Baillie

*

To meet the arrow; so I met
My poisoned shaft of suffering.

JOANNA BAILLIE.
And as that bird, with drooping crest

Besides her dramatic writings, to be noticed in
And broken wing, will seek his nest,
But seek in vain : so vain I sought

another section, Miss BAILLIE has presented to the
My pleasant home of song and thought.
There was one spell upon my brain,
Upon my pencil, on my strain ;
But one face to my colours came;
My chords replied to but one name-

world at different times a sufficient quantity of misLorenzo !-all seemed vowed to thee,

cellaneous poetry, including songs, to constitute a To passion, and to misery !

single volume, which was published in 1841. The

pieces of the latter class are distinguished by a pecu(Last Verses of L. E. L.]

liar softness of diction, which makes them fall melt[Alluding to the Pole Star, which, in her voyage to Africa, ingly on the ear; yet few of them have become she had nightly watched till it sunk below the horizon.] favourites with vocalists or in the drawing-room.

A star has left the kindling sky

A lovely northern light; How many planets are on high,

But that has left the night. I miss its bright familiar face,

It was a friend to me; Associate with my native place,

And those beyond the sea.
It rose upon our English sky,

Shone o'er our English land, *
And brought back many a loving eye,

And many a gentle hand.
It seemed to answer to my thought,

It called the past to mind,
And with its welcome presence brought

All I had left behind.
The voyage it lights no longer, ends

Soon on a foreign shore;
How can I but recall the friends

That I may see no more!
Fresh from the pain it was to part-

How could I bear the pain ?
Yet strong the omen in my heart

That says—We meet again.
Meet with a deeper, dearer love;

For absence shows the worth
Of all from which we then remove,

Friends, home, and native earth.
Thou lovely polar star, mine eyes

Still turned the first on thee, Till I have felt a sad surprise, That none looked up with me.

Miss Baillie's House, Hampstead. But thou hast sunk upon the wave,

Her poem entitled The Kitten, which appeared in an Thy radiant place unknown;

early volume of the Edinburgh Annual Register, I seem to stand beside a grave,

has a truth to nature which ranks it among the best And stand by it alone.

pieces of the kind in our language. Farewell ! ah, would to me were given

The Kitten.
A power upon thy light!
What words upon our English heaven

Wanton droll, whose harmless play
Thy loving rays should
write !

Beguiles the rustic's closing day,

When drawn the evening fire about,
Kind messages of love and hope

Sit aged Crone and thoughtless Lout,
Upon thy rays should be ;

And child upon his three-foot stool,
Thy shining orbit should have scope

Waiting till his supper cool;
Scarcely enough for me.

And maid, whose cheek outblooms the rose, Oh, fancy vain, as it is fond,

As bright the blazing fagot glows,
And little needed too;

Who, bending to the friendly light,
My friends! I need not look beyond

Plies her task with busy sleight;
My heart to look for you.

Come, show thy tricks and sportive graces,

Thus circled round with merry faces. * These expressions, it is almost unnecessary to say, are not Backward coiled, and crouching low, true to natural facts, as the Pole Star has not a quotidian With glaring eyeballs watch thy foe, rising anywhere, and it shines on the whole northern hemi- The housewife's spindle whirling round, sphere in common with England. -Ed.

Or thread, or straw, that on the ground

'Twas thou who woo'dst me first to look

And he above them all, so truly proved Upon the page of printed book,

A friend and brother, long and justly loved, That thing by ine abhorred, and with address There is no living wight, of woman born, Didst win me from my thoughtless idleness,

Who then shall mourn for me as thou wilt mourn. When all too old become with bootless haste In fitful sports the precious time to waste.

Thou ardent, liberal spirit! quickly feeling Thy love of tale and story was the stroke

The touch of sympathy, and kindly dealing At which my dormant fancy first awoke,

With sorrow or distress, for ever sharing And ghosts and witches in my busy brain

The unhoarded mite, nor for to-morrow caringArose in sombre show a motley train.

Accept, dear Agnes, on thy natal day, This new-found path attempting, proud was I An unadorned, but not a careless lay. Lurking approval on thy face to spy,

Nor think this tribute to thy virtues paid Or hear thee say, as grew thy roused attention,

From tardy love proceeds, though long delayed. • What! is this story all thine own invention?'

Words of affection, howsoe'er expressed,

The latest spoken still are deemed the best : Then, as advancing through this mortal span,

Few are the measured rhymes I now may write; Our intercourse with the mixed world began;

These are, perhaps, the last I shall indite.
Thy fairer face and sprightlier courtesy
(A truth that from my youthful vanity
Lay not concealed) did for the sisters twain,

WILLIAM KNOX.
Where'er we went, the greater favour gain ;
While, but for thee, vexed with its tossing tide, WILLIAM Knox, a young poet of considerable ta-
I from the busy world had shrunk aside.

lent, who died in Edinburgh in 1825, aged thirty-six, And now, in later years, with better grace,

was author of The Lonely Hearth; Songs of Israel; The Thou help’st me still to hold a welcome place Harp of Zion, &c. Sir Walter Scott thus mentions With those whom nearer neighbourhood have made Knox in his diary :— His father was a respectable The friendly cheerers of our evening shade.

yeoman, and he himself succeeding to good farms

under the Duke of Buccleuch, became too soon his With thee my humours, whether grave or gay, Or gracious or untoward, have their way.

own master, and plunged into dissipation and ruin. Silent if dull-oh precious privilege!

His talent then showed itself in a fine strain of I sit by thee; or if, culled from the

pensive poetry. Knox spent his latter years in page

Edinburgh, under his father's roof, and, amidst all Of some huge ponderous tome which, but thyself, None e'er had taken from its dusty shelf,

his errors, was ever admirably faithful to the domes

tic affections--a kind and respectful son, and an Thou read'st me curious passages to speed The winter night, I take but little heed,

attached brother. He experienced on several occaAnd thankless say, 'I cannot listen now,'

sions substantial proofs of that generosity of Scott

towards his less fortunate brethren, which might 'Tis no offence; albeit, much do I owe

have redeemed his infinite superiority in Envy's To these, thy nightly offerings of affection, Drawn from thy ready talent for selection;

own bosom. It was also remarkable of Knox, that, For still it seemed in thee a natural gift

from the force of early impressions of piety, he was The lettered grain from lettered chaff to sift.

able, in the very midst of the most deplorable dissi

pation, to command his mind at intervals to the By daily use and circumstance endeared,

composition of verses alive with sacred fire, and Things are of value now that once appeared

breathing of Scriptural simplicity and tenderness. Of no account, and without notice passed,

The feelings of the poet's heart, at a particular Which o'er dull life a simple cheering cast;

crisis of his family history, are truly expressed in To hear thy morning steps the stair descending, the two first of the following specimens :Thy voice with other sounds domestic blending ; After each stated nightly absence, met To see thee by the morning table set,

[Opening of the 'Songs of Israel.'] Pouring from smoky spout the amber stream Which sends from saucered cup its fragrant steam;

Harp of Zion, pure and holy, To see thee cheerly on the threshold stand,

Pride of Judah's eastern land, On summer morn, with trowel in thy hand

May a child of guilt and folly For garden-work prepared ; in winter's gloom

Strike thee with a feeble hand? From thy cold noonday walk to see thee come,

May I to my bosom take thee, In furry garment lapt, with spattered feet,

Trembling from the prophet's touch, And by the fire resume thy wonted seat ;

And with throbbing heart awake thee
Ay, even o'er things like these soothed age has thrown

To the strains I love so much ?
A sober charm they did not always own-
As winter hoarfrost makes minutest spray

I have loved thy thrilling numbers,
Of bush or hedgeweed sparkle to the day

Since the dawn of childhood's day; In magnitude and beauty, which, bereaved

Since a mother soothed my slumbers Of such investment, eye had ne'er perceived.

With the cadence of thy lay;

Since a little blooming sister The change of good and evil to abide,

Clung with transport round my knee, As partners linked, long have we, side by side,

And my glowing spirit blessed her
Our earthly journey held; and who can say

With a blessing caught from thee!
How near the end of our united way?
By nature's course not distant; sad and 'reft

Mother-sister-both are sleeping
Will she remain—the lonely pilgrim left.

Where no heaving hearts respire, If thou art taken first, who can to me

Whilst the eve of age is creeping Like sister, friend, and home-companion be?

Round the widowed spouse and sire. Or who, of wonted daily kindness shorn,

He and his, amid their sorrow, Shall feel such loss, or mourn as I shall mourn?

Find enjoyment in thy strain : And if I should be fated first to leave

Harp of Zion, let me borrow This earthly house, though gentle friends may grieve,

Comfort from thy chords again !

Oh, then! there is freedom, and joy, and pride,

ROBERT MONTGOMERY.
Afar in the Desert alone to ride!
There is rapture to vault on the champing steed,

The Rev. ROBERT MONTGOMERY has obtained a And to bound away with the eagle's speed,

numerous circle of readers and admirers. His works, With the death-fraught firelock in my hand

The Omnipresence of the Deity, Satan, Luther, &c., (The only law of the Desert land);

display great command of poetical language and But 'tis not the innocent to destroy,

fluent versification, but are deficient in originality For I hate the huntsman's savage joy.

and chasteness of style. The literary labours of

Mr Montgomery seem to have been wholly devoted Afar in the Desert I love to ride,

to the service of religion, of the truths of which he With the silent Bush-boy alone by my side;

is an able and eloquent expounder in the pulpit. Away-away from the dwellings of men,

[Description of a Maniac.] By the wild deer's haunt, and the buffalo's ģlen; By valleys remote, where the oribi plays;

Down yon romantic dale, where hamlets few Where the gnoo, the gazelle, and the hartebeest graze; Arrest the summer pilgrim's pensive view And the gerasbok and eland unhunted recline The village wonder, and the widow's joyBy the skirts of gray forests o’ergrown with wild vine; Dwells the poor mindless, pale-faced maniac boy: And the elephant browses at peace in his wood;

He lives and breathes, and rolls his vacant eye, And the river-horse gambols unscared in the flood;

To greet the glowing fancies of the sky; And the mighty rhinoceros wallows at will

But on his cheek unmeaning shades of wo In the Vley, where the wild ass is drinking his fill.

Reveal the withered thoughts that sleep below!

A soulless thing, a spirit of the woods, Afar in the Desert I love to ride,

He loves to commune with the fields and floods : With the silent Bush-boy alone by my side:

Sometimes along the woodland's winding glade, O'er the brown Karroo where the bleating cry

He starts, and smiles upon his pallid shade; Of the springbok's fawn sounds plaintively;

Or scolds with idiot threat the roaming wind, Where the zebra wantonly tosses his mane,

But rebel music to the ruined mind! In fields seldom freshened by moisture or rain ;

Or on the shell-strewn beach delighted strays, And the stately koodoo exultingly bounds,

Playing his fingers in the noontide rays: Undisturbed by the bay of the hunter's hounds;

And when the sea-waves swell their hollow roar, And the timorous quagha's wild whistling neigh

He counts the billows plunging to the shore; Is heard by the brak fountain far away ;

And oft beneath the glimmer of the moon, And the fleet-footed ostrich over the waste

He chants some wild and inelancholy tune; Speeds like a horseman who travels in haste;

Till o'er his softening features seems to play And the culture in circles wheels high overhead,

A shadowy gleam of mind's reluctant sway. Greedy to scent and to gorge on the dead ;

Thus, like a living dream, apart from men, And the grisly wolf, and the shrieking jackal,

From morn to eve he haunts the wood and glen ; Howl for their prey at the evening fall ;

But round him, near him, wheresoe'er he rove, And the fiend-like laugh of hyenas grim,

A guardian angel tracks him from above ! Fearfully startles the twilight dim.

Nor harm from flood or fen shall e'er destroy

The mazy wanderings of the maniac boy.
Afar in the Desert I love to ride,
With the silent Bush-boy alone by my side:

[The Starry Heavens.] Away-away in the wilderness vast,

Ye quenchless stars ! so eloquently bright, Where the white man's foot hath never passed, Untroubled sentries of the shadowy night, And the quivered Koranna or Bechuan

While half the world is lapped in downy dreams, Hath rarely crossed with his roving clan :

And round the lattice creep your midnight beams, A region of emptiness, howling and drear,

How sweet to gaze upon your placid eyes, Which man hath abandoned from famine and fear; In lambent beauty looking from the skies ! Which the snake and the lizard inhabit alone, And when, oblivious of the world, we stray And the bat flitting forth from his old hollow stone; At dead of night along some noiseless way, Where grass, nor herb, nor shrub takes root,

How the heart mingles with the moonlit hour, Save poisonous thorns that pierce the foot :

As if the starry heavens suffused a power!
And the bitter melon, for food and drink,

Full in her dreamy light, the moon presides,
Is the pilgrim's fare, by the Salt Lake's brink: Shrined in a halo, mellowing as she rides;
A region of drought, where no river glides,

And far around, the forest and the stream
Nor rippling brook with osiered sides;

Bathe in the beauty of her emerald beam; Nor reedy pool, nor mossy fountain,

The lulled winds, too, are sleeping in their caves, Nor shady tree, nor cloud-capped mountain,

No stormy murmurs roll upon the waves ; Are found—to refresh the aching eye:

Nature is hushed, as if her works adored, But the barren earth and the burning sky,

Stilled by the presence of her living Lord! And the black horizon round and round,

And now, while through the ocean-mantling haze Without a living sight or sound,

A dizzy chain of yellow lustre plays, Tell to the heart, in its pensive mood,

And moonlight loveliness hath veiled the land, That this is–Nature's Solitude.

Go, stranger, muse thou by the wave-worn strand :

Centuries have glided o'er the balanced earth, And here—while the night-winds round me sigh, Myriads have blessed, and myriads cursed their birth; And the stars burn bright in the midnight sky, Still, yon sky-beacons keep a dimless glare, As I sit apart by the caverned stone,

Unsullied as the God who throned them there! Like Elijah at Horeb's cave alone,

Though swelling earthquakes heave the astounded And feel as a moth in the Mighty Hand

world, That spread the heavens and heaved the land- And king and kingdom from their pride are hurled, A still small voice' comes through the wild

Sublimely calm, they run their bright career, (Like a father consoling his fretful child),

Unheedful of the storms and changes here. Which banishes bitterness, wrath, and fear- We want no hymn to hear, or pomp to see, Saying. Man is distant, but God is near !

For all around is deep divinity!