114 THE LAY OF THE LAST MINSTREL. [CANTO III.

In solemn measure, soft and slow,

Arose a father's notes of woe.1

1["Nothing can excel the simple concise pathos of the close of this Canto-nor the touching picture of the Bard when, with assumed business, he tries to conceal real sorrow. How well the poet understands the art of contrast--and how judiciously it is exerted in the exordium of the next Canto, where our mourning sympathy is exchanged for the thrill of pleasure!"-ANNA SEWARD.]

THE

LAY OF THE LAST MINSTREL.

CANTO FOURTH.

THE

LAY OF THE LAST MINSTREL.

CANTO FOURTH.

I.

SWEET Teviot! on thy silver tide
The glaring bale-fires blaze no more;
No longer steel-clad warriors ride

Along thy wild and willow'd shore;1
Where'er thou wind'st, by dale or hill,
All, all is peaceful, all is still,

As if thy waves, since Time was born,
Since first they roll'd upon the Tweed,2
Had only heard the shepherd's reed,
Nor started at the bugle-horn.

1 ["What luxury of sound in this line!"-ANNA SEWARD.]

2 [Orig. "Since first they rolled their way to Tweed."]

II.

Unlike the tide of human time,

Which, though it change in ceaseless flow, Retains each grief, retains each crime,

Its earliest course was doom'd to know;
And, darker as it downward bears,
Is stain'd with past and present tears.
Low as that tide has ebb'd with me,
It still reflects to Memory's eye
The hour my brave, my only boy,

Fell by the side of great Dundee.1
Why, when the volleying musket play'd
Against the bloody Highland blade,
Why was not I beside him laid !—
Enough he died the death of fame; .

Enough he died with conquering Græme."

1 The Viscount of Dundee, slain in the battle of Killicrankie.

2 ["Some of the most interesting passages of the poem are those in which the author drops the business of his story to moralize and apply to his own situation the images and reflections it has suggested. After concluding one Canto with an account of the warlike array which was prepared for the reception of the English invaders, he opens the succeeding one with the following beautiful verses, (Stanzas i. and ii.)

"There are several other detached passages of equal beauty, which might be quoted in proof of the effect which is produced by this dramatic interference of the narrator."JEFFREY.]

8 [No one will dissent from this, who reads, in particular, the first two and heart-glowing stanzas of Canto VI.-now, by association of the past, rendered the more affecting.-ED.]