night; calm as the breast of the lake when the loud wind is laid. Narrow is thy dwelling now; dark the place of thine abode! With three steps I compass thy grave, O thou who wast so great before! Four stones, with their heads of moss, are the only memorial of thee. A tree with scarce a leaf, long grass which whistles in the wind, mark to the hunter's eye the grave of the mighty Morar. Morar! thou art low indeed. Thou hast no mother to mourn thee; no maid with her tears of love. Dead is she that brought thee forth. Fallen is the daughter of Morglan. Who on his staff is this? who is this, whose head is white with age? whose eyes are red with tears? who quakes at every step? It is thy father, O Morar! the father of no son but thee. He heard of thy fame in war; he heard of foes dispersed; he heard of Morar's renown ; why did he not hear of his wound? Weep, thou father of Morar! weep; but thy son heareth thee not. Deep is the sleep of the dead; low their pillow of dust. No more shall he hear thy voice; no more awake at thy call. When shall it be morn in the grave, to bid the slumberer awake! Farewell, thou bravest of men! thou conqueror in the field! but the field shall see thee no more; nor the dark wood be lightened with the splendour of thy steel. Thou hast left no son. The song shall preserve thy name. Future times shall hear of thee; they shall hear of the fallen Morar! Such were the words of the bards in the days of song, when the king heard the music of harps, the tales of other times! The chiefs gathered from all their hills, and But heard the lovely sound. They praised the voice of Cona! the first among a thousand bards! But age is now on my tongue; my soul has failed! I hear at times the ghosts of bards, and learn their pleasant song. memory fails on my mind. I hear the call of years! They say, as they pass along, why does Ossian sing? Soon shall he lie in the narrow house, and no bard shall raise his fame! Roll on, ye dark-brown years; ye bring no joy on your course! Let the tomb open to Ossian, for his strength has failed. The sons of song are gone to rest. My voice remains, like a blast that roars, lonely on a sea-surrounded rock, after the winds are laid. The dark moss whistles there; the distant mariner sees the waving trees! See Brooke's Reliques of Gaelic Poetry (1789); Ossian (1807); Trans. of the Ossianic Soc. of Dublin (1854-61); Popular Tales of the West Highlands (1860-62); Dean of Lismore's Book (1862); Clerk's Ossian (1870); Hately Waddell's Ossian and the Clyde (1875); Leabhar na Féinne (1872); Folk and Hero Tales from Argyllshire (1890); Windisch, Irische Texte (1880); Ztschr. fur deutsches Alt., vol. liii.; the Life and Letters of Macpherson, by Mr Bailey Saunders (1894); Dr Douglas Hyde's Story of Early Irish Literature (1895); the centenary edition of Ossian (1896); Ossian in Germany, by Rudolf Tombo (New York, 1901) Other 'Ossianic poems were published by Dr Smith of Campbeltowa in 1780 in Gaelic; and in English in 1787 by Baron Edmund de Harold, an Irishman in the service of the Elector Palatine. French, Italian, Spanish, Latin, Polish, Dutch, and several German versions of Macpherson's Ossian are extant. Goethe gives a fine rendering of Selma's songs in Werther. A controversy somewhat resembling that circling round Macpherson has arisen over the Kalevala, the Finnish epic rescued by Lönnrot (1835-49), and, as some think, much cooked and expanded by him. Thomas Percy, born, a grocer's son, at Bridgnorth, 13th April 1729, in 1746 entered Christ Church, Oxford, and in 1753 became vicar of Easton Maudit, Northamptonshire, in 1756 also rector of Wilby. Till after his institution at Easton Maudit (when he began to try to count kin with the noble house) he spelt his name Piercy. His leisure yielded fruit in Hau Kiou Chooann (1761), a Chinese novel translated from the Portuguese, and Miscellaneous Pieces relating to the Chinese (1762), as well as anonymously in Runic Poetry translated from Icelandic (1763), prompted by the success of Macpherson, and A New Translation of the Song of Solomon (1764). In 1765 Percy published his Reliques of Ancient English Poetry, in which many rare old songs and ballads were mingled with lyrics from dramas, court poetry like that of Lord Vaux, and doggerel like Warner's. He had long been collecting old ballads from every quarter, and a large folio manuscript had fallen into his hands, being found lying dirty on the Floor under a Bureau in the Parlour' of his friend Humphrey Pitt of Shiffnal, and 'being used by the maids to light the fire.' This he claimed as the original of the Reliques, but of the one hundred and seventysix pieces in the first edition only forty-five were taken from the manuscript, and these were so touched up and tricked out in false ornament and conventional eighteenth-century poetic diction as often to bear but little likeness to their originals. Shenstone seems to have made the suggestion that Percy should publish the collection; and in gathering materials Percy had help from Thomas Warton, Garrick, Goldsmith, and others. The original folio manuscript was first printed in full by Furnivall and Hales (3 vols. 1867-68). Percy was himself a poet. 'O Nancy, wilt thou go with me?' (1758) was addressed to his first wife before their marriage in 1759, and was followed by his 'Hermit of Warkworth' (1771) and other detached pieces. Made chaplain to the Duke of Northumberland and to George III., Percy in 1769 published his translation of Paul Henri Mallet's Northern Antiquities, in 1778 became Dean of Carlisle, in 1782 Bishop of Dromore, and died 30th September 1811. He enjoyed the friendship of Johnson and Goldsmith, and lived long enough to hail the genius of Scott. The influence of Percy's collection was great and wide; it may be traced in many contemporary authors as plainly as in Coleridge and Wordsworth; this more than Ossian or the spirit of Hebrew poetry gave impulse to Herder and the German romantic movement, as well as to the genius of Sir Walter Scott. A fresh fountain of poetry was opened up a spring of sweet, tender, and heroic thoughts and imaginations, which could never be again turned back into the artificial channels in which the genius of poesy had been too long and too closely confined. It is interesting to remember that this great European literary revolution did undoubtedly come partly from Percy's studies in popular Chinese literature. 'O Nancy, wilt thou go with me?' was, in Johnson's Musical Museum, printed as a Scottish production, and is probably best known in the Scottified form. 'It is too barefaced,' says Burns, 'to take Dr Percy's charming song, and, by means of transposing a few English words into Scots, to offer to pass it for a Scots song.' Mr Chappell had no doubt that Percy wrote (in 1771) Nancy (as above = Agnes), and that Tom Carter, the Irish musician who composed the tune to which the song is sung, took the liberty (disapproved by Percy) of altering it to Nanny (= Anne). Who changed go to gang, town and gown into toon and goon, and made the other adaptations to the modern Scotch spellings does not seem to be known. On the other hand, it should be remembered that Percy's 'ballad' is little more than a paraphrase of 'The Royal Nun' (1682), repeated with slight variations in Nat Lee's Theodosius (1697). And in one of the songs in Allan Ramsay's Tea-table Miscellany (1733) we have O Katy! wiltu gang wi' me And leave the dinsome town awhile? O Nancy, wilt thou go with me? O Nancy, wilt thou go with me, Nor sigh to leave the flaunting town? Can silent glens have charms for thee, The lowly cot and russet gown? 'Now Christ thee save, thou reverend friar ! I pray thee tell to me, If ever at yon holy shrine My true love thou didst see.' 'And how should I know your true love From many another one?' 'Oh! by his cockle hat and staff, And by his sandal shoon : 'But chiefly by his face and mien, That were so fair to view, His flaxen locks that sweetly curled, And eyne of lovely blue.' "O lady, he is dead and gone! And at his heels a stone. And 'plaining of her pride. And art thou dead, thou gentle youth- 'O weep not, lady, weep not so, Let not vain sorrow rive thy heart, 'O do not, do not, holy friar, My sorrow now reprove; And now, alas! for thy sad loss For thee I wish to die.' Weep no more, lady, weep no more; For violets plucked, the sweetest showers I pray thee say not so; For since my true love died for me, 'Tis meet my tears should flow. 'And will he ne'er come again— Will he ne'er come again? Ah, no! he is dead, and laid in his grave, "His cheek was redder than the rose- 'Sigh no more, lady, sigh no more, 'Hadst thou been fond, he had been false, And left thee sad and heavy; For young men ever were fickle found, 'Now say not so, thou holy friar, I pray thee say not so; My love he had the truest heart O he was ever true! 'And art thou dead, thou much-loved youth? And didst thou die for me? Then farewell home; for evermore A pilgrim I will be. 'But first upon my true-love's grave My weary limbs I'll lay, And thrice I'll kiss the green grass turf That wraps his breathless clay.' 'Yet stay, fair lady, rest a while Beneath this cloister wall; The cold wind through the hawthorn blows, 'O stay me not, thou holy friar, 'Yet stay, fair lady, turn again, 'Here, forced by grief and hopeless love, And here, amid these lonely walls, To end my days I thought. 'But haply, for my year of grace Might I still hope to win thy love, 'Now farewell grief, and welcome joy Once more unto my heart; For since I've found thee, lovely youth, We never more will part.' Percy's ballad resembles Goldsmith's Edwin and Angelina, and Goldsmith had the priority. The seventeenth stanza is borrowed, of course, from Shakespeare's Much ado about Nothing, Act iii. See the Percy Ballads and Romances, edited by Furnivall and Hales, with Life by Pickford (1867–68); H. B. Wheatley's edition of the Reliques (1876-77); Kiebitz, The Influence of Percy on English Poetry (Bautzen, 1894). Joseph and Thomas Warton both contributed to the reaction against Popian correctness in favour of a truer and deeper conception of poetic worth. The brothers, Joseph and Thomas, were the sons of Dr Thomas Warton of Magdalen College, Oxford, and vicar of Basingstoke, who was twice (1718 and 1723) chosen Professor of Poetry by his university, and wrote occasional verses, half scholastic and half sentimental. In view of his sons' life-work, it is worth noting that some of his poems are called 'runic odes.' After retiring from the Oxford professorship (for which he had but slender competence) he settled at Basingstoke, where he was also master of the grammar-school and had Gilbert White for a pupil. A so-called sonnet by the elder Warton shows that he himself still belonged to the older school. Written after seeing Windsor Castle. From beauteous Windsor's high and storied halls, Sips the warm fragrance of the greenhouse bowers, The Jacobitical poetry- professor and clerical pluralist died in 1745, aged fifty-eight. His sons had much in common, but it was the second who made the deepest mark on our literature. Joseph (1722-1800), the elder, attended his father's school, and at Winchester was the schoolfellow of Collins. He was afterwards a commoner of Oriel College, Oxford, and was successively rector of Winslade, Thorley, Easton, and Upham. In 1755 he was appointed second master of Winchester; from 1766 till 1793 he was head-master; and he was a prebendary of St Paul's and of Winchester. His collections of odes and poems (1744 and 1746) explicitly avowed revolutionary dissent from the critical canons of the dominant school of Pope. An edition of Virgil (1753), with translation of the Eclogues and Georgies, gained him a high reputation. He was much esteemed by Dr Johnson, at whose request he became a contributor to the Adventurer, and, like his brother Thomas, was one of the members of the famous Literary Club. In 1757 appeared the first volume of his Essay on the Writings and Genius of Pope, the second and concluding volume following only in 1782; the distinction drawn between the poetry of reason and the poetry of imagination, and the enthronement of romanticism in the place of correctness, marked an important era in English criticism; Spenser and the Elizabethans had more of the spirit of poetry than Pope. theories were substantially sound, but his own poetry, artificial rather than truly spontaneous, illustrated them somewhat imperfectly. His latest works were an annotated edition of Pope (9 vols. 1797) and a similar edition of Dryden, of which at his death he had published two volumes. His From the Ode to Fancy. O parent of each lovely muse! An all-commanding magic wand, Ne'er echoing with the woodman's stroke, When young-eyed Spring profusely throws Thy solemn whispers, Fancy, hear! The second son, Thomas Warton (1728-90), began his studies under his father, and at sixteen was entered of Trinity College. He began early to write verses, and his Pleasures of Melancholy, published when he was nineteen, gave a promise of excellence which his riper productions |