  BY DELTA. I. Although from Adam stained with crime, A halo girds the path of time, As 'twere things humble with sublime, Divine with mortal blending, And that which is, with that which seems,— Till blazoned o'er were Jacob's dreams With heaven's angelic hosts, in streams, Descending and ascending. II. Ask of the clouds, why Eden's dyes Have vanished from the sunset skies? Ask of the winds, why harmonies Now breathe not in their voices? Ask of the spring, why from the bloom Of lilies comes a less perfume? And why the linnet, 'mid the broom, Less lustily rejoices? III. Silent are now the sylvan tents; The elves to airy elements Resolved are gone; grim castled rents No more show demons gazing, With evil eyes, on wandering men; And, where the dragon had his den Of fire, within the haunted glen, Now herds unharmed are grazing. VI. Alas! that Fancy's fount should cease! In rose-hues limn'd, the myths of Greece Have waned to dreams—the Colchian fleece, And labours of Alcides:— Nay, Homer, even thy mighty line— Thy living tale of Troy divine— The sceptic scholiast doubts if thine, Or Priam, or Pelides! VII. As silence listens to the lark, And orient beams disperse the dark, How sweet to roam abroad, and mark Their gold the fields adorning: But, when we think of where are they, Whose bosoms like our own were gay, While April gladdened life's young day, Joy takes the garb of mourning. VIII. Warm gushing thro' the heart come back The thoughts that brightened boyhood's track; And hopes, as 'twere from midnight black, All star-like re-awaken; Until we feel how, one by one, The faces of the loved are gone, And grieve for those left here alone, Not those who have been taken. IX. The past returns in all we see, The billowy cloud, and branching tree; In all we hear—the bird and bee Remind of pleasures cherish'd; When all is lost it loved the best, Oh! pity on that vacant breast, Which would not rather be at rest, Than pine amid the perish'd! X. A balmy eve! the round white moon Emparadises midmost June, Tune trills the nightingale on tune— What magic! when a lover, To him, who now, gray-haired and lone, Of her, whose heart was once his own: Ah! bright dream briefly over! XI. See how from port the vessel glides With streamered masts, o'er halcyon tides; Its laggard course the sea-boy chides, All loath that calms should bind him; But distance only chains him more, With love-links, to his native shore, And sleep's best dream is to restore The home he left behind him. XII. To sanguine youth's enraptured eye, Heaven has its reflex in the sky, The winds themselves have melody, Like harp some seraph sweepeth; A silver decks the hawthorn bloom, A legend shrines the mossy tomb, And spirits throng the starry gloom, Her reign when midnight keepeth. XIII. Silence o'erhangs the Delphic cave; Where strove the bravest of the brave, Naught met the wandering Byron, save A lone, deserted barrow; And Fancy's iris waned away, When Wordsworth ventured to survey, Beneath the light of common day, The dowie dens of Yarrow. XIV. Little we dream—when life is new, And Nature fresh and fair to view, When throbs the heart to pleasure true, As if for naught it wanted,— That, year by year, and ray by ray, Romance's sunlight dies away, And long before the hair is gray, The heart is disenchanted. FOOTNOTES:"Somnia, terrores magicos, miracula, sagas, Nocturnos Lemures, portentaque Thessala," as well as Milton's "Gorgons, Hydras, and ChimÆras dire," have all been found wanting, when reduced to the admeasurements of science; and the "sounds that syllable men's names, on sands, and shores, and desert wildernesses," are quenched in silence, or only exist in what James Hogg most poetically terms "That undefined and mingled hum, Voice of the desert, never dumb." The inductive philosophy was "the bare bodkin" which gave many a pleasant vision "its quietus." "Homo, naturÆ minister," saith Lord Bacon, "et interpres, tantum facit et intelligit, quantum de naturÆ ordine se vel mente observaverit: nec amplius scit nec potest."—Nov. Organum, Aph. I. The fabulous dragon has long acted a conspicuous part in the poetry both of the north and south. We find him in the legends of Regnar Lodbrog and Kempion, and in the episode of Brandimarte in the second book of the Orlando Inamorato. He is also to be recognised as the huge snake of the Edda; and figures with ourselves in the stories of the Chevalier St George and the Dragon—of Moor of Moorhall and the Dragon of Wantley—in the Dragon of Loriton—in the Laidley Worm of Spindleton Heugh—in the Flying Serpent of Lockburne—the Snake of Wormieston, &c. &c. Bartholinus and Saxo-Grammaticus volunteer us some curious information regarding a species of these monsters, whose particular office was to keep watch over hidden treasure. The winged Gryphon is of "auld descent," and has held a place in unnatural history from Herodotus (Thalia, 116, and Melpomene, 13, 27) to Milton (Paradise Lost, book v.)— "As when a Gryphon, through the wilderness, With wingÈd course, o'er hill or moory dale, Pursues the Arimaspian," &c. "Whan we came to the Lapland lone, The fairies war all in array; For all the genii of the North War keepyng their holyday. The warlocke man and the weird womyng, And the fays of the woode and the steep, And the phantom hunteris all were there, And the mermaidis of the deep. And they washit us all with the witch-water, Distillit fra the moorland dew, Quhill our beauty bloomit like the Lapland rose, That wylde in the foreste grew." Queen's Wake, Night 1st. "Like, but oh how different," are these unearthly goings on to the details in the Walpurgis Night of Faust (Act v. Scene 1.) The "phantom-hunters" of the north were not the "Wilde JÄger" of Burger, or "the Erl-king" of Goethe. It is related by Hearne, that the tribes of the Chippewas Indians suppose the northern lights to be occasioned by the frisking of herds of deer in the fields above, caused by the hallo and chase of their departed friends. "From Ross's hills to Solway sea," was supposed to have had its fulfilment in the death of the lamented monarch, which occurred, only a few months after the appearance of the skeleton masquer, by a fall from his horse, over a precipice, while hunting between Burntisland and Kinghorn, at a place still called "the King's Wood-end." Wordsworth appears to have had the subject in his eye, in two of the stanzas of his lyric, entitled Presentiments,—the last of which runs as follows:— "Ye daunt the proud array of war, Pervade the lonely ocean far As sail hath been unfurled, For dancers in the festive hall What ghostly partners hath your call Fetched from the shadowy world." —Poetical Works, 1845, p. 176. The same incident has been made the subject of some very spirited verses, in a little volume—Ballads and Lays from Scottish History—published in 1844; and which, I fear, has not attracted the attention to which its intrinsic merits assuredly entitle it. |
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