Page images
PDF
EPUB

His severe literary toils were not intermitted even amid the heavy financial disasters which overtook him in connection' with the failure of his publishers; but with heroic determination he persevered in the noble purpose of discharging these obligations. Having accomplished the herculean task, his physical strength began to fail; and after a tour to Italy, he returned to Abbotsford, totally exhausted. When he arrived there, his dogs came about his knees, and he sobbed over them till he was reduced to a state of stupefaction. After lingering for two months, his mind became more clear, when he would ask to be placed at his desk, but the fingers refused to grasp the pen, and he sunk back, weeping. On the 21st of September, 1832, Sir Walter breathed his last.

Not long before he died, he said: "I have been, perhaps, the most voluminous author of the day, and it is a comfort to me to think that I have tried to unsettle no man's faith, to corrupt no man's principles, and that I have written nothing which, on my death-bed, I should wish blotted."

Melrose he has consecrated by his genius, Abbotsford by his living presence, and Dryburgh is made sacred by his sleeping dust while Nature herself may be said, in his own beautiful lines, to do homage to the memory of his muse :—

Call it not vain; they do not err,

Who say that when the poet dies,
Mute Nature mourns her worshipper,
And celebrates his obsequies:
Who say,-tall cliff and cavern lone,
For the departed bard make moan:
That mountains weep in crystal rill,-
That flowers in tears of balm distil,—
Through his loved groves that breezes sigh,
And oaks in deeper groan reply;

And rivers teach the rushing wave
To murmur dirges round his grave.

[graphic][merged small]

Allen-a-Dale has no fagot for burning,
Allen-a-Dale has no furrow for turning,
Allen-a-Dale has no fleece for the spinning,
Yet Allen-a-Dale has red gold for the winning.
Come, read me my riddle; come, hearken my tale!
And tell me the craft of bold Allen-a-Dale.

The Baron of Ravensworth prances in pride,
And he views his domains upon Arkindale side.
The mere for his net, and the land for his game,
The chase for the wild, and the park for the tame;
Yet the fish of the lake, and the deer of the vale,
Are less free to Lord Dacre than Allen-a-Dale.

Allen-a-Dale was ne'er belted a knight,

Though his spur be as sharp, and his blade be as bright;
Allen-a-Dale is no baron or lord,

Yet twenty tall yeomen will draw at his word;

And the best of our nobles his bonnet will vail,

Who at Rere-cross on Stanmore meets Allen-a-Dale.

Allen-a-Dale to his wooing is come;

The mother, she asked of his household and home:
"Though the Castle of Richmond stands fair on the hill,
My hall," quoth bold Allen, "shows gallanter still;
'Tis the blue vault of heaven, with its crescent so pale,
And with all its bright spangles," said Allen-a-Dale.

The father was steel, and the mother was stone;
They lifted the latch, and they bade him begone;
But loud, on the morrow,
their wail and their cry!

He had laughed on the lass with his bonnie black eye,

And she fled to the forest to hear a love-tale,

And the youth it was told by was—Allen-a-Dale!

Let us now note the interview of the Last Minstrel with the Duchess :

He passed where Newark's stately tower
Looks out from Yarrow's birchen bower:

The Minstrel gazed with wistful eye-
No humbler resting-place was nigh.

With hesitating step at last

The embattled portal-arch he passed,
Whose pond'rous grate and massy bar
Had oft rolled back the tide of war,
But never closed the iron door
Against the desolate and poor.

The Duchess marked his weary pace,
His timid mien, and reverend face,
And bade her page the menials tell,
That they should tend the old man well:
For she had known adversity,

Though born in such a high degree ;—
In pride of power, in beauty's bloom,
Had wept o'er Monmouth's bloody tomb!

[blocks in formation]

He had played it to King Charles the Good,
When he kept court in Holyrood;

And much he wished, yet feared to try
The long-forgotten melody.

Hear his tribute to the Worth of Woman :—

O woman! in our hours of ease,
Uncertain, coy, and hard to please,
And variable as the shade

By the light quivering aspen made,
When pain and anguish wring the brow,
A ministering angel thou!

We all remember his fine lines on Patriotism :

Breathes there the man, with soul so dead,
Who never to himself hath said,

This is my own, my native land?

Whose heart hath ne'er within him burned,
As home his footsteps he hath turned,
From wandering on a foreign strand?
If such there be, go, mark him well;
For him no minstrel's raptures swell;
High though his titles-proud his name,
Boundless his wealth as wish can claim ;-
Despite those titles, power, and pelf,
The wretch, concentred all in self,
Living, shall forfeit fair renown,

And doubly dying, shall go down

To the vile dust from whence he sprung,

Unwept, unhonoured, and unsung.

Scattered through his prose writings, we occasionally meet with

« PreviousContinue »