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The Pamphlet Collection of Sir Robert Stout: Volume 65

Lays of the Deer Forest

Lays of the Deer Forest.

This is an exceedingly rare work, in two volumes, [unclear: octavo]. The authors are mysterious branches [of the ill-fated House of Stuart. John Sobieski and Charles Edward Stuart dedicate this work to Louisa Sobieski Stuart. Let us take a few bricks out of this edifice by way of sample.

"And never in Moray was maiden fair,
But, on her face if turned his eyes,
Bright to her cheek the blood should rise."

"When as he saw the maiden bright,
Forth from the boughs he bounded light,
And to his footstep, as he came,
The flowers might seem to bend with shame.
He was as bright as sunshine fair,
And his light step as free as air;
page 77 And in the sun his golden hair
Seemed to shake off a radiance bright,
As if it waved with amber light.
His brow was like the lily flower,
His eye the sun-drop in the shower,
And all his form so fragile fair,
Like a bright angel of the air."

"Day on the white Himala rose,
And tinged with red and dazzling snows,
Touching her forehead with a flush,
Like a pale virgin's fleeting blush."

The ode of the Findhorn is sad in tone and utterance, indeed

"But if my father's fate be mine,
And like the last lone mountain pine,
Blasted, and bent, and leafless still,
I wither on my lonely hill,
Toward the gleam thy bank that warms,
Shall spread my wan and wasted arms."

The poem on the Rose of the Dime is exquisitely beautiful

"But o'er thy fair and cloudless brow,
The light of spring is beaming now,
And thy bright eyes and locks upon,
Shines lovely summer's coming sun."
"The lovely cheek, the peerless mould,
Shall shrink and fade, and wither cold

The Anniversary is a mournful retrospect.

"Land of my fathers! Through Culloden's gloom
There shines a light of glory on thy tomb,
A star which to posterity shall tell
How the base conquered, and the noble fell."

"For desolation reigns in Holyrood,
And in the sacred dust the regal strewed,
The bones of princes whiten in the air."

"Land of the brave, our hearts have wept for all
Thou hast endured for us, and in our fall
We mourn the desolation, scorn, and woe,
Which to a humbled province brought thee low—
A hundred years of exile now have run,
Since red Culloden's bloody field was won,
And all have long been summoned to that bar—
The dread tribunal, where no passions jar."

"—Justice gives the seal, and truth shall fix
The curse of crime upon The forty-six."

The address to the Divie is really pathetic—

"Sweet Divie! how thy murmuring floods,
Thy dewy banks and weeping woods,
Recall the bright and thoughtless dream,
When I was like thy dancing stream,
When all my glad and sunny hours,
Like thy sweet banks, were strewed with flowers,
And boyhood's care, and joy, and fray
Swept on the tide of youth away,
As down the stream, in giddy whirl,
The sparkling foam and bubbles curl."

page 78
The Midnight Prayer is solemn in the extreme, and contains sweet passages also—

"Maiden, before my clouded sight
Thou rose, a star upon the night
Of my dark spirit—pure as light—
But like the parting sunset given—
Too late for earth—a hope for heaven,
A hope yet there to meet again
Beyond this world of grief and pain."

"Forgive! forgive! O I was lost—
My soul in maddening visions dreaming—
Forgive me, maiden—now 'tis past,
The radiance of thy soft eyes beaming
Broke the wild trance—then think no more
Of that dark dream—'tis gone, 'tis o'er."

The Ode to the Widow is very touching.—

"Scotland awake—why sleep'st thou now
Beneath the yoke that galls thy brow?
Land of the brave, the fair, the free,
Hark to the voice of liberty.
Land of the Bruce, awake, reply,
Assert your rights, avenge, or die!
Break now your chain, be free, ye brave,
Nor live degraded,—England's slave."

The Exile's Farewell is truly melancholy.—

"Land of the warrior clans—my father's land,
Land of the plume, the helmet, and the brand,
Land of the deer and eagle—the last shell,
The parting shell I drink to thee,—farewell!"

"Behold, like Greece degraded and betrayed,
The abject realm a Saxon province made,
The holy cloister and the regal hall
Cast to the dust—abandoned to its fall.
The crown, a bauble for the vulgar stare,
Like penny monster in a village fair.
The princely city, Albion's northern queen.
Forsaken like a mourning village green
The grass-grown streets and palace all bereft,
A scorn and scandal to the stranger left."

The royal brothers hit hard at some unknown enemy in these verses.

"Malignant reptile!—When your malice free
Blotted the best and fairest, what might we
In name, and faith obnoxious, hope from ye?
The asps, and adders, and the scorpion sting
Of thine own conscience, thy dark soul shall wring."

Were these volumes in Sir George Grey's library, they might be apprised by him at the fictitious value of two thousand pounds sterling. Their contents recall the days—the fatal days of [unclear: yore]. One cannot refrain from shedding a tear over the melancholy [unclear: odes] in this book. We cast a sad look at

"Edina, Scotia's darling Seat,—
Where once beneath a monarch's feet
Sat Legislation's sovereign power."