Till death's cold bosom half

appears With life, and speech, and spirit warm.

She looks! she lives! this tranced hour,
Her bright eye seems a purer gem
Than sparkles on the throne of power,
Or glory's wealthy diadem.

Yes, Genius, yes! thy mimic aid

A treasure to my soul has given, Where beauty's canonized shade

Smiles in the sainted hues of heaven.

No spectre forms of pleasure fled,

Thy softening, sweetening, tints restore; For thou canst give us back the dead, Even in the loveliest looks they wore.

Then blest be Nature's guardian Muse, Whose hand her perish'd grace redeems! Whose tablet of a thousand hues

The mirror of creation seems.

From Love began thy high descent;
And lovers, charm'd by gifts of thine,
Shall bless thee mutely eloquent,

And call thee brightest of the Nine!

DRINKING SONG OF MUNICH.

SWEET Iser! were thy sunny realm
And flowery gardens mine,
Thy waters I would shade with elm
Το prop the tender vine;

My golden flagons I would fill
With rosy draughts from every hill;
And under every myrtle bower,
My gay companions should prolong.
The laugh, the revel, and the song,
To many an idle hour.

Like rivers crimson'd with the beam
Of yonder planet bright,

Our balmy cups should ever stream
Profusion of delight;

No care should touch the mellow heart,
And sad or sober none depart;

For wine can triumph over wo,

And Love and Bacchus, brother powers,
Could build in Iser's sunny bowers
A paradise below.

LINES

ON REVISITING A SCOTTISH RIVER.

AND call they this Improvement ?-to have changed,
My native Clyde, thy once romantic shore,

Where Nature's face is banish'd and estranged,
And heaven reflected in thy wave no more;

Whose banks, that sweeten'd May-day's breath before,

Lie sere and leafless now in summer's beam,
With sooty exhalations cover'd o'er;

And for the daisied green sward, down thy stream Unsightly brick-lanes smoke, and clanking engines gleam.

Speak not to me of swarms the scene sustains;
One heart free tasting Nature's breath and bloom
Is worth a thousand slaves to Mammon's gains.
But whither goes that wealth, and gladdening whom?
See, left but life enough and breathing-room

The hunger and the hope of life to feel,

Yon pale Mechanic bending o'er his loom,
And Childhood's self as at Ixion's wheel,

From morn till midnight task'd to earn its little meal.

Is this Improvement ?-where the human breed
Degenerates as they swarm and overflow,
Till Toil grows cheaper than the trodden weed,
And man competes with man, like foe with foe,
Till Death, that thins them, scarce seems public wo?
Improvement! smiles it in the poor man's eyes,

Or blooms it on the cheek of Labour?-No-
To gorge a few with Trade's precarious prize,
We banish rural life, and breathe unwholesome skies.

Nor call that evil slight; God has not given
This passion to the heart of man in vain,
For Earth's green face, the untainted air of heaven,
And all the bliss of Nature's rustic reign.
For not alone our frame imbibes a stain
From fetid skies; the spirit's healthy pride
Fades in their gloom-And therefore I complain,
That thou no more through pastoral scenes shouldst
glide,

My Wallace's own stream, and once romantic Clyde!

LINES

ON REVISITING CATHCART.

OH! scenes of my childhood, and dear to my heart,
Ye green waving woods on the margin of Cart,
How blest in the morning of life I have stray'd,
By the stream of the vale and the grass-cover'd glade!

Then, then every rapture was young and sincere, Ere the sunshine of bliss was bedimm'd by a tear, And a sweeter delight every scene seem'd to lend, That the mansion of peace was the home of a FRIEND.

Now the scenes of my childhood and dear to my heart,
All pensive I visit, and sigh to depart;
Their flowers seem to languish, their beauty to cease,
For a stranger inhabits the mansion of peace.

But hush'd be the sigh that untimely complains, While Friendship and all its enchantment remains, While it blooms like the flower of a winterless clime, Untainted by chance, unabated by time.