Remember the pruning knife is keen, cutting cankers even from the vine; Remember, twelve were chosen, and one among them liveth in perdition. Yea, for standing unatoned, the soul is a bison on the prairie, Hunted by those trooping wolves, the many sinful yesterdays: And it speedeth a terrified Deucalion, flinging back the pebble in his flight, The pebble that must add one more to those pursuing ghosts. How to avert that fate, living consequence of causes unexistent? Close at hand, with its wicket on the latch; haste for thy life, poor hunted one! The gladiator, Guilt, fighteth as of old, armed with net and dagger; Snaring in the mesh of yesterdays, stabbing with the poniard of to-day; Fly, thy sword is broken at the hilt; fly, thy shield is shiver'd; Leap the barriers and baffle him; the arena of the past is his. The bounds of guilt are the cycles of time; thou must be safe within Eternity; The arms of God alone shall rescue thee from yesterday. A POET'S PARTING THOUGHT.*-MOTHERWELL. WHEN I beneath the cold red earth am sleeping, Will there for me be any bright eye weeping Will there be any heart still memory keeping When the great winds through leafless forests rushing, When the swollen streams, o'er crag and gully gushing, Will there then one, whose heart despair is crushing, When the bright sun upon that spot is shining, And the small flowers, their buds and blossoms twining, Will there be one still on that spot repining When no star twinkles with its eye of glory, And wintry storms have, with their ruins hoary, Will there be then one, vers'd in misery's story, It may be so, but this is selfish sorrow *These lines of Motherwell,-so touching in their simple pathos, and so unselfish in the calm resignation of their close, —were given to a friend by the author, a day or two before his decease. A weakness and a wickedness to borrow, The wailings of to-day for what to-morrow Lay me then gently in my narrow dwelling, And though thy bosom should with grief be swelling, It were in vain,-for time hath long been knelling;Sad one, depart! DIALOGUE AND DRAMATIC PIECES. LOCHIEL'S WARNING.-CAMPBELL. WIZARD-LOCHIEL.* Wiz.-Lochiel, Lochiel! beware of the day Oh weep! but thy tears cannot number the dead. * In this dialogue, the tone of the Wizard, or Seer-who is supposed to be gifted with second-sight-must be deep, and solemn; increasing in pitch and force as the images of horror crowd upon his vision, and varied occasionally by the soft tones of grief. The expression of the chieftain Lochiel must be that of bold confidence, daring, and contempt of the Wizard's prediction. His pitch will therefore be higher, and his tone louder. For a merciless sword on Culloden shall wave, Draw, dotard, around thy old wavering sight Wiz.-Ha! laugh'st thou, Lochiel, my vision to scorn? From his home, in the dark-rolling clouds of the north? But down let him stoop from his havoc on high! For the blackness of ashes shall mark where it stood, Loc.-False Wizard, avaunt! I have marshall'd my clan, Wiz.-Lochiel, Lochiel! beware of the day! |