" REST AND BE THANKFUL!

AT THE HEAD OF GLENCROE.

DOUBLING and doubling with laborious walk, Who, that has gained at length the wished-for Height,

This brief this simple way-side Call can slight, And rests not thankful? Whether cheered by talk

With some loved friend, or by the unseen hawk Whistling to clouds and sky-born streams, that shine

At the sun's outbreak, as with light divine,
Ere they descend to nourish root and stalk
Of valley flowers: Nor, while the limbs repose,
Will we forget that, as the fowl can keep
Absolute stillness, poised aloft in air,
And fishes front, unmoved, the torrent's
sweep,--

So may the Soul, through powers that Faith bestows,

Win rest, and ease, and peace, with bliss that Angels share.

XIV.

HIGHLAND HUT.

SEE what gay wild flowers deck this earthbuilt Cot,

Whose smoke, forth-issuing whence and how it may,

Shines in the greeting of the sun's first ray
Like wreaths of vapour without stain or blot.
The limpid mountain rill avoids it not;
And why shouldst thou?-If rightly trained
and bred,

Humanity is humble, finds no spot

Which her Heaven-guided feet refuse to tread. The walls are cracked, sunk is the flowery roof, Undressed the pathway leading to the door; But love, as Nature loves, the lonely Poor; Search, for their worth, some gentle heart wrong-proof,

Meek, patient, kind, and, were its trials fewer, Belike less happy.-Stand no more aloof!

XV.

THE HIGHLAND BROACH. The exact resemblance which the old Broach (still in use, though rarely met with, among the Highlanders) bears to the Roman Fibula must strike every one, and concurs, with the plaid and kilt, to recal to mind the communication which the ancient Romans had with this remote country.

IF to Tradition faith be due,

And echoes from old verse speak true,
Ere the meek Saint, Columba, bore
Glad tidings to Iona's shore,
No common light of nature blessed
The mountain region of the west

A land where gentle manners ruled

O'er men in dauntless virtues schooled,
That raised, for centuries, a bar
Impervious to the tide of war:
Yet peaceful Arts did entrance gain
Where haughty Force had striven in vain;
And, 'mid the works of skilful hands,
By wanderers brought from foreign lands
And various climes, was not unknown
The clasp that fixed the Roman Gown;
The Fibula, whose shape, I ween,
Still in the Highland Broach is seen,
The silver Broach of massy frame,
Worn at the breast of some grave Dame
On road or path, or at the door
Of fern-thatched hut on heathy moor:
But delicate of yore its mould,
And the material finest gold;
As might beseem the fairest Fair,
Whether she graced a royal chair,
Or shed, within a vaulted hall,
No fancied lustre on the wall
Where shields of mighty heroes hung,
While Fingal heard what Ossian sung.
The heroic Age expired-it slept
Deep in its tomb:-the bramble crept
O'er Fingal's hearth; the grassy sod
Grew on the floors his sons had trod:
Malvina where art thou? Their state
The noblest-born must abdicate;
The fairest, while with fire and sword
Come Spoilers-horde impelling horde,
Must walk the sorrowing mountains, drest
By ruder hands in homelier vest.
Yet still the female bosom lent,
And loved to borrow, ornament;
Still was its inner world a place
Reached by the dews of heavenly grace;
Still pity to this last retreat

Clove fondly; to his favourite seat
Love wound his way by soft approach,
Beneath a massier Highland Broach.
When alternations came of rage
Yet fiercer, in a darker age;

And feuds, where, clan encountering clan,
The weaker perished to a man;
For maid and mother, when despair
Might else have triumphed, baffling prayer,
One small possession lacked not power,
Provided in a calmer hour,

To meet such need as might befal-
Roof, raiment, bread, or burial:
For woman, even of tears bereft,
The hidden silver Broach was left.

As generations come and go
Their arts, their customs, ebb and flow;
Fate, fortune, sweep strong powers away,
And feeble, of themselves, decay;
What poor abodes the heir-loom hide,
In which the castle once took pride!
Tokens, once kept as boasted wealth,
If saved at all, are saved by stealth.
Lo! ships, from seas by nature barred,
Mount along ways by man prepared ;
And in far-stretching vales, whose streams
Seek other seas, their canvas gleams.

Lo! busy towns spring up, on coasts
Thronged yesterday by airy ghosts;
Soon, like a lingering star forlorn
Among the novelties of morn

While young delights on old encroach,
Will vanish the last Highland Broach.
But when, from out their viewless bed,
Like vapours, years have rolled and spread;
And this poor verse, and worthier lays,
Shall yield no light of love or praise;
Then, by the spade, or cleaving plough,
Or torrent from the mountain's brow,
Or whirlwind, reckless what his might
Entombs, or forces into light;
Blind Chance, a volunteer ally,
That oft befriends Antiquity,
And clears Oblivion from reproach,
May render back the Highland Broach.

XVI.

THE BROWNIE.

Upon a small island not far from the head of Loch Lomond, are some remains of an ancient building, which was for several years the abode of a solitary Individual, one of the last survivors of the clan of Macfarlane, once powerful in that neighbourhood. Passing along the shore opposite this island in the year 1814, the Author learned these particulars, and that this person then living there had acquired the appellation of "The Brownie." See "The Brownie's Cell," p. 182, to which the following is a sequel.

"How disappeared he?" Ask the newt and toad;

Ask of his fellow men, and they will tell
How he was found, cold as an icicle,
Under an arch of that forlorn abode ;
Where he, unpropp'd, and by the gathering
flood

Of years hemm'd round, had dwelt, prepared

to try

In the grey sky hath left his lingering Ghost, Perplexed as if between a splendour lost

* How much the Broach is sometimes prized by persons in humble stations may be gathered from an occurrence mentioned to me by a female friend. She had had an opportunity of benefiting a poor old woman in her own hut, who, wishing to make a return, said to her daughter, in Erse, in a tone of plaintive earnestness, "Í would give anything I have, but I hope she does not wish for my Broach!" and, uttering these words, she put her hand upon the Broach which fastened her kerchief, and which, she imagined, had attracted the eye of her benefactress.

PICTURE OF DANIEL IN THE LIONS' DEN, AT HAMILTON PALACE.

AMID a fertile region green with wood And fresh with rivers, well did it become The ducal Owner, in his palace-home To naturalise this tawny Lion brood; Children of Art, that claim strange brotherhood (Couched in their den) with those that roam at large

Over the burning wilderness, and charge Satiate are these; and stilled to eye and ear: The wind with terror while they roar for food. Hence, while we gaze, a more enduring fear! Yet is the Prophet calm, nor would the cave Daunt him-if his Companions, now be-drowsed Outstretched and listless, were by hunger roused:

Man placed him here, and God, he knows, can

Has mixed its current with the limpid flood,
Her heaven-offending trophies Glory rears:
Never for like distinction may the good
Shrink from thy name, pure Rill, with un-
pleased ears.

XXI.

SUGGESTED BY A VIEW FROM AN EMINENCE IN
INGLEWOOD FOREST.

THE forest huge of ancient Caledon
Is but a name, no more is Inglewood,
That swept from hill to hill, from flood to flood:
On her last thorn the nightly moon has shone;
Yet still, though unappropriate Wild be none,
Fair parks spread wide where Adam Bell might
deign

With Clym o' the Clough, were they alive again,

To kill for merry feast their venison.

Nor wants the holy Abbot's gliding Shade
His church with monumental wreck bestrown;
The feudal Warrior-chief, a Ghost unlaid,
Hath still his castle, though a skeleton,
That he may watch by night, and lessons con
Of power that perishes, and rights that fade.

To his huge trunk, or, with more subtle art,
Among its withering topmost branches mixed,
The palmy antlers of a hunted Hart,
Whom the Dog Hercules pursued his part
Each desperately sustaining, till at last
Both sank and died, the life-veins of the chased
And chaser bursting here with one dire smart.
Mutual the victory, mutual the defeat!
High was the trophy hung with pitiless pride;
Say, rather, with that generous sympathy
That wants not, even in rudest breasts, a seat;
And, for this feeling's sake, let no one chide
Verse that would guard thy memory, HART'S-
HORN TREE!

XXIII.

FANCY AND TRADITION.

THE Lovers took within this ancient grove
Their last embrace; beside those crystal springs
The Hermit saw the Angel spread his wings
For instant flight; the Sage in yon alcove
Sate musing; on that hill the Bard would rove,
Not mute, where now the linnet only sings:
Thus every where to truth Tradition clings,
Or Fancy localises Powers we love.
Were only History licensed to take note
Of things gone by, her meagre monuments
Would ill suffice for persons and events:
There is an ampler page for man to quote,
A readier book of manifold contents,
Studied alike in palace and in cot.

XXIV.

COUNTESS' PILLAR.

[On the roadside between Penrith and Appleby, there stands a pillar with the following inscription:

This pillar was erected, in the year 1656, by Anne Countess Dowager of Pembroke, &c., for a memorial of her last parting with her pious mother, Margaret Countess Dow.

ROMAN ANTIQUITIES.
(FROM THE ROMAN STATION AT OLD PENRITH.)
How profitless the relics that we cull,
Troubling the last holds of ambitious Rome,
Unless they chasten fancies that presume
Too high, or idle agitations lull!

Of the world's flatteries if the brain be full,
To have no seat for thought were better doom,
Like this old helmet, or the eyeless skull
Of him who gloried in its nodding plume.
Heaven out of view, our wishes what are they?
Our fond regrets tenacious in their grasp?
The Sage's theory? the Poet's lay?—
Mere Fibula without a robe to clasp ;
Obsolete lamps, whose light no time recals;
Urns without ashes, tearless lacrymals!

XXVI. APOLOGY.

FOR THE FOREGOING POEMS.

No more: the end is sudden and abrupt,
Abrupt as without preconceived design
Was the beginning; yet the several Lays
Have moved in order, to each other bound
By a continuous and acknowledged tie
Though unapparent-like those Shapes dis
tinct

That yet survive ensculptured on the walls
Of palaces, or temples, 'mid the wreck
Of famed Persepolis; each following each,
As might beseem a stately embassy,
In set array; these bearing in their hands
Ensign of civil power, weapon of war,
Or gift to be presented at the throne
Of the Great King; and others, as they go
In priestly vest, with holy offerings charged,
Or leading victims drest for sacrifice.
Nor will the Power we serve, that sacred Power,
The Spirit of humanity, disdain
A ministration humble but sincere,
That from a threshold loved by every Muse
Its impulse took-that sorrow-stricken door,
Whence, as a current from its fountain-head,

I.

CALM is the fragrant air, and loth to lose Day's grateful warmth, tho' moist with falling dews.

Look for the stars, you'll say that there are

none;

Look up a second time, and, one by one,
You mark them twinkling out with silvery light,
And wonder how they could elude the sight!
The birds, of late so noisy in their bowers,
Warbled a while with faint and fainter powers,
But now are silent as the dim-seen flowers:
Nor does the village Church-clock's iron tone
The time's and season's influence disown:
Nine beats distinctly to each other bound
In drowsy sequence-how unlike the sound
That, in rough winter, oft inflicts a fear
On fireside listeners, doubting what they hear!
The shepherd, bent on rising with the sun,
Had closed his door before the day was done.
And now with thankful heart to bed doth creep,
And joins his little children in their sleep.
The bat, lured forth where trees the lane a'er-
shade,

Flits and reflits along the close arcade;
The busy dor-hawk chases the white moth
With burring note, which Industry and Sloth
Might both be pleased with, for it suits them

both.

A stream is heard-I see it not, but know
By its soft music whence the waters flow:
Wheels and the tread of hoofs are heard nc

more;

One boat there was, but it will touch the shore
With the next dipping of its slackened oar;
Faint sound, that, for the gayest of the gay,
Might give to serious thought a moment's sway,
As a last token of man's toilsome day!
1832.

11.

ON A HIGH PART OF THE COAST OF CUMBERLAND.

Easter Sunday, April 7.

THE AUTHOR'S SIXTY-THIRD BIRTH-DAY. THE Sun, that seemed so mildly to retire, Flung back from distant climes a streaming fire,

Whose blaze is now subdued to tender gleams, Prelude of night's approach with soothing dreams.

Look round;-of all the clouds not one is moving;

'Tis the still hour of thinking, feeling, loving. Silent, and stedfast as the vaulted sky The boundless plain of waters seems to lie :Comes that low sound from breezes rustling o'er

The grass-crowned headland that conceals the shore?

No; 'tis the earth-voice of the mighty sea, Whispering how meek and gentle he can be!

Thou Power supreme! who, arming to rebuke Offenders, dost put off the gracious look, Of ocean roused into his fiercest mood, And clothe thyself with terrors like the flood Whatever discipline thy Will ordain For the brief course that must for me remain; Teach me with quick-eared spirit to rejoice In admonitions of thy softest voice! Whate'er the path these mortal feet may trace, Breathe through my soul the blessing of thy

grace,

Glad, through a perfect love, a faith sincere
Drawn from the wisdom that begins with fear,
Glad to expand; and, for a season, free
From finite cares, to rest absorbed in Thee!
1833.

III.

(BY THE SEA-SIDE.)

THE Sun is Couched, the sea-fowl gone to rest, And the wild storm hath somewhere found a nest;

Air slumbers-wave with wave no longer strives,
Only a heaving of the deep survives,
A tell-tale motion! soon will it be laid,
And by the tide alone the water swayed.
Stealthy withdrawings, interminglings mild
Of light with shade in beauty reconciled-
Such is the prospect far as sight can range,
The soothing recompence, the welcome change.
Where now the ships that drove before the blast,
Threatened by angry breakers as they passed;
And by a train of flying clouds bemocked;
Or, in the hollow surge, at anchor rocked