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378 WILLIAM HAMILTON DRUMMOND (1778–1811–1856) William Hamilton Drummond was born in Larne, Co. Antrim and educated at the University of Glasgow. He worked as a Presbyterian minister in Belfast and Dublin, becoming a strong defender of and advocate for Unitarianism. His many sermons and pamphlets show him to have been a man of strong liberal principles and a defender of the rights of animals. His published verse included translations of Lucretius from Latin and of early Irish poetry for his own book on ancient Irish verse (1852) and for James Hardiman’s Irish Minstrelsy (1831). Drummond’s The Giant’s Causeway (Belfast, 1811) is one of the most remarkable and ambitious scholarly poems of the age. Its nearly 2,000 lines are divided into three books, each with a preceding ‘Argument’and extensive notes. The lengthy introduction summarizes the geological theories of the day and within the poem itself Drummond covers in detail the history, mythology, folklore and physical appearance of the causeway. There are extended descriptions of the inhabitants of the Antrim coast as well as moral, historical, scientific and theological reflections. The poem caused considerable controversy at the time of its publication as theories of the formation of the earth’s crust were being widely debated. The book is adorned with finely engraved views of the causeway and its surroundings. from: The Giant’s Causeway from: Book II … Now round the mole,1 from Giants named of yore, Thy altar Nature, helm th’obedient prore;2 How black, how firm, its adamantine3 sides Rise o’er the azure of the heaving tides! How proud th’indented bound of ocean lowers!4 What rocky theatres, and spires, and towers! First bold creation of the plastic hand,5 That rolled the billows round the rock-ribbed land! Nature’s primeval forms, whence mimic Art Saw the first image of her fabrics start, 10 Th’idea fair of wonders deemed her own, The breathing canvas, and the quickened stone.6 massive structure, i.e. the Giant’s Causeway itself. 1 i.e. steer the obedient prow of the boat. During this passage of the poem, the poet is 2 observing the Giant’s Causeway from the sea and is here instructing the boatman to steer the boat around the Giant’s Causeway to give a better view of this ‘altar’ of Nature. unyielding. 3 i.e. how proud and dark the indented edge of the ocean appears. 4 i.e. the hand that moulded or created the rocks (that of God). 5 i.e. all works of art (painting or sculpture) merely mimic the primeval forms of Nature. 6 379 William Hamilton Drummond But vain her powers with Nature’s pride to vie, As the gilt dome to match the starry sky; High be her boast of Tiber’s proud arcades. Her ducts, pantheons, fanes,7 and colonnades: See, in these temples of the northern blast, Their beauty, grandeur, strength and skill surpast. … High on yon cliff the fisher takes his stand,8 The rock’s loose fragments arm his brawny hand, 20 Swift as he marks the glistening salmon glide, He hurls a rattling stone-shower in the tide. The patient boatman rocking on the brine, Elate with hope, beholds the well-known sign: Swift winds the capturing net, and now in vain, The fear-struck captive beats the flaxen chain;9 Vain is his strength, and vain his dotted mail,10 His rapid fin, quick eye, and springy tail: He sports in Bosca’s sable streams11 no more, Nor braves majestic Banna’s cataract12 roar; 30 By hands unpitying, from his native flood Dragged o’er the pointed crags, defiled with blood, His scales all ruffled, and his vigour fled, He gasps—he pants—he lies deformed—and dead. arcades, passages, pantheons, temples and colonnades. i.e. the man-made glories of Rome 7 are surpassed by ‘these temples of the northern blast’ – the Giant’s Causeway. In a note at this point, Drummond describes the methods of fishing for salmon off the 8 Antrim coast, the salmon’s reproductive cycle, how painful it is for ‘a spectator of humanity’ to see salmon attempting to leap from the ‘cutts’ at Coleraine, and how it is that the salmon gathers energy to leap. (Drummond believed that the fish takes its tail in its mouth when about to leap.) He also quotes lines from Dryden and from Drayton, and ends the note by giving the reasons for the decline...

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