The Sun's eye had a sickly glare,

The Earth with age was wan, The skeletons of nations were

Around that lonely man:

Some had expired in fight,-the brands
Still rested in their bony hands;

In plague and famine some;
Earth's cities had no sound nor tread,
And ships were drifting with the dead
To shores where all was dumb!

Yet, prophet-like, that lone one stood
With dauntless words and high,
That shook the sere leaves from the wood
As if a storm passed by, [Sun,
Saying, "We are twins in death, proud
Thy face is cold, thy race is run,

'Tis Mercy bids thee go.

For thou ten thousand thousand years
Hast seen the tide of human tears,
That shall no longer flow.

[forth

"What though beneath thee man put
His pomp, his pride, his skill;
And arts that made fire, flood, and earth
The vassals of his will?

Yet mourn I not thy parted sway,
Thou dim discrowned king of day;

For all those trophied arts

And triumphs that beneath thee sprang, Healed not a passion or a pang

Entailed on human hearts.

Go, let oblivion's curtain fall
Upon the stage of men,

Nor with thy rising beams recall
Life's tragedy again.

Its piteous pageants bring not back,
Nor waken flesh, upon the rack
Of pain anew to writhe;

Stretched in disease's shapes abhorred,
Or mown in battle by the sword,

Like grass beneath the scythe.

"E'en I am weary in

yon

skies

To watch thy fading fire; Test of all sumless agonies,

Behold not me expire.

My lips that speak thy dirge of deathTheir rounded gasp and gurgling breath

To see thou shalt not boast. The eclipse of Nature spreads my pall, The majesty of Darkness shall

Receive my parting ghost!

"This spirit shall return to Him
That gave its heavenly spark;
Yet think not, Sun, it shall be dim
When thou thyself art dark.

No! it shall live again, and shine
In bliss unknown to beams of thine,
By Him recalled to breath
Who captive led Captivity,
Who robbed the Grave of victory,

And took the sting from Death!

"Go, Sun, while Mercy holds me up On Nature's awful waste

To drink this last and bitter cup

Of grief that man shall taste; Go, tell the night that hides thy face, Thou saw'st the last of Adam's race

On earth's sepulchral clod, The darkening universe defy To quench his Immortality,

Or shake his trust in God!"

:0:

SIR WALTER SCOTT. 1771-1832.

CALEDONIA.

BREATHES there the man, with soul so dead,
Who never to himself hath said,
"This is my own-my Native Land!"
Whose heart hath ne'er within him burned
As home his footsteps he hath turned
From wand'ring on a foreign strand?
If such there breathe, go-mark him well:
For him no minstrel raptures swell;
High though his titles, proud his name,
Boundless his wealth as wish can claim-
Despite those titles, power, and pelf,
The wretch, concentred all in self,
Living, shall forfeit fair renown;
And, doubly dying, shall go down
To the vile dust from whence he sprung,
Unwept, unhonoured, and unsung!
O Caledonia! stern and wild,
Meet nurse for a poetic child!

Land of brown heath and shaggy wood,
Land of the mountain and the flood,
Land of my sires! what mortal hand
Can e'er untie the filial band

That knits me to thy rugged strand?
Still, as I view each well-known scene,
Think what is now, and what hath been,
Seems as to me, of all bereft,
Sole friends thy woods and streams were left;,
And thus I love them better still,
Even in extremity of ill.

By Yarrow's stream still let me stray,
Though none should guide my feeble way;

Still feel the breeze down Ettrick break,
Although it chill my withered cheek;
Still lay my head by Teviot-stone,
Though there, forgotten and alone,
The bard may draw his parting groan.
Sweet Teviot! on thy silver tide,

The glaring bale-fires blaze no more; No longer steel-clad warriors ride

Along thy wild and willowed shore; Where'er thou wind'st, by dale or hill, All, all is peaceful, all is still!

As if thy waves, since Time was born, Since first they rolled upon the Tweed, Had only heard the shepherd's reed, Nor started at the bugle-horn.

Unlike the tide of human time,

Which, though it change in ceaseless flow,

Retains each grief, retains each crime,

Its earliest course was doomed to know, And-darker as it downward veersIs stained with past and present tears.

A POETIC FANCY.

CALL it not vain :-they do not err
Who say, that when the Poet dies,
Mute Nature mourns her worshipper,

And celebrates his obsequies;
Who say, tall cliff and cavern lone
For the departed Bard make moan;
That mountains weep in crystal rill
That flowers in tears of balm distil;
Through his loved groves that breezes sigh,
And oaks, in deeper groan, reply;
And rivers teach their rushing wave
To murmur dirges round his grave.

Not that, in sooth, o'er mortal urn Those things inanimate can mourn; Bút that the stream, the wood, the gale, Is vocal with the plaintive wail Of those who, else forgotten long, Lived in the poet's faithful song, And with the poet's parting breath Whose memory feels a second death. The Maid's pale shade, who wails her lot, That love, true love, should be forgot, From rose and hawthorn shakes the tear Upon the gentle Minstrel's bier; The phantom Knight, his glory fled, Mourns o'er the field he heaped with dead,

Mounts the wild blast that sweeps amain,
And shrieks along the battle-plain;
The Chief, whose antique crownlet long
Still sparkled in the feudal song,
Now, from the mountain's misty throne,
Sees, in the thanedom once his own,
His ashes undistinguished lie,
His place, his power, his memory die:
His groans the lonely caverns fill,
His tears of rage impel the rill:

All mourn the Minstrel's harp unstrung,
Their name unknown, their praise unsung.

101

NELSON, PITT, AND FOX.

NOVEMBER'S sky is chill and drear, November's leaf is red and sere : Late, gazing down the steepy linn That hems our little garden in, Low in its dark and narrow glen, You scarce the rivulet might ken, So thick the tangled greenwood grew, So feeble trilled the streamlet through: Now murmuring hoarse, and frequent seen Through bush and brier, no longer green, An angry brook, it sweeps the glade, Brawls over rock and wild cascade, And, foaming brown, with doubled speed Hurries its waters to the Tweed.

No longer autumn's glowing red Upon our forest hills is shed;" No more, beneath the evening beam, Fair Tweed reflects their purple gleam; Away hath passed the heather-bell That bloomed so rich on Needpath Fell; Sallow his brow, and russet bare Are now the sister-heights of Yair. The sheep, before the pinching heaven, To sheltered dale and down are driven, Where yet some faded herbage pines, And yet a watery sunbeam shines: In meek despondency they eye The withered sward and wintry sky; And far beneath their summer hill, Stray sadly by Glenkinnon's rill: The shepherd shifts his mantle's fold, And wraps him closer from the cold; His dogs no merry circles wheel, But, shivering, follow at his heel; A cowering glance they often cast, As deeper moans the gathering blast.

My imps, though hardy, bold, and wild, As best befits the mountain child,

Feel the sad influence of the hour,
And wail the daisy's vanished flower;
Their summer gambols tell, and mourn,
And anxious ask, -Will spring return,
And birds and lambs again be gay,
And blossoms clothe the hawthorn spray?
Yes, prattlers, yes. The daisy's flower
Again shall paint your summer bower;
Again the hawthorn shall supply
The garlands you delight to tie;
The lambs upon the lea shall bound,
The wild birds carol to the round,
And while you frolic light as they,
Too short shall seem the summer day.

To mute and to material things New life revolving summer brings; The genial call dead Nature hears, And in her glory reappears. But oh! my country's wintry state What second spring shall renovate? What powerful call shall bid arise The buried warlike and the wise,The mind that thought for Britain's weal, The hand that grasped the victor steel? The vernal sun new life bestows Even on the meanest flower that blows; But vainly, vainly may he shine Where glory weeps o'er NELSON'S shrine, And vainly pierce the solemn gloom, That shrouds, O PITT, thy hallowed tomb!

Deep graved in every British heart, Oh, never let those names depart ! Say to your sons,--Lo, here his grave Who victor died on Gadite wave; To him, as to the burning levin, Short, bright, resistless course was given. Where'er his country's foes were found Was heard the fated thunder's sound, Till burst the bolt on yonder shore, Rolled, blazed, destroyed, and was no

more.

Nor mourn ye less his perished worth Who bade the conqueror go forth, And launched that thunderbolt of war On Egypt, Hafnia, Trafalgar; Who, born to guide such high emprise, For Britain's weal was early wise; Alas! to whom the Almighty gave, For Britain's sins, an early grave! His worth who, in his mightiest hour, A bauble held the pride of power, Spurned at the sordid lust of pelf, And served his Albion for herself; Who, when the frantic crowd amain Strained at subjection's bursting rein,

O'er their wild mood full conquest gained; The pride, he would not crush, restrained, Showed their fierce zeal a worthier cause, And brought the freeman's arm to aid the freeman's laws.

Hadst thou but lived, though stripped
of power,

A watchman on the lonely tower,
Thy thrilling trump had roused the land
When fraud or danger were at hand;
By thee, as by the beacon-light,
Our pilots had kept course aright;
As some proud column, though alone,
Thy strength had propped the tottering
throne:

Now is the stately column broke,
The beacon-light is quenched in smoke,
The trumpet's silver sound is still,
The warder silent on the hill.

Oh, think how to his latest day, When Death, just hovering, claimed his prey,

With Palinure's unaltered mood,
Firm at his dangerous post he stood;
Each call for needful rest repelled,
With dying hand the rudder held,
Till, in his fall, with fateful sway,
The steerage of the realm gave way!
Then, while on Britain's thousand plains
One unpolluted Church remains,
Whose peaceful bells ne'er sent around
The bloody toscin's maddening sound,
But still, upon the hallowed day,
Convoke the swains to praise and pray,-
While faith and civil peace are dear,
Grace this cold marble with a tear:-
He who preserved them, PITT, lies here!

Nor yet suppress the generous sigh
Because his rival slumbers nigh;
Nor be thy requiescat dumb,

Lest it be said o'er Fox's tomb.
For talents mourn, untimely lost,
When best employed, and wanted most;
Mourn genius high and lore profound,
And wit that loved to play, not wound;
And all the reasoning powers divine,
To penetrate, resolve, combine
And feelings keen, and fancy's glow,-
They sleep with him who sleeps below.
And, if thou mourn'st they could not save
From error him who owns this grave,
Be every harsher thought suppressed,
And sacred be the last long rest.
Here, where the end of earthly things
Lays heroes, patriots, bards, and kings;