A previously unknown poem by the 19th century poet laureate Robert Southey has been found hidden in a dusty collection of post amassed by a fanatical autograph hunter who pestered distinguished contemporaries.
The untitled ode to an Edinburgh sunrise sheds a new and unexpectedly sympathetic light on Southey's view of Scot land and the Scots, whom the poet notoriously dismissed as "miserably puny" and "the ugliest nation in Europe apart from the French".
The 37 lines on the Scottish capital, written in 1805, eight years before Southey became poet laureate, compare the city at dawn to King Arthur's Camelot, with the sun burning the morning mist off the castle and Holyrood House. The ode, which fits with Southey's description in a letter of the time of "wild red skies" slanting along Edinburgh's rooftops, was found in the Brooks collection, 12 leather-bound volumes of autographs collected by John Crosse Brooks, a Tyneside shipbuilder and amateur historian. The trove is being investigated in detail for the first time by a Newcastle University postgraduate researcher, Christopher Goulding, after years in restricted access at the city's Society of Antiquaries.
"The collection has already yielded previously unpublished letters by Percy Shelley and Lord Byron," said Mr Goulding. Unknown poems by Southey are rare finds, as he was meticulous about editing his work and recorded that material sifted out should be "consigned to the flames". He was poet laureate from 1813 to his death in 1843 and is best known for romantic ballads such as The Inchcape Rock and How Does the Water Come Down at Lodore? Although prolific, his ruthless editing and collection of all his approved poems in 10 volumes in 1838 has led to only two or three brief passages being found since his death.
The poem was wrapped in several signed letters from the poet to his publisher, which Brooks bought at a literary auction.
Patient, I climbed the hill and on its height
Paus'd for my pulse play'd quick. I cast mine eyes
Down on the city that I late had left.
Had the noon sun shone full upon the vale
Lovely had been the scene, but lovelier now,
For thro the windings of the glen, the mist
Spread white and moveless, over the town towers
Stretching its long ascent, and high above
Tinged with the early ray. The reddening ray
Beam'd on the pile that crests the ancient hill
Where Arthur with the last of Camelot
Scattered the Saxon tribes; the broken light
Shone in the morning, and its glittering pile
Seem'd like some fabric sear'd by magic power
Amid the clouds, searching whose strange ascent
Many a good errant night might roam below
Vainly adventuring. Lovelier now the scene
Than in the richness of a summer eve,
For all familiar to the eye was veil'd
And the deep obscure delighted while it mock'd
The baffled light. The Sun shone cheerfully
On the clear summit that my toil had gain'd,
And where the fir trees skirted the deep grove,
Shot a slant beam upon their branchless trunk
Their bright brown bark, and tinged its rusty moss.
The autumnal leaves to the fresh morning air
Their grateful odour gave; the broken dew
Clouded the green sward grey; and the thin stem
Of the grass-blossom bent with little globes
Whose whole collected waters had not brimm'd
Some Elfin's acorn cup. Onward I went -
It seem'd as I looked down upon the Sun
That climbing glorious up the eastern heaven
Flash'd on my dazzled sight: anon the mist
Roll'd on and veil'd its beams, and in a sea
Of cloud wrapt all things, - only visible
Thro' the white vapour was the beamless Sun.
