Our quiv'ring lances shaking in the air,
And bullets, like Jove's dreadful thunderbolts,
Enroll'd in flames and fiery smould'ring mists,
Shall threat the gods more than Cyclopian wars;
And with our sun-bright armour as we march
We'll chase the stars from heaven, and dim their eyes
That stand and muse at our admir'd arms.
There are two angels that attend unseen
Each one of us, and in great books record
Our good and evil deeds. He who writes down
The good ones, after every action closes
His volume, and ascends with it to God.
The other keeps his dreadful day-book open
Till sun-set, that we may repent; which doing,
The record of the action fades away,
And leaves a line of white across the page.
Now if my act be good, as I believe it,
It cannot be recalled. It is already
Sealed up in heaven, as a good deed accomplished.
The rest is yours.
MORNING IN THE HIGHLANDS.
Morn wakes in beauty, but her eyes are pale,
As pillow'd downy in aerial snow,
She bids from off the lake the dull mists sail,
And watches, with her mild and sunny brow,
Till slowly up the green hill's side they go,
To cling around the cliffs their glittering wreaths;
Then, moving forth in smiles, her footsteps glow
With dewy radiance o'er the purple heaths,
And fresh through all the soul her rapturous spirit breathes.
J. G. CROSBIE.
He deserves to find himself deceived
Who seeks a heart in the unthinking man.
A passage in a poem entitled Retrospective Musings, by JOHN MALCOLM, published thirty years ago.
'Tis eve, but on the mountain-head
No farewell sunny smile is shed;
The woodland choristers are gone,
The hermit-robin sings alone;
The waning beauty of the earth
To musings sadly sweet gives birth;
Recalling from the past again
Of thoughts a pale and pensive train,
And scenes that sun them in the rays
Reflected from departed days;
And in the mellow'd radiance wear
A sainted aspect, sadly fair,
O'er which the tints of time have shed
The mournful beauty of the dead:
And there, while memory wanders o'er
The regions of a lonely shore,
A moaning of the distant main
Is blending with my dreamy strain :
In dying sounds of soften'd tone,-
From music to its echo grown,
From far away come back on me
The torrent's mountain melody;
And faint and low the murmurs mild
Of streams that warble to the wild.
For there, beneath the evening-star,
From home, and haunt, and man afar,
Oft have my wandering footsteps sought
The scenes that waken'd solemn thought;
But ever dearest seem'd to me
Companionship of the lone sea,
Where, o'er the foam around them flung
The world's grey fragments frowning hung,
Dim-shadow'd in a misty shroud,
Or hooded in the stooping cloud;
Where ocean, with a quire of waves,
His anthem thunder'd through the caves,
And roll'd through Nature's vaulted piles
Like organs down cathedral aisles.
There, when the wintry storm was o'er,
I loved to linger on the shore,
And gaze upon the floating wreck
On ocean's breast, a darkening speck,
And muse on its pale crew, who found
No rest in earthly burial-ground;
But sunk, perchance, 'mid tempest's roar,
A thousand miles from every shore;
Or on some night of fate and fear
Went down when their sweet homes were near;
And while around each native hearth
Peal'd songs of joys and sounds of mirth,
Perchance arose from sea to sky
Their shriek of mortal agony.
'Tis thus the rolling world doth run,
One half in shade and one in sun;
Thus some rejoice while others weep,
And some must wake while others sleep.
And oft upon the silent hill,
While evening brooded bright and still,
And shed a dying beauty o'er
The beetling cliff and ruin hoar,
I watch'd the snowy sails at rest
Far off upon the billow's breast,
And thought how blest the crews they bore
To many a sweet and summer shore,
And long'd for that expected time
When I should seek a brighter clime,
And scenes that fancy painted there
Of dying saints as visions fair.
Delusive were the happy dreams
As those of childhood, when it deems
That earth is circled by the eye
And wedded to the azure sky.
When eve, of day and darkness born,
Paled like the spectre of the morn,
And from the hearth the blazing pile
Shed round the pictured wall its smile,
Whose silent dwellers there would seem
More life-like in the sportive beam,—
How sweetly then the cares of day
From weary bosoms past away,
While music's witching accents rung,
And a fair seraph sweetly sung
Those strains that prompt the bosom's sigh,
Those magic airs that cannot die,
Eternal as the rocks that stand
The bulwarks of our native land,
Immortal as the feelings given
Unto the human heart by Heaven!
Oft, when on high the harvest-moon
Rode clear and cloudless in her noon,
We wander'd onward with delight
Beneath the cool and silent night,
When not a frowning shade was there
To dim the soft and azure air,
But all was lustre pure and mild,
A pale light o'er a pathless wild;
When silence slumber'd on the hill,
And lakes below lay bright and still,
As at Creation's dawning morn
They slept ere yet the winds were born;
Reflecting mountain, rock, and tree,
Fair as the good man's memory
Gives back, ere life's last sun is set,
Its scenes unclouded by regret.
From an old periodical, where it appeared anonymously.
WERE I a leaf, which had danced out my time,
And welcomed with a fresh and mutual glee
Spring, Summer, and the Autumn's early prime,
I would not choose to be
As these crisp leaves, yellow and red, that sound
About my feet, for on the horizon's bound,
And on its mountainous unequal line,
Are heap'd the autumnal rains
And every leaf, traced o'er with fibres fine,
As is a silver foot with branching veins
Of clear enamel, must be downward trodden
To a promiscuous mass, and with the mire be sodden.
I would not linger, as that lonely one,
That wove the network of a common shade
With many a fellow, but now spins alone
Where its sweet tones it made-
For now, the lightest breath that would not curl
The surface of the lake below, may whirl
That single leaf away-oh! wretched fate!
To have outbraved the storm,
The sharp hail and the tempest, and to wait, (Surviving only in its wither'd form)
A triumph and an easy trophy given
Unto the earliest wind, the faintest breath of heaven.
'Twere best to droop as yon leaf on this lake,
Gently descending on its azure sleep,
So that it may not with one circle break
That slumber soft and deep,
And for a while a pinnace or frail boat
For sylph or fairy on its surface float
Then downward sink into the common grave
Where many a year has shed
Its summer habitants. I see them pave
The untrampled floor, nor there perchance unfed
With such pure joy as to the fall'n may spring
At sight of other buds, and never blossoming.
By BEAUMONT, published 1749.
TELL me no more of sweets and joys;
Miscall not things;
Nor flatter poor unworthy toys
As they were kings.
'Tis not a pretty name
That can transform the frame
Of bitterness, and cheat a sober taste;
'Tis not a smile
That can beguile
Good eyes, and on false joys true colours cast.
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