The princess smiled, and sore was flushed,

O, but her heart was fain!

And

aye her cheek of beauty blushed

Like rose-bud in the rain.

From this the Hamiltons of Clyde

Their royal lineage draw;

And thus was won the fairest bride
That Scotland ever saw !

When ceased the lay, the plaudits rung,
Not for the bard, or song he sung;

But every eye with pleasure shone,
And cast its smiles on one alone,-
That one was princely Hamilton!
And well the gallant chief approved
The bard who sung of sire beloved,
And pleased were all the court to see
The minstrel hailed so courteously.

Again is

every courtier's gaze

Speaking suspense, and deep amaze;

The bard was stately, dark and stern,-
"Twas Drummond from the moors of Ern.
Tall was his frame, his forehead high,
Still and mysterious was his eye;

His look was like a winter day,

When storms and winds have sunk away.

Well versed was he in holy lore;
In cloistered dome the cowl he wore;
But, wearied with the eternal strain
Of formal breviats, cold and vain,
He wooed, in depth of Highland dale,
The silver spring and mountain gale.

In gray Glen-Ample's forest deep, Hid from the rains and tempest's sweep, In bosom of an aged wood

His solitary cottage stood.

Its walls were bastioned, dark, and dern,

Dark was its roof of filmot fern,
And dark the vista down the linn,
But all was love and peace within.
Religion, man's first friend and best,
Was in that home a constant guest;
There, sweetly, every morn and even,
Warm orisons were poured to Heaven:
And every cliff Glen-Ample knew,

And green wood on her banks that grew,

In answer to his bounding string,

Had learned the hymns of Heaven to sing;

With many a song of mystic lore,

Rude as when sung in days of yore.

His were the snowy flocks, that strayed

Adown Glen-Airtney's forest glade ;

And his the goat, and chesnut hind,

Where proud Ben-Vorlich cleaves the wind:

There oft, when suns of summer shone,

The bard would sit, and muse alone,

Of innocence, expelled by man;

Of nature's fair and wonderous plan;

Of the eternal throne sublime,

Of visions seen in ancient time,

Till his rapt soul would leave her home

In visionary worlds to roam.

Then would the mists that wandered bye

Seem hovering spirits to his

eye:

Then would the breeze's whistling sweep,

Soft lulling in the cavern deep,

Seem to the enthusiast's dreaming ear

The words of spirits whispered near.

Loathed his firm soul the measured chime

And florid films of modern rhyme;

No other lays became his tongue

But those his rude forefathers sung.

And when, by wandering minstrel warned,

The mandate of his queen he learned,
So much he prized the ancient strain,
High hopes had he the prize to gain.

With modest, yet majestic mien,

He tuned his harp of solemn strain :
O list the talc, ye fair and young,

A lay so strange was never sung!

Kilmeny.

THE THIRTEENTH BARD'S SONG.

Bonny Kilmeny gaed up the glen;

But it wasna to meet Duneira's men,
Nor the monk of the isle to see,

rosy

For Kilmeny was pure as pure could be.
It was only to hear the Yorlin sing,

And pu' the cress-flower round the spring;
The scarlet hypp and the hindberrye,
And the nut that hang frae the hazel tree;
For Kilmeny was pure as pure could be.
But lang may her minny look o'er the wa',
And lang may she seek i' the green-wood shaw;
Lang the laird of Duneira blame,

And lang, lang greet or Kilmeny come hame!