Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets Part 106

16 Busk ye then, busk, my bonny bonny bride, Busk ye, busk ye, my winsome marrow, Busk ye, and lue me on the banks of Tweed, And think nae mair on the Braes of Yarrow.

17 C. How can I busk a bonny bonny bride, How can I busk a winsome marrow, How lue him on the banks of Tweed, That slew my love on the Braes of Yarrow?

18 O Yarrow fields! may never never rain Nor dew thy tender blossoms cover, For there was basely slain my love, My love, as he had not been a lover.

19 The boy put on his robes, his robes of green, His purple vest, 'twas my ain sewin', Ah! wretched me! I little little kenned He was in these to meet his ruin.

20 The boy took out his milk-white milk-white steed, Unheedful of my dule and sorrow, But e'er the to-fall of the night He lay a corpse on the Braes of Yarrow.

21 Much I rejoiced that waeful waeful day; I sang, my voice the woods returning, But lang ere night the spear was flown That slew my love, and left me mourning.

22 What can my barbarous barbarous father do, But with his cruel rage pursue me?

My lover's blood is on thy spear, How canst thou, barbarous man, then woo me?

23 My happy sisters may be may be proud; With cruel and ungentle scoffin', May bid me seek on Yarrow Braes My lover nailed in his coffin.

24 My brother Douglas may upbraid, upbraid, And strive with threatening words to move me; My lover's blood is on thy spear, How canst thou ever bid me love thee?

25 Yes, yes, prepare the bed, the bed of love, With bridal sheets my body cover, Unbar, ye bridal maids, the door, Let in the expected husband lover.

26 But who the expected husband husband is?

His hands, methinks, are bathed in slaughter.

Ah me! what ghastly spectre's yon, Comes, in his pale shroud, bleeding after?

27 Pale as he is, here lay him lay him down, Oh, lay his cold head on my pillow!

Take aff take aff these bridal weeds, And crown my careful head with willow.

28 Pale though thou art, yet best yet best beloved; Oh, could my warmth to life restore thee, Ye'd lie all night between my b.r.e.a.s.t.s!

No youth lay ever there before thee.

29 Pale pale, indeed, O lovely lovely youth; Forgive, forgive so foul a slaughter, And lie all night between my b.r.e.a.s.t.s; No youth shall ever lie there after.

30 A. Return, return, O mournful mournful bride, Return and dry thy useless sorrow: Thy lover heeds nought of thy sighs, He lies a corpse on the Braes of Yarrow.

ALLAN RAMSAY.

Crawford Muir, in Lanarks.h.i.+re, was the birthplace of this true poet. His father was manager of the Earl of Hopetoun's lead-mines. Allan was born in 1686. His mother was Alice Bower, the daughter of an Englishman who had emigrated from Derbys.h.i.+re. His father died while his son was yet in infancy; his mother married again in the same district; and young Allan was educated at the parish school of Leadhills. At the age of fifteen, he was sent to Edinburgh, and bound apprentice to a wig-maker there.

This trade, however, he left after finis.h.i.+ng his term. He displayed rather early a pa.s.sion for literature, and made a little reputation by some pieces of verse,--such as 'An Address to the Easy Club,' a convivial society with which he was connected,--and a considerable time after by a capital continuation of King James' 'Christis Kirk on the Green.'

In 1712, he married a writer's daughter, Christiana Ross, who was his affectionate companion for thirty years. Soon after, he set up a bookseller's shop opposite Niddry's Wynd, and in this capacity edited and published two collections,--the one of songs, some of them his own, ent.i.tled 'The Tea-Table Miscellany,' and the other of early Scottish poems, ent.i.tled 'The Evergreen.' In 1725, he published 'The Gentle Shepherd.' It was the expansion of one or two pastoral scenes which he ad shewn to his delighted friends. The poem became instantly popular, and was republished in London and Dublin, and widely circulated in the colonies. Pope admired it. Gay, then in Scotland with his patrons the Queensberry family, used to lounge into Ramsay's shop to get explanations of its Scotch phrases to transmit to Twickenham, and to watch from the window the notable characters whom Allan pointed out to him in the Edinburgh Exchange. He now removed to a better shop, and set up for his sign the heads of Ben Jonson and Drummond, who agreed better in figure than they had done in reality at Hawthornden. He established the first circulating library in Scotland. His shop became a centre of intelligence, and Ramsay sat a Triton among the minnows of that rather mediocre day --giving his little senate laws, and inditing verses, songs, and fables.

At forty-five--an age when Sir Walter Scott had scarcely commenced his Waverley novels, and Dryden had by far his greatest works to produce --honest Allan imagined his vein exhausted, and ceased to write, although he lived and enjoyed life for nearly thirty years more. At last, after having lost money and gained obloquy, in a vain attempt to found the first theatre in Edinburgh, and after building for himself a curious octagon-shaped house on the north side of the Castle Hill, which, while he called it Ramsay Lodge, his enemies nicknamed 'The Goose-pie,' and which, though altered, still, we believe, stands, under the name of Ramsay Garden, the author of 'The Gentle Shepherd' breathed his last on the 7th of January 1758. He died of a scurvy in the gums. His son became a distinguished painter, intimate with Johnson, Burke, and the rest of that splendid set, although now chiefly remembered from his connexion with them and with his father.

Allan Ramsay was a poet with very few of the usual poetical faults. He had an eye for nature, but he had also an eye for the main chance. He 'kept his shop, and his shop kept him.' He might sing of intrigues, and revels, and houses of indifferent reputation; but he was himself a quiet, _canny_, domestic man, seen regularly at kirk and market. He had a great reverence for the gentry, with whom he fancied himself, and perhaps was, through the Dalhousie family, connected. He had a vast opinion of himself; and between pride of blood, pride of genius, and plenty of means, he was tolerably happy. How different from poor maudlin Fergusson, or from that dark-browed, dark-eyed, impetuous being who was, within a year of Ramsay's death, to appear upon the banks of Doon, coming into the world to sing divinely, to act insanely, and prematurely to die!

A bard, in the highest use of the word, in which it approaches the meaning of prophet, Ramsay was not, else he would not have ceased so soon to sing. Whatever lyrical impulse was in him speedily wore itself out, and left him to his milder mission as a broad reflector of Scottish life--in its humbler, gentler, and better aspects. His 'Gentle Shepherd'

is a chapter of Scottish still-life; and, since the pastoral is essentially the poetry of peace, the 'Gentle Shepherd' is the finest pastoral in the world. No thunders roll among these solitary crags; no lightnings affright these la.s.ses among their _claes_ at Habbie's Howe; the air is still and soft; the plaintive bleating of the sheep upon the hills, the echoes of the city are distant and faintly heard, so that the very sounds seem in unison and in league with silence. One thinks of Sh.e.l.ley's isle 'mid the Aegean deep:--

'It is an isle under Ionian skies, Beautiful as the wreck of Paradise; And for the harbours are not safe and good, The land would have remained a solitude, But for some pastoral people, native there, Who from the Elysian clear and sunny air Draw the last spirit of the age of gold, Simple and generous, innocent and bold.

The winged storms, chanting their thunder psalm To other lands, leave azure chasms of calm Over this isle, or weep themselves in dew, From whence the fields and woods ever renew Their green and golden immortality.'

Yet in the little circle of calm carved out by the magician of 'The Gentle Shepherd' there is no insipidity. l.u.s.t is sternly excluded, but love of the purest and warmest kind there breathes. The parade of learning is not there; but strong common sense thinks, and robust and manly eloquence declaims. Humour too is there, and many have laughed at Mause and Baldy, whom all the frigid wit of 'Love for Love' and the 'School for Scandal' could only move to contempt or pity. A _denouement_ of great skill is not wanting to stir the calm surface of the story by the wind of surprise; the curtain falls over a group of innocent, guileless, and happy hearts, and as we gaze at them we breathe the prayer, that Scotland's peerage and Scotland's peasantry may always thus be blended into one bond of mutual esteem, endearment, and excellence.

Well might Campbell say--'Like the poetry of Ta.s.so and Ariosto, that of the "Gentle Shepherd" is engraven on the memory of its native country.

Its verses have pa.s.sed into proverbs, and it continues to be the delight and solace of the peasantry whom it describes.'

Ramsay has very slightly touched on the religion of his countrymen. This is to be regretted; but if he had no sympathy with that, he, at least, disdained to counterfeit it, and its poetical aspects have since been adequately sung by other minstrels.

LOCHABER NO MORE.

1 Farewell to Lochaber, and farewell, my Jean, Where heartsome with thee I've mony day been; For Lochaber no more, Lochaber no more, We'll maybe return to Lochaber no more.

These tears that I shed they are a' for my dear, And no for the dangers attending on weir; Though borne on rough seas to a far b.l.o.o.d.y sh.o.r.e, Maybe to return to Lochaber no more.

2 Though hurricanes rise, and rise every wind, They'll ne'er make a tempest like that in my mind; Though loudest of thunder on louder waves roar, That's naething like leaving my love on the sh.o.r.e.

To leave thee behind me my heart is sair pained; By ease that's inglorious no fame can be gained; And beauty and love's the reward of the brave, And I must deserve it before I can crave.

3 Then glory, my Jeany, maun plead my excuse; Since honour commands me, how can I refuse?

Without it I ne'er can have merit for thee, And without thy favour I'd better not be.

I gae then, my la.s.s, to win honour and fame, And if I should luck to come gloriously hame, I'll bring a heart to thee with love running o'er, And then I'll leave thee and Lochaber no more.

THE LAST TIME I CAME O'ER THE MOOR.

1 The last time I came o'er the moor, I left my love behind me; Ye powers! what pain do I endure, When soft ideas mind me!

Soon as the ruddy morn displayed The beaming day ensuing, I met betimes my lovely maid, In fit retreats for wooing.

2 Beneath the cooling shade we lay, Gazing and chastely sporting; We kissed and promised time away, Till night spread her black curtain.

I pitied all beneath the skies, E'en kings, when she was nigh me; In raptures I beheld her eyes, Which could but ill deny me.

3 Should I be called where cannons roar, Where mortal steel may wound me; Or cast upon some foreign sh.o.r.e, Where dangers may surround me; Yet hopes again to see my love, To feast on glowing kisses, Shall make my cares at distance move, In prospect of such blisses.

4 In all my soul there's not one place To let a rival enter; Since she excels in every grace, In her my love shall centre.

Sooner the seas shall cease to flow, Their waves the Alps shall cover, On Greenland ice shall roses grow, Before I cease to love her.

5 The next time I go o'er the moor, She shall a lover find me; And that my faith is firm and pure, Though I left her behind me: Then Hymen's sacred bonds shall chain My heart to her fair bosom; There, while my being does remain, My love more fresh shall blossom.

FROM 'THE GENTLE SHEPHERD.'

ACT I.--SCENE II.

PROLOGUE.

A flowrie howm[1] between twa verdant braes, Where la.s.ses used to wash and spread their claes,[2]