IV

The kirk was deck'd at morning-tide,
The tapers glimmer'd fair;

The priest and bridegroom wait the bride,
And dame and knight are there.

They sought her baith by bower and ha'

The ladie was not seen!

She's o'er the Border, and awa'
Wi' Jock of Hazeldean.

THE RECOLLECTION

WE wander'd to the pine forest
That skirts the ocean's foam;
The lightest wind was in its nest,
The tempest in its home.

The whispering waves were half asleep,
The clouds were gone to play,
And on the bosom of the deep

The smile of heaven lay;

It seem'd as if the hour were one
Sent from beyond the skies,
Which scatter'd from above the sun
A light of paradise!

We paused amid the pines that stood
The giants of the waste,

Tortured by storms to shapes as rude
As serpents interlaced,

And soothed, by every azure breath
That under heaven is blown,
To harmonies and hues beneath,
As tender as its own;

Now all the tree-tops lay asleep

Like green waves on the sea, As still as in the silent deep The ocean woods may be.

SCOTT.

IL PENSEROSO

HENCE, vain deluding Joys,

The brood of Folly without father bred! How little you bestead

Or fill the fixèd mind with all your toys! Dwell in some idle brain,

And fancies fond with gaudy shapes possess As thick and numberless

As the gay motes that people the sunbeams, Or likest hovering dreams

The fickle pensioners of Morpheus' train.

But hail, thou goddess sage and holy, Hail, divinest Melancholy!

Whose saintly visage is too bright

To hit the sense of human sight,

And therefore to our weaker view

O'erlaid with black, staid Wisdom's hue;
Black, but such as in esteem

Prince Memnon's sister might beseem,
Or that starr'd Ethiop queen that strove
To set her beauty's praise above

The sea nymphs, and their powers offended
Yet thou art higher far descended:
Thee bright-haired Vesta, long of yore,
To solitary Saturn bore;

His daughter she; in Saturn's reign
Such mixture was not held a stain:
Oft in glimmering bowers and glades
He met her, and in secret shades
Of woody Ida's inmost grove,
While yet there was no fear of Jove.
Come, pensive nun, devout and pure,
Sober, steadfast, and demure,
All in a robe of darkest grain
Flowing with majestic train,
And sable stole of cypress lawn
Over thy decent shoulders drawn:

Come, but keep thy wonted state,
With even step, and musing gait,
And looks commercing with the skies,
Thy rapt soul sitting in thine eyes:
There, held in holy passion still,
Forget thyself to marble, till,
With a sad leaden downward cast,
Thou fix them on the earth as fast;

And join with thee, calm Peace, and Quiet
Spare Fast, that oft with gods doth diet,
And hears the Muses in a ring

Aye round about Jove's altar sing :
And add to these retired Leisure,

That in trim gardens takes his pleasure :-
But first, and chiefest, with thee bring
Him that yon soars on golden wing,
Guiding the fiery-wheeled throne,
The cherub Contemplation;

And the mute Silence hist along,
'Less Philomel will deign a song
In her sweetest, saddest plight,
Smoothing the rugged brow of Night,
While Cynthia checks her dragon yoke

Gently o'er the accustom'd oak.

-Sweet bird, that shunn'st the noise of folly,

Most musical, most melancholy!

Thee, chauntress, oft, the woods among
I woo, to hear thy even-song;
And missing thee, I walk unseen
On the dry, smooth-shaven green,
To behold the wandering Moon
Riding near her highest noon,
Like one that had been led astray
Through the heaven's wide pathless way
And oft, as if her head she bow'd,
Stooping through a fleecy cloud.

Oft, on a plat of rising ground
I hear the far-off curfeu sound
Over some wide-water'd shore,
Swinging slow with sullen roar :

Or, if the air will not permit,

Some still removèd place will fit,

Where glowing embers through the room Teach light to counterfeit a gloom;

Far from all resort of mirth,

Save the cricket on the hearth,