At bughts in the morning, nae blythe lads are scorning,

Our lasses are lonely, and dowie, and wae:
Nae daffing, nae gabbing, but sighing and sobbing,

Ilk lass lifts her leglin, and hies her away.

In har'st at the shearing, nae swankies are jeering,
Our bansters are wrinkled, and lyard, and grey:
At a fair, or a preaching, nae wooing, nor fleeching,
Since the flowers of the forest are weeded away.

At e'en in the gloaming, nae youngsters are roaming 'Bout stacks with the lasses at boggles to play; But ilk lass sits dreary, lamenting her deary,

Since the flowers of the forest are weeded away.

Dool and wae fa' the order,-sent our lads to the border! The English for ance by a guile won the day:

The flowers of the forest, that shone aye the foremost, The pride of our land now lie cauld in the clay!

We'll ha' nae mair lilting, at the ewes milking,

Our women and bairns now sit dowie and wae; There's nought heard but moaning, in ilka green loaning, Since the flowers of the forest are weeded away.

posed for the bag-pipe, jumps over the discordant notes of the second and seventh, in order to prevent the jarring which it would otherwise produce with the drone or bass, which constantly sounds an octave to the key-note. Hence this kind of composition is commonly styled a Scotch Lilt."-Herbert Croft.

CHAPTER XV.

OF LYRIC POETRY.

We have, hitherto, attended only to the general Rules of regular versification. In long poems the writer, with few exceptions, chuses his Stanza, continuing in the same strain to the close; and this is generally one of the species already described; but in Lyric Poetry, which is understood to be written to accompany the tones of a Lyre, or other musical instrument, the versification is often united in fanciful combinations, in correspondence with the strain for which it is composed.

"The Lyric Poetry of the Grecians was not only sung, but composed to the chords of the lyre. This was at first the characteristic distinction of all that was called Lyric Poetry by the Romans, and their descendants and imitators in later times. The Poet was a musician: he called upon the God of verse, and animated himself with a prelude. He fixed upon the tune, the movement, and the musical period; the melody gave birth to the verse, and thence was

derived the unity of rhythm, character, and expression, between the music and the poem that was sung. Thus the poetry became naturally subservient to number and cadence, and thus each lyric poet invented not only the proper kind of verse, but also the Strophe analogous to the melody which he himself had created, and to which he composed it.

"In this respect, the lyric poem, or ode, with the Latins and with modern nations, has been nothing more than a frivolous imitation of the lyric poem of the Greeks: they say, I sing, but never do sing; they speak of the chords of the lyre, but have never seen a lyre. No poet, since Horace inclusively, appears to have modelled his odes upon a melody. Horace adopting, by turns, the different formula of the Greek poets, seems so much to have forgotten that an ode ought to be sung, that he has often suspended the sense at the end of the strophe, where the air ought to repose, to the beginning of the next stanza."*

The Lyre of the Greeks was a stringed instrument, the invention of which they ascribed to the Gods. The first lyre is fabled to have been the shell of a tortoise, found by Mercury on the border of the Nile, and in which the sinews of the

* Encyclopédie.

animal had been dried by the sun and stretched into sounding strings. It was a species of harp; changing in its form and in the number of its strings, as the art of music advanced towards perfection. It is in allusion to this imaginary origin that the poets still sing of the sounding Shell; and the Swedish skal, a shell (which also denotes a sound) gave the name of Skalds to the poets of Scandinavia.

Music and Poetry were doubtless, in their origin, the same art among the nations of the North, as the Encyclopædist has asserted of the Greeks. The narrative part of the vocal effusions of the Bards formed a chant, or recitative, interrupted by frequent bursts of high enthusiasm, or of tender feelings, which called forth the united melody of the voice and the harp. These several excitements of enthusiasm and of tenderness are, now, the separated provinces of the Lyric Muse; and, indeed, they comprehend all that is worthy of cultivation in the Empire of Poetry.

The highest of the modern lyric compositions is the ODE. It is a Greek name which we usually translate by the word Song, but it was not a song as we use the term in our language. The Ode was the result of strong excitement,-a poetical attempt to fill the hearts of the auditors with

feelings of the sublime. Those Odes that were sung in honour of the Gods, were termed HYMNS, from hymneio, I celebrate. They were the earliest of the Greek Odes; and the name has been retained to designate those pious poems that are sung in our churches. The Hebrew Hymns, said to have been written by King David, are termed PSALMS from the Greek psallo, I sing.

The characteristic principle of the Greek Ode was enthusiasm. It was a poeto-musical composition, brought forward by the united powers of art and of genius. When complete it was composed of parts: the STROPHE, the ANTISTRoPHE and the EPODE. "The priests going round the altar singing the praises of the Gods, called their first entrance Strophe (strepho, I turn),turning to the left, that is, from east to west; the second, turning to the right, they called Antistrophe, q. d. returning:-these were dances. Lastly, standing still before the altar, they sung the remainder, which they called the Epode," or end of the song. The same nominal divisions are sometimes substituted in the Odes that have been manufactured in modern times, though these have no concern, either with altars, or with priests. The PAANS were songs of triumph, sung in procession in honour of Apollo, on occasion of a victory, or of a deliverance from public calamity.