Telling a tale of mad, luxurious waste,
Yet not enough to cover nakedness,
A garb of many hues, and wretched all.
There is a desperate patience in her look,
And straggling smiles, or rather ghosts of smiles,
Display the sadness of her wrinkled visage.
Anon, with gusty rage, she casts away
Her motley weeds, and tears her thin grey locks,
And treads her squalid splendour in the mire ;
Then weeps amain to think what she has done,
Doom'd to cold penance in a sheet of snow.

EPIGRAM.

They say Despair has power to kill

With her bleak frown; but I say No: If life did hang upon her will,

Then Hope had perish'd long ago : Yet still the twain keep up their “barful strife,” For Hope Love's leman is, Despair his wife.

'Tis silly, sooth, And dallies with the innocence of love Like the old age.

IN THE MANNER OF A CHILD OF SEVEN

YEARS OLD.

Ah! woe betide my bonny bride,

For war is in the land,
And far and wide the foemen ride

With ruthless bloody brand.

Still as a dream the purple beam

Of eve is on the river,
But ghastly bright, at the dead of night,

A blood-red flame will quiver.

Fair in the skies the sun will rise

As ever sun was seen,
But never again our window pane

Shall back reflect his sheen :

For the warrior stern our cot will burn,

And trample on the bower;
It grew for years of smiles and tears,

”Twill perish in an hour.

Those firs were old, our grandsires told,

In their good fathers' days, And my soul it grieves that their needle leaves

Must crackle in the blaze.

Beneath their shade how oft we played !

There was our place of wooing :But now we're wed, and peace is fled,

And we shall see their ruin.

In battle plain shall I be slain,

And never would I shrink,
Oh! were that all, what may befall

To thee, I dare not think.

And our sweet boy, our baby joy,

He'll for his mother cry,
Till the hot smoke, his voice shall choke,

And then my bird will die.

Green are

the
graves,

and thick as waves,
Within our holy ground
And here, and there, an hillock fair,

An infant's grave is found.

Our fathers died, their whole fireside

Is laid in peace together,
But vile as stones, our bleaching bones

Must brave the wind and weather.

Nay, love, let's fly, to the hill so high,

Where eagles build their nest,
Among the heather we'll couch together,

As blithely as the best.

We'll leave the bower and tender flower

That we have nursed with care ;
But the wild blue bell shall bloom as well
Beside our craggy

lair.

We shall not die, for all birds that fly

Shall thither bring us food, And come the worst, w’ell be help'd the first,

Before the eagle's brood.

The mist beneath, that curls its wreath

Around the hill-top hoar,
There will we hide, my bonny bride,

And ne'er be heard of more.

H

SENSE, IF YOU CAN FIND IT.

Like one pale, flitting, lonely gleam

Of sunshine on a winter's day,
There came a thought upon my dream,
I know not whence, but fondly deem

It came from far away.

Those sweet, sweet snatches of delight

That visit our bedarken'd clay
Like passage birds, with hasty flight,
It cannot be they perish quite,

Although they pass away.

They come and go, and come again ;

They're ours, whatever time they stay: Think not, my heart, they come in vain, If one brief while they soothe thy pain

Before they pass away.

But whither go they? No one knows

Their home,—but yet they seem to say, That far beyond this gulf of woes There is a region of repose

For them that pass away.