Thomas Humphry Ward, ed. The English Poets. 1880–1918.rnVol. III. The Eighteenth Century: Addison to Blake
William Collins (1721–1759)An Ode on the Popular Superstitions of the Highlands of Scotland
Have seen thee lingering with a fond delay
’Mid those soft friends, whose hearts, some future day,
Shall melt, perhaps, to hear thy tragic song.
Go, not unmindful of that cordial youth
Whom, long endeared, thou leav’st by Lavant’s side;
Together let us wish him lasting truth,
And joy untainted with his destined bride.
Go! nor regardless, while these numbers boast
My short-lived bliss, forget my social name;
But think far off how, on the southern coast,
I met thy friendship with an equal flame!
Fresh to that soil thou turn’st, whose every vale
Shall prompt the poet, and his song demand:
To thee thy copious subjects ne’er shall fail;
Thou need’st but take thy pencil to thy hand,
And paint what all believe who own thy genial land.
’Tis Fancy’s land to which thou set’st thy feet;
Where still, ’tis said, the fairy people meet,
Beneath each birken shade, on mead or hill.
There, each trim lass that skims the milky store
To the swart tribes their creamy bowl allots;
By night they sip it round the cottage door,
While airy minstrels warble jocund notes.
There every herd, by sad experience, knows
How, winged with fate, their elf-shot arrows fly,
When the sick ewe her summer food forgoes,
Or, stretched on earth, the heart-smit heifers lie.
Such airy beings awe the untutored swain:
Nor thou, though learned, his homelier thoughts neglect;
Let thy sweet muse the rural faith sustain;
These are the themes of simple, sure effect,
That add new conquests to her boundless reign,
And fill, with double force, her heart-commanding strain.
Where to the pole the Boreal mountains run,
Taught by the father to his listening son
Strange lays, whose power had charmed a Spenser’s ear.
At every pause, before thy mind possest,
Old Runic bards shall seem to rise around,
With uncouth lyres, in many-coloured vest,
Their matted hair with boughs fantastic crowned:
Whether thou bid’st the well-taught hind repeat
The choral dirge that mourns some chieftain brave,
When every shrieking maid her bosom beat,
And strewed with choicest herbs his scented grave;
Or whether, sitting in the shepherd’s shiel,
Thou hear’st some sounding tale of war’s alarms;
When at the bugle’s call, with fire and steel,
The sturdy clans poured forth their bony swarms,
And hostile brothers met to prove each other’s arms.
In Sky’s lone isle, the gifted wizard seer,
Lodged in the wintry cave with [fate’s fell spear,]
Or in the depth of Uist’s dark forest dwells:
How they, whose sight such dreary dreams engross,
With their own vision oft astonished droop,
When, o’er the watery strath, or quaggy moss,
They see the gliding ghosts unbodied troop.
Or, if in sports, or on the festive green,
Their [piercing] glance some fated youth descry,
Who now, perhaps, in lusty vigour seen,
And rosy health, shall soon lamented die.
For them the viewless forms of air obey;
Their bidding heed, and at their beck repair:
They know what spirit brews the stormful day,
And heartless, oft like moody madness, stare
To see the phantom train their secret work prepare.
What though far off, from some dark dell espied,
His glimmering mazes cheer the excursive sight,
Yet turn, ye wanderers, turn your steps aside,
Nor trust the guidance of that faithless light;
For watchful, lurking, ’mid the unrustling reed,
At those mirk hours the wily monster lies,
And listens oft to hear the passing steed,
And frequent round him rolls his sullen eyes,
If chance his savage wrath may some weak wretch surprise.
Whom late bewildered in the dank, dark fen,
Far from his flocks and smoking hamlet then!
To that sad spot [his wayward fate shall lead:]
On him, enraged, the fiend in angry mood,
Shall never look with pity’s kind concern,
But instant, furious, raise the whelming flood
O’er its drowned banks, forbidding all return.
Or, if he meditate his wished escape,
To some dim hill, that seems uprising near,
To his faint eye the grim and grisly shape,
In all its terrors clad, shall wild appear.
Meantime the watery surge shall round him rise,
Poured sudden forth from every swelling source.
What now remains but tears and hopeless sighs?
His fear-shook limbs have lost their youthly force,
And down the waves he floats, a pale and breathless corse.
Or wander forth to meet him on his way;
For him in vain at to-fall of the day,
His babes shall linger at the unclosing gate.
Ah, ne’er shall he return! Alone, if night
Her travelled limbs in broken slumbers steep,
With drooping willows drest, his mournful sprite
Shall visit sad, perchance, her silent sleep:
Then he, perhaps, with moist and watery hand,
Shall fondly seem to press her shuddering cheek,
And with his blue-swoln face before her stand,
And, shivering cold, these piteous accents speak:
‘Pursue, dear wife, thy daily toils pursue,
At dawn or dusk, industrious as before;
Nor e’er of me one helpless thought renew,
While I lie weltering on the osiered shore,
Drown’d by the kelpie’s wrath, nor e’er shall aid thee more!’
Thy muse may, like those feathery tribes which spring
From their rude rocks, extend her skirting wing
Round the moist marge of each cold Hebrid isle,
To that hoar pile, which still its ruin shows:
In whose small vaults a pigmy-folk is found,
Whose bones the delver with his spade upthrows,
And culls them, wondering, from the hallowed ground!
Or thither, where, beneath the showery west,
The mighty kings of three fair realms are laid;
Once foes, perhaps, together now they rest,
No slaves revere them, and no wars invade:
Yet frequent now, at midnight’s solemn hour,
The rifted mounds their yawning cells unfold,
And forth the monarchs stalk with sovereign power,
In pageant robes, and wreathed with sheeny gold,
And on their twilight tombs aerial council hold.
On whose bleak rocks, which brave the wasting tides,
Fair nature’s daughter, virtue, yet abides.
Go, just, as they, their blameless manners trace!
Then to my ear transmit some gentle song,
Of those whose lives are yet sincere and plain,
Their bounded walks the rugged cliffs along,
And all their prospect but the wintry main.
With sparing temperance, at the needful time,
They drain the sainted spring; or, hunger-prest,
Along the Atlantic rock undreading climb,
And of its eggs despoil the solan’s nest.
Thus blest in primal innocence, they live,
Sufficed and happy with that frugal fare
Which tasteful toil and hourly danger give.
Hard is their shallow soil, and bleak and bare;
Nor ever vernal bee was heard to murmur there!
Thy gentle mind, of fairer stores possest;
For not alone they touch the village breast,
But filled in elder time the historic page.
There Shakespeare’s self, with every garland crowned,
[Flew to those fairy climes his fancy sheen,]
In musing hour, his wayward sisters found,
And with their terrors drest the magic scene.
From them he sung, when ’mid his bold design,
Before the Scot afflicted and aghast,
The shadowy kings of Banquo’s fated line
Through the dark cave in gleamy pageant passed.
Proceed, nor quit the tales which, simply told,
Could once so well my answering bosom pierce;
Proceed, in forceful sounds, and colours bold,
The native legends of thy land rehearse;
To such adapt thy lyre and suit thy powerful verse.
From sober truth, are still to nature true,
And call forth fresh delight to fancy’s view,
The heroic muse employed her Tasso’s art!
How have I trembled, when, at Tancred’s stroke,
Its gushing blood the gaping cypress poured;
When each live plant with mortal accents spoke,
And the wild blast upheaved the vanished sword!
How have I sat, when piped the pensive wind,
To hear his harp by British Fairfax strung;
Prevailing poet! whose undoubting mind
Believed the magic wonders which he sung!
Hence, at each sound, imagination glows;
[Hence, at each picture, vivid life starts here!]
Hence his warm lay with softest sweetness flows;
Melting it flows, pure, numerous, strong, and clear,
And fills the impassioned heart, and wins the harmonious ear!
Ye [spacious] friths and lakes, which, far away,
Are by smooth Annan filled or pastoral Tay,
Or Don’s romantic springs, at distance hail!
The time shall come when I, perhaps, may tread
Your lowly glens, o’erhung with spreading broom;
Or, o’er your stretching heaths, by fancy led;
[Or o’er your mountains creep, in awful gloom!]
Then will I dress once more the faded bower,
Where Jonson sat in Drummond’s [classic] shade;
Or crop, from Tiviotdale, each [lyric flower,]
And mourn, on Yarrow’s banks, [where Willy’s laid!]
Meantime, ye powers that on the plains which bore
The cordial youth, on Lothian’s plains, attend!—
Where’er he dwell, on hill, or lowly moor,
To him I lose, your kind protection lend,
And, touched with love like mine, preserve my absent friend!