6 Now safely moor'd, my peril's o'er, I'll sing, first in night's diadem, For ever, and for evermore, The Star-the Star of Bethlehem! A HYMN. 10 LORD my God, in mercy turn, 2 I strove against thee, Lord, I know, And I am left alone to die. 3 O pleasures past, what are ye now 4 For pleasure I have given my soul; 5 Yet, Jesus, Jesus! there I'll cling, I'll crowd beneath his sheltering wing; END OF KIRKE WHITE'S POEMS. THE LIFE AND GENIUS OF JAMES GRAHAME. No Life, in a separate form, so far as we know, has yet appeared of the author of the "Sabbath," and the most of our materials for this notice are derived from a pleasing little memoir of Grahame in the first volume of Blackwood, signed Y, and written by a personal friend of the poet's. James Grahame was born in Glasgow on the 22d of April 1765, and was educated there in the usual form, first at the Grammarschool, and then at the College. When very young, his ruling passion displayed itself in the composition of some fine Latin verses. He used seldom to walk abroad without a volume of the Classics in his pocket, and had a copy of the Greek Testament always by his bedside to employ his waking hours. His father, who was connected with the law (a writer, as they call it in Scotland, answering nearly to an attorney in England), seems to have been an intelligent man, and his mother, like all mothers of poets, had herself a touch of genius. The most remarkable member of the family, however, next to James, was his eldest sister, who, to fine talents and tastes, added an exquisite musical faculty. Campbell the poet used to call her the "Angel of Music." Her voice exerted a peculiar power over her brother, whose soul rose to its grand swells, or melted to its softer cadences, in a manner, it is said, of which eye-witnesses only could conceive. Some time before her premature death, she lost her voice through illness; and sorely did the poet bewail its loss before called on, with a far deeper grief, to mourn her own. Well might he have said to her, as she lay a-dying, in the words of Coleridge "They surely have no need of you In the place where you are going; While Heaven is overflowing." Grahame has expressed his sorrow at his sister's death in some very tender lines, in his poem on "Melrose Abbey." It is said that Campbell's beautiful stanzas on "Painting," including the lines, "But thou canst give us back the dead, Even in the loveliest looks they wore," were suggested by the sight of the portrait of this amiable. woman after her decease. Grahame himself was a musician; and the Bard of Hope describes him, after returning from a walk to Arthur's Seat, spending the night alone in pouring out extempore hymns to God, in a depth of musical intonation and with an enthusiasm of devotion which Campbell never heard equalled. Grahame's tastes and habits inclined him to the study of divinity; and it is deeply to be regretted that his father dissuaded him from this, and induced him to follow his own profession, that of the law. He came to Edinburgh, was articled as apprentice to his cousin, Lawrence Hill, and, after the usual routine, commenced practice, in 1791, as Writer to the Signet. Save in the case of the kindred spirits of Cowper and Kirke White, few men have ever been less at home in an attorney's office than poor Grahame. Whatever may be said, on other grounds, in favour of the profession of law, it is certainly not a congenial profession for a poet. He had scarcely entered on his work as a W.S. when his father died, and he again turned his thoughts to the church. Again, however, his purpose was overruled by his friends, and for years he continued to plod on as a writer, although disliking alike the duties and the confinement of the occupation. By and by he passed as an Advocate, expecting thus to obtain more leisure for the prosecution of his literary studies. |