Chapter III

Pactolus singeth over golden sand;
Scamander, old and blood-empurpled river,
Rolls yet her stream divine; and Castaly
Flows lucid in the light of ancient song;
Whilst thou, sweet Luggie! fairest of this land,
And fair as any of that famous throng,
In pastoral, still loveliness, must be
Bald as a marshy brooklet nameless ever!
Nay, by the spirit of beauty and dear pleasure,
Sure I shall sing thee as my first delight,
Nurse of my soul, companion of my leisure!
And if in aftertime thy waters roll
More worthily, more spiritually bright,
It will be sunshine to my perfect soul.

Thomas the Rhymer.

Listen, O spirit of that ancient bard!
Thou weird Ezekiel of an age of lies
And human fantasy! If ’neath the skies
One being liveth, worthy to be heard,
Whisper the awful _sesame_ that unstarr’d
To thee the riddle of those mysteries,
Dumb evermore to gazing of all eyes
Mortal and uninspired! O thou that warr’d
With man and custom, I do think of thee
As something of a glory, something grand
Beyond what ever satisfied this land
With earnest of a strange divinity,
Penn’d in thy passionately-breathing moods,
Prophetic peopler of old solitudes!

The Lime-Tree.

A Lime-tree broad of bough and rough of trunk
Deepens a shadow, as the evening cool,
Over the Luggie gathering in deep pool
Contemplative, its waters summer-shrunk;
The Lammas floods have sucked away the mould
About its roots, and now in bare sunshine
Like knot of snakes they twine and intertwine
Fantastic implication, fold in fold.
Secure in covert, ’neath the fringing fern
Lurks the bright-speckled trout, untroubled, save
When boyhood with a glorious unconcern
Eagerly plunges in the sleeping wave.
Here the much-musing poet might recapture
The inspiration flown, the vagrant rapture.

The Brooklet.

O deep unlovely brooklet, moaning slow
Thro’ moorish fen in utter loneliness!
The partridge cowers beside thy loamy flow
In pulseful tremor, when with sudden press
The huntsman flusters thro’ the rustled heather.
In March thy sallow-buds from vermeil shells
Break, satin-tinted, downy as the feather
Of moss-chat that among the purplish bells
Breasts into fresh new life her three unborn.
The plover hovers o’er thee, uttering clear
And mournful—strange, his human cry forlorn:
While wearily, alone, and void of cheer
Thou glid’st thy nameless waters from the fen,
To sleep unsunned in an untrampled glen.

Maidenhood.

A sacred land, to common men unknown,
A land of bowery glades and greenwoods hoary,
Still waters where white stars reflected shone,
And ancient castles in their ivied glory.
Fair knights caparison’d in golden mail,
And maidens whose enchantment was their beauty,
Met but to whisper each the passion-tale,
For love was all their pleasure and their duty.
Here cedar bark, as with a moving will,
Floated thro’ liquid silver, all untended;
Here wrong and baseness ever came to ill,
And virtue with delight was sweetly blended.
This land, dear Spenser! was thy fair creation,
Made thro’ fine glamour of imagination.

Sleep.

O precious Morphia! I sanctify
The soothing power that in a painless swoon
Laps my weak limbs, giving me strength to lie,
Till sacred dawn increases unto noon:
Then when, from highest meridional height,
The sun devolves, and cooling breezes wake,
It is a comfort and divine delight
The weary bed exhausted to forsake,
And bathe my temples in the blessed air.
But when day wanes, and the wind-moaning night
Deepens to darkness, then thy virtue rare,
O dream-creative liquid! brings delight,
Thy silver drops, diffusive, kindly steep
The senses in the golden juice of sleep.

The Days of Old Mythology.

O for the days of old Mythology,
When dripping Naiads taught their streams to glide!
When, ’mid the greenery, one would oft-times spy
An Oread tripping with her face aside.
The dismal realms of Dis by Virgil sung,
Whose shade led Dante, in his virtue bold,
All the sad grief and agony among,
O’er Acheron, that mournful river old,
Ev’n to the Stygian tide of purple gloom!
Pan in the forest making melody!
And far away where hoariest billows boom,
Old Neptune’s steeds with snorting nostrils high!
These were the ancient days of sunny song;
Their memory yet how dear to the poetic throng.

Discontentment.

O if we never knew the genial hour
When Happiness sits by us like a god
Dispensing treasures, we would never know
The barren sadness of the common day,
The weariness, and discontentment sour
At human life—its ordinary load
Of hopes deferred, and presences that flow
Smilingly past us, syrens in the dream
Of young imagination, fancy-fed.
O I have seen such beauties with the gleam
Of fairy sunshine on them, and I long
Upon their bosoms this my life away
To dally, like the lover in a song,
And be a luting swain, Arcadian bred!

Snow.

But yestermorn the February snow
Lay printless as the heaven upon this field,
And, with a rapture in my bosom born,
In sudden awe and reverence I kneeled
Alone beneath the glory of the sky
And omnipresent deity. To-day
The spirit of the beautiful no more
Over the wondering earth, in earnest glow
Touches to beauty all the landscape grey,—
Bringing a vision from her palace high
To this sublunar planet. Now, forlorn
As Ariadne on Cretan shore
For many bitter-cold and weary days
She knoweth not her old immortal ways.

The Thrush.

One Candlemas, a gentle day of Spring,
I was abroad betimes while the red sun
Rose large and stately with a purpled ring
Of mist about him, and a mantle dun.
Thro’ naked boughs he ominously glared,
Till, soul-constrained, in sudden awe I stood,
And with a Persian’s adoration stared.
When lo! from a round beech-tree in the wood,
The only tree to which the brown leaves clung,
A mavis warbled forth his mellow lay;
And ever as his ditty clear he sung
The passion swelled his breast of downy grey.
Dear bird! since then thy melody I know
The boldest in intent, the fullest in its flow.

Stars.

O cold blue night, and deep the cloudless sky
Gleams, sown with lucid keen and trembling stars;—
A ravishment of glory shines on high,
And the rapt soul yearns upward. Fiery Mars
Shines with a baleful redness in the west;
While mail’d Orion, frozenly severe,
Stands like an armed skeleton opprest
With centuries of sentinelship. Thro’ clear
Smooth ether the keen-silvered Plough upheaves
Its seven diamonds; and far away
Poor Cassiopeia for her daughter grieves—
Andromeda cold-touch’d by windy spray,
While faintly watching with tear-misted eyne,
Perseus flying shoreward o’er the gleaming brine.

My Epitaph.

_Below lies one whose name was traced in sand.
He died, not knowing what it was to live:
Died, while the first sweet consciousness of manhood
And maiden thought electrified his soul,
Faint beatings in the calyx of the rose.
Bewildered reader! pass without a sigh,
In a proud sorrow! There is life with God,
In other kingdom of a sweeter air;
In Eden every flower is blown:_ AMEN.

_DAVID GRAY._
_September 27, 1861._

Gray’s Monument.

At the inauguration of the Monument erected to the Poet’s Memory in the “Auld Aisle” Burying Ground, Kirkintilloch, July 29, 1865, Mr. Bell said:—

David Gray, was born on the 29th January, 1838, and reared in his father’s house here at Merkland till he reached his fourteenth year. His parents, seeing as they did his disposition and his genius, thought they might find means to bring up their son for the Church. With that view he was sent into Glasgow, and as he required funds to aid him in the prosecution of his studies, at that very early age he became a pupil-teacher in the city. He contrived also to attend the famous University there for four successive sessions. But during all that time his mind was brimming over with poetry, which rose like a rising tide above his Latin, above his Greek, above his theological studies. He had a very ardent and ambitious fancy; he had high aspirations; he had an earnest belief that he was born to be a poet, and to attain fame. In one so young it might have been thought that this was an overweening conception of his own powers. But in reality it was not. A poet is also a _vates_ or prophet, and there is no reason why he should not be permitted sometimes to prophesy of himself. David Gray prophesied of himself that his name would yet be known to his fellow-countrymen as a poet and a teacher, for every true poet is a true teacher. In May, 1860, when he had so far completed his studies in Glasgow, and had arrived at the age of nearly 22, he started alone for London. He had read of the great literary world of the metropolis, and he was fired with an ambition to mingle in it and to make himself, if possible, known to some of the men there. He was fortunate in forming the acquaintance, very soon after going to London, of Mr. Monckton Milnes, now Lord Houghton, who at once formed a correct appreciation of the poet’s character and genius. Lord Houghton has himself put it upon record that he found in David Gray what appeared to him to be the making of a great man. He has also recorded of him that upon first seeing him he was strongly reminded of the poet Shelley. Gray had a light, well-built form; he had a full brow and an out-looking eye; and he had a sensitive, melancholy mouth. So Lord Houghton speaks of him. He formed also in London other acquaintances of value, including Mr. Oliphant, then Private Secretary to Lord Elgin, now member for the Stirling Burghs. As to Sydney Dobell, the poet, I do not know that he actually formed the personal acquaintance of that gentleman; but he had frequent correspondence with Mr. Dobell, and received from him valuable letters, and suggestions, and assistance. He formed the acquaintance of a very estimable woman—Miss Marian James—herself an authoress of great reputation. Nearer at home he had already attained the friendly companionship of some whom he valued much. I am delighted to see two of those gentlemen present to-night—Mr. W. Freeland, David Gray’s early and attached friend, now of the _Herald_ Office, Glasgow, and Mr. James Hedderwick, himself a poet and an editor of great reputation. He had not, however, been long in London till he was seized with a cold which rapidly assumed the character of consumption. Lord Houghton and others, feeling deeply interested in him, got him sent to the South of England for a time; but the disease making rapid progress, David Gray was seized with an irresistible home-sickness, and notwithstanding all the kindness, and all the attention of his friends in the South, in January, 1861, he made his re-appearance at his father’s house down there in Merkland. He lived there from January, 1861, to the 3d December of the same year, when he died. That is the brief record of this young poet’s life—almost all the incidents in it, all the events connected with it. But who can record, or who shall attempt to record the thousand thoughts and emotions that passed through his mind, that illuminated his fancy, and that kindled his genius? Who shall say how these familiar woods, and fields, and glens, and streams were to him dearer, a thousand times dearer and more romantic, than any woods, or fields, or glens, or streams in any other part of the world. No man but a true poet has that warm affection for home scenes, for his country, for his native land, for the friends of his youth; no man but a true poet has those sentiments in their height and in their depth; and if ever a man entertained them, the poetical remains of David Gray prove that he had them in a deep, pathetic, and most earnest manner. Upon his death-bed, within three days of his death, he received what appears to me to be a particularly beautiful letter from Marian James, breathing that _alma gentile_ which none but a refined and pure woman possesses. I never saw David Gray, but I have seen to-night the humble room in which he was born; I have seen the home in which he was afterwards reared—a simple, rural house, belonging to a simple, honest, and upright family, such a family as Scotland is always proud of—and of such families I am proud to know that Scotland possesses her thousands and tens of thousands. I saw his mother to-night, and was deeply impressed with the apparent simplicity and earnestness of her character. I owe her my gratitude and my thanks for her presenting me with a book which belonged to her son, and which contains many of his private markings. I shall always retain it as a valuable and most esteemed possession. David Gray’s poetical susceptibility was of the most conspicuous description. He had a most refined perception of the beautiful; he had a perception of an interminable vista of beauty and truth. He had noble and pure thoughts, and he has been enabled to express those noble and pure thoughts in very noble and pure language. “The Luggie” is a most remarkable poem, containing many very fine passages, inspired partially, no doubt, by a careful perusal of Thomson’s “Seasons” and Wordsworth’s “Excursion,” and not, therefore, so entirely original as some of the author’s subsequent poems; but with passages breaking out in it every now and then which neither Thomson nor Wordsworth suggested, and which are entirely the conceptions of David Gray’s own genius. “The Luggie,” as has been well said, “may not possess in itself much to attract the painter’s eye, but it has sufficed for a poet’s love.” The series of sonnets entitled “In the Shadows”—written by the poet during his last illness—many of them bearing relation to his own condition, his own life, and his own prospects—appear to me to possess a solemn beauty not surpassed by many of the finest passages in Tennyson’s “In Memoriam,” totally distinct and unlike the “In Memoriam,” but as genuine, as sincere, as heart-stirring, and often as poetical. In the author’s own words, they admit you “to the chancel of a dying poet’s mind;” you feel when you are reading these sonnets that they are written in the sure and immediate prospect of death; but they contain thoughts about life, about the past, and about the future, most powerful and most beautiful. I am not going to ask you to take all this for granted. I think, upon an occasion like this, we ought to show some little reason for the faith that is in us; and, if it will not fatigue you too much, I propose in a few minutes to read two or three of those passages and those sonnets which strike me as worthy of all admiration. I feel confident that these works are destined to take their place amongst standard poetical works in the library of every man of literary taste. We are here, as you have said, upon the occasion of the erection of a monument to David Gray—a monument erected on the spot where he is buried, in a beautiful old churchyard, standing upon the brow of a hill, from which a fine and extensive view of the surrounding valley and hills is commanded. It is a granite monument, and will last, I hope, for centuries. I am sure that in this neighbourhood it will often be visited by persons who feel something like kindred emotions with David Gray, and they will be proud of this neighbourhood that it gave birth in that humble cottage to a man who has added so much charm to its natural scenery. It was felt at the same time, I believe, by the gentlemen in Glasgow who took the principal charge of it, that a great or imposing monument was not the thing that was wanted. A plain, simple, enduring record of respect and esteem was what was wished. Therefore, although the fund I know could have been trebled, quadrupled, with ease, it was thought that when a certain moderate sum was obtained that was enough, and by the aid of the genius of our townsman, Mr. Mossman, I venture to say that an appropriate and suitable monument has now been erected on that spot. I may mention that I find the names in the list of subscribers very varied. Among the Glasgow subscribers I find the name of Mrs. Nichol, widow of the late Professor of Astronomy in our University, who I know took a great interest in David Gray from first to last, and who, I know also, with her usual benevolence, aided in smoothing his dying pillow. I find the name of William Logan, one of the most earnest and attached friends that David Gray ever had; I find Lord Houghton; I find Mr. Bailie Cochrane; I find Mr. Stirling of Keir, the Hon. Julia Fane, the Dowager Duchess of Sutherland, Mr. Macmillan, Mr. MacLehose, Mr. J. A. Campbell, Mr. Hutton, editor of the London _Spectator_, and many other names. Now Lord Houghton was requested to write an appropriate inscription for this monument. I know it was a labour of love with him, and I know he was anxious to write such an epitaph as would be thought suitable both here and elsewhere; and I venture to say, and I hope you will agree with me, that he has admirably succeeded in the simplicity and truth of that epitaph which has now been engraved on the monument. Such is the young man whose fame we shall not willingly let die, because they who read his works aright derive moral improvement and intellectual benefit from them—because, young as he was when he died, he cherished pure and noble thoughts, and because he has left those pure and noble thoughts as a record to us of his life, and as an incentive to us to endeavour to cherish similar thoughts. Therefore, we owe him a debt of gratitude; and, therefore, without attempting to raise him upon a pinnacle too high—for his life was cut short before the highest aims of his ambition were attained—let it go forth that no true poet in this land, be his position in life what it may, be his birth humble or great—no true poet, no great teacher of the hearts of men, will ever find an ungrateful country in Scotland, as long as it remembers its great poets—as long as it knows that it is the land of Burns. In “The Luggie,” which you are aware is a descriptive and pastoral poem, there are varied moods of thought. There is a good deal of mere description of beautiful scenery, but that, whilst exquisitely done, is also intermingled with many thoughts and feelings which add a richness to the charm of the poet’s description. No mere description of external and lifeless nature, unless brought home to the heart by allusions to human emotion, can ever produce a very strong effect. But David Gray seems to have understood admirably how to combine those two qualities in his descriptive picture, and whilst he describes beautiful external nature, he always takes care at the same time to attract and touch the feelings. I am happy to know that David Gray died in true Christian faith, and amity with all men. I know from the esteemed clergyman who attended him weekly for many a day, that he had those true Christian sentiments which become a man, and most of all become a great man, upon his death-bed. I have had the very greatest satisfaction in being present to-night. I felt it to be an honour to be requested to come here and express my sentiments on such a subject. It is an honour which I feel, and it is a pleasure which I feel still more, for when a man has passed through this world now for a good many years, as I have done, there can be nothing dearer to his heart than expressing sympathy with the great and good, and feeling those expressions of sympathy reflected from the hearts and the eyes of a sympathising audience.

The Monument bears the following inscription:—

THIS MONUMENT OF
AFFECTION, ADMIRATION, AND REGRET,
IS ERECTED TO

DAVID GRAY,

THE POET OF MERKLAND,
BY FRIENDS FROM FAR AND NEAR,
DESIROUS THAT HIS GRAVE SHOULD BE REMEMBERED
AMID THE SCENES OF HIS RARE GENIUS
AND EARLY DEATH,
AND BY THE LUGGIE, NOW NUMBERED WITH THE STREAMS
ILLUSTRIOUS IN SCOTTISH SONG.

_Born 29th January, 1838; Died 3rd December, 1861._

GLASGOW: PRINTED AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS.

_Second Edition, just ready, in Extra Fcap. 8vo, Price 6s. 6d._

_OLRIG GRANGE_,

A Poem in Six Books. Edited by HERMANN KUNST,
Philol. Professor.

The Tatler in Cambridge.
“One could quote for ever, if a Foolscap Sheet were
inexhaustible; but I must beg my Readers, if they want to have
a great Deal of Amusement, as well as much Truth beautifully
put, to go and order the Book at once. I promise them they will
not repent.”

The Examiner.
“The demoralizing influence of our existing aristocratic
institutions, on the most gifted and noblest members of
the aristocracy has never been so subtly and so powerfully
delineated as in ‘Olrig Grange.’”

The Pall Mall Gazette.
“‘Olrig Grange,’ whether the work of a raw or of a ripe
versifier, is plainly the work of a ripe and not a raw student
of life and nature.... It has dramatic power of a quite
uncommon class; satirical and humorous observation of a class
still higher, and a very pure and healthy, if perhaps a little
too scornful, moral atmosphere.”

The Spectator.
“The story is told in powerful and suggestive verse. The
composition is instinct with quick and passionate feeling,
to a degree that attests the truly poetic nature of the man
who produced it.... The author exhibits a fine and firm
discrimination of character, a glowing and abundant fancy, a
subtle eye to read the symbolism of nature, and great wealth
and mastery of language, and he has employed it for worthy
purposes.”

The Academy.
“The pious self-pity of the worldly mother, and the despair of
the worldly daughter, are really brilliantly put.”

“The story is worked out with quite uncommon power.”

New Poem, by the author of “OLRIG GRANGE.”

_AUSTEN LYELL_. A Poem in Six Books. Extra
Fcap. 8vo, Cloth. [_Immediately._

_SONGS AND FABLES_. By the late PROFESSOR
W. MACQUORN RANKINE, with 10 Illustrations by J. B.
(Mrs. Blackburn). Extra Fcap. 8vo, Cloth.
[_Immediately._

GLASGOW: JAMES MACLEHOSE, PUBLISHER TO THE UNIVERSITY.
LONDON: MACMILLAN AND CO.

_In One Vol., Extra Fcap. 8vo., Cloth, Price 5s._

_HILLSIDE RHYMES_:

AMONG THE ROCKS HE WENT,
AND STILL LOOKED UP TO SUN AND CLOUD
AND LISTENED TO THE WIND.

Scotsman.
“Let anyone who cares for fine reflective poetry read for
himself and judge. Besides the solid substance of thought which
pervades it, he will find here and there those quick insights,
those spontaneous felicities of language which distinguish the
man of natural power from the man of mere cultivation.... Next
to an autumn day among the hills themselves commend us to poems
like these, in which so much of the finer breath and spirit of
those pathetic hills is distilled into melody.”

Glasgow Herald.
“The author of ‘Hillside Rhymes’ has lain on the hillsides,
and felt the shadows of the clouds drift across his half-shut
eyes. He knows the sough of the fir-trees, the crooning of the
burns, the solitary bleating of the moorland sheep, the quiet
of a place where the casual curlew is his only companion, and a
startled grouse-cock the only creature that can regard him with
enmity or suspicion. The silence of moorland nature has worked
into his soul, and his verse helps a reader pent within a city
to realize the breezy heights, the sunny knolls, the deepening
glens, or the slopes aglow with those crackling flames with
which the shepherds fire the heather.”

_Just Ready, in Extra Fcap. 8vo, Cloth, Price 7s. 6d._

_HANNIBAL_:

A Historical Drama. By JOHN NICHOL, B.A., Oxon.,
Professor of English Language and Literature in the University
of Glasgow.

The Saturday Review.
“After the lapse of many centuries, an English Poet is found
paying to the great Carthaginian the worthiest poetical tribute
which has as yet, to our knowledge, been offered to his noble
and stainless name.”

The Athenæum.
“Probably the best and most accurate conception of Hannibal
ever yet given in English. Professor Nichol has done a really
valuable work. From first to last of the whole five acts there
is hardly a page that sinks to the level of mediocrity.”

The Dublin Telegraph.
“Professor Nichol has just given us a volume which bids fair to
open a new era in poetry, and secures to the author a position
among the first poets of the day.”

The Morning Post.
“Glasgow has good reason to be proud of her Professor of
English Literature, in which he now takes a prominent place by
right of his admirable classic drama. Criticism will award him
a regal seat on Parnassus, and laurel leaves without stint.”

GLASGOW: JAMES MACLEHOSE, PUBLISHER TO THE UNIVERSITY.
LONDON: MACMILLAN AND CO.

End of Project Gutenberg's The Poetical Works of David Gray, by David Gray