And when the blust'ring winter winds Howl in the woods that clothe my cave, I lay me on my lonely mat,

And pleasant are my dreams.

And Fancy gives me back my wife;
And Fancy gives me back my child;
She gives me back my little home,
And all its placid joys.

Then hateful is the morning hour, That calls me from the dream of bliss, To find myself still lone, and hear The same dull sounds again.

The deep-toned winds, the moaning sea,
The whisp'ring of the boding trees,
The brook's eternal flow, and oft

The Condor's hollow scream.

PROSE COMPOSITIONS.

PROSE COMPOSITIONS.

REMARKS ON THE ENGLISH POETS.

IMITATIONS.

THE sublimity and unaffected beauty of the sacred writings are in no instance more conspicuous than in the following verses of the 18th Psalm :

"He bowed the heavens also and came down and darkness was under his feet."

"And he rode upon a cherub and did fly: yea he did fly upon the wings of the wind.”

None of our better versions have been able to preserve the original graces of these verses. That wretched one of Thomas Sternhold, however (which, to the disgrace and manifest detriment of religious worship, is generally used), has, in this solitary instance, and then perhaps by accident, given us the true spirit of the Psalmist, and has surpassed not only Merrick, but even the classic Buchanan.* This version is as follows:

That the reader may judge for himself, Buchanan's translation is subjoined

Utque suum dominum terræ demittat in orbem
Leniter inclinat jussum fastigia cœlum;
Succedunt pedibus fusca caliginis umbra;
Ille vehens curru volucri, cui flammeus ales
Lora tenens levibus ventorum adremigat alis
Se circum fulvo nebularum involvit amictu,
Prætenditque cavis piceas in nubibus undas."

This is somewhat too harsh and prosaic, and there is an unpleasant caco phony in the terminations of the fifth and sixth lines.