"God rest her; she is still enough Who sleeps beneath my feet!" She ever did herself, though now She lies where four roads meet. I have past by about that hour When men are not most brave; It did not make my heart to fail, And I have heard the nightingale Sing sweetly on the grave. I have past by about that hour When ghosts their freedom have ; But there was nothing here to fright, And I have seen the glowworm's light, Shine on the poor girl's grave. There's one who like a Christian lies Beneath the church tree's shade; I'd rather go a long mile round Than pass at evening through the ground Wherein that man is laid. A decent burial that man had, The bell was heard to toll, In silent pomp they laid him down,— Didst see a house below the hill, Which the winds and the rains destroy? The man in that farmhouse did dwell, And I remember it full well When I was a growing boy. And she was a poor parish girl, A man of a bad name was he; Passion made his dark face turn white; The man was bad, the mother worse,— 'Twould make your hair to stand on end, If I should tell to you, my friend, The things that were told of them! It was a stable then, but now This poor girl she had served with them When she was found hung up one day, It is a wild and lonesome place; Should one meet a murderer there alone, And there were strange reports about; That she by her own hand had died, This was the very place he chose, They carried her upon a board, In the clothes in which she died; I think they could not have been closed, I never saw so dreadful a sight, And it often made me wake at night, For I saw her face again. They laid her here where four roads meet, The earth upon her corpse was prest, THOMAS CAMPBELL. BORN at Glasgow, and educated at the university of his native city. After leaving the university he resided for some time in Edinburgh, where he published his first work (The Pleasures of Hope). The profits which he derived from the sale of this poem enabled him to visit the continent in the year 1800. He reached Bavaria (then the seat of war), and from a safe distance had a view of the battle of Hohenlinden. Soon after his return from the continent, he settled in London, and commenced the pursuit of literature as a profession. In 1806 a pension of £200 a year was bestowed upon him by the Fox ministry. Campbell died at Boulogne in 1844, and his body was brought to England, and interred in Westminster Abbey. His chief works are:- The Pleasures of Hope; Gertrude of Wyoming; The Battle of the Baltic; Hohenlinden; Lora Ullin's Daughter, etc. TO THE RAINBOW. TRIUMPHAL arch, that fill'st the sky I ask not proud philosophy To teach me what thou art. Still seem as to my childhood's sight A midway station given, For happy spirits to alight Betwixt the earth and heaven. Can all that optics teach, unfold When science from Creation's face And yet, fair bow, no fabling dreams, When o'er the green undeluged earth And when its yellow lustre smiled Methinks, thy jubilee to keep, Nor ever shall the Muse's eye The earth to thee her incense yields, Heaven still rebuilds thy span, LORD ULLIN'S DAUGHTER. A CHIEFTAIN to the Highlands bound, "Now who be ye would cross Loch-Gyle, And fast before her father's men |