And when he breathes his master-lay
Of Alloways witch-haunted wall
All passions in our frames of clay
Come thronging at his call.
Such graves as his are pilgrim-shrines,
Shrines to no code or creed confined-
The Delphian vales, the Palastines,
The Meccas of the mind.
They linger by the Doon's low trees,
And pastoral Nith, and wooded Ayr,
And round thy Sepulchres, Dumfries!
The Poet's tomb is there.
Wyoming is composed of nine Spenserian stanzas. With some unusual
excellences, it has some of the worst faults of Halleck. The lines
which follow are of great beauty.
I then but dreamed: thou art before me now,
In life- a vision of the brain no more,
I've stood upon the wooded mountain's brow,
That beetles high thy love! valley o'er;
And now, where winds thy river's greenest shore,
Within a bower of sycamores am laid;
And winds as soft and sweet as ever bore
The fragrance of wild flowers through sun and shade
Are singing in the trees, whose low boughs press my head.
The poem, however, is disfigured with the mere burlesque of some
portions of Alnwick Castle- with such things as
he would look particularly droll
In his Iberian boot and Spanish plume;
and
A girl of sweet sixteen
Love-darting eyes and tresses like the morn
Without a shoe or stocking- hoeing corn,
mingled up in a pitiable manner with images of real beauty.
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