an the storm
Which beats the side of old Cairn Gorm;
That hand, as white as falling snow,
Which yet can fell the stoutest foe;
And, last of all, that noble heart,
Which ne'er from honour's path would start,
Shall never be forgot by me--
So farewell, honest six-foot three.

This is already pure Borrow, with a vigour excusing if not quite
transmuting its rant. He creates a sort of hero in his own image, and it
should be read as an introduction and invocation to "Lavengro" and "The
Romany Rye." It is one of the few contemporary records of Borrow at
about the age when he wrote "Celebrated Trials," made horse-shoes and
fought the Blazing Tinman. So far as I know, it was more than ten years
before he wrote anything so good again, and he never wrote anything
better in verse, unless it is the song of the "genuine old English
gentleman," in the twenty-fourth chapter of "Lavengro":

"Give me the haunch of a buck to eat, and to drink Madeira old,
And a gentle wife to rest with, and in my arms to fold,
An Arabic book to study, a Norfolk cob to ride,
And a house to live in shaded with trees, and near to a river side;
With such good things around me, and blessed with good health withal,
Though I should live for a hundred years, for death I would not call."

The only other verse of his which can be remembered for any good reason
is this song from the Romany, included among the translations from thirty
languages and dialects which he published, in 1835, with the title of
"Targum," and the appropriate motto: "The raven has ascended to the nest
of the nightingale." The Gypsy verses are as follows:

The strength of the ox,
The wit of the fox,
And the leveret's speed,--
Full oft to oppose
To their numerous foes,
The Rommany need.

Our horses they take,
Our waggons they break,
And ourselves they seize,
In their prisons to coop,
Where we pine and droop,
For want of breeze.

When the dead swallow
The fly shall follow
O'er Burra-panee,
Then we will forget
The wrongs we have met
And forgiving be.

It will not be necessary to say anything more about Borrow's verses.
Poetry for him was above all declamatory sentiment or wild narrative, and
so he never wrote, and perhaps never cared much for poetry, except
ballads and his contemporary Byron. He desired, as he said in the note
to "Romantic Ballads," not the merely harmonious but the