POETRY.

THE CRUSADER'S RETURN.

"Joy to the fair!-thy knight behold,
Return'd from yonder land of gold;

No wealth he brings, nor wealth can need,
Save his good arms and battle-steed ;
His spurs, to dash against a foe,
His lance and sword to lay him low;
Such all the trophies of his toil,
Such-and the hope of Tekla's smile!

"Joy to the fair! whose constant knight Her favour fired to feats of might; Unnoted shall she not remain,

Where meet the bright and noble train;
Minstrel shall sing and herald tell—
'Mark yonder maid of beauty well,
"Tis she for whose bright eyes was won
The listed field at Askalon!'

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Joy to the fair!—my name unknown, Each deed, and all its praise thine own; Then, oh! unbar this churlish gate, The night-dew falls, the hour is late. Inured to Syria's glowing breath, I feel the north breeze chill as death; Let grateful love quell maiden shame, And grant him bliss who brings thee fame.

REBECCA'S HYMN.

It was in the twilight of the day when her trial, if it could be called such, had taken place, that a low knock was heard at the door of Rebecca's prison-chamber. It disturbed not the inmate, who was then engaged in the evening prayer recommended by her religion, and which concluded with a hymn we have ventured thus to translate into English.

When Israel, of the Lord beloved,

Out of the land of bondage came,
Her father's God before her moved,

An awful guide in smoke and flame.
By day, along the astonished lands
The cloudy pillar glided slow;
By night, Arabia's crimson'd sands
Returned the fiery column's glow.

There rose the choral hymn of praise,
And trump and timbrel answer'd keen,
And Zion's daughters pour'd their lays,
With priest's and warrior's voice between.
No portents now our foes amaze,

Forsaken Israel wanders lone;

Our fathers would not know THY ways,
And THOU hast left them to their own.

But, present still, though now unseen;
When brightly shines the prosperous day
Be thoughts of THEE a cloudy screen
To temper the deceitful ray.

And oh, when stoops on Judah's path
In shade and storm the frequent night,
Be THOU, long-suffering, slow to wrath,

A burning and a shining light!

Our harps we left by Babel's streams,
The tyrant's jest, the Gentile's scorn;
No censer round our altar beams,

And mute our timbrel, trump, and horn,
But THOU hast said, the blood of goat,
The flesh of rams I will not prize;
A contrite heart, an humble thought,
Are mine accepted sacrifice.

VIEW OF THE SCOTTISH CAMP, A.D. 1513, AND CITY OF EDINBURGH, FROM BLACKFORD HILL.

Blackford! on whose uncultured breast,
Among the broom, and thorn, and whin,
A truant-boy, I sought the nest,
Or listed, as I lay at rest,

While rose, on breezes thin,
The murmur of the city crowd,
And, from his steeple jangling loud,
Saint Giles's mingling din.

Now, from the summit to the plain,
Waves all the hill with yellow grain

And o'er the landscape as I look,
Nought do I see unchanged remain,

Save the rude cliffs and chiming brook.

To me they make a heavy moan,

Of early friendships past and gone.

But different far the change has been,
Since Marmion, from the crown
Of Blackford, saw that martial scene
Upon the bent so brown:
Thousand pavilions, white as snow,
Spread all the Borough-moor below,
Upland, and dale, and down :-
A thousand, did I say? I ween,
Thousands on thousands there were seen,
That chequer'd all the heath between
The streamlet and the town;

In crossing ranks extending far,
Forming a camp irregular ;

Oft giving way, where still there stood

Some relics of the old oak wood,

That darkly huge did intervene,

And tamed the glaring white with green :
In these extended lines there lay

A martial kingdom's vast array.

Still on the spot Lord Marmion stay'd,
For fairer scene he ne'er survey'd.

When sated with the martial show
That peopled all the plain below,
The wandering eye could o'er it go,
And mark the distant city glow
With gloomy splendour red;

For on the smoke-wreaths, huge and slow,
That round her sable turrets flow,

The morning beams were shed,

And tinged them with a lustre proud,
Like that which streaks a thunder-cloud.

"MINE OWN ROMANTIC TOWN."