As in the gardens, all through May, the Rose, Lovely, and young, and rich apparelled, Makes sunrise jealous of her rosy red, When dawn upon the dew of dawning glows;Graces and Loves within her breast repose, The woods are faint with the sweet odour shed, Till rains and heavy suns have smitten dead The languid flower and the loose leaves unclose, -So this, the perfect beauty of our days, When heaven and earth were vocal of her praise, The fates have slain, and her sweet soul reposes:
And tears I bring, and sighs, and on her tomb Pour milk, and scatter buds of many a bloom, That, dead as living, Rose may be with roses.
THE POET'S APOLOGY
No, the Muse has gone away, Does not haunt me much to-day.
Everything she had to say Has been said!
'Twas not much at any time She could hitch into a rhyme, Never was the Muse sublime, Who has fled!
Any one who takes her in May observe she's rather thin;Little more than bone and skin Is the Muse;Scanty sacrifice she won When her very best she'd done, And at her they poked their fun, In Reviews.
'Rhymes,' in truth, 'are stubborn things.'
And to Rhyme she clung, and clings, But whatever song she sings Scarcely sells.
If her tone be grave, they say 'Give us something rather gay.'
If she's skittish, then they pray 'Something else!'
Much she loved, for wading shod, To go forth with line and rod, Loved the heather, and the sod, Loved to rest On the crystal river's brim Where she saw the fishes swim, And she heard the thrushes' hymn, By the Test!
She, whatever way she went, Friendly was and innocent, Little need the Bard repent Of her lay.
Of the babble and the rhyme, And the imitative chime That amused him on a time, -Now he's grey.
NOTES
A SCOT TO JEANNE D'ARC
Jeanne d'Arc is said to have led a Scottish force at Lagny, when she defeated the Burgundian, Franquet d'Arras. A Scottish artist painted her banner; he was a James Polwarth, or a Hume of Polwarth, according to a conjecture of Mr. Hill Burton's. A monk of Dunfermline, who continued Fordun's Chronicle, avers that he was with the Maiden in her campaigns, and at her martyrdom. He calls her Puella a spiritu sancto excitata. Unluckily his manuscript breaks off in the middle of a sentence. At her trial, Jeanne said that she had only once seen her own portrait: it was in the hands of a Scottish archer. The story of the white dove which passed from her lips as they opened to her last cry of Jesus! was reported at the trial for her Rehabilitation (1450-56).
ONE OF THAT NAME.
Two archers of the name of Lang, Lain, or Laing were in the French service about 1507. See the book on the Scottish Guard, by Father Forbes Leith, S. J.
THY CHURCH UNTO THE MAID DENIES.
These verses were written, curiously enough, the day before the Maiden was raised to the rank of 'Venerable,' a step towards her canonisation, which, we trust, will not be long delayed. It is not easy for any one to understand the whole miracle of the life and death of Jeanne d'Arc, and the absolutely unparalleled grandeur and charm of her character, without studying the full records of both her trials, as collected and published by M. Quicherat, for the Societe de l'Histoire de France.
HOW THEY HELD THE BASS.
This story is versified from the account in Memoirs of the Rev.
John Blackader, by Andrew Crichton, Minister of the Gospel. Second Edition. Edinburgh, 1826. Dunbar was retained as a prisoner, when negotiations for surrender, in 1691, were broken off by Middleton's return with supplies. Halyburton was, it seems, captured later, and only escaped hanging by virtue of the terms extorted by Middleton. Patrick Walker tells the tale of Peden and the girl.
Wodrow, in his Analecta, has the story of the Angel, or other shining spiritual presence, which is removed from its context in the ballad. The sufferings from weak beer are quoted in Mr.
Blackader's Memoirs. Mitchell was the undeniably brave Covenanter who shot at Sharp, and hit the Bishop of the Orkneys. He was tortured, and, by an act of perjury (probably unconscious) on the part of Lauderdale, was hanged. The sentiments of the poem are such as an old cavalier, surviving to 1743, might perhaps have entertained. 'Wullie Wanbeard' is a Jacobite name for the Prince of Orange, perhaps invented only by the post-Jacobite sentiment of the early nineteenth century.
BRITANNIA
ROUSSEAU'S DELIGHT.
The pervenche, or periwinkle.
A TOAST
One of the college bells Of St. Salvator, mentioned by Ferguson, is called 'Kate Kennedy'; the heroine is unknown, but Bishop Kennedy founded the College. 'Kate Kennedy's Day' was a kind of carnival, probably a survival from that festivity.
THE DISAPPOINTMENT.
As a matter of fact the Haunted House Committee of the Society for Psychical Research have never succeeded in seeing a ghost.
End