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 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: "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 AULD LANG SYNE. AND all our little feuds, at least all mine, To make such puppets of us things below), And when I use the phrase of "Auld Lang Syne!" With you, than aught (save Scott) in your proud city. A whole one, and my heart flies to my head,— As "Auld Lang Syne" brings Scotland, one and all, The Dee, the Don, Balgounie's brig's black wall,* 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, They cannot quench young feelings fresh and early; blood, THE DREAM. SHE dream'd of being alone on the sea-shore, Until she sobb'd for breath, and soon they were Anon-she was released, and then she stray'd O'er the sharp shingles with her bleeding feet, 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 Which she must still pursue howe'er afraid : The dream changed :-in a cave she stood, its walls 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, Of his quench'd heart; and the sea dirges low FAME. Or poets who come down to us through distance And so great names are nothing more than nominal, 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 But which neglect is hastening to destroy, While weeds and ordure rankle round the base.* I pass each day where Dante's bones are laid: To the bard's tomb, and not the warrior's column: Yet there will still be bards: though fame is smoke, Song in the world, will seek what then they sought; Thus to their extreme verge the passions brought If in the course of such a life as was At once adventurous and contemplative, And in such colours that they seem to live; LOVE AND GLORY. O LOVE! O Glory! what are ye who fly There's not a meteor in the polar sky Of such transcendent and more fleeting flight. 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* O'ercharged with rain; her summon'd handmaids bore Of herbs and cordials they produced their store, Days lay she in that state unchanged, though chill- All hope; to look upon her sweet face bred The ruling passion, such as marble shows When exquisitely chisell'd, still lay there, Their energy like life forms all their fame, She woke at length, but not as sleepers wake, She look'd on many a face with vacant eye, • 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 |