“The king was cuming thro’ Caddon Ford,And full five thousand men was he;They saw the derke Foreste them before,They thought it awsome for to see.”
“The king was cuming thro’ Caddon Ford,And full five thousand men was he;They saw the derke Foreste them before,They thought it awsome for to see.”
“The king was cuming thro’ Caddon Ford,And full five thousand men was he;They saw the derke Foreste them before,They thought it awsome for to see.”
“The king was cuming thro’ Caddon Ford,
And full five thousand men was he;
They saw the derke Foreste them before,
They thought it awsome for to see.”
Or take again the impression made on the traveling knight as he comes on Clyde in full flood:—
“As he gaed owre yon high high hillAnd doun yon dowie den,There was a roar in Clyde water,Had fear’d a hundred men.”
“As he gaed owre yon high high hillAnd doun yon dowie den,There was a roar in Clyde water,Had fear’d a hundred men.”
“As he gaed owre yon high high hillAnd doun yon dowie den,There was a roar in Clyde water,Had fear’d a hundred men.”
“As he gaed owre yon high high hill
And doun yon dowie den,
There was a roar in Clyde water,
Had fear’d a hundred men.”
Or that other gentler pathetic touch, where the maiden says—
“Yestreen I dreamed a dolefu’ dreamI fear there will be sorrow,I dreamed I pu’d the heather greenWi’ my true love, on Yarrow.“O gentle wind, that bloweth south,From where my love repaireth,Convey a kiss from his dear mouth,And tell me how he fareth!”
“Yestreen I dreamed a dolefu’ dreamI fear there will be sorrow,I dreamed I pu’d the heather greenWi’ my true love, on Yarrow.“O gentle wind, that bloweth south,From where my love repaireth,Convey a kiss from his dear mouth,And tell me how he fareth!”
“Yestreen I dreamed a dolefu’ dreamI fear there will be sorrow,I dreamed I pu’d the heather greenWi’ my true love, on Yarrow.
“Yestreen I dreamed a dolefu’ dream
I fear there will be sorrow,
I dreamed I pu’d the heather green
Wi’ my true love, on Yarrow.
“O gentle wind, that bloweth south,From where my love repaireth,Convey a kiss from his dear mouth,And tell me how he fareth!”
“O gentle wind, that bloweth south,
From where my love repaireth,
Convey a kiss from his dear mouth,
And tell me how he fareth!”
In verses such as these, which abound throughout the popular ballads and songs, we see the outer world, not as it appeared to the highly educated poet, seeking to express it in artistic phrase, but as it showed itself to the eyes and hearts of country-people, living quite familiarly among itssights and sounds. Much more might be said of the natural imagery of the ballads, and of the feeling toward the outer world indicated by it. Suffice it to note that the simplicity and pathos, both of sentiment and of expression, which the ballads contained, entering, with other influences, into the minds of the young generation which first welcomed them, called up another view of Nature than that which the literary poets had expressed, and affected most deeply both the feeling and the form of the new poetry of Nature which this century brought in.
One more poetic influence, born of last century, must be noticed before we close. I mean the Celtic or Ossianic feeling about Nature.
I am not going now to discuss whether Macpherson composed the Gaelic poems which still pass for Ossian’s, or whether he only collected songs which had been floated down by tradition from a remote antiquity. Whichever view we take, it cannot be questioned that the appearance of this poetry gave to the English-speaking mind the thrill of a new and strange emotion about mountain scenery. Whether the poetry was old, or the product of last century, it describes, as none other does, the desolation of dusky moors, the solemn brooding of the mists on the mountains, the occasional looking through them of sun by day, of moon and stars by night, the gloom ofdark cloudy Bens or cairns, with flashing cataracts, the ocean with its storms as it breaks on the West Highland shores or on the headlands of the Hebrides. Wordsworth, though an unbeliever in Ossian, felt that the fit dwelling for his spirit was
“Where rocks are rudely heaped and rentAs by a spirit turbulent,Where sights are rough and sounds are wildAnd everything unreconciled,In some complaining dim retreat,For fear and melancholy meet.”
“Where rocks are rudely heaped and rentAs by a spirit turbulent,Where sights are rough and sounds are wildAnd everything unreconciled,In some complaining dim retreat,For fear and melancholy meet.”
“Where rocks are rudely heaped and rentAs by a spirit turbulent,Where sights are rough and sounds are wildAnd everything unreconciled,In some complaining dim retreat,For fear and melancholy meet.”
“Where rocks are rudely heaped and rent
As by a spirit turbulent,
Where sights are rough and sounds are wild
And everything unreconciled,
In some complaining dim retreat,
For fear and melancholy meet.”
And such are the scenes which the Ossianic poetry mainly dwells on. Here is a description of a battle—
“As hundred winds ’mid oaks of great mountains,As hundred torrents from lofty hills,As clouds in darkness rushing on,As the great ocean tumbling on the shore,So vast, so sounding, dark and stern,Met the fierce warriors on Lena.The shout of the host on the mountain heightWas like thunder on a night of storms,When bursts the cloud on Cona of the glens,And thousand spirits wildly shriekOn the waste whirlwind of the hills.”
“As hundred winds ’mid oaks of great mountains,As hundred torrents from lofty hills,As clouds in darkness rushing on,As the great ocean tumbling on the shore,So vast, so sounding, dark and stern,Met the fierce warriors on Lena.The shout of the host on the mountain heightWas like thunder on a night of storms,When bursts the cloud on Cona of the glens,And thousand spirits wildly shriekOn the waste whirlwind of the hills.”
“As hundred winds ’mid oaks of great mountains,As hundred torrents from lofty hills,As clouds in darkness rushing on,As the great ocean tumbling on the shore,So vast, so sounding, dark and stern,Met the fierce warriors on Lena.The shout of the host on the mountain heightWas like thunder on a night of storms,When bursts the cloud on Cona of the glens,And thousand spirits wildly shriekOn the waste whirlwind of the hills.”
“As hundred winds ’mid oaks of great mountains,
As hundred torrents from lofty hills,
As clouds in darkness rushing on,
As the great ocean tumbling on the shore,
So vast, so sounding, dark and stern,
Met the fierce warriors on Lena.
The shout of the host on the mountain height
Was like thunder on a night of storms,
When bursts the cloud on Cona of the glens,
And thousand spirits wildly shriek
On the waste whirlwind of the hills.”
And yet, though this is the prevailing tone, it is broken at times by gleams of tender light—
“Pleasing to me are the words of songs,Pleasing the tale of the time that is gone;Soothing as noiseless dew of morning mildOn the brake and knoll of roes,When slowly rises the sunOn the silent flank of hoary Bens—The loch, unruffled, far away,Lies calm and blue on the floor of the glens.”[16]
“Pleasing to me are the words of songs,Pleasing the tale of the time that is gone;Soothing as noiseless dew of morning mildOn the brake and knoll of roes,When slowly rises the sunOn the silent flank of hoary Bens—The loch, unruffled, far away,Lies calm and blue on the floor of the glens.”[16]
“Pleasing to me are the words of songs,Pleasing the tale of the time that is gone;Soothing as noiseless dew of morning mildOn the brake and knoll of roes,When slowly rises the sunOn the silent flank of hoary Bens—The loch, unruffled, far away,Lies calm and blue on the floor of the glens.”[16]
“Pleasing to me are the words of songs,
Pleasing the tale of the time that is gone;
Soothing as noiseless dew of morning mild
On the brake and knoll of roes,
When slowly rises the sun
On the silent flank of hoary Bens—
The loch, unruffled, far away,
Lies calm and blue on the floor of the glens.”[16]
Whatever men may now think of them, there cannot be a doubt but these mountain monotones took the heart of Europe with a new emotion, and prepared it for that passion for mountains which has since possessed it.
Cowper, Burns, the Ballads, Ossian, all these had entered into the minds that were still young when this century opened, and added each a fresh element of feeling, and opened a new avenue of vision into the life of Nature. When the great earthquake of the Revolution had shaken men’s souls to their centre, and brought up to the surface thoughts and aspirations for humanity never known till then, the deepened and expanded hearts of men opened themselves to receive Nature into them in a way they had never done before, and to love her with a new passion. But original as this impulse in the present century has been, we must not forget how much it owed, both in itself and in its manifold forms of expression, to the poetry of Nature which the eighteenth century bequeathed. Of that poetry there were two main streams, a literary and a popular. Of these the popular one was probably the most powerful in moulding the Poetry that was about to be.