ment, the intimate love of Nature, in her sublime or lovely dress, with its national faithfulness to "Wild Wales," which is always before us-these gifts have led me to dwell on the subject more perhaps than for the sake of my readers I should, but less than I have wished. The ancient Erse poetry, whether of Ireland or of Scotland, running more or less a parallel course, must now also be too scantily and imperfectly dwelt on. The Gaelic field was indeed excellently touched by my patriotic friend, J. C. Shairp, whose lectures were published in his Aspects of Poetry (1881). And I will quote from the translations which he gives a few examples of the landscape, Erse or Gaelic. We have first a true undecorated fragment of the Ossianic lays a warrior meets and addresses a maiden on the hillside Morna, most lovely among women, Why by thyself in the circle of stones, Trouble is on yonder loch; Clouds darken round the mountain tops; Thyself art like snow on the hill Thy waving hair like mist of Cromla Curling upwards on the Ben,1 'Neath gleaming of the sun from the west; Thy soft bosom like the white rock On bank of Brano of foaming streams. To the same Ossianic class belongs the splendid address to the Sun O thou that travellest on high, Round as the warrior's hard full shield, Whence thy brightness without gloom, original words of our Welsh examples. The Hebrew, Erse, and Saxon texts have also been omitted. 1 Mountain-top. Thy light that is lasting, O sun! Thou comest forth strong in thy beauty, Who will dare draw nigh to thee? The moon is lost aloft in the heaven; Another very early lyric tells us how the fair Deirdre laments being forced back to Erin from her home in the Western Highlands Glen Massan, O Glen Massan ! Glen Etive! O Glen Etive! There was raised my earliest home. When the sun struck on Glen Etive. Glendaruadh! O Glendaruadh !1 Each man who dwells there I love. Sweet the voice of the cuckoo on bending bough, On the hill above Glendaruadh. Last, an aged poet's wish-apparently of mediaeval date Oh, lay me near the brooks, which slowly move with gentle steps; under the shade of the budding branches lay my head, and be thou, O sun, in kindness with me. I see Ben-Aid of beautiful curve, chief of a thousand hills; the dreams of stags are in his locks, his head in the bed of clouds. . . . 1 The d in the last syllable of Glendaruadh is practically mute. Let the swan of the snowy bosom glide on the top of the waves. When she soars on high among the clouds she will be unencumbered. . . Oh, place me within hearing of the great waterfall, where it descends from the rock. Compare this with the lament of Llywarch Hen. The differences in style and passion between the Gaelic and Welsh poetry we may feel; but only a scholar versed in both languages could define them. The exquisite sensibility of the Celt, however, his pensive melancholy, his power of penetrating the soul of the landscape and of tracing its affinity to the human soul, as Shairp notes, assuredly thrill through these beautiful lyrics. The foregoing poems have been grouped in connection with Scotland under the general name Gaelic. Yet several must have originated in that earlier Scotia which we know as Ireland. Such are the song to Morna, the lament of Deidre; whatever, in brief, has a reasonable claim to be termed Ossianic. But all that early history, Irish or Scottish, is too thickly veiled in the mists of vague tradition-too nebulous, to bear strict analysis. Our examples, however, make it clear that the prevailing note of the early Erse landscape verse breathes sadness: the eternal sigh over human life; or the dirge of a race gifted and unhappythat never has done itself justice, and hence, has rarely received it. Let me then conclude this sketch by a hymn in a sweeter, healthier tone, with great probability assignable to Columba, the Irish saint who brought Christianity to Western Scotland, settling in the island Hii or Ia (corrupted to Iona), about the middle of the sixth century. The delicate pensiveness, the yearning intimate love of Nature which characterise the Celt are nowhere more beautifully breathed forth. The saint is standing on the rocky range which forms the south-west corner of the island, where, "on the highest point overlooking the expanse of the western sea is the cairn . . . "which marks the spot where he is said to have ascended for "the purpose of ascertaining if he could discern from it the "distant shores of his beloved Erin.”1 It would be delightful, says Columba, to be On the pinnacle of a rock, That I might often see The face of ocean; That I might see its heaving waves Over the wide ocean, When they chant music to their Father Upon the world's course; That I might hear the song of the wonderful birds, Source of happiness ; That I might hear the thunder of the crowding waves That I might hear the roar by the side of the church Of the surrounding sea : . . . That I might see the sea-monsters, The greatest of all wonders; That I might see its ebb and flood In their career. That I might bless the Lord Who preserves all, Heaven with its countless bright orders, Land, strand, and flood. 1 W. F. Skene, Celtic Scotland, vol. ii (1877). CHAPTER IX LANDSCAPE IN ANGLO-SAXON POETRY BUT I must now resolutely turn my face to our own language in our own land. Yet the Saxon literature (as for convenience I shall name it) is but the prelude and ante-chamber to the English. And the English, indeed (if we do not concern ourselves with philology), regarded simply as literature, must in reason date from language intelligible to us all, without more at most than a glossary and a few notes. In a word, it must, mainly and practically, date from Henry VIII rather than from Edward III. But this by the way. We may claim, it is stated,1 that the German tribes whose conquests created England were before the other Teutons in poetical work. The Hero-epic was developed by our people in the sixth century. Yet the Saxon poetry does not go far; to the contemporary Cymric or Gaelic at least, in point of style and art, it seems to me decidedly inferior. As Mr. Earle has noted, it is strongly rhetorical. The distinctly imaginative element is mainly to be found in the frequent and varied metaphors; sometimes in the passion pervading the whole scheme of the song. In style, in metre, so far as I can judge, it must be confessed rarely or barely to rise above prose diction. Looking to our own province, seldom do we find complete similes; the landscape is scarcely described; the scene is indicated, rather than painted, by isolated touches. In this it may resemble the Greek poetry of Nature, but with a deeper and a sadder tone, a more personal quality. The Hellenic 1 B. Ten Brink, Early English Literature, 1883. |