Micro R&D 1/MicroRD-CD-ROM-Vol1-1994.iso/books/irving/r_poet

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                                    1819-20
                                THE SKETCH BOOK
                                  A ROYAL POET
                              by Washington Irving

             Though your body be confined,
               And soft love a prisoner bound,
             Yet the beauty of your mind
               Neither check nor chain hath found.
                 Look out nobly, then, and dare
                 Even the fetters that you wear.
                                                    FLETCHER.

  ON A soft sunny morning in the genial month of May, I made an
excursion to Windsor Castle. It is a place full of storied and
poetical associations. The very external aspect of the proud old
pile is enough to inspire high thought. It rears its irregular walls
and massive towers, like a mural crown, round the brow of a lofty
ridge, waves its royal banner in the clouds, and looks down, with a
lordly air, upon the surrounding world.
  On this morning the weather was of that voluptuous vernal kind,
which calls forth all the latent romance of a man's temperament,
filling his mind with music, and disposing him to quote poetry and
dream of beauty. In wandering through the magnificent saloons and long
echoing galleries of the castle, I passed with indifference by whole
rows of portraits of warriors and statesmen, but lingered in the
chamber, where hang the likenesses of the beauties which graced the
gay court of Charles the Second; and as I gazed upon them, depicted
with amorous, half-dishevelled tresses, and the sleepy eye of love,
I blessed the pencil of Sir Peter Lely, which had thus enabled me to
bask in the reflected rays of beauty. In traversing also the "large
green courts," with sunshine beaming on the gray walls, and glancing
along the velvet turf, my mind was engrossed with the image of the
tender, the gallant, but hapless Surrey, and his account of his
loiterings about them in his stripling days, when enamored of the Lady
Geraldine-

         "With eyes cast up unto the maiden's tower,
          With easie sighs, such as men draw in love."

In this mood of mere poetical susceptibility, I visited the ancient
Keep of the Castle, where James the First of Scotland, the pride and
theme of Scottish poets and historians, was for many years of his
youth detained a prisoner of state. It is a large gray tower, that has
stood the brunt of ages, and is still in good preservation. It
stands on a mound, which elevates it above the other parts of the
castle, and a great flight of steps leads to the interior. In the
armory, a Gothic hall, furnished with weapons of various kinds and
ages, I was shown a coat of armor hanging against the wall, which
had once belonged to James. Hence I was conducted up a staircase to
a suite of apartments of faded magnificence, hung with storied
tapestry, which formed his prison, and the scene of that passionate
and fanciful amour, which has woven into the web of his story the
magical hues of poetry and fiction.
  The whole history of this amiable but unfortunate prince is highly
romantic. At the tender age of eleven he was sent from home by his
father, Robert III., and destined for the French court, to be reared
under the eye of the French monarch, secure from the treachery and
danger that surrounded the royal house of Scotland. It was his
mishap in the course of his voyage to fall into the hands of the
English, and he was detained prisoner by Henry IV., notwithstanding
that a truce existed between the two countries.
  The intelligence of his capture, coming in the train of many sorrows
and disasters, proved fatal to his unhappy father. "The news," we
are told, "was brought to him while at supper, and did so overwhelm
him with grief, that he was almost ready to give up the ghost into the
hands of the servant that attended him. But being carried to his
bed-chamber, he abstained from all food, and in three days died of
hunger and grief at Rothesay."*

  * Buchanan.

  James was detained in captivity about eighteen years; but though
deprived of personal liberty, he was treated with the respect due to
his rank. Care was taken to instruct him in all the branches of useful
knowledge cultivated at that period, and to give him those mental
and personal accomplishments deemed proper for a prince. Perhaps, in
this respect, his imprisonment was an advantage, as it enabled him
to apply himself the more exclusively to his improvement, and
quietly to imbibe that rich fund of knowledge, and to cherish those
elegant tastes, which have given such a lustre to his memory. The
picture drawn of him in early life, by the Scottish historians, is
highly captivating, and seems rather the description of a hero of
romance, than of a character in real history. He was well learnt, we
are told, "to fight with the sword, to joust, to tournay, to
wrestle, to sing and dance; he was an expert mediciner, right crafty
in playing both of lute and harp, and sundry other instruments of
music, and was expert in grammar, oratory, and poetry."*

  * Translation of Hector Boyce.

  With this combination of manly and delicate accomplishments, fitting
him to shine both in active and elegant life, and calculated to give
him an intense relish for joyous existence, it must have been a severe
trial, in an age of bustle and chivalry, to pass the spring-time of
his years in monotonous captivity. It was the good fortune of James,
however, to be gifted with a powerful poetic fancy, and to be
visited in his prison by the choicest inspirations of the muse. Some
minds corrode and grow inactive, under the loss of personal liberty;
others grow morbid and irritable; but it is the nature of the poet
to become tender and imaginative in the loneliness of confinement.
He banquets upon the honey of his own thoughts, and, like the
captive bird, pours forth his soul in melody.

           Have you not seen the nightingale,
             A pilgrim coop'd into a cage,
           How doth she chant her wonted tale,
             In that her lonely hermitage!
         Even there her charming melody doth prove
         That all her boughs are trees, her cage a grove.*

  * Roger L'Estrange.

  Indeed, it is the divine attribute of the imagination, that it is
irrepressible, unconfinable; that when the real world is shut out,
it can create a world for itself, and with a necromantic power, can
conjure up glorious shapes and forms, and brilliant visions, to make
solitude populous, and irradiate the gloom of the dungeon. Such was
the world of pomp and pageant that lived round Tasso in his dismal
cell at Ferrara, when he conceived the splendid scenes of his
Jerusalem; and we may consider the "King's Quair," composed by
James, during his captivity at Windsor, as another of those
beautiful breakings-forth of the soul from the restraint and gloom
of the prison house.
  The subject of the poem is his love for the Lady Jane Beaufort,
daughter of the Earl of Somerset, and a princess of the blood royal of
England, of whom he became enamored in the course of his captivity.
What gives it a peculiar value, is that it may be considered a
transcript of the royal bard's true feelings, and the story of his
real loves and fortunes. It is not often that sovereigns write poetry,
or that poets deal in fact. It is gratifying to the pride of a
common man, to find a monarch thus suing, as it were, for admission
into his closet, and seeking to win his favor by administering to
his pleasures. It is a proof of the honest equality of intellectual
competition, which strips off all the trappings of factitious dignity,
brings the candidate down to a level with his fellow-men, and
obliges him to depend on his own native powers for distinction. It
is curious, too, to get at the history of a monarch's heart, and to
find the simple affections of human nature throbbing under the ermine.
But James had learnt to be a poet before he was a king: he was
schooled in adversity, and reared in the company of his own
thoughts. Monarchs have seldom time to parley with their hearts, or to
meditate their minds into poetry; and had James been brought up amidst
the adulation and gayety of a court, we should never, in all
probability, have had such a poem as the Quair.
  I have been particularly interested by those parts of the poem which
breathe his immediate thoughts concerning his situation, or which
are connected with the apartment in the tower. They have thus a
personal and local charm, and are given with such circumstantial
truth, as to make the reader present with the captive in his prison,
and the companion of his meditations.
  Such is the account which he gives of his weariness of spirit, and
of the incident which first suggested the idea of writing the poem. It
was the still midwatch of a clear moonlight night; the stars, he says,
were twinkling as fire in the high vault of heaven: and "Cynthia
rinsing her golden locks in Aquarius." He lay in bed wakeful and
restless, and took a book to beguile the tedious hours. The book he
chose was Boetius' Consolations of Philosophy, a work popular among
the writers of that day, and which had been translated by his great
prototype Chaucer. From the high eulogium in which he indulges, it
is evident this was one of his favorite volumes while in prison: and
indeed it is an admirable text-book for meditation under adversity. It
is the legacy of a noble and enduring spirit, purified by sorrow and
suffering, bequeathing to its successors in calamity the maxims of
sweet morality, and the trains of eloquent but simple reasoning, by
which it was enabled to bear up against the various ills of life. It
is a talisman, which the unfortunate may treasure up in his bosom, or,
like the good King James, lay upon his nightly pillow.
  After closing the volume, he turns its contents over in his mind,
and gradually falls into a fit of musing on the fickleness of fortune,
the vicissitudes of his own life, and the evils that had overtaken him
even in his tender youth. Suddenly he hears the bell ringing to
matins; but its sound, chiming in with his melancholy fancies, seems
to him like a voice exhorting him to write his story. In the spirit of
poetic errantry he determines to comply with this intimation: he
therefore takes pen in hand, makes with it a sign of the cross to
implore a benediction, and sallies forth into the fairy land of
poetry. There is something extremely fanciful in all this, and it is
interesting as furnishing a striking and beautiful instance of the
simple manner in which whole trains of poetical thought are
sometimes awakened, and literary enterprises suggested to the mind.
  In the course of his poem he more than once bewails the peculiar
hardness of his fate; thus doomed to lonely and inactive life, and
shut up from the freedom and pleasure of the world, in which the
meanest animal indulges unrestrained. There is a sweetness, however,
in his very complaints; they are the lamentations of an amiable and
social spirit at being denied the indulgence of its kind and
generous propensities; there is nothing in them harsh nor exaggerated;
they flow with a natural and touching pathos, and are perhaps rendered
more touching by their simple brevity. They contrast finely with those
elaborate and iterated repinings, which we sometimes meet with in
poetry;- the effusions of morbid minds sickening under miseries of
their own creating, and venting their bitterness upon an unoffending
world. James speaks of his privations with acute sensibility, but
having mentioned them passes on, as if his manly mind disdained to
brood over unavoidable calamities. When such a spirit breaks forth
into complaint, however brief, we are aware how great must be the
suffering that extorts the murmur. We sympathize with James, a
romantic, active, and accomplished prince, cut off in the lustihood of
youth from all the enterprise, the noble uses, and vigorous delights
of life; as we do with Milton, alive to all the beauties of nature and
glories of art, when he breathes forth brief, but deep-toned
lamentations over his perpetual blindness.
  Had not James evinced a deficiency of poetic artifice, we might
almost have suspected that these lowerings of gloomy reflection were
meant as preparative to the brightest scene of his story; and to
contrast with that refulgence of light and loveliness, that
exhilarating accompaniment of bird and song, and foliage and flower,
and all the revel of the year, with which he ushers in the lady of his
heart. It is this scene, in particular, which throws all the magic
of romance about the old Castle Keep. He had risen, he says, at
daybreak, according to custom, to escape from the dreary meditations
of a sleepless pillow. "Bewailing in his chamber thus alone,"
despairing of all joy and remedy, "for, tired of thought and
wobegone," he had wandered to the window, to indulge the captive's
miserable solace of gazing wistfully upon the world from which he is
excluded. The window looked forth upon a small garden which lay at the
foot of the tower. It was a quiet, sheltered spot, adorned with arbors
and green alleys, and protected from the passing gaze by trees and
hawthorn hedges.

         Now was there made, fast by the tower's wall,
           A garden faire, and in the corners set
         An arbour green with wandis long and small
           Railed about, and so with leaves beset
         Was all the place and hawthorn hedges knet,
           That lyf* was none, walkyng there forbye
           That might within scarce any wight espye.

         So thick the branches and the leves grene,
           Beshaded all the alleys that there were,
         And midst of every arbour might be sene
           The sharpe, grene, swete juniper,
         Growing so fair, with branches here and there,
           That as it seemed to a lyf without,
           The boughs did spread the arbour all about.

         And on the small grene twistis*(2) set
           The lytel swete nightingales, and sung
         So loud and clear, the hymnis consecrate
           Of lovis use, now soft, now loud among,
         That all the garden and the wallis rung
         Right of their song-

  * Lyf, Person.
  *(2) Twistis, small boughs or twigs.
  Note.- The language of the quotations is generally modernized.

  It was the month of May, when every thing was in bloom; and he
interprets the song of the nightingale into the language of his
enamored feeling:

         Worship, all ye that lovers be, this May,
           For of your bliss the kalends are begun,
         And sing with us, away, winter, away,
           Come, summer, come, the sweet season and sun.

  As he gazes on the scene, and listens to the notes of the birds,
he gradually relapses into one of those tender and undefinable
reveries, which fill the youthful bosom in this delicious season. He
wonders what this love may be, of which he has so often read, and
which thus seems breathed forth in the quickening breath of May, and
melting all nature into ecstasy and song. If it really be so great a
felicity, and if it be a boon thus generally dispensed to the most
insignificant beings, why is he alone cut off from its enjoyments?

         Oft would I think, O Lord, what may this be,
           That love is of such noble myght and kynde?
         Loving his folke, and such prosperitee
           Is it of him, as we in books do find:
           May he oure hertes setten* and unbynd:
         Hath he upon our hertes such maistrye?
         Or is all this but feynit fantasye?

         For giff he be of so grete excellence,
           That he of every wight hath care and charge,
         What have I gilt*(2) to him, or done offense,
           That I am thral'd, and birdis go at large?

  * Setten, incline.
  *(2) Gilt, what injury have I done, etc.

In the midst of his musing, as he casts his eye downward, he beholds
"the fairest and the freshest young floure" that ever he had seen.
It is the lovely Lady Jane, walking in the garden to enjoy the
beauty of that "fresh May morrowe." Breaking thus suddenly upon his
sight, in the moment of loneliness and excited susceptibility, she
at once captivates the fancy of the romantic prince, and becomes the
object of his wandering wishes, the sovereign of his ideal world.
  There is, in this charming scene, an evident resemblance to the
early part of Chaucer's Knight's Tale; where Palamon and Arcite fall
in love with Emilia, whom they see walking in the garden of their
prison. Perhaps the similarity of the actual fact to the incident
which he had read in Chaucer may have induced James to dwell on it
in his poem. His description of the Lady Jane is given in the
picturesque and minute manner of his master; and being doubtless taken
from the life, is a perfect portrait of a beauty of that day. He
dwells, with the fondness of a lover, on every article of her apparel,
from the net of pearl, splendent with emeralds and sapphires, that
confined her golden hair, even to the "goodly chaine of small
orfeverye"* about her neck, whereby there hung a ruby in shape of a
heart, that seemed, he says, like a spark of fire burning upon her
white bosom. Her dress of white tissue was looped up to enable her
to walk with more freedom. She was accompanied by two female
attendants, and about her sported a little hound decorated with bells;
probably the small Italian hound of exquisite symmetry, which was a
parlor favorite and pet among the fashionable dames of ancient
times. James closes his description by a burst of general eulogium:

  * Wrought gold.

         In her was youth, beauty, with humble port,
           Bounty, richesse, and womanly feature;
         God better knows then my pen can report,
           Wisdom, largesse,* estate,*(2) and cunning*(3) sure,
         In every point so guided her measure,
           In word, in deed, in shape, in countenance,
           That nature might no more her child advance.

  * Largesse, bounty.
  *(2) Estate, dignity.
  *(3) Cunning, discretion.

The departure of the Lady Jane from the garden puts an end to this
transient riot of the heart. With her departs the amorous illusion
that had shed a temporary charm over the scene of his captivity, and
he relapses into loneliness, now rendered tenfold more intolerable
by this passing beam of unattainable beauty. Through the long and
weary day he repines at his unhappy lot, and when evening
approaches, and Phoebus, as he beautifully expresses it, had "bade
farewell to every leaf and flower," he still lingers at the window,
and, laying his head upon the cold stone, gives vent to a mingled flow
of love and sorrow, until, gradually lulled by the mute melancholy
of the twilight hour, he lapses, "half sleeping, half swoon," into a
vision, which occupies the remainder of the poem, and in which is
allegorically shadowed out the history of his passion.
  When he wakes from his trance, he rises from his stony pillow,
and, pacing his apartment, full of dreary reflections, questions his
spirit, whither it has been wandering; whether, indeed, all that has
passed before his dreaming fancy has been conjured up by preceding
circumstances; or whether it is a vision, intended to comfort and
assure him in his despondency. If the latter, he prays that some token
may be sent to confirm the promise of happier days, given him in his
slumbers. Suddenly, a turtle dove, of the purest whiteness, comes
flying in at the window, and alights upon his hand, bearing in her
bill a branch of red gilliflower, on the leaves of which is written,
in letters of gold, the following sentence:

         Awake! awake! I bring, lover, I bring
           The newis glad that blissful is, and sure
         Of thy comfort; now laugh, and play, and sing,
           For in the heaven decretit is thy cure.

  He receives the branch with mingled hope and dread; reads it with
rapture: and this, he says, was the first token of his succeeding
happiness. Whether this is a mere poetic fiction, or whether the
Lady Jane did actually send him a token of her favor in this
romantic way, remains to be determined according to the faith or fancy
of the reader. He concludes his poem, by intimating that the promise
conveyed in the vision and by the flower is fulfilled, by his being
restored to liberty, and made happy in the possession of the sovereign
of his heart.
  Such is the poetical account given by James of his love adventures
in Windsor Castle. How much of it is absolute fact, and how much the
embellishment of fancy, it is fruitless to conjecture: let us not,
however, reject every romantic incident as incompatible with real
life; but let us sometimes take a poet at his word. I have noticed
merely those parts of the poem immediately connected with the tower,
and have passed over a large part, written in the allegorical vein, so
much cultivated at that day. The language, of course, is quaint and
antiquated, so that the beauty of many of its golden phrases will
scarcely be perceived at the present day; but it is impossible not
to be charmed with the genuine sentiment, the delightful artlessness
and urbanity, which prevail throughout it. The descriptions of
nature too, with which it is embellished, are given with a truth, a
discrimination, and a freshness, worthy of the most cultivated periods
of the art.
  As an amatory poem, it is edifying in these days of coarser
thinking, to notice the nature, refinement, and exquisite delicacy
which pervade it; banishing every gross thought or immodest
expression, and presenting female loveliness, clothed in all its
chivalrous attributes of almost supernatural purity and grace.
  James flourished nearly about the time of Chaucer and Gower, and was
evidently an admirer and studier of their writings. Indeed, in one
of his stanzas he acknowledges them as his masters; and, in some parts
of his poem, we find traces of similarity to their productions, more
especially to those of Chaucer. There are always, however, general
features of resemblance in the works of contemporary authors, which
are not so much borrowed from each other as from the times. Writers,
like bees, toll their sweets in the wide world; they incorporate
with their own conceptions the anecdotes and thoughts current in
society; and thus each generation has some features in common,
characteristic of the age in which it lived.
  James belongs to one of the most brilliant eras of our literary
history, and establishes the claims of his country to a
participation in its primitive honors. Whilst a small cluster of
English writers are constantly cited as the fathers of our verse,
the name of their great Scottish compeer is apt to be passed over in
silence; but he is evidently worthy of being enrolled in that little
constellation of remote but never-failing luminaries, who shine in the
highest firmament of literature, and who, like morning stars, sang
together at the bright dawning of British poesy.
  Such of my readers as may not be familiar with Scottish history
(though the manner in which it has of late been woven with captivating
fiction has made it a universal study), may be curious to learn
something of the subsequent history of James, and the fortunes of
his love. His passion for the Lady Jane, as it was the solace of his
captivity, so it facilitated his release, it being imagined by the
court that a connection with the blood royal of England would attach
him to its own interests. He was ultimately restored to his liberty
and crown, having previously espoused the Lady Jane, who accompanied
him to Scotland, and made him a most tender and devoted wife.
  He found his kingdom in great confusion, the feudal chieftains
having taken advantage of the troubles and irregularities of a long
interregnum to strengthen themselves in their possessions, and place
themselves above the power of the laws. James sought to found the
basis of his power in the affections of his people. He attached the
lower orders to him by the reformation of abuses, the temperate and
equable administration of justice, the encouragement of the arts of
peace, and the promotion of every thing that could diffuse comfort,
competency, and innocent enjoyment through the humblest ranks of
society. He mingled occasionally among the common people in
disguise; visited their firesides; entered into their cares, their
pursuits, and their amusements; informed himself of the mechanical
arts, and how they could best be patronized and improved; and was thus
an all-pervading spirit, watching with a benevolent eye over the
meanest of his subjects. Having in this generous manner made himself
strong in the hearts of the common people, he turned himself to curb
the power of the factious nobility; to strip them of those dangerous
immunities which they had usurped; to punish such as had been guilty
of flagrant offences; and to bring the whole into proper obedience
to the crown. For some time they bore this with outward submission,
but with secret impatience and brooding resentment. A conspiracy was
at length formed against his life, at the head of which was his own
uncle, Robert Stewart, Earl of Athol, who, being too old himself for
the perpetration of the deed of blood, instigated his grandson Sir
Robert Stewart, together with Sir Robert Graham, and others of less
note, to commit the deed. They broke into his bedchamber at the
Dominican Convent near Perth, where he was residing, and barbarously
murdered him by oft-repeated wounds. His faithful queen, rushing to
throw her tender body between him and the sword, was twice wounded
in the ineffectual attempt to shield him from the assassin; and it was
not until she had been forcibly torn from his person, that the
murder was accomplished.
  It was the recollection of this romantic tale of former times, and
of the golden little poem which had its birthplace in this Tower, that
made me visit the old pile with more than common interest. The suit of
armor hanging up in the hall, richly gilt and embellished, as if to
figure in the tournay, brought the image of the gallant and romantic
prince vividly before my imagination. I paced the deserted chambers
where he had composed his poem; I leaned upon the window, and
endeavored to persuade myself it was the very one where he had been
visited by his vision; I looked out upon the spot where he had first
seen the Lady Jane. It was the same genial and joyous month; the birds
were again vying with each other in strains of liquid melody; every
thing was bursting into vegetation, and budding forth the tender
promise of the year. Time, which delights to obliterate the sterner
memorials of human pride, seems to have passed lightly over this
little scene of poetry and love, and to have withheld his desolating
hand. Several centuries have gone by, yet the garden still
flourishes at the foot of the Tower. It occupies what was once the
moat of the Keep; and though some parts have been separated by
dividing walls, yet others have still their arbors and shaded walks,
as in the days of James, and the whole is sheltered, blooming, and
retired. There is a charm about a spot that has been printed by the
footsteps of departed beauty, and consecrated by the inspirations of
the poet, which is heightened, rather than impaired, by the lapse of
ages. It is, indeed, the gift of poetry to hallow every place in which
it moves; to breathe around nature an odor more exquisite than the
perfume of the rose, and to shed over it a tint more magical than
the blush of morning.
  Others may dwell on the illustrious deeds of James as a warrior
and a legislator; but I have delighted to view him merely as the
companion of his fellow-men, the benefactor of the human heart,
stooping from his high estate to sow the sweet flowers of poetry and
song in the paths of common life. He was the first to cultivate the
vigorous and hardy plant of Scottish genius, which has since become so
prolific of the most wholesome and highly-flavored fruit. He carried
with him into the sterner regions of the north all the fertilizing
arts of southern refinement. He did every thing in his power to win
his countrymen to the gay, the elegant, and gentle arts, which
soften and refine the character of a people, and wreathe a grace round
the loftiness of a proud and warlike spirit. He wrote many poems,
which, unfortunately for the fulness of his fame, are now lost to
the world; one, which is still preserved, called "Christ's Kirk of the
Green," shows how diligently he had made himself acquainted with the
rustic sports and pastimes, which constitute such a source of kind and
social feeling among the Scottish peasantry; and with what simple
and happy humor he could enter into their enjoyments. He contributed
greatly to improve the national music; and traces of his tender
sentiment, and elegant taste, are said to exist in those witching
airs, still piped among the wild mountains and lonely glens of
Scotland. He has thus connected his image with whatever is most
gracious and endearing in the national character; he has embalmed
his memory in song, and floated his name to after ages in the rich
streams of Scottish melody. The recollection of these things was
kindling at my heart as I paced the silent scene of his
imprisonment. I have visited Vaucluse with as much enthusiasm as a
pilgrim would visit the shrine at Loretto; but I have never felt
more poetical devotion than when contemplating the old Tower and the
little garden at Windsor, and musing over the romantic loves of the
Lady Jane and the Royal Poet of Scotland.


                        THE END