m eyelids touched with fairy
ointment, such visions as are vouchsafed to the minstrel alone--the
dream of sweet Kilmeny, too spiritual for the taint of earth? I shall
not attempt any comparison--for I am not here to criticise--between his
genius and that of other men, on whom God in his bounty has bestowed the
great and the marvellous gift. The songs and the poetry of the Shepherd
are now the nation's own, as indeed they long have been; and amidst the
minstrelsy of the choir who have made the name of Scotland and her
peasantry familiar throughout the wide reach of the habitable world the
clear wild notes of the Forest will for ever be heard to ring. I have
seen him many times by the banks of his own romantic Yarrow; I have sat
with him in the calm and sunny weather by the margin of Saint Mary's
Lake; I have seen his eyes sparkle and his cheek flush as he spoke out
some old heroic ballad of the days of the Douglas and the Graeme, and I
have felt, as I listened to the accents of his manly voice, that whilst
Scotland could produce amongst her children such men as him beside me,
her ancient spirit had not departed from her, nor the star of her glory
grown pale! For he was a man, indeed, cast in nature's happiest mould.
True-hearted, and brave, and generous, and sincere; alive to every
kindly impulse, and fresh at the core to the last, he lived among his
native hills the blameless life of the shepherd and the poet; and on the
day when he was laid beneath the sod in the lonely kirkyard of Ettrick,
there was not one dry eye amongst the hundreds that lingered round his
grave. Of the other sweet singer, too--of Allan Cunningham, the
leal-hearted and kindly Allan--I might say much; but why should I detain
you further? Does not his name alone recall to your recollection many a
sweet song that has thrilled the bosom of the village maiden with an
emotion that a princess need not blush to own? Honour, then, to the
poets!--whether they speak out loud and trumpet-tongued, to find
audience in the hearts of the great, and the mighty, and the brave--or
whether, in lowlier and more simple accents, but not less sacred in
their mission, they bring comfort and consolation to the poor. As the
sweep of the rainbow, which has its arch in heaven, and its shafts
resting upon the surface of the earth--as the sunshine which falls with
equal bounty upon the palace and the hut--is the all-pervading and
universal spirit of poetry; and what less can we do