AM. Oh that this too, too solid flesh would melt, Thaw and resolve itself into a dew! Till it blends with the filth in the horrible Or, that the Everlasting had not fix'd street. Once I was pure as the snow-but I fell! Cursing, Dreading to die, Selling my soul to whoever would buy, Dealing in shame for morsels of bread, Hating the living and fearing the dead. Merciful God! have I fallen so low? And yet I was once as the beautiful snow. Once I was fair as the beautiful snow, His canon 'gainst self-slaughter! O God! O How weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable, Possess it merely. That it should come to this! But two months dead!-nay, not so much, not two: So excellent a king; that was, to this, Hyperion to a satyr: so loving to my mother, That he might not beteem the winds of heav en Visit her face too roughly. Heaven and earth! With an eye like a crystal, a heart like its Must I remember? why, she would hang on glow; Once I was loved for my innocent grace- Mother, Sisters, all, God, and myself, I've lost by my fall; For all that is on or about me, I know There is nothing that's pure like the beautiful snow. him, How strange it should be that this beautiful Than I to Hercules; within a month, Where, for these many hundred years, the The mitherless bairn gangs to his lane bed, Nane covers his cauld back, or haps his bare bones Of all my buried ancestors are pack'd; say, At some hours in the night spirits resort ;- And shrieks like mandrakes' torn out of the That living mortals, hearing them, run mad; And madly play with my forefathers' joints? And, in this rage, with some great kinsman's As with a club, dash out my desperate brains? [She throws herself on the bed. THE MITHERLESS BAIRN. By aunty, or cousin, or frecky grandame, head; His wee hackit heelies are hard as the airn, O' hands that wont kindly to kame his dark But morning brings clutches, a' reckless and That lo'e nae the locks o' the mitherless bairn. stern, Yon sister, that sang o'er his saftly rocked bed, Now rests in the mools where her mammy is The father toils sair their wee bannock to earn Her spirit, that passed in yon hour o' his birth, Recording in heaven the blessings they earn Oh! speak na him harshly-he trembles the while, He bends to your bidding, an' blesses your smile; In their dark hours o' anguish, the heartless shall learn, That God deals the blow for the mitherless bairn! WILLIAM THOM. DESOLATION OF BALCLUTHA. HAVE seen the walls of Balclutha, but they were desolate. The fire had resounded in the halls; and the voice of the people is heard no more. The stream of Clutha was removed from its place by the fall of the walls. The thistle shook there its lonely head; the moss whistled to the wind. The fox looked out from the windows; the rank grass of the wall waved round its head. Desolate is the dwelling of Moina; silence is in the house of her fathers. Raise the song of mourning, O bards! over the land of strangers. They have but fallen before us; for one day we must fall. Why dost thou build the hall, son of the winged days? Thou lookest from thy towers to-day: yet a few years and the blast of the desert comes; it howls in thy empty court, and whistles round thy half-worn shield. And let the blast of the desert come! we shall be renowned in our day! The mark of my arm shall be in battle; my name in the song of bards. Raise the song, send round the shell; let joy be heard in my hall. When thou, sun of heaven, shalt fail! if thou shalt fail, thou mighty light! if thy brightness is but for a season, like Fingal, our fame shall survive thy beams. Such was the song of Fingal in the day of his joy. JAMES MACPHERSON. |