Once I beheld a splendid dream, A visionary scene of bliss: Truth! wherefore did thy hated beam I loved - but those I loved are gone; And friends When all its former hopes are dead! Though pleasure stirs the maddening soul, How dull! to hear the voice of those Whom rank or chance, whom wealth or power, [The "imagination all compact," which the greatest poet who ever lived has assigned as the distinguishing badge of his brethren, is in every case a dangerous gift. It exaggerates, indeed, our expectations, and can often bid its possessor hope, where hope is lost to reason: but the delusive pleasure arising from these visions of imagination resembles that of a child, whose notice is attracted by a fragment of glass to which a sun-beam has given momentary splendour. He hastens to the spot with breathless impatience, and finds the object of his curiosity and expectation is equally vulgar and worthless. Such is the man of quick and exalted powers of imagination. His fancy over-estimates the object of his wishes, and pleasure, fame, distinction, are alternately pursued, attained, and despised when in his power. Like the enchanted fruit in the palace of a sorcerer, the objects of his admiration lose their attraction and value as soon as they are grasped by the adventurer's hand, and all that remains is regret for the time lost in the chase, and astonishment at the hallucination under which it was undertaken. The disproportion between hope and possession, which is felt by all men, is thus doubled to those whom nature has endowed with the power of gilding a distant prospect by the rays of imagination. These reflections, though trite and obvious, are in a manner forced from us by the poetry of Lord Byron,-by the sentiments of weariness of life and enmity with the world which they so frequently express, and by the singular analogy which such sentiments hold with well-known incidents of his life.- SIR WALTER SCOTT.] Have made, though neither friends nor foes, In years and feelings still the same, And woman, lovely woman! thou, This busy scene of splendid woe, Fain would I fly the haunts of men - Whose gloom may suit a darken'd mind. 1 "And I said, Oh! that I had wings like a dove; for then would I fly away and be at rest."- Psalm lv. 6. This verse also constitutes a part of the most beautiful anthem in our language. WHEN I ROVED A YOUNG HIGHLANDER. WHEN I roved a young Highlander o'er the dark heath, And climb'd thy steep summit, oh Morven of snow! To gaze on the torrent that thunder'd beneath, Or the mist of the tempest that gather'd below, 2 Untutor'd by science, a stranger to fear, And rude as the rocks where my infancy grew, No feeling, save one, to my bosom was dear; Need snow, say, my sweet Mary, 't was centred in you? "Gormal of 1 Morven, a lofty mountain in Aberdeenshire. ," is an expression frequently to be found in Ossian. 2 This will not appear extraordinary to those who have been accustomed to the mountains. It is by no means uncommon, on attaining the top of Ben-e-vis, Ben-y-bourd, &c. to perceive, between the summit and the valley, clouds pouring down rain, and occasionally accompanied by lightning, while the spectator literally looks down upon the storm, perfectly secure from its effects. 4 [In Lord Byron's Diary for 1813, he says, "I have been thinking lately a good deal of Mary Duff. How very odd that I should have been so utterly, devotedly fond of that girl, at an age when I could neither feel passion, nor know the meaning of the word. And the effect! My mother used always to rally me about this childish amour; and, at last, many years after, when I was sixteen, she told me one day; Oh, Byron, I have had a letter from Edinburgh, from Miss Abercrombie, and your old sweetheart, Mary Duff, is married to a Mr. Cockburn.' [Robert Cockburn, Esq. of Edinburgh. And what was my answer? I really cannot explain or account for my feelings at that moment; but they nearly threw me into convulsions-to the horror of my mother and astonishment of every body. And it is a phenomenon in my existence (for I was not eight years old), which has puzzled and will puzzle me to the latest hour of it."- Again, in January, 1815, a few days after his marriage, in a letter to his friend Captain Hay, the poet thus speaks of his childish attachment:" Pray tell me more-or as much as you like, of your cousin Mary. I believe I told you our story some years ago. I was twenty-seven a few days ago, and I have never seen her since we were children, and young children Yet it could not be love, for I knew not the name, As I felt, when a boy, on the crag-cover'd wild : I loved my bleak regions, nor panted for new; And few were my wants, for my wishes were bless'd; And pure were my thoughts, for my soul was with you. I arose with the dawn; with my dog as my guide, And heard at a distance the Highlander's song: No dreams, save of Mary, were spread to my view; And warm to the skies my devotions arose, For the first of my prayers was a blessing on you. I left my bleak home, and my visions are gone; And delight but in days I have witness'd before: too; but I never forget her, nor ever can. You will oblige me by presenting her with my best respects, and all good wishes. It may seem ridiculous- but it is at any rate, I hope, not offensive to her nor hers-in me to pretend to recollect anything about her, at so early a period of both our lives, almost, if not quite, in our nurseries; but it was a pleasant dream, which she must pardon me for remembering. Is she pretty still? I have the most perfect idea of her person, as a child; but Time, I suppose, has played the devil with us both."] 1 The Dee is a beautiful river, which rises near Mar Lodge, and falls into the sea at New Aberdeen. Ah! splendour has raised, but embitter'd my lot; More dear were the scenes which my infancy knew: Though my hopes may have fail'd, yet they are not forgot; Though cold is my heart, still it lingers with you. When I see some dark hill point its crest to the sky, I think of the rocks that o'ershadow Colbleen; When I see the soft blue of a love-speaking eye, I think of those eyes that endear'd the rude scene; When, haply, some light-waving locks I behold, That faintly resemble my Mary's in hue, I think on the long flowing ringlets of gold, The locks that were sacred to beauty, and you. Yet the day may arrive when the mountains once more Shall rise to my sight in their mantles of snow: 2 1 Colbleen is a mountain near the verge of the Highlands, not far from the ruins of Dee Castle. 2 In the spring of 1807, on recovering from a severe illness, Lord Byron had projected a visit to Scotland. The plan was not put into execution; but he thus adverts to it, in a letter dated in August, and addressed to his fair correspondent of Southwell:"On Sunday I set off for the Highlands. A friend of mine accompanies me in my carriage to Edinburgh. There we shall leave it, and proceed in a tandem through the western parts to Inverary, where we shall purchase shelties, to enable us to view places inaccessible to vehicular conveyances. On the coast we shall hire a vessel, and visit the most remarkable of the Hebrides, and, if we have time and favourable weather, mean to sail as far as Iceland, only three hundred miles from the northern extremity of Caledonia, to peep at Heela. I mean to collect all the Erse traditions, poems, &c. &c., and translate, or expand the subject to fill a vofume, which may appear next spring under the denomination of The Highland Harp,' or some title equally picturesque. What would you say to some stanzas on Mount Hecla? They would be written at least with fire."] |