''The Minstrel''

THE MINSTREL

[Two excerpts]

James Beattie

XI.
    There lived, in Gothic days, as legends tell,
    A shepherd-swain, a man of low degree;
    Whose sires, perchance, in Fairyland might dwell,
    Sicilian groves, or vales of Arcady;
    But he, I ween, was of the North Countrie:
    A nation famed for song, and beauty’s charms;
    Zealous, yet modest; innocent, though free;
    Patient of toil; serene amidst alarms;
Inflexible in faith; invincible in arms.

XXI.
    And oft the craggy cliff he loved to climb,
    When all in mist the world below was lost.
    What dreadful pleasure! there to stand sublime,
    Like shipwrecked mariner on desert coast,
    And view the enormous waste of vapour, tost
    In billows, lengthening to the horizon round,
    Now scooped in gulfs, with mountains now embossed!
    And hear the voice of mirth and song rebound,
Flocks, herds, and waterfalls, along the hoar profound!

1771-74


Complete text of The Minstrel.

(Illustration is Caspar David Friedrich, Morning in the Riesengebirge, 1810-11.)