Farewell to the Muse
by Sir Walter Scott

Scottish novelist, poet, historian, translator and biographer, best known as the author of the historical novel and author of Ivanhoe (1819). His first published works were translations - The Chase and William and Helen (1796), a translation of two ballads by G.A. Bürger, and a translation of Goethe's Götz von Berlichingen (1799) - and a compendium of border ballads, collected by Scott in three volumes, entitled Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border (1802-3). These were followed by a narrative poem The Lay of the Last Minstrel (1805) and other poetic romances: Marmion (1808), The Lady of the Lake (1810), Rokeby (1813) and Lord of the Isles (1813). He also published eighteen and twelve volume works of Dryden and Swift in 1808 and 1814 respectively, before the appearance, in 1814, of the first novel Waverley (1814).

This became the first of a trilogy of novels with the subsequent publication of Guy Mannering (1815) and The Antiquary (1816). Four other series of Scottish historical novels followed - The Black Dwarf and Old Mortality (1816); Rob Roy and The Heart of Midlothian (1818); The Bride of Lammermoor and A Legend of Montrose (1819) - before his taking up of specifically English history in the more famous texts: Ivanhoe (1819), The Monastery and the Abbot (1820), Kenilworth (1821), The Pirate (1822) and The Fortunes of Nigel (1822). Later works include Quentin Durwood (1822), Redgauntlet (1824) and The Talisman (1825).

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Farewell to the Muse
by Sir Walter Scott

Enchantress, farewell, who so oft hast decoy'd me,
At the close of the evening through woodlands to roam,
Where the forester, 'lated, with wonder espied me
Explore the wild scenes he was quitting for home.
Farewell and take with thee thy numbers wild speaking
The language alternate of rapture and woe:
Oh! none but some lover, whose heartstrings are breaking
The pang that I feel at our parting can know.

Each joy thou couldst double, and when there came sorrow,
Or pale disappointment to darken my way,
What voice was like thine, that could sing of tomorrow,
Till forgot in the strain was the grief of today!
But when friends drop around us in life's weary waning,
The grief, Queen of Numbers, thou canst not assuage;
Nor the gradual estrangement of those yet remaining,
The languor of pain, and the chillness of age.

'Twas thou that once taught me, accents bewailing,
To sing how a warrior I lay stretch'd on the plain,
And a maiden hung o'er him with aid unavailing,
And held to his lips the cold goblet in vain ;
As vain thy enchantments, O Queen of wild Numbers
To a bard when the reign of his fancy is o'er,
And the quick pulse of feeling in apathy slumbers—
Farewell, then, Enchantress I'll meet thee no more!

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Farewell to the Muse by Sir Walter Scott