O bonny Kilmeny! free frae stain,
If ever you seek the world again,

That world of sin, of sorrow, and fear,
O tell of the joys that are waiting here.'
They lifted Kilmeny, they led her away,
And she walk'd in the light of a sunless day;
The sky was a dome of crystal bright,
The fountain of vision, and fountain of light;
The emerant fields were of dazzling glow,
And the flowers of everlasting blow.
Then deep in the stream her body they laid,
That her youth and beauty never might fade;
And she heard a song, she heard it sung,
She kend not where; but sae sweetly it rung,
It fell on the ear like a dream of the morn;
'O blest be the day Kilmeny was born!
Now shall the land of the spirits see,
Now shall it ken what a woman may be !'

They bore her away, she wist not how,
For she felt not arm nor rest below;

But so swift they wained her through the light,
'Twas like the motion of sound or sight;
Unnumbered groves below them grew,
They came, they pass'd, and backward flew,
Like floods of blossoms gliding on,

A moment seen, in a moment gone.

But to sing the sights Kilmeny saw,
So far surpassing nature's law,

The singer's voice wad sink away,

And the string of his harp wad cease to play.
But she saw till the sorrows of man were by,
And all was love and harmony;

Till the stars of heaven fell calmly away,
Like the flakes of snaw on a winter day.

Then Kilmeny begged again to see

The friends she had left in her ain countrye;

To tell of the place where she had been,
And the glories that lay in the land unseen;
To warn the living maidens fair,

The loved of Heaven, the spirits' care,
That all whose minds unmeled remain
Shall bloom in beauty when time is gane.

With distant music, soft and deep,
They lull'd Kilmeny sound asleep;

And when she awaken'd, she lay her lane,

All happ'd with flowers, in the green-wood wene.
When seven lang years had come and fled,
When grief was calm, and hope was dead;
When scarce was remembered Kilmeny's name,
Late, late in a gloamin' Kilmeny came hame!

When a month and a day had come and gane,
Kilmeny sought the green-wood wene;
There laid her down on the leaves sae green,
And Kilmeny on earth was never mair seen.
But O, the words that fell from her mouth
Were words of wonder and words of truth!
But all the land were in fear and dread,
For they kendna whether she was living or dead.
It wasna her hame, and she couldna remain ;
She left this world of sorrow and pain,

And returned to the land of thought again! 9

Never was Fairyland made to appear nearer to us, or suffused with lovelier colours. Aware of such a potentiality within him, if seldom elsewhere developed to equal perfection, Hogg himself may be forgiven for some soreness of heart at the wounding wisdom of worldly experience, which led his patron Scott to recommend him to confine versifying to legends of Ettrick Glen, and the like, while keeping to sheep-farming for his life's vocation:

Blest be his generous heart for aye
He told me where the relic lay:

Pointed my way with ready will,
Afar on Ettrick's wildest hill;
Watch'd my first notes with curious eye,
And wonderd at my minstrelsy;
He little weend a parent's tongue
Such strains had o'er my cradle sung.
But when to native feelings true,
I struck upon a chord was new;
When by myself I 'gan to play,
He tried to wile my harp away.
O could the bard I loved so long,
Reprove my fond aspiring song?
Or could his tongue of candour say,
That I should throw my harp away?
Just when her notes began with skill,
To sound beneath the southern hill,
And twine around my bosom's core,
How could we part for evermore ?
'Twas kindness all-I cannot blame-
For bootless is the minstrel flame :

But sure a bard might well have known
Another's feelings by his own ! 10

It was natural for him to fancy that in happier circumstances, with more sympathy from without, he had it in him to rank with his many illustrious contemporaries. Yet I am afraid that, if Kilmeny, though certainly no accident, stands alone among his works, the default was rather in himself than in others; that, if his soul held the germs of new Kilmenys, the will was wanting to endure in patience the pangs of bringing them forth, equipped to soar and sing.

Poems and Life of the Ettrick Shepherd. New Edition. By the Rev. Thomas Thomson. London: Blackie, 1865. Also The Poetical Works of James Hogg. Four vols. Edinburgh: Arch. Constable, 1822. 1 The Gude Greye Katt (The Poetic Mirror), st. 7.

2 Elegy, st. 43 (Poems Descriptive and Sentimental).

3 Poor Little Jessie (Miscellaneous Songs), st. 4.

The Auld Man's Fareweel to his Wee House (Poems Descriptive and Sentimental), stanzas 9 and 11.

5 Blithe an' Cheerie (Love Songs), st. 1.

• When the Kye comes Hame (Miscellaneous Songs), st. 6. Tenth Bard's Preamble (The Queen's Wake).

Ibid., The Spectre's Cradle Song (The Queen's Wake), st. 1. • Thirteenth Bard's Song-Kilmeny (The Queen's Wake). 10 Ibid., The Queen's Wake-Conclusion.

WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR

1775-1864

but

A POET with greatness in him; who has written unforgettable things. Illustrious in prose as in verse; always a poet. As a poet, a success and a failure.

To begin with a theme by which he would himself have chosen to be judged-in his metempsychosis as a Greek poet he works miracles. Study Enaleos and Cymodameia, Pan and Pitys, Cupid and Pan, Europa and her Mother, Chrysaor, The Altar of Modesty. The outlines are exquisitely clear, never out of drawing; the grace, if sometimes marble-cold, is finely statuesque. Now and again the warm, living, modern blood asserts itself in him; and the figures are suffused with pathos. Even then, if not Greek, neither are they crudely Gothic. The blend is beautifully tempered in The Hamadryad; in Peleus and Thetis; in the first part of Corythos; in the coquetting with her peasant wooer of the sweet wood-nymph, who, as any human maid, knew that

to play at love,

Stopping its breathings when it breathes most soft,

Is sweeter than to play on any pipe; 1

and in that masterpiece, Iphigeneia and Agamemnon, with the final heroic tenderness of the victim :

An aged man now enter'd, and without
One word, stept slowly on, and took the wrist
Of the pale maiden. She lookt up, and saw
The fillet of the priest and calm cold eyes.
Then turn'd she where her parent stood, and cried
'O father! grieve no more; the ships can sail.' 2