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O, thou shalt find, howe'er thy footsteps roam,
That land thy country, and that spot thy home!

On Greenland's rocks, o'er rude Kamschatka's plains, In pale Siberia's desolate domains;

When the wild hunter takes his lonely way,

Tracks through tempestuous snows his savage prey,
The rein-deer's spoil, the ermine's treasure shares,
And feasts his famine on the fat of Bears;
Or, wrestling with the might of raging seas,
Where round the pole the eternal billows freeze,
Plucks from their jaws the stricken whale, in vain
Planging down head-long through the whirling main;
-His wastes of ice are lovelier in his eye
Than all the flowery vales beneath the sky,
And dearer far than Cæsar's palace-dome,
His cavern-shelter, and his cottage home.

O'er China's garden-fields and peopled floods; In California's pathless world of woods;

Round Andes' heights, where Winter, from his throne,
Looks down in scorn upon the summer zone;

By the gay borders of Bermuda's isles,
Where Spring with everlasting verdure smiles;
On pure Madeira's vine-robed hills of health;
In Java's swamps of pestilence and wealth;
Where Babel stood, where wolves and jackals drink,
Midst weeping willows on Euphrates' brink;
On Carmel's crest; by Jordan's reverend stream,
Where Canaan's glories vanish'd like a dream;

Where Greece, a sceptre, haunts her heroes' graves,
And Rome's vast ruins darken Tiber's waves;
Where broken-hearted Switzerland bewails
Her subject mountains and dishonour'd vales;
Where Albion's rocks exult amidst the sea,.
Around the beauteous isle of Liberty;
-Man, through all ages of revolving time,
Unchanging man, in every varying clime,
Deems his own land of every land the pride,
Beloved by heaven o'er all the world beside;
His home the spot of earth supremely blest,
A dearer, sweeter spot than all the rest.

THE WEST INDIES.

MY COUNTRY.

Walter Scott.

BREATHES there the man, with soul so dead,

Who never to himself hath said,

This is my own, my native land!
Whose heart hath ne'er within him burned,
As home his footsteps he hath turned,

From wandering on a foreign strand!
If such there breathe, go, mark him well;
For him no minstrel raptures swell;
High though his titles, proud his name,
Boundless his wealth as wish can claim;
Despite those titles, power, and pelf,
The wretch, concentered all in self,
Living, shall forfeit fair renown,
And, doubly dying, shall go down

To the vile dust, from whence he sprung,
Unwept, unhonoured, and unsung.

O Caledonia! stern and wild,
Meet nurse for a poetic child!

Land of brown heath and shaggy wood,
Land of the mountain and the flood,
Land of my sires! what mortal hand
Can e'er untie the filial band,

That knits me to thy rugged strand!
Still, as I view each well-known scene,

Think what is now, and what hath been,

Seems as, to me, of all bereft,

Sole friends thy woods and streams were left;
And thus I love them better still,

Even in extremity of ill.

By Yarrow's stream still let me stray,
Though none should guide my feeble way;
Still feel the breeze down Ettricke break,
Although it chill my withered cheek;
Still lay my head by Teviot stone,
Though there, forgotten and alone,
The Bard may draw his parting groan.

LAY OF THE LAST MINSTREL,

ON THE DEATH OF HENRY KIRKE WHITE.

Lord Byron.

Henry Kirke White died at Cambridge in October, 1806, in consequence of too much exertion in the pursuit of studies that would have matured a mind which disease and poverty could not impair, and which death itself destroyed rather than subdued. His poems

abound in such beauties as must impress the reader with the liveliest regret, that so short a period was allotted to talents which would have dignified even the sacred functions he was destined to assume.

UNHAPPY White! while life was in its spring,
And thy young Muse just waved her joyous wing,
The spoiler came; and all thy promise fair
Has sought the grave, to sleep for ever there.
Oh! what a noble heart was here undone,

When Science' self destroyed her favourite son!
Yes! she too much indulg'd thy fond pursuit!

She sowed the seeds, but Death has reaped the fruit.
"Twas thine own Genius gave the final blow,
And helped to plant the wound that laid thee low:
So the struck eagle, stretch'd upon the plain,
No more through rolling clouds to soar again,
Viewed his own feather on the fatal dart,
And wing'd the shaft that quivered in his heart:
Keen were his pangs but keener far to feel
He nurs'd the pinion which impell'd the steel,
While the same plumage that had warm'd his nest,
Drank the last life-drop of his bleeding breast.

ENGLISH BARDS.

TWILIGHT.

Montgomery.

I LOVE thee, Twilight; as thy shadows roll,
The calm of evening steals upon my soul,
Sublimely tender, solemnly serene,

Still as the hour, enchanting as the scene.
I love thee, Twilight! for thy gleams impart
Their dear, their dying influence to my heart,
When o'er the harp of thought thy passing wind
Awakens all the music of the mind,

And joy and sorrow, as the spirit burns,

And hope and memory sweeps the chords by turns,
While Contemplation, on seraphic wings,

Mounts with the flame of sacrifice, and sings.
Twilight! I love thee; let thy glooms increase
Till every feeling, every pulse is peace;
Slow from the sky the light of day declines,
Clearer within the dawn of glory shines,
Revealing, in the hour of Nature's rest,
A world of wonders in the Poet's breast:
Deeper, O Twilight! then thy shadows roll,
An awful vision opens on my soul.

WORLD BEFORE THE FLOOD..

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