Never did maiden and manly youth Love with such fervour, and love with such truth: The day is come, the dreaded day, Must part two loving hearts for ever; The ship lies rocking in the bay, The boat comes rippling up the river; Oh happy has the gloaming's eye In green Glen-Ora's bosom seen them! And angry oceans roll between them. Straight to the south the pennons play, And steady is the wind. Shall Malcolm relinquish the home of his youth, And sail with his love to the lands of the south? Ah no! for his father is gone to the tomb: One parent survives in her desolate home! No child but her Malcolm to cheer her lone way: Break not her fond heart, gentle Malcolm-oh stay! The boat impatient leans ashore, Her prow sleeps on a sandy pillow; Already bent to brush the billow. To love the dear maiden for ever. And canst thou forego such beauty and youth, Such maiden honour and spotless truth? Forbid it! He yields; to the boat he draws nigh. Haste, Malcolm, aboard, and revert not thine eye. That trembling voice, in murmurs weak, Comes not to blast the hopes before thee; For pity, Malcolm, turn and take A last farewell of her that bore thee. She says no word to mar thy bliss; Her love deserves; then be thou gone ;al wolg -fT He looked to the boat-slow she heaved from the shore; He saw his loved Anna all speechless implore: But, grasped by a cold and a trembling hand, He clung to his parent, and sunk on the strand. ? The boat across the tide flew fast, And left a silver curve behind; Loud sung the sailor from the mast, Spreading his sails before the wind. The stately ship, adown the bay, A corslet framed of heaving snow, And flurred on high the slender spray, Till rainbows gleamed around her prow. How strained was Malcolm's watery eye, Yon fleeting vision to descry! But ah! her lessening form so fair, Soon vanished in the liquid air. Away to Ora's headland steep The youth retired the while, And saw the unpitying vessel sweep Around yon Highland isle. His heart and his mind with that vessel had gone; His sorrow was deep, and despairing his moan, When, lifting his eyes from the green heaving deep, High o'er the crested cliffs of Lorn The glowing ocean heaved her breast, For his joy was fled, his hope was dead, One little boat alone is seen On all the lovely dappled main, That softly sinks the waves between, Then vaults their heaving breasts again; Why bears she on yon headland steep, That springs ashore and scales the steep, Till sunk upon young Malcolm's breast? That blaze of joy, through clouds of wo, But ah! the eye was set for ever! 'Twas more than broken heart could brook! How throbs that breast!-How glazed that look! As melts the wave on level shore; As fades the dye of falling even, Three editions of the Queen's Wake appeared in quick succession; but, with what he calls his usual fuck, Hogg, according to his own showing, did not receive the full pecuniary recompense to which he was entitled, through the difficulties in which his bookseller was involved. Mr Goldie, however, afterwards averred that the poet greatly overrated, to say the least of it, his losses on this occasion; and such really appears, to a certain extent, to have been the case. Mr William Blackwood, the bookseller, having taken a leading part in the arrangement of Mr Goldie's affairs, became, through that circumstance, acquainted with Hogg, and thenceforward was his chief publisher. When Mr Blackwood, some years afterwards, set up his celebrated magazine, Hogg was one of his first contributors, being the writer, amongst other things, of the first draught of the Chaldee Manuscript, a paper which excited much local attention, by the freedom with which it handled Mr Constable and his literary friends. At this time, also, the Shepherd formed a friendship, which lasted for life, with Professor Wilson and Mr Lockhart. Besides numerous contributions to the magazines (particularly Mr Blackwood's) and annuals, he produced, in the six years following 1813, the poetical works entitled "The Pilgrims of the Sun," "The Hunting of Badlewe," "Mador of the Moor," "The Poetic Mirror,' ""Dramatic Tales," "Sacred Melodies," "The Border Garland," and "The Jacobite Relics;" with the prose tales called "The Brownie of Bodsbeck," and "Winter Evening Tales." All these works were productive of more or less emolument to him, and some of them attained a temporary popularity. From 1809 to 1814 he resided in Edinburgh, but in the latter year a generous patron changed his condition in a material degree. "I then received," says he, "a letter from the late Duke Charles of Buccleuch, by the hands of his chamberlain, presenting me with the small farm of Altrive Lake, in the wilds of Yarrow. The boon was quite unsolicited and unexpected, and never was a more welcome one conferred on an unfortunate wight, as it gave me once more a habitation among my native moors and streams, where each face was that of a friend, and each house was a home, as well as a residence for life to my aged father. The letter was couched in the kindest terms, and informed me that I had long had a secret and sincere friend whom I knew not of, in his late duchess, who had in her lifetime solicited such a residence for me. In the letter he said the rent shall be nominal;' but it has not even been nominal, for such a thing as rent has never once been mentioned. "I then began and built a handsome cottage on my new farm, and forthwith made it my head-quarters. But, not content with this, having married, in 1820, Miss Margaret Phillips, youngest daughter of Mr Phillips, late of Longbridge Moor, in Annandale, and finding that I had then in the hands of Mr Murray, Mr Blackwood, Messrs Oliver and Boyd, and Messrs Longman and Co., debts due, or that would soon be due, to the amount of a thousand pounds, I determined once more to farm on a larger scale, and expressed my wish to the Right Honourable Lord Montague, head trustee on his nephew's domains. His lordship readily offered me the farm of Mount-Benger, which adjoined my own. At first I determined not to accept of it, as it had ruined two well-qualified farmers in the preceding six years; but was persuaded at last by some neighbours, in opposition to my own judgment, to accept of it, on the plea that the farmers on the Buccleuch estate were never suffered to be great losers, and that, at all events, if I could not make the rent, I could write for it. So, accordingly, I took a lease of the farm for nine years. "I called in my debts, which were all readily paid, and amounted to within a few pounds of one thousand; but at that period the sum was quite inadequate, the price of ewes bordering on thirty shillings per head. The farm required stocking to the amount of one thousand sheep, twenty cows, five horses, farming utensils of all sorts, crop, manure, and, moreover, draining, fenc ing, and building, so that I soon found I had not half enough of money; and though I realised, by writing, in the course of the next two years, £750, besides smaller sums paid in cash, yet I got into difficulties at the very first, out of which I could never redeem myself till the end of the lease, at which time live stock of all kinds having declined one-half in value, the speculation left me once more without a sixpence in the world-and at the age of sixty, it is fully late enough to begin it anew. It will be consolatory, however, to my friends to be assured that none of these reverses ever preyed in the smallest degree on my spirits. As long as I did all for the best, and was conscious that no man could ever accuse me of dishonesty, I laughed at the futility of my own calculations, and let my earnings go as they came, amid contentment and happiness, determined to make more money as soon as possible, although it should go the same way." These confessions display the character of the man in genuine colours. It is necessary to say so; for otherwise, it might be doubted if any man would have taken a farm with the almost certain prospect before him of having to pay its rent out of resources unconnected with itself. Not less might it be doubted that any one could be regardless of the futility of those calculations on which his bread depended, if he merely retained the consciousness of upright intention. Such, really, was the mind of the Ettrick Shepherd-a union of uncommon poetical talents 27 |