Imagens das páginas
PDF
ePub

Usurping Brunswick's pride shall lowly Pardon my transport, gentle shade,
lay,
While o'er thy turf I bow;
And Stuart's wrongs and yours, with ten- Thy earthly house is circumscribed,

fold weight repay.

[ocr errors][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small]

And solitary now.

Not one poor stone to tell thy name,
Or make thy virtues known,
But what avails to thee or me

The sculpture of a stone?

From thy loved friends, when first thy
heart

Was taught by Love to glow,
Far, far removed, the ruthless stroke
Surprised and laid thee low.

At the last limit of our isle,

Washed by the western wave, Touched by thy fate, a thoughtful bard Sits by thy lonely grave :

Pensive he eyes, before him spread

The deep, outstretched and vast;
His mourning notes are borne away
Along the rapid blast.

Him, too, the stern impulse of fate
Resistless bears along ;

And the same rapid tide shall whelm
The Poet and the song.

His grief-worn heart, with truest joy,
Shall meet the welcome shock;
His airy harp shall lie unstrung,
And silent as the rock.

O my dear maid, my Mary, when
Shall this sick period close,
And leave the solitary bard

To his beloved repose?

[merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][ocr errors][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small]

ODE TO THE DYING OUT OF
THE REGENCY BILL, 1789.

[George the Third's insanity first manifested itself in the October of 1788, but before the end of March, 1789, his Majesty's complete recovery was officially announced. With the restoration of the Sovereign's reason the necessity for the introduction of a Regency Bill of course vanished, and along with it all the political contentions which that project not unnaturally aroused. Burns, in this Ode, merely endorsed the sarcasm in which he had already indulged in his "Elegy on the Year 1788." Twenty-two years after the following lines had been written by the Scotch Poet, the old King's intellect (in the January of 1811) again gave way, and that time so utterly as to banish all hope of its ever being restored. Then, at length, the Prince of Wales was duly appointed Regent, a position retained by him until his demented father had been released by death, in 1820, from a double darkness of appalling duration--a darkness both of mind

and body. "The Monarch," as William Hazlitt wrote in one of the most impressive passages of his splendid "History of Napoleon,' "survived the accomplishment of all his wishes, but without knowing that they had been accomplished. To those who long after passed that way, at whatever hour of the night, a light shone from one of the watch-towers of Windsor Castle-it was from the chamber of a King, old, blind, bereft of reason, with double darkness bound of body and mind; nor was the film ever removed, nor those eyes or that understanding restored, to hail the sacred triumph of Kings over mankind; but the light streamed and streamed (indicating no dawn within) for long years after the celebration of that day which gladdened the hearts of monarchs and of menial nations, and through the second night of slavery which succeeded-the work of a single breast, which it had dearly accomplished in darkness, in selfoblivion, and in more than kingly solitude."]

I.

DAUGHTER of Chaos' doating years,
Nurse of ten thousand hopes and fears,
Whether thy airy, unsubstantial shade
(The rites of sepulture now duly paid,)

[blocks in formation]

By a Monarch's Heaven-struck fate!
By a disunited State!

By a generous Prince's wrongs!
By a Senate's strife of tongues!
By a Premier's sullen pride,
Louring on the changing tide!
By dread Thurlow's powers to awe-
Rhetoric, blasphemy, and law!
By the turbulent ocean-
A Nation's commotion !
By the harlot-caresses
Of borough addresses!
By days few and evil-
Thy portion, poor devil!

By power, wealth, show-the gods by
men adored!

By nameless Poverty-their hell ab-
horred !

By all they hope! By all they fear!
Hear!! And Appear!!!

[blocks in formation]

Paint all the triumph of the Portland ON GLENRIDDEL'S FOX BREAK

band:

Mark how they lift the joy-exulting

voice,

And how their numerous creditors re

joice;

ING HIS CHAIN.

[This fragment was written probably in 1791, not long before Burns removed from Ellisland to Dumfries.]

But just as hopes to warm enjoyment THOU, Liberty, thou art my theme; Not such as idle Poets dream,

rise,

Cry, Convalescence! and the vision Who trick thee up a Heathen goddess

flies.

V.

That a fantastic cap and rod has;
Such stale conceits are poor and silly;
I paint thee out a Highland filly,
A sturdy, stubborn, handsome dapple,

Then next pourtray a darkening twilight As sleek 's a mouse, as round 's an apple,

gloom,

Eclipsing sad a gay rejoicing morn, While proud Ambition to the untimely tomb

That, when thou pleasest, can do won

ders;

But when thy luckless rider blunders,
Or if thy fancy should demur there,

By gnashing, grim, despairing fiends Wilt break thy neck ere thou go further.

is borne ;

Paint ruin, in the shape of high D[un- These things premis'd, I sing, a fox
Was caught among his native rocks,

das],
Gaping with giddy terror o'er the And to a dirty kennel chained,

brow;

How he his liberty regained,

Glenriddel, a Whig without a stain,

A Whig in principle and grain,

Has gagg'd old Britain, drained her

coffer,

Couldst thou enslave a free-born crea- As butchers bind and bleed a heifer.

[blocks in formation]
« AnteriorContinuar »