The departure of the Lady Jane from the garden puts an end to thistransient riot of the heart. With her departs the amorous illusionthat had shed a temporary charm over the scene of his captivity, andhe relapses into loneliness, now rendered tenfold more intolerableby this passing beam of unattainable beauty. Through the long andweary day he repines at his unhappy lot, and when eveningapproaches, and Phoebus, as he beautifully expresses it, had "badefarewell to every leaf and flower," he still lingers at the window,and, laying his head upon the cold stone, gives vent to a mingled flowof love and sorrow, until, gradually lulled by the mute melancholyof the twilight hour, he lapses, "half sleeping, half swoon," into avision, which occupies the remainder of the poem, and in which isallegorically 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 hisspirit, whither it has been wandering; whether, indeed, all that haspassed before his dreaming fancy has been conjured up by precedingcircumstances; or whether it is a vision, intended to comfort andassure him in his despondency. If the latter, he prays that some tokenmay be sent to confirm the promise of happier days, given him in hisslumbers. Suddenly, a turtle dove, of the purest whiteness, comesflying in at the window, and alights upon his hand, bearing in herbill 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 sureOf 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 withrapture: and this, he says, was the first token of his succeedinghappiness. Whether this is a mere poetic fiction, or whether theLady Jane did actually send him a token of her favor in thisromantic way, remains to be determined according to the faith or fancyof the reader. He concludes his poem, by intimating that the promiseconveyed in the vision and by the flower is fulfilled, by his beingrestored to liberty, and made happy in the possession of the sovereignof his heart.
Such is the poetical account given by James of his love adventuresin Windsor Castle. How much of it is absolute fact, and how much theembellishment of fancy, it is fruitless to conjecture: let us not,however, reject every romantic incident as incompatible with reallife; but let us sometimes take a poet at his word. I have noticedmerely those parts of the poem immediately connected with the tower,and have passed over a large part, written in the allegorical vein, somuch cultivated at that day. The language, of course, is quaint andantiquated, so that the beauty of many of its golden phrases willscarcely be perceived at the present day; but it is impossible notto be charmed with the genuine sentiment, the delightful artlessnessand urbanity, which prevail throughout it. The descriptions ofnature too, with which it is embellished, are given with a truth, adiscrimination, and a freshness, worthy of the most cultivated periodsof the art.
As an amatory poem, it is edifying in these days of coarserthinking, to notice the nature, refinement, and exquisite delicacywhich pervade it; banishing every gross thought or immodestexpression, and presenting female loveliness, clothed in all itschivalrous attributes of almost supernatural purity and grace.
James flourished nearly about the time of Chaucer and Gower, and wasevidently an admirer and studier of their writings. Indeed, in oneof his stanzas he acknowledges them as his masters; and, in some partsof his poem, we find traces of similarity to their productions, moreespecially to those of Chaucer. There are always, however, generalfeatures of resemblance in the works of contemporary authors, whichare not so much borrowed from each other as from the times. Writers,like bees, toll their sweets in the wide world; they incorporatewith their own conceptions the anecdotes and thoughts current insociety; 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 literaryhistory, and establishes the claims of his country to aparticipation in its primitive honors. Whilst a small cluster ofEnglish writers are constantly cited as the fathers of our verse,the name of their great Scottish compeer is apt to be passed over insilence; but he is evidently worthy of being enrolled in that littleconstellation of remote but never-failing luminaries, who shine in thehighest firmament of literature, and who, like morning stars, sangtogether 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 captivatingfiction has made it a universal study), may be curious to learnsomething of the subsequent history of James, and the fortunes ofhis love. His passion for the Lady Jane, as it was the solace of hiscaptivity, so it facilitated his release, it being imagined by thecourt that a connection with the blood royal of England would attachhim to its own interests. He was ultimately restored to his libertyand crown, having previously espoused the Lady Jane, who accompaniedhim to Scotland, and made him a most tender and devoted wife.