Sir John Malcolm, as a tribute to the memory of his deceased friend: : -

"Where sleep the brave on Java's strand,
Thy ardent spirit, Leyden, fled!
And Fame with cypress shades the land,
Where genius fell, and valour bled.

"When triumph's tale is westward borne,
On Border hills no joy shall gleam;
And thy lov'd Teviot long shall mourn
The youthful poet of her stream.

"Near Jura's rocks, the Mermaid's strain

Shall change from sweet to solemn lay;

For he is gone, the stranger swain,
Who sung the Maid of Colonsay.

"The hardy tar, Britannia's pride,

Shall hang his manly head in woe;
The Bard who told how Nelson died,
With harp unstrung, in earth lies low.

"I see a weeping band arise,

I hear sad music on the gale;
Thy dirge is sung from Scotia's skies,
Her mountain sons their loss bewail.

"The Minstrel of thy native North
Pours all his soul into the song;

It bursts from near the winding Forth,
And Highland rocks the notes prolong.

"Yes, he who struck a matchless lyre,
O'er Flodden's field, and Katrine's wave
With trembling hand now leads the choir

That mourn his Leyden's early grave."

Mr. Scott has alluded with regret to the death of his friend in the following lines, from the "Lord of the Isles."

"His bright and brief career is o'er,
And mute his tuneful strains;
Quenched is his lamp of varied lore,
That lov'd the light of song to pour;

A distant and a deadly shore
Has Leyden's cold remains!"

NOTE [G.] PAGE lxxii.

That he was not unconscious of the peculiarities of his own character is evinced in the following passage of one of his letters to Dr. Robert Anderson

:

"I often verge so nearly on absurdity, that I know it is perfectly easy to misconceive me, as well as misrepresent me."

ODE TO PHANTASY.

WRITTEN IN 1796.

THE following may be considered as a kind of sombrous Ode to Fancy, written during an attack of the ague.

I.

AVAUNT the lark's clear thrilling note
That warbles sweet through ether blue,

While on the sloping sun-beam float

Her waving pinions wet with dew!
Too dire the power whose sullen sway
My torpid nerves and breast obey.—

B

But, from the stump of withered oak,
Let me hear the raven croak,

And her sooty pinions flap

At the night thunder's startling clap,

As perch'd aloft she mutters hoarse
O'er an infant's mangled corse;

When, drunk with blood, her sharp short scream
Shall wake me from my wayward dream,

To see the blood spontaneous flow

Through the half-opened sod below.

II.

Avaunt the cheerful village throng,
With all the sprightly sports of youth,
The mazy dance, and maiden song!
Be mine to roam through wilds uncouth;
To talk by fits at dusky eve
With Echo in her rock-hewn cave,
And see the fairy people glide

Down the cavern's rugged side;
Or dive into the wood profound,
Where red leaves rustle strangely round;
Where through the leaf-embowered way,
The star-light sheds a sickly ray.-

And then the dead-man's lamp I spy,
As twinkling blue it passes by,
Soon followed by the sable pall,
And pomp of shadowy funeral. *

III.

Beside yon hoary shapeless cairn,
That points the shepherd's lonely path,
Mantled with frizly withered fern,

And skirted by the blasted heath; -
By the slow muddy streams which lave
The suicide's unhallowed grave,
Where flaunts around in loose array,
The withered grass that looks so gray;
Whence aloof the travellers go,

And curse the wretch that lies below;
I'll sit at midnight's fearful hour,
When the wan April moon has power,

* In some parts of Scotland, where superstitious terrors still maintain their influence, at or near the time of a person's death, (for the ghost seers are not agreed,) a glimmering light is supposed to proceed from his house to the place of interment, tracing exactly the course of the funeral procession. This light is sometimes accompanied with the ghostly representation of a bier.