English Narrative Poems Part 29

LOCHINVAR (Page 19)

Published first in _Marmion_ (1808) as "Lady Heron's Song."

[98] 2. =Border=; the country on the border between England and Scotland, a region of warfare and strife for many centuries.

[99] 8. The =Esk= River is in southwest Scotland, and flows into Solway Firth.

[100] 32. =Galliard=; a lively dance of the period.

[101] 41. =Scaur=; a steep bank of rock.

WILLIAM WORDSWORTH

William Wordsworth was born in 1770 at c.o.c.kermouth on the borders of the beautiful English lake country. During a boyhood spent largely out of doors, rowing, walking, and skating, he imbibed a love for nature which had a broader manifestation in his later life and poetry. After a short period at Hawkshead School, he entered St. John's College, Cambridge, where he took a degree in 1791. He then resided for a time in France; but was driven from there in 1793 by the Reign of Terror, and pa.s.sed a few years in a rather idle way in the vicinity of London. His real poetic awakening came in 1797, when he and Coleridge lived near each other at Alfoxden among the Quantock Hills in Somerset. Here, in 1798, the two young men published _Lyrical Ballads_, a collection of poems written for the most part by Wordsworth, though Coleridge contributed _The Rime of the Ancient Mariner_ and a few others. This book, especially in its treatment of nature, was a reaction against the stilted formalism which had characterized much of the English poetry of the eighteenth century, and as such it was the real stimulus for the revival of Romanticism which followed its appearance. After a year in Germany with his sister Dorothy, Wordsworth returned to the lake region now a.s.sociated with his name, living at Grasmere until 1813, and after that at Rydal Mount. He married his cousin, Mary Hutchinson, in 1802.

Among his later important works were _The Prelude_ (1805), _The Excursion_ (1814), and many shorter poems and sonnets. He was made poet-laureate in 1843, and died seven years after in 1850.

Wordsworth, though a radical in his youth, became more conservative in later years. He was a man of quiet tastes, and deliberately chose to live where he could be among simple people. As a poet, he was first of all an interpreter of nature, endowed with extraordinary keenness of observation and delighting in all her phases. In humanity, too, he had a sympathetic interest, especially in the everyday emotions and occupations of the plain men and women around him. And influencing his att.i.tude toward both nature and humanity was a sort of religious mysticism which conceived the spirit of G.o.d as permeating all things, flowers and trees as well as the human heart.

MICHAEL (Page 21)

Written in 1800 and published in the same year. Wordsworth's own note on the poem is as follows: "Written at Town-end, Grasmere, about the same time as 'The Brothers.' The Sheepfold, on which so much of the poem turns, remains, or rather the ruins of it. The character and circ.u.mstances of Luke were taken from a family to whom had belonged, many years before, the house we lived in at Town-end, along with some fields and woodlands on the eastern sh.o.r.e of Grasmere. The name of the Evening Star was not in fact given to this house, but to another on the same side of the valley, more to the north."

[102] 2. =Greenhead Ghyll=; a ravine near Grasmere.

[103] 134. =Easedale=; a small lake near Grasmere.

LUCY GRAY; OR, SOLITUDE (Page 36)

Written in 1799 and published first in 1800. Wordsworth says of it: "Written at Goslar in Germany. It was founded on a circ.u.mstance told me by my Sister, of a little girl, who, not far from Halifax, in Yorkshire, was bewildered in a snowstorm. Her footsteps were traced by her parents to the middle of the lock of a ca.n.a.l, and no other vestige of her, backward or forward, could be traced. The body, however, was found in the ca.n.a.l."

THOMAS CAMPBELL

Thomas Campbell was born at Glasgow, Scotland, July 27, 1777. He was educated at the University of Glasgow, where he made somewhat of a reputation as a versifier and translator. After some desultory attempts at tutoring, he published in 1799, _The Pleasures of Hope_, a long didactic poem which brought him real fame and a considerable financial reward. Soon after he travelled on the continent, where many of his war ballads were written. In his later days he was a figure in literary circles and was given a pension by the crown. He died in 1844 and was buried in Westminster Abbey.

Much of Campbell's longer poetic work is dull and unequal. However, in his own field of the vigorous patriotic ballad, he is without a rival.

Saintsbury says of him, "He holds the place of best singer of war in a race and language which are those of the best singers, and not the worst fighters, in the history of the world."

HOHENLINDEN (Page 39)

Written in 1800, after the author had visited the battlefield.

In the battle of Hohenlinden (December 3, 1800), the French under General Moreau defeated the Austrians and compelled the Austrian Emperor to sue for peace. The treaty of Luneville, which followed, extended French territory to the Rhine.

[104] 4. The =Iser= is a river rising in northern Switzerland and flowing into the Danube.

BATTLE OF THE BALTIC (Page 40)

Written in 1809.

The battle of the Baltic took place in the Baltic Sea before Copenhagen, April 2, 1801, between the English and the Danish fleets. England had accepted a declaration of the Armed Neutrality League (Russia, Denmark, and Sweden) as being really in the interests of her enemy, France, and the English fleet under Lord Parker was sent to the Baltic. Under Lord Nelson, the second in command, a decisive victory was gained, largely through the fact that Nelson refused to obey the orders of his superior officer.

[105] 67. =Riou= was one of Nelson's officers.

CHARLES WOLFE

Charles Wolfe was born at Dublin, Ireland, in 1791 and died at Queenstown in 1823. He graduated at Trinity College, Dublin, in 1814 and became curate of Donoughmore, Ireland. His _Remains_, with a brief memoir, were published in 1825.

His only poem of any distinction is the one here printed, _The Burial of Sir John Moore_.

THE BURIAL OF SIR JOHN MOORE AT CORUNNA (Page 43)

First published in the _Newry Telegraph_, an Irish paper, in 1817, under the initials C. W.

Sir John Moore (1761-1809) was commander of an English army of twenty-four thousand men in Spain against a French force of eighty thousand under Soult. At the battle of Corunna, January 16, 1809, the English army won a doubtful victory in which their leader was killed.

After burying him at dead of night, the English troops embarked for their own country.

[106] =Corunna= is a city in northwest Spain.

BYRON

George Gordon, Lord Byron, was born in London, January 22, 1788, and died at Missolonghi, April 19, 1824, at the age of thirty-six. Byron's father, a captain in the guards, after a romantic first marriage, wedded Catharine Gordon, a wealthy girl, of Aberdeenshire, whom, after squandering her fortune, he deserted shortly after young Byron's birth.

Byron's mother was a quick-tempered, impulsive woman, ill-fitted to bring up a son who had a temperament almost exactly like her own. Once when a companion said to Byron, "Your mother's a fool," the boy answered, "I know it."

As a boy at school Byron formed pa.s.sionate attachments, entered into the games he played with an unusual fierceness of spirit, and exhibited that sensitive pride which was the cause of much of his posing there and in later life. He was club-footed, a deformity about which he was extremely sensitive. Before entering Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1805, he had attended Harrow for five years. At Cambridge he remained less than three years, but in that time made some close friends and took an active part in all sorts of sports, especially riding and swimming. His vacations he spent at London or Southwell, generally quarrelling violently with his mother.

His first published poetry was _Hours of Idleness_, which appeared in 1807, and which was attacked by the _Edinburgh Review_ so strenuously that Byron replied in 1809 with _English Bards and Scotch Reviewers_. In the same year he took his seat in the House of Lords, but he had no interest in politics, and, accordingly, left England for two years'

travel on the continent. This tour was the occasion of the first two cantos of _Childe Harold_. This poem was received so warmly that Byron remarked that "he awoke one morning to find himself famous." From now till the separation from his wife in 1816, after a year of wedded life, he was the lion of British society, but society took sides on this family difference, and as most of them sympathized with Lady Byron, Byron himself left England. He spent some time on Lake Geneva, where the Castle of Chillon is situated. He then went to Italy, where, amid his usual life of dissipation, he became interested in the Italian Insurrection. Among his friends and companions in Italy were Sh.e.l.ley and Leigh Hunt. In 1823, becoming attracted by the attempts of the Greeks to overthrow Turkish rule, he went to Greece as a leader, but he contracted a fever at Missolonghi, where he died, April 19, 1824.

As a poet Byron appeals especially to youth. His tales are so interesting that Scott made the remark that Byron beat him at his own game. Rapidity and force of movement, intensity and pa.s.sion, excellent description, and a great, though not fine, command of poetic sound are the chief characteristics of his poetry. The romantic tale, _Childe Harold_, and the satire, _Don Juan_, are perhaps his best-known works.

THE PRISONER OF CHILLON (Page 45)

The castle of Chillon is situated near Montreux at the opposite end of Lake Geneva from the city of Geneva. It is a large castle, built on an isolated rock twenty-two yards from the sh.o.r.e of the lake. Beneath this castle, but some nine or ten feet above the surface of the lake, supported by seven detached pillars and one semi-detached, is a vaulted chamber, which was formerly used as a prison. Here, from 1530 to 1536, was imprisoned Francis Bonnivard.

Bonnivard, the son of the Lord of Lune, was born in 1496. When sixteen years old, he inherited from his uncle the priory of St. Victor, near Geneva. Later he allied himself with this city against the Duke of Savoy, but was captured and imprisoned for two years in Grolee. In 1530 he again fell into the hands of the Duke of Savoy, who this time confined him for six years in Chillon castle. At the end of this period he was liberated by the Bernese and Genevese and returned to Geneva to live a brilliant but wild life until 1570.

Byron takes no pains to stick to the facts of Bonnivard's imprisonment or life, or even to the facts about the prison itself. Notice, however, that he calls the poem "A Fable."