Page:The Poetical Works of William Motherwell, 1849.djvu/57

 the genius loci in such circumstances, for the character of that mysterious lady must be much the same in both places, and is not particularly spiritual in either; but there may be something in the disruption of old and established ties—something in the absence of familiar faces and well-known voices, and something in the destruction of those secret and inexplicable material sympathies which make one spot of earth more than another the home of a man's soul. Whether any or all of these influences may have affected him I shall not take upon me positively to affirm, but I think myself so far justified in the conclusion at which I have arrived by the subsequent steps of his history, which indicate a sluggish action if not an absolute torpor of his creative energies.

In 1832 a publication was started in Glasgow, under the direction of Mr John Strang, the author of two interesting volumes of Travels in Germany, called , to which Motherwell contributed largely. In that periodical there appeared for the first time the following poetical pieces from his pen:—The Serenade—The Solemn Song of a Righteous Hearte—Elfinland Wud—The Covenanters' Battle Chant—Caveat to the Wind—What is Glory? What is Fame?—A Solemn Conceit—The Parting—The Ettin Lang o' Sillerwood—and, Spirits of Light! Spirits of Shade!—all of which, with the exception of the two last, he afterwards embodied in his volume. He also