LESSON 38 LOVE OF COUNTRY

LOVE OF COUNTRY

SIR WALTER SCOTT (1771-1832), Scottish novelist and poet; originator of the historical novel. Chief poems: Lay of the Last Minstrel, Marmion, and Lady of the Lake . Among his famous Waverley novels may be mentioned Heart of Midlothian, Kenilworth, and Ivanhoe.

BREATHES there the man with soul so dead,

Who never to himself hath said,

“This is my own, my native land!”

Whose heart hath ne’er within him burned,

As home his footsteps he hath turned

From wandering on a foreign strand?

If such there breathe, go, mark him well:

For him no minstrel raptures swell [1] ;

High though his titles, proud his name,

Boundless his wealth as wish can claim;

Despite those titles, power, and pelf [2] ,

The wretch, concentred all in self [3] ,

Living, shall forfeit fair renown;

And, doubly dying, shall go down

To the vile dust, from whence he sprung,

Unwept, unhonoured, and unsung.

O Caledonia! stern and wild,

Meet nurse for a poetic child [4] !

Land of brown heath and shaggy [5] wood,

Land of the mountain and the flood,

Land of my sires! what mortal hand

Can e’er untie the filial band [6]

That knits me to thy rugged strand!

Still, as I view each well-known scene,

Think what is now, and what has been,

Seems as, to me, of all bereft,

Sole friends thy woods and streams were left;

And thus I love them better still,

Even in extremity of ill.

By Yarrow’s stream still let me stray,

Though none should guide my feeble way;

Still feel the breeze down Ettriek break,

Although it chill my wither’d cheek;

Still lay my head by Teviot Stone [7] ,

Though there, forgotten and alone,

The Bard may draw his parting groan.

SCOTT —Lay of the Last Minstrel

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[1] no minstrel raptures swell: No poet sings his praises.

[2] pelf: Wealth.

[3] concentred all in self: Thinking of nothing but his own interest.

[4] meet nurse for a poetic child: Suitable ground for the growth of the poetic spirit.

[5] shaggy: Rough; untrimmed.

[6] filial band: The love as of a son to his parents.

[7] Teviot Stone: A rude rock at which the Teviot has its source in the south-west of Roxburghshire.