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 Methinks thy jubilee to keep, Nor ever shall the Muse's eye The earth to thee her incense yields, The snowy mushroom springs. How glorious is thy glory cast As fresh in yon horizon dark, First sported in thy beam. For, faithful to its sacred page, Nor lets the type grow pale with age, 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, WILSON. ALL night the booming minute-gun Looked o'er the tide-worn steep. Before the rushing blast, Had vailed her topsails to the sand, And bowed her noble mast. The queenly ship!—brave hearts had striven, We saw her mighty cable riven, We saw her proud flag struck that morn, A star once o'er the seas, Her helm beat down, her deck uptorn, - We saw her treasures cast away, And gorgeous robes, but oh! that shore We saw the strong man, still and low, A crushed reed thrown aside ! Yet, by that rigid lip and brow, But well our gushing hearts might say, 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 And beautiful, 'midst that wild scene, In melancholy grace. Deep in her bosom lay his head, With half-shut violet eye; He had known little of her dread, Oh, human love! whose yearning heart So stamps upon thy mortal part, 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 '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. |