THE FALLS OF THE CLYDE.

H, I have seen the Falls of Clyde,
And never can forget them;

For Memory, in her hours of pride, 'Midst gems of thought will set them, With every loving thing allied

I will not now regret them!

And I have stood by Bonnington,

And watched the sparkling current
Come like a smiling wood-nymph on-
And then, a mighty torrent!
With power to rend the cliffs anon,
Had they not before been rent.

And I have been in Balfour's cave;
But why hath chisel wrought it,
Since he, the brutal-but the brave,

In sore constraining sought it?
Dark days! when savage fought with slave,
Heroically fought it.

And I have hung o'er Burley's leap,
And watched the streams all blending,
As down that chasm so dark and steep
The torrents were descending;

How awful is the chaos deep

Those rocks so high impending!

And I have worshipped Corra Linn,
Clyde's most majestic daughter;
And those eternal rainbows seen

That arch the foaming water;
And I have owned that lovely queen,
And cheerful fealty brought her.

And I have wandered in the glen
Where Stone-byres rolls so proudly;
And watched, and mused, and watched again,
Where cliff, and chasm, and cloud lie,
Listening, while Nature's denizen
Talks to the woods so loudly.

Yes! I have seen the Falls of Clyde,
And never can forget them;
For Memory, in her hours of pride,
'Midst gems of thought will set them,
With life's most lovely scenes allied—
I will not now regret them!

BOWRING.

THE FALLS OF NIAGARA.

HE thoughts are strange that crowd into
my brain
While I look upward to thee. It would seem
As if God poured thee from his "hollow hand,"

And hung his bow upon thine awful front,
And spoke in that loud voice, which seemed to him
Who dwelt in Patmos for his Saviour's sake,
"The sound of many waters ;" and had bade
Thy flood to chronicle the ages back,

And notch his centuries in the eternal rocks.
Deep calleth unto deep. And what are we,
That hear the question of that voice sublime?
Oh! what are all the notes that ever rung
From war's vain trumpet, by thy thundering side!
Yea, what is all the riot that man makes,
In his short life, to thy unceasing roar !
And yet, bold babbler, what art thou to Him
Who drowned a world, and heaped the waters far
Above its loftiest mountains?—a light wave
That breaks and whispers of its Maker's might.

BRAINARD.

LOCH LONG.

PON another shore I stood

And looked upon another flood.*
Great Ocean's self! ('tis he who fills
The vast and awful depth of hills,)
Where many an elf was playing round,
Who treads unshod his classic ground;
And speaks his native rocks among,
As Fingal spoke and Ossian sung.
Night fell, and dark and darker grew
That narrow sea, that narrow sky,
As o'er the glimmering waves we flew,
The sea-bird rustling, wailing by,
And now the grampus, half descried,
Black and huge above the tide;
The cliffs and promontories there,
Front to front, and broad and bare,
Each beyond each, with giant-feet
Advancing as in haste to meet

The shattered fortress, whence the Dane

Blew his shrill blast, nor rushed in vain,

Tyrant of the drear domain:

All into midnight-shadow sweep—

"When day springs upward from the deep!" +

Kindling the waters in its flight,

The prow wakes splendour; and the oar,
That rose and fell unseen before,

Flashes in a sea of light!

Glad sign, and sure! for now we hail
Thy flowers, Glenfinnoch, in the gale;
And bright indeed the path should be
That leads to Friendship and to thee!
O blest retreat, and sacred too!
Sacred as when the bell of

prayer

• Loch Long.

† A phenomenon described by many navigators

Tolled duly on the desert air,

And crosses decked thy summits blue.
Oft, like some loved romantic tale,
Oft shall my weary mind recall,
Amid the hum and stir of men,
Thy beechen grove and waterfall,
Thy ferry with its gliding sail,
And Her the Lady of the Glen.

ROGERS,

LOCH KATRINE.

NE burnished sheet of living gold,
Loch Katrine lay beneath him rolled;
In all her length far winding lay,

With promontory, creek, and bay,
And islands that, empurpled bright,
Floated amid the livelier light;
And mountains that, like giants, stand,
To sentinel enchanted land.

High on the south, huge Ben-venue
Down to the lake in masses threw

Crags, knolls, and mounds, confusedly hurled,
The fragments of an earlier world;
A wildering forest feathered o'er
His ruined sides and summit hoar,
While on the north, through middle air,
Ben-an heaved high his forehead bare.

SCOTT.

LOCH KATRINE.

HE summer dawn's reflected hue

To purple changed Loch Katrine blue;
Mildly and soft the western breeze

Just kissed the lake, just stirred the trees;

And the pleased lake, like maiden coy,
Trembled, but dimpled not for joy;
The mountain shadows on her breast
Were neither broken nor at rest,—
In bright uncertainty they lie,
Like future joys to Fancy's eye.
The water-lily to the light

Her chalice reared of silver bright;

The doe awoke, and to the lawn,
Begemmed with dew-drops, led her fawn ;
The gray mist left the mountain side,
The torrent showed its mountain pride;
Invisible in flecked sky,

The lark sent down her revelry;

The blackbird and the speckled thrush
Good-morrow gave from brake and bush;
In answer cooed the cushat dove,

Her notes of peace, and rest, and love.

SCOTT.

THE SEA.

H! I shall not forget, until memory depart,
When first I beheld it, the glow of my heart;
The wonder, the awe, the delight that stole

o'er me,

When its billowy boundlessness opened before me!

As I stood on its margin, or roamed on its strand,

I felt new ideas within me expand,

Of glory and grandeur, unknown till that hour,
And my spirit was mute in the presence of Power!

In the surf-beaten sands that encircled it round,
In the billow's retreat, in the breaker's rebound,
In its white drifted foam, and its dark heaving green,
Each moment I gazed, some fresh beauty was seen.