And ever, ever to her lap he flies,

When rosy sleep comes on with sweet surprise.
Locked in her arms, his arms across her flung
(That name most dear for ever on his tongue),
As with soft accents round her neck he clings,
And, cheek to cheek, her lulling song she sings:
How blest to feel the beatings of his heart,
Breathe his sweet breath, and bliss for bliss impart ;
Watch o'er his slumbers like the brooding dove,
And, if she can, exhaust a mother's love!

FROM “COLUMBUS.”

THE ANGEL TO COLUMBUS IN HIS DREAM.

The wind recalls thee; its still voice obey:
Millions await thy coming: hence, away!
To thee blest tidings of great joy consigned,
Another nature, and a new mankind!
The vain to dream, the wise to doubt shall cease;
Young men be glad, and old depart in peace.
Hence! though assembling in the fields of air,
Now, in a night of clouds, thy foes1 prepare
To rock the globe with elemental wars,
And dash the floods of ocean to the stars;
And bid the meek repine, the valiant weep,
And thee restore thy secret to the deep.

Not then to leave thee! to their vengeance cast
Thy heart their aliment, their dire repast!2

To other eyes shall Mexico unfold

Her feather'd tapestries and her roofs of gold:
To other eyes, from distant cliffs descried,
Shall the Pacific roll his ample tide ;3
There destined soon rich argosies to ride:
Chains thy reward! beyond the Atlantic wave,
Hung in thy chamber, buried in thy grave!
Thy reverend form to time and grief a prey;
A phantom wandering in the light of day!

What though thy gray hairs to the dust descend,
Their scent shall track thee, track thee to the end:
Thy sons reproach'd with their great father's fame ;5
And on his world inscribed another's name!

1 The evil spirits of the storm. The admiral's voyage home was so extremely tempestuous, that, in despair, he committed his secret to the deep;" viz., an account of the discovery enclosed in a cask, in the hope that fortune might convey it to a civilized shore. 2 See Eschylus Eumenid., v. 246.-Columbus was doomed to much subsequent affliction.

3 Cortez was the discoverer and conqueror of Mexico; Balboa of the Pacific.-See Robertson's America.

See Robertson, Book ii.; and Washington Irving's Columbus.

There go the sons of him who discovered these fatal countries."-History by Don Ferdinand, the son of Columbus.-(Author's note.)

The Florentine Amerigo Vespucci.-Robertson.

That world a prison-house, full of sights of woe,
Where groans burst forth, and tears in torrents flow;
Those gardens of the sun, sacred to song,
By dogs of carnage,1 howling loud and long,
Swept, till the voyager in the desert air
Starts back to hear his altered accents there!

Not thine the olive but the sword to bring;

Not peace but war! yet from these shores shall spring
Peace without end; from these, with blood defiled,
Spread the pure spirit of thy Master mild!
Here in his train shall arts and arms attend;
Arts to adorn, and arms, but to defend.
Assembling here all nations shall be blest;
The sad be comforted; the weary rest;
Untouched shall drop the fetters from the slave;
And He shall rule the world he died to save.

Hence, and rejoice. The glorious work is done;
A spark is thrown that shall eclipse the sun!
And, though bad men shall long thy course pursue,
As erst the ravening brood o'er chaos flew,
He whom I serve shall vindicate His reign:
The spoiler spoiled of all; the slayer slain ;2
The tyrant's self, oppressing and opprest,
'Mid gems and gold, unenvied and unblest :3
While to the starry sphere thy name shall rise
(Nor there unsung thy generous enterprise);
Thine in all hearts to dwell-by fame enshrined
With those, the few, who live but for mankind:
Thine, evermore, transcendant happiness!
World beyond world to visit and to bless.

REV. JAMES GRAHAME.

(1765-1811.)

JAMES GRAHAME exchanged the profession of a Scottish barrister for that of a curate in the Church of England. Amiable, modest, pious, and assiduous in his ecclesiastical ministrations, he was deeply regretted on his death in Scotland in 1811. His poetry consists of a drama, " Mary Queen of Scots ;" "The Sabbath," with which his name is chiefly associated; "The Birds of Scotland," ""British Georgics," &c. His writing is moulded on the model of Cowper, full of Scottish associations, earnest and beautiful in spirit; it is somewhat deficient in compactness of picture and harmony of numbers.

! Bloodhounds were employed by the Spaniards in tracking the "rebel" Indians. 2 The Spanish government rewarded with neglect and disgrace, Columbus forming the first example, almost all those whose conquests in America had added empires to the Spanish crown.-Many of the Spanish oppressors died violent deaths.-" Almost all," says Las Casas, "have perished: the innocent blood cried aloud for vengeance; the sighs and tears of so many victims went up before God."-(Author's note.) The prophecy of universal peace and pure Christianity in these countries is of course yet to be fulfilled.

3 Historians have enumerated her American possessions among the causes of the decline of the Spanish monarchy.-Robertson.

THE SCOTTISH SABBATH SERVICE.

Solemn the knell, from yonder ancient pile, Fills all the air, inspiring joyful awe :

Slowly the throng moves o'er the tomb-pav'd ground;
The aged man, the bowed down, the blind

Led by the thoughtless boy, and he who breathes
With pain, and eyes the new-made grave well pleased;
These, mingled with the young, the gay, approach
The house of God; these, spite of all their ills,
A glow of freshness feel; with silent praise
They enter in. A placid stillness reigns,
Until the man of God-worthy the name-
Arise, and read the anointed shepherd's lays.
His locks of snow, his brow serene,-his look
Of love, it speaks, "Ye are my children all;
The grey-haired man, leaning upon his staff,
As well as he, the giddy child, whose eye
Pursues the swallow flitting 'thwart the dome."
Loud swells the song: oh how that simple song,
Though rudely chaunted, how it melts the heart,
Commingling soul with soul in one full tide
Of praise, of thankfulness, of humble trust!
Next comes the unpremeditated prayer,
Breathed from the inmost heart, in accents low,
But earnest.-Altered is the tone; to man
Are now addressed the sacred speaker's words:
Instruction, admonition, comfort, peace,
Flow from his tongue: oh chief let comfort flow!
It is most wanted in this vale of tears:
Yes, make the widow's heart to sing for joy;
The stranger to discern the Almighty's shield
Held o'er his friendless head; the orphan child
Feel, 'mid his tears, "I have a Father still."

66 THE SABBATH SERVICE OF THE SHEPHERD BOY."

In some lone glen, where every sound is lulled
To slumber, save the tinkling of the rill,
Or bleat of lamb, or hovering falcon's cry,
Stretched on the sward, he reads of Jesse's son;
Or sheds a tear o'er him to Egypt sold,

And wonders why he weeps; the volume closed,
With thyme-sprig laid between the leaves, he sings
The sacred lays, his weekly lesson, conned
With meikle care beneath the lowly roof,

Where humble lore is learn'd, while humble wort'ı
Pines unrewarded in a thankless state.

Thus reading, hymning, all alone, unseen,

The shepherd boy the Sabbath holy keeps.

THE SABBATH OF WAR.

Of all the murderous trades by mortals plied, 'Tis war alone that never violates

The hallowed day by simulant respect,

By hypocritic rest: no, no, the work proceeds.
From sacred pinnacles are hung the flags

That give the sign to slip the leash for slaughter.1
The bells, whose knoll a holy calmness poured
Into the good man's breast, whose sound solaced
The sick, the poor, the old-perversion dire-

Pealing with sulphurous tongue, speak death-fraught words :2
From morn to eve destruction revels frenzied,
Till, at the hour when peaceful vesper-chimes
Were wont to soothe the ear, the trumpet sounds
Pursuit and flight altern; and, for the song

Of larks, descending to their grass-bowered homes,
The croak of flesh-gorged ravens, as they slake
Their thirst in hoof-prints filled with gore, disturbs
The stupor of the dying man: while Death
Triumphantly sails down the ensanguined stream,
On corses throned, and crowned with shivered borghs,
That erst hung imaged in the crystal tide.3

SCOTTISH SABBATH EVENING PICTURE.

Oh Scotland! much I love thy tranquil dales;
But most on Sabbath eve, when low the sun
Slants thro' the upland copse; 'tis my delight,
Wandering and stopping oft, to hear the song
Of kindred praise arise from humble roofs;
Or, when the simple service ends, to hear
The lifted latch, and mark the gray-haired man,
The father and the priest, walk forth alone
Into his garden plat, or little field,

To commune with his God in secret prayer,—
To bless the Lord that, in his downward years,
His children are about him: sweet, meantime,
The thrush, that sings upon the aged thorn,
Brings to his view the days of youthful years,
When that same aged thorn was but a bush.
Nor is the contrast between youth and age
To him a painful thought; he joys to think
His journey near a close-Heaven is his home.

1 "Church steeples are frequently used as signal posts." Slip the leash; comp."I see you stand, like greyhounds in the slips,

Straining upon the start."-Shakesp. Hen v., Act iii. Sc. 3. "Let slip the dogs of war."-Ib. J. Cæs., Act iii. Sc. 1.

Alluding to church bells melted for French cannon.

"After a heavy cannonade, the shivered branches of trees, and the corpses of the

killed, are seen floating together down the rivers.”

More happy far that man, though bowed down,
Though feeble be his gait, and dim his eye,
Than they, the favourites of youth and health,
Of riches and of fame, who have renounced
The glorious promise of the life to come,
Clinging to death.1

WILLIAM WORDSWORTH.

(1770- .)

A GREAT portion of Mr Wordsworth's life, since the completion of his education at Cambridge, has been passed amidst the mountain seclusion of Rydal Lake, in Westmoreland. His genius was complimented with the laureateship on the death of Mr Southey. No man, perhaps, ever made poetry, not merely the constructive part of the art, but its whole feelings and contemplations, so completely his occupation. His youth fell fortunately in an age when the poetical literature of England had begun to revive; but the criticism of the times, independently of political animosities, did not yet seem to have tempered its taste to the novel music of the "Lake" bards. Cowper, and Burns, and Crabbe had struck out new paths, and the academic steps of Wordsworth followed their track into nature with such literal fidelity as to border on the practical exaggeration of his own theory respecting the extent of field and minuteness of variety afforded by nature for the purposes of poetry. His new poetical experiment, in which Mr Coleridge shared, appeared in the Lyrical Ballads in 1798. The poet and his associated friends struggled stoutly against the ridicule and hostility which their "school" drew down on them; and their perseverance has been rewarded in the popularity of much that was so mercilessly derided. The feelings touched by some of these pieces, their pathos, and truth to nature, won them way in popular estimation. Mr Wordsworth's great work, "The Excursion," is a portion of a philosophical poem, in three parts, to be entitled "The Recluse," 99.66 containing views of man, nature, and society," "having for its principal object the sensations and opinions of a poet living in retirement." The portion published presents a group of beautiful and profound thoughts,-of splendid and pathetic descriptions, united by a slight narrative, resulting from the poet's accidentally meeting a Scottish pedlar, "the grey-haired Wanderer," whose peculiar education has made him a moralist, a philosopher, and a Christian. They join, and are joined by, other personages, and the poem consists chiefly of a semi-dramatic exchange of argument and sentiment among the characters. The main moral seems to be to justify the ways of God to man, and to encourage the hopes of the wretched beyond the grave. The ethereal metaphysical speculations of the Excursion render the thought often obscure, or at least difficult to be apprehended; but the calm beauty of its pictures of solitude,—of lowly, suffering worth,—the fre

1 Compare Cowper's more rich and expanded picture-Task, Book vi., "He is the happy man," &c.

2 From the residence of Mr Wordsworth, Mr Southey, and Mr Coleridge, near each other among the lakes of Westmoreland and Cumberland, they and their "school" were termed in ridicule, by some of the reviews, the Lake Poets."

3 See Works, vol. iv., Edit 1827.

4 Mr Wordsworth's first publication was 1793.

* Consult the noble "Prospectus" of the design, Works, vol. v., Preface, Edit. 1827