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When o'er the great undeluged earth Heaven's covenant thou didst shine, How came the world's grey fathers forth To watch thy sacred sign!

And when its yellow lustre smiled
O'er mountains yet untrod,
Each mother held aloft her child
To bless the bow of God.

Methinks thy jubilee to keep,
The first-made anthem rang,
On earth, delivered from the deep,
And the first poet sang.

Nor ever shall the Muse's eye
Unraptured greet thy beam :
Theme of primeval prophecy,
Be still the poet's theme!

The earth to thee her incense yields,
The lark thy welcome sings,
When glittering in the freshened fields

The snowy mushroom springs.

How glorious is thy glory cast
O'er mountain, tower, and town,
Or mirrored in the ocean vast,
A thousand fathoms down!

As fresh in yon horizon dark,
As young thy beauties seem,
As when the eagle from the ark

First sported in thy beam.

For, faithful to its sacred page,
Heaven still rebuilds thy span ;

Nor lets the type grow pale with age,
That first spoke peace to man.

THE WRECK.

BY MRS. HEMANS.

Her sails are draggled in the brine,

That gladdened late the skies;

And her pennon, that kissed the fair moonshine,
Down many a fathom lies.

WILSON.

ALL night the booming minute-gun
Had pealed along the deep,
And mournfully the rising sun

Looked o'er the tide-worn steep.
A bark, from India's coral strand,

Before the rushing blast,

Had vailed her topsails to the sand,

And bowed her noble mast.

The queenly ship!—brave hearts had striven,
And true ones died with her!

We saw her mighty cable riven,
Like floating gossamer !

We saw her proud flag struck that morn,

A star once o'er the seas,

Her helm beat down, her deck uptorn, -
And sadder things than these!

We saw her treasures cast away,
The rocks with pearl were sown;
And, strangely sad, the ruby's ray
Flashed out o'er fretted stone;
And gold was strewn the wet sands o'er,
Like ashes by a breeze,

And gorgeous robes, but oh! that shore
Had sadder sights than these!

We saw the strong man, still and low,

A crushed reed thrown aside !

Yet, by that rigid lip and brow,
Not without strife he died!
And near him on the sea-weed lay,
Till then we had not wept,

But well our gushing hearts might say,
That there a mother slept:

For her pale arms a babe had prest

With such a wreathing grasp,

*

Billows had dashed o'er that fond breast,

Yet not undone the clasp !

Her very tresses had been flung

To wrap the fair child's form,

Where still their wet, long streamers clung
All tangled by the storm.

And beautiful, 'midst that wild scene,
Gleamed up the boy's dead face,
Like Slumber's trustingly serene,

In melancholy grace.

Deep in her bosom lay his head,

With half-shut violet eye;

He had known little of her dread,
Nought of her agony!

Oh, human love! whose yearning heart
Through all things vainly true,

So stamps upon thy mortal part,
Its passionate adieu !

Surely thou hast another lot,

There is some home for thee,

Where thou shalt rest, remembering not

The moaning of the sea!

This circumstance is related of Mrs. Cargil, an actress of some celebrity, who was shipwrecked on the rocks of Scilly, when returning from India.

THE HIGHLANDER.

BY WILLIAM GILLESPIE.

Many a years ago, a poor Highland soldier on his return to his native hills, fatigued, as it was supposed, by the length of the march and the heat of the weather, sat down under the shade of a birch tree, on the solitary road of Lowran, that winds along the margin of Loch Ken in Galloway. Here he was found dead, and this incident forms the subject of the following verses.

FROM the climes of the sun, all war worn and weary
The Highlander sped to his youthful abode;
Fair visions of home cheered the desert so dreary,
Though fierce was the noonbeam and steep was the
road.

'Till spent with the march that still lengthened before him,

He stopped by the way in a sylvan retreat;

The light shady boughs of the birch-tree waved o'er

him,

And the stream of the mountain fell soft at his feet.

He sank to repose where the red heaths are blended, One dream of his childhood his fancy passed o'er; But his battles are fought, and his march it is ended, The sound of the bagpipe shall wake him no more.

No arm in the day of the conflict could wound him, Though war launched her thunder in fury to kill; Now the angel of death in the desert has found him, And stretched him in peace by the stream of the

hill.

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