Abbildungen der Seite
PDF
EPUB

And sullen Moloch, fled,

Hath left in shadows dread

His burning idol all of blackest hue;
In vain with cymbals' ring

They call the grisly king,

In dismal dance about the furnace blue;

The brutish gods of Nile as fast,

Isis, and Orus, and the dog Anubis, haste.

Nor is Osiris seen

In Memphian grove or green,

Trampling the unshower'd grass with lowings loud :
Nor can he be at rest

Within his sacred chest ;

Nought but profoundest Hell can be his shroud ;
In vain with timbrell'd anthems dark

The sable-stolèd sorcerers bear his worship'd ark.

He feels from Juda's land

The dreaded Infant's hand;

The rays of Bethlehem blind his dusky eyn;
Nor all the gods beside

Longer dare abide,

Not Typhon huge, ending in snaky twine :

Our Babe, to show His Godhead true,

Can in His swaddling bands control the damned crew.

So, when the sun in bed

Curtain'd with cloudy red

Pillows his chin upon an orient wave,

The flocking shadows pale

Troop to the infernal jail,

Each fetter'd ghost slips to his several grave;

And the yellow-skirted fays

Fly after the night-steeds, leaving their moon-loved maze.

But see! the Virgin blest

Hath laid her Babe to rest ;

Time is, our tedious song should here have ending:

Heaven's youngest-teemèd star

Hath fix'd her polish'd car,

Her sleeping Lord with hand-maid lamp attending:
And all about the courtly stable

Bright-harness'd Angels sit in order serviceable.

I

III

ROBERT BURNS

(1759-1796)

SUPPOSE no man ever lived and no poet

ever wrote who has done so much to make us

pity the weak and erring, to love the human heart with all its faults and weaknesses, to inspire forgiveness and sympathy, and fill the world with tenderness and love even for a mountain daisy and a “wee sleekit mousie," as Robert Burns.

Burns was born in grinding Scotch poverty, and even in the day of his literary success he did not escape from it. He had all the faults and vices of a passionate human heart. And yet the sternest Christian of us cannot but forgive him and love him with a tender pity for the pure and beautiful songs he wrote.

In an age the most artificial which English literature has known, appeared Burns, the most spontaneous, natural, inevitable poet that ever wrote. Nature loves contrasts, and we certainly find one of the most perfect when we compare Burns with Pope. Wordsworth is simple, but he is sophisticated. Burns is naturally simple, and yet so broadly intelligent that the keenest human mind is bound to delight in him.

Burns was a sinner; but we feel certain that his sins are the mere excess of a superabundant nature, or the result of the unnatural suffering

to which he was subject during the whole of his short life; for his love-songs are as pure, as tender, as gentle, as sweet, as the ripple of the brook, and nothing is nobler than the little poem "the man's the gowd for a' that," nothing simpler and more natural and more reverent than "The Cotter's Saturday Night." Milton is an eagle in the clouds, Burns a daisy in the field; but we are forced to see the same loveliness of beauty at both extremes; and millions on the earth will love Burns to one who has the strength of pinion to soar to the cold height in which Milton delights.

Burns's poetry is touched with humor. In this it is unique. Poets like Wordsworth and Milton are hopelessly solemn, Byron can be satirical but hardly humorous, and Shelley and Keats and Tennyson seemed to live in a land where humor had no uses. But there is no great humanity without pathos, and pathos is but the reverse of humor. It breathes through all that Burns wrote like a purifying salt breeze from the sea, or a mountain brook full of sparkle and ozone. And with it all Burns is invariably poetic, that is, he sees all in the light of beauty, and shapes everything in divine loveliness quite as much as Shelley does. Hood was pathetic and humorous, but not always poetic.

Burns is what he is because his emotions mastered his poetic intelligence, and his heart and his mind speak in the same voice, singing endearing gentleness with perfect sweetness.

AULD LANG SYNE

SHOULD auld acquaintance be forgot,
And never brought to min'?
Should auld acquaintance be forgot,
And auld lang syne?

Chorus

For auld lang syne, my dear,

For auld lang syne,

We'll tak a cup o' kindness yet,
For auld lang syne!

And surely ye 'll be your pint-stowp,
And surely I'll be mine;

And we'll tak a cup o' kindness yet
For auld lang syne.
For auld, &c.

We twa hae run about the braes,
And pu'd the gowans fine;

But we've wander'd mony a weary fit
Sin' auld lang syne.

For auld, &c.

We twa hae paidled i' the burn,

Frae mornin sun till dine;

But seas between us braid hae roar'd

Sin' auld lang syne.

For auld, &c.

And here's a hand, my trusty fiere,

And gie's a hand o' thine;

And we 'll tak a right guid-willie waught,

For auld lang syne.

For auld, &c.

BANNOCKBURN

ROBERT BRUCE'S ADDRESS TO HIS ARMY

SCOTS, wha hae wi' Wallace bled,
Scots, wham Bruce has aften led,
Welcome to your gory bed,

Or to glorious victorie.

Now's the day, and now 's the hour;
See the front o' battle lower;
See approach proud Edward's power-
Edward! chains and slaverie!

Wha will be a traitor knave?
Wha can fill a coward's grave?
Wha sae base as be a slave?

Traitor! coward! turn and flee !

Wha for Scotland's King and law
Freedom's sword will strongly draw,
Free-man stand, or free-man fa',
Caledonian! on wi' me!

By Oppression's woes and pains!
By your sons in servile chains!
We will drain our dearest veins,

But they shall they shall be free!

Lay the proud usurpers low!

Tyrants fall in every foe!

Liberty 's in every blow!

Forward! let us do, or die!

FOR A' THAT AND A' THAT

Is there for honest poverty

That hangs his head, and a' that?

The coward slave, we pass him by,
We dare be poor for a' that!
For a' that, and a' that,

Our toils obscure, and a' that;
The rank is but the guinea's stamp;
The man's the gowd for a' that.

« ZurückWeiter »