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Snows muffled earth when thou didst go,
In life's spring bloom,

Down to the appointed house below,
The silent tomb.

But now the green leaves of the tree,
The cuckoo and the busy bee,'
Return-but with them bring not thee,
Casa Wappy!

'Tis so; but can it be (while flowers
Revive again)-

Man's doom, in death that we and ours
For aye remain?

Oh! can it be, that o'er the grave
The grass renewed, should yearly wave,
Yet God forget our child to save?—
Casa Wappy!

It cannot be for were it so

Thus man could die,

Life were a mockery, Thought were wo, And Truth a lie;

Heaven were a coinage of the brain,

Religion frenzy, Virtue vain,

And all our hopes to meet again,

Casa Wappy!

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Ten Years Ago.

[By Alaric A. Watts.]

That time is past,

And all its aching joys are now no more,

And all its dizzy raptures! Not for this
Faint I, nor mourn, nor murmur. Other gifts
Have followed for such loss, I would believe,
Abundant recompense.-Wordsworth.

Ten years ago, ten years ago,

Life was to us a fairy scene;

And the keen blasts of worldly wo

Had seared not then its pathway green.
Youth and its thousand dreams were ours,
Feelings we ne'er can know again;
Unwithered hopes, unwasted powers,
And frames unworn by mortal pain:
Such was the bright and genial flow
Of life with us-ten years ago!

Time has not blanched a single hair

That clusters round thy forehead now;
Nor hath the cankering touch of care
Left even one furrow on thy brow.
Thine eyes are blue as when we met,
In love's deep truth, in earlier years;
Thy cheek of rose is blooming yet,

Though sometimes stained by secret tears; But where, oh! where's the spirit's glow, That shone through all-ten years ago?

I, too, am changed-I scarce know why-
Can feel each flagging pulse decay;
And youth and health, and visions high,
Melt like a wreath of snow away;
Time cannot sure have wrought the ill;
Though worn in this world's sickening strife,
In soul and form, I linger still

In the first summer month of life;
Yet journey on my path below,
Oh! how unlike-ten years ago!
But look not thus: I would not give
The wreck of hopes that thou must share,
To bid those joyous hours revive

When all around me seemed so fair.
We've wandered on in sunny weather,

When winds were low, and flowers in bloom, And hand in hand have kept together,

And still will keep, 'mid storm and gloom; Endeared by ties we could not know When life was young-ten years ago!

Has fortune frowned? Her frowns were vain,
For hearts like ours she could not chill;
Have friends proved false? Their love might wane,
But ours grew fonder, firmer still.
Twin barks on this world's changing wave,
Steadfast in calms, in tempests tried;
In concert still our fate we'll brave,

Together cleave life's fitful tide;
Nor mourn, whatever winds may blow,
Youth's first wild dreams-ten years ago!
Have we not knelt beside his bed,

And watched our first-born blossom die?
Hoped, till the shade of hope had fled,
Then wept till feeling's fount was dry?
Was it not sweet, in that dark hour,

To think, 'mid mutual tears and sighs,
Our bud had left its earthly bower,

And burst to bloom in Paradise?
What to the thought that soothed that wo
Were heartless joys-ten years ago?

Yes, it is sweet, when heaven is bright,
To share its sunny beams with thee;
But sweeter far, 'mid clouds and blight,
To have thee near to weep with me.

Then dry those tears-though something changed
From what we were in earlier youth,
Time, that hath hopes and friends estranged,
Hath left us love in all its truth;

Sweet feelings we would not forego

For life's best joys-ten years ago.

My Mother's Grave.

[By Thomas Aird.]

O rise and sit in soft attire,
Wait but to know my soul's desire!
I'd call thee back to days of strife,
To wrap my soul around thy life!
Ask thou this heart for monument,
And mine shall be a large content.

A crown of brightest stars to thee!
How did thy spirit wait for me,
And nurse thy waning light, in faith
That I would stand 'twixt thee and death;
Then tarry on thy bowing shore,
Till I have asked thy sorrows o'er.

I came not-and I cry to save
Thy life from out the oblivious grave,
One day; that I may well declare,
How I have thought of all thy care,
And love thee more than I have done;
And make thy day with gladness run.

I'd tell thee where my youth hath been;
Of perils past-of glories seen :
I'd speak of all my youth hath done-
And ask of things, to choose and shun;
And smile at all thy needless fears,
But bow before thy solemn tears.
Come, walk with me, and see fair earth,
The ways of men, and join their mirth!
Sleep on-for mirth is now a jest ;
Nor dare I call thee from thy rest;
Well hast thou done thy worldly task;
Thy mouth hath nought of me to ask!

Men wonder till I pass away-
They think not but of useless clay:
Alas! for age, this memory!
But I have other thoughts of thee;
And I would wade thy dusty grave,
To kiss the head I cannot save.

O life and power! that I might see
Thy visage swelling to be free!
Come near, O burst that earthly cloud,
And meet my visage lowly bowed.
Alas!-in corded stiffness pent,
Darkly I guess thy lineament.

I might have lived, and thou on earth,
And been to thee like stranger's birth-
Thou feeble thing of eld! but gone,

I feel as in the world alone.

The wind that lifts the streaming tree-
The skies seem cold, and new to me.

I feel a hand untwist the chain,

Of mother's love, with strange cold pain
From round my heart: this bosom's bare,
And less than wonted life is there.
O, well may flow these tears of strife,
O'er broken fountains of my life;

Because my life of thee was part,
And decked with blood-drops of thy heart:
I was the channel of thy love,
Where more than half thy soul did move :
How strange, yet just o'er me thy claim,
Thou aged head! my life and name.

Because I know there is not one
To think of me as thou hast done
From morn till starlight, year by year:
From me thy smile repaid thy tear;
And fears for me-and no reproof,
When once I dared to stand aloof.

My punishment-that I was far
When God unloosed thy weary star:
My name was in thy faintest breath,
And I was in thy dream of death:
And well I know what raised thy head,
When came the mourner's muffled tread.

Alas! I cannot tell thee now,

I could not come to bind thy brow:
And wealth is late, nor aught I've won,
Were worth to hear thee call thy son,
In that dark hour when bands remove,
And none are named but names of love.

Alas for me! that hour is old,

My hands, for this, shall miss their hold:
For thee no spring, nor silver rain
Unbutton thy dark grave again.
No sparrow on the sunny thatch
Shall chirp for thee her lonely watch.

Yet, sweet thy rest from mortal strife,
And cruel cares that spanned thy life!
Turn to thy God-and blame thy son-
To give thee more than I have done.
Thou God, with joy beyond all years,
Fill high the channels of her tears.

Thou carest not now for soft attire,
Yet wilt thou hear my last desire;
For earth I dare not call thee more;
But speak from off thy awful shore-
O ask this heart for monument,
And mine shall be a large content.

The Death of the Warrior King.
[By Charles Swain.]

There are noble heads bowed down and pale,
Deep sounds of wo arise,

And tears flow fast around the couch
Where a wounded warrior lies;

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I saw him in the banquet hour
Forsake the festive throng,

To seek his favourite minstrel's haunt,
And give his soul to song;
For dearly as he loved renown,

He loved that spell-wrought strain
Which bade the brave of perished days
Light conquest's torch again.

Then seemed the bard to cope with Time,
And triumph o'er his doom-
Another world in freshness burst
Oblivion's mighty tomb!
Again the hardy Britons rushed
Like lions to the fight,

While horse and foot-helm, shield, and lance,
Swept by his visioned sight!

But battle shout and waving plume,
The drum's heart-stirring beat,

The glittering pomp of prosperous war,
The rush of million feet,
The magic of the minstrel's song,
Which told of victories o'er,

Are sights and sounds the dying king
Shall see shall hear no more!

It was the hour of deep midnight,
In the dim and quiet sky,

When, with sable cloak and 'broidered pall,
A funeral train swept by;

Dull and sad fell the torches' glare
On many a stately crest-

They bore the noble warrior king
To his last dark home of rest.

The Convict Ship.

[By T. K. Hervey.]

Morn on the waters! and, purple and bright,
Bursts on the billows the flushing of light;
O'er the glad waves, like a child of the sun,
See the tall vessel goes gallantly on;
Full to the breeze she unbosoms her sail,

And her pennon streams onward, like hope, in the gale;
The winds come around her, in murmur and song,
And the surges rejoice as they bear her along:
See! she looks up to the golden-edged clouds,
And the sailor sings gaily aloft in the shrouds:
Onward she glides, amid ripple and spray,
Over the waters-away, and away!
Bright as the visions of youth, ere they part,
Passing away, like a dream of the heart!
Who-as the beautiful pageant sweeps by,
Music around her, and sunshine on high-
Pauses to think, amid glitter and glow,
Oh! there be hearts that are breaking below!

Night on the waves!-and the moon is on high,
Hung, like a gem, on the brow of the sky,
Treading its depths in the power of her might,
And turning the clouds, as they pass her, to light!

Look to the waters !-asleep on their breast,
Seems not the ship like an island of rest?
Bright and alone on the shadowy main,
Like a heart-cherished home on some desolate plain!
Who as she smiles in the silvery light,
Spreading her wings on the bosom of night,
Alone on the deep, as the moon in the sky,
A phantom of beauty-could deem with a sigh,
That so lovely a thing is the mansion of sin,
And that souls that are smitten lie bursting within!
Who, as he watches her silently gliding,
Remembers that wave after wave is dividing
Bosoms that sorrow and guilt could not sever,
Hearts which are parted and broken for ever?
Or deems that he watches, afloat on the wave,
The deathbed of hope, or the young spirit's grave?

"Tis thus with our life, while it passes along,
Like a vessel at sea, amidst sunshine and song!
Gaily we glide, in the gaze of the world,
With streamers afloat, and with canvass unfurled;
All gladness and glory, to wandering eyes,
Yet chartered by sorrow, and freighted with sighs:
Fading and false is the aspect it wears,

As the smiles we put on, just to cover our tears;
And the withering thoughts which the world cannot
know,

Like heart-broken exiles, lie burning below;
Whilst the vessel drives on to that desolate shore,
Where the dreams of our childhood are vanished and
o'er.

Prayer.

[By W. Beckford, author of 'Vathek."]

Like the low murmur of the secret stream,
Which through dark alders winds its shaded way,
My suppliant voice is heard: Ah! do not deem
That on vain toys I throw my hours away.

In the recesses of the forest vale,

On the wild mountain, on the verdant sod, Where the fresh breezes of the morn prevail, I wander lonely, communing with God.

When the faint sickness of a wounded heart Creeps in cold shudderings through my sinking frame,

I turn to thee that holy peace impart,

Which soothes the invokers of thy awful name!

O all-pervading Spirit! sacred beam!

Parent of life and light! Eternal Power!

Grant me through obvious clouds one transient gleam Of thy bright essence in my dying hour!

Sonnet written on the Burial-ground of his Ancestors. [By Walter Paterson.]

Never, O never on this sacred ground

Can I let fall my eye, but it will gaze, As if no power again its beam could raise, To look on aught above, or all around; And aye upon the greenest, oldest mound, That lies on those who lived in earliest days, To me the most unknown, it most delays, With strongest spell of strange enchantment bound. Sure not for those whom I did never know Can I let fall so big and sad a tear. No, 'tis the foretaste of a future wo;

The oldest grave receives the soonest bier: It is not for the dead my tears do flow,

But for the living that must soon lie here.

Ode on the Duke of Wellington, 1814.
[By John Wilson Croker.]

Victor of Assaye's orient plain,
Victor of all the fields of Spain,
Victor of France's despot reign,
Thy task of glory done!

Welcome! from dangers greatly dared;
From triumphs with the vanquished shared;
From nations saved, and nations spared;
Unconquered Wellington!

Unconquered! yet thy honours claim
A nobler than a conqueror's name:
At the red wreaths of guilty fame

Thy generous soul had blushed:

The blood-the tears the world has shed-
The throngs of mourners-piles of dead-
The grief-the guilt-are on his head,
The tyrant thou hast crushed.

Thine was the sword which Justice draws;
Thine was the pure and generous cause,
Of holy rites and human laws,

The impious thrall to burst;
And thou wast destined for thy part!
The noblest mind, the firmest heart-
Artless-but in the warrior's art-
And in that art the first.

And we, who in the eastern skies
Beheld thy sun of glory rise,
Still follow with exulting eyes

His proud meridian height.
Late, on thy grateful country's breast,
Late may that sun descend to rest,
Beaming through all the golden west
The memory of his light.

[The November Fog of London.] [By Henry Luttrel.] First, at the dawn of lingering day, It rises of an ashy gray; Then deepening with a sordid stain Of yellow, like a lion's mane. Vapour importunate and dense, It wars at once with every sense. The ears escape not. All around Returns a dull unwonted sound. Loath to stand still, afraid to stir, The chilled and puzzled passenger, Oft blundering from the pavement, fails To feel his way along the rails; Or at the crossings, in the roll Of every carriage dreads the pole. Scarce an eclipse, with pall so dun, Blots from the face of heaven the sun. But soon a thicker, darker cloak Wraps all the town, behold, in smoke, Which steam-compelling trade disgorges From all her furnaces and forges In pitchy clouds, too dense to rise, Descends rejected from the skies; Till struggling day, extinguished quite, At noon gives place to candle-light. O Chemistry, attractive maid, Descend, in pity, to our aid: Come with thy all-pervading gases, Thy crucibles, retorts, and glasses, Thy fearful energies and wonders, Thy dazzling lights and mimic thunders; Let Carbon in thy train be seen, Dark Azote and fair Oxygen, And Wollaston and Davy guide The car that bears thee at thy side.

If any power can, any how,
Abate these nuisances, 'tis thou;
And see, to aid thee in the blow,
The bill of Michael Angelo;

O join (success a thing of course is)
Thy heavenly to his mortal forces;
Make all chimneys chew the cud
Like hungry cows, as chimneys should!
And since 'tis only smoke we draw
Within our lungs at common law,
Into their thirsty tubes be sent
Fresh air, by act of parliament.

In this period many translations from classic and foreign poets have appeared, at the head of which stands the version of Dante by the REV. H. F. CARY -universally acknowledged to be one of the most felicitous attempts ever made to transfuse the spirit and conceptions of a great poet into a foreign tongue. The third edition of this translation was published in 1831. Versions of Homer, the Georgics of Virgil, and the Oberon of the German poet Wieland, have been published by WILLIAM SOTHEBY, whose original poems have already been noticed. The comedies of Aristophanes have been well translated, with all their quaint drollery and sarcasm, by MR MITCHELL, late fellow of Sidney-Sussex college, Cambridge. LORD STRANGFORD has given translations from the Portuguese poet Camoens; and DR JOHN BOWRING, specimens of Russian, Dutch, ancient Spanish, Polish, Servian, and Hungarian poetry. A good translation of Tasso has been given by J. H. WIFFEN, and of Ariosto by MR STEWART ROSE. LORD FRANCIS EGERTON, MR BLACKIE, and others, have translated the Faust of Goëthe; and the general cultivation of the German language in England has led to the translation of various imaginative and critical German works in prose. MR J. G. LOCKHART's trans|lation of Spanish ballads has enriched our lyrical poetry with some romantic songs. The ballads of Spain, like those of Scotland, are eminently national in character and feeling, and bear testimony to the strong passions and chivalrous imagination of her once high-spirited people.

SCOTTISH POETS.

ROBERT BURNS.

After the publication of Fergusson's poems, in a collected shape, in 1773, there was an interval of about thirteen years, during which no writer of eminence arose in Scotland who attempted to excel in the native language of the country. The intellectual taste of the capital ran strongly in favour of metaphysical and critical studies; but the Doric muse was still heard in the rural districts linked to some popular air, some local occurrence or favourite spot, and was much cherished by the lower and middling classes of the people. In the summer of 1786, ROBERT BURNS, the Shakspeare of Scotland, issued his first volume from the obscure press of Kilmarnock, and its influence was immediately felt, and is still operating on the whole imaginative literature of the kingdom.* Burns was

*The edition consisted of 600 copies. A second was published in Edinburgh in April 1787, no less than 2800 copies being subscribed for by 1500 individuals. After his unexampled popularity in Edinburgh, Burns took the farm of Ellisland, near Dumfries, married his 'bonny Jean,' and entered upon his new occupation at Whitsunday 1788. He had obtained an appointment as an exciseman, but the duties of this office, and his own convivial habits, interfered with his management of the farm, and he was glad to abandon it. In 1791 he removed to the town of Dumfries, subsisting entirely on his situation in

then in his twenty-seventh year, having been born in the parish of Alloway, near Ayr, on the 25th of January 1759. His father was a poor farmer, a man of sterling worth and intelligence, who gave his son what education he could afford. The whole, however, was but a small foundation on which to erect the miracles of genius! Robert was taught

Robert Burns.

English well, and 'by the time he was ten or eleven years of age, he was a critic in substantives, verbs, and particles.' He was also taught to write, had a fortnight's French, and was one summer-quarter at land-surveying. He had a few books, among which were the Spectator, Pope's Works, Allan Ramsay, and a collection of English songs. Subsequently (about his twenty-third year) his reading was enlarged with the important addition of Thomson, Shenstone, Sterne, and Mackenzie. Other standard works soon followed. As the advantages of a liberal education were not within his reach, it is scarcely to be regretted that his library was at first so small. What books he had, he read and studied thoroughlyhis attention was not distracted by a multitude of volumes and his mind grew up with original and robust vigour. It is impossible to contemplate the life of Burns at this time, without a strong feeling of affectionate admiration and respect. His manly integrity of character (which, as a peasant, he guarded with jealous dignity), and his warm and true heart, elevate him, in our conceptions, almost as much as the native force and beauty of his poetry. the excise, which yielded L.70 per annum. Here he published, in 1793, a third edition of his poems, with the addition of Tam o' Shanter, and other pieces composed at Ellisland. He died at Dumfries on the 21st of July 1796, aged thirty-seven years and about six months. The story of his life is so well known, that even this brief statement of dates seems unnecessary. In 1798 a fourth edition of his works was published in Edinburgh. Two years afterwards, in 1800, appeared the valuable and complete edition of Dr Currie, in four volumes, containing the correspondence of the poet, and a number of songs, contributed to Johnson's Scots Musical Museum, and Thomson's Select Scottish Melodies. The editions of Burns since 1800 could with difficulty be ascertained; they were reckoned a few years ago at about a hundred. His poems circulate in every shape, and have not yet' gathered all their fame.'

We see him in the veriest shades of obscurity toiling, when a mere youth, like a galley-slave,' to support his virtuous parents and their household, yet grasping at every opportunity of acquiring knowledge from men and books-familiar with the history of his country, and loving its very soil-worshipping the memory of Scotland's ancient patriots and defenders, and exploring every scene and memorial of departed greatness-loving also the simple peasantry around him, 'the sentiments and manners he felt and saw in himself and his rustic compeers.' Burning with a desire to do something for old Scotland's sake, with a heart beating with warm and generous emotions, a strong and clear understanding, and a spirit abhorring all meanness, insincerity, and oppression, Burns, in his early days, might have furnished the subject for a great and instructive moral poem. The true elements of poetry were in his life, as in his writings. The wild stirrings of his ambition (which he so nobly compared to the 'blind gropings of Homer's Cyclops round the walls of his cave'), the precocious maturity of his passions and his intellect, his manly frame, that led him to fear no competitor at the plough, and his exquisite sensibility and tenderness, that made him weep over even the destruction of a daisy's flower or a mouse's nest, these are all moral contrasts and blendings that seem to belong to the spirit of romantic poetry. His writings, as we now know, were but the fragments of a great mind-the hasty outpourings of a full heart and intellect. After he had become the fashionable wonder and idol of his day-soon to be cast into cold neglect and poverty!-some errors and frailties threw a shade on the noble and affecting image, but its higher lineaments were never destroyed. The column was defaced, not broken; and now that the mists of prejudice have cleared away, its just proportions and exalted symmetry are recognised with pride and gratitude by his admiring countrymen.

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No

Burns came as a potent auxiliary or fellow-worker with Cowper, in bringing poetry into the channels of truth and nature. There were only two years between the Task and the Cotter's Saturday Night. poetry was ever more instantaneously or universally popular among a people than that of Burns in Scotland. It seemed as if a new realm had been added to the dominions of the British muse-a new and glorious creation, fresh from the hand of nature. There was the humour of Smollett, the pathos and tenderness of Sterne or Richardson, the real life of Fielding, and the description of Thomson-all united in delineations of Scottish manners and scenery by an Ayrshire ploughman! The volume contained matter for all minds-for the lively and sarcastic, the wild and the thoughtful, the poetical enthusiast and the man of the world. So eagerly was the book sought after, that, where copies of it could not be obtained, many of the poems were transcribed and sent round in manuscript among admiring circles. The subsequent productions of the poet did not materially affect the estimate of his powers formed from his first volume. His life was at once too idle and too busy for continuous study; and, alas! it was too brief for the full maturity and development of his talents. Where the intellect predominates equally with the imagination (and this was the case with Burns), increase of years generally adds to the strength and variety of the poet's powers; and we have no doubt that, in ordinary circumstances, Burns, like Dryden, would have improved with age, and added greatly to his fame, had he not fallen at so early a period, before his imagination could be enriched with the riper fruits of knowledge and experience. He meditated a national drama; but we might have looked with more

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