A Royal Poet

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A Royal Poet

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 around 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 bad 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 enamoured 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 servants that attended him. But
being carried to his bedchamber, he abstained from all food, and
in three days died of hunger and grief at Rothesay."*

* Buchanan.

James was detained in captivity above 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 tourney, 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."*

* Ballenden's 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 enamoured 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.

* Quair, an old term for book.

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 mid-watch 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 manlv 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 woe-begone," 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 seen,

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+ 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. + 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
enamoured 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 oure 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+ to him, or done offense,

That I am thral'd, and birdis go at large?

* Setten, incline.

+ 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 a 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:

In her was youth, beauty, with humble port,

Bounty, richesse, and womanly feature:

God better knows than my pen can report,

Wisdom, largesse,+ estate,++ and cunning& sure.

In every point so guided her measure,

In word, in deed, in shape, in countenance,

That nature might no more her child advance.

* Wrought gold.

+ Largesse, bounty.

++ Estate, dignity.

& 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 turtledove
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 fate 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 which was 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 lives.

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 n 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 tourney, 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 the
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.

Washington Irving's short story: A Royal Poet

_

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