And canst thou forego such beauty and youth,
Such maiden honour and spotless truth?

Forbid it! He yields; to the boat he draws nigh.
Haste, Malcolm, aboard, and revert not thine eye.

V.

That trembling voice, in murmurs weak,

Comes not to blast the hopes before thee; For pity, Malcolm, turn, and take

A last farewell of her that bore thee.

She says no word to mar thy bliss;

A last embrace, a parting kiss,

Her love deserves;-then be thou gone;

A mother's joys are thine alone.

Friendship may fade, and fortune prove

Deceitful to thy heart;

But never can a mother's love

From her own offspring part.
That tender form, now bent and gray,
Shall quickly sink to her native clay;

Then who shall watch her parting breath,
And shed a tear o'er her couch of death?
Who follow the dust to its long long home,
And lay that head in an honoured tomb?

VI.

Oft hast thou, to her bosom prest,

For many a day about been borne ;

Oft hushed and cradled on her breast,

And canst thou leave that breast forlorn ?

O'er all thy ails her heart has bled;
Oft has she watched beside thy bed;
Oft prayed for thee in dell at even,
Beneath the pitying stars of heaven.
Ah! Malcolm, ne'er was parent yet

So tender, so benign!

Never was maid so loved, so sweet,

Nor soul so rent as thine!

He looked to the boat,-slow she heaved from the

shore;

He saw his loved Anna all speechless implore:

But, grasped by a cold and a trembling hand, He clung to his parent, and sunk on the strand.

VII.

The boat across the tide flew fast,
And left a silver curve behind;
Loud sung the sailor from the mast,
Spreading his sails before the wind.

The stately ship, adown the bay,

A corslet framed of heaving snow, And flurred on high the slender spray,

Till rainbows gleamed around her prow. How strained was Malcolm's watery eye, Yon fleeting vision to descry!

But, ah! her virgin form so fair,

Soon vanished in the liquid air.

Away to Ora's headland steep

The youth retired the while, And saw th' unpitying vessel sweep Around yon Highland isle.

His heart and his mind with that vessel had gone; His sorrow was deep, and despairing his moan, When, lifting his eyes from the green heaving deep, He prayed the Almighty his Anna to keep.

VIII.

High o'er the crested cliffs of Lorn

The curlew coned her wild bravura ;

The sun, in pall of purple borne,

Was hastening down the steeps of Jura.
The glowing ocean heaved her breast,
Her wandering lover's glances under ;
And shewed his radiant form, imprest

Deep in a wavy world of wonder.
Not all the ocean's dyes at even,
Though varied as the bow of heaven;

The countless isles so dusky blue,

Nor medley of the gray curlew,

Could light on Malcolm's spirit shed;

Their glory all was gone!

For his joy was fled, his hope was dead,

And his heart forsaken and lone.

The sea-bird sought her roofless nest,
To warm her brood with her downy breast;
And near her home, on the margin dun,

A mother weeps o'er her duteous son.

IX.

One little boat alone is seen

On all the lovely dappled main,

That softly sinks the waves between,

Then vaults their heaving breasts again;

With snowy sail, and rower's sweep,

Across the tide she seems to fly.

Why bears she on yon headland steep,

Where neither house nor home is nigh?

Is that a vision from the deep

That springs ashore and scales the steep,
Nor ever stays its ardent haste

Till sunk upon young Malcolm's breast!