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she will not love,

      Nothing can make her:

      The devil take her!

      But we catch a very different amatory note, and that of the most personal and earnest kind, when the voice of Burns, and then the voice of Byron, were heard in English poetry. In Byron the note is almost always passionate. In Burns it is sometimes sentimental, sometimes jovial, sometimes humorous, sometimes frankly and offensively coarse. Many readers cannot do full justice to the North-Country dialect in the following lines, but the most Southern of accents could not quite spoil their simple beauty:

      The westlin wind blaws loud an’ shrill;

      The night’s baith mirk and rainy, O;

      But I’ll get my plaid, an’ out I’ll steal,

      An’ owre the hills to Nannie, O.

      Her face is fair, her heart is true,

      As spotless as she’s bonnie, O:

      The op’ning gowan, wat wi’ dew,

      Nae purer is than Nannie, O.

      That is one amatory, one feminine note in Burns. Here is another:

      There’s nought but care on every han’,

      In every hour that passes, O;

      What signifies the life o’ man,

      An’ ’twere na for the lasses, O.

      Auld Nature swears the lovely dears

      Her noblest work she classes, O:

      Her ’prentice han’ she tried on man,

      An’ then she made the lasses, O.

      I have no fault to find with these lines. They express a profound and enduring truth; and, if they do so with some little exaggeration, they do it half humorously, and so protect themselves against criticism. But I really think – I hope you will not deem me unchivalrous in saying so – we have, during the present century, heard too much, both in poetry and in prose romance, as we are now hearing too much in newspapers and magazines, of “the lasses, O.” Not that we can hear too much of them in their relation to each other, to men, and to life. The “too much” I indicate is the too much of romantic love, that leaves no place for other emotions and other passions equally worthy, or relegates these to an inferior position and to a narrower territory. I should say that there is rather too much of the sentimental note in Byron, in Shelley, in Keats, just as I should say that there is not too much of it in Wordsworth or in Scott. To say this is not to decry Byron, Shelley, and Keats – what lover of poetry would dream of decrying such splendid poets as they? – but only to indicate a certain tendency against which I cannot help feeling it is well to be on our guard. The tendency of the times is to encourage writers, whether in prose or verse, to deal with this particular theme and to deal with it too frequently and too pertinaciously. Moreover, there is always a danger that a subject, in itself so delicate, should not be quite delicately handled, and indeed that it should be treated with indelicacy and grossness. That, too, unfortunately, has happened in verse; and when that happens, then I think the Heavenly Muse veils her face and weeps. It must have been through some dread of poetry thus dishonouring itself that Plato in his ideal Republic proposed that poets should be crowned with laurel, and then banished from the city. For my part, I would willingly see such poets banished from the city, but not crowned with laurel. No doubt Plato’s notion that poets should chant nothing but hymns to the Gods and praises of virtue is a little narrow and exacting, but if they are to sing songs worthy of themselves, and of mankind, they must be on the side of virtue and of the Gods. Hark with what perfect delicacy a masculine poet like Scott can deal with a feminine theme:

      What though no rule of courtly grace

      To measured mood had trained her pace,

      A foot more light, a step more true

      Ne’er from the heath-flower dashed the dew.

      Ev’n the light harebell raised its head,

      Elastic from her airy tread.

      What though upon her speech there hung

      The accents of the mountain tongue?

      Those solemn sounds, so soft, so clear,

      The listener held his breath to hear.

      That is how manly poets write and think of women. But they do not dwell over much on the theme; they do not harp on it; and when you turn the page, you read in a totally different key:

      The fisherman forsook the strand,

      The swarthy smith took dirk and brand;

      With changëd cheer the mower blythe

      Left in the half-cut swathe the scythe.

      The herds without a keeper strayed,

      The plough was in mid-furrow stayed.

      The falconer tossed his hawk away,

      The hunter left the stag at bay.

      Prompt at the signal of alarms,

      Each son of Albion rushed to arms.

      So swept the tumult and affray

      Along the margin of Achray.

      Does it not remind you of the passage I quoted from Homer, where Hector says to Andromache, “Go! to your house, and see to your loom and distaff, but for war men will provide”? Scott, like Homer, observed the due proportion between love and life, giving love ample room, but not allotting it excessive space. If again one wants to hear how delicately, how worthily, how manfully, poets can write of love and of women, what can one do better than recall this perfect lyric of Wordsworth’s? —

      Three years she grew in sun and shower,

      Then Nature said, “A lovelier flower

      On earth was never sown;

      This Child I to myself will take;

      She shall be mine, and I will make

      A Lady of my own.

      “Myself will to my darling be

      Both law and impulse: and with me

      The Girl, in rock and plain,

      In earth and heaven, in glade and bower,

      Shall feel an overseeing power

      To kindle or restrain.

      “She shall be sportive as the Fawn

      That wild with glee across the lawn

      Or up the mountain springs;

      And hers shall be the breathing balm,

      And hers the silence and the calm

      Of mute insensate things.

      “The floating Clouds their state shall lend

      To her; for her the willow bend;

      Nor shall she fail to see

      Even in the motions of the Storm

      Grace that shall mould the Maiden’s form

      By silent sympathy.

      “The Stars of midnight shall be dear

      To her; and she shall lean her ear

      In many a secret place

      Where Rivulets dance their wayward round,

      And beauty born of murmuring sound

      Shall pass into her face.

      “And vital feelings of delight

      Shall rear her form to stately height,

      Her virgin bosom swell;

      Such thoughts to Lucy I will give

      While she and I together live

      Here in this happy Dell.”

      Thus

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