III.

How shall I woo her?-I will try
The charms of olden time,
And swear by earth and sea and sky,
And rave in prose and rhyme ;-
And I will tell her, when I bent
My knee in other years,
I was not half so eloquent,-
I could not speak for tears!

Away! away! the chords are mute,

The bond is rent in twain ;You cannot wake that silent lute,

Nor clasp those links again : Love's toil I know is little cost, Love's perjury is light sin;

But souls that lose what I have lost,

What have they left to win?

FLODDEN FIELD.

BY D. M. MOIR, ESQ.

1.

"T was on a sultry summer noon,

The sky was blue—the breeze was stillAnd Nature with the robes of June

Had clothed the slopes of Flodden Hill;As rode we slowly o'er the plain, 'Mid wayside flowers and sprouting grain; The leaves on every bough seemed sleeping, And wild bees murmured in their mirth So pleasantly, it seemed as earth A jubilee was keeping!

II.

And canst thou be, unto my soul

I said, that dread Northumbrian field, Where war's terrific thunder-roll

Above two banded kingdoms pealed ?— From out the forest of his spears,

Ardent imagination hears

The crash of Surrey's onward charging; While curtel-axe and broadsword gleam

Opposed, a bright, wide, coming stream, Like Solway's tide enlarging.

III.

Hark to the turmoil and the shout,
The war-cry, and the cannon's boom!
Behold the struggle and the rout,

The broken lance and draggled plume! Borne to the earth, with deadly force, Comes down the horseman and his horse; Round boils the battle like an ocean;

While stripling blithe and veteran stern, Pour forth their life-blood on the fern, Amid its fierce commotion!

IV.

Mown down like swaths of summer flowers,
Yes! on the cold earth there they lie,
The lords of Scotland's bannered towers,
The chosen of her chivalry!
Commingled with the vulgar dead,
Perhaps lies many a mitred head;

And thou, the vanguard onwards leading,
Who left the sceptre for the sword,

For battle-field the festal board,

Liest low amid the bleeding!

V.

Yes! here thy life-star knew decline, Though hope, that strove to be deceived, Shaped thy lone course to Palestine,

And what it wished full oft believed:An unhewn pillar on the plain

Marks out the spot where thou wast slain; There pondering as I stood, and gazing On its grey top, the linnet sang,

And, o'er the slopes where conflict rang, The quiet sheep were grazing.

VI.

And were the nameless dead unsung,
The patriot and the peasant train,
Who like a phalanx round thee clung,
To find but death on Flodden Plain?

No! many a mother's melting lay
Mourned o'er the bright flowers wede away;
And many a maid, with tears of sorrow,

Whose locks no more were seen to wave, Wept for the beauteous and the brave, Who came not on the morrow!

THE RUINS OF TIME.

BY BARRY CORNWALL.

I.

"TIME in his awful course rolls on for ever.
Marble and brass and gold, temples and towers,
Fall down before his waves; the unsparing Hours.
And on the dark deep river

(Washed like an atom down) goes man, the god!
Pale stern philosophers and hermits holy,
Vain scholars, lovers vain, maids melancholy,
And kings, who once in purple vengeance trod.
Kingdoms and states resist not: great seas fall
Back, and old Earth shrinks like a crumbling ball;
Grace, honour, valour, wisdom, virtue, fame,

Weak, wise, or brave or strong,-all bend the same!

II.

"Now sit, and let us mark what ruins hoar Great Time hath left upon this terrene shore,— What pillars and vast blocks of brass and stone,

With figures carved, and filled with speech unknown,