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This birth to Life, while Life is doomed withhold
Whate'er the world contain for Life to use!

Yet never Life to lose

Though 'twas already lost times manifold!
In brief my Fortune could no horror make,
Ne certain danger ne ancipitous case

(Injustice dealt by men, whom wild-confused
Misrule, that rights of olden days abused,

O'er neighbour-men upraised to power and place!)
I bore not, lashed to the sturdy stake,

Of my long suffering, which my heart would break
With importuning persecuting harms

Dasht to a thousand bits by forceful arms.

XI

Number I not so numerous ills as He

Who, 'scaped the wuthering wind and furious flood,
In happy harbour tells his travel-tale;

Yet now, e'en now, my Fortune's wavering mood
To so much misery obligeth me

That e'en to pace one forward pace I quail:

No more shirk I what evils may assail;

No more to falsing welfare I pretend;
For human cunning naught can gar me gain.
In fine on sovran Strain

Of Providence divine I now depend:

This thought, this prospect 'tis at times I greet
My sole consoler for dead hopes and fears.
But human weakness when its eyne alight
Upon the things that fleet, and can but sight
The sadding Memories of the long-past years;
What bread such times I break, what drink I drain,
Are bitter tear-floods I can ne'er refrain,

Save by upbuilding castles based on air,
Phantastick painture fair and false as fair.

XII

For an it possible were that Time and Tide

Could bend them backward and, like Memory, view

The faded footprints of Life's earlier day;

And, web of olden story weaving new,

In sweetest error could my footsteps guide

'Mid bloom of flowers where wont my youth to stray; Then would the memories of the long sad way

Deal me a larger store of Life-content;
Viewing fair converse and glad company,
Where this and other key

She had for opening hearts to new intent; -
The fields, the frequent stroll, the lovely show,
The view, the snow, the rose, the formosure,
The soft and gracious mien so gravely gay,
The singular friendship casting clean away
All villein longings, earthly and impure,
As one whose Other I can never see;-
Ah, vain, vain memories! whither lead ye me
With this weak heart that still must toil and tire
To tame (as tame it should) your vain Desire?

L'ENVOI

No more, Canzon! no more; for I could prate
Sans compt a thousand years; and if befall

Blame to thine over-large and long-drawn strain
We ne'er shall see (assure who blames) contain
An Ocean's water packt in vase so small,

Nor sing I delicate lines in softest tone

For gust of praise; my song to man makes known

Pure Truth wherewith mine own Experience teems;

Would God they were the stuff that builds our dreams!

ADIEU TO COIMBRA

WEET lucent waters of Mondego-stream,

SWEE

Of my Remembrance restful jouïssance,

Where far-fet, lingering, traitorous Esperance

Long whiles misled me in a blinding Dream:

Fro' you I part, yea, still I'll ne'er misdeem

That long-drawn Memories which your charms enhance Forbid me changing and, in every chance,

E'en as I farther speed I nearer seem.

Well may my Fortunes hale this instrument

Of Soul o'er new strange regions wide and side, Offered to winds and watery element:

But hence my Spirit, by you 'companied,

Borne on the nimble wings that Reverie lent,

Flies home and bathes her, Waters! in your tide.

THOMAS CAMPBELL

(1777-1844)

HE life of Thomas Campbell, though in large measure fortu nate, was uneventful. It was not marked with such brilliant successes as followed the career of Scott; nor was fame purchased at the price of so much suffering and error as were paid for their laurels by Byron, Shelley, and Burns; but his star shone with a clear and steady ray, from the youthful hours that saw his first triumph until near life's close. The world's gifts- the poet's fame, and the public honors and rewards that witnessed to it- were given with a generous hand; and until the death of a cherished wife and the loss of his two children-sons, loved with a love beyond the common love of fathers-broke the charm, Campbell might almost have been taken as a type of the happy man of letters.

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THOMAS CAMPBELL

Thomas Campbell was born in Glasgow, July 27th, 1777. His family connection was large and respectable, and the branch to which he belonged had been settled for many years in Argyleshire, where they were called the Campbells of Kirnan, from an estate on which the poet's grandfather resided and where he died. His third son, Alexander, the father of the poet, was at one time the head of a firm in Glasgow, doing a profitable business with Falmouth in Virginia; but in common with almost all merchants engaged in the American trade, he was ruined by the War of the Revolution. At the age of sixty-five he found himself a poor man, involved in a costly suit in chancery, which was finally decided against him, and with a wife and nine children dependent upon him. All that he had to live on, at the time his son Thomas was born, was the little that remained to him of his small property when the debts were paid, and some small yearly sums from two provident societies of which he was a member. The poet was fortunate in his parents: both of them were people of high character, warmly devoted to their children, whose education was their chief care, their idea of education including the training of the heart and the manners as well as the

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When eight years old Thomas was sent to the grammar school at Glasgow, where he began the study of Latin and Greek. "I was so early devoted to poetry," he writes, "that at ten years old, when our master, David Allison, interpreted to us the first Eclogue of Virgil, I was literally thrilled with its beauty. In my thirteenth year I went to the University of Glasgow, and put on the red gown. The joy of the occasion made me unable to eat my breakfast. Whether it was presentiment or the mere castle-building of my vanity, I had even then a day-dream that I should one day be Lord Rector of the university."

As a boy, Campbell gained a considerable familiarity with the Latin and Greek poets usually read in college, and was always more inclined to pride himself on his knowledge of Greek poetry than on his own reputation in the art. His college life was passed in times of great political excitement. Revolution was in the air, and all youthful spirits were aflame with enthusiasm for the cause of liberty and with generous sympathy for oppressed people, particularly the Poles and the Greeks. Campbell was caught by the sacred fire which later was to touch the lips of Byron and Shelley; and in his earliest published poem his interest in Poland, which never died out from his heart, found its first expression. This poem, 'The Pleasures of Hope,' a work whose title was thenceforth to be inseparably associated with its author's name, was published in 1799, when Campbell was exactly twenty-one years and nine months old. It at once placed him high in public favor, though it met with the usual difficulty experienced by a first poem by an unknown writer, in finding a publisher. The copyright was finally bought by Mundell for sixty pounds, to be paid partly in money and partly in books. Three years after the publication, a London publisher valued it as worth an annuity of two hundred pounds for life; and Mundell, disregarding his legal rights, behaved with so much liberality that from the sale of the first seven editions Campbell received no less than nine hundred pounds. Besides this material testimony to its success, scores of anecdotes show the favor with which it was received by the poets and writers of the time. The greatest and noblest of them all, Walter Scott, was most generous in his welcome. He gave a dinner in Campbell's honor, and introduced him to his friends with a bumper to the author of The Pleasures of Hope.'

It seemed the natural thing for a young man so successfully launched in the literary coteries of Edinburgh and Glasgow to pursue his advantage in the larger literary world of London. But Campbell judged himself with humorous severity. "At present," he writes in a letter, "I am a raw Scotch lad, and in a company of wits and geniuses would make but a dull figure with my northern

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THOMAS CAMPBELL

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brogue and my 'braw Scotch boos.'» The eyes of many of the young men of the time were turned toward Germany, where Goethe and Schiller, Lessing and Wieland, were creating the golden age of their country's literature; and Campbell, full of youthful hope and enthusiasm, and with a little money in his pocket, determined to visit the Continent before settling down to work in London. In 1800 he set out for Ratisbon, which he reached three days before the French entered it with their army. His stay there was crowded with picturesque and tragic incidents, described in his letters to friends at home-"in prose," as his biographer justly says, "which even his best poetry hardly surpasses." From the roof of the Scotch Benedictine Convent of St. James, where Campbell was often hospitably entertained while in Ratisbon, he saw the battle of Hohenlinden, on which he wrote the poem once familiar to every schoolboy. Wearied with the bloody sights of war, he left Ratisbon and the next year returned to England. While living at Altona he wrote no less than fourteen of his minor poems, but few of these escaped the severity of his final judgment when he came to collect his verses for publication. Among these few the best were The Exile of Erin' and the noble ode 'Ye Mariners of England,' the poem by which alone, perhaps, his name deserves to live; though 'The Battle of the Baltic' in its original form The Battle of Copenhagen'-unfortunately not the one best known-is well worthy of a place beside it.

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On his return from the Continent, Campbell found himself received in the warmest manner, not only in the literary world but in c.rcles reckoned socially higher. His poetry hit the taste of all the classes that go to make up the general reading public; his harp had many strings, and it rang true to all the notes of patriotism, humanity, love, and feeling. "His happiest moments at this period," says his biographer, seem to have been passed with Mrs. Siddons, the Kembles, and his friend Telford, the distinguished engineer, for whom he afterward named his eldest son.» Lord Minto, on his return from Vienna, became much interested in Campbell and insisted on his taking up his quarters for the season in his town-house in Hanover Square. When the season was over Lord Minto went back to Scotland, taking the poet with him as traveling companion. At Castle Minto, Campbell found among other visitors Walter Scott, and it was while there that 'Lochiel's Warning' was composed and 'Hohenlinden' revised, and both poems prepared for the press.

In 1803 Campbell married his cousin, Matilda Sinclair. The marriage was a happy one; Washington Irving speaks of the lady's personal beauty, and says that her mental qualities were equally matched with it. "She was, in fact," he adds, "a more suitable wife for a poet than poets' wives are apt to be; and for once a son of song had married a reality and not a poetical fiction."

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