THOMAS PRINGLE.
(poet and reformer.)
With glory of poetic light
The century dawned whose night
Is deepening around us. Joyful rang
The earth when all those morning stars together sang.
Our Ocean-Mother gave to us
One, not least luminous,—
Pringle, the poet of the parched Karoo.
From thraldom of the "glittering eye" his music drew
Coleridge, who loved its magic well;
E'en Scott beneath it fell,
Forgetful of the Gael and Saxon feud
While listening to that weird romance of solitude.
A fighter thou, with never time
To build the deathless rhyme;
Thine the flung gauntlet of a righteous hate,
And thine a flower of song to lone ways consecrate.
Thou singest; we behold the band
Of exiles leave their land:
The fair dear hills of Scotland fade away
For ever! eyes unused to weeping weep that day.
