Knowledge and sense, body and soul,
And whatso power I have beside:
The rein that doth my being guide
Impels me to this only goal!

His heart is dead whence doth not spring
Love's odor sweet and magical;

His life doth ever on him pall
Who knoweth not that blessed thing:
Yea, God who doth my life control
Were cruel did he bid me bide
A month or even a day, denied
The love whose rapture I extol.

How keen, how exquisite the sting
Of that sweet odor! At its call
An hundred times a day I fall
And faint; an hundred rise and sing!
So fair the semblance of my dole,
'Tis lovelier than another's pride:
If such the ill doth me betide,

Good hap were more than I could thole!

Yet haste, kind heaven, the sundering

True swains from false, great hearts from small!

The traitor in the dust bid crawl,

The faithless to confession bring!

Ah, if I were the master sole

Of all earth's treasures multiplied,
To see my lady satisfied

Of my pure faith, I'd give the whole!

II.

When I behold on eager wing
The skylark soaring to the sun,
Till e'en with rapture faltering
He sinks in glad oblivion,
Alas, how fain to seek were I

The same ecstatic fate of fire!
Yea, of a truth, I know not why
My heart melts not with its desire!

Methought that I knew everything

Of love. Alas, my lore was none!
For helpless now my praise I bring!
To one who still that praise doth shun;

One who hath robbed me utterly

Of soul, of self, of life entire, So that my heart can only cry For that it ever shall require.

For ne'er have I of self been king
Since the first hour, so long agone,
When to thine eyes bewildering,

As to a mirror, I was drawn.
There let me gaze until I die;
So doth my soul of sighing tire,
As at the fount, in days gone by,
The fair Narcissus did expire.

III.

When the sweet breeze comes blowing From where thy country lies, Meseems I am foreknowing

The airs of Paradise.

So is my heart o'erflowing
For that fair one and wise
Who hath the glad bestowing
Of life's whole energies;
For whom I agonize
Whithersoever going.

I mind the beauty glowing,
The fair and haughty eyes,
Which, all my will o'erthrowing,
Made me their sacrifice.
Whatever mien thou 'rt showing,
Why should I this disguise?
Yet let me ne'er be ruing

One of thine old replies:-
"Man's daring wins the prize,

But fear is his undoing."

THOMAS PRINGLE.

PRINGLE, THOMAS, a Scottish poet; born at Blaiklaw, in Teviotdale, Roxburghshire, January 5, 1789; died at London, December 5, 1834. He was graduated at the University of Edinburgh. In 1816 he wrote "The Autumnal Excursion." In 1817 he began the publication of the "Edinburgh Monthly Magazine," out of which subsequently grew "Blackwood's Magazine." He went to Cape Town in 1820, where he became the editor of the South African Journal." Pringle returned to Great Britain in 1826, and in 1828 published a collection of his poems, entitled "Ephemerides." His verses on South African themes were issued in 1834 as "African Sketches," in the same volume with his "Narrative of a Residence in South Africa." A collection of his "Poems" appeared in 1838.

AFAR IN THE DESERT.

AFAR in the desert I love to ride,

With the silent Bush-boy alone by my side:
When the sorrows of life the soul o'ercast,
And, sick of the Present, I turn to the Past;
When the eye is suffused with regretful tears,
From the fond recollections of former years;
And the shadows of things that long since have fled
Flit over the brain like the ghost of the dead;
And my native land whose magical name

Thrills to the heart like electric flame;

The home of my childhood the haunts of my prime;
All the passions and scenes of that rapturous time
When the feelings were young, and the world was new,
Like the fresh flowers of Eden unfolding to view:-
:-
All, all now forsaken, forgotten, foregone,

And I, a lone exile, remembered of none;

My high aims abandoned, my good acts undone,

A-weary of all that is under the sun;

With that sadness of heart which no stranger may scan,

I fly to the desert, afar from man!..

Afar in the desert I love to ride,

With the silent Bush-boy alone by my side,

Away, away from the dwellings of men,

By the wild deer's haunt, by the buffalo's glen;

By valleys remote where the oribi plays,

Where the gnu, the gazelle, and the hartebeest graze,
And the koodoo and eland unhunted recline

By the skirts of gray forests o'erhung with wild vine;
Where the elephant browses at peace in the wood,
And the river-horse gambols unscared in the flood,
And the mighty rhinoceros wallows at will
In the fen where the wild-ass is drinking his fill.
Afar in the desert I love to ride,

With the silent Bush-boy alone by my side;
O'er the brown karroo, where the bleating cry
Of the springbock's fawn sounds plaintively;
And the timorous quagga's whistling neigh
Is heard by the fountain at twilight gray;
Where the zebra wantonly tosses his mane,
With wild hoof scouring the desolate plain;
And the fleet-footed ostrich over the waste
Speeds like a horseman who travels in haste,
Hieing away to the home of her rest,
Where she and her mate have scooped their nest,
Far hid from the pitiless plunderer's view,
In the pathless depths of the parched karroo.
Afar in the desert I love to ride,

With the silent Bush-boy alone by my side;

Away, away in the wilderness vast,

Where the white man's foot hatlı never passed,

And the quivered Coranna and Bechuan
Hath rarely crossed with his roving clan;
A region of emptiness, howling and drear,

Which man hath abandoned from famine and fear:
Which the snake and the lizard inhabit alone,
With the twilight bat from the yawning stone;
Where grass, nor herb, nor shrub takes root,
Save poisonous thorns that pierce the foot;
And the bitter melon, for food and drink
Is the pilgrim's fare by the salt lake's brink:
A region of drought, where no river glides,
Nor rippling brook with osiered sides;
Where sedgy pool, nor bubbling fount,
Nor tree, nor cloud, nor misty mount,
Appears to refresh the aching eye;
But the barren earth, and the burning sky,
And the blank horizon, round and round,
Spread void of living sight or sound.

And here, while the night-winds round me sigh,
And the stars burn bright in the midnight sky,
As I sit apart by the desert stone,
Like Elijah at Horeb's cave alone,

A still small voice comes through the wild
(Like a father consoling his fretful child),
Which banishes bitterness, wrath, and fear,
Saying, "Man is distant, but God is near !"

THE HIGHLANDS.

THE Highlands! the Highlands! O gin I were there:
Tho' the mountains an' moorlands be rugged an' bare,
Tho' bleak be the clime, an' but scanty the fare,

My heart's in the Highland's - O gin I were there!

The Highlands! the Highlands! My full bosom swells When I think o' the streams gushing wild through the delis, And the hills towering proudly, the lochs gleaming fair!

Stands a cosy wee cot, wi' a but an' a ben,

An' a deas at the door, wi' my auld mother there,

Crooning"Haste ye back, Donald, an' leave us nae mair!"