" His flaring torch is a pine-tree, to be sure,
which nobody can wield but himself. He waves it: and four times in the
midnight he shouts mightily, "Alexandra!" and the Pontic pine is whirled
into the ocean and Enceladus goes home.
Whose muse, whose cornemuse, sounds with such plaintive sweetness from
Arthur's Seat, while Edinburgh and Musselburgh lie rapt in delight,
and the mermaids come flapping up to Leith shore to hear the exquisite
music? Sweeter piper Edina knows not than Aytoun, the Bard of the
Cavaliers, who has given in his frank adhesion to the reigning dynasty.
When a most beautiful, celebrated and unfortunate princess whose memory
the Professor loves--when Mary, wife of Francis the Second, King of
France, and by her own right proclaimed Queen of Scotland and England
(poor soul!), entered Paris with her young bridegroom, good Peter
Ronsard wrote of her--
"Toi qui as veu l'excellence de celle
Qui rend le ciel de l'Escosse envieux,
Dy hardiment, contentez vous mes yeux,
Vous ne verrez jamais chose plus belle."*
* Quoted in Mignet's "Life of Mary."
"Vous ne verrez jamais chose plus belle." Here is an Alexandrine written
three hundred years ago, as simple as bon jour.
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