The father toils sair their wee bannock to earn,
An' kens na the wrangs o' his mitherless bairn.
Her spirit, that passed in yon hour o' his birth,
Still watches his wearisome wanderings on earth;
Recording in heaven the blessings they earn
Wha couthilie deal wi' the mitherless bairn.
O, speak him na harshly,—he trembles the while,
He bends to your bidding, and blesses your smile;
In their dark hour o' anguish the heartless shall learn,
That God deals the blow for the mitherless bairn.
My life is like the summer rose
That opens to the morning sky,
But, ere the shades of evening close,
Is scattered on the ground-to die!
Yet on the rose's humble bed
The sweetest dews of night are shed,
As if she wept the waste to see,—
But none shall weep a tear for me!
My life is like the autumn leaf
That trembles in the moon's pale ray;
Its hold is frail-its date is brief,
Restless-and soon to pass away!
Yet, ere that leaf shall fall and fade,
The parent tree will mourn its shade,
The winds bewail the leafless tree,—
But none shall breathe a sigh for me!
My life is like the prints which feet
Have left on Tampa's desert strand;
Soon as the rising tide shall beat,
All trace will vanish from the sand;
Yet, as if grieving to efface
All vestige of the human race,
On that lone shore loud moans the sea,
alas! shall mourn for me!
AFAR in the desert I love to ride,
With the silent Bush-boy alone by my side,
When the sorrows of life the soul o'ercast,
And, sick of the present, I cling to the past;
When the eye is suffused with regretful tears,
From the fond recollections of former years;
And shadows of things that have long since fled
Flit over the brain, like the ghosts of the dead:
Bright visions of glory that vanished too soon;
Day-dreams, that departed ere manhood's noon;
Attachments by fate or falsehood reft;
Companions of early days lost or left-
And my native land-whose magical name
Thrills to the heart like electric flame;
The home of my childhood; the haunts of my prime;
All the passions and scenes of that rapturous time
When the feelings were young, and the world was new,
Like the fresh bowers of Eden unfolding to view;
All-all now forsaken-forgotten-foregone!
And I-a lone exile remembered of none-
My high aims abandoned,—my good acts undone―
Aweary of all that is under the sun—
With that sadness of heart which no stranger may scan, I fly to the desert afar from man.
Afar in the desert I love to ride,
With the silent Bush-boy alone by my side.
When the wild turmoil of this wearisome life,
With its scenes of oppression, corruption, and strife
The proud man's frown, and the base man's fear,
The scorner's laugh, and the sufferer's tear,
And malice, and meanness, and falsehood, and folly,
Dispose me to musing and dark melancholy;
When my bosom is full, and my thoughts are high,
And my soul is sick with the bondman's sigh,—
O, then there is freedom, and joy, and pride,
Afar in the desert alone to ride!
There is rapture to vault on the champing steed,
And to bound away with the eagle's speed,
With the death-fraught firelock in my hand,—
The only law of the Desert Land!
Afar in the desert I love to ride,
With the silent Bush-boy alone by my side,
Away, away from the dwellings of men,
By the wild deer's haunt, by the buffalo's glen;
By valleys remote where the oribi plays,
Where the gnu, the gazelle, and the hartebeest graze, And the kudu and eland unhunted recline
By the skirts of gray forest o'erhung with wild vine; Where the elephant browses at peace in his wood, And the river-horse gambols unscared in the flood, And the mighty rhinoceros wallows at will
In the fen where the wild ass is drinking his fill.
Afar in the desert I love to ride,
With the silent Bush-boy alone by my side,
O'er the brown karroo, where the bleating cry
Of the springbok's fawn sounds plaintively;
And the timorous quagga's shrill whistling neigh
Is heard by the fountain at twilight gray;
Where the zebra wantonly tosses his mane,
With wild hoof scouring the desolate plain;
And the fleet-footed ostrich over the waste
Speeds like a horseman who travels in haste,
Hieing away to the home of her rest,
Where she and her mate have scooped their nest,
Far hid from the pitiless plunderer's view
In the pathless depths of the parched karroo.
Afar in the desert I love to ride,
With the silent Bush-boy alone by my side,
Away, away, in the wilderness vast
Where the white man's foot hath never passed,
And the quivered Coranna or Bechuan
Hath rarely crossed with his roving clan,—
A region of emptiness, howling and drear,
Which man hath abandoned from famine and fear;
Which the snake and the lizard inhabit alone,
With the twilight bat from the yawning stone;
Where grass, nor herb, nor shrub takes root,
Save poisonous thorns that pierce the foot;
And the bitter-melon, for food and drink,
Is the pilgrim's fare by the salt lake's brink;
A region of drought, where no river glides,
Nor rippling brook with osiered sides;
Where sedgy pool, nor bubbling fount,
Nor tree, nor cloud, nor misty mount,
Appears, to refresh the aching eye;
But the barren earth and the burning sky,
And the blank horizon, round and round,
Spread,-void of living sight or sound.
And here, while the night-winds round me sigh,
And the stars burn bright in the midnight sky,
As I sit apart by the desert stone,
Like Elijah at Horeb's cave, alone,
"A still small voice" comes through the wild
(Like a father consoling his fretful child),
Which banishes bitterness, wrath, and fear,
Saying,-Man is distant, but God is near!
THE scene was more beautiful far to the eye,
Than if day in its pride had arrayed it:
The land-breeze blew mild, and the azure-arched sky
Looked pure as the spirit that made it :
The murmur rose soft, as I silently gazed
On the shadowy waves' playful motion,
From the dim distant hill, till the light-house fire blazed Like a star in the midst of the ocean.
No longer the joy of the sailor-boy's breast
Was heard in his wildly-breathed numbers;
The sea-bird had flown to her wave-girdled nest,
The fisherman sunk to his slumbers:
One moment I looked from the hill's gentle slope,
All hushed was the billows' commotion,
And o'er them the light-house looked lovely as hope,-
That star of life's tremulous ocean.
The time is long past, and the scene is afar,
Yet when my head rests on its pillow,
Will memory sometimes rekindle the star
That blazed on the breast of the billow:
In life's closing hour, when the trembling soul flies,
And death stills the heart's last emotion;
O, then may the seraph of mercy arise,
Like a star on eternity's ocean!
O WHY should the spirit of mortal be proud?
Like a fast-flitting meteor, a fast-flying cloud,
A flash of the lightning, a break of the wave,
He passes from life to his rest in the grave.
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