"Say," said Semo's blue-eyed son, "say how fell the chiefs of Erin. Fell they by the sons of Lochlin, striving in the battle of heroes? Or what confines the strong in arms to the dark and narrow house?" Câthba," replied the hero, "fell by the sword of Duchômar at the oak of the noisy streams. Duchômar came to Tura's cave; he spoke to the lovely Morna. 'Morna, fairest among women, lovely daughter of strong-armed Cormac ! Why in the circle of stones; in the cave of the rock alone? The stream murmurs along. The old tree groans in the wind. The lake is troubled before thee: dark are the clouds of the sky! But thou art snow on the heath; thy hair is the mist of Cromla, when it curls on the hill, when it shines to the beam of the west! Thy breasts are two smooth rocks seen from Branno of streams. Thy arms, like two white pillars in the halls of the great Fingal.' replied, 'from Dark are thy "From whence,' the fair-haired maid whence Duchômar, most gloomy of men? brows and terrible! Red are thy rolling eyes! Does Swaran appear on the sea? What of the foe, Duchômar?' 'From the hill I return, O Morna, from the hill of the dark-brown hinds. Three have I slain with my bended yew. Three with my long-bounding dogs of the chase. Lovely daughter of Cormac, I love thee as my soul: I have slain one stately deer for thee. High was his branchy head, and fleet his feet of wind.' 'Duchômar,' calm the maid replied, 'I love thee not, thou gloomy man! hard is thy heart of rock; dark is thy terrible brow. But Câthba, young son of Torman, thou art the love of Morna. Thou art a sunbeam, in the day of the gloomy storm. Sawest thou the son of Torman, lovely on the hill of his hinds? Here the daughter of Cormac waits the coming of Câthba!'" "Long shall Morna wait,' Duchômar said, 'long shall Morna wait for Câthba! Behold this sword unsheathed! Here wanders the blood of Câthba. Long shall Morna wait. He fell by the stream of Branno. On Croma I will raise his tomb, daughter of blue-shielded Cormac! Turn on Duchômar thine eyes; his arm is strong as a storm.' 'Is the son of Torman fallen?' said the wildly-bursting voice of the maid; 'is he fallen on his echoing hills, the youth with the breast of snow? the first in the chase of hinds! the foe of the strangers of ocean! Thou art dark to me, Duchômar; cruel is thine arm to Morna! Give me that sword, my foe! I loved the wandering blood of Cathba!' "He gave the sword to her tears. She pierced his manly breast! He fell, like the bank of a mountain stream, and stretching forth his hand, he spoke: 'Daughter of blueshielded Cormac! Thou hast slain me in youth! the sword is cold in my breast! Morna, I feel it cold. Give me to Moina the maid. Duchômar was the dream of her night! She will raise my tomb; the hunter shall raise my fame. But draw the sword from my breast. Morna, the steel is cold!' She came, in all her tears she came; she drew the sword from his breast. He pierced her white side! He spread her fair locks on the ground! Her bursting blood sounds from her side: her white arm is stained with red. Rolling in death she lay. The cave re-echoed to her sighs." "Peace," said Cuthullin, "to the souls of the heroes! their deeds were great in fight. Let them ride around me on clouds. Let them show their features of war. My soul shall then be firm in danger; mine arm like the thunder of heaven! But be thou on a moonbeam, O Morna! near the window of my rest; when my thoughts are of peace; when the din of arms is past. Gather the strength of the tribes! Move to the wars of Erin!" IGOROUS expression of national life and intense patriotic enthusiasm marked the reign of the Virgin Queen. The same elements worked, though with less fervor, in the time of her pedantic successor, James Stuart, son of the rival queen, whom she had beheaded. Brought up among the Presbyterians of Scotland, he was but too well acquainted with theology, and aiming at the fame of Solomon, won for himself the reputation of "the wisest fool in Christendom." In the first year of his reign he presided at the Savoy Conference, called to settle the rising disputes of the Puritans and the Anglican clergy. The chief result of the conference was the arrangement for a new translation of the Bible. This was duly carried out, and the work being dedicated to the king, is usually called the Authorized Version (1611). The dramatic and lyrical outburst which had given glory to Elizabeth's golden time continued with little abatement into the reign of James. Shakespeare was the greatest living writer at his accession, but his career closed with the production of "Henry VIII." in 1613. In fact, some critics think that he bade farewell to the stage in "The Tempest,' which was performed in 1611, since in it the magician Prospero breaks his wand, burns his books, and departs from the magic island. Shakespeare's plays were first collected in a folio in 1623. The plays of Beaumont and Fletcher, the literary Damon and Pythias of England, belong entirely to the reign of James I.; the romantic Fletcher, who survived his younger comrade nine years, produced more plays alone. They hit the popular demand better even than Shakespeare, so that Dryden declared that in his time two of their plays were "acted through the year for one of Shakespeare's." In "The Knight of the Burning Pestle," they burlesqued the high-flown chivalric romances. The other dramatists of this reign were Tourneur, Middleton, Dekker, Chapman, Heywood, Webster, and Massinger, the last of whom continued active during fifteen years of the reign of Charles I. Massinger was the best of these later dramatists, but many of his plays are lost. As the Puritan controversy waxed fierce, the court party fell into disfavor in the city of London, and in 1648 the theatres were closed by the government. The chief writers of Elizabeth's time, with glowing insular patriotism, expressed their opposition to the supremacy of the Pope, but otherwise they accepted the mixed classical and Christian culture then recognized in the courts of France and Italy. The Puritans, who were steadily increasing in numbers, followed the lead of the Reformer Calvin, and sought to remodel society as well as the Church according to the patterns furnished by the Scriptures. They severely rebuked the attempts of the humorists to revive in song the praises, if not the actual worship, of Apollo, Bacchus and Venus. Those who had the divine gift of poetry were called to compose hymns of Zion and to versify the Psalms of David. And in large measure their earnest faith was successful in removing mountains. The established Church of England for a time inclined to Calvinism in doctrine, as the Thirty-nine Articles still attest. But under the Stuarts the bishops and clergy fell back to Arminianism. James I. hated a Puritan as one who would deny a divine right of rule in bishops, and therefore had little belief in the divine authority of the king. Bishop Richard Hooker (1553–1600) constructed in his "Ecclesiastical Polity" the chief bulwark of the Anglican Church. When the Puritans gained the upper hand Bishop Jeremy Taylor (1613-1667) preached the doctrine of toleration in his “Discourse on the Liberty of Prophesying" (1648), and published devotional books of merit. The old scholastic philosophy fell into disrepute with the national change of religion. When philosophical study revived, it turned away from the abstractions of formal logic and bewildering metaphysics, and sought to investigate the laws of the natural world and of the human mind as its interpreter. Francis Bacon, Lord Verulam, is honored as the founder of this Inductive Philosophy in his “Advancement of Learning" and "Novum Organum." But though he marked out noble plans, his own life was too much engaged in labors at the bar, on the bench, and in the council-chamber, to permit him to carry them into execution. His contributions to literature proper are his "Essays," "Wisdom of the Ancients," or fanciful explanations of ancient mythology, and the incomplete "New Atlantis," a description of an imaginary commonwealth. The activity of theological controversy and philosophical discussion turned some minds back to the medieval allegories, and perhaps helped to produce a new school of poetry which is called "the metaphysical." Donne was the acknowledged leader, but the Anglican Herbert, the Catholic Crashaw, and the more natural Cowley were noted members of the school. Their poems are marked by far-fetched "conceits," tracing curious resemblances between remote and diverse objects. Herrick, though a clergyman, was a worldly lyrist, belonging in spirit to the early Elizabethans. But the crowning glory of the literature of this period was the Puritan Milton, of whom Wordsworth has said, "Thy spirit was a star, and dwelt apart." Overflowing with classical learning even in early life, he wrote the masque "Comus," the elegy "Lycidas," and the twin pastorals "L'Allegro" and "Il Penseroso," whose Italian titles attest his familiarity with the poets of Southern Europe. From his travels in that region, he felt that duty called him to return to take part in the struggle between King and Parliament. In a Latin treatise he defended the beheading of King Charles, yet after the Restoration he was unmolested by Charles' lenient son. Deprived of natural light, his undaunted spirit turned to a long-meditated epic of transcendent interest, and he sang in sublime strains of "Paradise Lost" and "Paradise Regained." THE PR-SBYTERIAN HOSPITAL, |