She listened with a blush and sigh,

His suit was warm, his hopes were high.
He sought her yielded hand to clasp,
And a cold gauntlet met his grasp;

The phantom's sex was changed and gone,
Upon its head a helmet shone ;

Slowly enlarged to giant size,

With darkened cheek and threatening eyes, The grisly visage, stern and hoar,

To Ellen still a likeness bore.—

He woke, and, panting with affright,
Recalled the vision of the night;
The hearth's decaying brands were red,
And deep and dusky lustre shed,
Half showing, half concealing all

The uncouth trophies of the hall.
Mid those the stranger fixed his eye
Where that huge falchion hung on high,
And thoughts on thoughts, a countless throng,
Rushed, chasing countless thoughts along,
Until, the giddy whirl to cure,

He rose, and sought the moonshine pure.

XXXV.

The wild rose, eglantine, and broom,
Wasted around their rich perfume;
The birch trees wept in fragrant balm,
The aspen slept beneath the calm;
The silver light, with quivering glance,
Played on the water's still expanse;

Wild were the heart whose passions' sway
Could rage beneath the sober ray.
He felt its calm, that warrior guest,
While thus he communed with his breast:
"Why is it at each turn I trace
Some memory of that exiled race?
Can I not mountain maiden spy,
But she must bear the Douglas eye?
Can I not view a highland brand,
But it must match the Douglas hand?
Can I not frame a fevered dream,
But still the Douglas is the theme?
I'll dream no more-by manly mind
Not e'en in sleep is will resigned.
My midnight orison said o'er,
I'll turn to rest, and dream no more."
His midnight orison he told,

A prayer with every bead of gold,
Consigned to heaven his cares and woes,
And sunk in undisturbed repose;
Until the heath-cock shrilly crew,
And morning dawned on Ben-venue.

END OF CANTO FIRST.

THE

LADY OF THE LAKE.

CANTO SECOND.

THE

LADY OF THE LAKE.

CANTO SECOND.

THE ISLAND.

I.

AT morn the black-cock trims his jetty wing,
'Tis morning prompts the linnet's blithest lay;
All nature's children feel the matin spring
Of life reviving, with reviving day;

And while yon little bark glides down the bay,
Wafting the stranger on his way again,
Morn's genial influence roused a minstrel gray,
And sweetly o'er the lake was heard thy strain,
Mixed with the sounding harp, O white-haired Allan-bane?

II.
SONG.

Not faster yonder rowers' might
Flings from their oars the spray,
Not faster yonder rippling bright,
That tracks the shallop's course in light,
Melts in the lake away,