Underwoods | Page 4

in which so many strong swimmers have
toiled vainly. To some the
situation is exhilarating; as for me, I give
one bubbling cry and sink. The compromise at which I have arrived is

indefensible, and I have no thought of trying to defend it. As I have
stuck for the most part to the proper spelling, I append a table of some
common vowel sounds which no one need consult; and just to prove
that I belong to my age and have in me the stuff of a reformer, I have
used modification marks
throughout. Thus I can tell myself, not
without pride, that I have added a fresh stumbling-block for English
readers, and to a page of print in my native tongue, have lent a new

uncouthness. SED NON NOBIS.
I note again, that among our new dialecticians, the local
habitat of
every dialect is given to the square mile. I could not emulate this nicety
if I desired; for I simply wrote my Scots as well as I was able, not
caring if it hailed from
Lauderdale or Angus, from the Mearns or
Galloway; if I had
ever heard a good word, I used it without shame;
and when
Scots was lacking, or the rhyme jibbed, I was glad (like my
betters) to fall back on English. For all that, I own to a friendly feeling
for the tongue of Fergusson and of Sir
Walter, both Edinburgh men;
and I confess that Burns has
always sounded in my ear like
something partly foreign. And indeed I am from the Lothians myself; it
is there I heard the language spoken about my childhood; and it is in
the drawling Lothian voice that I repeat it to myself. Let the precisians
call my speech that of the Lothians. And if it be not pure, alas! what
matters it? The day draws near when this
illustrious and malleable
tongue shall be quite forgotten; and Burn's Ayrshire, and Dr.

Macdonald's Aberdeen-awa', and
Scott's brave, metropolitan
utterance will be all equally the ghosts of speech. Till then I would love
to have my hour as a native Maker, and be read by my own countryfolk
in our own
dying language: an ambition surely rather of the heart
than of the head, so restricted as it is in prospect of endurance, so
parochial in bounds of space.
BOOK I. In English
I - ENVOY
Go, little book, and wish to all
Flowers in the garden, meat in the hall,

A bin of wine, a spice of wit,
A house with lawns enclosing it,
A
living river by the door,
A nightingale in the sycamore!
II - A SONG OF THE ROAD
The gauger walked with willing foot,
And aye the gauger played the
flute;
And what should Master Gauger play
But OVER THE
HILLS AND FAR AWAY?
Whene'er I buckle on my pack
And foot it gaily in the track,
O
pleasant gauger, long since dead,
I hear you fluting on ahead.
You go with me the self-same way -
The self-same air for me you
play;
For I do think and so do you
It is the tune to travel to.
For who would gravely set his face
To go to this or t'other place?

There's nothing under Heav'n so blue
That's fairly worth the
travelling to.
On every hand the roads begin,
And people walk with zeal therein;

But wheresoe'er the highways tend,
Be sure there's nothing at the end.
Then follow you, wherever hie
The travelling mountains of the sky.

Or let the streams in civil mode
Direct your choice upon a road;

For one and all, or high or low,
Will lead you where you wish to go;

And one and all go night and day
OVER THE HILLS AND FAR
AWAY!
Forest of Montargis, 1878
III - THE CANOE SPEAKS
On the great streams the ships may go
About men's business to and
fro.
But I, the egg-shell pinnace, sleep
On crystal waters ankle-deep:

I, whose diminutive design,
Of sweeter cedar, pithier pine,
Is
fashioned on so frail a mould,
A hand may launch, a hand withhold:

I, rather, with the leaping trout
Wind, among lilies, in and out;
I,
the unnamed, inviolate,
Green, rustic rivers, navigate;
My dipping
paddle scarcely shakes
The berry in the bramble-brakes;
Still forth
on my green way I wend
Beside the cottage garden-end;
And by the
nested angler fare,
And take the lovers unaware.
By willow wood
and water-wheel
Speedily fleets my touching keel;
By all retired
and shady spots
Where prosper dim forget-me-nots;
By meadows
where at afternoon
The growing maidens troop in June
To loose
their girdles on the grass.
Ah! speedier than before the glass
The
backward toilet goes; and swift
As swallows quiver, robe and shift

And the rough country stockings lie
Around each young divinity.

When, following the recondite brook,
Sudden upon this scene I look,

And light with unfamiliar face
On chaste Diana's bathing-place,

Loud ring the hills about and all
The shallows are abandoned. . . .
IV
It is the season now to go
About the country high and low,
Among
the lilacs hand in hand,

And two by two in fairy land.
The brooding boy, the sighing maid,
Wholly fain and half afraid,

Now meet