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John Bartlett (1820–1905). Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. 1919.

Page 488

 
 
Sir Walter Scott. (1771–1832) (continued)
 
5121
    Call it not vain: they do not err
Who say that when the poet dies
Mute Nature mourns her worshipper,
And celebrates his obsequies.
          Lay of the Last Minstrel. Canto v. Stanza 1.
5122
    True love ’s the gift which God has given
To man alone beneath the heaven:
  It is not fantasy’s hot fire,
    Whose wishes soon as granted fly;
  It liveth not in fierce desire,
    With dead desire it doth not die;
It is the secret sympathy,
The silver link, the silken tie,
Which heart to heart and mind to mind
In body and in soul can bind.
          Lay of the Last Minstrel. Canto v. Stanza 13.
5123
    Breathes there the man with soul so dead
Who never to himself hath said,
  This is my own, my native land!
Whose heart hath ne’er within him burn’d 1
As home his footsteps he hath turn’d
  From wandering on a foreign strand?
If such there breathe, go, mark him well!
For him no minstrel raptures swell;
High though his titles, proud his name,
Boundless his wealth as wish can claim,—
Despite those titles, power, and pelf,
The wretch, concentred all in self,
Living, shall forfeit fair renown,
And, doubly dying, shall go down
To the vile dust from whence he sprung,
Unwept, unhonour’d, and unsung. 2
          Lay of the Last Minstrel. Canto vi. Stanza 1.
 
Note 1.
Did not our heart burn within us while he talked with us by the way?—Luke xxiv. 32.

Hath not thy heart within thee burned
At evening’s calm and holy hour?
S. G. Bulfinch: The Voice of God in the Garden. [back]
Note 2.
See Pope, Quotation 326. [back]