Poor fellow for some reason, surely bad,

They had slain him with five slugs; and left him there To perish on the pavement: so I had

Him borne into the house and up the stair,

And stripp'd, and look'd to,-But why should I add
More circumstances? vain was every care;
The man was gone: in some Italian quarrel
Kill'd by five bullets from an old gun-barrel.

I gazed upon him, for I knew him well;

And though I have seen many corpses, never Saw one, whom such an accident befell,

So calm; though pierced through stomach, heart, and liver, He seem'd to sleep,-for you could scarcely tell

(As he bled inwardly, no hideous river

Of gore divulged the cause) that he was dead:
So as I gazed on him, I thought or said—

"Can this be death? then what is life or death?

Speak!" but he spoke not: "wake!" but still he slept :"But yesterday, and who had mightier breath?

A thousand warriors by his word were kept In awe: he said, as the centurion saith,

'Go,' and he goeth; come,' and forth he stepp'd. The trump and bugle, till he spake, were dumb; And now, nought left him but the muffled drum."

And they who waited once and worshipp'd-they
With their rough faces throng'd about the bed
To gaze once more on the commanding clay,
Which for the last, though not the first, time bled:
And such an end! that he who many a day
Had faced Napoleon's foes until they fled,—
The foremost in the charge or in the sally,
Should now be butcher'd in a civic alley.

AULD LANG SYNE.

AND all our little feuds, at least all mine,
Dear Jeffrey, once my most redoubted foe
(As far as rhyme and criticism combine

To make such puppets of us things below),
Are over: Here's a health to " Auld Lang Syne [
I do not know you, and may never know
Your face-but you have acted on the whole
Most nobly, and I own it from my soul.

And when I use the phrase of "Auld Lang Syne!"
'Tis not address'd to you-the more's the pity
For me, for I would rather take my wine

With you, than aught (save Scott) in your proud city.
But somehow, it may seem a schoolboy's whine,
And yet I seek not to be grand nor witty,
But I am half a Scot by birth, and bred

A whole one, and my heart flies to my head,—

As "Auld Lang Syne" brings Scotland, one and all,
Scotch plaids, Scotch snoods, the blue hills, and clear
streams,

The Dee, the Don, Balgounie's brig's black wall,*
All my boy feelings, all my gentler dreams
Of what I then dreamt, clothed in their own pall,
Like Banquo's offspring-floating past me seems
My childhood in this childishness of mine:

I care not-'tis a glimpse of "Auld Lang Syne."

And though, as you remember, in a fit

Of wrath and rhyme, when juvenile and curly,
I rail'd at Scots to show my wrath and wit,
Which must be own'd was sensitive and surly,
Yet 'tis in vain such sallies to permit,

They cannot quench young feelings fresh and early;
I" scotch'd, not kill'd," the Scotchman in my
And love the land of "mountain and of flood."

blood,

THE DREAM.

SHE dream'd of being alone on the sea-shore,
Chain'd to a rock; she knew not how, but stir
She could not from the spot, and the loud roar
Grew, and each wave rose roughly, threatening her;
And o'er her upper lip they seem'd to pour,

Until she sobb'd for breath, and soon they were
Foaming o'er her lone head, so fierce and high-
Each broke to drown her, yet she could not die.

Anon-she was released, and then she stray'd

O'er the sharp shingles with her bleeding feet,
And stumbled almost every step she made :

And something roll'd before her in a sheet,

The brig of Don, near the "auld toun" of Aberdeen, with its one arch, and its black deep salmon stream below, is in my memory as yesterday. I still remember, thenga perhaps I may misquote, the awful proverb which made me pause to cross it, and yet lesa over it with a childish delight, being an only son, at least by the mother's side. The aying as recollected by me was this, but I have never heard or seen it since I was tears of age

"Brig of Balgounie, black's your wa',

Wi' a wife's ae son, and a mear's ae foal
Doun yo shall fa'!"

Which she must still pursue howe'er afraid :
'Twas white and indistinct, nor stopp'd to meet
Her glance nor grasp, for still she gazed and grasp'd,
And
ran, but it escaped her as she clasp'd.

The dream changed :-in a cave she stood, its walls
Were hung with marble icicles; the work

Of ages on its water-fretted halls,

Where waves might wash, and seals might breed and lurk ; Her hair was dripping, and the very balls

Of her black eyes seem'd turn'd to tears, and mirk The sharp rocks look'd below each drop they caught, Which froze to marble as it fell,-she thought.

And wet, and cold, and lifeless at her feet,

Pale as the foam that froth'd on his dead brow,
Which she essay'd in vain to clear (how sweet
Were once her cares, how idle seem'd they now!),
Lay Juan, nor could aught renew the beat

Of his quench'd heart; and the sea dirges low
Rang in her sad ears like a mermaid's song,
And that brief dream appear'd a life too long.

FAME.

Or poets who come down to us through distance
Of time and tongues, the foster-babes of Fame,
Life seems the smallest portion of existence;
Where twenty ages gather o'er a name,
"Tis as a snowball which derives assistance
From every flake, and yet rolls on the same,
Even till an iceberg it may chance to grow ;
But, after all, 'tis nothing but cold snow.

And so great names are nothing more than nominal,
And love of glory 's but an airy lust,

Too often in its fury overcoming all

Who would as 'twere identify their dust

From out the wide destruction, which, entombing all,

Leaves nothing till "the coming of the just'

Save change: I've stood upon Achilles' tomb,

And heard Troy doubted; time will doubt of Rome.

The very generations of the dead

Are swept away, and tomb inherits tomb,

Until the memory of an age is fled,

And, buried, sinks beneath its offspring's doom:

Where are the epitaphs our fathers read?

Save a few glean'd from the sepulchral gloom Which once-named myriads nameless lie beneath, And lose their own in universal death.

I canter by the spot each afternoon
Where perish'd in his fame the hero-boy,
Who lived too long for men, but died too soon
For human vanity, the young De Foix !
A broken pillar, not uncouthly hewn,

But which neglect is hastening to destroy,
Records Ravenna's carnage on its face,

While weeds and ordure rankle round the base.*

I pass each day where Dante's bones are laid:
A little cupola, more neat than solemn,
Protects his dust, but reverence here is paid

To the bard's tomb, and not the warrior's column:
The time must come, when both alike decay'd,
The chieftain's trophy and the poet's volume,
Will sink where lie the songs and wars of earth,
Before Pelides' death, or Homer's birth.

Yet there will still be bards: though fame is smoke,
Its fumes are frankincense to human thought;
And the unquiet feelings, which first woke

Song in the world, will seek what then they sought;
As on the beach the waves at last are broke,

Thus to their extreme verge the passions brought
Dash into poetry, which is but a passion,-
Or at least was so ere it grew a fashion.

If in the course of such a life as was

At once adventurous and contemplative,
Men who partake all passions as they pass,
Acquire the deep and bitter power to give
Their images again as in a glass,

And in such colours that they seem to live;
You may do right forbidding them to show 'em,
But spoil (I think) a very pretty poem.

LOVE AND GLORY.

O LOVE! O Glory! what are ye who fly
Around us ever, rarely to alight?

There's not a meteor in the polar sky

Of such transcendent and more fleeting flight.
Chill, and chain'd to cold earth, we lift on high
Our eyes in search of either lovely light;
A thousand and a thousand colours they
Assume, then leave us on our freezing way.

The pillar which records the battle of Ravenna is about two miles from the city, on the opposite side of the river to the road towards Forli.

Gaston de Foix, who gained

the battle, was killed in it: there fell on both sides twenty thousand men. The present state of the pillar and its site is described in the text.

THE MANIAC.

A VEIN had burst, and her sweet lips' pure dyes*
Were dabbled with the deep blood which ran o'er;
And her head droop'd as when the lily lies

O'ercharged with rain; her summon'd handmaids bore
Their lady to her couch with gushing eyes;

Of herbs and cordials they produced their store,
But she defied all means they could employ,
Like one life could not hold, nor death destroy.

Days lay she in that state unchanged, though chill-
With nothing livid, stil, her lips were red;
She had no pulse, but death seem'd absent still;
No hideous sign proclaim'd her surely dead;
Corruption came not in each mind to kill

All hope; to look upon her sweet face bred
New thoughts of life, for it seem'd full of soul—
She had so much, earth could not claim the whole.

The ruling passion, such as marble shows

When exquisitely chisell'd, still lay there,
But fix'd as marble's unchanged aspect throws
O'er the fair Venus, but for ever fair;
O'er the Laocoon's all-eternal throes,
And ever-dying Gladiator's air,

Their energy like life forms all their fame,
Yet looks not life, for they are still the same.-

She woke at length, but not as sleepers wake,
Rather the dead, for life seem'd something new,
A strange sensation which she must partake
Perforce, since whatsoever met her view
Struck not her memory, though a heavy ache
Lay at her heart, whose earliest beat still true
Brought back the sense of pain without the cause,
For, for a while, the furies made a pause.

She look'd on many a face with vacant eye,
On many a token without knowing what;
She saw them watch her without asking why;
And reck'd not who around her pillow sat;
Not speechless, though she spoke not; not a sigh
Relieved her thoughts; dull silence and quick chat
Were tried in vain by those who served; she gave
No sign, save breath, of having left the grave.

• This is no very uncommon effect of the violence of conflicting and different passions. The Doge Francis Foscari, on his deposition in 1457, hearing the bells of St. Mark announce the election of his successor, "mourut subitement d'une hémorragie causée par une veine qui s'éclata dans sa poitrine" (see Sismondi and Daru, vols. i. and ii.) at the age of eighty years, when "Who would have thought the old man had so much blood in him" Before I was sixteen years of age, I was witness to a melancholy instance o the same effect of mixed passions upon a young person, who, however, did not die in Consequence, at that time, but fell a victim some years afterwards to a seizure of the same kind, arising from causes intimately connected with agitation of mind