falconer tossed his hawk away, [Pg 56]The hunter left the stag at bay. Prompt at the signal of alarms, Each son of Albion rushed to arms. So swept the tumult and affray Along the margin of Achray.

[Pg 56]

Does it not remind you of the passage I quoted from Homer, where Hector says to Andromache, “Go! to your house, and see to your loom and distaff, but for war men will provide”? Scott, like Homer, observed the due proportion between love and life, giving love ample room, but not allotting it excessive space. If again one wants to hear how delicately, how worthily, how manfully, poets can write of love and of women, what can one do better than recall this perfect lyric of Wordsworth’s?—

Three years she grew in sun and shower, Then Nature said, “A lovelier flower On earth was never sown; This Child I to myself will take; She shall be mine, and I will make A Lady of my own.  “Myself will to my darling be Both law and impulse: and with me The Girl, in rock and plain, In earth and heaven, in glade and bower, Shall feel an overseeing power To kindle or restrain.  “She shall be sportive as the Fawn That wild with glee across the lawn Or up the mountain springs; And hers shall be the breathing balm, And hers the silence and the calm Of mute insensate things.  “The floating Clouds their state shall lend To her; for her the willow bend; Nor shall she fail to see [Pg 57]Even in the motions of the Storm Grace that shall mould the Maiden’s form By silent sympathy.  “The Stars of midnight shall be dear To her; and she shall lean her ear In many a secret place Where Rivulets dance their wayward round, And beauty born of murmuring sound Shall pass into her face.  “And vital feelings of delight Shall rear her form to stately height, Her virgin bosom swell; Such thoughts to Lucy I will give While she and I together live Here in this happy Dell.”  Thus Nature spake—The work was done— How soon my Lucy’s race was run! She died, and left to me This heath, this calm and quiet scene; The memory of what has been, And never more will be.

[Pg 57]

Neither should I like it to be supposed that I think Byron could not write on this same theme in the noblest manner. He did so frequently; he would not have been the great poet he is if he had not done so. Listen to this, for example:

She walks in beauty, like the night Of cloudless climes and starry skies, And all that’s best of dark and light Meet in her aspect and her eyes. Thus mellowed to that tender light Which Heaven to gaudy day denies. One 

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