What leaf-fringed legend haunts about thy shape? Of deities or mortals, or of both, In Tempe or the dales of Arcady? What men or gods are these? What maidens loth? What mad pursuit? What struggle to escape? What pipes and timbrels? What wild ecstasy? Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard Thy song, nor ever can those trees be bare;' Bold lover, never, never canst thou kiss, yet, do not Though winning near the goal grieve; She cannot fade, though thou hast not thy bliss, For ever wilt thou love, and she be fair! Ah, happy, happy boughs! that cannot shed For ever piping songs for ever new; For ever panting and for ever young; Who are these coming to the sacrifice? To what green altar, O mysterious priest, Lead'st thou that heifer lowing at the skies, And all her silken flanks with garlands drest? What little town by river or sea-shore, Or mountain-built with peaceful citadel, Is emptied of this folk, this pious morn? And, little town, thy streets for evermore Will silent be; and not a soul to tell Why thou art desolate, can e'er return. O Attic shape! Fair attitude! with brede When old age shall this generation waste, Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe Than ours, a friend to man, to whom thou say'st, "Beauty is truth, truth beauty," that is all Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know. Sonnets. To one who has been long in city pent, 'Tis very sweet to look into the fair And open face of heaven, to breathe a prayer Full in the smile of the blue firmament. Who is more happy, when, with heart's content, Fatigued he sinks into some pleasant lair Of wavy grass, and reads a debonair And gentle tale of love and languishment? Returning home at evening, with an ear Catching the notes of Philomel, an eye Watching the sailing cloudlet's bright career, He mourns that day so soon has glided by; E'en like the passage of an angel's tear That falls through the clear ether silently. Happy is England! I could be content To see no other verdure than its own; To feel no other breezes than are blown Through its tall woods with high romances blent: Yet do I sometimes feel a languishment For skies Italian, and an inward groan To sit upon an Alp as on a throne, And half forget what world or wordling meant. Happy is England, sweet her artless daughters; Enough their simple loveliness for me, Enough their whitest arms in silence clinging: Yet do I often warmly burn to see Beauties of deeper glance, and hear their singing, And float with them about the summer waters. Stanzas. In a drear-nighted December, In a drear-nighted December, But with a sweet forgetting, Ah! would 'twere so with many To know the change and feel it, Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store? Thy hair soft lifted by the winnowing wind: Spares the next swath and all its twined And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day, And touch the stubble plains with rosy hue: Then, in a wailful choir, the small gnats mourn Among the river sallows, borne aloft, Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies; To bend with apples the moss'd cottage trees, With a sweet kernel; to set budding more And still more, later flower for the bees, bourn; Hedge- crickets sing; and now, with treble soft, The redbreast whistles from a garden croft, Hogg James Hogg ward am 25. Januar 1772 in einer Hütte am Ufer des Ettrick im Shire von Selkirk (Schottland) geboren. Er stammte von Schäfern und ward selbst wieder ein Schäfer, wes halb er auch zur Auszeichnung the Ettrick Shepherd genannt wurde. Schon früh musste er sich sein Brod verdienen und genoss nur ein halbes Jahr lang eigentlichen Schulunterricht; seine ganze übrige Bildung verdankte er seinem eigenen Fleisse. Als er achtzehn Jahr alt war, entstanden seine ersten Gedichte, welche er später in Edinburg herausgab, die aber wenig Aufmerksamkeit erregten. Mit der Landwirthschaft wollte es ihm nicht gelingen und er hatte mit Armuth zu kämpfen, bis sich Walter Scott seiner annahm. Hogg liess nun mehrere grössere Dichtungen erscheinen, unter denen namentlich The Queen's Wake sich des allgemeinsten Beifalls erfreute, aber seine Vermögensumstände verbesserten sich nicht, da er den Pachthof von Mount Benger übernommen hatte und vom Ackerbau doch nicht sonderlich viel verstand. Er starb am 21. November 1835 und hinterliess eine Wittwe und fünf Kinder in drückenden Verhältnissen. Neben mehreren Romanen und prosaischen Erzählungen schrieb Hogg einige grössere Dichtungen, wie dass oben erwähnte Queen's Wake, the Pilgrims of the Sun, Mador of the Moor, Queen Hynde und eine Anzahl Balladen und lyrischer Poesieen u. A. m. Allan Cunningham sagt von ihm a. a. O.: "Als Dichter steht er auf einer hohen Stufe. An Energie des Ausdrucks und Leidenschaftlichkeit des Gefühls ist er Burns zwar bei Weitem nicht gleich, allein was den natürlichen Aufschwung einer freien fessellosen Einbildungskraft anlangt, tritt er vor Niemand zurück. Die besonderen Eigenschaften seiner Dichtungen, so wie seine Stellung als Haupt der ländlichen Schule, die eben keine zahlreichen Jünger hat, geben ihm alle Aussicht auf Nachruhm." The Skylark. Bird of the wilderness, Sweet be thy matin o'er moorland and lea! Emblem of happiness, Blest is thy dwelling-place O to abide in the desert with thee! Wild is thy lay, and loud, Where, on thy dewy wing, O'er fell and fountain sheen, O'er moor and mountain green, O'er the red streamer that heralds the day, Kilmeny. From the Queen's Wake. Bonny Kilmeny gaed up the glen; And lang, lang greet or Kilmeny come hame! |