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MOODS OF THE MIND.

No I.

Despondency.-A Reverie.

'Twas on the evening of an August day,
A day of clouds and tempest, that I stood
Within the shade of over-arching wood,
My bosom filled with visions of decay;
Around were strewed the shivered leaves, all wet;
The boughs above were dripping; and the sky
Threw down the shadows of despondency,-
As if all melancholy things were met

To blast this lower world. I leaned my side
Against an oak, and sighed o'er human pride!

I thought of life, and love, and earthly bliss,
Of all we pine for, pant for, and pursue,
And found them like the mist, or matin dew,
Fading to nothingness in Time's abyss.

Our fathers,-where are they? The moss is green
Upon the tablet that records their worth;
They have co-mingled with their parent earth,
And only in our dreams of yore are seen,-
Our visions of the by-past, which have fled,
To leave us wandering 'mid the buried dead.

I thought of men, who looked upon my face,
Breathing, and life-like, breathless now and cold,-
I heard their voices issuing from the mould,
Amid the scenes that bear of them no trace.
I thought of smiling children, who have sat

All evening on my knees, and pressed my hand,
Their cherub features and their accents bland,-
Their innocence, and their untimely fate ;-
How soon their flower was cropt, and laid below
The turf, where daisies spring, and lilies blow.

I thought of sunless regions, where the day
Smiles not, and all is dreariness and death ;-
Of weltering oceans, where the winter's breath
Beats on the emerald ice, and rocky bay;
I thought me of the old times,-of the halls

Of ancient castles mouldering to the dust-
Of swords, long used in war, bedimm'd with rust,
Hanging in danky vaults, upon the walls,

Where coffined warriors rest, amid the night
Of darkness, never tinged by morning light.

The unsheltered cattle lowed upon the plain ;-
The speckled frog was leaping 'mid the grass,
Down to the lakelets edge, whose breast of glass
Was wrinkled only by the tardy rain.

Dim was the aspect of the sullen sky ;—

The night scowled gloomier down:-I could not throw
From off my heart the weary weight of woe,

But loathed the world, and coveted to die;

Beholding only in the earth and air

Omens of desolation and despair."

Δ

No II.

The Woodland Glen.

1.

THE sun is sinking behind the mountain,
The Evening Star is bright,

And the ceaseless gush of the twilight fountain
Is heard, with calm delight,

By the spirit, that far from the homes of men,
Delights in the still of the woodland glen.

2.

When the heart is sullen, and sad, and lonely,
Mid worldly toil and care;

When pleasure, and friendship, and love forsaking,
Behind leave blank despair,

Oh! fly to the lone, the sequestered spot,
Where Nature presides, and where man is not!

3.

The hazel, the willow, and birch tree weeping,
With tresses long and drear,

Descending from slaty rocks, and steeping
Their boughs in waters clear;

The flap of the night bird skimming by,
And the drowsy hum of the beetle fly.

4.

The sound of the gentle rills, that tinkle
Adown their pebbly beds;

The aspect of the stars that twinkle,
The azure gloom that spreads,
Soften the troubled heart, and sooth

The waves of the spirit, till all is smooth.

5.

If sorrow the blossom of manhood wither,
If fortune prove unkind,

If the world to thee is estranged, come hither
And breathe the fragrant wind,

And learn, that far from the snares of men,
Peace and Liberty dwell in the woodland glen!

No III.

The Isle of Despair. A Vision.

COLD blew the noisy winds unceasingly
Across the waste, where never summer-flower,
Expanding, spread its bosom to the sun,
Or drank the freshness of the matin dew;
Where never tree was seen to rear its head,
Branching, nor verdure to o'erspread the lawn;
Where sound was never heard, except the roar
Of battling elements-the sleety north
When Eurus buffeted, or tortured waves
Lashed foaming on the rocks-except the howl
Of famished bears and sea birds; or the crash

of frozen masses, with o'erwhelming force,

That, bursting, thundered from the mountain-tops,
And woke the slumbering echoes from repose.
A solitary waste-a waste of snows-
Bleak rocks and frozen waters-desolate,
Beyond the painter's touch, or poet's thought.
Dark precipices bound it, giant-like,
Hiding their snowy scalps amid the clouds,
And listening to the storms that growled below,
And to the lazy ocean fathomless,

In icy greenness, rolling with its waves.

Sure to the voice of man these barren rocks
Re-echoed never! sure, by human steps,
Were never trodden these eternal snows,
But silence, slumbering on her mountain, though
Voiceless, hath governed since the first of time,
A region darkened with the shadow of death!
More bleak and blank, more desolate and drear,
Than ever fancy conjured to the mind
Of dreaming murderer, on his midnight couch.

What moving creature stirs on yonder height,
And, with his breath, disturbs the solitude?
Severed from all communion with mankind,
For ever severed, like a ghost he stands
Above the ocean, where he cannot drown;
And where, thro' countless labyrinths of years,
Years that have neither origin nor end,
Summer nor sunshine, he is doomed to bear
The burden of his solitude; to drink

The thoughts of gall and bitterness; to feel
The curse of immortality; and long

For death that mocks him still. His hollow eye,
His haggard visage, and his flowing beard,
White as December's billow, wind-enchafed,
Bespeak the desolation of his soul;

And as the she-wolf, when the hunter's hand
Hath robbed her of her young, with starting eye,
And piercing howl, stands maddening in her den,
So, in the torment, but without the power

To utter it unto the winds of heaven,

Voiceless he stood.

The famished bear came by,

Grinding his teeth in famine; in the path
Prostrate he threw himself, and hoped for death
Turning his eye towards her-'twas in vain !
Howling she fled in cruel mockery,

And, with remorseless and unnatural rage,
I saw her rush towards her suckling cubs,
Dart on them in her hungry wretchedness,

And crunch their young bones, with unfeeling maw!

The clouds grew dark-the shadows hovered round They hovered round, and compassed him about, As with a garment; and I heard a cry, Ear-piercing-horrible-a desolate cryThe circling hills re-echoed it; around They caught the tone, till faint and far away Lowly it died; and, listening there I heard, Alone, the weltering of the dreary sea.

RECOLLECTIONS.

No IV.

MARK MACRABIN, the Cameronian.

(Continued from Last Number.)

Adventure with the Gypsies.

MINE honest and ancient friend, the Cameronian, having forsaken the gentle lady of Lagghill, and her kind and enthusiastic followers, thus continued his narrative. “Truly, Miles Cameron, wise was he who rendered into rhyme that famous maxim of circumspection and prudence,Ay keep something to yoursel', you scarcely tell to ony, and wiser still would men be could they practise it. My next adventure was a strange one, and happened among a people of unstable residence, infirm faith, and imperfect morality. When I promised to relate my history, I might have held, by mental reservation, the right of exercising my own judgment on indiscreet or unseemly circumstances; and truly, my adventure with the hopeful progeny of Black-at-the-bane is a thing not to be proclaimed in the public places. The profane songs and profaner conduct of a moving camp of roving gypsies will sound unseemly after the enthusiastic hymns and hosannahs of my excellent friends the Buchanites. And yet there is a kind of pleasure in speaking of conduct and relating conversation, of which prudence cannot wholly approve-it relieves the monotony of sedate thought, brings the sunny morning of youth upon us again-it is joy that the gravest indulge in-and so, with the quiet attention of my friend, and the inspiring aid of this potent peat reek,' I shall proceed.

"Leaving Lagghill and Lagg's ruined tower behind me, I ascended a green eminence on the opposite side, and, looking back from its summit, saw the camp of our lady descending into the plain towards the stream of Dalgonar. It was conducted with all the precision, and much of the pomp, of a regular march. Four men bearing green boughs marched in fronttwo others followed, blowing at intervals on harvest horns-then came our lady, mounted on a white poney, a

present from the minister's wife of Kipplekimmer-a handmaiden on either side accompanied her on foot, and four men, bearing green branches, followed. The procession was closed by the congregation marching in mass, conducting a cavalcade of horses loaded with the travelling equipage of the establishment. The men and the women sung, alternately, verses of a wild hymn-between every verse the four men winded their horns, and thus they pursued their journey till they passed from my sight among the woods of the vale of Dalgonar.

"From gazing on those respectable enthusiasts, I turned my face towards the river Nith, my forlorn condition began to claim my concern, and I resolved to pass into the moorland part of the parish of Closeburn, and seek employment as a shepherd. I was acquainted with several opulent Cameronian moorland farmers, and I had a love for their patriarchal calling. I had acquired, from tale and from song, a great liking to shepherds' pipes, well replenished scrips, kilted damsels, and kitted whey. I thought, too, it was assuredly a pleasant thing to lie in the sun, on the green side of a high hill, with all my flooks around me, listening to the lilting o' the laverocks, and daun'er with them down the green margin of a burn among the flowers and the primroses. Resolving to prove the charms of this primitive vocation, I hastened on my way, making the uplands ring with the charming old Nithsdale song of the Wakerife Minnie.'

"I soon found myself on the borders of the old forest, which covers the eastern side of the hills of the Keir, and reaching down to the Nith, lines its margin with stately groves of ash, elm, and oak, the whole thickly interwoven with hazel, mountain-ash, sloethorn, and green holly. Through these ancient groves, and chiefly on the river bank, the laird had cut many

pathways, and as no one ever accused him of an aim in his improvements, his roads had singular terminations. One greensward winding-way led, with a kind of Will-o'-wisp wandering, to the sheer brink of one of the deepest pools in the river-another pathway pursued its course to the verge of an impassable thicket-and one, more beautiful still, chose to stop at the base of a steep rock, where the wild cats reared their young, and the eagle found a resting-place when he chose his first spring lamb from the flocks of Nithsdale. It was full three miles of rough road round, to go by either the eastern or western extremity of the wood-and as the night was calm and unclouded, I leaped over the fence which defined, but did not defend, the limit of the forest, and setting my face for the green mountain of Queensberry, went fearlessly forward. The way at first was exceedingly pleasantthe forest was portioned out into clumps of trees, the tall, and the dwarf, and the shrub all intermixed, and among them green knolls and green sward plats were thick and delightful. The moon poured full on my path her slant and softened light, and showed the ring-doves and the rooks sitting in pairs abreast among the thickest branches. I crossed one or two of the laird's roads, and rested myself on several of his hermitages, or rude lodges of dry stone, matted over floor, and wall, and roof, with a thick and trailing mass of green ivy. Proceeding onward, I entered the dark and untrodden bosom of the wood, nor did I enter it without awe. The trees, over-arching high above me, formed a roof thick and verdant, through which the moon could visit me with little of her cheering light, and the woodpigeons, having forsaken this thick and gloomy grove, left it to the undisturbed possession of the gleds and the hooded ravens. These birds of prey and evil omen sat visible on the upper boughs, evidently enjoying the luxury of the sweet evening.

"My progress was at last impeded by a natural barrier of thick green holly, which, sloping upwards from the forest-sward, formed a rampart fifteen feet high, as close and impassable as a wall of stone. Nature had woven this verdant tracery round a large green knoll in the centre of the wood: the peasants, from the seclusion and beau

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ty of the place, called it the "Fairy Knowe." But the folly of man had profaned the haunt of the Good Folk;' the spade and the axe had cut their way through many a thicket of honeysuckle and holly, to the foot of this beautiful hillock, and two lodges, floored and thatched with ivy, seemed to promise centinels to watch the sacred ground. Into this winding path it was my fortune to fall, as I endeavoured to force my way round the enclosure of holly, and I obtained a sight, for the first time, of the famous Fairy Knowe, reposing in the silent splendour of moonlight. The folly of the laird had not halted at the foot of the hillock; it had found its way to the summit. In the very centre of the Fairy ring a square tower of masonry had been constructing for many years, and had already reached the height of forty feet, with buttress, loop-hole, and embrazure. The laird had some hopes of finding a use for it. He had long hesitated about a suitable name. When his masons were weary with building houses, whose ponderous roofs and impending battlements scared away all tenants-with raising stone walls round fields which lacked nourishment for a thistle-and with rearing buttresses of mortar and stone on scaurs and burn-banks, to preserve trees from falling that were not worth tenpence when they had finished all these, away they marched with trowel and hammer, to the Fairy Knowe, to add another annual yard to the altitude of this new Babel.

"I stood and looked on this mass of mortar and rock, which encumbered this romantic hillock, but I soon found another subject for contemplation. Advancing through an arch-way, cut out of the holly rampart by the removal of a dwarf-bush, I observed the building, unfinished though it was, was inhabited, for a thin blue smoke curled slowly towards the moon, and a light glimmered from all the lower loop-holes. The character of those who had thus chosen to themselves an habitation, and entered as tenants at will, required little waste of thought. A dozen of asses, all tethered and reposing round the building, were to me as sure a sign of a troop of gypsies, as the personal assurance of the patriarch of the tribe himself; and this assurance was not long wanting. Advancing with a rash eagerness to reconnoitre

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