The Poetical Works of Thomas Campbell (1837)

S$86.00

The Poetical Works of Thomas Campbell (1837)

S$86.00

Title: The Poetical Works of Thomas Campbell
Author: Thomas Campbell
Publisher: Edward Moxon, 1837
Condition: Vellum. Gilt to cover, spine and all edges. Some wear to cover. Name inscription to fly page, some foxing. Illustrated with black and white engravings. Well bound.

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About Thomas Campbell (from Wikipedia):

Thomas Campbell (27 July 1777 – 15 June 1844) was a Scottish poet chiefly remembered for his sentimental poetry dealing especially with human affairs. He was also one of the initiators of a plan to found what became the University of London. In 1799, he wrote “The Pleasures of Hope”, a traditional 18th century didactic poem in heroic couplets. He also produced several stirring patriotic war songs—”Ye Mariners of England”, “The Soldier’s Dream”, “Hohenlinden” and in 1801, “The Battle of Mad and Strange Turkish Princes”.

He took an active share in the foundation of the University of London, visiting Berlin to inquire into the German system of education, and making recommendations which were adopted by Lord Brougham. He was elected Lord Rector of Glasgow University (1826–1829) in competition against Sir Walter Scott. Campbell retired from the editorship of the New Monthly Magazine in 1830, and a year later made an unsuccessful venture with The Metropolitan Magazine. He had championed the cause of the Poles in “The Pleasures of Hope”, and the news of the capture of Warsaw by the Russians in 1831 affected him as if it had been the deepest of personal calamities. “Poland preys on my heart night and day,” he wrote in one of his letters, and his sympathy found a practical expression in the foundation in London of the Literary Association of the Friends of Poland. In 1834 he travelled to Paris and Algiers, where he wrote his Letters from the South (printed 1837). The small production of Campbell may be partly explained by his domestic calamities.

Campbell’s other works include a Life of Mrs Siddons (1842), and a narrative poem, “The Pilgrim of Glencoe” (1842). See The Life and Letters of Thomas Campbell (3 vols., 1849), edited by William Beattie, M.D.; Literary Reminiscences and Memoirs of Thomas Campbell (1860), by Cyrus Redding; The Complete Poetical Works Of Thomas Campbell (1860); The Poetical Works of Thomas Campbell (1875), in the Aldine Edition of the British Poets, edited by the Rev. V. Alfred Hill, with a sketch of the poet’s life by William Allingham; and the Oxford Edition of the Complete Works of Thomas Campbell (1908), edited by J. Logie Robertson.

VERSES ON THE QUEEN OF FRANCE.

BEHOLD ! where Gallia’s captive Queen,
“With steady eye, and look serene,
In life’s last awful awful scene,
Slow leaves her sad captivity !

Hark ! the shrill horn, that rends the sky,
Bespeaks the ready murder nigh ;
The long parade of death I spy,
And leave my lone captivity !

Farewell, ye mansions of despair !
Scenes of my sad sequestered care ;
The balm of bleeding woe is near,
Adieu, my lone captivity !

To purer mansions in the sky
Fair Hope directs my grief- worn eye ;
Where Sorrow’s child no more shall sigh,
Amid her lone captivity !

Adieu, ye babes, whose infant bloom,
Beneath Oppression’s lawless doom,
Pines in the solitary gloom
Of undeserved captivity !

O, Power benign, that rul’st on liigl
Cast down, cast down a pitying eye !
Shed consolation from the sky,
To soothe their sad captivity !

Now, virtue’s sure reward to prove,
I seek emp’real realms above,
To meet my long-departed love.
Adieu, mv lone Ciiptivitv !