HIGHLAND MARY ROBERT BURNS [The subject of the poem is Mary Campbell, a sailor's daughter, to whom Burns was attached for a time and who died suddenly on her way to a meeting with him.] Ye banks, and braes, and streams around The castle o' Montgomery, Green be your woods, and fair your flowers, Your waters never drumlie!1 There Summer first unfald2 her robes, And there the langest tarry; For there I took the last fareweel O' my sweet Highland Mary. How sweetly bloomed the gay green birk,8 How rich the hawthorn's blossom, 10 As underneath their fragrant shade I clasped her to my bosom! The golden hours on angel wings Flew o'er me and my dearie; For dear to me as light and life Was my sweet Highland Mary. 20 Wi' monie a vow, and locked embrace, That wraps my Highland Mary! O pale, pale now, those rosy lips, That heart that lo'ed me dearly! 30 ODE INTIMATIONS OF IMMORTALITY FROM RECOLLECTIONS OF EARLY CHILDHOOD WILLIAM WORDSWORTH [This poem was based on the writer's own experience of a childhood remarkably sensitive to spiritual "intimations." "I used to brood," he said, "over the stories of Enoch and Elijah, and almost to persuade myself that, whatever might become of others, I should be translated, in something of the same way, to heaven. With a feeling congenial to this I was often unable to think of external things as having external existence. Many times when going to school have I grasped at a wall or tree to recall myself from this abyss of idealism to the reality" (compare lines 142-146). As to the idea of a pre-existent state of the soul, suggested in lines 59-66, Wordsworth said that he did not wish to be understood to propose it as a definite belief, but only to make use "as a poet" of the widespread instinctive notion of such a possi bility.] |