Helas! le poison et le glaive
M’ont pris en dédain et m’ont dit:
Tu n’es pas digne qu’on t’enlève
A ton esclavage maudit.
Imbécile!—de son empire
Si nos efforts te délivraient,
Tes baisers ressusciteraient
Le cadavre de ton vampire!
In England there is a poem—truly of a very different kind—which appears in the life of the famous scientist, James Clerk Maxwell, by Lewis Campbell and William Garnett, verses written by Maxwell in 1845 when he was fourteen years of age. The verses should not perhaps, because of the youth of the author, be criticized too sharply, and although they show Wardour Street fustian and gimcrack, since the piece is of no great length it may pardonably be quoted here. It is not entirely without a certain feeling after the right atmosphere, and much will be forgiven on account of the precocity. It is grandiosely entitled The Vampyre: “Compylt into Meeter by James Clerk Maxwell.”
Thair is a knichte rydis through the wood,
And a douchty knichte is hee.
And sure hee is on a message sent,
He rydis sae hastilie.
He passit the aik, and hee passit the birk,
And hee passit monie a tre,
Bot plesant to him was the saugh sae slim,
For beneath it hee did see
The boniest ladye that ever hee saw,
Scho was sae schyn and fair.
And thair scho sat, beneath the saugh,
Kaiming hir gowden hair.
And then the knichte—“Oh ladye brichte,
What chance has broucht you here?
But sae the word, and ye schall gang
Back to your kindred dear,”
Then up and spok the ladye fair—
“I have nae friends or kin,
Bot in a little boat I live,
Amidst the waves’ loud din.”
Then answered thus the douchty knichte—
“I’ll follow you through all,
For gin ye bee in a littel boat,
The world to it seemis small.”
