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His clotted locks he backward threw,

Across his brow his hand he drew,

From blood and mist to clear his sight,
Then gleamed aloft his dagger bright!—
But hate and fury ill supplied

The stream of life's exhausted tide,

And all too late the advantage came,
To turn the odds of deadly game;

For, while the dagger gleamed on high,
Reeled soul and sense, reeled brain and eye.
Down came the blow! but in the heath
The erring blade found bloodless sheath.
The struggling foe may now unclasp
The fainting Chief's relaxing grasp;
Unwounded from the dreadful close,
But breathless all, Fitz-James arose.

A Farewell.

HARP of the North, farewell! The hills grow dark,
On purple peaks a deeper shade descending;
In twilight copse the glow-worm lights her spark,
The deer, half-seen, are to the covert wending.
Resume thy wizard elm! the fountain lending,

And the wild breeze, thy wilder minstrelsy;
Thy numbers sweet with Nature's vespers blending,
With distant echo from the fold and lea,

And herd-boy's evening pipe and hum of housing bee.

Yet, once again, farewell, thou Minstrel Harp!
Yet, once again, forgive my feeble sway,
And little reck I of the censure sharp

May idly cavil at an idle lay.

Much have I owed thy strains on life's long way, Through secret woes the world has never known, When on the weary night dawned wearier day,

And bitterer was the grief devoured alone.

That I o'erlive such woes, Enchantress! is thine own.

Hark! as my lingering footsteps slow retire,

Some Spirit of the Air has waked thy string! 'Tis now a Seraph bold, with touch of fire,

'Tis now the brush of Fairy's frolic wing. Receding now, the dying numbers ring

Fainter and fainter down the rugged dell, And now the mountain breezes scarcely bring

A wandering witch-note of the distant spellAnd now 'tis silent all!-Enchantress, fare thee well!

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STRANGER! if e'er thine ardent step hath traced
The northern realms of ancient Caledon,
Where the proud Queen of Wilderness hath placed,
By lake and cataract, her lonely throne;

Sublime but sad delight thy soul hath known,

Gazing on pathless glen and mountain high, Listing where from the cliffs the torrents thrown Mingle their echoes with the eagle's cry,

And with the sounding lake, and with the moaning sky.

Yes! 'twas sublime, but sad.-The loneliness
Loaded thy heart, the desert tired thine eye;
And strange and awful fears began to press

Thy bosom with a stern solemnity.

Then hast thou wished some woodman's cottage nigh, Something that showed of life, though low and mean; Glad sight, its curling wreath of smoke to spy,

Glad sound, its cock's blithe carol would have been, Or children whooping wild beneath the willows green.

Such are the scenes, where savage grandeur wakes
An awful thrill that softens into sighs;

Such feelings rouse them by dim Rannoch's lakes,
In dark Glencoe such gloomy raptures rise:
Or further, where, beneath the northern skies,
Chides wild Loch Eribol his caverns hoar-
But, be the minstrel judge, they yield the prize
Of desert dignity to that dread shore,

That sees grim Coolin rise, and hears Coriskin roar.

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